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eriquin · 5 months

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The Prophetic D&D Game, Part 16

Start of the 5th session. Time marches on.

(master post)

Part 16

It felt like the home stretch for Eddie’s third and final senior year. He was determined to graduate this time, and putting all his effort into getting his grades up. Well, almost all his effort. He still spared time for his band, his lucrative sales job, and his two epic Dungeons and Dragons games. The Cult of Vecna was going great, and he expected that they would wrap up the Tales of the Cursed after it was done. But other than that, he was focused.

He was going over his notes for what to do next with Vecna when Grant tapped him on the shoulder. “Jeff can’t make it today,” he said. “He broke an arch wire and has to go to the orthodontist. Emergency and all.”

Eddie sighed. “Well, guess I won’t be needing these notes, then,” he said, shoving the Vecna notes into his bag. Grant raised his eyebrows and tried to get a look, but Eddie snapped his fingers in his face and shook his head. “Don’t even try it, Grantham.”

“Just keeping you on your toes, Edwin,” Grant said. “So this means we’re going to find out what happens to Natalia, then?”

“In theory,” Eddie said. He flashed Grant a wicked grin. “I might just kill her off and skip to the next bit of plot.”

Grant pouted. “Don’t be an ass,” he said. “At least give me a chance to save her. It’s been bugging me since the last session.”

“Yeah? You’re enjoying the story, huh?” Eddie shuffled through his notes to make sure he had everything for the Cursed run. “Did you give Jeff something sticky to eat just so he’d break his braces and we’d get to play?”

“No, but I was thinking about it,” Grant said. “We need more hours in the day, man. I want to know what happens with the cult, too.”

“Here, here,” Eddie said. He produced his Cursed notes and rearranged his stuff before heading to the drama room. Grant followed him. “Oh, did you pick up the new Metallica album? I have been listening to it over and over since I got it. It’s mind blowing.”

The rest of the club was running late, and Eddie and Grant got the whole table set up before anyone else showed. Gareth was the first of them to arrive, and he looked confused when he saw the layout that Eddie had put on the battlemap. He quickly figured out that they were playing the Cursed, and rubbed his hands together in excitement. He and Grant started discussing theories about the demon and how Natalia had ended up cursed. Eddie sat back and kept his face neutral as he listened in.

The three freshmen arrived together, arguing about something science related. They dropped it almost as soon as they got in the room and saw Eddie holding up their character sheets. Lucas let out a whoop. He had clearly missed playing Sadie.

As they settled down to play the game, Eddie gave them a quick recap of what had happened so far. It hadn’t been that long, but it was useful to set the stage and get back into character. “So now that you’re all ready to escape the demon realm, Natalia has frozen and gone into a trance. Before I take Grant aside and tell him what’s going on in his character’s head, what are you all doing?”

“We need music, right? Do any of us know her favorite song?” Gareth asked.

Dustin leaned forward. “We’re in Quinn’s house, right? He’s a bard. He probably has plenty of music and instruments around. Either he or I should be able to play something for her.”

“Yeah, sure, but that doesn’t tell us what song to play,” Gareth said. “Mike, wouldn’t Joe know her favorite song?”

Mike snapped his fingers. “Yeah! Sure, definitely.” He looked at Eddie.

Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know, man. You guys broke up a long time ago. Maybe it was for a good reason.” He held his hands out helplessly. “Make me a good intelligence check there, sparky.”

Mike picked up his die and blew on it for luck. He rolled, and got a pathetically bad number. Everyone groaned and started yelling at Mike, who complained about his dice hating him.

Eddie stood and leaned over the table to look at them all, waiting until they quieted down. “Grant, I think it’s time you and I adjourned to my office. Shall we?”

His office was the corner of the drama room, behind a folding screen. Grant brought his dice. He ran through a scenario of Natalia witnessing a young family moving into a sprawling mansion from the point of view of the only son. Grant quickly figured out that this was the Englund mansion that they’d explored, and the boy was the dead son. Grant was great for this, because he loved to sit and gather information before acting. He had Natalia watch as the young boy narrated the events of his life, and developed a twisted set of powers. It quickly became clear that he was responsible for his family’s deaths, and that his father had been unjustly blamed. He showed Natalia the way he had been made into a pawn for the wizard’s guild, just like their psychic sorceress friend.

“Still as a young boy, he is confined to a chair and imbued with a mystical tattoo. It looks much like Millie’s, but while hers a lambda, his is an alpha,” Eddie said.

“The first one,” Grant said.

“Indeed. He was the first psychic they found, and because of him, they started looking for more. But he was just biding his time, and they could not control him.”

“Oh, damn,” Grant said. He grabbed his dice. “Okay, I need to get the hell out of here. Can I run?”

“You can try.”

They went through a short combat, and Natalia ended up with psychic damage, but ultimately, the villain let her go. “He tells you to tell Millie that he’s coming for her, and that he’ll see her again soon,” Eddie said, clapping his hand on Grant’s shoulder. “Now, let’s go let the rest of them know that you survived.”

Taglist: @weirdandabsurd42, @10moonymhrivertam, @blueskiesandstarrynights

#the prophetic d&d game #hellfire club #my writing #stranger things

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ndostairlyrium · 10 months

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Hey!! <3

3 for each of them

19 for Elanor

13 and 15 for Hawke

6 and 13 for Ankh

4 for whichever OC you'd like!

