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ask-de-writer · 8 months

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SUBMARINE! 1812 an Alternate History

Chapter 6 : KRAKEN

(Part 1 of 5)

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

5462 words

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KRAKEN-

Anchors were dropped with a rattle of heavy chain, followed by the hiss of heavy cable through the hause-pipes as the hooks sought and found purchase in the bottom of Hampton Roads. We were home at last.

The seaman beside me was precariously standing on the rail of the Maryland, one hand on a line for balance, the other waving enthusiastically at the small boats approaching from shore. “I got me more than two thousand gold Continentals in prize money to blow,” he confided to me. “I’d ha’ stayed out longer, iffin’ I was the Commodore. We chewed ‘em up and spit ‘em out so good.”

“Indeed we did, though I was one of those who said that we should return,” I replied.

“So why’d we come back? You got the inside skinny?”

“Only part of it. If it helps any, even Commodore Marks shared your view. We had two attack boats damaged in loading accidents there at the last. Shark lost her mast and a tackle failure caused Polliwog serious damage to rudder and diving planes. We had not the facilities to refit the Shark. Still, we were willing to continue, with altered raising tackle. There was something in that last messenger packet’s dispatches that changed The Commodore’s mind. What that was I do not know.”

“What’s up? Green Jackets in boats is turnin’ back the harbor boats...” The shrill of the bosun’s pipe sounding assembly interrupted him. He leapt nimbly down to the deck and ran aft with the rest of the crew. Commodore Marks was standing on the poop deck, ready to address the crew.

“Men,” he cried, “you have done what no nation has ever done before. You have humbled the Beast of Britain on her home seas. Even the least among you has enough prize money to buy a decent farm. Our holds bear a secret and that secret is the rocket, nothing else. If any man or woman questions you about other weapons or even the submarine boats, what do you do?”

There was a pregnant pause, followed by one man saying, “Report ‘em!” Suddenly the whole crew caught it. “Report ‘em!” they thundered as one.

“That’s right! Report ‘em! There are no submarine boats! Anyone who says that there are is a liar! An arrested liar at that! It’s rockets that sent the Brits to the bottom! Is every man here clear on that?”

“Aye, Sir!” they responded.

“Signal man! Clear the boats to approach us! Bosun Harding has the harbor duty assignments. Those not on harbor duty may go ashore and God go with you.”

Bosun Harding read off a dozen names and was met by as many groans of disappointment.

The many small boats swarmed like a gaggle of geese about our ships. Many were carrying liveried servants from great houses, and at least as many more were carrying ladies. They all were bearing invitations to come to parties being held in the honor of our deed. The servants wanted officers, or at least the highest ranking men that they could get for their master’s “rocket parties.”

The ladies were mostly less discriminating. They were there to invite any man that they could get to come to their ‘parties.’ Some of those parties were very private and some were open invitations from the brothels of Norfolk.

One boat cut through the swarm and all made way for it. It bore the ensign of the Office of the President of the Continental Congress. Riding stiffly erect, in his fine coat of green broadcloth with red and gold trim, was the President’s personal aide, my grandfather, Tall Bear. He had three eagle feathers in his braid. The bosun piped him aboard.

In spite of his age, he climbed the ladder easily and swiftly gained the deck. That he saw me in his brief glance about the deck, I was sure, but he went straight to the Commodore and they went into his cabin. Whatever the discussion was, it was brief. They emerged moments later, and he strode gravely across the deck to me.

He looked me up and down, quietly. “You have done well. We have read every dispatch and all of your letters too. It would appear that all of your devices have done as well or better in real action than we had hoped.

“Your mother, Sun on the Cloud, misses you. Also your sister, Cornflower, wishes you to meet her new husband.” Here he at last grinned and clapped me on the arm and thrust a letter into my hand. “Harvest Moon wants to see you, too. Most urgently. When are you two going to settle down together?”

“I don’t know, Grandfather. When the war permits. I, too, wish to see the forests and lakes of home. I will come home as soon as I can find the time. I have missed you all.”

“It will have to wait a bit longer. I bear an invitation from your Uncle, President Arnold. All of the principal officers and you submariners are to go to Philadelphia for a special reception at the Presidential Mansion. Something big is in the wind. That is all that I can say about it here.”

“May I come with you, Grandfather?”

“I fear not, Tecumsah. I have a number of errands to accomplish yet. I will not get back in time to be at the fete. Smollet will be there.”

“Mister Smollet! I haven’t seen him for ages! What is new from his workshops?”

“I cannot say. I am sure that he will tell you himself. You two always did understand each other better than any two men ought. Now, I must go.” With that, he strode across the deck to the ladder and the bosun piped him off the ship.

To be continued

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#Submarine! 1812 Chap 6 #Part 1 of 5)#Science Fiction #Alternate History #Written by De Writer

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dollarbin · 2 months

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Shakey Sundays #14:

Stills-Young Band's Long May You Run

I've gone all soft on Stephen Stills of late. After seven straight months and 50+ posts spent excoriating Neil Young's nemesis/buddy/paste-eating boyband classmate I've given Stills a break in March. He had no business interrupting my vital appreciations of Karl Wallinger, Kris Kristofferson and Sandy Denny. There was barely room for him in my far less vital ruminations on Neil Young's Life or Peace Trail.

But your play time is over young Stephen. It's time to pack away your blocks, crayons and wah wah peddle and face my puritanical, yet objective, judgment regarding a core phase in your suckiness: that's right, it's time for me to actually listen to all of Long May You Run.

It took me a few years to find this relatively common-place Dollar Bin record way back when in the 90's. That's because all my usual haunts dumped their fairly worthless copies of Long May You Run in the never-of-any-interest-to-anyone-with-a-decent-sense-of-ethics-and-self-respect Stills, Stephen section instead of in Young, Neil.

But I knew the album's title track from Decade and from what remains my most prized Neil Young record: a bootleg copy of his 74 Honey Slides Bottom Line Show (note: the bootleg is better than Neil's recent official release of the show in that every rambling, humble word and harmonica fumble remains intact). That bootleg was so expensive at a very sketchy shop on the Santa Monica Promenade (the place also sold Star Wars ephemera and water pipes) that I convinced three of my buddies to chip in $5 each in exchange for my commitment to have it transferred to tape for each of them post haste.

Every moment of the show is rich and fulsome, including the premier of the song Long May You Run, which Neil introduces as a song he wrote for his new bus because he can no longer deal with flying airplanes, a detail that goes a long way to understanding the concept behind one of his most complicated records, Landing on Water.

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And so I am still never prepared to hear the original album mix of this song. Young ditched not just Zuma-era Crazy Horse but also his savant producer David Briggs to make the entire coked-up record; out of an equal mix of savvy and bitterness Briggs then remixed Stephen Stills almost entirely out of the song on Decade. He also chucked the most Briggs-like event in that original version, a what-the-hell-just-include-it errant harmonica blast before the song gets started. "No sloppy sounds are allowed, Neil" Briggs boomed from his captain's chair. "Not unless I'm around to approve them!"

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The song is a Young classic, sure, but it's never been one of my favorites. Too pretty; too earnest. Yes, the verses include a good sex joke (we found things to do in stormy weather) and some juicy Beach Boys non sequitors, but Young is too wasted to land his own jokes.

Neil has a dozen or more different ways to sing while wasted. There's his terrific tequila stagger (just about everything on Tonight's the Night), the terrifying "someone, please someone, pull me out of my dumpster of sorrow" vibe on songs like Pardon my Heart and Borrowed Tune, not to mention his, "Hey, everybody look! I'm so high I'm a flapping penguin" vocals on Vampire Blues or Cripple Creek Ferry.

I could go on; Neil is a connoisseur of making art while altered. The only time Neil sounds unappealingly stoned is whenever Stills's percussionist/vocalist/dealer Joe Lala is around, cutting lines of coke for everyone on his handheld mirrors. Here are Lala and Young together during his Trans tour. Neil is inquiring where he went wrong; Lala is indicating that it all goes back to hiring him to play bongos.

Throughout Long May You Run, it sounds like Neil keeps catching glimpses of himself in Lala's chop glass, and every time Stills and Joe are there grinning over both his shoulders; you can hear the dull, self-loathing result in Long May You Run's vocals.

The same thing happens, only worse, on Young's potentially best song on the record, Let It Shine. I first came to the song via driving and soaring cuts from 76 Japan bootlegs (catch my details on that vital tour here).

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But on the record Young sings Let It Shine with self-hatred and a layer of very unattractive menace. There's nothing funny here; it's just ugly. And the guitars sound like they too are supplied from Joe Lala's terrible stash.

I've never done cocaine. The reasons are many: too scary, too expensive, too many lives ruined by the drug trade, and did I mention, too scary? But I've never really needed to think twice about the drug because I've heard this song once a year, or so, for the past 25+ years. If this is what coke does, I want nothing to do with it.

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Neil shakes all this weighty failure off a few times on the record. He sounds appealing silly on Ocean Girl, helps the band make a Bee Gees audition tape on Midnight on the Bay (Joe Freakin' Lala passed the test; I imagine Stayin' Alive is the best song he ever performed on) and earnestly asks us about some complex nonsense on the Florida-based, wave riding precursor to Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze, Fountainbleau.

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For the record: I do not know who put the palm over your blond, Neil. Nor do I know who's been moving everything to where it last was seen. But I do know that Joe Freakin' Lala does everything he can to wreck this otherwise groovy track with his terrible, whoops-I-dropped-my-bong-on-my-bongos-again percussion.

I only play this record when I've got the chance to sit beside the turntable. That's because there are four Stephen Stills tracks littering up the mix, each of them unlistenable. But I will now make myself listen to them anyway.

Here goes:

Make Love to You is ugly terror. Stills thinks he's Ray Manzarek meets Neil Diamond. He gathers the band around him to buff and polish both his nails and his lizard skin pants. The song was recorded 48 years ago but the "girl" in question is probably still in hiding after hearing Stephen the bar crawling man monster bust out his bluesiest warble to announce that he wanted to make love to her and that it was gonna take all night.

There's a flute driven bridge planted in the middle of this harrowing track like a Trump Flag at a pro wrestling event; someone get me the hell out of here before Stills wants to make love to me too.

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Black Coral is a soundtrack for my nightmares. The piano riff is fevered and gross, Joe Lala thinks he's getting paid per beat, and Stills has shanghaied us 200 feet down underwater (with Jesus of Nazareth apparently in attendance, I guess? Maybe he forgot how to walk on water?). Stills has no coherent plan other than reminding us to take care: turns out he's more than a terrible musician, he's also the world's worst scuba instructor. There's more flute here too. The drummer, Joe Vital, is responsible. He probably figured, I played a mean flute in elementary school so, what the hell? How could a song like this get any worse?

12/8 Blues is actually worth listening to, once, so as to hear Neil's tiny, I'm a mouse and I'm trapped, backing vocals and his fairly killer guitar. But the riff is toxic and so are the lyrics. Stills tells he's dying, but don't get your hopes up. He wants us to know that he's "got the music" and he grunts like he knows how to pump iron while Neil tries to make something worthwhile out of it all.

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The album closes with Guardian Angel, which somehow manages to be boring and nauseating all once. Lala shows off his touch typing skills throughout. Curses upon him. Stills' guardian angel demanded reassignment the moment they heard this song.

Neil has a guitar solo towards the end of Guardian Angel that's mixed to sound like he's in another state; which of course he was, as he literally told them all to eat a peach and went back to Crazy Horse at his first sober and available moment.

And that's exactly what I'm going to do now too: leave the Stills-Young band solidly in my rear-view mirror, listen to Zuma and recover.

#stephen stills sucks #neil young #joe freakin' lala #shakey sundays #honey slides

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obey-me-headquarters · 2 years

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Help me I’m frothing at the mouth 🤤🤤 we literally have the same kinks and I never see anyone talk about them or make content for it I don’t even know where to start omg

I did remember this manga(?) that I read a while back I can’t remember the name or anything but basically there was this remote that had a little button on it that you could magically connect to someone’s clit. And then you could mess around with the little button and it would transfer the feeling to the person’s clit and omg I think about that concept a lot

Gosh that sounds like a hot manga. This idea basically mixes my hidden vibrator kink and removable pussy pocket idea all into my one. I did once read a fic were this remote was connected to the sub's orgasm, and so every time the dom pressed down on the button the sub would be forced to orgasm. I remember the dom sticking the remote in the sub's pussy and playing with their clit, so everytime the sub would clutch it would press the button and make them cum, creating this never ending cycle of the sub clutching because they're cumming, only to cum again, and needing to try to relax mod orgasm to stop coming.

