#originally i just meant to put three but then i remembered that second to last one and 💔💔💔💔

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

having a lot of allie X and similar in my hoard of songs that inevitably end up going in my playlists for abusive ship dynamics is wild, because then you get haunting high-voiced trauma pop but it's just like, scranky scooby doo villains. anyway pericky blast

#sdmi #scooby doo: mystery incorporated #ricky owens #professor pericles #pericky #abuse cw #this is by no means a complete list of this particular vibe for them let alone pericky in general #i just picked out a few to throw out there #debated adding dahmer and the limbs because it is both pericles and pericky specifically to a tee #but also. uh. mmm. mixed feelings about that one lmao #flowers of flesh and blood (be warned if you look it up that it is Extremely Gory as well as the abuse/SA imagery) is a weird one #because it's basically 'what happened to ricky; except it's how pericles would react to going through that' #which is the extreme opposite of ricky's reaction to it; as you can maybe guess by the aforementioned warnings lmao #anyway i'll have to put together an Actual Playlist to post at some point but for now have this #originally i just meant to put three but then i remembered that second to last one and 💔💔💔💔 #and then i needed one more to round it out so hush felt appropriate despite being less Haunting than the others. have some anime girl edge #when the 'and i'll undress if you need it/but please don't need it' hits #me in a puddle of tears on the floor: oh okay #SDMItag #whosebaby makes things #whosebaby makes playlists #playlists #dyn: when i die i want you to die too #SA implied cw

[seulgiwifeee]

craving irene fluff where she gets mad at you for switching your fabric softener because she loved the smell of your original one (cuz yk the girl knows her scents)

ugh just the idea of irene being so cute is bugging me

♡ Member: Irene x Femreader

♡ Theme: Fluff

♡ Warnings: None

Word count: 1.8k

তততততততততততততততততততততততততততততত

Irene happily arrived at your apartment complex early that Friday morning, coming over as quickly as she possibly could, not wanting to spare any more seconds that she could've been using to spend with you—the girl who she loved the most in the whole world!

"Princesss!" you yelled out gleefully, definitely loud enough to have pissed off your sleeping neighbors, as you stood highly on your patio, leaning over the railing and frantically waved down at the approaching Irene. Irene heard your calls and looked up, her eyes lighting up in an instant once she spotted you up there and flailed her arms while wildly hopping all around childishly as she cheered out your name.

A smile never left her face, her contagious laughter echoing throughout the complex when she jogged up those two-story stairs like nothing within a matter of seconds. The moment she turned to corner to your apartment number, just barely a few feet from your door, you ran up to her, immediately greeting the small girl in with your strong embrace.

Irene hugged you back just as tight, snuggling her head deeply into the coziness of your fluffy sweater—the one you had purposefully slipped on last minute while you were in the middle of folding laundry, remembering it was one of her favorite items of yours when spotting it out in the clutter of clothes.

This was one of your very few free weekends rather than your usual hectic schedule—no work, classes, or special events you needed to go to—so of course the only logical thing you had to do was invite your girl to stay over for the weekend!

You and Irene were, unfortunately, dating long distance due to studying at different colleges that were hours away from each other, so that meant you two normally didn't get to see each other in person for any more than two times, if a miracle struck you, maybe three times, every two weeks, and for this particular time, the last she'd seen you was close to around four weeks, almost a month! So there wasn't a thing that could describe how happy you two were to finally be in each other's arms again.

"I've missed you so much, Y/N, you don't understand! I think I was actually about to go insane if I wasn't able to see you anytime sooner!" Irene stressed to you, her voice growing muffled speaking into your chest and dug her newly manicured nails into your lower back as she held on to you tighter. You chuckled, smiling warmly looking down at her and ran your fingers through the silkiness of her dark hair. "I've missed you so much too!"

Irene lifted her head back, gazing up at you with those pretty doll-like brown eyes and shone her signature half-toothy smile, but all of a sudden, her once soft expression contorted into a grimace, frowning and flaring her nostrils up at you. Your brows furrowed in confusion, also frowning at the girl. "What's wrong?"

Irene continued to flare her nose, leaning her head back into you and sniffing at your sweater. "Nothing."

"Are you sure? Do I smell bad or something?" you asked teasingly, though quickly reconsidered your question the longer it took her to deny it. "No.." Irene trailed off, not sounding convincing in any way, and slowly backed away from you, reaching down to pick up her bag.

"Alright then.." You tilted your head at her with a confused smile, looking side to side unsurely while scratching your neck, now feeling the abrupt change of atmosphere weigh down on you.

"I'm just going to put my stuff up now," Irene said and began to walk away down the hall, but you were quick to stop her. "No! I got it, let me do it for you, your highness!" You grabbed her duffel bag and gestured your hand towards the living room. "Please, sit! And when I come back I'll make you lunch."

"Okay," Irene smiled. "But just know I'm going to be making it."

Your lips pursed, pausing in your tracks and turned over to face her again. "But you cook each time you're here, though! Just let me do it!" you whined, but Irene shook her head, continuing to go back and forth with you until she got her final ‘no’ out. "I said NO!"

"Okay fine, sheesh! But seriously next time you're going to let me cook for you," you said finally in defeat, knowing you weren't going to win this dispute and walked into your room while Irene smirked widely at you from the couch, trying to hold in a giggle. "I can't promise that."

You brushed her off with a hidden smile, knowing it was all just out of love since you knew that one of her many love languages was cooking for you, and entered your room, unzipping her bag and laid out her clothes. Some relaxing music that was playing on your speaker beforehand continued to run as you organized her items with a peaceful mind, sitting without a thought or worry until..

"—Y/N-AHH!" Your eyes went wide and you jumped, startled from hearing the screeching voice of Irene shouting demandingly through the closed door, dragging out your name in her oh-too-familiar whiny voice. Just by that tone you already knew she found something to be upset at you with, so you quickly stopped your actions and hurried up out of your room, running to the living room where you had expected her to be, though was met with no sign of her presence.

You curled your expression, turning your head towards a door leading to a room that you knew wasn't opened before—the laundry room. Taking that as an obvious sign, you quickly ran over there and flung open the cracked door, instantly locking your eyes on Irene's crotched-down figure sitting in front of the dryer messing with your clean laundry, a shirt held in each of her hands while she deeply sniffed at one of them.

Your brain didn't even get a chance to question the sight in front of you because within seconds of you being upon the doorway—once she had turned around after hearing the footsteps of you nearing the room—she gave you no time to think, charging towards you with heavy steps and shoved the warm t-shirt right into your face. "What is this?!"

You stumbled back, blindly taking hold of the shirt and removed it from your face. You narrowed your eyes down, scanning over the print on the graphic tee and shook your head slow and unsurely, furrowing your eyebrows even more in confusion as you wondered why your lover was so worked up. "A.. t-shirt?.." you muttered, not exactly sure as to what other answer Irene was expecting to hear.

Irene sharply rolled her eyes, snatching the shirt from you and forced it back deeper into your face, slightly suffocating you with the soft cotton. "Not that! The smell! What's with the smell?!" Irene demanded, placing her hands on her hips and speedily tapped her foot on the marble floor.

When she was forcing the shirt in your face, you were given no choice but to smell it as you aired in a dramatic inhale trying to gasp out for air, letting the pungent scent of sweet roses flow throughout your mouth and nose. The shirt fell onto the floor and instead of picking it up, you left it there, shooting Irene a look with so much confusion; it was literally the definition of what a series of question marks would look like if it was put into a facial expression. "What do you mean, baby?! It doesn't smell bad..or at least not to me.. it's just roses. You don't like roses now?"

"Not when they replace the lavender scent you always have! You knew that was my favorite scent! Why would you get rid of it?!" Irene pouted, crossing her arms and turned her back to you with a tiny "hmph," too upset to look even at you.

A few seconds went by and suddenly the static in your brain cleared up once everything clicked to you, realizing all of this attitude and bickering was only because you for once decided to be different and changed up your fabric softener; which you, by the way, weren't even planning on doing in the first place, but since the store was sold out of your usual scent, which wasn't a big deal for you, you just simply bought the next container your eyes spotted. You didn't even think she was going to notice something as little as that! But you should've known better than to underestimate the Bae Joohyun.

You couldn't even take her anger seriously anymore, chortling a loud cackle at her bratty attitude and threw your shirt into the laundry basket. Looking at an angry Irene is like someone drawing slanted eyebrows on a bunny, it only made her cuter.

You crept up a few steps behind Irene, snaking your arms around your girlfriend's waist and pulled her into your chest. "Joohyun, seriously?" you snickered into her ear, "are you seriously this mad that I changed up my laundry detergent to another stupid scent?"

"It's not stupid!" Irene retorted, keeping her chin up high, "How am I supposed to cuddle with you at night if can't even seek comfort in the thing that makes me smile, brings me joy, helps put me to sleep! I can't, Y/N. You know, this is really serious for me."

You laughed some more, your body ticked from her cuteness and rolled your eyes with a smile while Irene only frowned deeper at you. "Oh, Joohyun. You really are something.." you sighed, shaking your head and leaned your face into her neck.

"Do you want me to rebuy that scent? Will that cheer you up?"

Irene's eyes flashed open. "What kind of question is that?! Obviously!" Irene turned around and took a hold of your wrist, dragging you two out of the room, towards the front door. "Matter of fact, we're getting it right now," Irene insisted with every bit of determination and seriousness, not caring one bit that you were still in your house clothes.

But you didn't care either, as long as you were going to make Irene happy in the end. You'll do anything to please your princess, even when it's for things as petty as this.. "Right now?" you asked with a sigh and Irene nodded firmly, squeezing onto your wrist tighter and used her other hand to grab her keys from the counter as she walked by.

You sucked your teeth, looking up and biting back a smile once the winter breeze swirled past you as you felt yourself continuing to get dragged out of the apartment. "Alright, princess."

I kinda don't like how I wrote this :(.. but I hope this was cute and funny enough for you,, also can you guys tell that I love writing the princess pet name? hehe

— Seulgiwifee ໒꒰ྀི♡˵ᴗ͈ . ᴗ͈ ꒱ྀི১

#red velvet #irene red velvet #kpop imagines #red velvet imagines #kpop #wlw #fem reader #irene #bae joohyun #bae joohyun x reader #irene imagines #irene x reader #kpop fanfic #kpop gg #fluff #request

[ewanmitchellconnoisseur]

"𝑨𝒈𝒐𝒏𝒚" - 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒕 2 Aemond x Reader

A/N: I had not originally planned on this being a series but the Aemond girlies loved the first one so here is a second as a lil gift. //Divider by @firefly-graphics & @cafekitsune

Summary: You wake up to unfortunate circumstances. It only gets worse when you finally get some answers. A dream confirms that whatever chance you had at having a normal life was gone.

TW: Blood, Death.

←  Previous Part • Final Chapter →

Word Count: 3.6k (Not proofread, we die like men 🫡Im also just too tired I'll do it eventually🤣)

You yawned as you sat up in your bed rubbing your eyes. You look over to the spot Aemond was in and simply see a flower. Blushing you reach over and smell the flower.

You look over to the bath on the other side of the room and notice there's no steam coming out of it. You stand up and grab your robe off of the armchair next to your bed.

You walk over to the door after you wrap yourself in the armchair and attempt to open the door. You're shocked when the door doesn't open or move an inch.

"Hello?" You try opening the door again but they don't budge. "Is anyone out there?" You wait but hear no response.

You're unsure of what to do now. You look around your room for something to do. All that you manage to find are some of your old toys and unfinished projects.

You sit in front of the fireplace trying to think of what could possibly be going on. You remember a piece of the wall that could move and search for it, trying your best to remember exactly where it was. You end up finding it next to your dresser.

The piece moves easily and you reach inside. Your hand touches something and you instantly remember. You lay down flat on your stomach reach in with both hands and pull out the wooden box.

You're filled with nostalgia as you sit down on your bed with the box. You blow off the smoke and open it up.

Inside lies a small journal which you place to the side already deciding you have to see what young you used to write about. Inside also lies a small cushion you had sewn for you and Halaena's dolls. One of your teeth which Aegon convinced you to let him take out by tying it with string to a door.

You're confused for a moment at the last item. It's a black handkerchief with gold detailing. You pick it up and stare at it a moment before you remember.

Aemond had found you crying in a corner of the library covered in dirt, mud and God knows what else. He had asked you what happened and although you didn't want to tell him he convinced you too. You admitted that your brothers had joined Aegon in tormenting you by throwing mud at you insisting it was just a joke.

Aemond felt bad especially since he understood what it meant to be at the end of their cruel jokes. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the mud off of your face before walking you to his mother's chambers.

Alicent cleaned you off and got you a clean dress before seeking out the boys and your mother. All three of them were forced to shovel horse shit while you, Helaena and Aemond watched and ate cake.

The memory brought a smile to your face. Aemond had asked you for the handkerchief back but you told him you couldn't find it.

You pick the journal back up excitedly and open it up to a random page.

King's Landing 117 AC

Dear Diary,

Today my brother was born. Father named him Joffrey, I personally think his name is stupid but I held my tongue. Septa Anne would be proud. I went with the boys to the dragon pit today. It was awfully boring. Aemond and I watched while they got to practice commands. AND YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE WHAT THEY DID! They gave us pigs! PIGS! Called them the "Pink Dreads".

Sometimes I wish I could just gouge out Aegon's eyes and put them in his soup when he isn't looking...maybe I can get Helaena to catch a beetle for me...

Anyways. I went to the kitchen to get cake but then Harwin stole it! He said it was taxes? WHAT EVEN IS TAXES?

You can't help but laugh as you continue to read. You fall asleep while reading about the time Aegon fell out of a tree while trying to grab a bird.

You wake up and blink a couple times, clearing your vision. You sit up and jump back when you see Aemond next to you lying in your bed.

"Gods! When did you get here?" He has a smirk on his face as he continues to read while eating an apple.

"A while ago. You were sleeping peacefully I didn't wish to wake you." You nod and look at what he's holding. You quickly notice it's your diary and try to snatch it out of his hand but he's quicker. He clicks his tongue at you as you try to reach for it. "Im quite enjoying this. Listen to this one. Aemond gave me a flower today!"

"Aemond! Stop! Give it back" Your face flushes in embarrassment. "I was a kid!" He drops the apple and manages to grabs your hands with one of his and holds them down.

"He is so cute!" He looks back at you with a shocked expression. "You thought I was cute, princess?" Aemond pulls you to sit in his lap and you hide your face in his neck out of embarrassment. "Aemond smiled at me today!"

"Stop!!! Please I beg of you!" He laughs and puts the journal down.

"And this!" He lifts you out of his neck and waves the handkerchief in your face. "You swore to me that you lost it! Liar!"

Aemond begins tickling you and rolls you over caging you under him. He leans down and leaves a trail of kisses from your neck down to your collarbone.

"Aemond?" He hums back in response. "Why was I locked in my chambers?" He stops kissing you for a moment before he leaves a final one on your cheek and sits up.

"You need to break fast first...then we can talk."

Aemond calls for food and for your handmaids to prepare you a bath. You're shocked at first cause of how open he was about being in your chambers while you were fully undressed. You wanted to ask if the talk had gone well about the betrothal and if that's why he was ok with people seeing him here but you opted to wait.

He watches you eat occasionally grabbing slices of fruit off of your plate.

"If you want one you could just take from the tray you know?" He smirks as he puts another grape in his mouth.

"But they taste much better off of your plate." He leans over and bites the strawberry that you're holding.

"So." He leans back in his chair. "Are you going to tell me why I was locked in here?"

The atmosphere immediately changes and is tense. He sighs deeply.

"...King Viserys died..."

Your eyes widen and you drop the food in your hand back onto the plate. Your heart clenches at the news. You had spent much of childhood following him around, you had even willingly chosen to be his cupbearer in some of his council meetings simply because you wanted to be near him.

"...that doesn't explain why I was locked in my chambers Aemond. Matter of fact that is far from an explanation. If my grandsire died I should have been notified."

Aemond fidgets with his hands the same way Alicent does as he looks at the wall.

"Kepus. What are you not telling me?" He continues staring at the wall occasionally looking at you. "Aemond." [Uncle]

"Aegon was crowned king." He says it quickly with his head held high. "As the king's firstborn son, he is the rightful heir. He was crowned before the masses in the dragon pit."

Aemond watches as your breathing quickens and your facial expressions. Your lips are pressed together as you're clenching your hands so tight.

"Who made that decision?"

"It was the King's wish. He said it upon his deathbed to my mother." You roll your eyes and stare at the wall. There was a battle going on within your head. Part of you was understanding of the firstborn son point but the other part was devastated for your mother.

"Does my mother know? What of my grandmother? I was supposed to leave with her this mourning."

"...your grandmother interrupted the crowning. She was riding Meleys, many people died and just as many were injured." You cover your mouth with a shaking hand. "I believe she is already on her way to Dragonstone probably to speak to your mother..."

Meanwhile in Dragonstone

Rhaenys wasted no time heading straight for the princess. She had no time for formalities.

She walks into the room seeing them both by the fireplace.

"Thank you, Ser Lorent." Rhaenys stops at the head of the table. "Princess Rhaenys, might we hope for news of Lord Corlys' recovery?"

"Viserys is dead." Rhaenyra's face drops as Daemon turns around. "I grieve this loss with you Rhaenyra. My cousin, your father...possessed a kind heart." Rhaenyra struggled to comprehend what was happening. She knew her father would die soon but hoped she would be back to King's Landing in time to be there.

"There is more. Aegon has been crowned as his successor" Rhaenyra clutches her stomach as Daemon walks over.

"They crowned him?" Rhaenyra was looking off into space, grieving.