!!! Thank you so much dear!! Also I'm totally stealing your layout lol This had me listening to some tracks I hadn't heard to in a loooong time, so I'm super happy! I wish I could cook you some pasta right now ;;

3 - a boss battle song for fighting my muse

(Watch your ears if they are sensitive <<)

Elanor: This happens to be her theme song either. When she goes full berserk she's an unstoppable vulcano of that rage she was forced to repress through the years. I thought this was the most appropriate.

(youtube link) Honorable mentions: All Nightmare Long by Metallica (yt link), Steel by Battle Beast (yt link)

Hawke: A vibrant punk rock cover of a song from lgbtq+ icon Raffaella Carrà (bless her soul). It fits him, it's a banger, watch fire coming down the sky unexpectedly.

(youtube link) - the original (it's so 70s I'm gonna die and resurrect omgg)

Dark Souls Boss Ankh: Honestly, I was tempted to just browse Wagner and call it a day, but the album Cult from Apocalyptica has some serious "This boss will take you three hours" vibes so I had to just sit down and pick the most nervous track ever.

(youtube link)

The Singles

Ela

19 - a song that plays while my muse studies/works

I already stated that Elanor gives me the idea that she's into thrash, so I'll act accordingly - aka I'm brushing off the dust from my physical copy of Cowboys from Hell because that album has some serious and underrated gems that she would love << I remember doing my whole presentation on Gericault for Art History I with this album (and Rust in Peace lol) in the background, so I guess it would work for her too? Hah

(youtube link)

Hawke

13 - a song dedicated to on of my muse’s ships

Already replied here

15 - a song that my muse would play at their wedding

So, it has to be stupid, right? Right? Also check this artist out, her covers are gorgeous ;;

(youtube link)

Ankh

6 - a song that makes my muse want to dance

The girl doesn't dance, the girl gets in the mosh pit and makes victims.

(youtube link)

Seriously tho, she does dance pretty decently (thanks Josie for those hardcore dance lessons before Halamshiral <<), but you'll never catch her listening to valzer in her free time lol

13 - a song dedicated to on of my muse’s ships (specify ship)

Already replied here

Bonus:

4 - a song lyric that describes my muse

For this I'm picking Hawke:

Se dolore ti farai - If you become pain Io starò attento - I'll be careful A ricucire i tagli - Stitching the wounds Senza stringere mai - Without tighten them

Incantevole by Subsonica (yt link)

Music Meme

#long post #ask meme #music meme #elanor cousland #kerry #ankh #also viper if you're reading this I owe u my life for letting me discover electric callboy 🙏💛#noora best metal female vocalist nowadays << I will die on that hill #picture fenris throwing away the instruments before the wedding starts lol #my translations suck :'' but I tried my best!! that song is delicious

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that-sims-four-blog · 2 months

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Oh dear, I started a Sims 4 playthrough.

You know what, "Leeb, Leefuh, Love" sounds like a pretty good sitcom name. I'm going to start naming whatever sitcom-fanfic this playthrough becomes—provided I don't chicken out of documenting This Thing out of cringe.

For starters, Metallica—the three angriest men of the year 2003—decided to move to some random house in Oasis Springs. Why? I don't know. Are they there to find a bassist? Dunno either.

Okay, maybe they aren't so angry.

In fact, James and Lars are coming along pretty well. Since there isn't a way in-game for them to start a thrash metal band, each members are doing mundane jobs!

Lars is a lawyer—looking at you, Napster—while James is an Entertainer, probably a comedian because why not. Kirk's getting a start in the Culinary career.

...Oh, yeah, the Welcome Wagon struck that household, too.

Johnny Zest made a fruitcake. I think they liked it—I can't recall what they thought of it... Kirk's social awkwardness begins to pop up, too, although advice from his totally-bandmates did help a bit.

And yes, that's Makoto Yuuki—from the popular PS2 video game Persona 3 FES—in the background. We'll bother about him in a bit. At least he gets along pretty well with the Metallica household, especially James.

Several hours later, Lars decided to become the new Skrillex, and played around with the music-making-table (I can't remember what they are called).

It's got about as much bass as ...And Justice For All, trust me.

Moving over to that place that the developers designed after the British countryside, not that I remember the world's name, the RBY household moved into a house. Weiss won't fit anywhere between the budding lovers Blake and Yang and the hyperfixative Ruby. She might get created at some point, just outside the hellhole.

So, yeah, there they are, living their lives in the moment.

This is probably my favorite screenshot of them, Blake probably being OOC be damned.

Also, most of the household seems to have fairly... memorable faces, especially Yang's psychotic expressions. I might compile them at some point in the future.

Anyways, so, jobs: Blake writes stuff. Yang is a cop—because I can, and I want her to be as silly as Martin Riggs; so she's stuck in a cop-aganda show. Ruby goes to high school, therefore she's stuck in some teenagers-do-stuff sitcom.

Oh, yeah, Ruby did go to high school, and I have some bits to document.

As pissed off because of some fear about unfulfilled dreams, she seems to have a thing for exercise. It's probably an excuse to offer you one of her goofy-looking faces, though.

There's some random person with the Zelda moon following them, apparently:

And there's also that thing.

I can't kill that Landgraab off for the grievous crime of T-posing?

God fucking damn it.

But aside from that, everything went as normal, and Ruby managed to acquaint herself with Cassandra Goth.

That's good, I suppose. There were two other Sims that she managed to befriend, too, but I forgot their names. No, that Landgraab is not on the list—absolutely not, nuh-uh.