I really love the idea of having the remote connected to one of the boy's clits, and maybe there's multiple buttons on the remote. So you can set how intense the feeling they get. Imagine putting it on low and constantly playing with the button all class long, and then, during the last 30 seconds, turning the intensity all the way up and pressing firmly on the button.

Being able to mess with a sub's pleasure and orgasm just with a tap of a button is a VERY got concept to me, if yall couldn't tell lol. Just being able to literally rewire them purely for your own pleasure.

Ok so, kinda relating to this idea but also rambling about this idea I had for a while. So you know how it's kinda canon that in tne game you have all these cards of the brothers right? And the dance battles? OK so, this also kinda relates to my voodoo doll kink. But do yall know about Ukagaka? Basically it's this program you can run on your computer to have little sprites of characters walking around on your desk top, and you can intact with them and some times even build relationships with them.

So imagine, since the demon bros are pretty famous in tne devildom, somebody made little sprites of all the bros and you decide to download them because they look cute. But, unbeknownst to you, your program is also cursed and connects the sprites to the demon bros. It starts off innocent, with the brother just feeling a sense of warmth whenever you pet them or give them a item. But after awhile, you discover that certain weird options stop popping up for the demons.

You're able to increase their sensitivity, whatever that means. And when you let them afterwards, they blush and squirm at your petting.... you find that whoever made the sprites must be some kind of pervert, as you find the items you can give the boys has changed from innocent things such as food items, books, or video games, to sex toys. At first you try to ignore the toys, but you can't help but be curious after awhile... and it's not like it's really the demons, right? You just want to drag the hitachi wand over to Mammon to see how the video game character will react....

Stopping now because, wow, was this not apart of the ask lol. But if yall want a less dubious consent version of this, I did first imagine that the bros were the ones who cursed your copy. At first they just wanted to see which one you liked the best, and would spend the most time with, but they certainly weren't complaining when you used more naughty items on them.....

Anyway, I guess this kinda links to my other idea, where instead of a gacha game Obey Me is a hentai game and you get pacts by fucking each of the demons lol. But like, instead of being a "character" in their "world" the fic protrays you as a player playing obey me.

#ask #obey me #remote #my post #dubious consent #just in case...#tbp masterlist #idk what else tk tag

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puppycatpawprint · 2 years

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Tell me about the 100 Gecs lore please I want to know!!!!!!! :)

im shocked anyone found that post thank you for asking LOL here u go, mostly copy pasted from my discord server but also edited a bit since i listened to literally every gec song ever for some reason: -

this lore starts off with the album named after the band, 100 gecs, which followed the journey of two stoners and a talking dog. the first song in my made-up little lore series, dog food, is about a wizard of some sort who communicates and lives through a dog they found and take care of. the song sounds like it talks about how a deceased someone is currently buried, and how they seem to talk to laura and dylan through the dog. laura and dylan start getting ~magic texts~ that they let go of as kinda spammy since there are 80 unread messages. what those messages are about are unknown, but eventually the dog goes missing, which leads into fuck teeth, being seemingly about laura starting to be able to transform into a dog and starting to notice everyone close to her all leaving her behind and then dylans just coming across her mid transformation and doing drugs with her (thats a lot of this lore weirdly enough). they get so fucked up and high he tries to feed her his own leg, but she breaks the transformation somehow and they dont really question it. they both revel in their powers and continue doing drugs. in the final song, laura sings about now how she has everything she could ever want in the world (twenty-five bands and a single gecko...?) but is a bit lost about how they came to be magical, trying to talk to dylan on the phone, not really realizing she's not using it cause it died- but actually using telekinesis. this is all also while on fucking drugs cause it isnt 100 gecs without good ass weed.

it continues with 1000 and 10000 gecs- 1000 gecs, is about laura and dylan BEFORE they became magical. 745 sticky is just about wanting to be rich and famous, and how theyre essentially there but dont feel adequate enough- spending all their money and waking up early all the time just to perform and make music to no end, slowly not enjoying it but still going as its keeping them alive. money machine is about a rival they encountered, a big guy with a big truck. unfortunately, money machine is not actually linked to lore, but i like to speculate that the rival put a curse on them to make them always unhappy about being famous in the first place. which leads into 800db cloud, where laura and dylan literally sing about how they miss either being with a lover, and miss smoking weed and having fun because theyre always leaving town and having to defend themselves from strange amalgamations that come after them when they smoke or start to feel happy. I Need Help Immediately is a transmission from something they called the tree of clues they overheard one night, but they ignored to go horse racing and try to make more money. stupid horse is about how they lost a LOT of money due to that Truck Guys Curse, and they stole a horse who essentially leads them to the tree of clues. it sends laura and dylan home with Magic Weed after ??? something happens, and a magic fly drives dylan fucking insane & he kills it and thats where all the newer music starts coming in where theyre flying around and shit. i wud nvrstop u, gecgecgec, and gec 2 u are all unfortunately just normal songs with no relation to the lore. no new album yet, but TWO songs are currently up to date with that lore: mememe and Doritos & Fritos. mememe is about dylan and laura talking shit to their exes, while demonstrating their newfound abilities of flying and reality manipulation, letting go of the past lives as just normal famous people. Doritos & Fritos explore a town thats being somewhat devastates and confused by laura and dylan, who are now just flying around the world being stoners

jesus christ this was less organized b4 i actually heavily edited this. LOL the end is all i kept intact, i hope you enjoy this silly dump abt nonsense i thought up

#100 gecs #lore #this is all. pulled directly out of my ass btw #i was also kinda high #long post

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740th · 1 year

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BASIC POWERS & ABILITIES.

resistance to pain

iron will / stubborn

shadow manipulation - shadow movement - "teleportation" - shadow splitting (weaponizing)

manipulation of emotions ("feasting")

ability copying (lighter versions, only for short amounts of time)

soul splitting & manifestation

shadow manifestation

due to excessive training (read: being subjected to torture at a young age until they had to intercept because he would have died) and due to his contract with the entity of dark garrett is able to tank massive amounts of damage before he feels pain; not quite a strength but it can come in handy because paired with his ferociousness it makes him a threat even without his powers as he refuses to back down until he is incapable of moving.

the ability to manipulate shadows manifested somewhere within his first fourty resets; due to his memories being intact every reset his training has become so efficient by now that he is able to master this craft within a single day. it allows him to become one with the shadows in any room or place and use them to move around. if a room or place is dark he simply uses the dark and bends the rules by calling that "the shadows". he is also able to fracture pieces off his own shadow and use them to create things like weapons, though what he mostly uses it for is currently unknown to anyone except himself.

the manipulation of emotions aka the feasting is a complicated thing to grasp that not even garrett himself has fully figured out. just as some need blood or other things to become stronger he can temporarily boost his powers by utilizing emotions, which in itself is a bad thing as he has efficiently subdued his own emotions for most of his life. whether it's coincidental or not, however, over time he has developed the ability to "steal" other peoples emotions from them, effectively making those his own for the time being and stealing them from the "victim". problem is that when he uses this ability without being engaged in combat he has no true outlet for his power and thus it will overtake his body and cause considerable damage to him. he has not used it often so far, but thanks to his memories and learning during timeline 319 he has mastered this ability the best he can.

the ability to copy, or as he himself calls it "mimick" is something that garrett picked up on somewhere during timeline 542; whilst not able to fully copy someone elses ability he is able to copy parts of their base power and use it to either support them or give them a boost of power. depending on who he copies though it can have terrible effects on his body; "to earn something you must give something of equal value".

soul splitting efficiently makes garrett able to break off pieces of his own existence and utilize them. nobody else so far has found out what exactly he does when he utilizes this ability but he pretty open and blunt about doing so on the regular. apart from splitting he is also able to break off pieces of his soul essence and create duplicates of himself that are basically glass cannons; they can dish out damage and serve as a distraction but it takes only one well aimed shot to destroy them. plus each and every manifestation that gets downed takes from his strength and depending on how many he summoned he may need to retreat to gather back his energy.

his ability to manifest shadows is not exactly what it sounds like; yes, he is able to manipulate shadows and give them a temporary shape or form but that is not what he means when he describes this ability. what he means when he mentions it is the fact that if he splits off a part of his own shadow to accompany someone he will be able to teleport to their side should they call for him, no matter where exactly in the world he is or how far apart they are.

#there's a lot more because once again. in his own lore he's the most overpowered bitch #but for now this is his basekit uwu #:))#𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 : i wanted love that i lost before i ever felt it.

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ignorantsanonymous · 11 months

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The below are not my words. They were written in March of 2016 by a currently disgraced stand-up comedian, 8 months before Donald Trump was elected as President of the United States, and emailed to everyone who had signed up to receive newsletter emails from his website. Everything between the octothorpes is copy and pasted from that email:

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Subject: Stop voting for your own cancer.

“Please stop it with voting for Trump. It was funny for a little while. But the guy is Hitler. And by that I mean that we are being Germany in the 30s. Do you think they saw the shit coming? Hitler was just some hilarious and refreshing dude with a weird comb over who would say anything at all.

And I’m not advocating for Hillary or Bernie. I like them both but frankly I wish the next president was a conservative only because we had Obama for eight years and we need balance. And not because I particularly enjoy the conservative agenda. I just think the government should reflect the people. And we are about 40 percent conservative and 40 percent liberal. When I was growing up and when I was a younger man, liberals and conservatives were friends with differences. They weren’t enemies. And it always made sense that everyone gets a president they like for a while and then hates the president for a while. But it only works if the conservatives put up a good candidate. A good smart conservative to face the liberal candidate so they can have a good argument and the country can decide which way to go this time.

Trump is not that. He’s an insane bigot. He is dangerous.

He already said he would expand libel laws to sue anyone who “writes a negative hit piece” about him. He says “I would open up the libel laws so we can sue them and win lots of money. Not like now. These guys are totally protected.” He said that. He has promised to decimate the first amendment. (If you think he’s going to keep the second amendment intact you’re delusional.) And he said that Paul Ryan, speaker of the house will “pay” for criticizing him. So I’m saying this now because if he gets in there we won’t be able to criticize him anymore.

Please pick someone else. Like John Kasich. I mean that guy seems okay. I don’t like any of them myself but if you’re that kind of voter please go for a guy like that. It feels like between him and either democrat we’d have a decent choice. It feels like a healthier choice. We shouldn’t have to vote for someone because they’re not a shocking cunt billionaire liar.

We should choose based on what direction the country should go.

I get that all these people sound like bullshit soft criminal opportunists. The whole game feels rigged and it’s not going anywhere but down anymore. I feel that way sometimes.

And that voting for Trump is a way of saying “fuck it. Fuck them all”. I really get it. It’s a version of national Suicide. Or it’s like a big hit off of a crack pipe. Somehow we can’t help it. Or we know that if we vote for Trump our phones will be a reliable source of dopamine for the next four years. I mean I can’t wait to read about Trump every day. It’s a rush. But you have to know this is not healthy.

If you are a true conservative. Don’t vote for Trump. He is not one of you. He is one of him. Everything you have heard him say that you liked, if you look hard enough you will see that he one day said the exact opposite. He is playing you.

In fact, if you do vote for Trump, at least look at him very carefully first. You owe that to the rest of us. Know and understand who he is. Spend one hour on google and just read it all. I don’t mean listen to me or listen to liberals who put him down. Listen to your own people. Listen to John Mccain. Go look at what he just said about Trump. “At a time when our world has never been more complex or more in danger… I want Republican voters to pay close attention to what our party’s most respected and knowledgeable leaders and national security experts are saying about Mr. Trump, and to think long and hard about who they want to be our next Commander-in-Chief and leader of the free world.”

When Trump was told what he said, Trump said "Oh, he did? Well, that’s not nice,” he told CBS News’ chief White House correspondent Major Garrett. “He has to be very careful.”

When pressed on why, Trump tacked on: “He’ll find out.”

