#which i accept but i am putting it on the record that those are both horrendous

[jaywhere]

moom, dad and dad are fighting over which of them is the most fucked up again :(

poolverine wip extend, ~7k. i have been confined to my tablet with a bluetooth keyboard so she is no doubt extremely messy and i am also too lazy to post in parts so we will all have to deal with that! skip to *** for the new stuff, follow-up to HER

The doorframe rattles when Logan slams it shut.

With a sigh, he shrugs off his jacket. He makes a half-hearted attempt at hanging it on one of the hooks off to the right before giving up and allowing it to slump onto the floor. His feet drag, toes catching clumsily against the transitional swell between his living room’s wood paneling and the kitchenette’s linoleum.

The world is already tolerably fuzzy as he slams open the cabinet door. Logan closes his eyes against the sound of one of his neighbors showering and crickets chirping in the distance. He pulls out a half-empty bottle of whiskey, pops out the cork, and tilts his head back to take a few slow glugs. The alcohol slides down his throat, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. The thunk of glass against the lacquered countertop echoes.

Today had not been a good day. The last few days hadn’t been good, really — although Logan’s not sure he’s ever had a good day. But the last few had been worse than usual. The kind of days that suck you dry, leave you nothing but a husk of a man at the end of ‘em. Logan glancces down at the bottle in his hand, wondering if he should down the whole thing now.

He squints. It looks significantly more full than he remembers.

It isn’t until the bathroom door swings open to release a cavalcade of barefoot footfalls and a cloud of hot steam, that Logan realizes it hadn’t been one of his neighbors showering.

“Logan Wolverine,” Wade Wilson announces, leveling an accusatory loofah brush towards him, “it’s time to resume our eternal battle.”

Drunk, Logan stares. The cloud of steam clears to reveal an expanse of marred skin interrupted only by the bright red kevlar of the Deadpool mask. A long beat passes wherein Logan stares directly at Wade’s bare cock dangling goofily between his legs before he jerks his head to the side.

“God damn, man, put some clothes on!” Logan turns, back to Wade. “And what the fuck are you doing here?”

“Not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before, lover.” The only warning Logan gets before a hot, wet body is pressed against his back is the damp slap of wet feet on linoleum. By reflex, he turns and shoves three ragged claws directly into Wade’s stomach. “Oh, should’ve expected that. Gonna take a second to get over that one.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Logan stares down at him, spread-eagled in the kitchenette with thin streams of blood puddling on the floor. “You are wet and naked. Get the fuck out of my house.”

“Well,” Wade responds. Completely shameless, he doesn’t even make an attempt to cover himself. Logan grinds his teeth and turns his back once again. “Considering that you just stabbed me. No! And besides, I have a job for you. Since you’re obviously done with your last one.”

Logan tips back the bottle of whiskey into his mouth. A few drops escape from the corner of his lips, which he doesn’t bother to wipe away. “What?”

“It’s something silly. A B-plot. Hijinks, if you will. The type suitable for some sort of one-shot. Maybe a two-shot if we get frisky.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” Logan stares out the window above the sink. The foggy, smudged surface prevents him from seeing much other than the glaring approach of oncoming cars down the highway.

“I’m talking about an adventure! Work for the good of the universe! The two amigos at it again to save the world — or at least a very specific suburb of Milwaukee — “

“Yeah, I don’t actually do that anymore.” He takes another swig. Bottle’s halfway empty.

“Okay. Well, if I am being honest, I did accept a payment for this one. About a milli, but if you play nice, I would be willing to split it between the two of us.”

Another drink. A car roars down the highway, lights blazing. A fly buzzes above, imprisoned against the glare of the LEDs.

“No.”

“Okay, fine.” Wade’s exasperated tone shatters the melancholy mood. Logan wishes he would give up and leave already. Wishful thinking, he supposes. Not even educated. “It was two milli.”

“No.”

Logan slides the whiskey back into the cabinet. Wade mutters something he doesn’t bother to listen to. Rather, Logan steps over Wade’s naked, wet, healing body, opens the fridge, and pulls out a mostly-intact six pack. With a sigh, he walks into the living room, collapses onto the couch, and turns of the TV.

“Fine!” Wade shouts from the floor of the kitchenette. “It was five milli, but if you’re actually going to take half of that, I expect a blowjob for my finder’s fee, mister!”

Logan doesn’t respond. Nothing good on at 3 AM. He should be asleep. No way he’s going to do so with Wade Wilson loose in his place. He’s too tired, drunk, and miserable to do anything meaningful about him right now. He pops open one of the beers. On screen, a lion eviscerates a zebra while the narrator drones calmly on.

Damp footfalls on carpet. Wade stands just inside of Logan’s line of sight. He isn’t bleeding any more. “Oh no, I’m bleeding all over your carpet! Whatever are you going to do!”

Logan ignores him. The lion is rooting through the zebra’s guts now.

“Come on, I know you can’t be that busy. You’ve been gone for four whole days.”

Logan’s brow furrows. His head snaps in Wade’s direction. “You’ve been in my house for four days.”

“This, Logan, is an apartment. And yeah, where do you think all those dirty dishes came from?” Wade gestures vaguely towards the kitchen. Logan hadn’t even noticed. “Also, you probably want to change your sheets. And don’t look in your second dresser drawer, please, unless you’re like, way more into me than I think.”

“Okay.” Logan sets down his beer, looking Wade dead in the eye. Very intentionally, he does not glance down to where Wade’s cock is still flopping pathetically about between his legs. “I’m being serious. I need you to get out now.”

“Ooh, it’s serious time, alright.” He bends his knees, turns to the side, and arches his back so his ass sticks out. “And what happens if I don’t?”

Logan stands up. He can’t fucking deal with this right now. He grabs his coat, stumbling over to the door. He squints against a blast of cold air.

“Come on, Logan.” Wade attempts to dramatically slam the door shut. Logan rips it right back open and steps outside. “I can’t be so repugnant you don’t want to work with me even just a tiny little bit — “

“No, you are,” Logan says, just before slamming the door in Wade’s face.

There are a few blessed moments of silence as Logan walks up the half-set of stairs leading to the parking lot. His shoulders tense when he hears his door creak open again.

“Even though I’m offering you two and a half million? This place is dingy as fuck, the X-men cannot be paying you that much.”

The door slams closed behind Wade. Logan keeps his gaze fixed ahead. He doesn’t speak until he senses Wade right behind him. “Pretty sure the X-Men don’t get paid, bub.”

“What the fuck, good ol’ Chuck — who is definitely alive by the way, don’t you even worry your sweet little heads about it — doesn’t even pay you.” Logan keeps walking forward, desperately hoping that the crunch of gravel beneath his boots will eventually drown Wade out. “That’s inhumane. Even the Avengers get paid. What the hell else is he doing with that seemingly infinite pool of money? Also, what do you mean you’re pretty sure? You are working with the X-Men, aren’t you.”

Logan takes a deep breath. Without a word, he continues walking forward.

Wade gasps. They cross into the street now, beginning to walk down the empty road. Logan’s car isn’t even here. He'd left it at the bar.

“Oh my god, you’re not. What the hell have you been doing for the last year then, man?”

“Didn’t I very specifically say that we would not be seeing each other around?”

“Yes, but then you waddled that cute little ass directly into my apartment, and held my dog, and made friends with my friends and your not-daughter, all strongly implying to the audience that we were going to live happily ever after in homoerotic bliss!” 

The sound of skin smacking against skin echoes from behind Logan. Perhaps Wade smacking himself in the face. “I thought you were the reason they rejected me again, good ‘ol Logan wants nothing to do with Wade anymore for completely inscrutable reasons, but — “

Logan’s brow furrows. “They rejected you — ?”

The sentence dies a swift death to a cocktail of rage and embarrassment as he turns and realizes that Wade is still buck naked.

“ — sunuvabitch, put some damn clothes on!”

The emotionless white pits of the Deadpool mask stare back at Logan. “I will if you come back to your sad wolf boy apartment with me.”

Logan scowls. “No.”

Wade crosses his arms and waggles his hips. “I’m the one wearing the mask here. I have nothing to lose. You live here. And you have neighbors you care about. Apparently.” 

Logan turns his head, gritting his teeth against the feeling of complete mortification. With a grunt, he clips Wade’s shoulder as he passes him on the way back to his apartment.

“There’s my peanut, always happy to see me!”

Logan throws his jacket onto the floor as soon as he re-enters his apartment. Wilson is such a fucking nut-case.

— 

“Are you sure you don’t want to get down nasty style? If it’s just about the carpet, we can lay down a tarp or something. Or we can do it in the bathroom. Always keeps the ugly bumping tidy no matter the bodily fluids involved — I highly recommend it.”

Exhausted, Logan blinks very slowly as he stares at the TV. He sucks down another half a beer before responding. “Don’t you have a girl?”

“If by a girl,” Wade calls out from the bedroom, “you mean my fabulous new therapist Lisa, then yes. She is so dumb. Knows nothing about the horrific depths of the human spirit. Never been tortured, Logan, can you believe that? Not even once. She’s incredible. She has me using this new morality app — “

Logan shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I mean a girlfriend, wife situation.”

“Not anymore!”

Wade arrives in Logan’s field of vision wearing a pair of jeans which come to an abrupt end at his mid-shin. A white t-shirt is tucked into Wade’s belt, dangling pouches failing to disguise how comically large the waistband is on him. Strips of discolored skin are visible on his arms and legs. He’s still wearing the mask. He makes jazz hands.

“You look stupid.”

“You, too!” Wade points an accusatory finger at Logan. “Oh, who am I kidding? You pull it off. Why was I cursed with this glorious, mutilated twink body?”

With a huff, Wade collapses onto the couch. He places a hand on Logan’s thigh, which Logan quickly removes.

“Sorry about your girl.” Wade’s hand continues to sit placidly on the couch. Logan takes another swig of his beer.

“It’s fine.”

On screen, a family of gerbils scurry out of their burrow in the middle of a flood. The narrator dully reports that, in these conditions, the little beasts make easy prey for opportunistic predators.

“Actually, it’s not fine. You know, the really fucked-up thing is that — according to her, at least — it wasn’t the loser-era stuff, or the putting her in constant danger, or the severe mental health problems. Sometimes, things just don’t work out.” Wade turns away from Logan and stares into the middle distance. “And that, dear, readers, is a weak plotline, but it’s also real life. We all know you just want to see his one-eyed snake disappear into my wet cave and you’ll take any excuse you can get. Fuck!”

Wade throws his head onto the back of the couch.

“It may also just have been the severe mental health problems,” he admits. “She was really nice. Probably wouldn’t have said that if it were true.”

Logan drink again. One of the gerbils gets snapped up by a hawk in slow motion. “She would have,” he says. “She would’ve just said it nice.”

Wade sighs. “Yeah.”

Wordlessly, Logan hands him a beer.

“You know, I’m not supposed to drink on my medication. But this is probably enough of a special occasion.” Logan’s not sure whether it’s a joke. He’d never known Wade — any iteration — to be particularly stable. In fairness, Logan has never been either.

When Wade takes the bottle, Logan pops the top off with one partially extended claw. Wade scoffs and takes a sad, quiet drink. Out of juice. Silence encroaches.

“So,” Logan starts. “You’re back on your merc shit, huh?”

“Kinda.” Wade slouches into the crevices of the couch. For a moment, he looks pathetically small. “I’m trying to incorporate my burgeoning moral compass into my work now. Man’s gotta eat.”

“Five million dollars ain’t grocery money.”

When Wade sits up, it’s like a switch flips on in his brain. “In this economy? You’d be lucky to get a loaf of bread for 50K!”

Logan ignores him. He finishes off his beer, then sets the empty bottle on the coffee table.

“So does this mean you’re gonna help me? Or fuck me? I was hoping for both but at this point I’d take either.” He leans closer, staring out at Logan from behind his mask.

Logan sighs. “I said I’m not doing that shit.”

“Logan.” Wade’s voice is deadly serious. “My bowels are clear. But if you’re really that worried about it, I can give myself an enema first.”

Logan reaches over and takes the beer back. Wade doesn’t flinch.

“Hey, come on. You literally save the multiverse, heroically switch timelines, sidestep the life-ruining consequences of your actions. You get to live in a world where you’re a hero, and not one where all of your friends are dead. That is literally once-in-thousands-of-lifetimes kind of luck. And you’re gonna use that ridiculous stroke of luck to sit on the couch all day?”

Shouldn’t be surprising. Logan was already familiar with Wade’s personal definition of heroism. With jaw tight, Logan keeps his gaze fixed forward. His grip tightens around Wade’s beer. Fingers twitching, he downs a third of it.

“I’m honestly shocked the TVA didn’t make you go home off-screen, just for continuity’s sake. I guess they want you to be in more — “

“In case you didn’t catch that,” Logan says, glaring at Wade out of the corner of his eye, “that was an invitation to leave.”

“But you did give me the beer. Invitation extended. And I bet if I ignore your grumpy mug and stay a little bit longer, I can get you to do it again!”

Logan doesn’t respond. He’s lost track of how much he’s had to drink. The whiskey from before is just now starting to hit him, thoughts growing sluggish, warmth crawling through his limbs. He downs the rest of Wade’s beer and cracks open another.

“For real, man.” Wade leans closer, squinting. “Why are you not chilling with the X-Men. They’re all alive here. Or, like, mostly. Probably.” His head turns, glancing around the room chaotically. “Those timelines were always really hard to follow. And our whole thing just didn’t make any sense at all, so it’s probably way easier to just show up and find out who’s alive, but like, it’s definitely most of them. I saw Kurt last week. Blue. Tail. All that fun stuff. You two are supposed to be buds.”

A black hole opens up in the pit of Logan’s stomach.

“You like reality TV, right? That seems like your kind of trash.” Logan flips through the channels. The warmth that radiates off of Wade as he leans in closer is probably Logan’s imagination.

“Logan.” Wade whispers. “Answer the question.”

Teeth grit, Logan hisses, “Or else what?”

“Or else.” Logan rolls his eyes when he feels the cool barrel of a gun press against his temple. He continues flipping through the channels. “We will have to continue our eternal — oh, Love Island, I love this shit.” Logan resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You know, the US version is so bland in comparison to the UK one — wait a second, you’re trying to distract me!”

With a sigh, Logan leans his head back on the couch. His thoughts are becoming delightfully fuzzy, now. He plays the game. “You ever get that ADHD testing done?”

Wade narrows his eyes. “No.”

If Wade had come here to commiserate — to play games — Logan can be fine with that. A few hours ago he’d lifted his cheek off of the bar with red in his mind’s eye. Her hair, her fire, her blood. The last few months had been lonely.

An unnatural silence fills the room when Logan closes his eyes. Wade moves, silent and fast. Thighs bracketing Logan’s, erratically-textured palms cradling his cheeks. Chest tight like he’d been strangled. Logan’s knuckles are pressed to Wade’s ribs, all reflex.

“Get off me.” The vision of his blades slicing through Wade’s soft stomach is clear in his mind’s eye.

“Logan.” Wade’s fingers on his cheek are patronizing. “My bro. My good boy. My homie. My personal hero. That would ruin your couch.”

Wade’s body going slack in Logan’s arms. Manic twinkles of laughter in his ear. Spilled blood sucked up by denim and upholstery. Logan grits his teeth. Silence ticks on.