"How did Viserys die?" Daemon had a look on his face that no one could quite place. Was he sad? Angry? Or just plain confused.

"I could not say." They both look at each other.

"How long ago?" Rhaenyra asks.

"A day past, perhaps two. I was made prisoner in my quarters while the Queen made her preparations."

"Viserys has been slain." Daemon watches Rhaenyra.

"Alicent demanded you declare for Aegon." It was not a question, Rhaenyra already knew that it had happened.

"She did. I refused her." Rhaenyra let out a shaky breath.

"And yet you are alive." Of course, Daemon was skeptical, when was he ever not?

"The High Septon crowned Aegon in the Dragonpit. I witnessed it myself just before I fled on Meleys." Rhaenyra was still clutching her stomach.

"They crowned him before the masses." Rhaenys nodded.

"So that the masses would see him as their rightful King," Rhaenys responded.

"That whore of a Queen murdered my brother and stole his throne. And you could have burned them all for it." Daemon's unknown emotion was now evident, he was angry, livid even.

"A war is like to be fought over this treachery, to be sure. But that war is not mine to begin. I only rushed this warning to you out of loyalty to my husband and to my house." She took a deep breath. "The greens are coming for you Rhaenyra. And for your children."

"M-my children?" Rhaenyra's face contorted in pain. "My daughter! You brought her with you?" Daemon stood straight up.

"Sadly...no...Alicent had her chambers guarded well and her room had no passages. I'm sorry. I did not wish to leave my granddaughter either."

"You left my daughter with those cunts?" Daemon walked around the table to face Rhaenys. "You left her to become a bargain in this war?"

"I did my best Prince Daemon. We have allies within those walls that can get a message to her. Once I hear word she is alright I will be sending someone in to retrieve her."

"You have done enough." Daemon pointed at her. "I will retrieve my child from the snakes you fed her too."

"Enough Daemon..." Daemon turned to face Rhaenyra who was now hunched over gripping the table. "The babe... it's coming..."

King's Landing

Aemond watched as you paced around the room. You had requested he leave you alone for the a day only allowing in your handmaidens and refusing to see anyone else.

Since you had called for him this morning you hadn't said anything in almost an hour and instead paced around the room looking for the words to start this conversation. Occasionally you would stop, point at him and open your mouth but then you'd scowl and resume pacing again. He could tell you were conflicted.

"Ñuha jorrāelagon, kessa ao sit ilagon? Before you burn a hole into the floor." [My Love, will you sit down?]

"Now is not a time for jokes, Aemond! Do you know what your family has done? This is an act of war! They have usurped the throne right out from under my mother's feet. If you think she will let this go easily- no, if you think Daemon will let this go easily you are all sorely mistaken." you begin pacing again.

Aemond stood up and walked over to you and grabbed your hands.

"Gīda." [Calm] He pushed a strand of hair out of your face. "Everything is going to be ok."

"What will happen to me?" The thought had crossed your mind many times as you wondered what would be made of you.

"My grandsire and the King have agreed to our betrothal. They will announce it as part of the terms if she agrees to declare Aegon as the rightful King and kneel before him and the council."

"Terms?" You back away from him letting go of his hands. "Our marriage would no longer hold meaning Aemond. It would be seen merely as something my mother won in bowing to Aegon, a spoil of war. Either way, she would never say yes."

"Then Aegon will marry us anyway." He shrugs and pulls you back into him as if none of this bothered him. "He is my brother and he knows of the love I hold for you."

"And if I say no?" His face became stern.

"You wouldn't hurt me so."

"You mean the way that you have today?" He sighs deeply. "Why did you not come and free me from my chambers?"

"Because I knew you would leave at the first chance." You look away from him and he turns your face back towards him. "You're mine and I wasn't willing to risk losing what is mine."

You would typically enjoy this possessive air around him but you currently found it suffocating. You wanted nothing more than to put space between you but he was holding you tight against him.

"Aemond. This is not right. You must understand that?" He rolled his eyes and let you go.

"Who sits on the throne is none of my concern and not on my list priority."

"Then what is?" You step towards him angrily.

"You!" he snaps. "You are my only priority. If you say no to marrying me then you will be made prisoner here. You will spend the entirety of this war locked in here." You could tell he was being truthful. "Marry me and you will at least have some freedom."

"Some?" He walked back over to the table and sat down tired of this conversation. "What is some?"

"You will be allowed to walk freely around the castle with a guard of my choosing."

"And Vermithor?" You think of your dragon and where he could be. You had claimed him when you returned to Dragonstone after what happened at Driftmark. Aemond's bravery in claiming Vhagar led you to sneak into where he sleeps and approach the dragon yourself. You had also thought that if you claimed him you could ride to King's Landing and see him. You had learned the song Daemon would sing and tried singing it to him to calm him down. It worked despite almost being burnt to a crisp you had claimed him.

"I will visit him on Vhagar." He reached for your hand but you shied away. "You must understand that my grandsire worries about allowing you to have full freedom. After a while, you will be allowed to go riding."

"How long is a while Aemond?" He visibly gulped and bit the inside of his cheek. "How long?" Your voice was cold and made the hairs on his neck stand.

"Until you give birth to our firstborn." He said it quietly already knowing how you would react. It was smart you'd give them that. They know you wouldn't fly away while your child is in their possession. "My grandfather's decision not my own."

"And did you try to fight him on it?"

"Why would I?" He shrugged but soon noticed the angry expression on your face. "I want marriage with you, I want children." He tried to reach for you again.

"So do I Aemond! But not like this." You take his hand and he pulls you to sit on his lap. "I want us to marry because it is what we want. I want my mother to be there! This isn't the way I want to do this."

Aemond leans his head against your chest.

"My hands are tied, my love." You get off of his lap and walk over to the fireplace facing your back to him.

"I wish to be alone."

"Baby..." You hear him get up and walk over to you.

"Please go...now!" A few seconds later you hear him sigh and leave the room. You sit on the armchair and allow yourself to cry.

This was all too much for you. You worried for your mother and the rest of your family. Did they think you were a traitor now? Will they think you have chosen Aemond's family over them if you were to marry him?

You know there's no way your mother will kneel before Aegon, even if she decides to, Daemon would rather lock her in her chambers than agree to that.

How could they be so foolish? So reckless?

You walk over to your bed and lie down. You go over the pros and cons of agreeing to marry Aemond. You then think about ways you could escape. Maybe agreeing to a betrothal will at least get you the right to walk around, you could find your parent's allies within the walls and find a way back to them.

You can stall the wedding for a while. Aemond would understand you'd prefer to be married only after the war was over and your family could attend.

You soon tire yourself out with all this thinking and fall asleep.

You spend the next day alone in your chambers. Alicent had invited you to join her in breaking your fast but you respectfully declined. You needed more time.

You saw a boat sail out from King's Landing and knew it was most likely Otto heading out to deliver the terms to your mother. You knew it would not go well and they would be lucky if she didn't feed them to Syrax for their treachery.

It was only the following midday when you grew worried. You saw Vhagar fly away from the castle. Part of you wish you knew where he was going and the other part of you remained angry. You thought he knew you better, if he did he would have fought harder for your freedom right? He would have denied Otto's offer and not allowed him to make your marriage into something that they hoped would sway your mother into giving up her crown.

Gods you missed her, you prayed every moment for her safety. For all of their safety.

It rained that night. Something was off. You could feel it in your bones. You tried to sleep hoping it would calm your nerves. Your handmaid brought you tea to help you relax. You soon fell asleep but sadly even your dreams were disturbed.

You wake up on the floor of pitch black. Everything around you was dark. There was no light just darkness. You sat up and looked around.

"Hello?" Your voice echoed. You stood up and began walking around in the dark abyss not knowing where you were going.

"Gēlȳn enkagon jamela!" You hear Aemond's voice. [You owe a debt!]

You quickly turned around but nothing was there.

"Aemond?" You walked in the direction that you heard his voice. As you got closer you noticed your feet getting wet.

"Taoba!" You hear him again but in a different direction. [Boy!]

You turned again where you heard his voice and walked quicker in that direction. You felt something patter on your head and looked up. Nothing was there just darkness but you could for sure feel something wet as if it was rain.

There was a flash of a bright light to which you shielded your face.

"Daor Arrax!" Arrax? That's Luke's dragon.

"Luke? Luke, are you there?" You noticed your clothes clinging to your body as they were now soaked the scent of salty water filling your nose.

"Vhagar! No! No..." What had happened? Why was he saying no?

You look around you quickly trying to make sense of what it is you are hearing. The rain is heavier and you look at your hands. They aren't just wet...they're red. Your dress is now too stained red. You touch your cheek and look back at your hands and see the same red substance.

Something drops from above causing you to step back quickly. More pieces fall from the sky surrounding you. You shield your head and scream as the red rain grows heavier and more pieces fall.

When the rain softens and the sound of stuff falling ceases you open your eyes and look around you. Your face twists in pain as you see pieces of the body of Arrax surrounding you. It only gets worse when you see a human body part. You look closer and notice the hand.

"He got me." You hear his Lucerys voice and you instantly know it was his hand.

You wake up in a sweat your hair sticking to your neck and your pillow drenched. You look up and see Aemond standing at the end of your bed his clothes drenched.

And in that moment you knew.

The war had started.

A/N: So this is clearly turning into a series. Which I'm actually not mad about. Not sure where this is going but naturally the chances of any of this being 100% original is not possible. There are far too many HOTD fanfics for any ending or storyline to be original. I can only hope that it is 100% enjoyable.

I will still obviously do my best to come up with a unique ending but I feel like to have a unique ending people need to die. I need to start killing off characters like Grey's Anatomy 🤣

Anywho I hope y'all enjoyed this part! If you wish to be added to this Taglist or any other one please let me know!

Gen Taglist: @thought--bubble, @valeskafics

#ewan mitchell verse #ewan nation #ewanverse #ewan mitchell fanfic #ewan mitchell #aemond targaryen x reader #prince aemond #aemond targaryen #hotd aemond #aemond x reader #aemond fanfiction #aemond one eye #prince aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen fic #aemond targaryen x you

[shygirl4991]

Chapter 5 Grand Sleepover

Art done by @alianarepasa do not repost Summary:  After the event of Splits into Three everything felt like things were back to normal, that is until Three’s boyfriend kicks down his front door announcing he has fallen under the same spell he did. Together they will learn the secret of the cherry potion and with SMG4 splits put an end to the evil gang's plan.  Sequel to Split into Threes

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Tags: Fluff, Angst, Comedy, Romance, action and adventure, Trauma, IGBP

SMG4 sighs as he waves the crew goodbye, they all agree to come by another day to help with the personalities. Once gone he turns to see Three talking with Artist, he watches as the personality glows with excitement over whatever his boyfriend was telling him. He takes out his sketchbook and runs to the others, with a nod Three walks up to four “We need to make rooms for them to stay at right now, after all you do have an empty second floor you're still working on.” 

Four nods as he throws himself to his partner “This is going to be a long couple of days…at least the bright side of the day was the gloves and your delicious cherry coffee!” SMG3 gets tense as he gently lifts Fours head to look at him. Trying to remain calm and collected  he asked the question he feared “Did you drink a full cup of cherry coffee?” he should have known this was the reason, why didn't it hit him sooner.  Three only had a sip and his three personalities were a lot, SMG4 got six, thinking on it more he starts to remember what book told him which only got the guardian concerned for his boyfriend.  Four gives him a bright smile “Of course you make great coffee!” Artist hums doodling the rooms when he notices Delinquent removing his gloves and glaring at them, slowly he approaches “D im collecting room ideas, busy?” The personality hides the gloves and turns before writing his thoughts down. He rips the page out and hands it to Artist, taking the paper and seeing his idea Artist smiles softly “Tonight lets have some fun, you in?” Delinquent gives Artist a look before noticing a smirk looking at him then at three. He lets out a low chuckle “Ah…well if the others want to then you know i'm all for it,” for once Delinquent was excited for something other then his plans. 

With a nod, Artist keeps doodling the rooms and goes off to ask the rest. Delinquent watches as the group starts shaking the Artist to hurry and draw their room.  His eyes then landed on his original and Three, he saw Three face go pale causing him to tilt his head “Wonder what those two are doing?” Three takes Four hands and walks to the bedroom, once the door is slammed he starts looking around the room. Four stares at his partner confused “Uh Three what are you looking for?” Three sighs standing up and giving him a sheepish smile “So the cherry coffee, you were never meant to drink it.” he sighs sitting on the bed. He touches the pins “Drinking the coffee i notice the cherry flavor, then next thing i know bam i have three versions of myself. So I put the coffee in the fridge to figure shit out later! How did you even get your hands on it?” 

Four blinks and slowly points at the spade pin “I…did the others know? I went to the fridge and got the coffee. Spade said it was okay for me to take it, are you saying you drank random cherry coffee which started all this?!” Three rolled his eyes. Getting up from the bed he glares at his boyfriend “OH YEAH I JUST DECIDED OH LOOK FREE COFFEE MIGHT AS WELL FUCKING DRINK IT!” Anger was building up in four as he stomps up to three “THEN HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE CHERRY IN THE COFFEE IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY CHERRY COFFEE IN YOUR PLACE!” Three stays silent, his eyes go wide “Your right!” he walks out of the room with Four chasing him “Where are you going?!” three stops at the door and turns to four “To check my coffee machine.” He pulls at the door and stares at it confused, he pushes the door, still the door did not want to open. The personalities turn and walk up to the door, Ringmaster chuckles “Door trouble?” Prince gently pushed Three away and attempted to open the door “The door..is stuck?” 

Four walks up shaking the door, seeing the door didn't open he ran to a window and attempted to open it. He blinks realizing even the window wouldn't open “GUYS!? EVEN THE WINDOWS WON'T OPEN!” They all scattered trying to find an exit.After a while Delinquent sighs kicking the front door, to his surprise it swung open “Hey look at that i manage to fix the door,” everyone stops and turns looking at the door confused. Four look at Delinquent then the door “How the hell?” Three runs out of the castle to his cafe without a second thought, once inside he starts to investigate his machines. He opens the coffee machine and gasps seeing what's inside the machine, it was pink liquid, he knew it was risky but had to know. He reaches towards the liquid only to be stopped when he hears the cafe door open, he closes the machine and gives a small smile at Four. “Still looking, when I find out anything you will be the first one to know blue!” 

Four nods as he looks back at the castle then at Three “Hey…what happened at the castle, that was weird huh?” Three nods “Yeah, it's almost like something didn't want us to see something.” Seeing Four’s eyes flicker to a different color made Three approach Four “Hey blue, i get the anxiety but we got this!” SMG4 grabs Three’s hand “You told me a gang were after your personalities…what if thats what happened back there?” Three pulls Four closer to him. Slowly he wraps his free arm around the man, he thinks over his boyfriend's words as he stares at the castle “I don't think so, these guys have no idea about you yet. Trust me if they knew about you guys they would be at our front door.” Something did rub Three the wrong way, how did the whole castle end up locked up like that. Even more strange, why did everything open the moment Delinquent opened the door?

Before he could think more on it an explosion was heard over at the castle, they exchanged a look before running over. Artist sighs at the mess of paint all over the second floor, Ringmaster smirks, proud of the paint explosion he made. Prince grab’s Artist holding the man back “YOU DUMBASS WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY PAINT!” Ringmaster turns, giving him a smirk “Showing you what true art looks like.” Delinquent looks around at the mess “It looks more like Depresso came in here and vomited.” 

Ringmaster glares at the orange man “What? No, I painted each corner that belongs to each of us!” Artist lets out a bitter chuckle “You moron, the colors are everywhere where do any of us go when you have green mixed with White!” SMG3 and Four run up stairs to see the mess of paint everywhere. The personalities noticing them all point towards Ringmaster, he lets out a gasp at how fast the others sold him out. Three sighs walking up to Artist “Let me have the room plans, the cherry hunt can wait for now.” He hands over the plans as Three puts on a hard hat, the others walk away to stand next to four. Seeing this SMG4 turns to Ringmaster “I dont get why you have to bother Artist so much,” Ringmaster scoffs at the comment “Artist thinks he is better than me, i was here first the good days of memewarts!” Four frowns and watches Artist angrily pick up his paint cans from the floor. At that moment he felt something toward the Artist, he walked over helping with cleaning up the paint “We will get you more paint, or maybe take a break from painting…i recently picked up digital art.” Artist eye glow as he leans closer to Four “I can try digital? Hehe my power grows,” Artist laughs to himself worrying Four.

Delinquent frowns watching the interaction, Producer seeing the frown takes Delinquent's hand.  The man turns to look confused at the personality “He cares for us…i…he has to right?” Delinquent could only let out a hum as he turned his attention to SMG3. The man looks over the plans and claps his hands, a white light takes over making everyone cover their eyes. The moment the group looked again six rooms were built, they gaps as they walk up to their door. Artist giggles touching the name plate “Our Mcdreamy has some skills under his belt huh?” “Not impressed,” was all Delinquent said before going in the room and locking it, with a sigh they all thank Three and walk into their room. Three smiles and gentle pats Fours back “It is getting late, you should join them and rest. Hopefully that nightmare doesn't come back, if it does though i'm right next door.” Four nods and they both leave to rest. Artist peeks out the door watching the pair leave, the moment they are gone he begins his plan. Walking to his sewing machine, Artist starts looking over the room plans “Now, let's make some fun pajamas shall we. Wonder what everyone requested, hehe.”  