(I cut and pasted that from CBS news)

Do you really want a guy to be president who threatens John McCain? Because John McCain cautiously and intelligently asked for people to be thoughtful before voting for him? He didn’t even insult Trump. He just asked you to take a good look. And Trump told him to look out.

Remember that Trump entered this race by saying that McCain is not a war hero. A guy who was shot down, body broken and kept in a POW camp for years. Trump said “I prefer the guys who don’t get caught.” Why did he say that? Not because he meant it or because it was important to say. He said it because he’s a bully and every bully knows that when you enter a new school yard, you go to the toughest most respected guy on the yard and you punch him in the nose. If you are still standing after, you’re the new boss. If Trump is president, he’s not going to change. He’s not going to do anything for you. He’s going to do everything for himself and leave you in the dust.

So please listen to fellow conservatives. But more importantly, listen to Trump. Listen to all of it. Everything he says. If you liked when he said that “torture works” then go look at where he took it back the next day. He’s a fucking liar.

A vote for Trump is so clearly a gut-vote, and again I get it. But add a little brain to it and look the guy up. Because if you vote for him because of how you feel right now, the minute he’s president, you’re going to regret it. You’re going to regret it even more when he gives the job to his son. Because American democracy is broken enough that a guy like that could really fuck things up. That’s how Hitler got there. He was voted into power by a fatigued nation and when he got inside, he did all his Hitler things and no one could stop him.

Again, I’m not saying vote democrat or vote for anyone else. If Hilary ends up president it should be because she faced the best person you have and you and I both chose her or him or whoever. Trump is not your best. He’s the worst of all of us. He’s a symptom to a problem that is very real. But don’t vote for your own cancer. You’re better than that.”

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#Donald Trump #Trump #potus 45 #conservatives #republicans #gop #gqp

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boyeolson41 · 1 year

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Make use of Freemake Video Downloader to convert YouTube to MP3

Freemake is an excellent alternative for anyone who wants to download YouTube videos fast and efficiently. Freemake isn't just an outstanding downloader, it also boasts some unique features.

The first thing you'll need to do is copy the YouTube URL. Paste the URL of YouTube into Freemake Video Downloader's clips grab feature. Clip grab is limited to downloading videos that are up to three minutes.

The "One-Click" feature is the other alternative. This will save the videos. But, you'll also need to set parameters. You'll need to choose an output format, resolution, and path. It is also necessary to make sure that the original video's quality remains intact.

Freemake Video Downloader 2.0 features a GUI that makes it easy to find and download videos from the internet. The GUI allows you to choose the format resolution, bitrate, resolution as well as other options. It also shows the length of video as well as its aspect ratio and duration. Freemake Video Downloader was updated to enable lossless audio extraction.

There are other features that you'll want to benefit from. You can download YouTube playlists. The app permits you to block websites that are inappropriate and provides parental control.

Freemake Video Downloader has the most impressive feature of allowing you to download HD videos. This means that you can view videos on your iPad or iPhone even when you're not connected to the Internet. It is also possible to save the video's hyperlinks directly to other devices.

Filmora another application that extracts MP3 from YouTube videos, is a fantastic alternative.

Filmora is able to convert YouTube music to MP3 format and save it to an iPhone app. The app works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's also available for download from Google Play and iOS. It is simple to install and very easy to use.

Filmora is not only able download music but it also includes a host of other features. Filmora has an audio mixer that lets users to alter the volume and pan tracks. Additionally, it has an option to text-to-voice. It can be used to remove background noise and replace the audio clips with your own music.

Filmora provides overlays and effects. It is a tool that makes it easy to create a captivating video story. An array of visual effects are possible to add to the tool such as distortions, film-style overlays and light leaks.

The Video Editor is another useful feature. It can help you make high-quality videos and can improve the quality of your video. If you're just beginning your journey on YouTube or are looking to make professional videos to showcase your work, Filmora can help you with your video editing needs.

Filmora is a versatile application that supports a variety of input formats like MOV, WMV, and HEVC. It also supports a wide variety of output formats. For instance, YouTube music can be converted into MP3 format and uploaded to your YouTube channel.

Filmora is available for download for no cost. However, if you're looking to add more effects to your videos, you should to subscribe to the application. Subscribers get access to more objects as well as templates and effects. In addition, you will also access tutorials and learn more about the program.

Filmora includes a feature which allows you to monitor the movements of people and objects within your video. You can also alter the background by using the chromemakey. You can also use the audio visualizer to match your video's sound.

iCloud Drive helps save files to your account for future use

Music lovers can reap many benefits to iCloud. It allows you to store and organize your music across multiple devices using this feature. It also offers a library that contains over 70,000,000 songs. But before you store your music files in iCloud Drive, there are few things you have to know.

iCloud Drive is not for everyone. It's not accessible for Linux devices. It doesn't also download directly onto your hard drives. It will however sync across all of your Apple devices. This means that you can import songs from your iPhone to your Mac and vice versa.

This feature allows you to download music to your iPhone via YouTube. MP3 files are not compatible with the iPhone. There are side applications like WALTR PRO , for example, to do this for you.

Logging into your iCloud account is required for using AirDrop. After you log in, AirDrop will appear in the sidebar. It's a great tool to share videos as well as contacts. It is also a great way to share music files. convertidor de mp3 But, you have to select the file to be sent.

You can find the Settings menu on your iPhone to enable the iCloud Drive i flag. It is possible to turn iCloud Drive ON and OFF in this menu. You can also add a folder. The folder is where the files you upload will be located.

If you'd like to utilize the iCloud Drive i-flag, you'll need to set up an iCloud account. Open the Settings app on iPhone and choose iCloud. Then you need to allow download to your hard drive.

The iCloud Drive iFlag isn't the only cloud-based storage feature Apple offers. You can also use apps like OneDrive as well as Google Drive to store your music files in the cloud.

Offline mixtape is a great way to enjoy your music

When you're traveling or simply want to listen to your favorite music while offline and want to download YouTube MP3 music onto your iPhone. This article will walk you through the procedure.

The first step is downloading the YouTube Music app on your phone. The app will be in your App folder. You can download music using the app in two principal ways. The first is to enable offline mixtape. This will automatically download songs according to your previous listening habits. You can also manually download playlists or songs.

Based on the number of tracks you've listened to as well as the quality of your files that you've downloaded, you'll be able to download a certain number of songs you can download. You can remove songs from an offline mixtape by simply pressing left.

YouTube Music provides an offline mixtape feature that automatically downloads songs from your listening history. You can download up to 500 tracks. You can download up to 500 tracks when you are connected to Wi Fi or unlimited data.

YouTube Music Premium subscribers have the option to download songs onto iPhones by using the YouTube Music app. Airdrop can also be used to transfer downloaded files. The music downloaded is playable for up to 30 days following the phone is disconnected from the internet.

YouTube Red subscribers have the option of selecting albums and songs to listen to offline. You'll also notice a menu icon next to the name of the playlist or album. The button will have three dots that signify the feature.

YouTube-to-MP3 lets you convert your YouTube video into MP3 format. The website will provide you with a URL link. Other audio formats can be found on the site , including FLAC, AIFF, WAV and AIFF.

Amazon Music is a great option to buy every song you want.

Amazon Music lets you purchase tracks and stream them on your iPhone. You can also transfer songs purchased to different devices. A third-party Amazon Music downloader can be employed to transfer the songs to local directories.

Log into Amazon and you will be in a position to download the track. Next, find the song you like and click on it. Once you find the song, you can copy the link to the song and paste it into the search bar within the converter. The converter will then automatically download the song onto your computer.

Once you have saved the track after saving it, the converter can be used to modify the file format. You can choose to download MP3, FLAC FLAC, WAV, or AAC. You can also adjust bit rate and sampling rates. You can also alter the output path, channel and the sample rate.

TunePat Amazon Music Conversion allows users to download music from Amazon accounts. An Amazon Prime Music account is necessary. TunePat Amazon Music Convert will convert your Amazon playlists into MP3 format.

Sidify Amazon Music Converter is another alternative. This powerful tool lets you to download music from Amazon Music Unlimted, Prime Music, and other sources. It can also be used to download tracks in FLAC or MP3 files. Sidify convert supports 192kbps , 320kbps 256kbps & 128kbps.

AudiCable may also be an option. This software will record music playing in the background. After installation you can choose to save all of the songs as MP3 files. You can also alter the output format and quality. You can also alter the songs' names after the conversion.

#ytmp3 #mp3 casa

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devandahlcourte-work-in-progress · 2 years

Text

Section 10. 4 chapters, ending with chapter 54

I am reposting these first eighty-two chapters (in 22 sections) plus the prologue and the preface.

These posts will be the updated versions from my DeviantArt account, and since Tumblr may not display all the text correctly (it destroys anything I had in italics or underlined) I would still recommend reading everything there, on DeviantArt. They will also include internal links that navigate between the chapters on DeviantArt and will take the reader off Tumblr if clicked.

This came about because I noticed search engines were finding random sections of my book and displaying them along with some other people’s blog posts.

Okay, so that’s why I installed those internal links in each one… so that if anyone gets to a random section by way of a search engine and would like to read the story from the beginning, they can.

Only then did I realize that it wasn’t getting it’s search results from DeviantArt, but from old Tumblr.

There’s another problem at work here besides unrefined searches…

There is a new species of virus on the internet that likes to eat ancient Tumblr posts and barf them back up infested with adware - spyware - malware etc. The virus goes by names like TumGIR, TumBIG, TumPIK, or Tum(anything else but ‘blr’). The caps were added by me for emphasis so that maybe you can double check in case you’re not looking at an actual Tumblr post right now but one of these so-called “mirror” sites.

If you’re looking at this text through one of the counterfeit Tumblrs that I mentioned, then no link you click (assuming it even copies it with my links intact) will take you out; it will redirect you and show you all of the spam ads it wants to. So read carefully what url is showing on your browser right now.

If it is one of the untrustworthy ones I would suggest closing your browser window and doing whatever else you normally would in order to reset settings.

As far as my science fiction novel entitled “If And Only If,” the safest way to find it is by going to my Instagram:

@michelle.de.vandahlcourte

From there you can click on the link in my bio. It will take you to the beginning of the story on DeviantArt… the safe one! No malware.

P.S. None of this is Tumblr’s fault! It’s the malware/adware/spyware developers who are stealing people’s tumblr posts.

The actual content of this page appears below here👇

Section 10. 4 chapters, ending with chapter 54

↩️return to previous section, section 9

↩️↩️…and if you arrived here because of a search engine and you would like to read this story from the beginning, click here.

Brenda

All right, full disclosure, I am not really Brenda. This first part of her story is being relayed to whoever may find this, in the future or past or on some other timeline or in some other parallel universe, by a friend of hers: me.

My name is Renaldo. And Brenda gave me something for safekeeping. This is going to sound super weird. But she gave me something to hold onto for her in case her memory was ever erased.

And by that, I mean the memory in her head; Her brain; her mind. Whatever you want to call it – I’m not talking about one of her devices having it’s memory wiped like a phone or notebook or tablet.

And as weird as it sounds, it actually has happened now. Someone erased her memory as she feared they might.

To be honest I was just kind of psyched that she wanted to talk about all this at first. It was fun. Kind of like a theoretical conversation about different types of science fiction. But I’ve come to realize now that this is all too real. I don’t know what to make of it. It’s scary.

Is Brenda going to be normal again? Healthy? She seems to be doing okay. She just has absolutely no idea that a particular fictional character on the Internet ever existed. And someone can live the rest of their life happily ever after without knowing about some obscure open-source cartoon, right? But then would she want to know that her memory had been erased and try to find out who did it and why?

I didn’t know that that character existed either; not until recently. But that’s simply because I should “get out more” as both my brothers frequently remind me. I tend to not know about fun stuff or trendy things. I found out that it existed because she told me. Now, I am finding myself in the peculiar position of having to tell her something that she not only used to know, but knew well enough that she was able to teach me and other people about it.

All right, enough drama. Time for specifics. As fortune would have it, Brenda decided to confide in me after all about what she called the Marky Mark signal. I went back and found the movie and streamed it on two different nights; I had a research paper due so I couldn’t see it all in one evening. But I watched it as quickly as I could so that I would understand what she was talking about.

And yes, it would make more sense to do it that way: A signal that goes out worldwide and makes people stop what they’re doing and go into some sort of hypnotic state where they immediately grab whatever materials they have on this fictional character that they are not supposed to know about, and destroy the things.

