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duckprintspress · 7 months

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Welcome to Duck Prints Press

Duck Prints Press LLC is an independent publisher based in New York State. Our founding vision is to work with fancreators to publish their original work. We are particularly dedicated to working with queer authors and artists to publish stories featuring characters from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. We were founded in January 2021. We're fan-owned, queer-owned, and dedicated to working with diverse creators, whether they be queer, disabled, bipoc, neurodiverse, or any combination of the above!

Current Projects

Anthology: Aether Beyond the Binary (aetherpunk settings, main characters outside the gender binary; the Kickstarter campaign to fund this ended, successful, on January 25th, 2024. We are currently working on fulfillment.)

The Twinned Trilogy by Tris Lawrence (f/f, m/m, and others, three-novel trilogy, modern with magic college setting; Kickstarter to (maybe) launch this winter - you can follow the campaign now!)

Pride Merchandise campaign featuring art by Pippin Peacock (six mythical creatures in each of eight pride colors, offered as die-cut stickers and enamel pins. Successfully crowdfunded! Currently working on fulfillment.)

Anthology: Many Hands: An Anthology of Polyamorous Erotica (what it says on the tin: poly erotica; Kickstarter tentatively scheduled for late spring, 2024)

Pride Bundles for Charity (we will repeat our Pride Bundle campaign from 2023, with new stories and new bundles. Included stories and benefiting charities are still to be decided).

Anthology: [untitled Best Of projects] (a project featuring stand-alone short stories previously published by Duck Prints Press; there will be two anthologies, one with general imprint titles and one with explicit imprint titles. Projected for a crowdfunding campaign in early summer of 2024)

Anthology: A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (what it says on the tin; art and fiction are currently in progress.)

Anthology: untitled General Imprint anthology (we tentatively expect to next open general recruitment to y'all in July or August of 2024; theme is not decided yet)

Monthly short stories are published to our website and our Patreon!

Short story bundles! Want to read lots of our stuff? Check out our story bundles! General Imprint Bundles | Explicit Imprint Bundles

Download our FREE ZINE with teasers, previews, information us, and more!

Come read with us - we host a low-key reading challenge on Storygraph, encouraging people to read more queer books!

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April 28th: A Big Gay Market (Washington Park, Albany, NY)

June 22nd: Toying Around Black Party (Main Street, Johnstown, NY)

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September 13th - 15th: Albacon (Clifton Park, NY)

Past Projects

Hockey Bois by A. L. Heard (m/m, modern sports setting, sloooooow burn romance; available on our website!)

Anthology: Aim For The Heart: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Alexandre Dumas's "The Three Musketeers" (what it says on the tin; available on our website!)

Many Drops Make a Stream by Adrian Harley (f/f, fantasy, novel; available on our website!)

To Drive the Hundred Miles by Alec J. Marsh (m/f, explicit novella, trans male main character; available on our website!)

Anthology: Add Magic to Taste (fluffy queer relationships at magical coffee shops, tea shops, and the like; available on our website!)

Anthology: And Seek (Not) to Alter Me: Queer Fanworks Inspired by William Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" (what it says on the tin; available on our website!)

Anthology: She Wears the Midnight Crown (f/f stories set at unusual and creative masquerades; available on our website!)

Anthology: He Bears the Cape of Stars (m/m stories set at unusual and creative masquerades; available on our website!)

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#duck prints press #hey look an updated pinned post #i've only needed to do this for like two years oops

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pazzesco · 8 months

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Wadsworth Jarrell | "Revolutionary" (Angela Davis), 1971, acrylic and mixed media on canvas, Brooklyn Museum

WADSWORTH JARRELL BOSS COUPLE, 1970 Acrylic on canvas 36 x 27 1/2 in

Wadsworth Aikens Jarrell

American painter, sculptor printmaker and social artist .

Revolutionary social artist Wadsworth A. Jarrell, Sr. was born in Albany, Georgia, in 1929, the youngest of six children. Jarrell credits his father, a furniture maker, and the rest of his family for supporting his childhood interest in art. After high school, Jarrell served in Korea, and then moved to Chicago. In 1954, Jarrell enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago majoring in advertising art and graphic design. Not long afterward, Jarrell lost interest in commercial art and took more drawing and painting classes.

Jarrell joined the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a group that created Chicago's Wall of Respect mural, a seminal piece in the 1960s urban mural movement. It was there that he met his future wife, Elaine Annette (Jae) Johnson, a clothing designer. With the eventual breakup of the Artists' Workshop of OBAC, Jarrell and fellow artists Jeff Donaldson and Barbara Jones-Hogu, among others, formed a collective called COBRA-Coalition of Black Revolutionary Artists, which later became AFRI-COBRA, the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists. AFRI-COBRA took as its central tenets black pride, social responsibility and the development of a new diasporic African identity.

In 1971, Jarrell was recruited by fellow AFRI-COBRA founder, Jeff Donaldson to teach at Howard University where he pursued his Master of Fine Arts degree. He continued there until 1977, taking a position at the University of Georgia as Assistant Professor. In 1988, with the interest in his work increasing, Jarrell retired from teaching altogether. Jarrell's work has been shown at numerous places including: the Smithsonian International Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and at festivals and exhibitions in Nigeria, Germany, Sweden, France, Haiti and Martinique.