Once done, Artist visits every room handing out a package, he changes into his own colorful pj’s. He walks down stairs waiting to see everyone, his smile grows seeing each personality come out in their pj’s. Delinquent chuckles “Why are you so basic? Plaid really?” Ringmaster waves his hand “I'm not here to impress, Pajamas are for sleeping plus you're wearing a band shirt you're not that original!” Parent comes out excited over his pj’s, as he skips over to the group the rest stared in horror over his Beeg onesie. They turn to Artist who only gives them an apologetic smile.  Producer and Prince come out ready to show off their pj’s only to freeze seeing Parents onesie “I know it's just so cute right?” Prince pats Parents back “It's fantastic!” Delinquent makes a disgusted face as he keeps staring at the pj. That's when a light bulb lit up “Hey guys, in a way this is like one of those sleep overs the original always pictured. Why don't we make this night a fun one and prank SMG3,” he lets out a mischievous grin. Artist pulls Delinquent into a surprise hug “YES! LET'S DO IT!” all according to plan. 

The group plans their prank while Producer plays with the sleeves of his shirt “Guys…I don't know about this. What if we make him hate us? OH GOD WHAT IF HE GROWS TO HATE US AFTER THIS!?” Delinquent walks up to Producer, everyone relaxes hoping the man would help Producer relax “I would honestly love that.” Parent runs up to the shock Producer “uh hey kiddo i have an idea, let's play the don't listen to D game!” Parent keep distracting Producer and the rest finish up their plans. Now that the plan is done, the group sneaks over to the cafe and notices Three was awake. Artist snaps his fingers “Damn he is awake, I’m paintfully aware of my limitations so i wont know how to distract him.” they all look down lost in thought on how to distract the man.  Delinquent  sighs as he walks ahead of the group only to be stopped by Producer “I…i will do it.” The group stare at Producer in shock, with a shaky breath he walks into the cafe.

Three stares at his coffee machine nervously, he wasn't sure what would happen if he attempted to taste it. Would it bring them back? Would he risk it and anger them by bringing them back out? He hears the door open making him look away, there he sees Producer nervously messing with his sleeves again “Cute pj’s im guessing artist helped?” the personality nods as he walks closer to Three. He watches the personality, confused, he reaches out “Hey are you okay?” Producer then suddenly hugs him. Three smiles softly hugging the personality back, he then blushes “okay the hug is going on too long can we stop, not because i'm really enjoying it  or anything it’s just awkward!” Producer lets out a chuckle as he pulls away. The group watches waiting for their moment to sneak in, Delinquent  on the other hand blushes seeing the hug that happens. 

Producer shyly looks down “I uh…god please don't hate me for asking but…you're our boyfriend. You and the original kissed yeah? W-what is that like?” the group gasps at the question as their eyes move to Three to see what happens next. The heart pin glows as he gets closer to Producer “Are you asking to kiss me?” Producer’s face goes red as he starts to panic “AH THIS WAS SO STUPID I'M SORRY PLEASE DON'T HATE ME FORGET WHAT I SAID!” Three reaches out to Producer and gently caresses his face, the touch relaxes the man as he looks up confused “Then kiss me you silly, you're a part of blue. I love everything about him and that includes you.”  Delinquent bites his lip seeing the moment between them, his head started to hurt the more he watched. He takes a step back “uh guys we can sneak over here let's hurry!” The group nods slowly going through the door and sneak to the back to get into Three’s room. 

Producer was lost in Three’s eyes, he didn't notice the others running inside the cafe and starting their mission. The group take out their camera, Artist lets out an evil giggle getting Parent ready “Okay now use Beeg face to cover yours hehe we are going to make Three’s room a Beeg paradise!” Delinquent chuckles alongside artist as they take the photo and start decorating the room with it. Ringmaster chuckles as he opens the elevator “Alright guys let's go! While I won't get in trouble because I'm the star of the show, I can't lose my groupies!” Artist smacks him aside “Right like you would have anything like that.” Producer was feeling himself lose steam from all the flirting Three was doing, that was until the elevator ding caught threes attention. In a panic Producer grabs Three pulling him close, the group slowly sneak by to escape the cafe. Producer lets out a shaky breath “Please don't hate me..” before Three could ask anything Producer leans forward gently kissing Three. As the group celebrates making it out, Delinquent stares at Producer and Three kissing. A memory hit him making his face go red as he looked away, he had to remind himself of his mission as he followed the group to the castle. Producer attempts to fun off in a panic, Three then grabs him gently pulling him back “Hey PD its okay! Remember what I said, you're a part of blue, no matter what i will love all of you guys!” Producer looks down nervously thinking over his words. 

“Save him…please save D…he is fading away,” Producer closes his eyes, scared to see Three’s face. The heart pin stops glowing as Three gently lifts Producers face “What do you mean he is fading?” Producer lets out a shaky breath. He then looks into three’s eyes “You said you love all of us no matter what, save D no matter what please!” The Spade pin flickers as Three nods “I promise, when the morning gets here, i will talk to four and see why he would deny his jealous side.” Producer shakes his head “I can't say more but…D is more than just jealousy,” with a small smile he walks out of the cafe. SMG3 watches Producer leave “More…than jealousy, what else could he be?”

Producer catches up with the others as they celebrate their victory, the group get together in Artist room and watch movies. Producer looks at  Delinquent giving the man a soft smile, Delinquent nods and lets out a sigh. Over time the group falls asleep except Delinquent, he gets up and steps outside the castle to get blinded by the sun “Morning already huh?” a sharp pain hits him causing him to fall to his knees. SMG3 walks out of his cafe, he lets out an annoyed sigh at the fact his room was covered in strange beeg photos. He was impressed that producer managed to distract him for the others to pull the prank off. Delinquent notice Three and attempts to get away, he curses when he just ends up falling to the floor. The pain was becoming too much for the personality, he groaned trying to find something to help him. His eyes start to flicker as the pain gets worse, he lets out a scream catching SMG3 attention “Delinquent!” 

Three helps Delinquent up before checking on him “What happened? Are you okay?” the man's eye twitched before the pain stopped. He nods “I'm okay…” SMG3 lets out a sigh of relief, seeing how close they are he pushed Three away. That's when he realized he was alone with SMG3 “No one is around us…hehe hahaha!” Three looks at the man concerned, this wasn't how heart acted when he was fading “Hey uh everything alright?” Delinquent nods “I lost my hat, if you want to be a hero so badly want to help me find it?” he tilts his head giving chills to Three. With a nod they both walk away from the showgrounds, SMG3 didn't like the feeling he was getting from the personality in front of him. Delinquent was silent as they walked to an alleyway “I lost my hat in there,” everything about this screamed trap to Three. He nods as he pats Delinquent making the personality go first, he watches as Delinquent starts to look around. “I have something to ask, the way you fell down…are you fading away?”  Delinquent pauses. Slowly he stood up laughing, the laugh was dark, devoid of joy. He turns smiling at Three “OH! So you're going around putting things together!”

Three frowns walking closer to him “Delinquent..i want to trust and help you i'm not the bad guy.” Delinquent’s face twisted “BUT I AM!” a tentacle came from the ground swinging at Three, acting fast he jumps out of the way and glares at Delinquent. “That wasn't meme energy…that looked like…Delinquent what happened to you?” Delinquent laughs as he charges at Three. In a panic Three dodge and shoved Delinquent, the personality hits the gate door to the alleyway. The door falls off the hinge hitting a fire hydrant soaking the man.  SMG3 gasps at the sight, Delinquent slowly gets up laughing “DO YOU SEE WHAT HE MADE ME?!” The black paint was being washed off. After a few moments white hair was revealed, his orange pink eyes were now completely pink. 

“Delinquent…” distracted by the man's appearance, Three didn't notice another tentacle behind him. It swings slamming three to the ground, knocking him out cold. Delinquent walks up SMG3 moving his hair out of his face “I need you, you're the only one that knows the power and I would love to meet the real you.” He lifts up Three and walks into the shadows disappearing. 

#smg4 #smg3 #smg34 #shygirl4991 #smg4 smg3 #smg43 #smg34 fanfiction #split into threes #six splits for fours #alianarepasa

[avatar-news]

Update 2: We finally figured out what happened with this whole Kyoshi movie mistake, and it has a pretty mundane explanation lol. Read an in-depth explanation here if you’re interested!

Original post below:

Update: Aang movie is first now in schedule shuffle!

Paramount and Avatar Studios’ slate of animated Avatar movies coming to theaters: Kyoshi (2024), Zuko (2025), Korra (2026)

It’s the post you’ve all been waiting for. I’ve finally compiled, confirmed, and cross-referenced enough sources to feel confident in posting what Avatar Studios’ first three movies are about, in what order, and (with a big grain of salt, okay?) when they’re coming.

You might be aware that there’s been a flurry of Avatar Studios news out of the 2022 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in the last few days-- they revealed that three movies are actively in the works right now, they confirmed my report on the director of the first movie, and they showed the first teaser for it to the press in attendance.

Let’s tackle that teaser first. After checking with a couple of sources who were in attendance, we’re pretty sure that what was shown was General Fong’s fortress, which was first visited by Aang and the Gaang in Avatar: The Last Airbender Book Two: Earth, Chapter One: The Avatar State.

It was either this exact clip/screencaps from the original, or something very similar. That visual was followed by text saying “the Avatar returns” (a popular tagline these days) and the earthbending symbol. Which brings us to...

The first animated movie coming from Avatar Studios is the prequel I reported on before, and it’s a “prequel” because it stars the most recent earth Avatar before Aang and Korra: Avatar Kyoshi.

Next, I can confirm that the second movie will be the one I exclusively revealed last month: a story focused on Fire Lord Zuko.

Lastly, and this is a brand-new reveal, the third movie is set in the era of Avatar Korra, after the end of the animated series.

I should note that these are all very high-level descriptions, for example I don’t know the exact focus of the Korra era movie, although I’d personally be willing to bet it will be Korra herself. But ultimately, I guess I should put a disclaimer that I don’t know that level of detail, except for the specific case of the Zuko movie being about Zuko himself. Technically, I don’t know that the Kyoshi movie will “star” her, but I can’t really imagine it won’t, you know?

AS FOR THE DATES. I debated whether to put them or not, but I decided to make things spicy and go for it this time. I want to make it clear that these are NOT my estimates, they are legit info cross-referenced from at least two sources, but...... it’s really early info subject to change and not meant to be any sort of commitment from anyone. I just figured that by the time we get to these years, no one will remember this post. 😂 Release dates could shift around as they almost always do in this day and age, but it’s just because that’s a natural thing that happens. So with all that being said, you can very vaguely look forward to animated Avatar movies coming to theaters once a year starting in 2024, with the first three being:

Kyoshi (2024)

Zuko (2025)

Korra (2026)

(Obviously those are not the movies’ titles.)

This next part is my estimate: I would personally expect LATE 2024 for the first one. Again, it’s super early. As for the rest: again, big grain of salt. As production goes on, maybe they’ll decide they want to do every two years instead, or any number of things that could lead to the slate changing.

It’s just really important to understand that this is just a snapshot of Avatar Studios’ CURRENT plans-- their NOT announced, NOT confirmed plans. I wouldn’t announce or confirm anything this early either, and there’s a good reason they aren’t-- they haven’t even revealed their first ever movie yet, much less committing to a slate. So please keep all that context in mind; don’t expect them to reveal anything about any Korra movie any time soon-- there are two movies before that that probably won’t even reveal anything any time soon. That being said, this is legit info and not just speculation/guessing, and it also might NOT change. I think release dates are honestly highly likely to change, but I don’t think it would be unlikely if the three high-level concepts of Kyoshi/Zuko/Korra stay the same. Assuming my sources are correct about those in the first place of course. :)

Alright, that’s enough disclaimers, I’ll let you run amok now. And yeah. KORRA’S BACK.

#news #movie #prequel movie #kyoshi movie #zuko movie #korra movie #annecy 2022 #avatar news exclusive

[kastlequill]

ii. for you my love i kill

pairing: miguel o'hara x f!reader word count: 6.5k synopsis: miguel visits the hospital to tie up some loose ends then makes sure you got home safe tags: whump/angst, protective/dark miguel o’hara, black cat!reader warnings: reference of past canonical sexual assault, some torture, broken bones, miguel kills a guy ao3: read here ← prev | next [soon] →

After Miguel left you crying in that alley, he had expected his night to end there.

The plan had originally been for him to head back to his apartment and get as much sleep as possible; no detours, no distractions. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d rested for more than three consecutive hours, but if the Spider-Man wanted to continue starting his days at the crack of dawn, then Miguel O’Hara needed some good ol’ shut-eye. This should’ve been an easy-to-follow, hard-to-fuck-up plan.

Except, he hadn’t gone home and was instead currently perched outside the window of a hospital room four stories high.

Because the thing was, Miguel had lied to you—the man you had tried to kill tonight wasn’t dead. A few feet away, the target in question was bedridden but very alive, receiving medical attention for the damage you’d inflicted onto him.

When Miguel stumbled upon you relentlessly clawing at a noncombative man who laid prone in the street, his instincts had compelled him to act first and ask questions later. Every second wasted brought the man closer to death as you’d shown no sign of stopping your flurry of attacks anytime soon. So, Spider-Man had snuck up from behind and put you in a chokehold, compressing your carotid artery just enough to render you unconscious.

While you were passed out, the apparent victim had departed from the scene in a flying ambulance, which left Spider-Man alone to handle the apparent perpetrator: you.

You weren’t what he had expected.

As witness to your capacity for violence, there were certain adjectives Miguel would have thought applied to you, like unfeeling and inhuman. But you’d surprised him by being the opposite: fervent and compassionate.

Which made it irritatingly difficult to figure you out.

Not that he wanted to—he didn’t.

It was just that you had seemed so lost at the chance that this man, who you’d attempted to rid from society, might have survived. Miguel intimately understood the single-minded pursuit of a goal that had become the axis upon which your whole world now hinged. He knew what it meant to latch onto the mere hope that achieving a certain goal might suffice as enough of a sacrifice to stain the door to your heart with lamb’s blood and convince the Angel of Death sent by your best-forgotten past to leave you be, to pass over you.

And because he (unfortunately) had ample experience in this regard, all it had taken was hearing the desperation in your voice and seeing the begrudgingly-pleading look in your eyes to pull the following words right out of his mouth:

You got him, he’d assured you. Already dead when I arrived.

Miguel was a lot of things, but a liar wasn’t one of them; among his plethora of epithets, prevaricator was notably absent. He spoke the truth as he understood it, even if it pained him to do so. Even if he wanted to tell himself a lie.

Even if he’d rather use his bare hands to carve a shelter out of Utopian falsehoods and reside in purposefully-ignorant bliss

Moreover, Miguel was unlike the vast majority of Spider-People in that he did not adhere to a strict no-kill rule, either. So the moment those two short sentences left his lips, the fate of the man on the other side of this window pane had been sealed.

“John Doe” was as good as dead.

John Doe; the name presiding medical staff had assigned to the patient of unknown origin. He’d been admitted without an ID card, and his disfigured face didn’t do identification efforts any favors either. You had carved out chunks of flesh from his cheeks, and no patch of skin had been spared the deep, inflamed gashes imparted by your claws.

In the wake of your vengeance, he had become more thing than person.

Luckily, Miguel had Lyla. The AI had pinpointed the man in question by extracting his DNA from remnant blood on the Spider-Man suit and running a cross-comparison with the hundreds of thousands of DNA profiles stored in the city’s database. If he had any prior involvements with the law, there would be a match.

And there was.

John Doe was actually Trent Michaels.

A recent college graduate, son of his school’s dean. Star athlete, doted on by his professors and peers. Squeaky-clean record.

It’d been all too easy to learn your identity thereafter, to then find unsealed court records for a case marked dead on arrival, old images of you smiling, carefree and trusting. Reconciling the life-hardened woman who he’d confronted in the alley and that bright-eyed girl as being one and the same was a challenge, but not impossible. There was still much of her in you, even if she only appeared during the brief moments your guard was down.

As a mechanism for survival, you had been forced to construct walls around yourself of such height and of such thickness that they were too insurmountable for most to scale and too impenetrable for the rest to infiltrate. A man’s wretchedness had been the catalyst for these defensive measures which, while successful in keeping others out, also kept you locked in, trapping you with the demons that weren’t so easily deterred.

Feelings of self-loathing and helplessness; thoughts of self-blame and fruitless what-if scenarios. You were resigned to dealing with it all alone. Though he similarly shared that sentiment, Miguel’s concern was that you’d gladly destroy yourself just to catch all that haunted you within the blast range of your implosion.

Mutually assured destruction.

He refused to stand idly by while you became collateral damage in your own quest for vengeance. The longer Miguel ruminated on the matter, the more his anger toward Michaels grew. His ire tempted him to detonate this ticking time bomb of a human so that there’d be no chance of it exploding around you. But his logic commanded him to suppress the urge to unsheathe his talons and refrain from tearing the man limb from limb.

Sé paciente, sé paciente, sé paciente. Miguel recited the words like a mantra meant to tether himself to the present then pinched the bridge of his nose to assuage an impending migraine. There’ll be plenty of time for that later.

To set the record straight, showing up to the hospital had not been a premeditated decision. One minute Miguel was swinging through Nueva York, taking the usual route that led to his apartment, and the next he was here, preparing to break into a facility for the sick and injured.

Since he had arrived, however, his mind had begun concocting a plan, officially converting this would-be crime of passion into an act of murder. Except—

—killing that maggot piece of shit isn’t murder. It’s what I’m owed.

Not murder. Retribution.

From the shadows, Miguel observed the medical staff’s next three rounds and soundly concluded that they were spaced fifteen minutes apart. That gave him fifteen minutes to do what he needed to do.

With sufficient information on both the premises and the target, operation take-out-the-trash was a go. He dug his fingers under the bottom edge of the double-hung window and slowly pushed upward, sliding it open just enough to allow him to step through and into the room.