That could include erasing files from local drives and clouds. But also physical hardcopies; printouts of related articles. Handwritten notes. Art that someone drew on their Wacom Intuos. (Hers is wiped clean of it, by the way.)

That actually makes a lot more sense than a neuralyzer / flashy-thing or or the like. As I told Brenda, let’s just crunch the numbers.

While that may work for just a few people, we’re talking about a number in the hundreds of thousands or millions, if the figure I read on the creepy pasta website stats is correct. How many people can one agent flashy thing in a day?

Assuming they have to go driving around visiting each person, would 10 a day be reasonable? That assumes an 8 hour work day, which would be 48 minutes per person. Assuming mostly urban environments, most of that 48 is spent driving, parking, and walking to and from the car... plus a little time for knocking and getting into a private place where no one else could see them use their gadget.

If so, then that agent could erase 300 people’s memories per month. How many months do they have to do this? Let’s say that the agency, government bureau, or whatever they call themselves, doesn’t mind moving at a leisurely pace. So let’s say they allocate 10 months for this project. Working with no vacation for 10 months straight, our agent can erase 3000 people‘s memories.

The website indicated something like 8 million viewers when I checked. Let’s suppose not all of them were fans of Stalko-Taco. You have only perhaps 3 million of them who were either fans or read the story then decided they didn’t like it but remembered it anyway…

How many agents would you need? If we’re sticking with that 10 month figure, then that’s 1000 agents. To personally visit and flashy-thing 3 million people for the purpose of erasing their memories. In ten months. If you wanted to hurry the process up and get done in only a month, you would need 10,000 agents.

Never mind which one it is. If it’s 1000 agents or 10,000 agents, that’s still a lot of government employees out there running around fully aware that there is a memory-erasing technology and that the government has some kind of organized campaign to go out and track down specific citizens and erase their memories. No way in hell does someone not talk when the numbers involved are that large. With anything more than 10 people it would be hard to manage. (And I am fully aware that during this rudimentary calculation I have completely neglected the complications presented by dealing with international fans of the story, i.e. outside the U.S.)

So what else could you do? Have some kind of super elite spy agency within the agency? Maybe 10 hard-core guys who systematically erase the memories of the memory-erasing agents once they’ve done their jobs?

I suppose it’s possible, but it’s just cumbersome. However this is happening, whether by “flashy thing” or “Marky Mark signal,” it almost certainly is occurring using alien technology. I made it clear to Brenda how I preferred to interpret the Drake equation.

So if it’s alien technology either way, and I am the aliens, I would go with a solution that’s less logistically cumbersome. So, Marky Mark it is.

As a safeguard against us being hit by another Marky Mark pulse which would be more thorough than the last one and would wipe Brenda’s memories as well – something the first one had failed to do – Brenda tried to do an end-run around the process.

Another old phone from her sister. Still another old phone that her dad didn’t need anymore. Both with the Sim cards removed in the course of their deactivation. She placed the videos on each of these phones. In the photos, yes, the obvious place. But also, as these phones allow you to do, the videos were embedded into some notes files. It doesn’t let you lock a notes file that contains a video. One that has pictures in it, yes. But not one that contains a video. But she gave it a shot anyway.

It was just another way to possibly foil their plans if they found the phone and just scanned for audio and video. Then yeah, they would erase that. If they looked at notes files – in other words, text files – the paragraphs would contain nothing but articles about fashion, complete with pictures of different outfits. But if you scroll down far enough, in between what’s in and what’s out for this autumn, there would happen to be an occasional video file imbedded.

She gave me one phone and let it slip out that she gave Wheeler the other.

There is more than one way she could show up asking for it back. One possibility would’ve been that Brenda, the normal version of her, comes to me/us and simply asks for the phone back because there’s some reason why she needs it/them.

The other possibility is that she asks for it back... but the person doing the asking isn’t quite the normal Brenda. To ascertain just how “normal” she is, she gave us a series of questions that we are supposed to ask her; somewhat more advanced than a simple password. A series of questions which when answered correctly would reveal that her memory was still intact and had not been tampered with.

I saw a potential problem with this. But telling her what this problem was would not only fail to solve it – it would in fact create a situation wherein she would fail altogether. That is, a situation wherein the whole procedure of making backup videos would automatically become useless. I couldn’t tell her about this. The only way to help her achieve what I know she’s going for is to change her plans without telling her.

I searched for the name in my head. I had to remember. Only one university here, I was fairly certain, had an actual law school. Scanning through their website’s list of faculty would probably trigger my memory. I’d know it when I saw it. Phone all the way dead; I could just wait about 70 seconds and then use it at 1% while plugged into the kitchen outlet. Asking my mom would have been a guaranteed way to find out his name, but she’d be infinitely curious why I wanted to know, and she’d never let up. Then as the white apple popped up, I saw one of my dad’s old coffee cups, from Flagstaff. Lowell Observatory – that was it. Professor Lowell.

Eileen

I trusted a time-traveler who doesn’t wear a watch. If that one mistake could have been avoided I might not be facing life in prison. I wasn’t handcuffed to a hospital bed; they hadn’t made an arrest yet. But it was just a matter of time and I was under guard, I could tell – more than just hospital security. I couldn’t leave. If I tell the whole truth? Then they might arrange for some of the time to be in a nuthouse instead, because they’ll never believe the truth. This isn’t how the future was supposed to be. Because I’ve already time traveled to the future and this wasn’t it.

What happened to My Future – the one I Saw? That little so-called Chronopolitan? That punk troubadour who prefers to live in medieval times? Yeah. And even though he’s from the future and could easily wear a watch, he chooses not to because he’s in love with that era. I want my EMPIRE dammit!

Narcissistic personality disorder! Bull Fucking Shit. I sometimes go days at a time without wearing makeup or looking in mirrors. It’s them! They’re the narcissists. The two doc-tards and the last five nurse-tards. All of them and their mutual admiration society. And all that eurotrash from Stuttgart and Trieste! They probably caused this. That’s it! I’ve made up my mind.

I’m tearing this shit up and flushing the tiny pieces down the toilet, as long as they’re letting me in here unsupervised back in 2006. I can’t have these notes ever be found. Because I’ve decided that it might be easier to escape from a looney bin someday than from prison, I’m going to do something that violates my personal philosophy of success: I’m going to tell the truth. That alone oughta get me locked up on the funny farm. That plus I have knowledge of psychology they don’t know I’ve got; enough to fake several mental illnesses in case the truth doesn’t make me sound crazy enough.

Plus my shysters being paid indirectly through offshore accounts will push for it and bring in expert witnesses to demolish my mental competency standing. More of what’s supposed to be my empire, crumbling because the vultures know there’s untraceable money there.

The Pyxis! I could clearly hear its sounds coming from down the hall now. My nurse-tard is habitually late and has to wait in line for it. She’s too much of a pushover. Let’s others walk all over her. Yes, perfect, just what I need. So I’ve got a half hour at least to tear up these tiny strips and flush them. My last chance because I’m pretty sure unsupervised use of toilets is going to be a rarity for me soon. As well as unsupervised electrical outlets. And towels. And salt packets. And straws.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

C’mon Eileen, I encouraged myself, it’s just like BDSM with Jared. And... ZAP!

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Eileen?” The nurse politely asked, even bothering to knock on her already propped-open door, she could hear because she was still semi-conscious but convulsing.

Shouted calls. Urgent instructions. Through it all she heard cries of “get the power shut off!”

Unknown and unseen voices chattered back and forth. “Where did she get wires?”

“It’s brine.”

“What?”

“A slushy paste of salt and water. Inside two lines each of about twenty plastic straws stuck together.”

You would think these losers had seen it all by now. They seemed truly surprised. Another one, on the phone with a doc-tard who was apparently in charge but too important to actually be present in the ward, sounded genuinely panicky: “Holy shit! She made two long tubes by working the straws together end-to-end, filled ‘em with salt water slush and plugged them into the outlet like wires. The wet towel wrapped around her neck may be soaked in salt water too. Yes sir, the current’s been switched off and she’s still breathing.”

It’s a good thing we aren’t further in the future, she thought. Bernart just happened to mention one day at a burger joint in Loma Linda that plastic straws would be outlawed on the entire west coast by the 20s, if not sooner. She’d silently cursed to herself:

“What other kinds of idiocy await in this wrong-future that I got railroaded into?”

The flashlight irritating her eyes was her cue to try and speak. With some difficulty since her “electrocution” stunt had almost worked. Fortunately she was able to attempt several tries since this moron kept flicking the thing back and forth about a dozen times. She fought the overwhelming temptation to shout: Dude! If my fucking pupils haven’t done whatever it is you think they’re supposed to by now, they aren’t gunna! You’re annoying as shit.

Finally her mouth worked well enough.

“Time travelers.”

Moron b repeated it to flashlight moron:

“Did she say time travelers?”

Time to get busy acting Eileen, she thought happily, shifting into high gear but still speaking in a groggy voice: “They already copied me and sent my new body and mind to the future. I don’t need this body anymore. It’s okay, we can go ahead and kill it.”

Brenda, by way of Renaldo again

I ran this whole scenario by my mom’s old friend, Professor Lowell. He was not just a lawyer but a professor of law at a nearby university. I had a voice conversation with him, in person. Totally non-electronic. I couldn’t rig the room and make it a SCIF or suchlike, or even pipe loud music against his office windows.

But one thing that worked in my favor was construction; whatever they were doing in the parking lot outside his building involved at least one jack-hammer going for the majority of the time, against a blanket of constant background noise created by heavy machinery – backhoe loader type vehicles. And at any given moment it seemed like at least one of their backup warning beepers was going; definitely more than half the time from the sound of it.

He apologized for all the racket out there. I told him it was okay. But didn’t elaborate as to why I thought it was okay. It would have made me sound disturbingly paranoid. And on that note, I was taking a calculated risk by assuming that his office wasn’t bugged beforehand. Statistically it was unlikely. Given that the “Taco Erasers,” whoever they were, were primarily targeting people who liked Creepypastas and they in turn seemed to be of an average age of around 18... it was unlikely that Professor Lowell here would even be on their radar.

Might he be involved in some other matter that could have caused someone to bug his office and thus allow my group of hypothetical spooks to patch into the preexisting circuitry and listen? Sure. But also unlikely. Although he was still officially licensed by the state bar association to practice as an attorney – if that’s the right phraseology – he was semi-retired now and primarily focused on teaching and coauthoring some publications with his peers.

Moreover I wasn’t running the scenario by him to ask if it would be legal, but to see if he agreed that it would be logical. And I admit that I also wanted his take on whether it would be ethical.

I mean, I’m basically lying to Brenda. But I’m doing it for her own good. Is that truly possible? Or am I just kidding myself? This guy had taught a course called The Philosophy of Logic, as a visiting assistant professor at another university in town, through their philosophy department. He’d also taught ethics both in his law school capacity and through that other university’s philosophy program.

He vaguely understood that I was writing some kind of literary work in the science fiction genre; a necessary cover story since it wouldn’t likely be possible that I hung out in circles where memory-erasure and mind-control were readily practiced.

To begin with, he assured me that my logic was sound. The two possibilities that I mentioned, one being the normal Brenda, and the other one being the Brenda whose memory had been tampered with, would give identical answers to anything requiring passwords or challenge questions. It would not be possible to tell them apart.

If this hypothetical technology could force people to do things they didn’t want to do, then that would also apply to keys to a desk drawer, passwords for computers or other devices, and answers to challenge questions that I or Wheeler might pose... it would even extend “to pulverizing a block of concrete with a jackhammer,” he said looking out his window somewhat perturbed, if the subject had chosen to encase the evidence in a concrete foundation.

If “they” truly had the ability to make you do anything they wanted for the purpose of destroying whatever evidence you had, then your involuntary cooperation would also extend to revealing all hiding places, passwords, locations of keys, etc. So your character’s actions and answers would be indistinguishable whether she was a victim of their mind manipulation or just genuinely realized that she needed her phone back for some other purpose.

Since she would voluntarily provide them with all the information necessary to look like she was normal Brenda, and not mind-manipulated Brenda, when she came to their door asking for the phone back they could expect her to have all the correct answers.