Also, later that day, she decided to bring Ruby to the Hijinks-and-other-things Festival. She went off to the art museum, while Ruby's left on her own. Noooo, that never happened before in the show Ruby was from! haha! But yeah, she joined the Pranksters—mainly because I wanted a silly laugh—but upon finding out that James Hetfield is there, I thought it'd be utterly hilarious for her to prank him.

That's the best image I could capture. No, I'm not giving you the aftermath of the trolling.

So, that's one-half of a thing I'm doing, and I realized that I was capturing too many pictures for comfortable reading. Plus, the default Tumblr layout sucks for this kind of thing, and I have no clue how to code layouts, so... Yeah, the second half coming later on.

#the sims 4 #the sims 4 screenshots #ts4 #sims4 #archive convinience tag goes here

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steveinscarlet · 1 year

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I don't think I've ever seen this interview before? It's from a free paper called Soundcheck! in Nov 1983. Transcribed below because the layout is hard to read and the spelling is bad! Like misspelling both parts of Steve's name bad 🙄

Talk about keen. After a gruelling ten-month trek of the States, followed by a short tour of Europe which precedes a pre- Christmas mini-tour of Britain (sheesh, it's tiring enough just typing about it!), Def Leppard guitarists Phil Collen and Steve 'Steamin' Clark have filled their precious few days of rest in between by doing a whole pile of interviews.

This includes yours truly, SOUNDCHECK! staff reporter Pete Makowski. This year saw the massive US success of the group's third and greatest album Pyromania, which has established them as Superstars in America, where audiences scream and general hysteria is the norm at one of the group's stadium-size performances.

Phil Collen is the band's newest member and fits in comfortably with the Leppard sound. He also works very well with Clark. In fact, their musical tie has developed into a solid bond of friendship and they seem to spend all their working hours together.

Both firmly believe in maintaining the axe image and hopefully after the release of their next album will show audiences all over the world that solos do not have to be long, boring and monotonous. They have an idea they feel will revolutionise the concept of guitar playing.

As expected, they were tight-lipped about this new baby but otherwise proved very open and entertaining as a team in the interview that follows......

PM: The tour has been promoted partly by Why Bother Ltd, which is your company (one of them, that is). Has that moniker got anything to do with your feelings about touring this country?

PC: Yes. 'Cause when we tour over here, we always lose money.

SC: Yeah, the title of the company speaks for itself.

PC: If you're touring somewhere, and you're losing money, why bother doing it?

PM: Will you ever concentrate your energies on crackin' it over here?

SC: We obviously are! We wouldn't be doing a tour here after 10 months of playing America, would we? It's still a bit steep though, because now it's not Phonogram anymore who are backing us for these ventures; we're actually forking out our own money, as we've cleared our debt with Phonogram.

PM: What could you credit for the mammoth success of the last US tour?

SC: Lots of different things, you know we don't look like we're one of the Metallica bands. In fact, we made a conscious effort of not trying to look like that. We just tried to look normal and it seemed to work. Mums ain't scared to send their kids to our shows, where they'd probably have second thoughts about an Iron Maiden tour or Judas Priest, something like that, thinking their daughters would get raped or something.

PM: Why do you think groups like Quiet Riot have recently enjoyed mega mammoth success?

SC: Because we opened it up a bit; I don’t think it's just because of that. We've definitely opened the gate for other rock bands and they all seem to be doing quite well again. You know how it goes.

PM: Do you still enjoy touring the States?

SC: Yeah, when we come back and toured Europe, mainly because of the weather. Everyone immediately got 'flu. America was good and we had a good summer on our side. The tour got bigger and bigger, we started off thinking 'are we big enough to headline?' We have a top ten album and we were supporting Billy Squier. Then we got bigger and bigger and half-way through the tour we had to play two nights in some places; the further we went on the bigger the band became.

PM: Did you make a conscious effort to pace yourself on this, because I recall the last two times you played there everyone got worn out halfway through?

PC: We done alright. Actually, I was surprised.

SC: The big difference was that we headlined everywhere. This was the first time we'd headlined everywhere.

PM: Has it made that much difference? On your previous marathon treks it seems it really took its toll, physically speaking?

SC: It's probably because you weren't there (laughs). Keep Makowski out the way and you'll be alright!

PC: I remember our manager, Peter Mensch, saying: 'I realise Phil that this is your first American tour but Makowski won't be here so you'll be alright'.

PM: Was Pete Willis (Leppard's former guitarist) missed? I mean, what difference has his absence made to the group?

PC: Well it's the difference between half a million and six million.

SC: Pete had more of a cult following.

PC: I got some iffy fan mail, didn't I. Things like, 'you should be dead'. I got some fierce ones.

SC: When people saw the videos it helped to advertise the fact that Pete had gone and now Phil is with us. So kids, when they think of Def Leppard now, they think of Phil Collen as being an established part of the band.

PM: Your last album Pyromania was a mega mammoth success; have you started thinking about having to follow this up?

PC: We haven't really thought about it. We've got some ideas. A lot of bands do that, they think right: 'the last album was successful, this is what we should do to follow’. We haven't done that.

I mean, we may even do a keyboard album, as an example. I very much doubt that that's gonna happen. It's all down to how we feel at the time, really.

PM: How have things worked out between you two, because after America you should know each other pretty well by now and ironed out any problems that needed to be dealt with.

SC:I think we were worried about things at first, but I think that Phil's better and all the numbers sound much better than they ever could have with Pete. We're best mates now.

PM: That was quite a crucial change in personnel for the band.