“Which you care about, because you’re broke, because you’re not fucking around with Chuck — who definitely pays people, by the way.” Wade’s voice is loud and annoying. “So come help me, Obi Wan. You’re my only hope.”

The sharp snikt of Logan’s claws slicing through his own skin occurs not half a second after Wade rolls off of him.

“For the last fucking time,” Logan growls. He can feel his own throat rumble, his self-control slipping as the alcohol suffuses his cells. “No.”

Wade crouches in the middle of Logan’s living room, ready to pounce. The upturned corners of his lips are visible even beneath the mask. “It’s not even a hit job. More of a rescue, really. And it’s delightfully silly. And afterwards we can do a little horizontal — “

Logan scowls. “Stop.”

His muscles are heavy, drawing him further back into the couch. He shouldn’t have had so much to drink. Wilson is a clown, but he’s not incompetent. Logan’s heart races against an impending sense of danger.

All at once, Wade collapses onto his ass. He pulls out his phone, gaze fixed on the screen. Logan couldn’t relax if he wanted to.

“Okay, I hear that you’re setting a boundary. Lisa’s been telling me a lot about those. So I’m willing to stop talking about sex. If you come with me.”

“And yet you apparently didn’t hear me when I told you to leave.”

Logan leans forward. Moonlight stretches down the length of his claws in reflection.

“Come on, Logan, we all know you weren’t being serious then.” Wade flaps his wrist dismissively. He’d probably still be cracking jokes if Logan were to snap it. “Which is definitely how it works. And you can’t say otherwise because you don’t even go to therapy.”

Logan says nothing. Wade stares at him, as if waiting for a response.

“If you did, your therapist would definitely tell you that you should come with me. And also that you should probably go hit up your good ol’ bubs the — “

“No.”

Logan stands. His patience is running out. He’s wobbly, unsteady. Wade’s fast. A bloodthirsty cacophony clamors in the back of his mind. Two kicks would leave Wade’s brains splattered across a broken television screen, a left hook could snap his neck on the edge of the coffee table, triplet blades rending flesh from his heart down to his gut leaving him flopping like a fish out of water on the carpet — 

“Fine.” Wade sighs. He stares down at his phone. Logan itches for violence. “I didn’t want to resort to this, but you leave me no choice.”

The sound of dice rolling fills the apartment. Wade gasps, turning his phone screen to display a mischievous-looking emoji with an angel halo. A beat passes with Logan’s head tilted in utter confusion.

“Chaotic heroic. I love this one. Always so weird.”

Swiftly, he pops open the velcro of one of his pouches. Logan’s eyes go wide as he pulls out a grenade.

“Wade,” Logan says. His voice is tense, pulse thundering in his ears. Wade’s attitude had felt strange — stranger — but he hadn’t anticipated this. “Put that down. This is an apartment building. There are innocent people here.”

With a giggle, Wade stands. He loops one finger through the pull ring, swinging it casually around his finger. “Oh, I know.”

Logan lunges at him. Wade sidesteps easily, laughing as Logan sprawls inelegantly across the floor. His limbs are heavy, the air baring down on him as he pushes himself up.

“I don’t know what kinda psycho fuckin’ meltdown you’re having because your girl dumped you, Wilson, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you — “

A hand held over his heart. “Wow. Last-named. The hurt. How would you feel if I called you — wait, what is your last name?”

“I’m not gonna let you kill a bunch of people for no goddamn reason.”

A swipe, dodged. Wade’s pressed flat against his front door. Logan throws his fist, embedding his claws in the wood instead of Wade’s skull. He screams as he yanks them out.

“Wow, Logan. It’s only been six months and you’ve gotten so slow! Or is it the alcohol?”

One last shot. Logan goes for his gut, but Wade’s too fast. He’s across the room before Logan’s halfway through the swing.

There’s no fanfare when he decided to stop playing games.

“Relax,” he calls from across the room. Logan watches in horror as he pulls the pin, tossing the grenade live across the living room. “This’ll only take a second.”

***

“Wakey-wakey, peanut.”

A finger taps his nose. Logan’s head throbs. His eyelids scrape like sandpaper. The sun is rising at the end of a long, thin stretch of highway.

Logan surges, movement stopped by the seatbelt.

Wade clicks his tongue in the driver’s seat. “I told you I didn’t wanna do this, Logan.”

“Sunuvabitch,” Logan mutters. His hands are bolted behind his back, ankles tied together. A thick chain secures the thick cuffs above his knees to a metal rod beneath the seat. “What the fuck — “

“Now, Logan.” Wade’s voice is chastizing, like he’s talking to a child. Logan seethes. “Before you extend those pretty little claws of yours — “

The upholstery of the passenger’s seat tears. Logan struggles only to find he doesn’t have enough leverage to slice through the metal holding the seat together. The seatbelt stretching across his chest locks his back flat against the back of the seat.

“That was literally what I just — “ Wade groans, smacking himself in he forehead. “This is why I can’t have nice things. You know I got this car from Spiderman, tricked the whole thing out, gave it a roof, and you just come in here with your little honey badger shit and just — “

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Logan screams.

“Calm down,” Wade says. “You’d think a little nap would make you less cranky. And before you ask, everyone is fine. It was just a little gas. I can’t believe you thought I would actually blow up an apartment building for fun.”

“I,” Logan rasps, “am going to fucking kill you.”

“Easier said than done,” Wade chirps. “Believe me, I’ve tried. Also, I’m driving this car on an incredibly busy highway so anything you do to me is likely to result in some random bystanders dying in a fiery car crash.”

Logan turns to look out the window. In the span of a few seconds, Wade blasts pasts one, two, three other cars on the right. 

“How fucking fast are you — “

“Uh…” The car twists into the right lane, then back into the left. “110. Thereabouts.”

Logan grits his teeth. He doesn’t know what else he expected.

“You know I’m just going to kill you whenever I have the chance.”

“And in the meantime, we have the opportunity to get in some quality time together while I convince you that — “

“Kidnapping me is not starting off on a good foot.”

“We weren’t on a good foot in the first place, Logan. And you know whose fault that was?” Logan curses under his breath as the right side wheels of the car lift from the pavement as Wade rounds a curve in the highway. “You. And you know, it didn’t have to be this way. We had a good thing going for awhile, me and you. And you had that wholesome daddy-daughter dynamic going on with X-whatever — “

“Her name is Laura.”

“ — not to say that we don’t also have a daddy-daughter dynamic of a different flavor going on.”

“You’re a disgusting son of a bitch, you know that?” Anger coils in the pit of Logan’s stomach as Wade dodges around another car. The violent honking fades out quickly.

“Very aware, thank you! But you just had to do the same shit you always do — “

“You don’t know shit about me, bub.”

“ — and leave. And being me, I was going to go look for you, but Vanessa, she’s all he has his reasons and he has to go on his own journey to figure out who he is and you need to leave people alone if they want to be left alone — “

“So your girl dumped you again and that’s my problem, somehow?”

“Something like that!” He’s wearing his suit again, leather-gloved fingers strangling the steering wheel. “So the job is outside of Milwaukee, not too far from here actually, really low-level stuff but I tried to take ‘em out last week and it was somewhat of a comical failure.”

The car jerks from side to side as Wade weaves through traffic. The back of Logan’s head throbs with a hangover — from the bottle of whiskey or from whatever Wade had dosed him with, he’s not sure. He holds in a growl and resists the urge to scream. The desire to completely lose control bubbles up in the pit of his stomach. He struggles to come up with a good justification not to.

“And I know what you’re thinking, Logan - wow, can’t believe this guy is skipping right over the emotional trauma of losing his girlfriend for the third or fourth time, depending on how you count it, and he’s totally emotionally dodging all of the important feelings that he’s feeling right now.” 

Logan closes his eyes, breathing in and out through his nose. Wade Wilson is a fucking shitstain of a human being. This isn’t new information to him.

“And you would be totally right — “ The image of Wade in blue, scrambling from rooftop to rooftop flashes across Logan’s mind. Bells jingling, laughter echoing, blood dripping from the sack thrown over his shoulder as he lobs a severed arm directly at Logan’s face. The car lurches as he skids around a little white sedan on the right, barely managing to avoid scraping the barrier on the right that stands between the car and the ditch below. “But that’s not even the point right now, because we have to break into a top-secret bse to stage a rescue mission for our comrade-in-arms — “

“Pull over.”

Logan’s head is pounding. Wade finally shuts up. The stench of his sweat is tangy in Logan’s nostrils.

“What?”

“Pull the fucking car over and untie me. I’ll help you.”

The seatbelt cuts into Logan’s chest when Wade slams on the breaks.

It’s a little scenic overlook. A car races past them, honking. Wade turns to stare at him for an unsettlingly silent moment.

“Damn, okay.”

The door slams behind him. He swings his hips exaggeratedly as he rounds the hood. Logan is overcome with the urge to rip out his throat. 

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Wade starts as he opens the passenger-side door, “but why, exactly, would you agree to help me?”

Logan clenches his jaw. Wade unties his ankles first, then unlocks the cuffs around his thighs before he glances up expectantly. Logan tries to mask the seething violence raging just underneath his skin. Given the way that Wade winks flirtatiously at him, he suspects that he’s failed.

“I’m already here, aren’t I?” Logan speaks through gritted teeth.

Wade shrugs. He unbuckles Logan’s seatbelt. “Fair enou—”

Logan’s shoulder smacks into Wade’s nose with as much force as he can muster. Wade’s body sprawls back. His head thunks loudly against first the metal barrier, then the asphalt. The tip of Logan’s boot seeks out Wade’s windpipe and bears down just hard enough to cut off his air. Wade’s eyelids flutter.

“Oh, how I hate to lose,” Wade mutters. Logan crouches to pick up the key from the ground, quickly unlocking his own wrists. “But how I love to lose.”

“Don’t make any goddamn sense, bub.” He rolls Wade over with the toe of his boot, forehead scraping against the barrier once again. Wade is dazed, groaning. Logan scoffs when he feels Wade lift his own arms for Logan to lock them behind his back.

Logan doesn’t have time for this. Or at least not the damn energy. He fully intends to get back in the driver’s seat, book it back to his dingy little apartment just long enough to grab the few important items he has. Losing the damn car should really be the least of Wade’s problems.

But when Logan stares down at him, face-down in the gravel, moaning just a little too loudly as he writhes around on the ground — he feels bad. There have been more times than Logan can count that he’s looked far more pathetic than Wade has right now. Tried to pull himself up by his bootstraps every time, completely failed more often than not.

Logan sighs. He flips Wade back over, hauls him up by the nape of his suit, and tosses him into the passenger’s seat.

He’s about to slam the door shut when he thinks to unbuckle Wade’s belt. He tosses it — pouches, holsters, guns and all — into the back seat.

“Wow, daddy,” Wade mutters. “I didn’t know you were into bondage.”

Logan scowls at him. “Don’t make me regret not leavin’ you on the side of the road, Wilson.”

“Daddy, if you wanted to play rough, all you had to do was — “

Logan slams the door in his face.

“Ask.” Wade finishes his sentence as soon as Logan re-enters on the driver’s side.

“Tired of watchin’ you drive like a fuckin’ maniac.” Logan pulls the seat up, then adjusts the mirrors. Wade keeps his mouth shut about the difference in height — smart. “Gonna fucking kill someone.”

“Fair, but you didn’t need to tie me up. We should at least pull up Google Maps so we know where we’re going — “ 

Logan pulls back onto the highway as soon as he sees a break in traffic, then turns to shoot Wade an incredulous look.

“I’m no goin’ to help you. I’m goin’ home.” He pulls into a parking lot on the left and hangs a right. The dashboard flashes 6:33 AM at him. The bags under his eyes tug at his eyelids. He wishes he was drunk.

“Wow,” Wade says. “I cannot believe the X-Man, Wolverine, is a liar.”

“I can’t believe that known asshole, Deadpool, would kidnap a guy — oh, wait. I can believe that.”

Wade ignores him. “I come all the way out to bumfuck nowhere to magnanimously kidnap you to get you out of your sad wolf boy depressive slump, just as you once did for me — well, I also kidnapped you then, didn’t I?” Logan rubs at his face, trying to tune Wade out. He accelerates up to the speed limit. “And that totally got me out of a depressive slump. Ultimate message: kidnapping works.”

For a beat, Wade pauses as if waiting for a response. Logan ignores him.

“And at the end of the day, after everything I’ve done for you, you repay me by going directly back to where you came from?”

“Yes.”

Wade leans forward. Probably trying to break out of those handcuffs — ain’t subtle. Logan hadn’t bothered to actually restrain him in any meaningful way. As annoying and insistent as Wade is, Logan can’t imagine he has much steam left for this ridiculous charade. 

“You won’t even come with me to help me on an actually magnanimous quest?”

“No.”

The silence stretches out. Wade sighs.

“Come on, man. You gotta be real with me for a second. What gives? We had a good thing going for a couple of months. Little team-up here, over at my place for dinner every once in a while, making friends with my friends. And I know the drinking was getting pretty bad — which like, if I’m saying that, you know that’s real because I have literally a full pound of cocaine stashed away in my apartment — “

He doesn’t. Logan would’ve been able to smell it.

“And you had this whole ridiculous self-hating thing about how you’re not allowed to just cheat and be an X-man in this universe. But things were good. I thought that we were building something good together. And we were going to get past it.”

Logan feels the steering wheel creak under the force of his grip.

“Oh, buddy. There it is. Come on, hit me, baby. Let is all out.”

“You wanna know why I left, Wade?” Logan snaps.

“Yes. Very clearly. That’s why I asked.”

“Because wrecking your entire world, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, is not the kind of shit you get to just brush off and pretend didn’t happen so you can go play house with alternate versions of the people that you got fucking killed.”

He’s panting. For a moment, Logan’s eyes go unfocused. Particles of his own spit have splattered across the windshield.

“Oh, boo-hoo. So Wolvie has to punish himself for being the big evil bad guy, as if saving literally every life in the multiverse didn’t absolve him.” 

There’s a note of cruelty in his tone that makes Logan want to throw him out the window.

“Doing something good doesn’t make the bad shit you’ve done in the past okay.”

“Mm, pretty sure it does, actually.” 

There’s sarcasm dripping from Wade’s tone. Mean, self-absorbed. Logan aches for Kurt — would’ve told him that sin is in the nature of being human, that he’d already more than proven himself worthy of his continued existence, then make a joke that was actually funny.

Unfortunately, that version of Kurt is long dead.

“You see all these cars around us?” Wade gestures at the vehicles zipping by. “I’m the reason they’re all alive. They all owe me. Which means it doesn’t matter if I kill that guy, or those people, or that old lady, or — “

“You’re worse than the last time I saw you.”

There was a spark in that little rant that reminds logan of Wade — the other one. He had still been alive when this Wade had kidnapped him, at least as far as Logan is aware. Guys like the two of them are hard to kill. The way Logan had heard it, he’d gotten cut to pieces a few months after shit started to really hit the fan. Took him five or six years to come back. Logan had always figured it was the pain that had sent him off the deep end. Now Logan wonders if it was the realization of just how alone he was.

“Yeah,” Wade agrees. “I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that my people keep leaving me.”

Logan breathes in. He waits for Wade to continue, for sarcastic comments. Nothing comes.

“You know this doesn’t have anything to do with you, right?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s not you, it’s me. Oldest trick in the book.”