Black Prince, 1993 Artist: Wadsworth Jarrell Offset Lithograph 22 3/4 x 16 inches Signed by the artist lower right

#art #angela davis #wadsworth jarrell #revolutionary #jazz giants #black prince #boss couple

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graveyardsh1ft · 1 year

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Hello! Sorry I haven’t been active, been busy with my apprenticeship! Check out these frogs with hats (and toad?) that I drew for a tattoo flash event for my coworker’s birthday! XXX

#artists on tumblr #tattoo apprentice #tattoo #tattooartwork #tattooartist #frogs #roads #frog #toad #lgbt artist #lgbtq #queer artist #upstateny #troy ny #albany ny #Saratoga ny

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lexosaurus · 4 months

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Twelve Hours: Chapter 5

Part 5 of 5 of my fic for Ecto Implosion, the DP reverse mini-bang (artists go first, writers go second)

This chapter is accompanied by art from @tytach AND IT'S SO SO COOL literally screaming crying throwing up I love GIW art so much. Do yourself a solid and check it out!

read on: [ao3]

[see all chapters]

Characters: Danny Fenton, Harriet Chin, GIW Tags: Identity Reveal, Flashbacks, Runaway Danny Fenton, Angst Chapter WC: 4453 Summary: When the GIW revealed Danny to the world, the only thing he could do was run. Run and run and run until he escaped to Chicago, trying desperately to disappear. Too bad it didn’t work.

****

“The day of your arrest, you’d been on the run,” Harriet Chin stated.

“I had,” Danny responded. Even though it’d been years, talking about the actual captivity—or as they’d put it in legal terms, arrest—still made his heart stutter.

Well, most things still made his heart rate pick up.

“They found you in Chicago,” Harriet continued. “And they arrested you at approximately two in the morning in Albany Park. Reports say you’d been in the city all day. First, I just need to ask, why? Why go to Chicago of all places?”

Danny steeled himself. He’d been expecting this. “I thought I could blend in there. I figured there were so many people in the city that everyone would look past another homeless kid. Obviously, that didn’t work. People recognized me.”

“What happened during the arrest? I think most people would have expected you to turn invisible and fly away, but that didn’t happen.”

“It’s not that easy with the Ghost Investigation Ward. Their glasses can see through invisibility, and they had me surrounded.” Danny pressed his lips together, fighting the imagery of him diving into his only chance of escape. It hadn’t worked. “It was futile, anyway.”

Harriet leaned back, a slight awe seeping into her tone as she said, “Three years, huh? That’s a long time.”

It had been. Oh god, it had been an agonizing time. And it probably would have gone on longer if not for Vlad’s incredible legal team.

Of course, that didn’t make Vlad suddenly his best friend. The asshole only really did it to try to make Maddie fall in love with him, that bastard. Well, that and the underlying terror of the government figuring out how to create a halfa, which would have been disastrous.

Thankfully, Danny managed to avoid both potential outcomes there. He’d gotten out, spent a year in and out of surgery, rehab, and PT, and then tried his best to restart his life. He got his GED, signed up for some community college courses, attained an associate degree, then transferred and finished his bachelor's.

It hadn’t been easy or smooth. In between associate and undergraduate degrees, he’d suffered a breakdown and had to take a gap year…or two. Then, after he finished his undergraduate, the soul-crushing reality that he was Danny Phantom and also job hunting so he could move out and really start his life hit him again, and he faltered.

But somehow, he made it. He was still figuring it out, but he was here. Alive.

“I survived,” he decided, setting his jaw.

****

01:00:00

Danny had no idea where he was anymore. He’d run till he found a train stop, then he took that further into the city and switched once. He’d gotten off and walked around—invisibly—his heart pounding in his chest the whole time because even a meager amount of invisibility was enough to ping any agent nearby of his ectosignature. Thankfully, there were no GIW sirens, no white fans, no tall men in white suits ambushing him from the street corners or jumping at him from the alleyways.

Still, just to be extra safe, he got back on the train and rode it for another hour till he’d reached a residential neighborhood, peering out the window before he got off the train to check and double-check for any sign that the Guys in White were waiting for him.

But there was nothing. He was safe. At least, for now, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. But when he glanced over his shoulder again and again, he saw no one behind him.

It seemed like the three thugs hadn’t followed the instructions from those horrific billboard signs watching block, they hadn’t dialed 449 to contact the emergency ghost-sighting number, they hadn’t tattled that Danny Fenton Phantom himself was in front of their home, that they’d nearly kicked the shit out of him.

Which, ouch. He touched his cheek, hissing as it whined in return. It was likely thanks to his frayed nerves, growling stomach, and lack of sleep that allowed the bruises to blossom on his skin instead of dwindling to nothing like they typically would with his advanced healing.

By morning, they would probably be gone. So long as he survived the night first, that was.

“If you don’t leave, I’m calling the cops,” a voice behind him growled.

Danny whipped around, his heart suddenly racing in his chest. He nearly forgot to double-check that his hood was tugged safely over his head.

Peering out of a house window was a pudgy, balding man in a wifebeater. His raised eyebrows created rivets in his shiny scalp. He looked to Danny not with recognition, but aggravation, as if Danny were a cockroach trying to sneak into his pantry.