After that, the professor was good enough to give me quite a bit more of his time to discuss ethics. Personally, I think he’s always been hot for my mom, who is just now coming out of her six-year long social withdrawal since being widowed, and maybe he thinks getting on her kids’ good sides might be helpful.

Later I reassured myself in my nightly journal, that what I was doing was ethical and moral. It was flimsy reasoning, I knew, and what I did was tantamount to seeking absolution from someone I was already sure would give it to me. Ultimately, it will not be time but Brenda herself who will tell; tell me if I did the right thing. So let’s get back to my “confession,” I suppose.

That thing Brenda feared would happen? It would work roughly in this way:

The pulse or signal (which we are no longer calling the Marky Mark signal because we have determined that it is not biochemically based in, and distributed by, plants... but in fact is likely of an electromagnetic nature) goes out into the universe to alter the minds of anyone who the Powers-That-Be determine has a knowledge of Stalko-Taco.

It tells these people: “go track down everything you have on Stalko-Taco. When you find it, destroy it. Then forget everything you know about Stalko-Taco.”

That would also apply to a personal vlog that they created which explains in detail exactly what Stalko-Taco is. Whether it’s on a device on their desk in their rooms, out in a storage bin in their garages, or in a desk drawer at their offices or wherever they work, it won’t matter.

They will go to whatever location necessary in order to get it. That also includes going to see a friend named Renaldo at his house – which for Brenda is quite a bit shorter a distance than most people’s average morning commute. But she’ll also drive the longer distance of almost 70 miles to get to Wheeler’s place in Austin.

If there really is a signal that can make people do this – destroy all evidence – then she’ll also cough up passwords, find keys, act normal or however she’s supposed to in order to get the things back from people...

The professor’s words still echoed through my head: even rent a jackhammer to extract “it” from a slab of cement if you had decided to hide it there.

The only way my character’s plan might work then, he conjectured, would be if she gave “Wheeler” the phone in a one-way transaction – admonishing him to “Never give it back to me for any reason, no matter how much I plead for it.” Instead, if she ends up dead under suspicious circumstances, or in a persistent vegetative state, or just generally acting goofy like her mind has been erased? He is to go Woodward-and-Bernstein and expose the video files to the world! Publicize it to the maximum extent possible.

I gave Professor Lowell the name Wheeler for the “other character” in all these cases, since I couldn’t very well use my own name. It was supposed to be fiction.

So when Brenda called me one afternoon just a few days later and said that she needed to come over for something soon, I already knew what it was going to be about even without her elaborating on the phone. I was fully prepared insofar as the hardware I would need; still not totally prepared in terms of my mindset. The guilt easily managed to taunt me through the holes in the pseudo-absolution process I had tried so hard to build for myself.

Why? Why all this guilt? Well, because I like Brenda, I suppose. And I’m just flat-out lying to her, stealing property from her, and burglarizing the house of a friend of hers... and ostensibly doing it all “for her own good.” How many times in human history has anyone who’s ever done something that they knew was wrong, but “for the right reason...” actually been right?

And when I say I like her, I don’t mean that I like her in that way. Brenda knows I’m gay. I’m fully out. As a popular girl who was walking between a clothing store and a makeup boutique with a group of her popular friends in her new town, she used her social currency to stop some guys from bullying me when I was waiting for my mom at a mall after summer school on my 14th birthday... before high school even started and before I had any idea at all... about what I was.

Now I have my network of people whom I feel safe enough around to wear my “Love is Love” t-shirt, which I also wore for the trip up to Austin to meet Wheeler for the second time. The first time I had on a different pride shirt. All I had needed to do was mention to the guy that Bren might be having some kind of trouble and I had his undivided attention.

Also, I hadn’t wanted to just blurt out the question and ask him: “are you gay?” But Babadook cosplay? Really? For some things you can simply read between the lines.

That, and what 18 year-old cis het-boy from Texas can even name ten prominent artists other than Andy Warhol, let alone give you detailed descriptions of them and their work? Or how many who even knew who Warhol was in the first place? It helped that Wheeler was cute too. I ran one of his Instagram photos through a “celebrity twin” or look-alike app to see who he reminded me of and it gave me some actor from an old Disney show that ended seven years ago. No, it wasn’t anyone I recognized. Well never mind that; We hit it off.

Weird Shapes

The artwork on their wall was different in a hip tech way, he thought. Not exactly a hologram but a diffraction grating sheet over some images perhaps? From their concealed positions and in their two-dimensional forms they heard him compliment Wheeler on it, since he knew by his reputation through Brenda that the dude was an artist.

The Princess of Pentacles, as that particular mass of quarks and leptons had come to be referenced by the ᢈᯒၔ᎘, had selected an excellent hiding place for them this time: a piece of Nancy’s avant-garde trash, as Princess Pentaculum called it.

“Oh, thanks man, but that’s actually one of my mom’s pieces. And yeah, it is some kind of diffraction grating that you’re viewing it through. She keeps changing the underlying images behind it and I’ve lost track, cause I’ve just been way busy lately.”

The shapes were “thrilled,” or whatever the close analog for it in their universe was: they immediately instructed the others to produce many extra batches of quarks and leptons for the Princess – in the form she liked: seventy-nine of the two-ups-and-a-down trios of quarks; enough of the two-down-and-one-up kind of trios to make it stable. Let some of the appropriate leptons tag along. The rules of charge in this strange universe will see to it that the right number automatically distribute themselves. A face centered cubic lattice for these blobs of matter. Let’s say, a thousand units. But no more than about 10²³ of the blobs per unit. Correction, the ᢈᯒၔ᎘ communicated to its assistant, multiply that by 0.950 and that should make them one “troy ounce” each.

Anything bigger than that made it difficult for her to move them on the “pawn shop” circuit... whatever that was supposed to mean. They didn’t really care to know all the nuances of her universe. The Princess was giving them the best results they’d ever seen in this dimension. They were happy with what they were seeing as the two human boys successfully defeated Agent Ranganathan’s best laid plans, backed up by the full strength of the Laniakea Supercluster Amphictiony. So, yes, they definitely wanted to keep The Princess of Pentacles happy.

The one called Renaldo looked on curiously at Nancy’s art. He didn’t have time for a detailed study. It was almost as if she’d placed a video image behind the grating sheet. As expected, it did that hologram-ish thing where you saw a different image as you walked back and forth, looking at slightly different angles. But it was almost too many images for just a hologram. A giant flat screen monitor behind the diffraction grating film might explain it.

Thoughts rang out loudly in his head, which the ᢈᯒၔ᎘ could read but not comprehend. The dude told himself to focus; never mind this art. He needed to learn the layout of the house and identify security measures, since his next visit here might very well be as a burglar.

A few hours later in her extended stay motel room, Eileen got off the bed in a hurry when a bi-location opened up about a meter above the middle of her mattress. It was just like the one the paranormal investigators were studying in Poltergeist. She knew it would be something good, but had to get clear of it to avoid bruising – these things were still utterly clueless about how physics worked in our universe.

Her bare feet were freezing on the simulated hardwood floor, but she looked on gleefully as the torrent poured in from another dimension. Before counting them, she made sure to arrange the tarot cards in a way that thanked them. She no longer had to introduce herself every time with the Princess of Pentacles card; they knew her well enough now. They got the size perfect: 31.103 grams each on her portable balance. And after grouping them into rows and columns, she realized that there were precisely one-thousand of them! Good, she thought, they’re learning to stick with base ten numbers for things, as she’d been trying to teach them.

Next, the tv. On! To the financial channel that always had that stock ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Less than a minute wait to see the precious metals prices. It had spiked a bit in the last week. After her fences and contacts got their cuts, there would still be well over a million dollars left for her! It had been her most profitable day so far that year.

Continue on to next section…

If And Only If

by Michelle Viviénne de Vandahlcourte

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

First Edition. © December 16, 2015.

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mandowh0re · 3 years

Text

Remember Me

Chapter 1

Summary: While cleaning up the timelines that he broke, Loki meets and inevitably loses the one person that's understood him in life. But he's not losing you without a fight

A/N: Beta'd by @edgyvege

Warnings: Mentions of death

Word Count: 1619

Happy reading!

It’s a quiet evening, and the Avengers that lived in the compound decided to take advantage of the rainy evening and have a movie night. Steve had called Tony over, who had brought Peter with him. The father and son duo has stopped on the way from the city to pick up a plethora of unhealthy snacks, including everyone’s favorite chips and candies.

They’re currently all settled in the common room watching She-Ra. Peter’s head is resing on Tony’s shoulder, Thor is snuggled up to Bruce, Natasha and Clint are sitting in the same recliner, Wanda and Vision are on one side of the love seat, Steve on the other side of Tony, Bucky and Sam sitting on the floor behind the coffee table.

They’re at the part where Adora is being stalked by Shadow Weaver in Mystacor, when the TV suddenly flickers, the audio warping. There’s a buzzing sound behind them closer to the kitchenette.

Everyone straightens in their seats, suddenly on alert.

“Friday,” Tony barks, pushing Peter behind him, “Lights.”

The lights cut on and everyone in the room watches as the air seems to distort and glow, similarly to when the sun beats down on the pavement, before a blonde man walks out with a cuffed and collared Loki behind him.

Every person in the room jumps into a defensive stance, some already with weapons that are always stashed and hidden throughout the compound, and each ready to fight at a moment’s notice.

Thor leaps over the couch and calls his hammer to him in one swift movement, but he doesn’t look frightened or angry.

He just looks… Mournful.

“Loki?” He says with apprehension, tilting his head.

It looks like Loki, and he’s certainly bound the way Loki should be if he were up to no good. But he watched Loki die. He watched Thanos crush the life out of him and toss him to the floor of that ship as if he were a worthless piece of balled up paper.

The blonde man holds up his hands in front of himself, as if to signal that they’re not here to cause any harm.

“Please, allow me to explain why we are here before this turns ugly.” The stranger pleads.

Thor looks back to his team, making eye contact with Tony and Steve.

They look apprehensive, and Tony has an iron grip on his kid, but Steve nods carefully.

Thor turns back to the stranger and nods, but his focus is mainly on Loki, “Go ahead.”

The man drops his hands and pockets them before beginning his story, “Okay. My name is Mobius, and I am a Timekeeper. My job, like Thor is probably aware, is to keep the timelines safe, intact, and to keep them from ever intersecting. When the Avengers used the Pym Particles to go back in time and retrieve the Infinity Stones; Stark, Rogers, Banner, and Lang went back to the Battle of New York in 2012. When they infiltrated the 2012 Avengers to get a hold of the tesseract, they made an error that caused the tesseract to fall into the hands of that Loki.”

Thor’s brows shot up to his hairline and he whipped around to look at Tony, “What? Why was I not informed of this?”

Now it’s Tony’s turn to hold his hands up, “Okay, hey. We didn’t have time to focus on that, and you were still grieving your brother. It would not have done anyone any good to bring it up while we were still in the fight of our lives.”

“And what about after?” He barks.

“While I agree this is something you all should discuss, I respectfully ask that you do that later,” Mobius interrupts, “I have places to be.”

Thor huffs and gives Tony one last glare before he turns back to the two other men.

“Right, anyways. When Loki took the tesseract and escaped, he broke that timeline. It caused multiple branches off of it,” He starts to take a step forward to the group, but decides against it when Thor’s nostrils flare, “We tracked him down, arrested him, and brought him into custody. He was given the option of life in prison or parole if he agreed to help us fix the timeline and erase the others. And I’m sure you can imagine what he chose.”

“I mean, there wasn’t much of a choice, was there?” Loki mumbles.

“Do you mind?” Mobius mumbles back, then turns to finish his story, “Through several months of helping us, Loki has proved himself to be, well, no longer a universal threat.”

“How do we know you aren’t under some spell of his?” Natasha asks, “Or working with him?”

“You don’t,” Mobius shrugs, “But he does know everything that has happened to him and those around him up until his final death. He was given the choice of choosing where he wanted to go at his time of being released, and I believe it says something for him to choose here.”

“Not much, actually. He’s manipulative.” Steve chimes in.

Mobius holds a finger up, “That he is. But unlike before, he has a lot more to lose this time.”

Thor crosses his arms, “And what would that be?”

***

You hum as you stock the shelves with the new shipment of books you just received.