Logan can’t hide his incredulous reaction. “We’re not dating. You know that, right?”

Wade squints. “Tell that to the Honda Odyssey. And Madonna. And my asshole.”

It occurs to Logan that crashing the car might not be an entirely undesirable experience.

“You have a girlfriend.”

“Had. Past-tense. She left, too.”

“You know you’re just gonna get right back together after you’ve gotten over whatever kind of breakdown this is, right? And your gal’s a pretty straight shooter. Just figure out whatever it is that she wants you to figure out — “

“Not this time. All-in-all, pretty good confirmation that I am actually worth dogshit despite my magnanimous multiverse-saving tendencies. And I’m not having a breakdown.”

Logan wonders if this is what it’s like talking to him.

“You understand that these two situations we’re talking about have literally nothing in common.” Wade kicks his feet. It feels like talking to a child.

“I don’t know, feels just about a gut-stabby from my perspective.”

“We are not dating. We’re — “ Logan hesitates over the word friend. “We don’t have a thing.”

“Oh, how the mind loves to rewrite history. We definitely have a thing, peanut. Or at least we did.”

Logan scoffs. At the end of his rope, he snaps, “You are such a fuckin’ narcissist.”

“Acknowledging that we had a good thing going which was then ruined by you leaving has nothing to do with my narcissism.” He thinks he’s so fuckin’ funny.

“No, thinking that me leaving is some reflection on you is narcissistic.”

Wade leans in over the center console, eyes narrowed. “‘Bout to throw you a curveball, peanut: thinking that I wouldn’t see you leaving as a reflection on my own self-worth is narcissistic. We are just the same, you and I. Two bloodthirsty little peas in a pod — “

Logan pushes Wade away, palm spanning most of the area of his face. “You think this is how you’re going to get me to help you out? Being an annoying fuckin’ asshole?”

“No.” Logan can hear the smirk in his voice. “I think that being an annoying asshole is how I’m going to get you to fuck me. Hold on.”

To Logan’s complete and utter exhaustion, Wade takes his hands out from behind his back. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, pulling up that stupid fucking app again. He glances up at Logan, muttering, “Pretend you’re not seeing this, it made me pop a l’il half-chub when you tied me up. That shit was hot.”

The words, you know there’s a reason people keep leaving you, right? sit heavy on Logan’s tongue. He wants to punch Wade in the side of the head, drag him out of the car, slice and hack and cut until he finally shuts the fuck up. Shame immediately follows the thought. A hundred sets of lips curl around the word bloodthirsty in his mind’s eye.

Wade taps away at his phone, swearing. Logan watches him re-roll multiple times. He had really tried to tear Wade down in the Honda whatever. Wade had pissed him off, and Logan wanted to tear him down. Force him to end whatever stupid little delusion he had in his head about saving the world. 

Wade hadn’t klet him. A fucked-up kind of stubborn that Logan can’t help but admire when he thinks about it. Logan wishes he had that same level of dedication.

“Okay, fuck yes. True neutral. Nice.”

Logan sighs. Can’t believe he’s developing a soft spot for Wade Wilson, of all people.

That soft spot melts away as soon as Wade sprawls across the front seat to set his head in Logan’s lap.

His leg jerks. Wade’s head bounces but remains firmly on Logan’s thigh. “What the fuck are you doin’, you want us to get in an accident?”

“No, I rolled true neutral. So obviously, I’m introducing you to the idea that I could give you road head. But I’m not pushing you strongly either way.”

Logan grits his teeth.

With barely-contained force, he shoves Wade’s head off of his lap and pulls the car off to the side of the road. Pines as far as the eye can see. He pulls the keys out of the ignition. 

“Get outta the car.”

Wade pouts. “But daddy, I can’t. You tied me up.”

Logan watches as he tries to slide the handcuffs back onto himself. He grabs Wade by the front of his costume and spits in his face.

“You,” Logan hisses, “are bein’ fuckin’ ridiculous. Over here actin’ like this is a fuckin’ porno every chance you get cause you think that’s gonna make you feel better about your girl fuckin’ leaving. I am not your personal fuckin’ attention fountain, or your daddy, or whatever the fuck you think this is. Get out of the car.”

He throws Wade into the passenger’s side door.

Logan shoves the keys into his pockets as he walks away. He doesn’t look back. A few moments later, he hears the crunch of Wade’s boots against the pine needles. Without a word, he follows Logan.

“Oh,” Wade pipes up after they’ve walked a few hundred feet in silence. “This is like a game. We’re going to roleplay Twilight: New Moon? You know, in this universe there’s this weird tangential link between 9/11 and — “

“Shut up.”

Wade does. Logan takes a deep breath before he turns around.

There had been a lot of people in Logan’s life that he’d wanted to help only to completely and utterly fail. He remembers how proud he’d felt when he’d first heard Wade mention his ten people, that’s it. Logan had mattered. He had changed something for the better.

Wade stands in front of him, this ball of self-destruction, compulsively pushing and pulling the people around him with his stupid jokes, and Logan can’t help but feel as if he’s failed yet again.

“If I need to beat the fucking horny out of you before you can have a conversation like an adult, fine.”

Wade tilts his head. “Who’s saying I won’t beat the horny out of you first?”

“I’m not fuckin’ horny, Wade.”

The tension escalates. Logan swallows.

“That half-chub I sniffed earlier begs to differ.” Logan says nothing, jaw clenched. “How about this: winner gets to do whatever the fuck they want to the loser.”

Logan snorts. “Okay, bub.”

Wade taps his finger on his chin. He arches his back, teasing. “Just no teeth when I shove my cock in your mouth, okay? That’s no way to win a fight.”

He wags a chastising finger at Logan. It looks ridiculous. Logan desperately wishes he wasn’t into it. 

“Don’t feel like that really even needed to be said.” Logan’s eyes flicker down to Wade’s belt. No idea when he had retrieved it from the back seat. “No guns.”

Wade throws his hands up dramatically. “What the fuck, come on!”

“This ain’t bumfuck nowhere. Unless you want the fuckin’ cops called, no guns.” Logan smirks. “As if they’re gonna do you any goddamn good.”

“Fine.” Wade squints. He pulls each gun out of its holster, releases the magazines onto the ground with a dull little thud, and tosses them off to the side. “No guns.”

Logan’s claws extend with a satisfying snikt.

“And my mask doesn’t come off.”

Quietly, Logan scoffs. “Whatever.”

[inkskinned]

we heard that you were very disappointed in us both as a generation and specifically as a generation of women (emphasis yours), how we had let ourselves go and now we were slutty and ill-tempered and holding onto notions of feminism like "having a savings account" and "equality."

we were very sorry about it, we didn't realize. it is very hard for you, in your life, because your entire definition was centered around the word providing, and that's a really vague and undulating word. it is hard to be a provider. for your purposes, the word provider here can be defined as "having a job", although it sometimes also extends to "doing yard work", "grilling on occasion," and "knowing basic car anatomy."

we had to do some reading but we divided it out. do not worry. high-value women will fill in the rest of the gaps of your life - all those silly feminine things like doing the dishes. we didn't realize we had asked too much when we asked you to pick up after yourself. we did not realize you were rendered small and scared and crying about the possibility of doing the laundry. here is a joke to lighten the sentiment: a man that listens when you talk to him.

we heard about how we had fallen from glory and it sickened us and made us very, very sad. lindsey had to cut all her hair off and tara threw up. we lit one million candles and we are going to have a vigil about it tonight. all of the people in this world that you do not approve of are going to be there and we will all be in mourning colors because we have lost your respect which is of course the only thing that any of us were looking for.

we searched around our bedrooms and our closets and for some of us it took a while but we all found the pricetag that we were originally born with, the one that gave our listing offer, the one that smells like rot and pine needles. we were horrified because many of us had taken deductions and hadn't realized it. i had scraped my knees and decided to be a lesbian so they had to take my voicebox out so i could never call home again. janice had been with too many people overall so we had to put her into the big squisher that will hopefully collapse her walls so that when you're with her, you'll feel so big and powerful. it will be like you're conquering something instead of being close with someone.

we are all going to the funeral of feminism and we will tear at our bodies and fall over ourselves. we will invite you onstage for a live recording of your podcast about the occasional minor inconvenience of self-reflection. you will talk about how we have targeted you and made you feel the sweat slick down your back, and we will teach you basic self-defense out of solidarity.

do not worry, we are seeing to all the outliers. taylor asked to be taken seriously so we have shipped her off to prison. laura asked you to accept her femininity regardless of her presentation. you will be happy to hear all women are now and forever going to have to be small and thin and pretty and white and ablebodied and quiet and unassuming and ladylike, which is different than how society has previously told us to act.

i am going to have to shave off my jawline, which is a little masculine, and they are going to have to reshape my hands, which are very square and thick - all the work i've done with them has made their veins stand out, so we're just going to have to exsanguinate me. i am horrified to have been out in public like this.

we are going to sit around the campfire and we will talk about being weird little girls that made potions in pink teacups. we will talk about the first time we made a difference. we will talk about the private lives of crickets, and then, at the stroke of three in the morning (the witching hour, obviously) - we will all promptly shut up.

and this will be your beautiful world. this silence that spans every corner of every street and every zoom meeting and every alley. i do not think you'll notice at first - it will be the same as every television show and movie and book. we will all just simply sit there in our doll dresses and smile blithely at your advances and none of us will do you the dishonor of answering and none of us will appear to be in distress and none of us will nag you or make a fuss or get hysterical about it. it will just be quiet, and you will say finally, some peace for once! and we will smell of smoke and our teeth will be white and the next day will come.

tonight we are going to bury the last little bits of our humanity. you are not invited. it is going to be ugly.

[schlattsdoll]

Okay I thought of this while I was getting smth out of the car a few months ago (don’t ask lol)

Anyway

So, you go to a Lovejoy gig and you’re close to the stage. Will keeps making eye contact with you and it’s almost like he’s admiring you. And of course, you’re filming him, you’re getting this on camera. I mean, who wouldn’t? After the gig you’re outside on the sidewalk and Will comes up to you, guitar (in its case) in hand. And obviously this is after all the fans have left after trying to get the bands attention and you’re just trying to get an Uber. “Hey- I uh, thought you were really pretty and I was wondering if you wanted to go back to my place?” He asks you. Of course you say yes and ask for a picture and hug which he happily accepts. Once the band has gotten all their equipment put up in the van and has sat in said van Will pulls you down onto his lap and snuggles into the back of your neck, leaving soft kisses there. It makes you feel hot and flustered and the band is giggling at the two of you. And when you and Will get back to his those kisses get rougher and move to different places. Then, the two of you move to his bedroom and…. I’ll let you write the rest :)

(I’m sorry this is so long😭)

call me what you like - wilbur soot

warnings: smut{18+},afab reader, oral {m receiving} , rikki getting carried away,

you made damn sure you were as close to the barricade as humanly possible, it was lovejoy after all, and you had a crush on a certain singer. it wasnt often you attended a concert solo, but you made sure to make the best of it, making friends in line and the people around you. the preshow music cuts off and the lights dim, as the boys make their entrance. your phone camera is recording your beloved band, and you notice wilbur making his way towards your side of the stage. excitedly you zoom in your camera, and in a blink and you'll miss it moment, he winks at you. the rest of the concert you began to notice him favoring your area, and making eye contact with you.

the concert wraps and sadly, you didnt get a setlist or will's guitar pick like you had hoped for. the venue empties out, fans now desperately running outside to try and see them board the bus. you began to walk out of the venue and pulled up uber on your phone when you feel a tap on the shoulder. it was none other than wilbur soot himself. "oh my god! i'm such a huge fan of yours!"

will chuckled, "hello, obviously you know who i am, but i think you're really pretty and would like to get to know you." a tall man with shaggy brown hair smiled at you. "y-yeah, of course! my name is y/n." you managed to get out without turning into a total mess. you kindly ask him for a picture before he helps you sneak out the back. the whole time, you two are talking and shamelessly flirting. "i'd love to keep this going darling, why don't you come back to the bus with me for a drink?"

after you snuck into the bus, he realized there wasn't enough seats, and he simply pulled you down onto his lap. "i hope this is okay love, just wanna be close to you." he smiles up at you and kisses your cheek. his arms holding your back to his chest as his placed gentle kisses along the back of your neck, hands rubbing smooth circles into the plush of your thighs. his bandmates biting back laughs and giggles while your face flushes.

joe hands you and wilbur glasses of a clear liquid, and you cheers with them and down the shot with ease. the burn of alcohol in your throat, you smile and wiggle back into will, who's more than happy to be holding you. you do your best to turn around without getting off your seat, and he laughs until you managed to face him. "hi." "hello love." he kisses your cheek once again, then your forehead, then your nose, then finally your lips. your hands make their way to his hair, tugging the chocolate strands gently and if you listened close enough, you could hear a faint moan into the kiss.

the bus finally stopped at his apartment and you both pulled away breathlessly, a flush on both of your cheeks. he grabs his guitar and guides you too his room. "now, where were we?" he asked, placing down the guitar and sitting on his bed, patting the spot next to him. you walked over and instead of sitting next to him you straddle his lap, "somewhere about here." he smirks up at you, his hands finding their way up your back. he pulls you down and kisses you fiercely, hands fumbling towards the bottom of your top, tugging gently as a hint for you to raise your arms. you oblige his request and he does the same. he oogles your breasts, hands tentatively reaching forward for them. "may i?" you nodded your head and wilbur kisses his way down from your jaw to your neck, little purple marks blossoming down his path. he continues down to your clavicle, the finally your chest. taking one in his mouth, the other in his hand. his tongue flicking the sensitive bud while his hand gropes and squeezes, his thumb rubbing over your other nipple gently. once he's satisfied with his work on the one, he switches and repeats. "will, stop being a tease." you whine as he continues his ministrations on your breasts. he smirks and pinches and bites gently, causing your back to arch, grinding your clothed cunt down onto his growing erection. will pulls away, a dopey smile on his face, "sorry love, your tits are just amazing. wanna keep kissin' them." he places one last kiss to each before laying back against the bed, you now on top of him.