SC: Yeah, and we were worried regarding how it would work out, because you don't really know what you need until you experience the change. When you've worked with someone for three years, initially things will be a bit strange; but as it's happened, things have worked out better than we'd ever expected.

PM: Is it still necessary to keep touring the States?

PC: I just think it's important to play where people appreciate you; you know for a fact that you lose money in England and you have to draw the line somewhere. As it happens, we made a bit of money in the States and it becomes very apparent that in other places we lose money when we go on the road. Hand over fist you have to fork out cash from your own wages.

PM: You've been getting a lot of teenybop- type fan hysteria in the States. How do you feel about that?

PC: It's great fun. Just take it with a pinch of salt. When it first started happening we just looked at each other and burst into hysterics thinking 'are you sure?'. It is a bit weird and we didn't accept it as the norm. We just thought this is a fluke, take it with a pinch of salt; it just kept on getting worse or better, whichever way you look at it.

What helps though is the attitude of the band. There's no ego problems here, which is what always screws other groups up. People start getting really weird. We're in a good position in as much as we're a younger and newer band and you can see all that crap going on while bands like AC/DC are getting on.

SC: When we're their age we'll have seen all the bad sides and have experienced all the problems when we were a lot younger. So it's taught us a lesson. So when we're their age we'll know what to do and what not to do.

PM: You do have a very strong band image.

PC: Yeah, it's not run by one person. The only way that you're gonna make good is if you all stick together and you all pull together.

PM: Have any of you got individual aspirations?

PC: Only within the band really me and him. Personally, there's some guitar things that we wanna do, but we can do them within the band. It works out great.

PM: Will the next album take as long to put together as Pyromania, which was 14 months in the making?

PC: It may do.

SC: We're not jumping on the Pyromania bandwagon: ‘oh, we want a hit album, let's bung out another one quick'. We're not going for a formula and trying to make forthcoming products sound like Pyromania because after a couple of albums we'd be finished. We're gonna take our time, do another album, which will retain our quality, and if it doesn't sell as well then tough shit! At least we'd know that what we did we wanted. But we're confident that it will do well anyway.

PC: Pyromania will be a hard one to follow up, but we ain't even thinking about that at the moment. We've got our own ideas and we're just going to do them. If no one likes them then bollocks!

PM: How about recording a live album?

SC: We have no plans for a live album.

PC: That usually comes at the end of a band's career or record contract; when they peak. Live albums are basically bullshit time. We haven't really got enough material to do one.

PM: You seem to separate yourself from the whole Heavy Metal bandwagon. Is that a conscious move?

PC: Well, it doesn't really bother us if we're associated with it. I don't really think that we're like the rest of them. We don't wear all that stupid regalia; we don't get all the studs and leather on, 'cause that's really false isn't it? I mean, could you seriously look me in the face if we was to like stick all the gear on?

SC: We've never tried to dress like that and it used to worry us. But we don't care anymore.

PC: The way we look at things is that we fill a great big gaping gap between bands like Journey and Foreigner and bands like AC/DC and Iron Maiden; we're right in the middle.

SC: We're almost like a Zeppelin or Queen -right in the middle! Well, that's what the press in America compare us to. We never said anything. We'd like people to take us for what we are...

And the beat goes on.

#def leppard #interview #steve clark #phil collen

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feverinfeveroutfic · 2 years

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chapter four: a new skeleton in the closet

“Your father and I had been talking for a time, to be perfectly frank with you, Sam. It's only to be friendly with one another, and it’s only the best thing for the both of us as well as you and your marriage. Our romance is long gone at this point, but to be honest, we had to get moving out of New York for a time on our own part. I had moved into my place and your father gave me a call because he had long moved into the city himself. Given we’re a California family, the layout left me rather baffled at first—the visits here every so often courtesy of Miss Grimes gave me an idea of the place, but I still had to thumb my way through it given the streets and the neighborhoods are still rather alien to me. Anyways, your father called me and offered to take me to Boston to better get acquainted with the area—I had been there, but never actually fully realized it before. We left on Monday morning and he drove the entire way there. We got there by lunchtime and we spent the rest of the day in the heart of town. We had planned to explore the rest of the place all week when the explosions happened.”

“And they told you to stay there,” Alex replied as he sipped on his coffee.

“They told us to stay right where we were in the heart of Boston. Ruben had only enough money on him to last until Wednesday and I don’t get paid until the twenty-third, too. We were both worried, about the result of the attacks and about you and Alex. Needless to say, we were both scared to death.”

Esmé took off her cat-eye glasses and she pressed the side of her hand to her eye.

“We didn’t know what you were doing—” she continued in a tearful voice; the first time in so long Sam had seen her mother cry. “We both thought the worst.” She sniffled and then gasped. Alex nibbled on his bottom lip and bowed his head a bit. “We called you every night on his cellular phone and we kept on getting dial tones. We thought we had lost both you and Alex...” A tear streamed down Esmé’s cheek at that, and that prompted Sam to put her arms around her.

She caught a bright flash outside of the window. A quick flash that she knew could only serve as lightning. Alex peered over his shoulder and he took a glimpse out of the window himself. Sam turned to him as he mouthed the words, “it’s raining” to her.

She didn’t want to make things seem so much more emotional for either of them there in that room, but Sam flashed back on the night after Cliff was killed. Everything about that night checked out with her: the pattern of life repeated itself to her on that night, and she had assumed the role of Lars all the while. Indeed, she remembered that the twenty-seventh was coming up in exactly two weeks at that point. Fifteen years since that fateful night, and fifteen years since she had cried into Lars’ arms as the rain fell all around them.