It’s a nice day out. Mid April, the trees and flowers are blooming, and it’s finally nice enough outside to leave windows open. The mini fan is running on the counter where the register is, and the music is flowing quietly throughout your shop.

A very pleasant day, indeed.

You hear the windchimes attached to the shop door tinkle brightly, and you call over your shoulder as you finish placing the last few books, “Welcome! I’ll be right with you!”

When you’re finished, you grab the now empty cardboard box and use your pocket knife to break it down as you walk back to the front of the small store.

When you look up, a tall man with dark hair and a black suit is standing by the register, hands in his pockets. He’s incredibly handsome and as your eyes scan his features, you can’t help but feel like you have seen him before.

“Hi! How can I help you?” You ask, tossing the now flattened box onto a pile of others before walking behind the counter.

The man looks at you, tearing his gaze from a picture you had behind the counter, and his eyes meet yours. For the briefest of moments, you think you see grief flash across his emerald eyes. But as quick as you think you saw it, it's gone.

“Hello,” He greets, his voice satiny smooth, “A friend of mine recommended a book, and I was wondering if you could help me get my hands on a copy.”

“Sure!” You lean against the counter and fold your hands, “What’s it called?”

“I believe it’s called Norse Mythology, written by a Neil Gaiman.”

Your eyes light up and you push off your elbows to stand, “That’s my favorite book! Your friend must have amazing taste!” You wink.

He nods, eyes never leaving you, “I like to think so.”

“I definitely have it! Can’t really consider myself a good bookstore owner if I don’t keep my favorite books in stock, follow me.” You walk out from behind the counter and wave the handsome man to follow you. You know exactly where to go, and weave expertly between the shelves of your small shop. You finally come to a halt and reach down to grab the book, handing it to him, “Here you are.”

He takes the book from you and offers a kind smile and he turns it over in his hands, reading the back, “Thank you.”

“Of course, let’s go get you checked out,” You smile, staring at the handsome stranger before you realize what you’re doing.

The two of you walk back to the front of the store, and he lays the book down for you to scan it.

You take another look at him, and you’re not sure what possesses you to say it. You later account it to having been alone for so long.

“Actually- Here...” You lean down under the counter where you have your own stash of books, and grab your own copy of Norse Mythology. You stand back up and place it in front of him, “Why don’t you borrow my copy? I know it’s not as pretty as a new one, but if you don’t like it, you won’t have wasted the money. If you do like it, we can talk about it. Either way, you’ll have to return it,” You look down to the countertop before bringing your eyes to meet him once more, “And I can see you again.”

A beautifully sweet smile spreads across the man’s face. His eyes flicker down, noticing that you’re picking at your nails; it’s your nervous habit. He places a hand on the worn paperback book, “Lovely. Sounds like a plan to me. Shall we say next week, this time?”

Your smile brightens considerably, and you feel butterflies come to life in your belly, “See you then.”

He bends at the waist, bowing slightly, and turns to leave. You watch as his slender hand grabs the door knob, when a thought occurs to you.

“Wait!” You shout, reaching out your hand.

He stops dead in his tracks and turns back to you, an eyebrow quirked.

“What’s your name?”

He stiffens slightly. It’s so subtle that you barely notice it, but you do. Finally, a soft look adorns the man’s handsome features, and he looks a little sad. But he still answers.

“Loki.”

***

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foxghost · 3 years

Text

Joyful Reunion, Chapter 112

Translator: foxghost @foxghost tumblr/ko-fi1 Beta: meet-me-in-oblivion @meet-me-in-oblivion tumblr Original by 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang Masterpost | Characters, Maps & Other Reference Index

Book 3, Chapter 24 (Part 7)

Right there behind the stone statue at the top of the stairs is a wide platform, and behind the platform is a set of derelict buildings stacked out of bricks. It’s eerily quiet on top of the platform as it’s little frequented, and green creeper vines have climbed all the way up from the base of the foundations miles below. Nothing marks the years’ passing in the mountains, as though time itself is frozen here.

“Is this where you trained?” Duan Ling asks.

“Yes. This is White Tiger Hall,” Wu Du replies, climbing the steps with Duan Ling until they’re before the great hall. A plaque is barely hanging on high above them with three characters written in ancient seal script: White Tiger Hall.

“We’ll sleep here tonight. It may still be a bit cold in the mountains, but I think …”

“That’s quite alright,” Duan Ling replies, standing in front of the great hall, he stretches, facing the green hills beyond and their misty clouds. It reminds him of a line of poetry: my mind expands to take in this expanse of clouds; the sight of homecoming birds stretches the edge of my vision.2 From the moment they left Jiangzhou he’s enjoyed the first true days of leaving all his worries behind. Here, he doesn’t have to worry about anyone coming to kill him, and neither does he have to worry about saying anything by accident that can get him killed. They can sleep soundly and let themselves relax.

He turns back to glance at Wu Du. Wu Du is inside the great hall, sweeping the stone paths clean. When he finds a bird’s nest on a chair, he picks up the nest and wipes down the chair before putting it back.

“Eh?” Duan Ling spies a small animal dodging behind a pillar and walks quickly over. It’s a squirrel. When it hears footsteps it stops, turns around, and hesitatingly stares at Duan Ling.

“Animals in the mountains aren’t afraid of people,” Wu Du explains.

“Are there other people here?”

“No. Even back then it was just me, my master, his wife, and Shijie.”

Recalling the Xunchun who lost her life in Shangjing, Duan Ling lets out a sigh.

Once Wu Du finishes cleaning he adds, “Duan Ling, come. Let’s go meet the White Tiger.”

Duan Ling walks to the centre of the main hall, and looks up at a white tiger carved out of white marble enshrined in the altar. Its eyes are sunken as if gems used to be set in them, but they’re long lost, presumably stolen by thieves. A mottled, dilapidated mural of “A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains”3 has been painted on the wall behind it, with seven Weiqi pieces carved out of marble inlaid into the mural.4

“I’m the seventeenth generation disciple, successor of the lineage of poison,” Wu Du says to the white tiger statue, “current leader of the White Tiger Hall, Wu Du. I’m here today with the crown prince of the central plains.”

Duan Ling cannot help but be awestruck, and his back straightens at Wu Du’s words. Wu Du stands tall in front of the statue, holding the index and middle fingers of his left hand to the back of his right hand to bow as a part of a special ritual on his pilgrimage to the White Tiger. "Lord White Tiger, please bless …

“What’re you called again?” Wu Du pauses to ask Duan Ling.

“What?”

“Your name.”

Duan Ling stares at Wu Du speechlessly. Wu Du stares silently back.

“What kind of a sect leader are you?” Duan Ling doesn’t even know what to tell him.

Wu Du whines, “That day you shocked me right out of my head, so how was I supposed to remember anything? Say it already.”

“Li Ruo, here to pay my respects,” Duan Ling takes one step forward. He knows that the White Tiger constellation is the god of soldiers and warfare, in control of everything that has to do with slaughter. He bows. “I pray for Great Chen to triumph in every battle, to be victorious in every war.”

Wu Du cracks a grin, and turns to the statue. “I pray you’ll bless and protect the crown prince of Great Chen, Li Ruo, and to allow him a smooth return to the imperial court.”

They each finish talking to the White Tiger, and afterwards, they look up together in silence, staring at the statue with its missing eyes. A draft brushes them by, pouring from the back of the main hall and rushing out the entrance, setting the fringes of their robes fluttering — as if a fierce tiger has just crossed the forest, setting all the leaves in the trees rustling.

“Where did its eyes go?” Duan Ling asks Wu Du.

“No idea. It’s never had them as far as I can remember, so they must have been dug out long ago. Its eyes can’t see, but it can hear just fine.”

Duan Ling thinks, sounds like that’s true. Perhaps the breeze was its instruction.

Duan Ling has never had so much free time in his life before. That very afternoon, Wu Du takes the stairs down the mountain again to move the bedding and food from their boat to their lodgings. Duan Ling offers to help, but Wu Du just tells him to rest. As soon as he puts the stuff down on the platform he’s off again to the boat for more.

White Tiger Hall has a rear courtyard with a set of houses sectioned into east and west wings, while the main house was the place where Wu Du’s master and his wife used to live. Duan Ling spots an alchemy furnace, still filled with solidified cinnabar and some medicaments, a mixture of something now pitch black. The west wing is Xunchun’s room. Duan Ling opens the door and peers inside to find it filled with cobwebs and dust, devoid of anything else. The east wing is Wu Du’s room. It has one bed, two wooden shelves filled with old things, piled high with worn-eaten ancient tomes.

“What a pity,” Duan Ling says, “you had this many rare hand-copied books, but they got so damaged. Aren’t you worried that the knowledge will be lost?”

Wu Du has drawn water from a creek behind the main hall, and he’s cleaning the house with his sleeves rolled up. "Everyone’s gone. Whether the martial arts knowledge is passed on or lost, there’s no one left to care about that anymore.”

“What’s in here?”

“The elixirs master refined ages ago. He’d always wanted to live forever, follow the Dao and become an immortal. He used to be just fine, but after eating too much of that stuff he couldn’t even fight anymore. When the capital was under attack he took his wife with him and got off the mountain to reinforce the troops, and he should have been able to escape unscathed, but whatever blasted elixir he took stopped his qi from flowing when he needed it, and the Khitans shot him to death.”

“Where’s he buried? Should we go visit his grave?”

“The cenotaph is back there. After the capital was taken by Khitans, Shijie had someone bring back his clothes. We’ll go if we have time. There’s no hurry.”

Together, Duan Ling and Wu Du clean up the room. Wu Du says, “I don’t need any of that stuff. Just toss it all out.”

“No no, they’re too valuable.”

“I’m keeping it all in my head, you know. Don’t flip through them now, they’re dusty. If you do that you’ll sneeze.”

Duan Ling sneezes dramatically more than a dozen times before he manages to reorganise Wu Du’s books, putting them away nicely on the shelves. He plans to make a copy of everything when he has time, and that way it’ll help keep White Tiger Hall’s knowledge intact.

It’s getting closer to dusk. Wu Du has half finished cleaning the place. He gets a fire started then, and begins making dinner for Duan Ling.

Watching Wu Du busying himself, Duan Ling feels as though he’s back to being a little kid again. He recalls those words once said to him: there will always be people who disregard all else to be good to you, no matter who you are. If I’m not the crown prince of Southern Chen, would Wu Du still have brought me here?

Duan Ling ponders this, and comes to the conclusion that Wu Du probably would.

Spotting an antique, worn-out case under the shelves in the room, Duan Ling bends down to open the lock. Once it’s opened, he discovers that it’s filled with wooden puppets of horses and people, carved with a small knife. They must have been toys carved by Wu Du for himself when he was all alone as a little kid. Underneath the toys is a red cloth sack, and Duan Ling’s about to open it when Wu Du notices and says, “Um … Don’t touch that!”

Thinking that it’s some deadly poison, Duan Ling quickly puts it back, but Wu Du is hurrying into the room, a crimson blush in his cheeks as he puts the cloth sack back in the lowest level of the case.

“What’s that?”

“It’s nothing.” Wu Du looks a bit embarrassed, which only serves to make Duan Ling even more curious and to keep pestering him. Self-conscious, Wu Du leaves for the kitchen to get more water so he can start steaming the fish, but Duan Ling follows him around the whole time until he gives up under the badgering. “It’s a baby wrap.”

Duan Ling pauses for a moment before he breaks out in side-splitting laughter. Wu Du sounds a bit irritated. “Don’t laugh!”

A thought occurs to Duan Ling and he thinks he understands. “You wore it when you were little?”

“Yeah,” Wu Du replies, “when the master’s wife found me, that cloth was the only thing on my person.”

“Was there a birth certificate? Your parents’ names?”

“No idea. Even if there was one, my master would have burned it.” Wu Du says without minding him, “Assassins can’t have mom and dad.”

“Doesn’t that mean you wouldn’t know when your birthday is?”

“Well let’s just treat … the day she found me as my birthday.”

Duan Ling only comes to that realisation then. “Which day is it?”

Wu Du doesn’t say anything, and Duan Ling seems about to press him, so Wu Du can but tell him, “I’ll tell you when it comes up.”

Duan Ling stretches out his pinkie, and so Wu Du gives it a little shake with his own. “Go wait for dinner, but don’t run off. Maybe no one is going to kill you here but getting lost in the mountains is no joke.”