Some strange, queasy filling filled Danny’s stomach. He almost preferred the fear people gave him when they recognized his ghost form to whatever this was.

A raindrop hit his eye, and he cursed, reeling back to wipe his face. “Sorry,” Danny said, glancing around. He was safe from the storm under this banister, but outside it was pouring. “I’m just trying to figure out where to go.”

“You’ve been here for a half fucking hour. Either go home or find a fucking shelter.”

Danny’s silence must have spoken for him.

“Or, don’t,” the man huffed. “I don’t give a shit, just get the fuck off my fucking porch!”

Danny felt like he’d been punched in the face all over again, but he tried to let it go. He tried to not let his head hang so far down as he stepped into the cosmos of rain, which didn’t hesitate to cling onto his hoodie, seeping through the fibers until water kissed his skin.

If the rain’s gentle touch was supposed to be a comfort, it failed miserably. Instead, Danny’s throat tightened, and he failed to block out the gruff, “See? Was that so fucking hard?” from behind him as he made his way to the sidewalk.

Despite his cold core, he shivered. If he didn’t find shelter soon, he was going to be soaked to the bone, and then he would have to have to sleep like that.

“Goddamnit,” he muttered, wrapping his arms around his stomach as he pressed into the night. He had no idea what time it was, but it was late. Most of the city had long since gone to sleep, and yet here he was, still awake, shuffling down the road while water squelched into his converse.

Hairs prickled the back of his neck. He glanced behind him, but no one was there. Not even the man in the window.

He was just being paranoid. That was all.

He walked down the road and passed a half-decrepit brick wall with the GIW logo spray painted on in green. Under it was the DP logo, which someone else embellished with red devil horns.

Don’t look, don’t look…

His bangs were sticking to his forehead now. He could just turn intangible, but if anyone saw him turn transparent, then they’d definitely report him for being a ghost, if not the Phantom.

He would just have to be wet until the air decided he could begin to dry, however long that took.

That ever-present lump in his throat grew like a tumor as he tried to ward away thoughts of his family who were probably home, maybe sleeping, maybe huddled in the living room with bleary eyes glued to the television as they waited to see any news about him.

But he’d made it this far, hadn’t he? Soon he’ll have survived the streets overnight on his own, soon he’ll become adept at blending into the city, and soon no one will give him a second glance. Especially not some busy-body white-suited government employee.

And then maybe his family could go to sleep.

The rain continued, unrelenting, but with his newfound determination, Danny refused to let it weigh him down. Even though his paranoia was telling him to panic, and nausea was at his throat, he wouldn’t turn around, wouldn’t back down.

He would survive.

The houses blurred into each other, and every light out of the corner of his eye seemed to glow green. Every siren in the distance was the unmistakable chirp of the Guys in White vans, and every pattering on the pavement was a clicky black shoe. It was a hell loop that expanded with each step, burning into his eyes, ears, fingers, and core. But it was just his anxiety at play. It was nothing, Danny, it was nothing.

He was fine, of course. Soaked down to his intestines, but fine. And now, he stood below a street lamp facing a tan townhouse with an iron fence outlining its entrance. To its left was a larger, sleeping blue townhouse, and to its right was a short, red-bricked apartment with the anti-ecto billboard hovering over it.

Seriously, how much fucking money had the US Government wasted on advertising their stupid new GIW emergency number?

He turned around, choosing to walk across the street where another row of brick townhouses and apartments stood at his wake.

“Fuck you too,” he hissed, failing to resist tossing a middle finger up to the sign behind him.

As predicted, the sign had little to say in return. Though, perhaps smugly, Danny just pretended it was because he’d won. He’d found an alley, a place to call home—for now. And unless the stupid Guys in White had followed him here—which they hadn’t—then they had lost him. Officially. And Danny would lay low here until the world abated, and then…who knew. He’d figure it out.

He settled onto the wet pavement, not caring that his soaked shoe was edging on a puddle. The rain probably wouldn’t let up for hours anyway. He was just glad Tucker had thought to add that emergency waterproof bag in his backpack for his phone and charger.

If he peered out of the alley, he could still see that odious sign trying its best to get under his skin. He could see the way the sign’s Phantom glared down at passersby with contorted, grisly eyes that promised nothing but agony for anyone who happened to cross his path.

“That’s not true,” Danny whispered to himself, or the sign. “You’ll see. Someday.”

He dropped his head to his knees, fatigue hitting him like a cannonball. Someday…perhaps. But not today.

It was still raining.

****

Harriet leaned forward, the soft glow of the lights against her skin now matching her tone as she asked, “And the people who protested against your release? What would you say to them if they were here?”

“I don’t have anything to say to them. Not anymore,” Danny said truthfully.

“Why is that?” she pressed.

“Because,” he started, cocking his head. Then, his eyes flickered to hers, and he wondered if maybe the outer rings of his pupils were hinting at a green glow. “I don’t have anything to say to a person who thinks that because of who I am, what I am, I should be destined to a life as a science experiment, torn apart and put back together over and over, beaten to the point of collapse and punished for not standing back up. Someone who thinks that when my hands were bound behind my back and I was forced to eat off the floor, or when I was locked for days or weeks in a dark cell, chained to the wall with no one to talk to except myself, that I deserved all this just because some of my blood cells were replaced with ectoplasm. And if that sounds blunt, I don’t care. Anyone who thinks a teenager they’d never met should live that sort of life isn’t a person I wish to try to reason with.”