Inside, it was quiet save for the steady beeping of a heart monitor and the faint whistling of air entering and exiting through the nostrils of a recently-broken nose. Everything tied back to the bastard who was laying on the hospital bed as if it were an altar and he was its sacrificial offering to the gods.

But there were no gods here; only Spider-Man.

This ritual wasn’t to bring plentiful rain or a bountiful harvest; it was to cage a monster’s soul in the confines of Hell and set free yours from the clutches of all that which sought to do you harm. It was to cleanse the revolting sight that was a supine Michaels sleeping peacefully, oblivious to or uncaring of the pain he’d caused you.

That those scum can walk among us freely, can go about the rest of their lives without consequence—

Try as he might, Miguel couldn’t unhear the break in your voice as you choked on all the things you could not say. The years-long wounds you carried within were clearly still raw; healing them had thus far been a feat unconquered since the root of the injury was still alive and well, preventing definitive closure.

Until now.

The room was larger than average, and a tray of gourmet food on the overbed table indicated the patient’s VIP status. This fancy, non-hospital cafeteria dinner had undoubtedly been provided at the behest of the Public Eye, who wanted Michaels pliable and cooperative during their inevitable one-on-one interrogation. He was, after all, their key witness to not just his mysterious assailant, but also his elusive savior. They’d been clamoring to get whatever information they could on The Spider-Man so that they could then charge him with vigilantism, and Trent Michaels had the potential to be a big lead.

Despite the only light source being a meager nearby computer screen, the combination of white tiled flooring and white stucco walls made the room appear well lit in contrast to the night’s pitch black. The moisture in the air reeked of sterility, which told him that this area was cleaned frequently and thoroughly.

No spilling blood, then. There was no hiding that unmistakable crimson red, nor was there time to properly erase the traces of evidence that would surely stain the pristine-white fitted bedsheets and seep into the slender crevices between each slab of tile.

When Miguel dragged his attention back to the bed, he discovered that Michaels had awoken at some point and was now sitting upright, eyes wary and muscles twitchy. The bruised and scratched-up man looked nervous in the presence of the masked hero.

Soon, he’d be more than just nervous. And by the time Miguel was done with him, he would be nothing at all.

Soon.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Spider-Man stated the obvious, stalking closer, both hands on his hips, before coming to a stop in front of the several machines that were hooked up to the target’s frail body. The movement held a striking resemblance to that of a predator circling its prey. It was an assessment of strength differential, an evaluation of the energy investment required to subdue. “That makes my job easier.”

As Miguel casually pulled up a chair and sat at his bedside, Michaels donned a look of bewilderment, confused why he had a visitor but showing no sign of fear. Not yet. At present, Spider-Man was still the masked hero who saved his life in that alleyway and not a harbinger of Death who had come here to cast him into the pits of Tartarus.

The man rubbed at his sockets once, twice, affirming and reaffirming that the mythified vigilante was indeed standing inside his hospital room at the dead of night. “Spider-Man? The hell’re you doin’ here?”

Miguel elected to ignore that question, not trusting his ability to maintain an unaffected vocal inflection if he were to discuss anything other than the strict script in his head. He got straight to the point, projecting into the space between him and Michaels a holographic image of you. The you of a few years ago, the you with a cheesy grin spread wide across your lips, ear to ear.

The you who hadn’t yet been made to walk this road of unsatiated vengeance.

“This girl,” Miguel started to say then stopped to assess the man’s face. Though most of it was swollen and scabbing, Michaels could still reconfigure his features into discernible expressions, and Miguel would be damned if he didn’t take note of every single change. “You know her?”

A beat of silence. Michaels flicked his gaze toward the hologram, and the sickly hue of his current complexion paled even further than Miguel had thought was possible. The heart monitor blared to warn that an abnormal spike had been detected in the patient’s heart rate, betraying the truth before an answer could even be given.

He knew you alright.

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” was his response, tone a bit defensive as he shifted in unease. “What’s it to you?”

What’s it to him?

To him, it was rectifying a wrong. If he’d known this man’s sin, he would have gladly stayed put on the roof to watch from above as you killed him yourself. Not everyone deserved the helping hand of Spider-Man, or, at least, not that of this dimension’s Spider-Man. Perhaps simultaneously filling the roles of judge, jury, and executioner was a sin in its own right, but Miguel wasn’t stupid; he knew the courts were conditional in how and when they chose to enforce law, sparing the rich and powerful from the consequences of their actions. Death, however, was not so inclined to do the same.

To him, it was honoring his word. He had reassured you that you’d successfully scourged the streets of this vermin, and he wasn’t about to let that become a lie. No, Miguel was going to strip the brute who’d dared to hurt you of the privilege to feel the warmth of tomorrow’s sunrise. Trent Michaels didn’t have permission to look upon the breaking of dawn, to see how the sun warred against darkness and emerged victorious, setting the sky ablaze with its golden rays.

Ultimately, it was very simple: paramount to everything else, you had wanted the man dead, and Miguel wanted to actualize that wish. For you, yes, but also for the sake of every soul who might someday cross paths with Michaels if he were to leave here alive.

This was what came to mind when he reflected on why he’d rerouted to the hospital rather than his own damn apartment. His thoughts demanded to be acknowledged by their maker, and their obnoxious loudness lulled Miguel into a state of reticence.

At the eerie, prolonged silence, Michaels cleared his throat and began to speak.

“She’s nobody. A girl I hung out with freshman year. Things got a little heated one night,” he said with a nonchalant shrug. “It was just some fun. Harmless, really. Then she had to go and make a big deal out of nothing. I’m sure you know what I mean, man.”

During this spiel of utter bullshit, Miguel had slowly begun to fiddle with the pulse oximeter attached to the tip of Michaels’ index finger. The minute fidgeting could be interpreted as absentminded and unmotivated, but that didn’t account for his purposeful and intentional way of doing things.

Miguel clipped it onto his own left finger when Michaels was preoccupied with picking at the peeling edge of a bandage on his brow bone. The heart monitor synced with the well-regulated and steady heart rate of Spider-Man.

That had been Step 1. The second step was a bit more. . . hands-on.

Rolling his shoulders back, Miguel stood up from his chair and gave a short, noncommittal hum. “Can’t say that I do.”

His free hand curled into a tight fist and launched itself at the man’s already-battered face, catching him on the nose, and a satisfying crack pierced the air. The sheer power behind the punch was such that it sent Michaels reeling backward, and his concussed head (your handiwork) ricocheted off the bed frame, temporarily dazing him.

When he came to his senses, shock morphed into contempt. “Y’broke my goddamn nose. That’s the second fuckin’ time tonight!”

Unfazed by the assault, the heart monitor continued to beep, raising no alarms since it hadn’t detected any abnormalities in heart rate. It was a metronome that kept time, but the maestro after whom it modeled its cadence had switched from Michaels to Miguel. Its consistent pattern thus left the medical personnel on duty none the wiser about what had just transpired, nor about what was yet to come.

Beep. Beep.

Beep.

“What the fuck, dude? I thought you were s’posed to be the good guy!” the man cried out, indignant and genuinely baffled as to what he could've possibly done to warrant this assault. He tipped his head back, desperately trying to stop his compromised nose from dripping blood all over.

The small blotches of red that now stained his patient gown weren’t ideal, but no one would think to question a spontaneous nosebleed when said nose was confirmed to have been broken earlier in the night. Punching him had been worth the risk; even Spider-Man wasn’t exempt from the universal human desire to absolutely deck an asshole who deserved considerably worse. Still, the plan had been to keep all blood inside all bodies, so that was what he was going to do moving forward.

Miguel allowed himself the momentary indulgence of basking in the melodic, steady stream of agonized groans. It was music to his ears, an unconventional symphony of which he was the conductor.

A prelude to his magnum opus, a crescendo to its climax.

Leaning forward to block every possible escape route with his broad frame, Miguel grabbed the sniveling coward by the neck and squeezed.

“I am.”

Driven by his instinct to fight or flight, Michaels clawed at the hand around his throat, but his efforts at either of the two courses of action were in vain. The hold was ironclad, immovable, whereas the force he tried to exert on it was nowhere near unstoppable; thus, it did not budge.

In no rush to relent, Miguel relished the way his prey squirmed and writhed, and only when the man’s eyes began to flutter shut did Spider-Man relax his grip with an exasperated sigh.

To die by strangulation was an end too merciful for the likes of this scum. It was over too quick, a brief burst of pain liberated by the peaceful promise of eternal nothingness. No, Miguel wouldn’t bestow the gift of a swift, clean death; rather, he sought to make the final moments of the man’s miserable existence torturous, to send him off to Hell kicking and screaming.

As he struggled to catch his breath, Michaels splayed his hands atop the overbed table to support his heaving body. The shift drew Miguel’s attention, and he glared at the offending appendages because those weren’t gentle hands that delivered care, nor were they hands that offered protection. They were hands that had hurt innocents.

Hands that had hurt you.

Hands that needed to reflect their sins, that needed to be as equally marred in flesh as the man who wielded them was in conscience. Each and every digit would pay penance for his transgressions since all ten had partaken in the atrocity.

The right middle finger was first. Breaking a bone was neither difficult nor complicated, regardless of whether it was his own or that of someone else. Miguel settled on his fists to be his weapon of choice, classic and old-fashioned, close and personal, then he restrained his target with shackles made of webs, then—

Snap.

Before a howl of pain could echo through the halls for all to hear, Miguel shot a wad of his organic webbing at Michaels’ mouth to muffle any potentially-incriminating screams.

“Quiet now, don’t worry,” he cooed in mock sympathy. “You won’t be needing these where you’re going.”

In a state of pain-induced delirium, Michaels extended his trembling left hand for the bedside remote to signal for aid, a Hail Mary that would go unanswered, deemed unworthy of her saintly supervision. Before he could press down on the call button, the device was snatched from his grasp altogether by another string of web.

“Too slow,” chided Spider-Man, a cruel smirk hidden underneath his mask as he moved the remote far from reach. “What are you making such a big deal for, we’re just having some fun. Isn’t that right?”

No reply. Just two beady blue eyes glistening with poorly-concealed terror, hoping to appeal to the hero’s better nature. Unfortunately for Michaels, Miguel reserved his compassion for the billions of innocent people who comprised the Arachnoid Humanoid Poly-Multiverse, not a sorry excuse for a man who couldn’t understand that no meant no.

“What was it you said, hm? Harmless?” Knowing the context in which the word had been used five minutes before, it tasted foul on Miguel’s tongue and sounded vile to his ears. “I think this is pretty harmless, no?”

That question, though rhetorical, elicited a vigorous shaking of the head, the man’s intended message fully-transparent and frantic: no, no, no.

Miguel released an exaggerated, disappointed sigh. “That’s fine—we can agree to disagree.”

It continued like this for the remaining four fingers on his right hand. One after the other, Miguel fractured bone with nothing but his enhanced strength and unbridled rage. Each additional crushed digit was accompanied by the further splintering of Michaels’ spirit, dismantling him piece by piece.

By the time Miguel had finished rendering the hand free of functioning fingers, it appeared as though Michaels had given up on trying to weasel out of this nightmare scenario, the pain so severe and unyielding that he had seemingly become numb to it. His joints were rapidly swelling, and angry patches of dark purples and reds bloomed on his skin as blood rushed to the site of the blunt force trauma. It was his body’s attempt at salvaging a sinking ship and relieving its captain of his burden.

But there would be no such reprieve, for Miguel was wholly unsatisfied so long as this man, who had touched and taken without permission, still had operational extensions of his body.

Michaels mumbled something unintelligible through the webbing that was still plastered over his mouth, and, wanting to hear what he had to say for himself, Miguel tore it off. When no words followed, he prepared to resume his onslaught, readying his arm for the swing.

A single syllable stopped him just short of making contact with the left pinky finger.

“Stop,” croaked Michaels, his voice scratchy from the strain of repressed screams. “Please.”

Spider-Man’s fist halted mid-slam and hovered over his chosen target. The plea transported him back to the events that had transpired earlier in the night. All throughout his interrogation, you had maintained a commendable degree of composure despite the clear imbalance in power between the two of you. You had been hung by your feet from the neck of a streetlight and then immediately re-tied to that same pole after being freed of your webbed restraints.

And yet, you’d never begged. Not until your vengeance outweighed your pride did you plead with the vigilante to—

—tell me I got him. Please, tell me I killed him

Your begging had been on behalf of the girl who’d been betrayed by someone she had trusted, on behalf of the many survivors who spent the rest of their lives carrying the knowledge that justice hadn’t been served and that it never would. Even while physically and emotionally under duress, you had thought of them. Because at your core, you represented all that was good and right about the world.

Conversely, no such redeemable qualities could be detected within Trent Michaels. His pleas served only himself, a sick piece of shit who, at his core, embodied all that bastardized the world from its ideal vision.

The man of the hour gulped several breaths of air, eyes closing in gratitude at the perceived fact that this torture session had run its course, mistaking the brief hesitation as a sign of reconsideration.

It wasn’t.

“Stop? I’m just getting started.” Spider-Man flexed his hand then clenched it once again. “We’ve still got five more to go.”

He unfroze and brought his fist-turned-hammer down hard, crushing another distal phalanx beneath the weight of his own fury as well as that which he channeled from you, grinding his knuckles into the new injury for good measure.

“Did I say five? I meant four.”

His assault on the left hand was a blur. He laid waste to the digits faster than he did the right hand, brain on autopilot. The clock on the wall ticked incessantly; fifteen minutes were almost up.

An agonized groan from Michaels eventually snapped Miguel out of his anger-induced stupor, and he blinked down to find that the last four fingers were severely mangled compared to the others, having been subjected to repetitive pummeling in excess. Though he resented losing control, the important thing was that he had neutralized these hands of vice and malevolence.

Now that there were no more fingers left for Spider-Man to break, a nearly-unconscious Michaels slackened his muscles, curling into himself. He probably thought the worst of the night was over.

Not a chance.

“Oh, I wouldn’t look too relieved if I were you, Trent. The show’s not over yet,” Miguel spat, saying the name like it was dirty. Which it was. “We still have the finale.”

The finale entailed grabbing a syringe from a nearby cabinet and pulling its plunger all the way back so that the entire apparatus filled with air. He had briefly entertained the idea of sinking his teeth into Michaels’ jugular and pumping him full of venom but had ultimately decided against it since that would surely get flagged on the autopsy report. Bit hard to explain that one.

Once the syringe was full, Miguel fastened a needle to the tip, and it reflected blue light from the computer when he raised it higher to get a better look.

As he did so, fear at last settled on Michaels’ face. During the obliteration of his ten fingers, he had writhed in pain, his eyes pinched shut and his veins protruding in exertion. Before that, there had been confusion and shock. But until this very instant, fear had remained notably absent, too consumed with surviving the encounter to imagine that Death might still await him in spite of his best efforts.

The appearance of Death came in an infinite many forms. Death was both destroyer and creator, both decomposition and nourishment. Death was the car that did not stop at a red light, the cancerous cells born of mutated proto-oncogenes, the peaceful embrace after eighty years of life.

And when he raised the syringe to the IV line, Spider-Man too became Death.

No one could accurately speculate their reaction to the moments preceding their death. Many liked to believe that they would use their strength to persevere, but in the end, they were the ones who bargained and begged the most. Some were more honest in their assessment, admitting that their souls would be fetched and relocated elsewhere, but they too believed that they would depart this world with their head held high. Fewer still recognized that death was not to be feared or overpowered, but was to be met with open arms and a smile.

Michaels, being the cowardly and spineless man he was, belonged to that first category.

Typical.

“I’m sorry, okay, I fucked up, but I can be better, I swear. If you want money, name a price and it’s yours. I’ll donate to charity, I’ll apologize to h-her, I’ll—” His groveling was abruptly cut off by a sob, pathetic and ugly. “I’ll do anything. Just please don’t kill me. I’m begging you.”

Nothing. The pitiful speech inspired absolutely nothing in Miguel. No sympathy, no reflection, no anything. He was devoid of all but stone-cold hatred.

“Me vale madre.”

Spider-Man injected the pocketed air into the IV line and watched its resulting bubble travel down the tube, disappearing into the stuck vein. The estimated time it took for an air embolism to kill an adult male of this stature was approximately five minutes, maybe ten. But considering the sheer volume of air that had been put into circulation, Miguel presumed complications would arise much sooner.

His prediction proved true, the tell-tale symptoms presenting not even a full minute after the air bubble had entered the man’s bloodstream. The man tried to clutch at his chest but yelped when the motion jostled his fractured bones. Unable to assuage the tightening in his heart, he began to hyperventilate, panting, eyes bulging.

Then came death.

When Michaels’ squirming body went unnaturally stiff, Miguel removed the pulse oximeter from his own index finger and reattached it to that of the dead man. The heart monitor began to blare, both an alert to the night-shift nurses that a patient had flatlined and a cue to the Spider-Man that he should vacate the premises.

He exited the way he’d entered, slinking through the window before sliding it shut behind him. Nothing was out of place. The walls and tiled floor were still squeaky clean and white; the chair he had moved was back in its original place in the far corner; the gourmet dinner was still untouched and positioned on one side of the overbed table, where it would stay uneaten for all eternity.

The lone evidence of his presence was a fresh corpse with ten fingers smashed and bent out of shape.

They would soon declare their John Doe deceased after multiple failed attempts at restarting his heart, and then they would open an investigation to determine the cause of death. Frustrations would mount when the toxicology reports housed no answers, and stress levels would peak when the patient turned out to be the son of a very wealthy man who was threatening to sue the hospital for negligence.