"we don't have to keep going if you don't want to darling." his arms are bent behind him, holding himself up. you shake your head, "i want you will, please take me?" another smile on his face as he replies "how can i say no to a sweet thing like you?" his hands rub your back gently as you lean down, now repeating his trail of kisses and bruises to him. as you do so, you shift down off the bed and onto your knees, pulling his jeans down his legs. you can see the growing wet patch near his tip, and he sucks in a breath as you palm him over his boxers. pulling those down too you see his cock spring out and slap against his tummy. he's not very thick, but what he lacks in thickness he makes up for in inches. you wrap your hand around it and stroke it tentatively, watching his eyes clench shut as you kitten lick the tip. "who's being a tease now love?" he jokes, right before he bites back a moan due to you licking down a particular vein, then taking the older man's member in your mouth. his hand makes its way down to your head where his fingers tangle in your hair, making a makeshift ponytail for you. he helps create a steady rhythm, bucking his hips while you keep your mouth open, until he eventually thrusts a little too hard, his large cock hitting the back of your throat. his eyes roll back as he moans, then he quickly pulls out, "'m sorry darling. did i hurt you?" you shook your head no, and to further prove him wrong you took him down as far as you could go, sucking and slowly bobbing your head. "fuck, just like that love. don't stop."

as he got close, he pulled himself out of your mouth. "normally i would return the favor, but i just can't wait to be inside you." will helped you off your knees and back and onto the bed. your jaw ached as he flipped up your skirt, seeing your frilly panties soaked, "all this just for me darling? you got this wet just from sucking my cock?" you could feel his calloused fingers from the flimsy material, whining for more contact. will pulled your panties down and flung them somewhere in the room. "you poor thing, all worked up. don't worry your pretty little head love, i'll take care of you." his thumb rubbed slow circles on your clit as he pushed himself into your hole. "s'fucking tight darling, feels so good."

his hips crashed against yours, the sounds of skin against skin filling the room. your moans of "fuck, will. dont stop." being music to his fucking ears. he leaned down to kiss you as he drilled into you, each thrust harder than the last. he brought his hand back to your sweet spot, rubbing at a speed to match his pace. you always thought he'd be skilled with his fingers but you never could imagine like this. his pace grew frantic and sloppy, eager to chase his release. “come on love, cum for me.” he said, feeling your walls tighten as you grew close to your own.

your back arches off the bed, eyes wide as will fucks you through your orgasm. “such a good girl, look so beautiful cumming on my cock.” he kisses you sweetly, and pulls out. stroking himself until he finishes on your stomach. after running to the bathroom to grab a washcloth, he gently cleans you off, being sure to be mindful of your sensitive area. flopping on the bed next to you he smiles and says “i don’t normally do this, but you’re just so beautiful i couldn’t help myself. tomorrow, let me take you on a proper date.” he kisses your cheek and you agreed. he pulled you close and held your waist. “you know, you don’t have to leave. please stay?”

and the whole night was spent talking and cuddling. you did eventually leave to get ready for your date with him, and he was a perfect gentleman. he drove you home and waited outside for you.

“so, darling, where are we off too?”

thank you so much for reading! as always my inbox is open for requests 💚

[svcredveins]

An introduction to myself!

So first things first, I’m 23 and female (I will not mention my real name, you can call me Luna if you want or just my username lol). Was so unsure to post on here since I’ve created this account three years ago to share my heartbeat. I have also a huge passion of mine - to become a Porsche factory driver in the coming future.

So bear with clips here and there, I do feel weird though doing this to the public but hey, we’re all heart lovers right?

Anyway, reason is to actually just check up on myself every once in awhile and see how my little lady is doing and appreciate her. I’ve struggled with a lot of things in my life with responsibilities to my own health and with this motivation to check up on myself. I definitely need to workout. And since becoming a Porsche factory driver is my dream, as a sim racer, I need to workout anyway because once I get my pedals and foldable rig, I have to workout because my little arms and legs will not bode well after 20 minutes of driving haha. For now I’m just on a controller.

So with this account made, I must be more aware of myself and even not just physically, but mentally too. Even though this is to the world, seeing others share their heartbeats is a reminder to myself to appreciate how our bodies were made and on how fascinating the human body is and what it’s capabile of. Also with the idea of more self acceptance for myself that I am living and breathing human being with a heartbeat and that it’s okay to fail. This alone will help me go a long way with that mindset for my sim racing as well! Hehe. Sorry. I love my racing. But! There’s also something to add on to that.

The dream

I’ve always been the type of girl to love speed. Anything that gets my heart racing (pun intended) I enjoy. The sheer thrill of going over the edge and that is where I found my biggest passion - sports car racing. The adrenaline, the awareness of knowing your putting your body over the edge, the unknown of what will happen when battling against another driver...I love that feeling and racing gives me that feeling and it bugs me everyday knowing that I am currently unable to race due to money, however, that is my dream and I strive to achieve it!

You need to be so fit for and that includes being aware of your breathing and heart rate. But oh to go so fast around a track over 200kmh feeling like everything around you is going by slowly. Heart pounding, breathing heavily, heavy focus on one goal - to win...yes! Give me my Porsche GT3 Cup, GT3 R, and 963! Let’s go!

Two passions intertwined

So since I was a little girl, I’ve also had those rare occasions where I felt my heartbeat. It’s always interested me feeling the “lub dub” in my chest. These things just began to intertwine for me and it’s actually perfect because since I love the sense of speed and adrenaline with it, my dream job is to be a cardiothorasic surgeon and that makes a lot of money’s worth to get into sports car racing which is definitely expensive as ever! So that will indefinitely support my biggest passion. Two passions in one? Crazy right?! I’m very excited for my future, despite my personal mental issues, but I am a huge dreamer so that’s my goal. I’m trying to work through it!

I’m aiming to get a stemoscope and a pulse oximeter. I would love to record my little lady working hard during my sim racing sessions! I just need the proper equipment to do it with a chest monitor strap.

Thank you for reading this far if you have. As you can tell I am super passionate about both!

Editing

Fun fact about me, I also do editing! I do photo and video edits and have been doing it for about 8 years. Time has flown by quickly!

The photo above is the Porsche 963 behind the human heart, portraying my passion for Porsche and the strong desire to become their factory driver.

My heart

I’ll try to say some info about my little lady.

She is a strong one with fire in her arteries. After getting an annual medical checkup about a year ago, my doctor remarked that I have a strong heart which was actually comforting to hear from her not gonna lie, knowing that my little lady is a strong and healthy one!

Strong and healthy speaks loudly about my passion for Porsche and racing for them as a factor driver, and that’s actually really heartwarming thinking about it because of how much of a passionate type person I am so it’s remarkable how she beats so strong and confident! I cherish that.

Cardiophilia intentions

I’m more on the light hearted (no pun intended) side of the cardiophilia. I just enjoy the functionality of the heart, and being fascinated with it, but I don’t mind some dark cardiopheila. It does, however, have limits. A lot of limits.

I have done a fanfic back in 2018 where I guess you could call it more on the dark side, but I do not involve myself physically in any of that, nor do I condone it. I’ll definitely write dark cardiophilia in some sort of form in books which I have in the past, as I’ve mentioned earlier, so anything else, I keep my little lady all out of harms way and treat her nicely. No resus, pressure, or poking. I do breathholds at times though, but other than that, I have one little heart so I must treat her well as she should be treated.

[milawritesstuff]

Hiii Mila I have a pedri imagine request…idk if you e seen those like couples quiz each other videos on YouTube (I know Kylie Jenner & Travis Scott did one) but can you do one where they’re quizzing pedri & the reader & one of the questions is what his pregame ritual is & it’s that he has to have sex before each match but they’re both too shy to answer until gavi exposes them & tells the story of how pedri once came with red scratches on his back

A/N: thank you for this request, I think it’s really cute. Hope you like it.

•••

You were waiting for Pedri to pick you up. You were supposed to shoot a video for GQ today with him. You heard a knock on the door, it was him. You opened the door and he stood there. -Ready?- he asked. You nodded and gave him a kiss trying to pull him into your apartment.

-Do we absolutely have to leave right now?- you ask him. He smiles into the kiss. -Gavi’s waiting for us in the car and you know we can’t leave kids in the car by themselves for long.- you laughed. -Fine.-

You stepped into Pedri’s car and sat next to him, Gavi in the backseat. -Hola guapa.- he said. You smiled at him. -Hola Pablito, how was practice?- He looked over at Pedri. -It was fine except your boyfriend took it too far and hit me on the face with the ball.- Pedri began to laugh. -It was an accident Gavi, I already told you.-

The rest of the drive was full of complaining from Gavi and laughing from all three of you. When you arrived to the interview they were confused Gavi was with the two of you.

-Pedri, Y/N… we are filming the couple’s quiz today and you brought Gavi, are you guys trying to tell us something?- asked the interviewer. You looked over at Gavi and shook your head. -No, no.- Pedri chimed in. -We got out of practice late and I didn’t have time to drop him off at home.-

Gavi smiled. -I’m just a spectator today. Although I am always with them so I could probably answer all of these questions for them.- you smacked him on the chest. -Pablito how about you just sit back and keep your mouth shut?- He walked backwards and sat down on a chair behind the camera.

-You can tell me if they’re lying.- said the interviewer to Gavi. You and Pedri just laughed and sat down.

They started to record and you two sat there smiling at each other. You introduced the video and began with the questions.

-We will start with an easy one, what’s my favorite color?- you looked at Pedri. He raised his shoulders. -Simple, black.- you smiled. -Correct.-

-Okay, next. What was your first match that I attended?- you began to think as well as Pedri. You heard Gavi from behind the camera. -Ooh I know it.- he said. -I remember how excited Pedri was that day because she was there.- Pedri began to laugh. -Pablo, don’t spill all my secrets.- you giggled.

Pedri took a deep breathe and began to answer. -It was against Atleti, one of the closed games. They only allowed us to invite 3 people and they all had to quarantine.- you smiled.

-I had to quarantine alone in a hotel room for four days before being allowed in.-

-I told him that’s how we knew you liked him because I wouldn’t quarantine for anyone.- added Gavi which caused you to laugh and roll your eyes.

Pedri took over some of the questions. -What’s my favorite fruit?- you laughed. -Mister Platano, I think we all know it.- everyone began to laugh as Pedri pouted. You leaned in and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. -Eres un tonto.- you said.

Pedri looked at the next card and you could see him reading it to himself. He smirked and looked up at you. -Come on Pedri, ask the question.-

He smiled and cleared his throat. -Do I have any pregame rituals?- he raised his eyebrow as he asked. -Uhm.- You said biting your lower lip. You looked at Pedri quizzingly. He laughed and put his head down. -Vamos Y/N give me your answer.-

-Well, you call me right before you go out to the tunnel before every match.- you smile at him. He nods and smiles back accepting your response.

You let out a big sigh of relief knowing you’re almost done and the one tough question is over. That is before Pedri clears his throat about to ask the next question and you hear Gavi interrupt.

-They lied.-

You turn over and shoot him a deadly look. But Gavi doesn’t care. -They have to have sex before every match or Pedri is out of it.- Pedri puts his face in his hands and begins to laugh. You can feel your cheeks turning bright red.

-You know how I found out?- Asked Gavi.

-Did you walk in on them?- Asked the interviewer. Gavi shook his head. -I’ve walked in on them but not that time.-

-Pablo!- you yell at him.

-I found out because Pedri was late to pick me up. I swore we were going to get fined that day. Luckily we didn’t. But when we were changing I noticed Pedri had red scratches on his back. Perfectly placed if you know what I mean.-

-Oh my god, this is so embarrassing.- you add. -Can we not add that to the video?-

-So it’s true?- said the interviewer.

-Of course it’s true. I can tell if they don’t do it because Pedri gets really mad out on the field and he’s a nervous wreck.-

Finally Pedri chimed in. -She calms me down. What can I say?- he smiles over at you.

-Oh and Y/N.- the interviewer added. -We won’t include that in the final video. But I’m sorry honey, all of that was filmed during the live we were recording.-

You put your face in your hands, your cheeks were burning with embarrassment.

TAG LIST:

@cinderellawithashoe @httpswiftie @simpingmyassoff @bubblebeep69 @fictional-l0v3r @httpspedri26 @0alanasworld0 @l0verl4ne @gaviypedrisbride @footballerficsposts @fashphotolife @beaschampagneproblems @jvsgnjrtpdar5stkd-tv-m @ikkehehe @jjishotasf @quemirasboboandapaya @maricciardo @gaviswh0re @pedriwifefrfr @dustell @elijahslover @formula1mount

[purplehalnw]

So, while the Chibnall Era was certainly not as bad as I saw some people saying it was, it was definitely not good. A big problem is that there is just a lot of missed potential. There are lots of elements that the writers didn't take advantage of or expand upon enough which ended up making the story and the characters pretty boring in my opinion. So, a lot of my rewrite ideas will be expansions of those underutilized elements.

Also, let me preface this by saying that I am in no way a professional writer, I am just a teenager with a dream. I've tried to organize my ideas as much as possible by presenting them character by character but it still may be a little messy.

Graham:

-His wife Grace should die helping/saving people after having spent at least half a season with the Doctor (not just one episode)

-The Doctor will feel guilty for having put Grace in danger and not being able to save her. Ryan will blame the Doctor and be angry while Yaz and Graham will be understanding and not blame the Doctor. Graham will reassure Ryan that all of them were aware of the risks that would come with travelling with the Doctor and that Grace died doing what she loved which was helping people.

-Graham's cancer will return and he will die from it. I think it would be interesting to see a companion die from something more normal when other ones have died in the most devastating ways possible. Graham's death can extend over multiple episodes which would show the characters' developing reactions to the fact that Graham is going to die.

-The Doctor will have a crisis in which she tries to make sure that Graham has lived a full life by taking him on as many adventures as possible due to the fact that other companions who died were so young and thus didn't get to experience as much. However, Graham will tell the Doctor that he is content with the mostly quiet life he has lived and that he has accepted the fact that he is going to die because at least he'll be going to the same place where Grace is.

-Also, I posted these ideas on TikTok as well and someone suggested another idea in the comments: The Doctor will obtain a cure for cancer from the future and offer it to Graham. But Graham will reject it for several reasons. One, Graham thinks that he has lived long enough, and he'd rather die this way rather than die suddenly and unexpectedly from something else. Two, the Doctor says she can't give the cure to anyone else before the time it's invented because of you know timeline shenanigans she can't interfere with. So Graham thinks, "why should I get the cure while no one else does? That's unfair". Third, Graham wants to see Grace again.

Ryan:

-Ryan will feel inclined to mend the relationship with his dad because he is the only blood relative he has left since Grace died. However, he won't reconcile with his father in the end. This'll instead be the moment Ryan accepts Graham as a father figure and calls Graham his grandfather.

-His dyspraxia will be touched upon more than just with throwaway lines about how he can't ride a bike and struggles with climbing ladders. There will be moments in which he is underestimated by some of the other characters, maybe Graham, which Ryan will obviously be frustrated by and will serve as a way to show how those with disabilities are often coddled and infantilized. Also, the Doctor will relate to him because of her own neurodivergence (especially since I've seen dyspraxic people point out how the 11th Doctor moves reminds them of themselves) which will strengthen their bond.

-There will be flashbacks that show how Yaz and Ryan were friends when they were in school. The two of them became friends because they both felt like outcasts with Ryan feeling that way due to his dyspraxia and Yaz feeling that way due to her sexuality.

-Ryan's YouTube channel will be a greater part of his character instead of something that never gets brought up again after his first episode. He will constantly record his adventures with the Doctor and upload them to YouTube to honor Grace in a way. When Graham dies of cancer, Ryan will upload a video summarizing who Graham was as a person and all the amazing things he did.

-Graham's death and his thing about being content with the little things in life will make Ryan realize that he hasn't fully explored his planet and seen its full potential and beauty. This epiphany will make him decide to take a break from being with the Doctor to travel around Earth. This'll open up the door for episodes solely focused on Ryan along with a way to introduce us to more Earth adventure episodes with the Doctor. Plus, this situation will allow Yaz and the Doctor's relationship to develop more.

Yaz:

-Her sexuality will not be something that only gets barely acknowledged in her final three episodes.

-Yaz and Ryan will have dated in school but broke up due to Yaz's lack of feelings towards him and her mental health struggles which caused her to push him away which will explain why they grew apart.

-I know we all love Dan but I'm going to have to get rid of him completely. So instead, Ryan will be the one to confront Yaz about her feelings towards the Doctor.