****

00:00:00

Whomp, whomp, whomp.

Something was beating overhead. A large…bird? Maybe?

Whatever it was, it wasn’t important.

Lethargy wrapped his consciousness back in its warm blanket again, shielding him from the pouring rain that had soaked through every molecule of his body, and his mind…went…

Whomp, whomp, whomp.

It was louder now. Closer. He peeked out from the mental box he’d locked himself into, cracking the lid just enough to notice that the whomp, whomp, whomp didn’t really sound like a bird. And wow, it was really close.

Was that…an issue? It was weird, wasn’t it?

He tried to separate what was normal from what wasn’t, but it was hard, and he was exhausted. Why was he so tired? And wait…why was he wet? Why wasn’t he home in his bed?

Maybe he’d just forgotten to change after patrol that night. Yeah, that had to be it.

But the—wow, that noise was pretty weird.

He craned his neck further out of the box, but his exhaustion protested. If he went much further, he’d never be able to go back to sleep. He was already beginning to notice the crick in his neck, the aching in his back, and the green tint of what was supposed to be only noir behind his eyelids…

Wait.

Green?

He mentally patted his core, but it was completely dormant.

Green…why was…

He wasn’t in his bedroom, was he?

No.

Green! His consciousness yelled, cleaving him from his little mental box. His core spiked, and he ripped his head from his arms to see green lights reflecting off every surface, strobing into the rainy night air.

Adrenaline impaled his pores and snapped him upright, his hands high and glowing before he even knew what to aim at.

The lights flashed more aggressively, and Danny’s heart plummeted. They had him surrounded. Whoever was here, they had him surrounded.

He could have screamed in frustration and sorrow for being so stupid as to get his hopes up that he wasn’t in the streets of Chicago, homeless because the government exposed him and was determined to hunt him down and turn him into their little plaything.

Fucking hell, fuck, it hurt so bad, so fucking bad. It was only a few moments where he believed with every fiber of his being that he was safe and home but he wasn’t and he might as well have let the GIW drive a pike through his heart.

“Freeze,” a deep voice said to his left.

He tried to look up, right, everywhere, everywhere. The helicopter lit a spotlight down on him, and he winced, shielding his sensitive eyes from the glaring supernova of bright, hot light spearing him.

He tried to step away, but the light followed him, and he realized with horror as he turned invisible that the light was still casting a shadow where he stood.

Fuck.

FUCK.

“Stand down!” the voice repeated, deep and throaty.

Operative O, Danny realized, and the shadow mimicked his movements as he backed away from the two prowling figures at the alley entrance.

Lights began flicking on in the surrounding houses, further lighting up the scene around him.

His invisibility flickered in and out. It was useless, either way. All the Operatives were wearing their sunglasses, and Danny knew the only reason they’d be wearing them at two in the morning was if they did more than just block the sunlight.

He turned, and more operatives with more glowing guns stood at the other end of the alley.

Above them, a glowing dome shot out of the helicopter, plunging into the pavement where Danny knew it connected.

Shit. He was trapped.

He dove into the building to his right, stumbling into a hallway with a woman in a bathrobe and a satin hair wrap frozen on the staircase before him. She screamed as if Danny had stabbed her, throwing her body into the wall. Her head hit a picture frame, and it fell, cracking against the wooden planks on the stairs.

“No, no!” Danny raised his arms in a plea, but they were still glowing, and the woman screamed further.

A man appeared at the top of the staircase, a gun in his hand. He didn’t hesitate, shooting Danny at once.

Although human bullets had little effect on an intangible body, he still cried out, “Stop!”

Bullets whizzed through his chest, shoulder, and stomach, and he flinched as holes indented the wall behind him. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

“Oh god, oh god!” the woman wailed. “HELP! HELP, GERALD!”

“GET OUT!” The man, presumably Gerald, bellowed, shooting Danny square in the face. “LEAVE MY WIFE ALONE!”

Danny’s vision blurred, and he stumbled as though he’d actually been shot, “Please, stop! I’m–they’re—”

“Danny Fenton Phantom, we have you surrounded. Please come outside with your hands in the air.”

The woman sank to the floor. “Don’t hurt me. Oh god, don’t hurt me.”

The man was out of bullets now, but he wasn’t finished. He tossed his gun to the side and rolled up his sleeves. Storming down the stairs with fists clenched, he hollered, “You don’t fucking touch my family, you zombie freak!”

Danny stumbled into their kitchen, and green lights flashed into their windows. He tried to put his hands down to steady himself, but his intangibility nearly sent his body careening through a stack of magazines sitting on the table. His hands were shaking—badly—and lightheadedness was encompassing all of his senses and skin with a relentlessness that would surely drive the strongest man insane.

This is it, he thought. Behind him, Gerald’s footsteps had reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Please, stop,” Danny croaked. Though, he had no idea who he was talking to. His hands flew up to his scalp, and he tried to right his head as his throat narrowed into a coffee straw. Before him, green light blinded his vision, pulsing off the beige wallpaper and setting fire to Danny’s entire life.