Quite frankly, none of that mattered to Miguel—the job was done. Whatever bureaucratic shit came next was an addendum, an afterthought scribbled into the margins of tonight’s catalogue of events.

The mission had been accomplished: Trent Michaels was dead.

By all accounts, this kill was yours. You had been the one to drag him to the gates of Hell, whereas Miguel had only ensured that the scum would successfully reach his destination. You had been the one to gather the trash and make all the arrangements to discard him, tracking his location and beating him within an inch of his life, whereas Miguel had only dropped him off at the dumpster yard.

It struck him then that this was likely the first time you’d taken a life. And instead of offering you advice on how to navigate the toll that killing took on your conscience, he had left you in the alley to come to terms with it all by yourself.

He winced. Fuck.

Miguel needed to see you.

“Lyla,” he called. “Give me her address.”

The miniature AI materialized beside him, her tone light and teasing. “Lyla, give me her address what?”

Usually, there was no harm in entertaining the AI’s shenanigans. But tonight was different.

“Not in the mood,” he gritted out, irritation spiking abnormally quick, even for him, as the adrenaline from handling Michaels continued to set ablaze his systems. “Her address.”

Lyla handed the information over without further fuss, and Miguel leaped off the ledge just as a cluster of medical personnel filtered into the hospital room-turned-morgue.

Clearing the tops of buildings in a single bound, he traveled through the city in record time, aided by the strong winds that blew in the direction of your residence. When Miguel finally arrived, he took up position on the roof of the building directly across from yours. From this vantage point, it was almost concerningly easy to see through one of your windows.

You should really buy some blinds, was his immediate thought, grumbling to himself about how unsafe this setup was.

He squinted his eyes and conducted a quick sweep of your apartment, searching every gap, checking every corner once, twice, three times. The place was empty.

A knot formed in his gut at the realization that you hadn’t come home.

Where are you?

The longer the question went unanswered, the louder its echo reverberated, perpetuating itself as if in a chamber. He’d scanned you for injuries and hadn’t found a scratch. You had been coherent, conscious, and as composed as could be expected, but what if he had missed something?

What if you were still in the alleyway, incapacitated by an unattended injury?

The mental image of you agonizing over your wounds, both the visible and the invisible, was enough to will him to a decision. Just as he was about to turn around and swing his way to the opposite side of the city—

A light flickered on, illuminating your living room. It was fairly small, like most other studio apartments in the expensive rungs of Nueva York. His sharp vision instantly honed in on the two black cats that roused from their slumber to greet you at the front door, which had swung open with such force that it’d hit the wall and slammed back into your shoulder.

When Miguel finally laid his eyes on you, tension seeped out of his muscles, the frown line between his brows momentarily disappeared, and his shoulders slumped forward as he exhaled a nearly-inaudible sigh of relief.

You were okay.

Well, okay might not be the right word because you were evidently not okay. You were slightly hunched and limping, shifting your weight from foot to foot, dragging a hand against the wall for extra support should you careen over, which was becoming a more likely reality by the second. As you lugged your spent body to the clawed-up sofa at the center of the room, the legs that had thus far been supportive of your weight buckled with fatigue. All Miguel could do from here was watch you collapse onto the sofa, face-first.

Your shoulders began to convulse, and he stiffened, worried you were belatedly going into shock or having a seizure based on the way you jerked and jolted. Upon further inspection, however, Miguel determined that the culprit of the shaking was neither the former nor the latter.

Sobs wracked your frame. You lifted your head from the seat cushion to rip off the black domino mask with which you’d disguised yourself, revealing a steady stream of tears, black trails of mascara staining your cheeks. Next to go was your white-haired wig, yanked with equal force and chucked across the room.

Gone was the outwardly-confident woman who had managed to rile him up and get the upper hand whilst dangling from a lamppost. Left in her wake was the woman behind the persona. Here was the woman you were when the spotlight faded to darkness, when the curtains closed and the audience departed, when the performance came to an end. Uncensored, unrefined, undone—you.

An unbecoming.

The rational part of his brain told him that this was an invasion of your privacy, that he should leave you to your much-needed crying session and stop peeping through your windows when you were at your most vulnerable. You thought you were alone and had subsequently allowed yourself to shatter, but here he was, heightened senses privy to the whimpers that broke your voice, to the utter despair that furrowed your brows.

And yet he couldn’t avert his gaze.

Such a raw display of catharsis; it was sublime. How long had it been since he last cried more than a few silent tears?

He already knew the answer: Gabriella.

The multiverse couldn’t afford for the leader of the Spider Society to fall apart, not when he was the one keeping this whole operation together. Thousands of Spider-People played their part, sure, but he alone dedicated every waking second to preventing anomalies from destroying entire dimensions. And though he would never admit it, Miguel was at the end of his rope, akin to a powder keg about to explode at any given moment.

Maybe he was more like you than he’d thought. Maybe he should take a page from your book, let himself cry and cry until he had poured everything out from the cavity of his chest. Even Atlas had briefly passed the weight of the heavens off to Heracles, so perhaps the multiverse wouldn’t unravel if he were to open the floodgates, just this once.

The thought left as quickly as it had arrived. Logistically, it wasn’t viable. How could he ever jeopardize the fate of billions for one man? Regardless of whether that man was himself or a stranger, his decision was the same.

He would thus have to make do with a more vicarious manner of release. Your tears were both yours and his. The tears he could not bring himself to shed joined yours as you became a vessel of the emotions that had long since been repressed, both by you and by him.

Where Michaels’ sobs had grated on his nerves, yours made Miguel physically recoil not in revulsion, but in visceral need to comfort. The sight made him want to do something stupid, like jump down from the roof, knock on your door, and ask you if he could come inside

Go inside to do what, exactly? Hugs are a no-go, so that leaves. . . awkward shoulder patting? He slapped a hand to his forehead and ran it over his face with a groan.

This—going to the hospital to terminate your target, showing up to your apartment—was a dangerous chain of events that would further snowball into an unacceptable culmination of feelings. Unless, of course, he impeded it, uprooting this budding thing before it could blossom, terminating these strange thoughts in gestation before they could be spoken into existence.

In which case, the crisis would be averted.

He had fulfilled his heroic obligations as Spider-Man, had ensured your safe arrival, and had kept his word. All he needed to do now was put as much distance between you and him as was humanly possible.

Yes, that sounded like a plan. Excellent. Good.

Great.

As Miguel vaulted off the roof and shot a web at the nearest billboard, he decided that he would not be returning to your apartment ever again; this was the only time he’d let himself check up on you. When he stepped foot into his own apartment a good hour and a half later than he had initially intended, he recited the declaration to himself as he took a hot shower and again as he changed out of his suit. When he awoke the next morning, he fully believed that such would be the case because you’d been absent from his dreams, all memories of you already archived.

It wasn’t until he took the long way home three nights in a row that Miguel finally conceded otherwise. The first night was brushed off as an innocent coincidence, and the second night was justified as having simply found a better path home. But by the third night, he couldn’t deny it anymore:

The true reason this objectively-worse, inconvenient route seemed better was purely because it passed by your building complex and gave him the chance to see you.

tbc.

#miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o’hara #across the spiderverse #spiderman x reader #spiderman 2099 #marvel #spiderman #my fic #fic: for you my love i kill #series: cursed from the start

[ghostflowerhotpotch]

I KNEW I WASN'T CRAZY

THERE ARE DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE MOVIE FLOATING AROUND.

I NOTICE THIS AND I WASN'T SURE WHAT TO THINK.

Okay okay, I guess is time to give admit a couple of things; one of them is that as for now, I had watched this movie in theatres 5 times; and no it would not be all of them. I have no idea how much of the movie I had seen outside theatres because doing this analysis can make me watch a scene from three to ten times.

Another caveat to all of this is that I have ADHD, which means I can either miss something that was plainly on the screen because it wasn't too interesting to me, or, I would be picking on crap that no on else even thought about until I point it out but to me feels obvious.

Honestly one of the praises I have for this movie is being able to keep my attention for over two hours without me getting bored or restless; not to say every person with ADHD can't sit still watching movies, but for me personally is a challenge. I concentrate more on books.

I am getting sidetrack again, the thing is that I NOTICE THESE STUFF.

I watched the movie the day it came out, which meant I also watched the movie when the audio was a bit off. So I was expecting in sub sequence viewings to be different.

This may be just me, but in my first viewing I could had swore the presentation on the logos was different; they were fewer and there were more versions of Lord Miller's logos for what I recall.

There is also a difference when Lyla appears at first.

I noticed The Spot's dialogue, the Hobie Bubble, and Ben's different dialogue, but at first I just thought "Huh? That looks/sounds different, oh I may just be mixing up stuff."

Remember what I mentioned about my memory? It's quite funny, I can remember exact quotes from books I obsessed over a decade ago; but if you put me a picture of a client from my workplace, and ask me if this person came yesterday or on Monday, I may legit not know.

Rule of thumb if that is I am hyperfixating on it chances I will remember things correctly, but I also didn't think there would legit be different versions of a movie, so it seemed more feasible that I just didn't remember it right.

I also have some audio processing issues and the movie is hard to hear on certain parts unless you have headphones; so I thought perhaps I just heard wrong and my mind filled the blanks.

Gwen's dialogue? Oh that was the part where I thought for a hot minute I lost it.

Last time I went to the theatres I realized Gwen's dialogue while looking for Miles was missing, which of course I caught on because I am obsessed with them; and I notice right away that was missing.

When I went to check on with my friends, they were surprised to hear me say that because they also remembered it.

I will let out on a little secret; the post of "Please No!"? The second reason I put that video on that post, was in case I was right about things changing.

I am not sure how this movie will be distributed, and if the different versions may had to do with the audio mixing issues; meaning the first version could get lost eventually once this movie is properly on screening.

So, I got the video, uploaded on the post and linked to the original; because in case I am right and Gwen's dialogue gets cuts on that moment, I have proof that no, it was like that at one point, or in one version.

Sorry for the incredibly long ramble, I will come with an analysis soon. But I needed to share this here because 1) I am not crazy, and 2) If I discover parts of my analysis don't match the final version, well, I have proof that I wasn't making stuff up.

Thanks for reading!

#atsv #across the spiderverse #astvs spoilers #across the spiderverse spoilers #news #I guess I can tag it with that?

[blooming-violets]

My sister in Christ, first off, hi. Second off, amazing writing like *chefs kisses* all around.

I don't know if you're taking requests or not, so sorry if this is out of place. I would love you to smithereens if you did a part three for the Peter Parker car accident fic.

Maybe his girlfriend could come out of the coma but like need lots of help recovering mentally and physically? Idk, just an idea.

Xoxo 🕺💃🏽🕺💃🏽

The original car accident fic can be found [here] AND WAS ONLY SUPPOSED TO BE A ONE SHOT but then turned into a part two [here] aaaaannnd now a part three.

It's pretty short but she's awake and alive and here to stay...and spilling all Peter's secrets but he ain't even mad about it because he's just happy she's alive.

She had been awake for exactly one week…if he could call it “awake”. 

Coming out of a coma wasn’t anything like the way movies or shows portrayed it. May, and a few other nurses, tried to warn him as such but Peter was never very good at listening. She didn’t blink her eyes open and reach for his hand with a slightly confused smile. She didn’t ask how long it had been or what had happened to put her in the hospital. She didn’t seem relieved to be alive or happy to see him or even knew who he was. It was like she had no concept of being in the hospital at all. Her big eyes gave off vacant stares, almost as if she was sleeping with them open. When she spoke, her voice would be small and scratchy, and nothing she said made much sense. Sometimes she would fall asleep mid sentence. The doctor claimed that this was all normal. He heard the term “PTA” thrown around a lot. Or post-traumatic amnesia. It was apparently something that happens after a traumatic brain injury and is common among people waking from comas. He only half heard what the doctor’s said when they spoke to him. His focus was usually trained on his girlfriend. 

Even though she looked rough, he liked seeing her without the tubes blocking half her face. Her eyes might be unfocused and her words might sound like she’s speaking a forgein language at times but she was conscious. Being conscious meant she could improve. 

And she did. Day by day. Little by little. 

Her memory was nearly nonexistent. She kept getting her dreams confused with reality. She would wake up and be absolutely certain that she had spent the evening dining on a cruise ship in the Alaskan waters. She would excitedly tell him how her boyfriend had managed to win the cruise tickets after competing in a pie eating contest and dominating the other competitors. Then she would pause, blink a few times while staring at his face, and laugh about how he looked just like her boyfriend. Peter would smile and tell her that he was glad she enjoyed her cruise ship dinner. And he was glad. If she got her dreams confused with reality, at least she was having good dreams, and he was present in them…even if she couldn’t make the connection between her dream boyfriend and himself being the same person. 

A week after she woke up, her memory was still not right, but it was slowly getting better. Yesterday she had successfully remembered Peter’s face as being someone she knew. It was better than nothing. He pushed the elevator button to her level. Now that she was awake and stable, he felt less guilty running home to shower every few days. When the doors opened to the neuro recovery ward, he stepped out and smiled at the nurses behind their station. 

“Hey there, Spider-Man!” One of them looked up with a sly grin. “Save any people last night?”

Peter’s smile faltered and his face immediately flushed as the panic rose, “...What?”

Alarm bells rang in his head. His heart pounded in his chest. How did they know? Did that paramedic say something? He should have never told her his name or taken off his mask in front of her. He thought he could trust her. If his secret got out- 

A chorus of laughter followed his panicked spiral. 

“Your girlfriend has been telling anyone who will listen that she’s dating the infamous Spider-Man. She claims that he once brought her on a rooftop date overlooking Rockefeller Center during the Christmas tree lighting. We never knew you were so romantic, Spidey.” The nurses giggled, clearly assuming that her words were nothing more than another confused, dream infused reality instead of the actual truth. 

Peter forced a smile and took a shaky breath, “Ha, ya got me! It’s me, you’re friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, just swingin’ in to check on my girl.” 

“Aww, that’s sweet. How lucky she is to have a real life superhero looking out for her,” she winked at Peter to indicate she was only teasing. “She’s doing well today! Go see if she can remember your face this morning. Don’t want her actually falling in love with Spider-Man instead of you.”

He let their jests fall into the background as he swiftly walked to her room. His heart was pounding in his chest. Not because he was angry she was out here spilling his secrets but because she actually remembered something. Last December he surprised her by setting up a rooftop picnic as they watched the giant tree light up. That was no dream she was recalling. That was a memory. 

Peter burst into her hospital room to find May sitting by her bedside and speaking softly to her. He beamed at the two of them, jogging over to his girlfriend and planting a big, happy kiss on her cheek. 

She made a face of disgust and turned to May, saying sarcastically, “Who does this nurse think he is? Personal space much? They’re gettin’ real friendly here.” 

May chuckled under her breath, “Nurses these days are very hands on. Peter, honey, why don’t you have a seat? I was just about to leave and I’m sure she’d enjoy the company.” They often took turns watching over her as she didn’t have any family of her own. 

She studied him from her hospital bed with wide eyes, analyzing his face, “Hey, I know you. Has my boyfriend ever saved you from a disaster? He’s Spider-Man. He saves people. We’re going to get married someday…probably…if he wants to. I’m going to have his Spider babies.” 

May suppressed another laugh and patted her nephew’s arm, “She also had a very good dream about Spider-Man last night. I think you might have some competition on your hands.” She gave Peter a quick wink. “I’ve got to get home. I had a full night shift but I couldn’t leave without stopping in to say good morning to my favorite girl. You take care of her, honey. I’ll see you later.” 

Peter waited until they were alone in the room before he turned to her with a big smile, pulling up a chair to her bedside, “You are an absolute nightmare, you know that? Almost gave me a damn heart attack today. Could you please do me a giant favor and stop telling everyone you meet my biggest secret?” 

“Okay,” she stated with vacant ease. “What’s your secret?” 

He laughed under his breath, “You’re lucky you’re cute.” 

Her smile faded the longer she stared at his face. Her brows pinched together in thought. He could tell she had just remembered something and was working hard to put it into words. 

“...Peter…” She whispered. “That woman called you Peter. That’s my boyfriend’s name. You look like him. You come here every day. You sit by me. You bring me flowers. You talk to me. You fall asleep in that chair every afternoon. You look just like him.” 

He held his breath and nodded, silently watching her try to put the pieces together. It was like he could see her bruised brain starting to heal in front of his eyes. 

“Why do you look like him?” She asked.  

He blinked back the tears starting to press into his eyes, asking softly “Why do you think?”

Her breath caught in her throat, her eyes intently studying him, “You’re Peter, aren’t you? My Peter. I think I know you. I think you might belong to me.”

His smile broke through the tears and he quickly cleared his throat, “Yeah. I belong to you.”

“Cool,” she sighed, sinking back into her pillows. Her face settled back in its placid, nearly vacant expression once more. 

“I love you,” he whispered to her, terrified of letting the moment pass.  

She turned her head back to face him, confusion pulling at her brows, but she flopped her hand out on the bed for him to take. He gladly accepted the offer. It was the first time since she woke up that she willingly reached out for him. His thumb brushed over her fingers as he relished in the feeling of holding her again. He would wait for her forever. 

“I think I love you, too,” she whispered back, a tiny smile gracing her face. "Spider-Man."

#tasm #tasm x reader #the amazing spiderman #peter parker #peter parker x reader #tasm peter #tasm peter x reader #tasm peter parker #tasm peter parker x reader #spiderman #car accident fic #car accident #blooming-violets #blooming violets #blooming violets fic

[ourshadowstallerthanoursoul]

Getting the led out - interview to JPJ

(by Gail Worley, Ink19 - April 26, 2002 - x)

This has to be THE interview. It's Jonesy's best interview I've found so far, so READ IT. You won't regret a single second spent reading it, I promise you.