-Yaz's implied internalized homophobia will be further expanded upon. Jack's 51st century values and feelings towards the Doctor along with the Doctor's nonchalantness towards gender will serve as ways for Yaz to accept herself more. A main thing with Doctor Who companions is the Doctor showing them things they didn't even think were possible, the same will be true for Yaz but in a different way.

-The issues surrounding Yaz being a police officer were only barely touched upon in the episode "Rosa" before quickly being brushed off and never brought up again. Her job in general hardly even plays much of a role, like she literally just quits off screen near the end. But now her being a cop will serve as a source of ongoing conflict between the Doctor and Ryan who will be ACAB. The Doctor will challenge Yaz's beliefs regarding the police system, similar to how she challenged Yaz's ideas regarding gender and sexuality.

The Doctor:

-While it is kind of nice that the Doctor's gender identity isn't really questioned and is treated as normal, I think there should be some more exploration of Timelord's concept of sexuality and gender. Are all Timelords fluid in gender and sexuality? Do Timelords ever have gender dysphoria or have gender identities that are different from their current sex? Is sexuality the same throughout every regeneration or does it vary? Not all of them have to be answered or completely answered but I would like them to be addressed.

-More lore will be given regarding who the Doctor thought was their biological family so that the Timeless Child plotline and the fact that the Doctor was lied to will have more impact.

-Instead of confining the Flux to only six episodes, it will be alluded to at around the same time the Timeless Child will be hinted at.

-The writers said that they intentionally wrote the 13th Doctor as autistic. There are several scenes where they emphasize how socially awkward she is and the Timeless Child plotline is used to explain the autistic behavior of hers which has been present throughout the whole entire series. All of this is nice but again it isn't used to it's full potential. The Doctor should be used to create allegories for neurodivergence. The reveal of the Timeless Child will be equated to say finding out you're autistic. The Doctor will be used as a way to show how autistic men are treated differently than autistic women with her eccentricities being met with more hostility than when she was a man. Ryan will address how the way the Doctor acts aligns with autism which will spark a conversation about the necessity of labels and who can use them.

-The Doctor's refusal to form strong relationships out of fear of them ending tragically will be a more present underlying conflict. The story of the 13th Doctor and her companions will end sadly with her pushing them away and leaving them on Earth long enough that they've gone back to their normal lives and have realized that there's nothing they can do except hope that the Doctor is able to sort her shit out on her own.

I have considered doing a rewrite of these seasons or something but again I'm not an expert writer. The only fic I've ever written is a 2,000 word character study and that one took me a long time to write because of how much a perfectionist I am.

[mikeysbride]

We Are Not Going Back

The 2024 U.S. presidential election has been anything but typical or boring, especially in the last month. Once President Joe Biden made the decision to remove himself from the race against Donald Trump in favor of endorsing VP Kamala Harris, everything changed. And it changed for the better if you're a Democrat. I was upset when he first withdrew, feeling that he was basically pushed into it by the media's insistence he is too old to run despite the record he's had as President the last 4 years. But then, within minutes, it seemed, my attitude changed to one of a sense of hope I hadn't felt in a while where the election is concerned. In reality, he made the ultimate selfless decision to put the country's interests above his own, and that is a remarkable quality, especially in a politician. It shows he's the real deal.

It appears I am not alone. The surge of excitement in the Democratic Party surrounding Kamala's nomination, which she'll officially accept this week, has been nothing short of amazing to watch. I have not seen anything like this since President Obama, and that says a lot. Her rallies are breaking attendance records, and even longtime Republicans are pledging to vote for her.

Of course, Kamala has already received the predictable criticism from the Trump cult about everything from her heritage to her laugh. Trump also still refuses to pronounce her name correctly, which is blatantly disrespectful but also typical behavior for him. If Kamala ("comma-la") is too hard for him to pronounce, Madame President will do just fine, I'm sure. But none if this should come as news to anyone. They have nothing else to go on, so of course they resort to the lowest rungs on the ladder when in reality, she has a stellar resume and record having served as a prosecuting attorney, District Attorney, Attorney General, Senator, and now Vice President of the United States. She is an actual prosecutor going up against Trump and his 34 felony convictions, and he's allowed to do that for the highest job in the country even though many jobs won't consider you if you have even 1 felony conviction. It's laughable really; it would be hilarious if it weren't also so sad and ridiculous. You can bet anyone of color would not be allowed the same leniency.

A few days before Kamala became the presumptive nominee, my 16-year-old daughter told me she felt apprehensive about her future if there were to be another Trump presidency. I told her that I feel the same way for myself. I actually feel that way about anyone who isn't a rich, straight white male because those are the only people Donald Trump cares about - those who look and think exactly like he does. But then, Joe passed the torch to Kamala, and it seemed the country awakened to a clearly better alternative and someone even the independents could get behind. Suddenly, there was hope that maybe, just maybe, things would be OK after all. That same daughter then came to me, just a few days after our previous conversation, and told me she is no longer fearful the way she was before. My 14-year-old daughter echoes her feelings, and the both of them have taken a greater interest in the election as a result. My teenage daughters are inspired and can see themselves in Kamala, and that is huge for them and for me.

I don't care who you are; this is historic and a big deal. It takes an incredible amount of privilege to see all this unfolding and not appreciate how significant this is in our history. Not only are we on the verge of having our first female U.S. President, but she's also Black. Not only that, but she's smart, successful, personable, and damn qualified. I can't help but think of my grandparents and how thrilled they would have been to live to see Barack Obama become President and now Kamala Harris. We came so close to a female President with Hillary Clinton in 2016, and I pray the election deniers and complacent people don't mess it up for us this time. I honestly don't think we can survive another Trump presidency and come out the same way ever again. He's already promised to be a dictator on his first day back in office and has alluded to doing away with elections...neither of which we need. And we certainly don't need him. He only wants to be President to avoid jail time, point blank. We can't let that happen.

We have a chance this November to save our democracy and keep moving forward - to make a hopeful future available to everyone and not just the rich, straight white males of the country. We can do this, and I have to believe we will. This is a test we absolutely cannot stand to fail. I understand the assignment. Do you?

[waterghoulcalamity]

a little lengthy but here are my predictions (or maybe expectations, in some cases) for next season of iwtv:

just like "the vampire lestat" begins with lestat reading interview with the vampire, the season is going to begin with louis reading lestat's book and possibly going to find lestat again

i wasn't sure if they were going to change the format of 2 time periods happening at the same time (the interview in louis apartment and the story and louis was telling) but i feel like it's the best way to do it, idk if they're going to have daniel interview lestat but i think it'd be interesting if they had lestat kind of post something he recorded of himself, am i the only one??

TW for SA // i believe they're going to go as far as they can with lestat's turning. some people say that lestat's SA in the books is purely metaphorical (because no penetration happens) but i would say no, that it is very explicit, biting is supposed to be this infinitively more intimate and pleasurable act than sex for BOTH the vampire and the victim in the books (because vampires can't have boners, apparently) and, since the whole reason magnus chooses lestat is because of his looks, i think we should be prepared for not only lestat's turning scene to be even worse than it was in the books, but the entirety of his stay with magnus as well, i won't go into detail of what happened but, well, you know

i think they will have lestat kill his father, which will give a whole new layer to lestat letting louis and claudia "kill" him, accepting louis knife in his throat. sam has said multiple times that his "death" was kind of a wake up call for lestat because he had been living at the peak of his chaotic behavior for too long, so i think it'd be interesting if they did that, because it would also make more painful why he never looked for louis and claudia, as in saying "i had to kill my own father and it was painful for me despite the fact that i hated him, and now i push you to go through the same pain because of my actions, i can't face you"

i hope, i HOPE, that they drop the incest with his mother. i think there are many ways they can make their relationship uncomfortably close without having resort to incest, please rolin i'm begging you

i'm manifesting that this season is going to be 12-15 episodes long, i'm willing to wait until 2026 for 12-15 episodes

pleaaaaseeee i want louis and lestat to be in that awkward "we are trying to be friends" stage but failing miserably because they're too possessive and could never be normal about each other

i think they're going to have armand find lestat at least briefly after the release of his book, it's going to be fun seeing what they have to say to each other. i don't quite think it's going to be like in the books were armand begs lestat to love him and let him stay with him but i do think they're going to keep some of those elements

speaking of armand, i think they're going to revisit that scene in magnus's tower with the three of them and they're going to reveal that armand was in lestat's head BEGGING him to go with lestat or something of that nature, like saying that all of this could've been avoided if lestat had loved him and it still could if he did, but lestat continued to reject him as he always did. idk if it was just me but i find assad's face in those scenes to be telling a story we don't quite understand yet

back to them meeting again in the modern times, i think armand is going to tell lestat about daniel and lestat is going to genuinely be happy for him (because they do keep a sort of friendship in the books after everything)

well, that is all. this thoughts keep circling my mind i think i needed to put them to rest, hopefully this will be enough but probably the only thing that can is s3 being released in this instant

[gingergofastboatsmojito]

THE BEAR S3 Predictions

Just a mental note I'm putting out here to be able to revisit it when the time comes to check its level of accuracy. I have the feeling that S3 is going to be the season of the reconciliations.

The relationship between Richie and Carmy is completely broken after the walk-in incident and Richie walks from The Bear. He happens to get some kinda job offer and accepts it just to prove Carmy wrong. They will later spend a good portion of S3 trying to repair their bond. By the end of S3 (hopefully sooner) there should be a reconciliation of some sort between them and Richie should go back to The Bear.

Nat gives birth to her new "cub" and this brings the family together. There is a reconciliation with Donna, which in some capacity benefits not only the siblings but the entire team, the restaurant as a whole. Not exactly sure how this will play out, but Donna will quit being this negative and toxic influence on everyone. Maybe she gets clean because she takes this baby as a new chance to start over and be a better grandmother than the mother she was. IDK...

Marcus' mother dies and this juxtaposition of new beginnings, births, endings, death, etc is going to be a theme throughout the whole season, that is why I actually think this funeral will be the opener.

There will be some kinda flashback episode, like 7 Fishes or a montage of some memory that has a huge impact on one or more characters. I have my $ put on the Sundays, Mr. Adamu and lil Syd would spend at Mr. Beef's. I strongly disagree with the weak argument that just because the Berzattos are catholic, their restaurant didn't open on Sundays. The gastronomic industry cares very little about those traditions especially if the place is struggling. I bet they were open every Sunday part-time, just for lunch, to get all the demand of those who went to church just because business-wise it makes total sense.

Carmen will apologize to Claire. Not sure what she's gonna make of that apology, whether she's gonna accept it or not, I hope she doesn't. I'm pretty sure there will be no reconciliation here. I don't necessarily oppose Carmy having a romantic partner and as much as I ship SydCarmy like nobody's business, I'm 100% sure they are not gonna happen any time soon. Maybe and this is a HUGE maybe, they could be the perfect cliffhanger for S4. But that would be a stretch. Not that Store & Calo couldn't pull it off, but still. So, basically, I am all for a new love interest being presented to Carmen just to see how he responds to it. After Claire he should go back to his old lone-wolf ways, I need to test that behavioral theory though, so I need a new female character to do it.

Last, but certainly not least, Miss Adamu needs her man and I'm not talking about Bear. I want to know more about Sydney's past and see her letting her hair down, putting her records on, and all that jazz. So, maybe an old flame can re-appear in her life and they can try to "reconcile". This reconciliation shouldn't work either because she's now devoted to making The Bear work and is basically a workaholic and both, Carmy & her get into this synch of type As on Speed and Red Bull, non-stop working machines, well-oiled now that they had already learned from their mistakes and The Bear succeeds but Sydney's relationship with her guy from the past fails, again. The guy feels like a 3rd wheel and lets her know that she's not in a relationship with him but with her job. Sydney understands the subtext, and this break-up is actually a wake-up call for her. She starts seeing what we all shippers are already seeing. It's not just about work for her. Yes, The Bears are too absorbing and demanding, both, the restaurant and the chef, but she doesn't mind. She loves it. Love is the operative word here. This realization should hit her hard by the end of the season.

The background of all the things I just mentioned above will be the BOH, fast-paced, chaotic, and working like a Swiss clock, just like Carmy likes it.

Am I missing something? Probably. Can't wait to find out.

Bonus tracks: I am pretty sure the wedding will either be Teff's or Fak's.

And lastly: When Sydcarmy happens, it will "officially" start with something small and inane like Syd accidentally finding out Carm has been drawing portraits of her all along... CHECK THIS OUT, I think Storer & Calo have something like this in mind or along these lines, and it should come along in S3, minus the sex part.

[o-uncle-newt]

I guess the only person who can really be trusted to describe the greatness of Agatha Christie is Dorothy L Sayers...?

A while back, the always-sharp @thesarahshay sent me an ask that caught me up on something that I'd carelessly written in some tags- I said that Agatha Christie was good at writing romance into her detective fiction, without really elaborating. I then spent multiple paragraphs attempting to elaborate, I'm not sure with how much success. Essentially, and you can click above to see for yourself, my thesis was that while Sayers was a much better literary stylist (and certainly better at writing romance) than Christie, when writing a detective novel, her seams show; Christie had a natural talent for knowing exactly what belongs in a detective story and creating and fitting all the right pieces together that create a seamless detective story, including motivations drawn by romance (though I think the actual romances are among the weaker elements- still MUCH better than those written by most of her peers, for the record).

I'd had trouble putting into words what I wanted to say (there was a convoluted metaphor about Barbies and Lego in there), and I'm not sure I was too convincing; but turns out that the person who said what I wanted to say the best was, in fact the great DLS herself.

There's a fabulous book that I 100% recommend called Taking Detective Stories Seriously, which is a compilation of about two years' worth of detective story reviews that Sayers wrote. I hadn't heard of most of the authors, and even when I had heard of the authors I'd rarely read the books, but it didn't matter, frankly. She's just such a great writer, so thoughtful and incisive and passionate about both the genre and good craftsmanship (not to mention good English), that everything she has to say including on novels that haven't been in print since the 30s is worth reading. She has generally great taste, though she has a much higher opinion of Margery Allingham than I do and doesn't like Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery as much as I'd thought she might (though the fact that a character in it insulted Unnatural Death may not have helped lol); but she also likes, to pick two very different writers who I too enjoy, HC Bailey and Mignon G Eberhart, and so she clearly has a good eye. (It's also entertaining to see her slowly force herself to admit that she likes Perry Mason...)

BUT ANYWAY.

She has three reviews of Agatha Christie books in the volume: Murder on the Orient Express, Why Didn't They Ask Evans, and Three Act Tragedy. She reviews all of them very positively, but it's her review of Three Act Tragedy (in my opinion, funnily enough, the weakest of the three) that she really gets to the core of Christie's genius. And it's actually fitting that it's for a book of hers that's on the more meh end of the scale- because it just shows how even meh Christie has an element of genius that other authors have to work hard for even in their best works.