Fifteen years later, and she still had done very little to commemorate him, especially when she vowed to make something at the ten-year mark. Perhaps this was her opportunity to stand by her word. To stand by her word and do something in Cliff’s memory as well as give Metallica their due. They were still her friends after all, even with as gigantic as they had become the last several years. They were still a part of her neighborhood no matter what happened to them, even when Jason had gone away and James had his own problems. They were still her neighbors, and she only had hope for them.

She had hope for her home as well as her parents: she knew in her heart that it could there with them as well.

Sam held Esmé close to her chest, and she treated her to her hands on her sides followed by the small of her back. Sam closed her eyes as her mother wept into her chest.

“It’s okay, Mom,” she assured her in a soft voice. “We’re still here. We're all still here.”

“We were so scared, Sam—we were both terrified!”

Alex, meanwhile, shrank back down on the couch and he tended to his cup of coffee all the while. Another flash of light outside and it bathed the side of his face in that bright white light. Even with the occasional flash of light, Sam could look into his eyes and the utter look of discomfort in them. He pursed his lips and bowed his head.

Esmé lifted her head from Sam’s chest and she brushed away some more tears from her face. Sam felt a little bit of mist on her eyelashes but that was as far as she could go with it. Esmé stroked her upper back with one hand and she brushed away a few more tears.

“Would you like a tissue, Miss Shelley?” Alex offered her in a low voice. She sniffled and she shook her head.

“No, thank you. That's so sweet of you, though, Alex.”

“What about Dad? Where's he at?” Sam asked her out of the blue.

“He’s back at his place,” Esmé answered in a broken voice. “He’s still reeling from it all as much as anyone across the country and around the world, probably about as much as me. We're both worried, battered parents who were close to a disaster and we were running on fumes for a whole week over in Boston.”

“How’d you survive a whole week in Boston with what little money you had?” Alex asked her, and he cleared his throat: Sam could hear the pain in his voice as well. He had dry eyes but she could sense it there inside of him. She could feel him and his bleeding heart even from a few feet away from him.

“I have no clue to be perfectly honest,” Esmé replied as she wiped away more tears from the brim of her eyes. In the dim light, Sam could see another one stream down the side of her face even after that. “I have no idea how we survived that week.”

“Wow,” Sam breathed as she realized that she had no idea as to how she and Alex survived that week as well with what very little money they both had. Joey and Krista only so much on their end as well: meanwhile, Zelda actually had to ask the two of them for money to help her on her way back home. Moreover, she had no idea how much money she had left over from the Cherry Suicides and what they had made when they initially became somewhat famous about ten years before.

It was in fact as if everyone was making it up as they went along, and more so in the face of an earth-shattering disaster. She herself was no exception. Everyone made it up as they went rolled with it, and more so with a stretch of ashes before her and the rest of the city complete in the form of ground zero this side of the East River.

“We were in our hotel room as we watched the towers come down,” Esmé proceeded, her voice still broken and tinny. “Your father woke me up right as the news broke out onto the screen. Even though the two of us were worried to absolute death about the both of you, for a few moments, we had returned to the romance of all those years ago again.”

“Tragedy brings people together,” Sam herself pointed out: all the while, she kept on thinking about that night and she kept on thinking about Cliff.

“Tragedy brings people together—and how,” Esmé echoed her. She sniffled again and brushed away another tear from underneath her eyes. Another flash of light which in turn was followed by a clap of thunder: rain pattered on the outside of the window right behind Alex’s head.

“And where did you two run off to?” she asked Sam right then.

The story all over again, and she knew she would have to let it rest at one point.

“We went upstate on a little camping trip,” Sam told her. “It was going to be my birthday present to him—” She gestured over to Alex. “We were coming home and the guy in the toll booth basically told us to turn around and go back. We saw the whole thing go down on the television screen in a gas station. We thought we had lost you...” Her voice trailed off as another round of tears came about. Esmé extended a hand and touched her knee.

“Tragedy brings people together,” she echoed her words yet again.

The three of them were silent as the rain came down outside of the apartment. Sheets of rain over the rooftop and the bricks right outside of there: another flash of bright light surged throughout the black sky and reflected onto the rim of the fire escape out there; Alex huddled closer to Sam and Esmé and he adjusted the lapels of his outer shirt.

Another flash of lightning, another clap of thunder, and the rain seemed to come down even harder over the entire neighborhood. Hell's Kitchen was being drowned alive in the face of smoke.

“I just think back to when I was with Testament,” Alex recalled right then and there. “How Chuck would often say that we don’t have much but we have each other.”

“It’s especially true now,” Sam said with a shiver up her spine. “We don’t have much and the city is forever scarred now—but we still have each other, safe and sound in the wake of it all.”

“I offered your father to come over here tonight, but he decided not to,” Esmé persisted without a second thought. “He still has something to do back at his place.” But Sam wondered if he still couldn’t fully face the world as of yet. Her own father, in all of his bravery and boldness, the rock of the family even after he and her mother separated and then divorced, couldn’t face the world at large even in the face of tragedy. All was not right in the world at the sound of that.

“By the way, Alex—I've been meaning to tell you this,” Esmé started again. “Short hair is—not a good look for you.”

He glanced over at her through the dim light: the shadows of the room caressed over his deep eyes and the full tip of his nose. His little ears resembled to little oblong rings on the sides of his head courtesy of the dim light. His smooth skin carried a bit of extra polish despite the darkness.