I saw the interview you did with Jim DeRogatis at South By Southwest in 2000. In that interview you said – perhaps jokingly – that one of the reasons it took you so long to make your first solo album is that you don’t sing. 'The Thunderthief' has your first recorded vocals ever. Was singing on a record with no previous experience a scary thing for you?

Yes. I mean, I had to make sure I could sing well enough to put [the performance] on record, so it wasn’t totally scary, you know what I mean? I sort of crept up on it [laughs]. The scary thing was actually doing it live on stage the first night, in Nashville (when Jones opened for King Crimson on their last tour). That was scary. What I wanted to do was do three songs from 'Thunderthief'. We started with 'Leafy Meadows' and then I did 'Hoediddle' and then I did 'Freedom Song' – which is scary enough. However, I suddenly thought, "I can’t just sing one song" (two of these three songs are instrumentals). So I thought, I need another vocal [laughs]. I didn’t want to do anything else off 'The Thunderthief', so I, in my bravura, decided to sing 'That’s The Way'. Singing a Zeppelin song was even scarier, I can tell you.

I bet.

What I used to do on the tour before, I played an instrumental version of 'Going To California' on the mandolin, and I used to team [those two songs]. I would start with 'That’s The Way' – because I played those mandolin parts on the original record. [Hums the tune] Then I said, "You didn’t think I was going to sing, did you?" [Laughs] But this time I did it and I sang it, so people who went to both concerts thought it was some kind of a trick [laughs]. But it went down alright. Nobody killed me for it, ‘cause I can’t possibly sing it like Robert Plant. I don’t have that voice. But I did it in this other way, and it worked, but the first night I was terrified. Remembering words is the hard part. I put the lyrics on a music stand, so I couldn’t fuck it up. But I’m learning, I’m getting better.

How has working with a guy like Robert Fripp influenced your own writing and playing?

Well, I haven’t actually worked with him that much. The biggest connection is being on his label. [Long pause] I mean, when Zeppelin first started in 1969, and people would say, "What sort of band is it?" I used to say "progressive rock", because in those days it meant rock that progressed [laughs]. You know, it was a very literal term; "Well, you know, we’re trying to advance the form of it, and this is what we’re doing to make it go somewhere." But of course, that title came to have all sorts of different meanings. When it started to mean 'classic', that’s when I stopped saying it was progressive rock. But then we’d say it’s 'blues rock', because people love to label things. I didn’t really hear an awful lot of King Crimson [music], to be honest. But being on his label is great, mainly because of the fact that you get, obviously, total artistic freedom. There are no contracts, either. He really hates the music industry with a passion, and he’s not afraid of telling everybody [laughs] at every available opportunity, which is great. And the artist maintains the copyrights to all their material, so I just agree with him on that whole side, and I really like the way he approaches music, and musicians. He’s so passionate about everything and has a definite way that he wants to do it. It’s inspiring to know that people can say, "This is the way I want to do it!" and off he goes! He’s always kind of been around in the background, but the first time Fripp got my attention was when Brain Eno called me and asked if I knew a piano player who could do some avant garde piano. He asked if I knew anybody who could do some spacey sort of piano, and I couldn’t really think of anybody. I asked him to describe what he wanted and then I said, "Well, I can do that" [laughs]. Alright then, so I said, "What’s the track?" and he said, "Fripp’s doing a solo on it, and I want you to do the counterpart." So I went along, and it was just this rhythm track, and I played this sort of spacey piano. The next time I heard it, Fripp had put his guitar solo on afterwards, so there’s this sort of alien spacey piano and suddenly this guitar comes in like [makes sounds of cars crashing], and I was like, "Fuck! I wish I’d known he was doing that! Jesus Christ!" Like "Who is this guy?" [laughs] Then, when I met him, he was like [imitating Robert Fripp’s gentlemanly nature] "Oh, Hello John. How are you?" I’m thinking, "Now, this isn’t the same guy who was like [makes car crash noises] on that record?" But it was. And that’s what he did on "Leafy Meadows". He walked in and he puttered about and set his pedals up and had tea and cake and then he went, "Whaaaahh!!!!" [Laughs] I really like that. It’s quite a paradox. That’s what I like about Diamanda [Galas] as well. When you meet her she’s terribly nice and sweet. And then you see her sing and [makes exaggerated face of terror].

I had to smile when I saw that Nick Beggs plays the Chapman stick on the album, because I remember him as the bassist for Kajagoogoo. How do you go about finding the various players who are involved with your solo projects?

Well, on 'Zooma' I had Pete Thomas on drums and Trey Gunn on stick. I wanted a stick player because they think differently. They’re often bass players as well, and they just approach it differently. Plus, from a very practical point of view, in a trio, it’s great, because I’m a bass player and a keyboard player and I play quite a lot of lap steel in my show. If I’m doing bass, then [the stick player] can play all the lead parts. If I go to the keyboards, he can then switch to bass in mid-song, if necessary. So, it’s very practical and it means I haven’t got someone standing there with a guitar, who feels like, "Well I should be playing something, because I’m standing here" [laughs]. There’s loads of space in a trio – which is what was nice about Led Zeppelin, because when Robert wasn’t singing we were a trio. There’s loads of space and you can go anywhere you like. So, Trey Gunn was on that album and originally I had asked him to come out with me on the road, because the idea, of course, with 'Zooma' was to get out and play it. He was going to [come out with us], but then King Crimson had resurfaced and he said his first loyalty was to go with them. Then I asked Robert [Fripp] if he knew of another Chapman stick player, and he said [adopting Fripp’s accent], "Well you won't believe it, but Nick Beggs is a really good player." I went, "Nick Beggs from Kajagoogoo? ‘Too Shy’?" And he goes, "Yeah, try him out." So I did. Then I went through a few drummers and eventually Nick said, well, "Terl Bryant is a really good drummer." So he came on board and he was great, and their attitudes are just awesome. It’s a happy family, they call me 'Pater' [laughs]. But it really is just like a family on the road, it’s really sweet. And they’re just full-on, enthusiastic, 100% committed, and it’s great.

Will you be taking 'Thunderthief' on the road now that your tour opening for Crimson has passed?

Well, yes. We’re trying to get some dates together at the moment, to do 'The Thunderthief'. But the thing is, I’d like to headline again, because then I can do my long show with the keyboards and things. But I may have to open for somebody else, again, because we really need to play to more people. It’s just maddening. I mean, we can sell out Irving Plaza [mid-size venue in NYC], but there comes a point where that’s the biggest one we can sell out, because nobody knows us. Everybody comes to the show and goes away going [adopts American accent], "That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen! It was fantastic!" and then they tell their friends and we get people going, "Wow, I wished I’d known he was playing there." We really just need to play to more people.

Here’s a quote from a review of 'The Thunderthief': "Since his days as a top sessioneer, his abilities as an arranger and multi-instrumentalist have equipped him to add musical finesse to any genre." That’s a pretty nice compliment. Is that part of the reason you’ve been attracted to such genre diverse projects? You know, from Cinderella to The Butthole Surfers?

[Laughing] Cinderella…

Oh come on, I love Cinderella.

Yeah, they were alright. The drummer owns a bus company now. Yeah, it’s all the same to me. As long as it’s good [music] I don’t care what it is. I mean, I’ve done classical composition and string quartets and [sighs] I don’t really care what it is. If somebody asks me to do something and I don’t know how to do it, I’ll find out.

In a criticism of the song 'Angry Angry', one reviewer said that you were "Always too accomplished to achieve something so off the cuff." I guess you’d call that a back-handed compliment.

Yeah, he didn’t get it. The Brits don’t like 'Angry Angry'. For a start, they understand the accent [I sing that song in], which they hate, ‘cause it’s "music hall", basically, is what it is – like a vaudeville accent. And they don’t like it because I think they think I’m taking the piss out of punk, which I’m not. I don’t do parody at all. It’s actually terribly prosaic, how it all happened, but music is just like that for me, basically. 'Angry Angry' is at the speed it is because I heard Adam Bomb (Pink Gibson from NY based rock band, Get Animal, who plays guitar on this song) play at the Borderline in London and I immediately heard what I wanted him to do [on the record]. I went back into the studio and put a riff down, which was on bass, mandolin, and drum machine which was [sings hyper-speed riff from song], at that speed. I got it to play for three minutes, just that riff, and then I wrote the song and thought, "Now, what do I do with it?" It was at that tempo and had that intensity and the phrase 'Angry Angry' just came to me, so I wrote the lyrics from there. And I had to do it in that voice because it sounds stupid any other way [laughs]. But the Brits hate it. They think I’m trying to be something that I’m not.

Oh, those Brits are so serious about everything.

Well, you haven’t met the Germans. They’ll go right into anything and find all the symbolism and the lot.

'Ice Fishing at Night' is a really beautiful song with some dark lyrics. What inspired you to write that song?

Well, I didn’t write the lyrics. They came with 'The Thunderthief'.

What does that mean?

What happened was, halfway through what was basically going to be an instrumental album, but was also a continuation from 'Zooma', I decided it’d be really nice to have voices [laughs]. As I’ve said before, I didn’t want to get a guest vocalist in, for a couple of reasons actually. One is that I know that I’d forget what I was doing and work on producing them, whoever the vocalist was. I would immediately turn into a producer and it would go somewhere else. The other reason is that, being a bass player, I don’t actually have a distinctive sound. I mean, some people will listen to a record and go, "Oh yeah, that’s a John Paul Jones record", but if you just heard one song in isolation, [you couldn’t tell]. Like, if you’re Santana, that record he did, every time he hits that guitar you know that’s Santana. It’s what he does. He doesn’t do anything else except for that sound. I don’t have that, because of the instruments I play. I thought, guest vocalists will only dilute that and just diffuse it even more. I decided, "I’m going to try and sing myself." Then I thought, "well, I’ve got nothing to sing." Then I was thinking that I don’t want to become a singer and a songwriter all at the same time. One thing at a time, you know? So, I knew Peter Blegvad, he’s a singer/songwriter, and a cartoonist as well – he did the album cover. He’s got a weird way of looking at things; just a strange, twisted sort of dark view. I thought he’d be the ideal person to write some lyrics. I asked him, "Have you got any lyrics that you haven’t got music to? Any lyrics just laying around?" He had about four songs that he gave me and I picked up 'The Thunderthief' and 'Ice Fishing at Night' and set them to music, and basically, just experimented with singing to see whether I liked what I did. I thought I could work with these songs and I could sing enough to do what I wanted to do. I don’t have a great technique or a great voice, but as long as I could convince myself that it sounded alright, then it would be OK… which is how I do everything [laughs]. You know, I’m not a great technician on any instrument, but as long as I can convince myself that it sounds real, then I’ll do it. I sang those two songs and then I thought, "well I can’t just sing two songs" [laughs]… I think like this all the time… it’s boring really. "You can’t just have two songs… how about trying to do some more?" Now that I know I can sing, I’ll try and write some lyrics and see how easy that is. So, I learned another trick. I discovered, like many people I’m sure have, that with the onset of the computer, I enjoyed writing emails. And since I enjoyed composing emails, I thought, "I wonder if it works for writing lyrics?" [Laughs] I tired writing some lyrics on the computer and – sure enough – I wrote three songs in an hour… one of which was 'Angry Angry'. I thought, "this is fun!" I could finally master the song form on the next album, ‘cause there’s no rules, you see? It’s great!

You make it up as you go along.

Absolutely, you get away with it yet again. [Laughing] I’ve had a lot of encouragement, but at the beginning of 'Zoom'a I thought, "They’re all going to go, 'it’s boring!'"

You’ve influenced so any modern rock bassists, from Tom Hamilton and John Deacon of Queen to Krist Novoselic and Flea. It’s almost like, if you drew it all as a Family Tree, you’d be the father of rock bass playing. What’s that like?

Well, it’s just that they haven’t bothered to look further than me. I mean, I’m just lower down the food chain than somebody else is. It just depends on how far you want to go back, really. It’s very nice, it’s very flattering… but I’m imparting stuff that I probably learned from James Jamison and [Donald] 'Duck' Dunn and Charles Mingus. But it’s very nice [to hear that I’ve influenced somebody]. I met some guy in New Orleans on the last tour and he says, "You probably don’t remember me but I came to see you with my Dad when I was 12 years old. You really influenced me and you got me playing the bass and you told me I should practice." He was, like, in his twenties now. I asked him if he was still playing and he said yes, he was the principal bass for the New Orleans Philharmonic Symphony [laughs]. Right! Nice to meet you!

How did it happen that 'Rock & Roll' is now the theme music for a Cadillac commercial?

Ah! Because they asked us if they could use it [laughs]. Cadillac’s kind of a romantic thing – for Englishmen, especially. You think, "Pink Cadillac", and it was Elvis’s car, and it’s a Limo and it just has this aura. I don’t know whether it’s the same in America; probably not, because you have them over here all the time – you’ve lived with them [laughs]. I can see a Cadillac now, and it’s BIG, with big fins and whitewall tires. But they asked us if they could use the song, and they didn’t get it for nothing. And why not?

Do all three of you – you and Jimmy and Robert – all have to make a decision like that? It’s not like Page did it when you weren’t looking?

No, all three of us make those decisions.

Well, on one had, you can think, "Classic car, classic song", but it does kind of bother me that I hear The Who’s 'Bargain' now and instantly think of a car commercial.

Well, yeah… I haven’t actually seen the commercial yet.

Before Led Zeppelin ever came into being, you had a successful career as a session musician and arranger. How much of Zeppelin’s unique sound is owed to your work on the arrangements?

Eh… some. But then it’s equally the way Bonham approached the drums and it really was a group effort. Even if the original idea wasn’t a group effort, the final thing was a group effort. It really was, more than any band I was involved in. It was never like the songwriter ruled the band. Robert wrote the lyrics last, usually.

But there wasn’t any other band that sounded like Led Zeppelin, and there never has been since. That’s kind of a big deal when you think about it. Especially now, in this day of everybody sounding like everyone else.

That’s because people in bands these days always listen to the same music. They all start a band because they all like U2 or they all like Pearl Jam. Consequently, their field of reference is very narrow. Our field of reference was huge. Page and I were very hard working session musicians, and when you walk into a session it can be absolutely anything. Country and western, to Champion Jack Dupree, to Englebert Humperdink, to a big band session. You walk through that door and you don’t know; it could really be anything [laughs]. You name it, I’ve done it. I played weddings, I’ve played Bar Mitzvahs, I’ve done Irish weddings, Jewish weddings, Greek weddings, Italian weddings. I can play it all. Musicians these days, they don’t seem to do that anymore, and bring it all into the mix. Bonzo used to like soul music and knew the words to every Chi-Lites record, ever [laughs]. He was the biggest Smokey Robinson fan, he was into Motown, he loved The Beatles and James Brown. I was into all that soul music, jazz, and classical. Robert was really into blues and all the rock stuff and doo-wop. Page had all these other interests. It was just a huge range of influences, you could go here or there or this way or that. And that’s what I do now, with this music.

What was the dynamic like between you and John Bonham as a rock rhythm section?

Well, we weren’t like a lot of rock rhythm sections, we swung like a bastard! [laughs] Groove was extremely important in Zeppelin and it wasn’t in a lot of those bands [that were popular at the same time]. It was extremely important, which is what, to me, made the band [so great]. We used to have a lot of women at our concerts – and I loved having women at our concerts because they’d dance. [Laughing] It’s great, because the guys stand there with their arms folded and the girls are dancing. Zeppelin was great because it was music you could dance to, and you can’t say that about too many rock bands.

How did your work with Diamanda Galas on her record 'The Sporting Life' and its subsequent tour, end up affecting your own career?

Oh, wow, she’s my favorite piano player. She’s just very inspiring as an artist, she’s very passionate, very committed, always knows what she wants to do. I have several other things to thank her for; she got me playing steel guitar again, which I hadn’t done for years. She saw it in the studio and said "What’s that?" And I said, "Steel guitar", "I want to hear it." So we put it on one of her songs and we did two songs with it in her shows. It was good because it gave me some sort of "high voice" as well as being in the back playing bass. And I thought, "this is a way I can work, this is a way I can actually do a solo show without being a bass player and having other people take over all the fun stuff."

Didn’t she also inspire you to start playing live again?

Yes, she did. I mean… somebody actually said, I think this was a German interview, [the journalist] said that he thought that these records – this is interesting – that 'The Thunderthief' was the third record in a trilogy, starting with Diamanda’s record. And in fact, he’s right in that way, because that was the first time I’d tried using that sort of riff, drums and voice. A lot of people didn’t like it, but to me it was blindingly obvious. I couldn’t see why nobody had thought of it before, especially with her voice, because she has all that range and passion. Plus, her lyrics are great! These homicidal love songs are wonderful [laughs]. She came along with, "Hide the knives, baby’s insane!" [laughs]. 'Skotoseme', that first track [on 'The Sporting Life'], she did it in one take. Me and the engineer were shaking at the end of it, and she just went [adopting a woman’s voice] "Is that OK? I’m going to get myself some coffee" [laughing]. When someone suggested we work together, I could hear it all in my head. I just went [snaps fingers], "I know what we’re going to do as well." I sent her these riffs, to New York, and she sent back some ideas. Then she just turned up and stayed for two months, and we made the record. It was just brilliant. I thought, "This is great! We can do what we like again." I was just so inspired. Then she also told me – cause she’s collaborated with everybody as well – that she’d said in interviews, when they’d say, "Well, why don’t you collaborate anymore?" She’d say, "Well, I’ve put effort into everybody else’s music. If I’m going to put that much effort into music, it’s going to be my own." And I went, "Yeah!" [laughs].