She says:

Some time ago this column contained the statement that Hercule Poirot was "one of the few real detectives." It was a well-sounding phrase, and I have no quarrel with it, except that I am not quite clear what it meant. What I meant to write and what I thought I had written and what I now propose to write clearly with no mistake about it was and is this: Hercule Poirot is one of the few detectives with real charm. Plenty of authors assure us that their detectives are charming, but that is quite another thing. I don't know that Mrs Christie has ever said a word about the matter. She merely puts Poirot there, with all his little oddities and weaknesses, and there he is- a really charming person. And it is true, too, that he is "real," in the sense that we never stop to enquire whether his words and actions are suited to his character; they are his character, and we accept them as we accept the words and actions of any living person because they are a part of himself. Le style c'est l'homme. Indeed, when Mrs Christie is writing at the top of her form, as she is in Three Act Tragedy, all her characters have this reality. She does not postulate a character- retired actor, West End mannequin, family retainer- and put into its mouth sentiments appropriate to its station in life. She shows us character and behavior all of a piece. However surprising or enigmatic the behavior, we believe that everything took place just as she says it did, because we believe in the reality of the people. Poirot is charming, not because anybody says so, but because is is, and all her other people exist for us in the same objective manner. This is the great gift that distinguishes the novelist from the manufacturer of plots. Mrs Christie has given us an excellent plot, a clever mystery, and an exciting story, but her chief strength lies in this power to compel belief in these characters. [emphasis mine]

Sayers then proceeds to compare another author (or rather authors, the husband and wife pair GDH and M Cole) to Christie in this regard, moving on to another review. But in these three paragraphs she has, I think, said it better than anyone- that Christie's skill is in her naturalness, and how that naturalness compels us to believe in and immerse ourselves in her world. She is effortless and seamless.

To be clear, Sayers praises a lot of people in this book, and a lot of people's writing; but mostly she is praising their skill and ability to create what they have created. Here, she isn't quite praising that- she's praising the fact that the final product is so good that you can't even see the craftsmanship behind it, and that's, I think, what separates Christie from her peers. It's a power, and not one that can be broken down by a critic. She just has it.

I've said before that I don't think Sayers had this as a mystery writer, and I think she'd probably be the first to agree with that assessment; she certainly had a seemingly effortless skill as a prose writer (as these reviews show), but as a novelist she took construction seriously and wanted us to know this. That said, another person who I don't think has this, who I mention because he's someone who a lot of people compare Christie to (often negatively), is John Dickson Carr.

I've seen plenty of people say that Carr is a more sophisticated version of Christie, not just in mystery construction but in writing style, and equally prolific, creative, and versatile. I don't agree with this on most counts, but I think, honestly, that Carr is fine- but you can see the seams easily. He might have been prolific but his formulae are visible and his writing required intentionality on his part. By which I mean- Carr when he's trying to be funny is generally hilarious. Carr when he's trying to be scary is generally spine-tingling. But Carr when he's just trying to get to the next good bit is dull and mechanical. He needs to be paying attention and making an effort in order to be good, and we notice him doing this. Christie never has this problem; even when the actual stuff she's writing isn't high quality, she's never dull. Everything feels purposeful and organic, somehow.

Obviously, all of this is fundamentally subjective, and if there's one redeeming element it's that an incredibly smart lady agrees with me (by my interpretation, at least) and says it extremely well. But I'll be holding on to this one, if nothing else.

[podcastjam]

Project Spotlight #1: SPACE SPECKS

Over the coming weeks, we'll be highlighting a Jam project and the team behind it. Today, we're talking with Quills of SPACE SPECKS, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi project with an exclusively aspec cast, both characters and crew!

Tell us a bit about yourself and your teammates!

I'm Quills, @quillsandpaper, and part of the writing, editing and voice acting for the project. I love anything supernatural, sci-fi or YA, especially if it includes fey lore or space. One of my favourite podcasts are Bridgewater and In Strange Woods.

@rawlyx: Hi, I’m Rawlyx, and I’m the main artist and one of the voice actors on this wonderful project! I got into podcasts after a friend suggested listening to them while I study and draw. My all-time favorites are The Magnus Archives and Just Roll With It, and I’m currently listening to Red Valley :]

@lumoakes: I'm Lumi Oakes. I'm a writer and Voice Actor on this podcast. I'm also the producer of Wanderer's Journal (@wanderersjournalpod). I got into fiction podcasts through The Bright Sessions a few years back, and I've recently really enjoyed Ethics Town.

@adragoncat: Hello, my name is Cat and I am one of the VA’s for Space Specks! I got into podcasts via The Magnus Archives and love JRWI, WTNV and I Am In Eskew.

@smallsies: Howdy, I'm Finch, and I'll be a VA and musician, along with co-writing and -editing the pilot! My introduction to audio drama was a few episodes of Welcome to Night Vale several years ago, and my current favorite is WOE.BEGONE.

What's your podcast about?

Our project is set on another planet in space after the second apocalypse has struck our characters. They're barely getting by as they're recovering from this disaster but a determined crew sets out to re-enter the dangerous zones in order to find a friend they’re hoping has survived. It’s really no surprise that they all have their own demons to battle alongside the looming danger of whatever is out there, and… well... death. A special element of our project is that all of our characters are some flavour of aspec, and our entire team is somewhere on the spectrum too!

What are you most excited about in this event?

I am having a lot of fun with the world- and character building that we are doing as a team. And putting the actual script writing aside, which I am also excited for, I'm really looking forward to recording and seeing the story elements and character dynamics flesh out and unfold in audio as well as hearing what the other teams have come up with! Additionally I'm honestly also so excited to see the art our talented artists on the team come up with.

Any advice for other participants, or those on the fence about joining?

It is my first time doing something in this shape and form so what I can say is: there's no level of skill set you necessarily need to have to participate because a lot of us are new to all of this. So don't hesitate because you're second-guessing yourself! Come join the event, let your creativity flow and don't forget to have fun!

This team is not accepting new members at this time, but if you're interested in learning more about the Podcast Jam event, check out this post for more information.

[chickwiththepurpleguitar]

Hello!! Not sure if you’re still open for prompts atm, but I would love to see you write about childhood best friends Luke and Bobby planning a prank on Reggie and Alex pls :)

This ask is from September 2022, I am SO sorry it took this long! I hope you enjoy what I eventually came up with! It got a little sappy at the end lmao.

“September 1st, 1989.”

“I still can’t believe your mom let you watch that movie.”

Luke clicks off the tape recorder and shoots Bobby a glare. “Stop talking when the recorder’s on, I have a script.”

“So far, all you’ve had is a Heathers reference.”

Luke shoves him, and Bobby shoves him back, and because Bobby just hit a growth spurt and Luke can never accept defeat, they both end up tangled in the rose bushes outside Reggie Peters’s house.

“Okay, okay, truce!” Luke shouts once it becomes abundantly clear that he’s gonna lose this wrestling match. “Get off me, man, this is a new shirt and you’re getting it all thorny.”

Bobby gets to his feet and sticks out a hand to help pull Luke to his. “Are we really doing this?”

“Of course we are.” Luke brushes leaves and petals off his Duran Duran shirt and sucks on a bleeding knuckle. “They’ve done worse things to us.”

“I mean, I guess.” Bobby peers over the bushes at the empty driveway. “But are we really the revenge types? This seems kinda mean.”

Luke grabs his fallen tape recorder out of a bush and hits record. “It’s not revenge, Bobby,” he says dramatically into the mic. “It’s retaliation. Peters and Mercer started a war when they filled our guitar cases with shaving cream, and now we’re going to win that war.”

Bobby leans closer to the mic. “By spraying them with silly string.”

“Actually, it’s Cheese Whiz, I couldn’t think of a way to convince my dad to buy me silly string.” Before Bobby can respond, Luke says, “Oh, shh, shh, here they come!”

He quickly unzips his backpack and hands Bobby the recorder and a can of liquid cheese spray, grabbing another for himself. They get into position, crouched behind the bushes, as two bicycles come speeding around the corner. As Alex Mercer and Reggie Peters glide to a stop at the end of the driveway, Luke and Bobby jump out and unleash their delicious weaponry upon them.

The recorder picks up a smattering of voices— Luke’s triumphant cheers, Bobby’s roar of forced aggression; Alex complains, “Aw, man, these are my church pants! My dad’s gonna kill me!” and Reggie shouts, “Aw, sweet, free cheese!”

Three years later, almost to the day, Luke Patterson finds his old tape recorder buried at the bottom of a box his mom is making him go through because “you have too many things, Luke. Give some to charity.” He listens to the chaotic recording with a smile on his face, and then brings it to band practice that afternoon to share with his three best friends.

“Aw, listen to us!” Reggie coos. “We were so cute and innocent!”

“I got grounded for two weeks over those pants,” Alex says, glaring at Luke.

“We were eleven here,” Bobby remembers. “Why do I sound like an eight-year-old girl?”

“Cause your voice didn’t drop till you were thirteen,” Luke teases him. Bobby whacks him with a pillow, which just makes him laugh.

“Yo, but how crazy is that!” Luke continues, putting the recorder away so he can grab his guitar. “Hard to believe we were ever not friends.”

“Right?” Alex agrees. “We had so much more sense back then.”

“Aw, you love us!” Reggie insists, wrapping his arms around Alex in a tight, squeezy hug. 

Alex’s ears go a little red, but he detaches himself from Reggie as gently as he’s able. “Can we just rehearse?”

And they do, but all four members of Sunset Curve spend the rest of the day thanking the music gods that their childhood rivalry ended when they got to middle school and that now, as high school freshmen ready to take on the world, they’ve got each other, their band, now and forevermore.

[qqueenofhades]

Am I crazy for thinking DeSantis is overextending on the cartoonish conservative evil in preparation for his presidential run? I feel like he might have drunk his own kool-aid as far as thinking “things that make you popular on Fox News also make you electable across the US”.

Book bans are not popular. They’re being shot down all over the US even in deep red areas. Taking away the liquor licenses of national chain hotels because they hosted a drag show seems like a good way to make big businesses wary of you, thus putting rifts in the evangelical/big business base of the GOP. People keep forgetting that Trump was a cipher when he ran. He had no record politically so both sides could think he’ll be the worst or the best, but there was no pinning him down. A lot of liberals entertained the possibility that Trump as a former democrat might not be so bad and he definitely caught the wave of people who wanted to try ANYTHING new rather than another Clinton.

Point is, even if DeSantis plays the Trump playbook but in a way more palatable to establishment GOP, that to me seems like a losing strategy rather than a winning one. Trump does not suffer competition and won’t endorse him. DeSantis lacks the decades of buildup of celebrity image and cult of personality. He’s got a an extremist GOP political record with lots of bold moves in a culture war that has NOT been fully litigated yet at the polls and might be less popular than the GOP realizes. I think the GOP is desperate to make him their guy since he’s a governor of a valuable state and he’s “reasonable” unlike Trump but at this point, is it possible they’re overestimating his appeal entirely and he’ll completely crash and burn when actually tested? Here’s hoping, but I’d love your thoughts.

Welp. Honestly, the media's relentless push to crown DeSantis "a more moderate version of Trump" is completely and demonstrably bullshit, since he is already a full-blown fascist and the only reason they think he's moderate is because he went to Harvard and can sometimes speak in complete sentences. Except every other one of those words is "woke," which the GOP can't define as literally anything apart from "something I don't like," and yeah.

The thing about DeSantis is that he's managed to curate an extremely hermetic personal bubble in Florida. He's staffed the state government with toadies and only gives interviews to hand-picked fawning conservative outlets. We're already seeing stories come out (and it's been noted before) that when you take him out of his personal comfort zone and make him answer actual questions from non-Fox reporters, he really struggles. He isn't smart or clever or original. He's just a dyed-in-the-wool white supremacist Christofascist who is willing to be "bold" (read: wildly extreme) and that makes him popular with the establishment GOP, who loved all of Trump's cruel policies but didn't like his personal demeanor. They think they can sell DeSantis to the suburban Republicans who really don't want to vote for Democrats (too liberal! Too brown! Too woke!) but were turned off by Trump's vulgar and criminal antics, and unfortunately, because white Republicans are the worst people in the world, they're probably right.

The problem for the GOP (hahahahhahahahahahaha thoughts and prayers motherfuckers!!!!!) is that Trump's base is still fanatically attached to his nasty orange backside and won't vote for DeSantis under any circumstances, as long as Trump is a factor in the race, because they think "respectability" is a dirty word and Trump's total derangement is what they like about him. He is their personal power fantasy and the living embodiment of their worst and most racist/sexist/xenophobic fantasies, and any hint of becoming acceptable to The Establishment would make them mad. So you've got the establishment GOP who wants to get back into power and thinks DeSantis is more likely to get them there, vs. the TrumpCult who will only ever vote for Trump, even as the establishment GOP is increasingly turning on him and treating him as the electoral liability that he is. (Don't forget the big Dominion lawsuit going on at Fox, which brutally exposed their hypocrisy for EVERYONE, even their own viewers, to see. Welp.)

And yes: America as a whole is not a nakedly fascist, deranged, extreme-right-wing white-supremacist Handmaid's Tale theocracy, despite the best efforts of a despicable minority. The GOP has not won one single meaningful election or federal office since Trump himself sneaked into the presidency thanks to the Electoral College in 2016 (barely squeaking out the House in 2022 and then watching Kevin McCarthy lose fifteen speakership elections in a row doesn't count). A recent poll showed that almost 60% of Americans thought "woke" was a good thing, meaning awareness of social and historical injustices rather than political correctness gone mad. The Democrats have continued to vastly overperform in special and state-level elections alike, including the much-hyped "Red Wave" in the 2022 midterms that turned out to be a Big Lol. Even this year, local Democrats are winning by bigger margins than Biden carried their districts. As I say, the reason Republicans try so hard to suppress, outlaw, and discredit the vote is because their policies/candidates will never win in any fair and legitimate election. They just won't. The only way they can bully their way into power is through fraud, fear, and lies. Of course, they're helped at every stage by the American media and its addiction to the "Both Sides Bad/Horse Race!!!" narrative, but even in this climate, Democrats are still winning.

Anyway: DeSantis is an empty suit who can reliably parrot fascist talking points and use his personal fiefdom of Florida to put them into action, but that doesn't translate to any kind of viable national candidate, especially since he implodes the instant you take him out of that bubble. I don't want to make anyone too overconfident or insist that it will clearly be fine, because the 2024 presidential election will be just as consequential as 2020 and there are way too many people in this country willing to vote for white supremacist fascism Because Gas Prices, but the overall sociocultural and political trends are not moving in DeSantis' direction and we need to work our asses off to make sure it stays that way.

[randomstranger24]

I’m certain a lot of people think I’m some deranged lunatic and will be skeptical and or just won’t believe anything I have to say. I totally get it and if it were me on the other end, I think I’d draw the same conclusion as well. It’s more than reasonable, but I promise there is a much bigger picture and I think you deserve to at least know another perspective. 

Not sure where to begin. I’ll start off first by saying I won’t be referring to anyone’s names or occupations to conceal anyone’s identity including my own.

I owe a big apology not just to the BoC fans, but also to Mike and Marcus, not that they would even give a shit, but if so, I’m sure they’d hate my guts. Yes, I am the original creator of the “Thrift Store Tape" and no, I am of no relation to the brothers, (no surprise there). I do feel spiritually connected to their music though if that’s of any consequence? (no surprise there either) I’m sure they’ll never see this, but I realize I could be viewed as an untalented hack and a giant piece of shit. This, I understand and I accept it. I never had bad intentions, I promise that, but it’s like they always say, “The road to Hell is paved with good ones”. 

Here’s how this entire thing got started. Regardless of what anyone might assume, I never in a million years set out to intentionally deceive people into believing this was some long lost BoC record. Hear me out and let me explain from the beginning. 