Bare and yet so soft at the same time. Alex himself at his own place there on the couch. And yet he was missing something. He missed those long flowing black curls over his shoulders and his collar bones.

Though he never looked cuter to her with the short haircut, she thought about her running her fingers through the softest ringlets all around his head. Something about the hair also accentuated his lips and the round shape of his chin as well as the full diamond shape of his jaw. The long hair gave him the beauty that drew her to him in the first place, and he rid of it to appear more sensible.

“Not a good look,” he echoed her.

“Yes, it’s too jarring for your face.” Esmé shifted around for a better look into his face; Sam leaned over to join in on looking on at him. The long hair that made him look young and rebellious, but also made him look like Alex in the end: the silvery gray streak on the crown of his head, once a singular pearl over his forehead having grown into a tenuous wisp the length of his face, only rounded out the look and separated him from the other long-haired boys in the metal world: the short haircut made his streak appear larger and wider than before now that Sam had a better look at him in the darkness. Esmé held up her hands to his face but she never touched his skin. “You have this nice full, round face that needs something like long, luxurious hair to surround it. If I'm being perfectly honest, Alex, every time I look over at you, I have to double take.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Sam told her with a raise of her eyebrows; Alex rubbed the tip of his nose at that. She wondered if it still ached him the way that her ribs and her leg ached her every so often.

“Those long curls you used to have made you so much softer,” Esmé continued, complete with a smile on her face; she picked up her glasses and returned them to her face for a better look at Alex’s face. Sam stood to her feet and ambled across the room, and she switched on the light for her. Alex snapped his eyes shut at the sudden rush of bright light, but nevertheless, Esmé had her intentions with him. “Like I said—you've got this nice round face, even as a skinny little man.”

“A nice, round kissable face,” Sam noted as she took her seat there on the couch once again.

“Oh yes! Very kissable indeed.” Esmé flashed Sam a wink, but Sam herself recoiled at the memory of her mother making love to Alex. She brought her hands closer to his face, and then his neck. He parted his lips a bit and he shuddered at the feeling of her hands on his body.

“You picked such a beautiful boy, Sam,” Esmé told her with a slightly lopsided smile, much like Alex’s smile itself. “A beautiful boy to elope and keep for yourself. A beautiful boy who’s growing even more handsome with age.”

“Handsome,” Alex muttered in a low voice.

“All the more handsome, especially with the thought of long hair around the crown of your head,” Esmé continued. Sam held back a bit at the sound of her own mother’s voice right then.

She thought about the spectacle down there on the sidewalk right before she walked into the apartment and they offered her some coffee. Belinda and Eric both somewhat drunk and showing their truest colors to one another, completely oblivious to Rebecca Hammett-Peterson's knowledge. She remembered that night in the game room when she and Alex had had a few too many beers and he was rather loose in his own rite. All for her, without a shadow of a doubt, but the power of alcohol had reared its ugly glare at them all once again. The thoughts only accentuated themselves as Esmé continued to caress Alex’s face: as a matter of fact, for a few seconds, Sam believed she was about to kiss him if she even turned away for even so much as a few seconds.

But lucky for the both of them, Esmé set her hands upon her knees and she turned back to the cup of coffee on the table before her. It had gone cold with the passage of time, but she picked it up and gave it a hearty swig right then and there. She took off her glasses once again and sighed through her nose.

“I better get home,” she confessed. “Although I'm still not very familiar with the subways here.”

“It’s raining, too,” Alex added as his bottom lip trembled from sheer apprehension.

“And it’s raining and thundering outside, yes. I don’t generally feel like taking something as powerful and metallic as a subway while a thunderstorm is raging on outside.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“People do it all the time here, Miss Shelley,” he pointed out. “But you’re a newcomer here so—I'll give you the benefit of a doubt.”

“Says the guy born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area,” Sam cracked.

“Says the guy born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, exactly!” He chuckled at that, his big hearty chuckle and a sound that she had been craving to hear for days at a time.

“We have a spare room here, though, Mom,” Sam volunteered.

“I’ve slept on that bed a number of times,” Alex told her. “It’s pretty comfy.”

“I also don’t want to take the subway because I worry about something nefarious like a bomb being strapped to one of the trains,” Esmé added.

“All the reason to stay with us for the night,” Sam insisted.

Within time, her mother settled into the second bedroom and Sam and Alex themselves turned in for the night. He closed the door part of the way as she stripped off her blouse and changed into one of her many camisoles, followed by a pair of soft flannel pajama bottoms decorated with little light pink cats: the light pink color made her think of Marla and her bubblegum pink hair.

“When’d you get those?” Alex asked her; she turned and face the little lopsided grin on his face as he looked on at her pajamas.

“This past summer when you were out in California,” she replied without a bat of a lash. “I’ve outgrown all my other pajama bottoms so I bought some new ones. I saw these and got them because they were soft.”

“And they have cats on them, too,” he declared as he peeled off his shirt and revealed his slender little body to her. His waist looked slightly fuller even right then and there, but then again, every time they changed clothes in front of each other, they developed the habit of always turning their backs to one another. This, the same man who posed nude for her in her apartment and she drew his naked body, including the miniscule stretch marks in places one wouldn’t expect to see them. The habit only picked up even more as she realized that his graduation date was coming the following June.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” she confessed to him in a near whisper, and he raised an eyebrow at that.

“What? The attacks?”