He felt the man’s fist sail through his head and hit the wall, and he heard the slew of curse words that followed.

“Face me like a man!” Gerald snapped.

“I can’t,” Danny whispered. “I can’t do it. I can’t win.”

“Come out with your hands in the air,” the voice outside repeated.

Danny walked through the man and faced the woman crumbled on the staircase, clutching the picture frame to her heart and weeping gut-wrenching sobs that stabbed through all the layers of panic and adrenaline until he too was crouching down in the hall with Gerald still hovering over him, his intangible hands gripping intangible strands of his hair as he fought the urge to throw up bile all over their weathered wooden hallway.

“Oh god, oh god!” the woman howled.

“I can’t win,” Danny repeated. If he dove underground, the helicopter would just pull him up. If he stayed here, the GIW agents and SWAT would just capture him. But if he went outside, he would be walking straight into the lion’s den.

There was no winning. No way of escape. They knew he was Phantom—they must have been following him—and Danny didn’t have to test it to know that the shield was keyed to his ectosignature, able to affect him no matter which form he took. He could feel it more clearly than any shield-static he’d experienced as a ghost.

He’d been so fucking arrogant before to think he’d escaped them. This was the government, and he was just a kid. Just a goddamn kid from Amity Park with two weird parents and a nerdy sister and oh god, he’d never see them again, and he never got to say goodbye.

Gerald’s footsteps disappeared in front of Danny, and he almost breathed relief before he blinked, realizing what the man was doing.

“No!” Danny yelled, jumping up and tripping over his feet. His intangibility slipped from his skin, and he crashed into a side table, knocking an urn to the floor. It shattered, permeating the floor in gray powder, and Danny reeled, colliding into the bullet-ridden drywall.

“Oh my god,” he gasped, stricken, then turned to face them but it was too late. Gerald was yanking his wife into the foyer and reaching for the door.

“NO!” Danny shot forward, his hand brushing the door handle simultaneously with Gerald. Danny turned them both intangible, and the woman slipped through her husband’s grip with a shriek.

“June!” Gerald cried out, reaching for an arm that was no longer there.

Danny let go, stepping back. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

Gerald turned to him once more, his face setting in fierce determination. “June, get out! I’ll hold him off!”

“No, Gerald!” June scrambled upright.

“GO!” Gerald commanded.

Danny looked into June’s grief and terror-stricken eyes as she pleaded, “Please don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him, please.” And for the first time in his life, Danny felt like every bit the grotesque monster whose eyes bore down from the GIW billboards across every city in America.

He took a step back, and nausea crept further up his throat. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The green light pulsed brighter, faster. The helicopter’s whomp, whomp, whomp swelled to a deafening pressure. The orchestra of dozens of boots arranging themselves in position, sirens wailing in the distance, commanding voices from the street, and the click of the megaphone that Danny could no longer understand blended together until he was sure he couldn’t discern reality from the madness of his mind anymore.

“Please don’t open the door. I’ll die.” Danny’s voice crackled. With dawning horror, he realized this was his final attempt at survival.

“Go, June,” Gerald said, ignoring him.

“I’ll die. They’ll kill me.”

June sobbed, reaching for her husband instead.

He batted her hand away. “I said, go!”

“Please,” Danny begged, his voice weak, but it was useless. This random couple wasn’t listening to him.

They didn’t think he was human enough to deserve a voice in the first place.

June hesitated, her amber eyes crashing into Danny’s one last time before she finally reached for the door.

Danny didn’t stop her.

She slipped out as Gerald made one last valiant attempt at charging Danny, his voice hollering a war cry that echoed down the block.

But Danny stood still, only barely caring enough to turn his body intangible for the man to pass through him before returning to his solid form.

There was the sound of a door opening and closing behind him, and Danny vaguely registered that they must have had a backdoor entrance in their kitchen, but he didn’t move. He could have, probably. He could have stopped Gerald from unlocking the deadbolt and dragged him back into the foyer to use his body like a shield against the GIW agents.

But he could see the billboard taunting him through the open door high above the white vans, green sirens, and teams of men and women dressed in GIW white, SWAT black, and police blue. That damn billboard with those damn eyes that ridiculed him with the warbling, “Is this what you really are?”

A second later, men poured into the foyer to slam Danny to the ground. They turned him over and cuffed his hands behind him. Another set of hands snapped an inhibitor around his neck, there was a shout, and then all touch left his body just before his world was overtaken by electricity. Hot, blazing lightning traveled through his skin, arteries, into the tendrils that connected his core from his body, severing each thread one by one.

It was the portal all over again. Blinding, catastrophic, screaming in his mind before some part of Danny realized it was his voice, it was his screams of pain and torment ripping his lungs from his body and spilling them onto the aged floor.

Then, it stopped, and the only thing left was the smell of burnt hair and his wavering vision.

“Clear!” a man shouted, and hands grabbed him again, this time hauling him up and dragging him across the floor.

“No,” Danny wheezed, but no one heard him. They lugged him down the front steps where dozens of guns were waiting to welcome him.