She kinda scares me, to tell you the truth.

She scares us all! That’s the fun part. But she’s so committed to her music. She’s just having fun. She was great on stage one time, [laughs] there was that perfect moment in this theater in Chicago, she was there at the front of the stage and – you know how everybody shouts out song titles? – a little voice comes up in this slight lull between songs and goes "Song Remains the Same!" And she just looked at him and she goes [makes malevolent face], "No, it doesn’t, motherfucker." [Laughing] You could see the crowd part.

As a way of wrapping this up, I surely don’t have to tell you this, but thinking about how Led Zeppelin always gets the nod as the greatest hard rock or metal band of all time – on VH1 shows or magazine polls, or radio countdowns or whatever – do you think the endurance and greatness of the Led Zeppelin legend has much to do with the fact that you guys called it quits after John Bonham died, while you were still a hot item?

[Pauses] I suppose with hindsight, maybe that did have something to do with it. I mean, there was no point in carrying on, it would be a different band, because no John Bonham, no Led Zeppelin, it’s as simple as that. He was so integral, to have gotten someone else would have made it more of a tribute band, if you were playing Led Zeppelin songs, because anyone else would have to be in his shadow all the time. However, he died at a time when there was like a new lease on life, a new awakening in Zeppelin. Punk had severely embarrassed us [laughs]. We’d stripped down and just went, [shrugs] "Oh, OK, right. This is over, off we go again." It was a very hopeful time, despite the darkness of having lost John. That was terrible. So, yes, [had he not died] we would have gone on and… who knows what would have happened.

#john paul jones #jonesy #led zeppelin #robert plant #planty #jimmy page #pagey #john bonham #bonzo #60s #70s #70s rock #70s music #rock music #ourshadowstallerthanoursoul

[ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff]

Star-crossed in the Crosshairs (John Price x Reader)

Chapter 8: I Think I Thought I Saw You Try

Fic Summary: This mission is the pinnacle of your efforts for the past three years. Your whole team and yourself have worked countless hours, slaughtered hundreds, risked life and limb for scraps of intel, and now it all boiled down to pairing up with another taskforce to get this job done and dusted. An unexpected spanner in the works comes in the shape of your former best friend, now also a Captain and somehow resurrected from his KIA status, John Price.

You can’t afford to let feelings - old and new - get in the way of your purpose. No matter how much you’ve missed, wished for, loved him, and no matter how much he might feel the same.

Chapter 7 // Masterlist // AO3 Version // Chapter 9

No doubt that Čiernik’s (insanely wrong) impression of Shepherd attempting to double-cross him had been corrected, but you had no idea whether or not Shepherd would continue this alliance after Čiernik lost all three of his hostages. The idea of making a deal with Čiernik to secure some intel on Shepherd crossed your mind briefly. But the Odristan Special Forces nullified that possibility before it even hit the table, and you weren’t about to disregard the impact this man had on your allies, especially when you’d been absent from your post for two days in Čiernik’s pocket.

You had the suspicion – and by that, it meant you were likely correct in thinking – that Fernandez just wanted this embarrassing matter put to sleep and so he was agreeing to the OSF’s requests faster than usual. This wasn’t his first colleague gone AWOL in the name of national security, but that only made it worse. He wanted to get his own tent in order before he could even attempt to send you after anyone outside the tent pissing in next.

Your first day back was spent without a break once you’d rested your eyes for the first few minutes. Too busy was your mind thinking about your initial task: collecting the list of those who hadn’t made it out of Shepherd’s villa, whose families you would visit if you made it out of this, funerals you’d attend, names you’d remember until your dying breath. Just as important was checking in on those alive. You’d charged Soap and Gaz with their cleaning house expertise to prepare for your plan whilst ensuring that both were ready. Additionally, Captain Minkowski of the OSF was more than happy to assist the final push on someone who had been a pain in his backside for the last couple of years.

Price introduced you to the new arrivals in Bravo team, just as you did with the rest of Sierra. The both of you looked beat to hell, stitched up and aching amidst a sea of soldiers ready for a fight. The recruit in you liked to think it earned you some credit amongst them. As if your role didn’t already do that.

It was just you and Crash left from the original outset, with Bronze hospitalised - against his wishes which he made known the second he came to in his cot – and Chance forced to maintain stiff posture at all costs until her stitches had healed. Again, the recruit in you almost yearned for the bedrest your subordinates were forced to follow. That recruit, so fresh-faced and naïve, you wished they’d remained in your history. Not poking up and prodding in present day matters, staring at the vulnerabilities in your comrades uniforms: slivers of skin at the end of jacket sleeves, bare faces barely obscured by the rim of your helmets, tactile trousers that wouldn’t stand a chance against any weapon. Most of all, your former self wished that every decision was the right one. Nothing was ever black and white, but questioning consistently only drove you closer towards insanity because the questioning didn’t know where to end, skipping through the last weeks, sowing doubts and veering dangerously near to where you’d tucked away your past with Price. You wanted to shun your old self back into a cupboard and lock them away until you weren’t sober - or with a medical professional who wouldn’t section you for getting het up over an old flame that never lit.

Since Crash was still en route from the doghouse, you tasked her with organising the blockades around Nemšiná. You didn’t feel nauseous with misplaced guilt anymore; you were on some serious painkillers.

The rest of your new to-do list was carried out by all forces combined: roads rammed to block any escape, barrages ready to crank up the pressure on your enemy, a circumference of sniper nests covering from afar in case any made it out Nemšiná’s limits, and the battering rams of your teams ready to arrest and recover.

Your replacement watch from your pack rested on your wrist, hands tucked under your vest where they warmed in preparation for accurate and immediate instincts to flow. You counted down in your head as Crash parked the vehicle at the edge of the town, before you called for your team’s attention on the radio.

“We’re go for Nemšiná. We have execute authority for Čiernik, but watch yourself for any civilians still held here.”

An echo of “Copy that, Sierra-7” bounced through your earpiece.

Latching eye contact onto your Sergeant, you said under your breath, “Let’s clear this up.”

Three of your fingers counted down the swing of Soap’s sledgehammer, precisely knocking it in.

First house revealed supposed civilians: a family of four eating dinner when you bust down the door and held them at gunpoint, your team clearing the house. But then Soap found guns taped beneath the table and boxes of bullets hidden in a China cabinet. In a split second, you had to decipher whether the parents were forced to hide those weapons or willingly did so, before one of the OSF escorted the kids to the nearest transportation for the safe-zone and two more took the parents for further questioning.

Mentally, you checked the address off now that your team had cleared the house and moved to the next. Concentric circles weaved their way into the heart of Nemšiná, where you and Price had been captured, the OSF and SAS moving like spiders fighting for the fly at the centre of the web. Your next several breaches continued to house civilians, who were whisked away if incriminating evidence was found or left behind without any promise of fixing their doors. Footing the bill was on no soldier’s mind. Maybe Shepherd could sign a few checks as part of his court-ordered penance if that pipe dream ever became a reality.

The surprise of the breaches kept your cover, allowing you to funnel civilians to safety or have your demand for surrender sated instantly by any reinforcements that were enjoying a tea break.

About two thirds into your route to the centre, you got the information that an armed squad of twenty had been caught by OSF. Still no sign of Čiernik, but his power was weakening by the second. You could feel it in the air, a surge of your own abilities overtaking that of the locale as you leapt over the fence into the mansion’s compound with only one adversary heading your way.

You aimed fast. But they dropped to the ground with a bullet from Price, straight through the temples. The soldier dropped to the floor, following the bullet’s trajectory to the left, and Price advanced on him from the other side of the compound to fire another two bullets into its nose, destroying the soldier’s chances of being recognised.

“I think you got him,” You said sarcastically. Your stomach still twisted with the half desire to kick Price – especially when he let out a dismissive sigh and a shrug in response. Signalled for the rest of your crew to follow, “Sierra-7 to Sierra-Bravo team. Begin planting the seeds.”

Reaching up for your gas mask, you were suddenly slammed back against a giant plant pot hosting another palm tree incompatible with the climate. In a fit of rage, Čiernik rabidly raised a knife to bury in your throat. It was just so handy that you were able to get a punch in first that sent him flying back.

“He’s mi-” Price halted as you shot Čiernik through the skull, putting him down like a dog, in his own back garden.

Price altered the end of his sentence, “Never mind.”

Sending Price and his team back to the rear end of the house, you spared one more glance down at Čiernik, his brains decorating the jade grass like pieces of pomegranate. Ultimately, this felt underwhelming after what he did. Things always were in war. Just as underwhelming as facing General Shepherd in the inevitable hearings that your black box’s evidence would extend.

A brief sigh of resignation was the only other thing you gave Čiernik before pulling on your gas mask and instructing your team to mimic you.

The breach of the mansion was loud and fast, no time for the sympathisers to respond to the tear gas cannisters that smashed through windows and fogged up each room that had barely recovered from the last invasion.

Captured, knocked out, slaughtered: these were the only results you allowed the remaining sympathisers to achieve as you swept through the floors. Your breath hollowed in your mask, dangling itself in front of the soldiers who choked on their tongues before you, needing only a light kick to submit to your authority.

A strong gust of Nemšinian wind gave you a firm pat between the shoulder blades as you stared down at Čiernik far below in the grass. His motionless body was currently feeding the ground with the life essence he no longer needed. Sweat pooling along the edges of your helmet, you resisted the urge to wiped beneath them and the coarse strap that held your chin hostage.

“Why was it easy?” You whispered to yourself.

You didn’t expect an answer but, from over your shoulder, Gaz snorted, “You call that easy, Cap?”

“It was,” You insisted, then you caught yourself. You were not about to continue a conversation with a Sergeant that wasn’t yours, solidifying the doubts you were letting out too soon. “Suppose he became disposable to Shepherd. We cleared up a loose end for him.

Gaz nodded assuredly, either taking your bait or playing along, “This’ll make Shepherd slip up. This whole place, it’ll be a blow to his arsenal, and now we’ve got an actual paper trail against him.”

The cynical and realistic sides to you paired up and refused to hold out much hope of General Shepherd being held to account for his actions. It would be stupid of you to think that this was the end. Another ego-driven dickhead would leap at the power vacuum opportunity. You were certain Gaz knew this too. However, Gaz’s wit and confidence was contagious and you appreciated again why Price spoke so highly of him – maybe even understand why Crash was so eager to risk her job for him.

Which is exactly who Gaz made a beeline for when you returned to the OSF base half an hour later.

Tactfully ignoring the restrained reunion, you headed towards the designated tent and tackled your gas mask back to your pack. Ghost approached the table from the opposite angle, just behind Price.

“You broken?” You asked them both.

“Fine,” both replied.

However, you rolled your eyes at Ghost, “Go to the medic.”

“Hmm?” Price frowned at you then at Ghost before he saw his Lieutenant shift on the spot, an almost invisible limp from his right calf, blood blending in with the dark wash of his trousers. Price folded his arms and said disapprovingly, “Simon.”

“I’m fine,” Ghost repeated.

“Go to the medic,” You repeated in a quietly firm voice.

Ghost let out a sigh that seemed to originate from deep within his bones, muffled by his mask. Your eyebrows shooting up held him accountable and he finally replied.

“Yes, Captain.” Then he sloped off with his gun held like a bag for life after a weekly shop.

Price itched his beard and look over at you, saying nothing, like he was waiting on you for an order or something. Whatever it was he was hanging around for could wait and that vicious side of you wanted to make him wait – a hint of the limbo you’d experienced.

“Can you go sort out your team for exfil please?” You said, enough firmness to indicate you wanted to be alone for a moment.

Nodding, Price parroted Ghost’s reply, “Yes, Captain.”

He went away, sauntering backwards for a while, though he didn’t smile at you. His face was as blank as yours, as a canvas. Eyes were on you at all times and yours on him, until he finally turned around and his hands released his vest, swinging in a march beside his hips. That exchange would be enough to spark theories if this entire mission hadn’t already caused your own team to ask veiled personal questions from the offset. Their discretion over the past few weeks had been greatly appreciated but you knew that, without a mission on the docket, they’d occupy their minds with prying visions of curiosity.

The official handover to the Odristan Special Forces went smoothly, their shouldering of most responsibility accepted with a firm handshake. Following up with General Fernandez took a lot longer. Eventually, your patience thinner than a sheet of paper in your dossier, you spoke through ungritted teeth, “Sir, all due respect, this can wait for when my team to be back on home turf and rested.”

General Fernandez allowed a restrained eyebrow raise at your irritation that could barely be considered below surface level. Yet he also allowed it to slide and Laswell supported your statement.

Chance with fresh bandages over her midsection was who you spotted first, through the wavering entrance flap in the tent your team had settled within. Beside her, coming into view as you drew closer, was Crash, unscathed besides a bit of dirt in her eye that she was still complaining about and in similar spirits to Soap - despite a bullet through the shoulder.

“The same bloody one as last time!” He bellowed, his fresh black eye squinting with his grin. How he’d gotten a black eye in a gunfight, you didn’t ask. You just asked if he was ok and put faith in his affirmative answer. Gaz teased him for it, having made it out with not a scratch on him and receiving a gentle headlock (in the crook of the uninjured arm) from his brother in arms as a reward.

Price was staring back at you again. In the shadow of the flap of the tent, you could make out a smaller version of his usual smile softening the cutting edge of his facial hair. You looked over your shoulder, back at the heli unsealing itself, ready to cart your teams back to British soil.

“How long ‘til our exfil?” Gaz adjusted his cap, the Union flag still standing proud at the centre.

You resisted the urge to make the meaningless gesture of checking your watch and chose instead to sit down on a free bench. “Another twenty minutes.”

“Plus debrief for a couple hours,” mused Gaz, “Justifying every bullet shot and every step taken on foreign soil.”

“Naturally. Though it’ll probably be more like five hours since there’s twice as many of us than usual.” You smoothed a wet wipe across your face, enjoying how the air displaced through the tent flap cooled your cheeks.

Opening up one of his palms, Price said, “Mind if I steal a few?”

“Respectfully, rot.” Then you tossed the packet at Price, hitting him on the bicep yet he still managed to catch it with the other hand.

Your memory of Price told you he’d have some kind of retort for your cheek. As if he’d let you get away with that comment coupled with the possibility of being heard by your subordinates.

However, he simply looked at you and broadened his smile into one that sent you almost two decades back. The turn of the new year in a pub garden in Herefordshire, your first year in the army complete, and you’d lost your voice bellowing the final ten seconds of the year and spun around as confetti snowed over everyone outside. John had both hands on your face, yours on his, and you both screamed as you jumped hysterically to the sounds of the year 2004 arriving.

“Fucking hell,” you muttered into the wet wipe, smothering it so you weren’t heard.

You dared not to show how your limbs felt like lava sluggishly slipping down a slope when the time came to haul ass to the tarmac. Lowering yourself into your seat and buckling in swiftly gave you a few extra seconds to bid farewell to Odristan. Maybe you’d return, but hopefully not in relation to this closing chapter of your life. No, for now, your job here was done. You could return home with your shoulders weighed down by your renewed grief, taking names and tags so that you could repeat them in your thanks, your eulogies. For a few moments, you could breathe before resuming the rest of the work you would continue across the rest of the planet, in hopes that you would never have to come here again.

“Reckon we’ve done enough to earn a medal this time?” Soap asked via comms. “Pat on the back maybe,” Crash suggested from her seat opposite him. The chuckles she inspired made you glad you didn’t switch your headset off.

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

AN: Thank you for those who are still reading this fic. I got caught up in my course so I couldn't finish it. But now it's the Christmas holidays so I can focus on finishing this! I wanna write more for Price, so maybe I'll do a remastered version of this fic when it's done. Or if you have any ideas, hit me up with your thoughts!

Also, I've seen the MW3 campaign and I am Electing to Ignore it.