She nibbled on her bottom lip as she eyed his body and she kept on thinking about her mother’s hands on his head and shoulders. The thought of the two of them having dinner at the house on Catalina and he was so warm and full from all the dinner and the pink dessert wine. The thought of her mother’s lips on his own. It never troubled her much until she actually thought about it right then and there.

“No. Eric and Belinda.”

“Oh, that,” he said with a raise of his eyebrows. His face opened up a bit more from the lack of long hair around his head, and thus, Sam could see where her mother was coming from with that remark. She never yearned for his long hair more than at that very moment there.

His long hair, a symbol of rock n’ roll rebellion and going against the grain of what his parents wanted for him, and that included making drunk love to an actual parent. That was it. He lacked that feeling of youthful rebelliousness, but she wanted him to be honest, however. She wanted him to be honest and away from the thought that he was merely doting into the world of precious youth when it waned away for a reason.

There was one thing that returned her to the idea of youthfulness: one thing that kept her heart and soul young even on those lonesome days bunked up in her old apartment following her car accident, and the one thing that made her fresh even thinking about it.

She bowed past him towards the nightstand and she picked up her journal and her pencil. She opened to a fresh new page and she began to draw it right on the spot. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alex shake his head at her.

“Samantha, don’t you dare,” he warned her in a hushed voice so Esmé wouldn’t hear him. “Don't.”

“Why? I'm not going to share it with anyone.”

“I don’t want you to, though!” he insisted as he took his seat next to her on the edge of the bed. “It just conjures up so many images, like—I don’t even want to know.” He pinched his eyes shut and shook his head.

“Alex, if I hid those erotic drawings from you for all that time, I can hide an erotic drawing of Eric and Belinda getting down with it.”

“Getting down with it, is that what you said?” he chuckled.

“Yeah. They were getting down and getting jiggy with it.”

He chuckled again, and that time he bowed his head a bit as if he was a shy little boy. Sam kept going with the pencil strokes until she recreated something wavy and crinkly, something that somewhat resembled to the crown of Belinda’s head, right over Eric’s low smooth black mane. From a distance, it looked as though he had dyed his hair a rich solid black, perhaps to maintain his own youth. However, she wanted to return to her youth rather than keep it up.

“I’m drawing this thing and—you don’t have to look if you don’t want to,” she assured him.

He swallowed, probably for the nervous feeling inside of him.

“No, no, I’m—already this far with you, I may as well watch you.”

Though the two of them were both in their mid-thirties at that point, the more Sam drew it up in her journal, the more it almost felt like they had become young kids again. Young kids who snuck around with that one secretive drawing that Sam didn’t want to share with anyone else but her best friend next to her. Alex huddled up next to her and he took off his wedding band.

“What’d you do that for?” she asked him in a hushed whisper.

“To add to the naughty feeling of anything.” He flexed his lanky fingers: she eyed his knuckles, which were growing bare and far more prominent with all the guitar work he had been doing all this time. She never realized just how slender and lovely his bones were, that is until she took a second look at his hand and his knuckles. She swallowed and she returned her attention to the journal plunked out on her lap before her.

Belinda’s crimped hair waved about as if she stood in the wind: Eric’s smooth hair swirled around her as if he was engulfing her like the tentacles of an octopus.

“Shall I keep their pants off or make their pants look crumpled around their feet?” she asked him.

“Eh, follow your heart’s desires.”

Indeed, she left the pants off of both of them. Something so titillating about it, so dirty and wrong, and yet so right at the same time. Alex snickered at the sight of her drawing Eric’s bare hips and thighs as he entwined himself with Belinda. They were the couple of the century; Sam was sure of it. Even if he was married to Rebecca, they had it going there. Alcohol reared its ugly head but it revealed the truth no matter what.

“You are such a bastard,” he joked.

“Me?” Sam laughed. “A bastard? Is that what you called me?”

“Yeah, an old dirty bastard. If that’s the case, then I’m one, too. We're both filthy and dirty. A couple of old dirty bastards.”

“Eh, birds of a feather,” she pointed out.

A few final touches and then Sam signed the bottom of the page. She wagged her finger at Alex as they both vowed to never show that drawing to anyone as they turned in for the night.

The next morning, they awoke to the smell of coffee and the sound of soft humming from the kitchen. They both got up at the same time and walked into the front part of the apartment when Esmé took a sticky note off of the top of the counter.

“What’s ‘Fool’s Gold’?” she asked them with a nudge of her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her free hand.

“It’s... something fun and special,” Alex replied. “We can’t really talk about it, to be honest.”

“Something fun? Like—an album from you, Alex?”

“No. It's Zelda’s solo album, but that’s all I'm saying, though.”

“It’s coming out on New Year’s Day,” Sam added. “That’s all I'm gonna say, too.”

“Well, look at you kids being all about releasing music and whatnot,” Esmé declared in a singsong voice and with a little nod of her head.

“That’s what we get for being old dirty bastards,” Sam joked, and Alex snickered at that once he was right behind the counter’s edge for a cup of coffee.

#fanfic #fanfiction #testament fanfic #chapter 4 #book eight #power drunk majesty #fever in fever out #fever in fever out fanfic #testament #testament band #alex skolnick #oc tag #heavy angst #slow burn #slice of life #also on ao3 #writing #fic writing #text

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scontomio · 1 year

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chaufferv · 10 months

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PRETTY FLY (FOR A WHITE GUY!!) (ﾉ･_-)☆

lars ulrich icons !!

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hikaruklaus · 1 year

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Heya, my name is Klaus. I'm a hentai artist and professional game developer. This post acts as an introduction, as well as a semi-incoherent rant.