Suddenly, a hand gripped his scalp, and Danny cried out as his head was forced upright. He blinked, and once his eyes focused, he wished they hadn’t because before him was a lording, square-shouldered figure clothed in white.

“Daniel Fenon Phantom,” Operative O began. “You are in violation of Article 1, Section 1, Sub-section A of the federal Anti-Ecto Control Act and are hereby under arrest. As you are not considered human by federal law, you are not protected under the Fifth Amendment. You do not have Miranda Rights, nor do you have the right to due process. Do I make myself clear?”

Danny didn’t respond, but it didn’t seem to matter. He wasn’t human, so the GIW didn’t need something as silly as his confirmation before they began towing him to a white van that seemed to glow brighter by the second.

“Don’t worry,” Operative O continued, his voice a hiss. “After the last few years of terror you’ve put this country under, I’m going to make sure our time together is special. And you, you, you…”

Operative O threw Danny onto the cushioned GIW van. A click of a button later, and the walls of the car and cage separating the back of the van from the front were lined in an excruciating green light. It sizzled, lapping at Danny’s skin and hair. He squirmed, and it seemed to chortle in response, whispering to not even try, there’s no escape, Danny, no escape at all.

Not that he had the energy to try. His limbs felt like lead, and his head pounded in his ears.

Operative O’s hands were back on him, forcing him upright while another operative strapped his body and legs into the seat.

This was it. He was going to die. Painfully, and slowly, but he was going to die. He would never see his family again. He would never hear Sam and Tucker bicker about food, he’d never laugh at Mr. Lancer trying his hand at teen slang, and he’d never feel the warm, and sometimes crushing embrace of his parents wrapping him in a hug.

He was going to die.

“Let’s see if your nervous system is really as human-like as the reports say. And if it is? Well.” Operative O chuckled, propping an arm over the door. “Well, you’ll be in for a world of pain.”

He shut the door, the bang rattling Danny’s skull. Outside of the van, inaudible chatter of the officers filled the neighborhood, but inside, only the static whispers of the ghost shield spoke to him.

It’s over, they reminded him. You lost.

The end.

****

Thanks for reading!

[read more of my stuff here]

#danny phantom #ectoimplosion2023 #my writing #twelve hours #dp fanfic #angst #cw violence

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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Walk down Washington Street in Lower Manhattan between the Battery Parking Garage and Albany Street, and you’ll see virtually no signs that this area was once home to one of the largest communities of Syrians in the United States. Groups [...] have worked tirelessly to preserve the three remaining buildings [...] that stood during the heyday of New York City’s “Syrian Quarter,” or Little Syria. [...] From 1890 to 1940, Little Syria stood as the mother colony to Syrian and Lebanese communities across the United States. The three-block radius around Washington and Rector was home to newspapers, magazines, restaurants, jewelry shops, banks, barbers, grocers, churches, a mosque, record stores. [...] This was the Mahjar, America’s Arab diaspora. [...]

Tucked within these streets were three Arab American record labels -- Maloof Phonograph Company in the 1920s and 1930s, A.J. Macksoud’s Phonograph Company from the 1910s to the 1930s, and Alamphon Records in the 1930s and 1940s -- now among the most recognizable to record collectors.

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These labels filled an important cultural gap -- by the 1920s, the US’ two big phonograph record companies, Victor and Columbia, cut back on recording and selling Arab music. And while companies like Beirut-based Baidaphon recorded Syrian and Egyptian musicians and sold their records at home [...]in the early 1900s, by the 1910s that was changing. Mahjari musicians in the United States began to record music themselves, for mahjari audiences.

The music that New York City’s mahjari artists performed from the 1910s through the following 30 years included recorded poems, folk songs from the homeland and original compositions telling of loss, love, [...] and favorite foods from home; the names, tunes, beats and rhythms connected them to their roots and shaped their nostalgia for what they had left behind. There was much to miss, even before leaving what was then known as Ottoman Syria: today’s Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. The region’s silk industry and other trades were in decline. Political instability and poverty were on the rise. Thousands of former Ottoman subjects soon found themselves in New York City, Boston, Detroit. [...]

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[T]he performing and literary arts movement that gripped Egypt and Greater Syria during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That movement was the Nahda, the Arab Renaissance.

The arrival of immigrants from Greater Syria coincided with a boom of gramophone machines, phonograph cylinders and flat-disc records.

And as Arab musicians in Cairo and Beirut recorded music throughout the 1890s and 1900s, thousands of miles away in Little Syria a precocious Alexander Maloof began composing and publishing music for the piano. [...] From a young age, Maloof listened to traditional Arabic music such as mawwal, Arab folk music forms such as the ataaba, and experimented with fusing these with American marches, fox trots, and ragtime.

Meanwhile, by 1907, 29-year-old musician Abraham J. Macksoud, now using the moniker A.J. Macksoud, opened a phonograph record store in Little Syria. [...] Columbia and Victor had already begun to record the songs of mashriqi musicians back home [...], but as late as 1911, no Arab or Ottoman immigrant to the US had recorded specifically for a mahjari audience. That was about to change.

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On 24 July 1913, Alexander Maloof, now a well-accomplished songwriter and composer, recorded the piano solo B 13834-1, #17443 Al-Ja-Za-Yer (“Algeria”) for the Victor Talking Machine Company. With Maloof's song, Mahjari musicians had now found a home for recording their music. [...]