For years prior to all of this, I have been experimenting with recording my musical creations onto VHS and cassette tapes in attempts to capture those warm fuzzy lofi aesthetics, but Sometimes the final product is actually disappointing because you’d be surprised how good VHS tapes actually hold sound. So, fast forward 2018, one of my housemates at the time, who was actually the one who helped manage a Red White And Blue thrift store. This was the catalyst of what sparked this idea in my head after my housemate mentioned all the blank VHS tapes that were being donated.  

I Purchased a whole bin of tapes and started dubbing my music, (both old and new) onto the donated VHS tapes to send back to the thrift stores to be re-donated in efforts of someone finding them. Kind of like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it out to sea in hopes someone finds it. I would donate several of these VHS tapes and would leave my dubbed mixes over top of older shitty movies. I had the idea of rummaging through and curating all of my “Old Tunes” sound-alikes and Vaporwave tracks or anything sounding adjacent and placing them on several tapes.  

I probably dubbed well over a hundred tapes over the years since 2018, both used and blanks

I ended up donating most of them to several different thrift stores. Mostly old generic shitty “dollar-bin” movies that nobody really wants and generic kids cartoons. I would never destroy a collectible VHS or anything of value, so no worries there, but I doubt anyone will ever find the ones sent out and even if they do, they’ll most likely throw it away or something. I have a few tapes that escaped that were made with music that accidentally got deleted years ago and I would pay top dollar to get back, but that’s another story for another day. 

Anyway, So, my other friend (Not housemate), who, (we’ll just say, is an independent filmmaker of sorts) had the idea which kind of spawned from mine to do a found-footage VHS horror film project also known as “Analog Horror” or the genre at least. Now, keep in mind, this is the spring of 2020 during the height of the pandemic lockdown. So, time is all we had. 

I had the idea of using an ARG for people to solve to lead them down a “Rabbit Hole” as part of an interactive movie project. It would start off pleasant and would progressively get more sinister and darker and even more disturbing the further down you went. My main intention and goal was to hopefully have this project be the subject of topic on a big name youtube channel like “Nexpo”. I figured the music and aesthetic would all be “Old Tunes- BoC-inspired” and would give it a more suitable twist. I figured any fans that would ever come across it would take notice instantly that it was “BoC-inspired” or at least the music. I also figured the BoC cover tracks would add a few disturbing layers to the mystique of this “Rabbit Hole” mystery.  especially since we wanted to catch those "Backrooms" "Liminal Space" vibes.

I’m sure folks will be skeptical and that’s okay, but just hear me out on this and yes, I’d be thinking the same way too, so I certainly do understand any skepticism. 

Originally, the inspiration for the name “Strange Soup” Mixtape was used in the original upload in efforts to connect ties to this twisted bizarrely disturbing video titled “Blank Room Soup (Dark Web Video)”.

Now, you can do a google search about this video. It was a strange mysterious viral sensation for quite a few years after emerging on 4chan and has been a part of other “Rabbit Holes”. We ended up deleting the original video so that another one could be uploaded in place of it. 

The idea was to incorporate it as part of this story, but we needed to scratch other ideas altogether because the numbers did not properly equate to the letters we needed to start the ARG and time was running out. We also needed the upload date to fall in line with the project. The creation of these ARG’s are not easy to create. Believe me when I tell you. I’m just some uneducated moron, so figuring this stuff out took trial and error. Even with the help of my friend.    

Now, if all would have gone as planned, we would have opened another account uploading another tape in connection with the thrift store tape. We were in search of materials to craft out costumes like the one’s seen in the “Blank Room Soup” video and wanted to utilize the office space at my friend's school.  

Originally, this is how this should have all played out in order for this horror project to have worked. We needed The first video to be uploaded at a certain date in order to maintain validity for the ARG storyline so it could be incorporated into the film project. The goal from the start was never to deceive people into believing this was a “long-lost BoC record”. I’ll explain more below.  

The next step, after a week or two, was to have all of us post the link to the video in “thrift store finds facebook groups” in order to drum up the mystery. He and I shared the link on a few of the forums online such as Reddit and so on. The forums had absolutely nothing to do with music or ARG’s. Just thrift store finds and VHS collector’s groups. We wanted to build the mystery up and clue people in eventually. The original video sat on youtube for quite some time. It had like maybe 60-75 views after a month. That view count just stayed stagnant. Then one day in, I think late March out of nowhere, I got the messages in the comments. They were friendly at first with some people just mentioning it was “Boards of Canada”. I thought to myself, “Oh shit, they found the video”. Soon the view count just kept on climbing and Soon enough some folks started becoming hostile. I convinced my housemate to make a response video explaining everything. We all thought this was the best course of action because of how unbiased he’ll be for the simple fact, he has no idea who BoC is (Well, he does now lol) and he is not a musician, like, at all haha. 

Me and my filmmaker friend were excited at first that at least we had an audience now and could run with it. So I figured the response video my housemate put out would quell any outrage and save our project in order to move forward but, boy, was I dead wrong.

The views kept climbing up and the comments kept coming. People were becoming hostile and outraged. Things got way too real and I started to panic slightly. I have a bad anxiety disorder and it triggered it for sure. I just had all these thoughts like, “What if I get sued by the band?” I had nightmares of the brothers coming after me and them telling me how much of a piece of shit I am.  

BoC fans are some of the craftiest people you’ll ever come across, lemme tell ya lol.

They had somehow figured out the metadata from the original deleted video that was uploaded months prior. After it was confirmed and revealed to me they could dig this info up, I was in a full blown panic attack. I started hyperventilating. I messaged my buddy and told him what was up. He was against it at first, but I told him, “hey I have to delete this whole channel, they’re going to find out where I live next and who I am!” I just had the worst thoughts imaginable. 

So, I hit the “Killswitch” button and within minutes it all vanished like a bad dream. I was genuinely worried at first that I could potentially face legal backlash, but my friend explained to me that I wasn't out there putting any BoC label on it or even labeling the tracks and attempting to make any money from it.   

Some time had passed and the dust settled a little bit. I was kind of shocked to see people had ripped the original audio from the video and were sharing it to facebook and reddit and soon uploaded to Youtube. The “Dan Fingerman” channel was the first to reupload as I read through the comments and to my surprise they were all mostly positive. Some people thought for sure the music was BoC and others were skeptical, but most of them didn’t believe for a second, but yet still they kept talking about how much they enjoyed it. Even “David Firth” the creator of “Salad Fingers” left a comment at some point stating he liked the music, but didn’t care for the BS backstory. I was so happy that this music that had been sitting around for years on end had finally found a home somewhere. 

This music is only meant for a small niche audience. Most folks will not appreciate it. I think where I really fucked up, was becoming addicted to the excitement of seeing people enjoy the music that I had accumulated over a decade. Believe me when I tell you, there is more where that all came from. It is ridiculous the hundreds of unfinished or hidden tracks I have stored on several harddrives, VHS and cassette tapes, but I am happy to finally put it all to bed today.

Here’s where I need to really step up and take accountability for my ignorance and selfishness. 

Again, I was truly happy that people were actually enjoying the music so I did a foolish thing and ran with it like an idiot. All the hate and backlash that I will receive after all of this is all well deserved. Yes, I’m a giant loser, I'm an idiot, a talentless hack with no life. I’ll take the “L”. I just wanted to purge the last of this music and put an end to all of it once and for all. I think this was much needed and I can now move on with my life and stop obsessing over creating music that sounds like BoC. I can go back to writing and producing dark progressive black and death metal like I once used to lol.     

The day I discovered BoC’s music is the day it changed my life forever and how I saw the world through a new lens. I became obsessed with wanting to replicate their sound. I think it is more than relevant to talk about it to help illustrate my madness. 

Growing up in my teen years I was an extreme metal fanatic. I listened to a lot of black and death metal bands and played in many metal bands as a guitarist. My biggest influences were bands like Slayer, Immortal, Death, Opeth, Dimmu Borgir, Gorgoroth, Deicide, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest. You name it, If it was extreme, I was probably into them. I wanted nothing to do with any music that wasn’t extreme metal. I was very narrow-minded back then. That’s not to say I’m no longer a fan of metal, I’m just not as closed off as I used to be. 

As the years went on, I would watch my favorite front men from the most prolific metal bands give interviews and mention their musical influences and would always be blown away by how far away from metal their influences actually were. One of them would mention Radiohead in multiple interviews and naturally I got curious and started trying out “Radiohead" and soon fell in love with Thom Yorke’s experimentations. I think this is where my taste began to shift. I started getting into the “chill trip-hop’ genres and bands like Portishead, producers like DJ Shadow, Flying Lotus, and J Dilla. So pretty much the recipe for being receptive to BoC was already in the making. 

Eventually I stopped playing in bands after I learned how to play every instrument: Bass, Piano, drums and so on. It just got too hectic with everyone’s schedules to keep the dedication. I wanted so badly to learn how to write, record, and produce my own music. At the time I had a friend who used “Frooty Loops” to make Industrial beats, but that was about it and he would never teach me how to use the program. I wanted so badly to make my own black metal album and perform and record all the instruments as well as sing vocals.            

“Opeth’s” front man Mikael Akerfeldt influenced me in other directions from the metal genre and 

I eventually outgrew those desires and over time I became more interested in collecting vintage things like vhs camcorders, tape players, and record players. This really set the stage for me. Some years later, I was surfing Youtube in 2008 in search of videos on the drug `DMT" and a slideshow video of psychedelic imagery started playing and that’s when I was introduced to BoC's "Roygbiv" for the first time. As I was listening, it was like something inside of me was born. I’ll never forget that day. 

Now, I grew up in the 80’s and I distinctly remember “PBS” and the shows that would air back then like Reading Rainbow and Sesame Street. As I’m listening to Roygbiv, I was in this state of disbelief. How did they manage to pull that off? These sounds of rich warm vintage analog tones of the mid 70’s TV bumpers on public broadcasting networks. It took me right back to my childhood and unlocked this part of me that had been missing my entire life. I had shivers down my spine. From that moment, I instantly fell in love. I just had to find out who the creator of this music was. I did some digging and one comment read the band name and I sought out more of their music. The next track I listened to was “Bocuma" and it buried into my soul even deeper. I had both tracks on repeat all day. It took me back to the simple days of my childhood of the early 80’s. I just had to find out what software they were using. I wanted to learn how one could possibly recreate something of the past with such an unreal haunting aesthetic.  

I eventually found out this music was released in 1998 and that, of itself blew my mind as well.

I was so certain the music was from the present day using “present-day-computer-technology”.

Eventually, I got my hands on a computer and started to dabble in music production and also learned how to convert analog to digital and vise/versa. I had read on multiple forums and interviews of how they could achieve their signature sound and naturally I followed.   

I would damage and degrade tapes to record on them and I had some incredible results and as mentioned before, a lot of disappointment because VHS has such a good HIFI sound. Almost better than any digital. 

I would fall asleep and dream of melodies and try to figure them out. It got to a point where it plagued everything I did musically. Everything I would make would always end up sounding similar to their music. This is why I am happy today, to purge the last of it and move on with my life.  

Am I mentally ill? Perhaps? Am I a lunatic? Far from it, but I needed to get all this out of my system. I am sorry for everything and I hope you can just enjoy the music for what it is. It was never about clout or recognition. I'm not here to profit financially. All I ever wanted was it all to find a home. Thank you so much for even listening and giving it the time. I owe so much to them. They opened my eyes to a whole other artistic realm. Special thanks and gratitude all goes to the brothers for all the inspiration over the many years. Thank you Mike and Marcus. Your music has settled deep within my heart and I will take it to the grave. Thank you so much and Thank all of you for all your kind words that I probably don’t deserve. Thank you for taking the time to read. I am so grateful. 

[vickyvicarious]

There are many odd things to put down, and, lest who reads them may fancy that I dined too well before I left Bistritz, let me put down my dinner exactly. I dined on what they called "robber steak"—bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the London cat's meat! The wine was Golden Mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable. I had only a couple of glasses of this, and nothing else.

Jonathan Harker, 5 May (aka the 'I wasn't drunk I swear' version)

Let me be prosaic so far as facts can be; it will help me to bear up, and imagination must not run riot with me. If it does I am lost. Let me say at once how I stand—or seem to.

Jonathan Harker, 8 May

Let me begin with facts—bare, meagre facts, verified by books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt. I must not confuse them with experiences which will have to rest on my own observation, or my memory of them.

Jonathan Harker, 12 May

+

Written 18 July, things so strange happening, that I shall keep accurate note henceforth till we land.

Captain of the Demeter, 18 July

Noticed right away the echo of Jonathan's oft-emphasized approach to weird events (be factual, keep a record). Of course, the Captain is only belatedly beginning this log, running back over some earlier suspicious events, whereas Jonathan made sure to keep an accurate account from the start. Then again, things did get weird a lot faster for him... Once I had this comparison in mind, I noticed another detail:

The roof was broken, and in two places were steps leading to vaults, but the ground had recently been dug over, and the earth placed in great wooden boxes, manifestly those which had been brought by the Slovaks. There was nobody about, and I made search for any further outlet, but there was none. Then I went over every inch of the ground, so as not to lose a chance. [...] There, in one of the great boxes, of which there were fifty in all, on a pile of newly dug earth, lay the Count!

Jonathan Harker, June 25

+

He was in a panic of superstitious fear, and I am afraid the panic may spread. To allay it, I shall to-day search entire ship carefully from stem to stern. [...] As there were only the big wooden boxes, there were no odd corners where a man could hide.

- Captain of the Demeter, 18 July

First off, the Captain 'indulges' superstition similarly to Jonathan accepting the crucifix and other gifts before he went to the castle. But more directly, they both share that impulse for a thorough search in order to discover anything hiding. Of course, the goals of their searches are different: the Captain is looking for a stowaway (if he honestly expects to find anything at all), while Jonathan was looking for a key. Given the relative sizes there's a clear difference between how thoroughly they actually look - adding in Jonathan knowing he's a prisoner and making the most of a rare chance, while the Captain is in charge here and is just humoring others. Add in the fact that the boxes are full of dirt and sealed shut for the Captain so obviously no one would be hiding in them, whereas Jonathan saw them before the lids were on. So it's no surprise things turn out the way they do.

Still, there's a horrible irony to the Captain's line about the boxes which is only increased by comparing it to Jonathan's own more recent quote about searching.

[cafeinthemoon]

Thorns - Part III

Chapter 3/3

Wordcount 3,5k

Title Part III

Fandom Shuumatsu no Valkyrie/ Record of Ragnarok

Pairing Hades x reader

Previous chapters

1 . 2

Symbols ✔ . ➕ . 💛

Warnings: none

Tagging: @mikkies (if you want to be tagged in any of my stories, just leave a comment on this chapter or send an ask or a message)

N. A.: Sooo here's the conclusion for this little adventure in Hellheim! I decided to include some humour here too, and honestly it's not that bad 😅 There aren't many things to comment on this one, except for a curious fact about pomegranate tea: it has many properties, anti-inflammatory ones included, and here I'll leave the text open to interpretation 👀

Thanks for reading and enjoy it!

While you felt like those stairs and corridors were an infinite path when you were going to the room to take the seeds, the travel back to the common areas of the building was nothing for you, mainly because you weren’t even seeing the stairs or the walls in your way: as you ran, you had only one thought, that is, reaching the entry room and seeing your husband and his generals. 