Wu Du limits Duan Ling’s roaming range to the area between the stone steps and plank walkways, extending all the way to the platform, and he can wander through the buildings of White Tiger Hall as well, but he can’t go to the mountains behind the halls. Duan Ling walks to the edge of the platform to view the clouds, where they flow like an ocean in the mountains; the mist has risen, and in the mountains it’s as quiet as the land of the immortals.

The racket and prosperity of Jiangzhou, the strife between people — all of it can be left behind for now. They all feel like nothing more than a dream Duan Ling had during an afternoon nap.

If he can stay here for the rest of his life, maybe no one will ever be able to find them?

If he stays here for the rest of his life, maybe he won’t ever have to worry about anything else anymore.

An idea occurs to Duan Ling as he stares out at the cloud sea. If he’s able to accomplish all his goals and retire in comfort someday, this will be his final and only resting place. After experiencing so much, there’s nothing happier than to live the rest of his life in peace, with someone by his side … as he thinks this he turns to look back inside White Tiger Hall. Wu Du just happens to be banging some metal together to make a clanging noise, letting him know that it’s time for dinner.

“Scram! I’ll hit you!”

As Duan Ling heads inside, he sees Wu Du scaring off a monkey that’s come out of nowhere. The monkey wants to come closer and beg him for some food, but it doesn’t dare get too close. It stares at Wu Du with wide puppy eyes, then it turns them on Duan Ling. Duan Ling can’t help but laugh soundly, tossing it a bit of dry rations. The monkey immediately grabs it and runs off.

“There’s another one over there.” Duan Ling looks around and finds the big monkey rushing to give another, smaller monkey the food after it successfully begged for some.

“If you want food, eke out a living for yourself.” Wu Du jokes around. “If you want to be lord and master of the household, you’ve got to support your family.” Then Wu Du pushes against the great doors with his shoulder to close them.

During the evening, a solitary lamp swings back and forth in the mountain breeze, and beneath it the two of them have rice with plates of side dishes, along with the live fish they bought on the river. There’s even a couple of cups of wine to go with it.

After they finish drinking, Wu Du says to Duan Ling, “I’m going to take you somewhere. Let’s go.”

It happens to be a full moon tonight. Wu Du takes Duan Ling towards the mountains behind the halls, and they turn a corner through a narrow path, coming to the other side of the mountain where the sky seems to open up; the desolate wilderness of the mountains makes the moon look even brighter, and silvery light fills their vision.

Lit by moonlight, throughout the mountains, this is the only place planted full of peach trees; out in the mortal world peach blossom season has reached its end, but in the mountain temples they’re in full bloom. Amidst the mountain ranges the peach blossoms bloom in brilliant clusters, and the mountain breeze takes millions of petals off their branches to flutter beneath a bright moon.

“What do you think?” Wu Du asks with a smile.

Duan Ling is nearly unable to get any words out at all; he stares in a daze at the scenery before him.

“Only for about ten days every year,” Wu Du says, “do you get a view like this.”

“It’s too beautiful.”

Wu Du comes over to him, and they sit down on a rock together. He takes out his flute, and holds it to his lips. Music rings out, and in that instant, Joyful Reunion once more drags Duan Ling’s mind back into the faraway past.

When the song ends, Duan Ling and Wu Du quietly meet each other’s eyes.

Wu Du’s lips move imperceptibly, his breathing growing slightly urgent, and wearing nothing but an unlined robe and short pants, he’s sitting quite close to Duan Ling on the rock. Moonlight spills onto their snow white underclothes, and Duan Ling can vaguely make out the rugged and beautiful lines of Wu Du’s body.

“Duan Ling,” Wu Du says suddenly, “I … have something I want to say to you.”

Without knowing the reason for it at all, Duan Ling is starting to feel tense as well. “Wha—what?”

Wu Du looks down at him. They’re both quiet for at least several breaths, but then Wu Du is turning away to look towards the mountain streams, then up at the bright moon above, seemingly on edge.

“What did you want to say?” Duan Ling reaches out, his hand folding over the back of Wu Du’s hand, but Wu Du has turned his hand over to hold onto his.

“Do you …” Wu Du turns the thought over and over in his head before he appears to make up his mind and asks, “Do you like it here?”

Duan Ling smiles, and it’s like a million peach flowers blooming beneath the moonlight, how brilliant their blossoms.

“Earlier today I was just thinking,” Duan Ling tugs on Wu Du’s hand, “maybe someday I’ll just live here in the White Tiger Hall and never go back to the earthly world.”

“Oh no no,” Wu Du says immediately, “now that won’t do. I … you …”

“Yeah.” Duan Ling thinks about his duty, and that’s bound to be a heavy subject. He jests, “It’s just a thought.”

“No, that’s not …” Wu Du collects himself and says, “What I was thinking is that … aside from this place, I also want to take you … other places. And if you want … you can … take your time to pick, pick the place you love the most … anywhere is fine. The edge of the oceans, the ends of the earth, as long as you want to be there, I’ll be at your side.”

Duan Ling stares at him in startled silence.

“I … What I’m thinking is …” Wu Du doesn’t dare look at Duan Ling, and he can only stare off anywhere else, his handsome face turning crimson to his collarbones; even the skin under his tattoo is glowing red like he’s been drinking. His grip on Duan Ling’s hand grows tighter subconsciously and he stammers through his speech.

“Afterwards, I’ll also take you … to all those places you want to see. I’ll take you to Diannan, take you to … see the ocean. You … Shan’er, that day … when you called me ‘milord’, I know maybe you were just joking, but I’ve taken you here because I wanted to ask you … if you’re willing to … for the rest of our lives …”

By now Wu Du has already calmed down. The words have already left his mouth so he’s not going to be nervy anymore.

“In front of other people, you and I will be as we always were.” Wu Du doesn’t know where his courage is coming from, but he’s staring into Duan Ling’s eyes as he says solemnly to him, "Even if you’ve returned to the imperial court, I don’t need you to make me anything official. As long as you still think of me as you do in your heart today, I will find you the Zhenshanhe and guard you for the rest of your life, until the day I die.

“I know that in the future you’ll become the emperor. But I really … really … really want to be … with you …”

As he says this he’s getting nervous again. “I think … if you’re willing, I’ll definitely treat you well. Whenever we’re alone and there’s no one else around, I’ll … treat you … treat you as I would treat … my wife, and you’ll … yield to me as you would …”

Duan Ling stares at Wu Du in a daze, and Wu Du realises now that he’s still squeezing on Duan Ling’s hand and hurriedly lets it go. He reaches into a pocket in his robe and takes out a string of beads.

Wu Du unfolded his fingers, holding the beads in front of Duan Ling, and he moves his hand forward a little, as though he’s a mere humble human being presenting a tribute he made with all his heart, in a gesture more reverent than making an offering to the gods of their world.

The tribute is a bracelet strung with rosary peas.

Duan Ling’s cheeks turn scarlet in an instant as he comes to realise what Wu Du has left unsaid — to his surprise, Wu Du is wooing him. Even before this Duan Ling has had a vague feeling that this is the case, and the present moment is reminding him of that evening as the sun was setting, and Wu Du had taken his hand and told him all those things in the maple forest.

In a flash, the Duan estate’s dark woodshed, the snowstorm oppressive above the frozen Yellow River, those unfamiliar and gloomy days in Shangjing, a war that shook the earth beneath him, a night of panicked escape that feels like it happened yesterday, that harsh winter in Luoyang, his father’s death … in his mind these memories all shatter one by one.

They were each alone in the world as children, and now they’re beneath a sky filled with fluttering peach petals, silently facing each other.

In place of those memories are all those dreams once promised to him in that endless river of time, all those colourful, dazzling hopes, with the life he wants to lead.

Duan Ling seems able to see himself, and he’s able to see Wu Du as well — the Wu Du who grew up orphaned and alone is finally all grown up, and has made his way to him.

Wu Du’s hands have once solemnly taken hold of the sword that represents the last of the central plains martial artists; they have also blocked the sword that came at him with a force great enough to shatter the firmament itself outside Tongguan. But now they’re somehow overtaken by a slight but uncontrollable trembling.

“I …” Duan Ling takes a deep breath as he tries his best to restrain the excitement rushing about in his heart, but he notices that he’s unable to say anything at all. When he raises his eyes to meet Wu Du’s though, it seems Wu Du has come to a different conclusion. Noting that Duan Ling hasn’t taken the bracelet from him, his expression grows sad, and forcing a smile tinged with agony, he nods as though he already knew this would be the answer.

But to his surprise, instead of taking Wu Du’s bracelet, Duan Ling has thrown his arms around Wu Du’s neck, and closing his eyes, he leans in and presses his lips to Wu Du’s.

A mountain breeze blows by, sending a rustling through the leaves; flower petals scatter to fly through the air.

Wu Du’s eyes widen, and his entire body freezes as though he’s been struck by lightning. Not daring to move an inch, he holds the pose with their lips touching. When he comes to himself in the next moment, he stares at Duan Ling, his heart beating madly in his chest.

The two of them pull apart and Duan Ling takes Wu Du’s bracelet from him. He grips it between his fingers, breathing rapidly, wanting to say something but has no idea where to begin. They’re both red in the face, blood rushing through their ears, but Duan Ling is wearing a small, shy smile on his face.

And yet in the next moment, without a word at all, Wu Du gets up and runs into the forest of peach trees.

“Wu Du?” Duan Ling calls him, but Wu Du isn’t stopping at all. In two shakes he’s run so far not even a shadow of him can be seen anymore.

Duan Ling stares into the dark speechlessly, no idea what’s happening, but when he chases over he finds Wu Du turning somersaults under a tree, following them with a sweeping kick and several punches, whipping up the leaves and flower petals so they flutter like a cloud around him.

Duan Ling laughs, and Wu Du suddenly turns around. When he realises that Duan Ling’s spotted him, he dodges behind a tree trunk.

Duan Ling puts on the bracelet. Meanwhile, Wu Du has closed his eyes with his back against a peach tree, revealing that slightly roguish yet captivating smile.

Duan Ling has no idea what he should say. It seems as though everything has changed through this one evening, and the scenery before him has taken on a special meaning. I actually kissed him earlier! Where did I find the courage to do that? Wu Du’s lips were scorching hot and soft, not at all the way he’d imagined them to be, and he’s still thinking about the sensation he had in the very instant he kissed him.

Wu Du turns his head to peer from behind the tree, and finds Duan Ling sitting on the rock, stock still, with his back to him, facing the mountain range and valleys beneath the moon.

Flute music begins again, but this time it’s an elated, cheerful melody. Duan Ling turns to look; Wu Du is standing beneath a tree, playing another tune that sounds like a folk song. A smile spreads over Duan Ling’s face.

“What song is that?”

When Wu Du finishes playing it, he puts the flute away and answers him with a smile, “Little Water Clock. I only ever heard the master’s wife play it once, so. I don’t even remember if that’s exactly how it goes.”5

Wu Du returns to his seat by Duan Ling’s side, and they look at each other, smiling without words.

Then, Wu Du turns a fraction, and reaches out to wrap his arm around Duan Ling’s waist. He puts his other hand over Duan Ling’s cheek, and with a slightest tilt of his head, he seals Duan Ling’s lips with a kiss.

Duan Ling touches Wu Du’s face; the bracelet is wrapped around that wrist.

This kiss lingers on and on, as though long suppressed emotions have finally breached the surface, and in the blink of an eye their feelings have transformed into a raging flood, thoroughly drowning them both.

Wu Du doesn’t want to let go of Duan Ling even for a moment; he has his arms wrapped around Duan Ling’s waist, and almost pressing him against the rock, licks into his mouth. Duan Ling feels his cheeks growing ever hotter under this assault, and as time drips by he’s more sure that Wu Du is growing more impertinent in his plunder.

Duan Ling really is getting way too nervous, and he can’t help but struggle. As he does, Wu Du loosens his hold on him and swallows, staring into his eyes as though he has also realised that he’s gone a bit overboard. He lets go of him at once and asks uneasily, “I didn’t … I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Duan Ling shakes his head. He’s not sure why, but the scene he spied in the Bouquet Pavilion is surfacing in his mind again and it really is too exciting. However, he can’t seem to accept something like that just yet.