The number of Syrian Muslims to emigrate to the United States remained relatively small during the first wave of emigration from 1880 to 1941. Still, in 1916, Columbia recorded one of only a few Syrian Muslim immigrants, Mohamed ZainEldeen. Born in Homs, Syria in 1892, ZainEldeeen arrived in New York in May 1912. By the fall of 1916, he had cut seven songs on six double-sided discs for Columbia [...]. As the number of Arab immigrant and Arab American musicians grew on Columbia and Victor’s rosters, A.J. Macksoud moved and opened two new record shops at 52 Broadway and 89 Washington Street. [...]

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The 1920s marked the era when Victor and Columbia lost their monopoly on lateral-cut recording technology, but it is also the period they slashed efforts to record and issue new Arabic-language music. To fill in the gaping hole left in the industry, [...] pianist and composer Alexander Maloof established his own record label. He kept up a break-neck pace appearing on radio, running his record label, composing songs and selling sheet music to publishers.

In October 1923, Maloof finally recorded his “Egyptian Glide” and a second track, “Pharaoh,” on his label’s pressing company, Gennett Records. And despite its long hiatus of recording Syrian American artists, in 1926 the Victor Talking Machine Company even brought Maloof back into the studios, this time with his larger orchestra, to record “Desert Wail” and “Kurdistan.” [...]

On his self-titled label, Maloof recorded former Victor recording artist Ilyas Wardiny, who became one of the label’s most popular singers. [...]

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Farid Alam al-Din (anglicized Fred Alam) founded the last of Little Syria’s record labels. For years, historians, ethnomusicologists, and even the most experienced scholars presumed Maloof and Macksoud shared the position of Washington Street’s only Arab American record labels headquartered in the heart of Manhattan.

But as the Great Depression saw Maloof and Macksoud shut down their labels by 1935, Fred Alam opened his store and launched his Alamphon Record label from 81 Washington Street.

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By then, Little Syria as a whole was already in some form of decline. Whether Alam bought out A.J. Macksoud’s inventory or launched his store anew, a 1935 newspaper article read:

"The Syrian quarter of the town, which for years boasted one of the country’s greatest rag centers, has practically vanished. What remains is in Washington Street down by the Battery. One of the best known is Alfred Alam’s Oriental gramophone record shop. Alam’s phonograph record business is perhaps the only business of its kind not diminished by the radio. [...]”

Little Syria’s Nile Restaurant and the Son of the Sheik restaurant commanded special attention, as did Alfred Alam’s shop. The paper noted “the piles of Egyptian and Syrian Phonograph records at A. Alam’s store. [...]” And yet, that same article also reported the changes that would soon mean Little Syria’s demise, as development and urban renewal programs took hold in Manhattan's Lower West Side.

The construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel in the 1940s meant the destruction of the tenements that once housed thousands of new immigrants and Syrian Americans. The buildings that contained many of the community’s businesses and meeting places steadily disappeared, never to return. [...]

Few traces remain, except the music records that subsequently scattered across the US, from owner to owner.

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Text by: Richard M. Breaux. “Songs of nostalgia in New York City’s long-lost ‘Little Syria’“. SyriaUntold. 5 March 2021. Article part of SyriaUntold’s ongoing series on Syrian music. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

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mirasloss · 1 year

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idle headway

02/14/08

i fell in love today. well, ive been falling for a while but today i finally accepted it. its weird. ive never been in love before, so i find this experience thoroughly exciting, but i know i cant be with someone forever. i can only hope that the sweet memories i carry after this ends will far outweigh the bitter ones.

05/23/08

i feel dirty. i had sex with someone that isnt the person im hopelessly in love with. we arent even dating! i dont know why i care so much! maybe id feel different if the sex was any good — they kept begging me to punch them in the jaw. now im not against a little violence in the bedroom, but i would rather not be the one inflicting it.

06/28/08

we made it official today, but nothing feels different. im just as in love as i was two days ago, except now theres a title associated with that love. i guess im a little disappointed — i wanted this to feel like a new chapter in my life, but it feels more like a new paragraph. maybe i just need to give it some time.

09/02/08

theyve only become more detached since we officially started dating. i feel like its been weeks since we last had a conversation. im a ghost around them — we walk past each other in my kitchen and out eyes dont even connect. come to think of it, ive felt that way around everyone lately. my friends threw a huge party without me, i havent talked to my siblings in over a month — hell, even my parents stopped answering my calls. maybe im already dead and i just dont know it.