... Enjoy?

I'm in a bit of a rut at the moment, I haven't been happy for a while now and I feel like I need some sort of space to write about my thoughts and stuff. I know very little about tumblr and how it works, which is part of the reason I picked it as my little "vent space". I've never been fully active on social media, but I know that I really hate Twitter, Facebook is frustrating to use, TikTok is overwhelming and irritating, and Reddit has a lot of unnecessary negativity floating around constantly. Hopefully this place is a little bit better. I'm not expecting people to follow or even see the stuff I post, but I hope the environment is less hostile and irritating than its competition.

I'm in my early 20s, and I'm a real goddamn nerd (you know, in case the whole "game developer and hentai artist" introduction didn't make that obvious). I love Nintendo games, heavy metal, cats, and vtubers. I have an off-beat sense of humour, don't know how else to describe it. Earthbound and Monkey Island kind of stuff.

I'm definitely on the weirder side (again, in case that wasn't obvious), at least partially because I'm autistic. I doodle ahegao faces while waiting for meetings to start, I have a compilation of various Hololive vtubers screaming as my alarm in the morning, and I have a Spotify playlist that jumps from Metallica's recent "Screaming Suicide" to the full version of that "Japanese Goblin" song that went viral like a year ago.

I'm a massive degenerate (in case that wasn't obvious [3× COMBO]). I have the whole starter package, a daki, an oppai mousepad, and like a dozen physical doujinshi.

They say tattoo artists shouldn't be tattoo artists unless they themselves have been tattoo'd, because they should know what the experience is like.

...Let's just say I'm glad the same doesn't go for hentai artists.

I speak a variety of languages, but I'll primarily be posting in English. Might throw in some Japanese dialogue into a drawing or something if I'm in the mood, it happens.

I've studied both art and game design. I'm a character artist/animator, and a generalist game designer. Don't feel like I'm particularly good at either one of them to be honest with you. : P

I use Clip Studio Paint EX to draw, and I'm slowly getting used to its animation tools as well. (I've mainly used OpenToonz, Krita, and FireAlpaca in the past, but I love the CSP brushes and layout so much that I'm trying to switch over entirely.)

I have experience with a lot of game engines, ranging from the Unreal Engine (aka my mortal enemy) to the much more simple and comfortable GameMaker Studio. I've worked on a variety of projects, some solo, others with different groups of people. Very unlikely anything you've played though.

I'm probably going to be posting a hentai drawing or three here. I tend to draw lewd shit when I'm sad, dunno why. Never had a place to post them before. I might just post a quick 5-minute sketch, or maybe a rough animation. I don't really know yet. Might do it daily, might do it once every few months.

Like I said, I haven't been happy for a good while now. I jump in and out of depressive episodes pretty often but this one's managed to last for a little longer than they usually do. I would love to tell my friends about it, but I just feel like I'd be a massive nuisance to them.

There's a lot that's bothering me, and I feel like I have to express it somehow. I'm not really a fan of "venting" on the internet, maybe because it reminds me of my teenage years, I don't know for sure- but posting it here feels "safe", it's in some random blog post no one will read, not an alarming message on discord or whatsapp, so I won't have to worry about bothering anyone, and I'll still get to write about how I feel.

Nothing I do feels right. My drawings look bad. My conversations are stale. My sleep schedule is fucked. My code is messy. I know things will get better eventually, I've been through this before, but it's hard to convince myself that that's actually the case and not just something I'm making up.

I've been feeling extremely lonely lately. As you can probably imagine if you've read all the stuff written above, I'm not exactly what you'd call a "chick magnet". I haven't been in a relationship since I was in my mid-teens, and the one I was in back then was long-distance. I haven't held a girl's hand since I was five or so and we were practically forced to do so in kindergarten. I've never kissed anyone in my life. I'm awful at nonverbal communication, and I get really jumpy whenever someone touches me, neither of which are great in a relationship. Finding someone with the same interests as me is practically impossible. I googled a whole bunch of statistics a few months back and came to the conclusion that every time I meet someone in the country I'm currently in, there is a 0.000773% chance that we have some interests in common, are both attracted to each other, and that they are single. (Oh yeah, I like numbers. Forgot to mention that.) That 0.000773% is obviously just an estimate, but I tried to be as "fair" as possible with the calculation. I very rarely leave my house, my eyesight is really rough so driving is out of the question, which means meeting new people is a rare occurance. At this point I feel like the best move might just be to give up and accept that I'll be alone forever, but that just makes me even sadder.

My real name isn't Klaus. It's an alias I came up with a few years ago that I only ended up using once to post a drawing. The drawing in question was on the lewder side of things, and I didn't want it to be associated with my other alias because no one knew about my "un-seiso" drawings. I've improved a lot as an artist since posting that old drawing and decided to pick the alias back up.

My reason for this isn't that my drawings are some kind of "DEEP DARK SECRET" that I have to keep from anyone- to be completely honest with you, I don't really care if anyone finds out what my main alias is. I just want to keep my hentai drawings separate from my more, ahem, "family friendly brand", that's all.

Sorry for rambling so much. It's very, very late, and I should be asleep by now. Bless your heart if you actually read all that crap. Cheers.

PS. Unless I decide to change it in the future, I realised right before posting this that I never set a profile picture, so I doodled an ahegao face as fast as I could, and for some reason I actually kind of like it. Really wish it weren't off-center though, might fix that tomorrow.

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