“Let’s … head back.” Duan Ling thinks that if they’re going to kiss then they’d better kiss indoors — at least they’ll have a roof over their heads.

Wu Du has come to his senses as well and says, “It’s windy, you better not catch a cold. Let’s go.”

Duan Ling and Wu Du slot their fingers together, and holding hands they stroll leisurely through the mountain paths back to the house.

“Mi … lord.” Duan Ling suddenly remembers what he called him, and smiles at the thought.

Wu Du is finding that funny as well, and the corner of his mouth is turning up before he knows it. His gaze goes from Duan Ling to the path before them, a narrow path passing through a boundless cloud sea, shimmery with moonlight, cutting through towering mountains.

As they go to sleep at night, Duan Ling can’t help reaching out to touch Wu Du’s chest, and they’re wrapped in each other’s embrace again; Wu Du leans in and kiss him cautiously, their bodies rubbing against each other through two thin layers of cloth, both of them growing scorchingly hot. It’s the first time Duan Ling has ever done anything like this, and it just happens to be spring when brand new desires are starting to bloom, while Wu Du has been studying the martial arts for years, and with no avenue of release for his longing, his breath burns him, wishing he could hold on to Duan Ling and simply have his way with him.

They kiss and kiss again; Wu Du’s hand slides under Duan Ling’s waistband, but when it goes over the curve of his hip and reaches his ass, Duan Ling starts to gasp urgently, and Wu Du swallows.

“Do I have to … to … do that?” Without warning, Duan Ling suddenly feels a bit scared.

Sobering, Wu Du thinks about this for a moment. “It’ll hurt you a lot, so not right now. Let’s do that some other time.”

Duan Ling nods and relaxes somewhat. He holds onto Wu Du, studying his features. Wu Du gives him another kiss and whispers, “I can’t bear to hurt you.”

And so Duan Ling smiles again. They’re pressed up against each other, with that hard thing between their legs rubbing together through the thin cloth of their pants. Even if it’s behind a sheet of fabric Duan Ling can still feel how big and hard Wu Du is — so much bigger than his own. Duan Ling just thinks it feels so good to rub against him like this, and he’s getting wet down there as he does so.

Wu Du’s breathing trembles, feeling so good he shivers all over, and soon enough he decides to simply turn them so that Duan Ling is beneath him, so that his weight is pressed down on Duan Ling as he kisses his lips, kisses the corner of his mouth.

After embracing each other for a while, they both somehow feel calmer, and neither of them say anything at all, just stare into each other’s eyes. Wu Du still can’t help smiling. “It’s like I’m dreaming.”

They’ve been kissing each other over and over yet Duan Ling isn’t prepared to do this or that … but he feels somewhat curious about it after all. “Does it really hurt a lot? Have you tried it?”

“I haven’t. Zheng Yan was the one who said that … yeah.”

“He’s tried it?”

Wu Du isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say to that. He reaches into Duan Ling’s shirt, touching him until it tickles. Duan Ling’s hands are behind Wu Du’s neck though, so he has no way of fighting back, and all he can do is beg for mercy repeatedly until Wu Du lets up. “He’s a ne’er do well who has a tendency to paw at pretty young men. I’ve been told that if you’re not careful it can hurt a lot. I don’t want you to develop a fear of it. When we get home I’ll get some … uh … at any rate I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to think about it anymore.”

Duan Ling understands now, and comes to think that is perhaps true. But he thinks that’s fine too — Wu Du’s tall figure pressing down against him gives him an overwhelming feeling of safety.

“I’ll take you home too, in the future,” Duan Ling whispers, his eyes roaming over Wu Du’s handsome features.

“You’ll go back some day.”

Wu Du thought Duan Ling was talking about the palace, but what Duan Ling meant was Xunyang. He’ll go there with Duan Ling at some point also. It’s springtime in Xunyang right now; the flowers must have already bloomed.

I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎

From Du Fu’s poem, 望嶽 / “Mountain Gazing”. ↩︎

You can see the painting here. ↩︎

Also known as Go. ↩︎

The original here actually says Little Water Clock · Golden Hairpin, but the first part is the melody, while the second part is the lyrics. Golden Hairpin is a poem about love. ↩︎

#相見歡 #fei tian ye xiang #joyful reunion #xiang jian huan #fox translates things #probably shouldn't read this chapter in public

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fowl-fox · 3 years

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I know I keep asking you all these random questions, but- in AF, it always irked me that we never learned about Fowl Sr.’s return to Fowl Manor, given that he was recovering from being in a coma (I know his amputation sight would have been healed by then, but I don’t think he would have been strong enough to walk on a prosthetic for a while- he probably used crutches for a bit). Like... what was that like for the Fowls. I know that the books never go into it, but I would have hoped that it was a brief period of the Fowl Family being just... happy to be together again, even as they were having to dramatically restructure their lives again to adjust to the head of the family being home again, especially for Tim and Angeline. Any thoughts or headcanons or what-not?

Ask as many questions as you like! (That goes for anyone else as well.) It gets my brain going and motivates me to start writing things. Also sorry this took a bit, I've got medical crap going on rn.

As usual, I'm gonna toss this under a Read More, because boy, did this get long, I apologize. And I'm going to warn you, a lot of this delves into how I feel about Artemis' relationship with Tim and Angeline overall. But it's those feelings that drive most of my headcanons, so I feel like it's best to talk about them.

Let's start with Artemis Sr. and his state of being after rescue. I'm gonna pull some quotes from my copies of The Arctic Incident and The Eternity Code throughout my pondering, please bear with me.

At the beginning of TAI, we're given a laundry list of ailments Fowl Sr. has when he's dragged out of the water in the beginning of the book:

"Though the man's clothes were relatively intact, his body had not fared so well. His bare hands were mottled with frostbite. One leg had been snapped below the knee, and his face was a horrific mask of burns."

"He'll lose that leg for sure, (...) A couple of fingers, too. That face doesn't look too good either."

When it's Holly's turn to drag Fowl Sr. out of the water, his heartbeat is dangerously low, due to deadly cold water. We know she kept him alive, healed the chest wound caused by the blunt force of the shell Butler shot him with, as well as a blinded eye that wasn't mentioned previously, but we're not really told anything else, which I suppose leaves it up to our imaginations as to what ailments he's left with.

We know he lost his leg, but did he lose some of those frostbitten fingers? Frostbite doesn't fuck around (Mayo Clinic link, if you'd like), and while it's not mentioned, it would be likely his captors would have had to amputate a few of those as well, to prevent the dead tissue from eventually killing their meal ticket. His face was severely burned from the explosion, how extensive was the scaring after everything was said and done? We know magic can heal scars if that's what the magic is told to do, but Holly probably wasn't worried about that in the moment, and she makes this statement:

"I got him," she gasped, "One live Mud Man. He's not pretty, but he's breathing."

So even with Holly doing what she could, it sounds like Fowl Sr.'s condition was still really rough. Rough enough to need prolonged medical attention. He'd spent nearly two years in a coma before waking up in Murmansk, and the ordeal of his rescue was enough to throw him back into a coma, as we're told in The Eternity Code.

Except wait a minute. In Artemis Jr.'s diary excerpt, we're given some information that contradicts the previous book.

"It had been over two months since Holly Short used her healing magic on his battered body, and still he lay in his Helsinki hospital bed. Immobile, unresponsive.

The doctor's could not understand it. He should be awake, they informed me. His brain waves are strong, exceptionally so. And his heart beats like a horse. It is incredible, this man should be at death's door, yet he has the muscle tone of a twenty-year old.

(…) Holly's magic has overhauled his entire being, with the exception of his left leg, (...) He has received an infusion of life, in body and mind."

(...) my father had no need of medical attention. He simply sat up, rubbed his eyes, and muttered one word: 'Angeline.'"

So now Holly's magic apparently healed everything but the lost leg? What?

I love the Artemis Fowl books, but I will always be a little frustrated with their inconsistencies. But you know what? It's great for giving yourself permission to play around with your headcanons. If Colfer changes what he wants when he wants, I certainly won't feel bad about doing it.

I'm going to go with the TAI and say that Tim was still in a really rough state after everything. Ignoring that supposedly his muscles were fine, he'd still have to learn how to walk on the prosthetic. And tbh, I'm just going to believe that his muscles weren't magically perfect. Maybe easier to build back than they would have been without the magical infusion, but there was definitely gonna be work involved. And that's ignoring probable mental trauma. He was in a coma for a large portion of his captivity, but there was a brief period of time where he was conscious, with captors that maybe couldn't kill him, but definitely didn't treat him well (though it sounds like he was being a difficult captive, but yeah, of course, he's a Fowl lol.)

(Detour Thought: My mental picture of Artemis Senior has always involved heavy facial scarring, especially on the side of his face where the damage was apparently bad enough to blind him.)

But to get back to your original inquiry (Jesus, Blue, I am so sorry at how badly I've dragged this out) I do like to think there would be a period of recovery and restructure that would involve the Fowls getting to be a happy family together. Great potential for a hurt/comfort fic, if you ask me.

I'm going to be frank, (and this opinion puts me at odds with the fandom at large, I know) - from my interpretations of the books overall, while Artemis certainly had a strict upbringing with parents who were usually busy and definitely irresponsible, I never got the sense that it was a loveless childhood. Nor did I ever get the sense that Artemis feared his father as a person, but rather that he feared disappointing him, which at no point are we told ever actually happened. I've read these books a million times, I've never found anything in them suggesting Artemis ever disappointed his father, nor that Tim was ever actually cruel to Artemis. Strict, yes. Overly formal? Definitely. But not cruel.

Now, the fact that he felt he had to jump through so many hoops to maintain his father's approval? Bad parenting, Tim. Also, don't encourage him to be a criminal mastermind, maybe. But also Artemis is an over-achiever by nature, which Tim just either didn't clue in on or more likely imo, thought it was in Artemis' best interests as an heir of a criminal empire to be that way.

Aside from Tim and Angeline later suggesting he try to be more 'normal' and let go of his criminal tendencies, and that one incident of Angeline pulling a guilt trip (all of which is a whole other thing I won't get into rn), Artemis' parents speak positively to and about him. I just honestly think they don't know how to be actual parents, which, being aristocrats, tracks. They function almost more like older siblings after TAI, really, which isn't exactly great, but it could be worse.

We know his father used to read to him regularly when he was little (ending with a kiss on the head, which I always thought was sweet) and we know that Angeline was always warm and available to him whenever possible (until her grief-stricken dementia set in.) Artemis has a moment of angst at how strict/formal his upbringing was compared to the twins, but overall he generally speaks positively of his parents, and he loved and missed them enough to risk his life several times for them. Even when he's frustrated by their joined presence making it harder for him to conduct criminal activities, he still misses them and thinks about them often when he's away from them.

Which yeah, that's what this all boils down to for me. Artemis just wants time with both of his parents, and Artemis Sr.'s recovery, in my headcannon, would absolutely allow for that time he so desperately wanted, deep down. Assisting in the physical recovery, using the down time to really talk and catch up (without mentioning his fairy adventures, of course.) It would be a drastic change and awkward to adjust to initially, but overall I think it would be good.

And as for Tim and Angeline? I think there would be of course the joy of being reunited with the love of your life, because Tim and Angeline are absolutely soul-mates. But I also imagine there were many, many conversations of regrets and questioning how to move forward as a family from this point. Angeline seems to defer to Tim as the one who makes decisions for the family as a whole, but she isn’t afraid to give her input. I bet they were scared, in a way, because not only has everything changed, but the future is uncertain. They have to restructure their whole life, and while overall the changes are positive, they’re not going to be easy.

I also feel like it would be difficult for Angeline in particular because while Tim returning is a joyful thing, she now probably has some self doubts. Why did she fall apart so tremendously, at the expense of not only her well being, but her son’s? While she isn’t the best parent, I imagine Angeline will always carry heartache about her time in the attic and how she forgot her own son. And to an extent I bet Tim does too, because it was his disappearance that triggered it.

And now I want to write a fic about all of this, which I guess I'll add to my pile of ideas I've been playing around with.

–

I'd definitely like to hear more thoughts on the matter from you if you have them!

#fowldom #artemis fowl #fowl senior #angeline #this is long #but i've put a lot of thought into this even before being asked #so here you go #headcanons

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