11/14/08

i made a new friend today. her name is miss pencil sharpener, and she is by far the most complex character in my life. she’s not that useful on her own, but you can appreciate her versatility once you break her down into each individual part. her plastic shell protects against predators while her stainless steel blades lie dormant, waiting for her prey to willingly give itself to her. she gifted me one of her blades, hoping that itd help me feel alive again. and oddly enough, it did

01/17/09

on january 17th at 3:31 am, i stabbed my partner to death. there is no punchline, no metaphor, not even a smidge of irony in that declaration. i didn’t even mean to kill them. i was convinced that i had died long ago. but i was real. and i remembered every action i hadnt taken, every word i didnt speak, all the love i didnt show — it was all my fault. and it took someone else’s life for me to realize it. i dont think they even had time to process that they were being killed. they didnt even scream. it was like they were lifeless from the start of the ordeal. or maybe they saw it coming and didnt care.

i left their body and started driving — i don’t know where i went or where i’ll end up going tomorrow, but i know i can never return home

09/09/09

it’s comforting knowing that the only pieces of evidence linking me to the murder — my knife and my diary — are kept in my backpack. i’ve been keeping up with the investigation, and everyone back home seems to believe i was kidnapped. works for me.

i found a local porn production company that was willing to pay me cash to edit their content, allowing me to comfortably live in my car while police back home hope they find my corpse in the river.

and maybe one day i’ll give them what they want

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stephensmithuk · 5 months

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The Illustrious Client

First published in the US in 1924 and the UK in 1925, the latter as a two-parter, this forms part of Case-book.

The first part in The Strand ends with Watson seeing the newspaper headline about the attack on Holmes.

Northumberland Avenue is a street running from Trafalgar Square to the Thames Embankment. It includes a pub called The Sherlock Holmes.

The Carlton Club was founded by the Conservative Party and was long its defacto headquarters. Originally on Carlton Terrace, it moved to Pall Mall in 1835, with the building rebuilt in 1856. A direct hit by a German bomb in 1940 destroyed the building and the Club moved to 69 St James's Street, former home of Arthur's Club. Women were not allowed to be associate members until the 1970s and not full members until 2008, with Margaret Thatcher getting honorary membership when she become Tory leader in 1975. She later become club president in 2009, although by his point she had dementia and died in 2013.

The general consensus is that the "Illustrious Client" is no less than Edward VII himself, who Holmes may have previously gotten the Beryl Coronet back for.

Prague was then under Austrian rule.

The Splügen Pass, used for travel since Roman times, connects Switzerland and Italy and with its great height, hairpins and spectacular views, is considered one of the greatest driving challenges on the planet, having featured in Top Gear. The San Bernandino tunnel has taken most of the non-tourist traffic and it is now closed in winter for safety reasons.

Kingston upon Thames, known as Kingston for short, is a town located 10 miles SW of Charing Cross. Until 1965, it was in Surrey before becoming part of Greater London and part of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames. Surrey County Council were based there until 2021, when their offices moved to Reigate.

The Hurlingham Club in Fulham is where horse polo's rules were established - it even hosted Olympic polo in the 1908 London Games, but the fields were compulsorily purchased by the local council after the Second World War for housing. It was also home to pigeon shooting and was home of world croquet, still holding major events in the latter. Edward VII was a keen patron of the site.

Charlie Peace was an English burglar and double murderer, executed in 1879. He ended up featuring in Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, which was oddly enough replaced between 2016 and 2022 with an immersive Sherlock Holmes Experience... which at £66.50 a ticket was a bit too expensive.

HMP Parkhurst, a Category B prison located on the Isle of Wight, merged in 2009 with HMP Albany to form HMP Isle of Wight, although each part retains its own name. Notable inmates include the Kray Twins, Peter Sutcliffe, Ian Brady and currently Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadžić.

Hypnotism was rather in vogue by this time.

Apaches were the name given to various criminal gangs in Paris; named after the Native American tribe. There are various suggestions as to how that came about.

Montmartre, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, was widely known for its artistic community during this time, with many a famous name living there due to the low rents. It's still there and development is restricted due to the historic character. Pigalle, Paris's red-light district, is next door.

Kitty Winter would feature as a character in Elementary, played by Ophelia Lovibond. Gruner turns up as well.

"Tinker’s curse" is Kitty saying, in the language of the time, that she does not give an [expletive deleted].

Ruritania is a fictional country first featured in the 1894 Anthony Hope novel The Prisoner of Zenda. It has become a byword for quaint small European countries in Central and Eastern Europe.

China was still an Empire in 1902, nominally ruled by the Guangxu Emperor, aka Zaitan, but an 1898 coup resulted in his loss of any real power; he was even in house arrest for a while. He died in 1908, probably poisoned by arsenic. His nephew, Puyi, would be the last Chinese Emperor and is beyond the scope of this article.

I cannot discuss Chinese pottery in any depth and so will not attempt to.

Some husbands might have questioned the gallantry of King Edward VII, who had a box for his mistresses at his coronation.

Armorial bearings are the "shield" part of a coat of arms. The British royal one traditionally depicted a bare-breasted woman as part of the harp on the bottom left, but this is no longer standard practice.

Edward VII, while having no actual political power, was able to exercise quite a bit of influence behind the scenes, especially in foreign and defence policy.

All criminal prosecutions are brought in the name of the monarch, rendered "R" (Rex or Regina) in text and "the Crown" when spoken). i.e. R vs. Winter. In addition, judicial reviews (i.e. is this government decision legal) are also brought in the name of the monarch, with the name of the actual plaintiff in brackets since a 2001 change to the format, e.g. R (Smith) vs. Secretary of State for the Home Department. It is common for initials to be used in those brackets to protect the identity of a plaintiff, such as the recent decision on flying migrants to Rwanda.

#letters from watson #sherlock holmes #the illustrious client #illu #acd canon #factoids #history #Edward VII

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