I know they won. I always knew they would. But my heart will only calm down when I put my eyes on them. 

You arrived at that room at the same time as them, judging by the sound of the doors through which each of you entered closing behind your backs. You stopped near your door, in silence, staring at the three individuals covered in sweat and blood, and thanked the universe for their return. 

Hades was the first to notice you there, soon followed by the officers, who bowed their heads in respect despite their conditions. You ran to them immediately. 

You stopped and looked into your husband’s eyes, and your lips trembled when you saw the glimmer in them, but your first words were not for him. 

– Nurses! Servants! Our King and his men are back! – you yelled at both sides, at the corridors through which the requested groups arrived – Take them to the emergency wing now, and take their weapons to the smith! 

When they were about to leave, you turned to the officers. 

– I’m glad all the three of you are back. Now, please, accept the necessary assistance and take some rest. 

They thanked you for your reception, then left with the nurses. 

The silence was back in the room when you saw yourself alone with Hades, and you spent an incalculable amount of time without breaking it, only staring at each other, as if making sure you both were really there. It wasn’t that you feared the possibility of not seeing each other again: you couldn’t die so easily, after all. But to love is to worry, and you were both worried with what happened to yourselves during your separation. 

However, just like the issues between you were taken away when you were distant, they came back with you when you reunited. 

Hades was the one who tried to break up the tension, doing it with a smile. He was also the first of you to speak. 

– It was quite a forest you grew out there. 

You didn’t reply. 

– You and Beelzebub-san make a really formidable duo. I myself am impressed with what you’ve produced – he continued – Speaking of this, I’ve sent him here to check on you. Did he come already? Where is he? 

You were still quiet. A wrinkle of worry was noticed on his forehead as his smile faded; finally, your silence was starting to preoccupy him, who took a step ahead and looked into your eyes. 

– What is it, y/n? What's wrong? I sensed your technique from the battlefield and knew you might get tired after it, so I asked him to give you some medicine. Did he do it or not? – he looked at you from head to toe, as to examine your conditions – Are you really feeling strong enough to stay on your feet after using those seeds? 

You haven’t changed your dress since the episode with the messenger at throne room. Hades raised one hand to touch the spot of the fabric where there was a stain of the officer’s blood. 

– You didn’t even change it, my dear... 

You took no time thinking of what you were doing. Before his fingers reached you, you slapped his hand away, then closed your fist and punched his left rib. 

Hades gasped, curling over himself and making all the possible effort to lean on his bident and not fall before you. You bit your lip and, for a second, you were worried that you might have exaggerated: sometimes, you still forgot that, as a goddess, your physical strength was ten times the usual for a human being, but soon your husband recovered, straightening up and staring at you in disbelief. 

– What...?! 

Here, you no longer held your tears back. You passed your arms around him, whining while you hid your face on his chest. You didn’t give a damn about the mixed scent of blood and sweat impregnating his skin, neither to the fact that his clothes were covered in soil and in shreds. 

– Don’t you... – you mumbled between one sob and other – Don’t you... ever... do this again, you understand?... 

You felt his arms surrounding you, pulling to a tight, warm embrace. 

– I do – he whispered, kissing the top of your head – I’m sorry for this. 

You stood like this for the next minutes, since no one arrived to interrupt you. You were both aware that there was too much to be discussed, but there would be a time for this. For now, you just needed some rest. 

As if answering Hades’ questions about Beelzebub, a few moments after this the god himself arrived at the room beside Adamas, through the same door you just came, the first with a playful smile on his face, the second with a serious, but relieved expression for seeing his elder brother again. 

Hades, still with you in his arms, received them with a smile. 

– It’s good to see you again, Beelzebub-san – and, when the other nodded in acknowledgment, he turned to Adamas – Is everything okay, little brother? 

– Everything alright. Not a single monster survived the forest created by y/n-chan. She managed everything by herself. No one dared question her authority – he smiled, crossing his arms – I could hardly work on anything! 

You looked at him, feeling your cheeks burning. 

– Don’t say these things, Adamas-sama! I could never do anything without your help… 

The conversation would have continued if you weren’t hit by a sudden weakness, which took over your limbs and made it impossible for you to stay on your feet. You didn’t fall on the floor because your husband, despite being exhausted, used his remaining strength to hold you. Your sight was now blurry and you were unable to speak. 

– The medicine I gave her is strong, but its effect is not immediate – you heard Beelzebub’s voice as if from a great distance – I told her to take some rest… 

You never knew for sure who carried you out of there while you were unconscious, but you always thought it was Adamas. The most probable thing was that he and Beelzebub stood with you in a common room while Hades went to his chambers to change what was left from his clothing.

***

The castle remained noisy and crowded for the rest of that day, and you knew it would be like this for the next ones. 

There wasn’t one person who wasn’t busy for most of the time, from Hades and yourself (now feeling better and insisting on helping the folk) to the servants, the smiths, the nursery personnel and others: a reinforcement in the security of the lands that served as battlefield and their surroundings was necessary until the passage used by the invaders was completely closed, and soldiers were sent to them as soon as possible; not only the officers, but some of the people who came to the castle seeking for safeness, and who were attacked by Underworld beasts on their way there, needed assistance from the nurses as well, and the servants must provide them food and other essential items until they were able to take care of themselves again. 

Fortunately, you could count on Adamas and Beelzebub’s support: while the god of Conquest kept doing his work with the guards and solving the immediate, practical stuff as his brother treated his wounds and find new apparel, the Lord of the Flies went to the outside to remove the ivy from its territory with the use of a reversion technique that made the plants go back to the state of seeds; he brought them back to you and you took them to their original place in the tower’s room. 

He left by night, moments after talking to Hades and solving the forest’s problem. You didn’t insist with him to stay, since he had his own matters to worry about and he never accepted this kind of invitations even when they came from your husband. 

– I actually lingered for too long already – he told you while you led him to the exit – And you already have many problems to fix. I don’t want to be one of them. 

You shrugged. 

– You do as you want, Beelzebub-sama. But there’s always room for you here. 

You stopped by the main doors. He gave you an extra bottle of the medicine. 

– Take it twice a day, early when you wake up and by night, before you go to sleep – he instructed – There’s medicine for an entire week there, but judging by your strength, I don’t think you’ll need it for too long. 

You remembered the episode at the tower and your cheeks burned. 

– Ah… Sorry for that – you opened the door – Well… Thank you for the support. 

– You’re welcome. 

You were going to close the door when Beelzebub turned back to you one last time... and said the most shocking thing you’ve heard from him. 

– Y/n-san, you should be careful – and, when you asked what he meant, – Now, you’re starting to speak just like Adamas. 

You opened your mouth and closed it again. What was he talking about? 

– You just shrugged and told me to “do as I want” – he explained, enjoying your reaction – Adamas was the only one who spoke to me like this until this day. But you’ve been spending too much time with him, as far as I can see. 

– Ah, but…! – you gasped, then put your hands on your waist – Seriously?! 

– Ha! What did I tell you? 

Beelzebub walked away, leaving you behind with a mixture of diversion and indignation, and wondering how much of that was true.

*** 

 

Heavy clouds crossed the dark skies above you, bringing the rain that would probably fall later that night. You were standing at the balcony of your private chambers, observing the surroundings where, just a few hours before, a poisonous forest covered every inch of the ground. Beelzebub really did a good job in reversing the technique, something that you would take days to do in your current conditions; now, the soil would be purified by the imminent rains and the residues of toxicity in the air would be carried away by the wind, blowing freely across them, reaching your ears with their mysterious tune. 

A bit of peace and quietness, at last. 

After saying farewell to Beelzebub, you kept working to help your people for hours despite being tired, until a moment when you felt dizzy and once again would have passed out on the floor if it wasn’t for your husband, who held you in his arms and sent you to your chambers in the company of a servant. You weren’t really in conditions to argue, so you just obeyed. Once you were in your room, you thanked the servant and sent them back to the crowded areas; only when they left you, you realized how much you’ve been enduring in so little time. 

Now you were bathed and changed, only waiting for the time to sleep as you did every night, even though you doubted that you would be able to fall asleep so soon. 

For everything was going just fine… except inside your heart. 

What must I expect things to be from now on? Hades couldn’t find the time to say anything about this, but did he really approve the measures I took? Is he disappointed? Would I just kill the remaining feelings he has for me if I do something like that again? I can feel that he’s not exactly pleased, and I doubt that he’s going to forget it so soon… 

You sighed. You’ve never imagined that things could get to this point between you and the person you loved most. A tear rolled through your face and you were going to wipe it… 

But your hand never reached it. 

A warm breath was sensed on your neck, followed by an intense kiss, as two strong arms grabbed you from behind. You let out a little scream. 

– Ah! What…! 

Your question was interrupted when you were turned around to face the newcomer and had your lips sealed with his, in a hungry, breathtaking sequence of kisses. 

– What…? – you mumbled on his lips when you had the chance – How long you’ve been here… Hades? 

He chuckled. 

– Half an hour… You didn’t really notice, uh? 

You looked into his eyes, glowing with the remaining red of the night sky, and your throat tightened. Why was he doing this now? Wasn’t he disappointed? 

You tried to control them, but the words just escaped through your mouth as they came to your mind. 

– Hades, I’m… I’m sorry for speaking to you that way in the throne room! I should never do that, especially in front of the officers! And I should never put myself and our people in danger like I did! If Beelzebub-sama didn’t arrive, I don’t know what could have happened! And I… 

Your husband silenced you with his index finger over your lips. 

– And I should never give you reasons to think that I don’t love you anymore, my y/n. 

Your lips trembled with the unexpected apology. Suddenly, you remembered your conversation with Adamas at the party. 

– Ah…! Did your brother say something to you? I asked him not to! 

– What? You talked to Adamas about this? – he raised an eyebrow, then smiled – My girl, I would be a complete fool if I didn’t notice that something was wrong. It’s enough for me to be a fool for taking too long to fix this already. 

– What... do you mean? 

– When I was about to leave and you stopped me, and I looked at you and met your worried gaze, the stains of the messenger’s blood in your dress, my heart ached. I knew that, if I just left without hearing what you had to say, I would be making the worst mistake of my life. And yet, I left you to endure so much on your own – he pulled you to him – And now I’m eager to make amends… 

You were certainly going to cry with that sudden change in the course of things, if Hades didn’t grab you on his lap at that moment and brought you back inside your chambers, slamming the balcony’s doors behind him. You had your legs around his waist: you tightened them and closed your eyes, chuckling and hiding your face on the crook of his neck with the loud noise. 

The bed was already prepared for sleeping: with all the servants occupied out there, you didn’t mind arranging it by yourself with your favorite sheets and blankets. He basically threw you over them, giving you no time to move them away and going after you to cover your skin in kisses, caresses and slight bites that would tickle your body and make you laugh, all of this while helping you to get free from your night gown: he was never the type who tears clothes apart, but the eagerness of his hands really made you think that this time would be an exception. 

When he took off his robe, you noticed the scars on his body and hesitated. 

– Are you really okay with this? – you leaned your two hands over his chest – Aren’t they hurting? You should take some rest… 

He took your hands and passed them around his neck in response. 

– Hurting? Of course, they hurt, but not as much as having this unsolved. 

– I see no problem in waiting – you touched his face close to his temple, where he received a cut – We have all the time in the world for this. 

Your husband took your hand on his own and kissed your palm. 

– Then let’s pretend we don’t – he hid his face on your neck, smelling your skin, while his hands went through your body, stopped on your thighs to make them pass around his waist – Until you have no doubts about my love… I won’t allow myself to rest. 

A tear rolled through your face at those words. You involved him in your arms, bringing you closer. 

– Do what you need to do, my dear – you whispered, caressing his hair – And don’t hold back... I’ll heal your wounds myself if I have to... 

And then he did. He touched you, caressed you, took you with everything he got, using his mouth, his hands, his body to make you smile, laugh, cry and moan as you haven’t done in a long time. 

Thank Heavens that the storm started right after that, with thunders that suffocated all the noise you made, for there was a moment when he tickled your thigh and your laughter was exceptionally loud, making him stop and stare at you. 

– What is it, y/n-chan? – he smirked – Am I forgiven already? 

– Forgiven? – you stared back at him, passing your leg around his waist and pulling him down – It’s too soon for you to speak about forgiveness, my Lord. 

***

The last night took its toll on you when you woke up and tried to leave the bed in the morning: you rolled on your side and your body ached despite the little effort; you opened your eyes, swollen by crying, and covered them with your hands. Minutes after that, when you leaned your elbows to sit on the mattress, you moved the sheets away and observed with a smile – a bit of shock – the purplish marks that your husband left all over your skin. 

He wanted me to bear as many marks as himself. 

You were so tired that you thought Beelzebub’s medicine was the only thing keeping you awake after so little time of sleeping and so much of it working for your people and for your beloved husband, but in both senses you had no regrets: the people who depended on you were the reason for your existence as a goddess; and, whether it was his intention or not to leave you in that state, Hades fulfilled his promise, for there was no doubt about his love for you anymore, and there wouldn’t be any in a long time. 

You left the bed and went to find a robe, took the medicine and then went to the bathing area to take care of yourself. When everything was settled, you decided to spend the first moments of your day at the balcony, before breakfast, as you used to do especially in your first years living in Hellheim: it was a way to adapt your eyes and your spirit to the air of the Underworld. 

You sensed you were alone in your room since you opened your eyes. As he used to do every day, Hades left earlier to take care of his responsibilities, and after everything you’ve been through, it couldn’t be different today. You weren’t mad at this: all the issues between you were now solved, and you just had to prepare yourself to go after him and fulfill your role by his side. 

It has been just a few minutes since you started observing the landscape, the puddles of water between the tors around being the only reminiscence of the storm, when you looked over your shoulder and saw him approaching your spot with something in his hands: a cup full of a red tea, which scent you identified with a smile and a bit of surprise. 

– Pomegranate? By this time of the year? 

Your fingers touched his when he put the cup in your hands. 

– There are still fruits from Valhalla’s last harvest left in the kitchen – he explained – Which is a really good thing, because they won’t be able to send new ones until we solve the problem with the passage. 

– I see – you sighed and sipped the cup’s content; it was hot just the way you liked it – And how are the things this morning? 

– Better than yesterday – Hades replied with a calmness in his tone that convinced you from what he was saying – Most of the common people already received assistance, the injured ones are being treated, the smiths are fixing the weapons and the workers chosen to close the passage were already sent to the working field. Everything is already settled – he approached you and kissed your temple – It’s just a question of time until we get back to normality. 

– That’s good to hear... – you closed your eyes as your husband hugged you. 

– Did you take the medicine already? 

– Yes. And the tea will help with the immediate issues – you sipped it – Thank you. 

Hades smirked. 

– Okay. 

– So... – you raised your eyes to him – I’ll finish this in a moment. Will you wait and walk down with me or should I meet you at the throne room? 

He frowned. 

– There’s too much work to be done still, y/n. Are you really feeling this good? 

That was your time to smirk. 

– I thought you stopped underestimating me – you put your hand over his rib, the same one you punched, and pressed it, making him gasp – Especially when you need a good pomegranate tea right now. 

He breathed deep, then smiled, kissing your forehead. 

– I’ll only accept it if it’s made by your hands. Will you do it for me? 

You put yourself on tip toes to reach his lips with yours. 

– Anything for you, my dear.