Tag-list: @mockerycrow and @i-g0-beserk

#john price x reader #john price fanfic #cod x reader #cod fanfic #mw2 fanfic #my writing #series #r: gn

[appropriatelystupid]

can you tell us the story of how you found your cats? i'm sick in bed and would love a heartwarming story :)

ooo you caught me at the right time because i just sat down with quite a bit of time to kill (also I hope you feel better soon <3)

when i say rey picked me i fucking mean it

it’s a lengthy so i’m gonna put it under the cut and kitten pics (first pics i took of the three of them)

our story begins all the way back in 2015:

over the summer i’d had to say good bye to one of my two remaining childhood cats, pongo, after ~17 years. my mom still had the last, catscan, but in september i would be leaving for a new job in a new state and she wouldn’t be able to come with me

there was a few months of training for this new job that meant i was in a situation where i couldn’t have pets yet but by mid december i was in my new apartment and DESPERATELY needed felines back in my life (legit this is the longest i’d ever lived without a cat in my home)

so finally, sorta settled between xmas and new years, i began my search for some kittens

i pretty quickly found the closest humane society to me and started scrolling their cats and there was a GORGEOUS long-haired tortie/calico kitten with a tragic backstory to boot

within a day or two i drove over to try and meet the kitten and see if any others seemed bonded to it because i knew i wanted two so they’d have company while i was at work

so i get there and do some intro stuff with the staff and run through the five cats i’d grown up with (and the bonus cats that crossed my life in various ways) clearly proving i wasn’t terrible and was absolutely qualified for adoption. the next step was meeting all the cats they had

(a brief note about the layout of this place: it’s located in an old house that’s been remodeled to serve this purpose so there are a handful of rooms set up for different groups of cats and each room has a door that’s almost fully a window so they can keep an eye out easier)

so we go into the first room that has the very little kittens and obviously they’re all adorable but they’re only just big enough to technically be ready to go to a new home so none of them jumped out at me

the second room, as it turned out, would be the game changer

in the second room only had two cats in it. lucy and leon (who i remembered had a terribly unflattering photo on the website) were nearly six months old and were very obviously related and likely part of why they were separated from the others

the room had a cat tree in one corner but also had a wall mounted about waist height on three of the walls for them to get to the window. there was a single folding chair placed to the side of the room

so we approach the second room and the employee showing me around tells me she has to take care of something and that i should just wait in the room until she’s done (majorly sus but i think she could tell rey was about to pick me). both kittens are standing in the door window watching me come over

so i scooch into the room and go to sit in the chair and before i’m even fully seated the girl cat is already jumping in my lap to curl up and start purring. the boy, clearly more skittish than his sister, gets up on the wall to sniff at me from a safer distance but eventually stretches out to get a paw on my shoulder to really get some sniffs in

i only sat there for maybe five minutes but my original plan was wobbling majorly

the staffer comes to get me eventually and we continue through the rest of the rooms. the fourth room had the gorgeous kitten and some other unrelated cats. and it was too nervous to really let me pet her. the others didn’t seem too interested in our presence either so no second cat from the room seemed like the one either

we moved on, headed downstairs to the new new kittens who weren’t ready for adoption and the seniors who i wish i could’ve considered more seriously (my pain from the summer was still a little too fresh and i knew catscan was only going to be around so much longer)

as we head upstairs to finish up some paperwork we talk through the next steps. they like my vibes but still need to call my references to do their do diligence. when we walk by, lucy and leon are back in their door window watching

i leave for the day, text my friend to warn her she’d be getting a call, and head to target to pick up some stuff. within an hour, barely into my target run, i get the call that i’m approved to adopt, and do i have any front runners for who i wanted to take home

there was no question about it: it had to be lucy and leon

rather unfortunately, the timing of it all meant i couldn’t actually pick them up until january 2nd (only four days later but a long four days of impatience) but then, just like that, i had two precious little kittens in my house just in time for their sixth month birthday on the 3rd, now named rey and legolas

~cut to april 2021~

i’m sitting at work one day and my buddy texts me that his sister came home that day, during a storm, to discover four kittens in a storm drain/gutter. she’d sat around for a bit to see if a mother came back but after an hour or so couldn’t bear to leave them out alone anymore so she brought them inside

i let him know, if she needed any help with placing them after she got them checked out i could probably help (we lived near each other and both my parents had separately talked about wanting a cat again. and i was moving out of my apartment into more space and figured i could probably handle a third if it came down to it)

two-ish months later, i’ve moved lego and rey into their new house and my buddy texts me again, am i still interested in another cat

there was one of the four yet to be claimed and i said absolutely give me the little guy

my buddy puts me in touch with his sister and we sort out a time for me to come by and, within a day or two, kieran joins the clowder

#some fun bonus facts: #alt name considered for rey: tauriel (i had a theme but it’s harder to abbreviate than legolas) #alt name for kieran (i didn’t know if i was getting a boy of one of the girls for a bit): aithusa (i was committed to it being kmcg related #so thank you sg writers for not knowing anything about anything) #also i def teared up typing this i just love my babies so so much #appropriatelyfeline #anon #appropriatelyasked #stupidlyanswered

[trashpandacraft]

tour de fleece (crash)

ok, so the tour de fleece ended, and i...did not do so great. i did really well for the first bit, and then we went to sheep and wool. and sheep and wool was amazing and delightful and i had an amazing time, but also: i'm disabled, and the crash from putting out that much energy was, uh, intense. i basically couldn't do anything for a week, and even spinning on my eel wheel in bed was too much to manage.

so i didn't. i picked up over the weekend, the last two days of the tour, and (very slowly) managed to spin some lovely rambouillet that i think will stay a singles—we'll see what it looks like after it's had a week to chill out on the bobbin.

(yeah, there's a couple little pigtaily bits, but (1) i literally finished the spin about thirty seconds before taking this photo, and (2) i prefer to spin at very low tension for most things, so it doesn't always wind on evenly. i suspect they'll go away.)

i'm not thrilled about how this ended for me, but when i made my tour de fleece plans, we hadn't decided to go to bendigo yet, so they were sort of overly ambitious. i also, uh, thought that the tour de fleece ran the entirety of july, and not just the first three weeks? so i thought that i had more time that i did, right until i started seeing people posting about the final stretch and went WAIT WHAT?

goals (link to original) and how they went:

spin a chunky yarn. i absolutely did not do this, and didn't even really think about it. i may just...keep not doing it. i still don't enjoy chunky yarns. maybe that's fine.

spin a singles yarn. see above! this one actually worked out ok, i think. i'm pretty sure it's going to stay a singles, and at minimum, it could stay a singles if i wanted it to.

spin some sock yarn. i didn't expect to finish this in july, but actually, yes i did! unwashed, it's about 25 wpi, which i'm pleased with. (it'll puff up some, but it's fairly firm, so i think not a ton.) unfortunately, i once again succumbed to the fallacy that i knit socks from 100g of commercial yarn, so 100g of fibre should be plenty for socks! it. is not. i think that washed up, i'll have about 225m, which might be enough for like, ankle socks. i'm gonna try, anyhow, but next time i say the words 'spinning for socks', someone please remind me that i want to spin at least 150g.

spin a breed i've never spun before. not a breed, and not much of it, but i actually did spin some bamboo fibre this month, and that's the first time i spun it and it wasn't a blend, so i think that counts.

spin this chunk of polwarth i dyed a few weeks back and am desperate to get my hands into. this was a just-for-fun addition that i absolutely did not get to, and am mad about. it's probably what i'm spinning next.

dye some wool in colours i don't usually use—the red-orange-yellow end of things. this was meant to be my second dye of the month, but didn't happen—the spin above is from fibre i dyed a couple years ago. i think it'll still happen in the near future, as my kid picked up a spindle at sheep and wool, and they fuckin love orange.

dye something brightly coloured. this one happened! i dyed some grey and white merino into a vivid purple. i'm thinking about blending in a little silk and sparkle.

make 20 rolags with hand cards. hahaha ha hahahaha no. i think i made four. the rolags will continue until the rolags improve, but i did not meet this goal even a little

stretch goals:

spin a four ply. surprisingly, yes! the sock yarn mentioned above is four ply, and i'm pretty pleased with it. i would, obviously, be more pleased if i'd remembered the whole density issue, but it's a very consistent four-ply sock weight, so i'm calling it a win.

spin a textured yarn. i did not do this. maybe later? maybe not, honestly. i feel like i should like textured yarns and chunky yarns and art yarns, but in my heart, i just don't. i'm impressed when other people make them, but maybe that's not reason enough to make them myself.

ok, spelling it all out like that makes me feel a little less bad. at no point did i say that i couldn't combine goals, so i achieved exactly half of those things. which isn't great, but isn't as bad as i thought. maybe next year i'll remember that 'do things you don't enjoy' doesn't really make for fun challenges for yourself, too.

#spinning #hand spinning #tour de fleece #fibrecraft #fibercraft #smartest raccoon i know

[ishgard]

Tag ppl you want to get to know better

Tagged by @myreia - thank you!!!

LAST SONG: so I meant to go to my history to figure out what it was but forgot and by the time I did it changed so uh, haha 'Hozier - 'Francesca'

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Sousou no Frieren, Dungeon Meshi

THREE SHIPS: Ohboyokay let's see. Obviously I have a ton, but three.

Mana & Belial: These two are everything to me. This is me and the besties pandemic ship, we started text RPing with them while I was up north in 2019 and then everything spiraled. They were originally GBF characters but they've jumped to so many different universes and become full blown OCs by this point. They're enemies-to-lovers, they're 'I'll find you in every life time', they're unapologetically horny, they give me so much joy and happiness I could vomit rainbows.

Ahru & Deryk: This is probably pretty obvious if you've been following me at all. Ahru has a lot of ships I could ramble about for an age but this is the one I'm rotating in my brain 24/7 these days. I love how they fit together, I love how they get to experience the world all fresh and new, free of their burdens, together. aughghghg anyway. (Holds up boombox blasting 'Francesca' by Hozier)

Ahru & Arshadaya: This is like, my sleeper ship. Like Thanahru it's kinda present in every Ahru verse, but more. They're platonic, they're romantic, they're inextricably linked in ways that should be concerning and even questionable but it works for them. Arsh wanted to meld with Ahru's soul ('to save Nyx') before he inevitably accepted her as herself instead of 'Azem's Shard' and swore that same loyalty and devotion to her that he did Nyx. To the extent that when she got chopped up by the Servants of Light he sacrificed a good portion of himself to restore her, only adding to the 'inextricably linked in concerning questionable ways'. As a result he's in like a magical coma that could last gods knows how long but he maintains a link with Ahru continuing to protect and watch over her even now. They've basically fused into one being but he sleeps on the sidelines because her happiness and continued existence is the most important thing to him. :''')

FAVORITE COLOR: Light Pinks, Red

CURRENTLY CONSUMING: Just had a brownie 😌

FIRST SHIP: Geez... I mean probably Sailor Moon/Tuxedo Mask. Hilariously I feel like I've been a self-shipper + ocxfandom shipper from a young age because I remember my little saiyan oc I shipped with Trunks way back when. 🤣

PLACE OF BIRTH: USA

CURRENT LOCATION: Nope. 😘 (Seconded)

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

LAST MOVIE: Geez I can't remember... I honestly have such a hard time watching movies. I watched a few parts of 'When Harry Met Sally' when mom had it on T.V. a few days ago???

CURRENTLY WORKING ON:

I Will Share Your Road - Ahru x Deryk screens set about their journey around Eorzea post-Myths of the Realm

The Road Ahead - tentative name for a fic of the same scenario above. Mostly a lot of all over the place drabbles at the moment.

Miqomarch X'D I'm trying to get ahead a bit for when I'm away on vacation.

[name pending] original work about faeries and shit, inspired by the Elfhame series by Holly Black. Has been put grievously on the back burner because of XIV brainworms.

Tagging: @icehearts, @eorzeanflowers, @uldahstreetrat, @twelveswood (i know you but i'm tagging you anyway teehee) - no pressure though and if you've already done it please ignore me 😂

#thank you again for tagging me! :D #lays on floor like a starfish thinking about ship things now

[thebroccolination]

I'm curious about something! In your opinion, which Between Us Specials are BounPrem and which are WinTeam? You mentioned on your last post staff and SWS were very mich aware of the mix, so 🤔🤔 Curious Stephh 🤭

Oooooohohoho, this is a fun ask!

THE BETWEEN US SPECIALS BOUNPREM vs. WINTEAM

Week 1

90% WinTeam

I'd call this one pretty solidly in character. Team moves around in his sleep a lot, Win grumbles a bit, gives Team a kiss on the cheek before he gets out of bed, and Team has an emotional meltdown because he was awake. I think Prem's just a tiiiny bit giddier than Team would be.

70% WinTeam

I think they both borrowed a little too much from their own personalities for this one, Boun more than Prem. Like, Boun's smile and laugh when he realizes Team wants a kiss goodbye are very much his own.

100% WinTeam

And thus, my overall favorite! Win pretends to be exasperated for three seconds, Team is a coddled baby, and Win is smitten. I'm pretty sure these are supposed to be set in the future, like Win's fourth year and Team's second, so this matches up perfectly with how they'd be down the road.

Week 2

30% WinTeam

This is very, very BounPrem to me. Boun just seems to be having fun with the goofy setup, and Prem's reaction at the end is a little too cartoonish. (Also, If I'm remembering right, the original skit Sheep wrote had them eating actual ice cream, so it melted faster and the tone was a little more ~erotic~. The popsicle they got for this scene wasn't really melting, though, so I think it made the scene a lot goofier than it was supposed to be.)

20% WinTeam

This one really drives home a comment Boun made about these special episodes: he found laughing as Win especially challenging because Win didn't really laugh in UWMA. He was fairly collected and calm for most of his scenes, so these lighthearted episodes where he laughs quite a bit are when Boun shines through most obviously. Like, this is just Boun being silly with Prem.

20% WinTeam

Again, this is mostly BounPrem goofing off and being cute. I remember Thai fans were very, "lol so this is a BounPrem week," when these three aired. It was cute, it just wasn't WinTeam Cute.

Week 3

0% WinTeam, 0% BounPrem

This was based on a short social media skit Sheep wrote in 2020. If I'm remembering correctly, Team pokes at his stomach and whines because the pool is closed during lockdown, so Win basically suggests sex as exercise instead. So it's another skit that was originally hinting at an erotic ending aaand turned goofy in the special episode. I honestly pretend this one doesn't exist. I didn't like the weight-shaming in UWMA and I liked it even less in the special episodes. But to give credit where it's due, when fans reached out to Paaty and Dao (BP's managers) about, they said they'd talked to New about it and he said they'd discuss the issue in more detail. So far, there hasn't been anything like it in BU, so it seems like they took the criticism seriously. (And considering one of their favorite sponsors is a plastic surgery clinic that specializes in weight loss, I'm impressed. Fingers crossed it lasts for the rest of BU.) Anyway, Win wouldn't weight-shame his boyfriend. NOT MY WINTEAM.

Note: Weight's a common topic in Asia, I know. When I lived in Japan, it was fairly common to get a cheerful, "You're skinnier/you got fat!" as a greeting from people I hadn't seen in a while. Still, it's one of those cultural things I don't think should be excused just because it's cultural. It just think it's universally unnecessary to comment on other people's bodies, y'know? You don't know what they're going through, it's not yours to comment on, etc. Plus I really don't like the position it puts Prem in.

5% WinTeam

Pffft. I'm remembering how much I disliked Week 3. This week was the one that really worried me about Between Us and how they'd portray Team. Like, why would he be this averse to sex in the special episodes, which are meant to be set when they've been dating for a while…? It just gave me those old-school BL vibes where the ~bottom~ is all "nooOoOOOoOoo I'm pure and I don't like sex" and I want to stab myself in the eye.

30% WinTeam

I think Boun channels the exasperation Win would feel, but Prem plays Team slightly too much like a caricature of Team for me. And then the whole second half is just playful Boun being playful Boun. And again, the "NOOOO NOT SEEEEX" thing.

Note: The locker room scene in BU damn near made me cry. I had almost no hope of them showing Team that enthusiastic about sex after the special episodes.

Week 4

90% WinTeam

Team's asleep throughout the scene, so this was all up to Boun, and he did well, I think! He's a little softer on the ABC gang than I think Win would be, but otherwise I think it's solid. Also, Team reaching for Win in his sleep is my second-favorite moment in these.

Note: N'aw, first introduction of the alphabet! (Minus Art, who was cast later as A.)

90% WinTeam

I was enormously relieved when this one aired because it actually had Team initiating sex. Yay! And the music is ridiculous, but I also really liked Prem's initial frustration/anxiety. He plays it a little too over the top, but in general this is probably my third-favorite scene.

Week 5

0% WinTeam

This is 100% BounPrem. The feet-kicking from Boun, the teasing from Prem, etc. This is WinTeam cosplaying BounPrem.

50% WinTeam

This is very cute, absolutely, but I don't see Win being this taken aback by a cheek kiss after they've been dating for months or possibly a year. Prem did fine though! This feels very much like Team.

60% WinTeam

Especially when you compare this to the horror movie scene in the main series, it's very, very clear that Boun's reaction here is zero percent Win and all himself. BUT there he tells Team he'll stay until it ends felt like Win. I can't decide where I fall on Team telling Win he's cute: it feels like Prem, but it's got Team's sass, so I'll lean in Team's favor for this one.

Week 6

50% WinTeam

This is EXTREMELY FUNNY but it's also EXTREMELY BOUNPREM. In fairness, I think Prem managed to stay mostly in character, but just look at that expression up there. That's 100% my gentle chaotic son Boun. <3

60% WinTeam

It's a little more in-character than the last one but it's still a little caricature-y.

BASICALLY, there's a reason why they put a "we're just fucking around, don't take this seriously" disclaimer at the start of every episode. I saw someone on here call the special episodes extended character workshops, which is genius and probably true.

Regardless of whether they'e more WinTeam or BounPrem, they're very cute and they kept us fed while we waited. <3

And it shows how much they've grown!

#kiranokira answers #between us special #between us #winteam

[quartercirclejab]

christmas in the time of hyperabundance

when i was a kid, my favorite Christmas song was a Paul McCartney single called "Wonderful Christmastime"

this schmaltzy ear worm was recorded in 1979, in the short interim between the release of Wings' final album and the release of Paul McCartney's second solo album. it got a lot of radio play over the years, eventually becoming a holiday classic. hearing it on the radio was how i first discovered it, in fact- and the minute i heard it, i knew i wanted a way to play it anytime i wanted to hear it

but that was the challenge: for many years, the only way to actually own the single was to get the 1993 reissue of that Wings album from '79, "Back to the Egg." my childhood was mostly in the pre-to-early internet years, so that meant my options for tracking down that specific reissue of that specific album were limited to local music stores and whatever Wal-Mart happened to be carrying... which meant owning "Wonderful Christmastime" was all but impossible for me

for many years of my childhood, i would look forward to the months when the local radio stations would switch over to playing Christmas music, because it was the only time of year i would get to hear "Wonderful Christmastime." like i said before, it was a popular song in its day, and remained so even in mine, but it was competing for airtime with dozens of other holiday standards. i was lucky if i heard it more than three or four times a holiday season

everything changed in 2001, when Universal Music put out their first holiday compilation album, "Now That's What I Call Christmas." it was the first time i was able to own a version of "Wonderful Christmastime" and play it any time i wanted. a game changer for certain

that was more than 20 years ago. now, at the age of 32, i'm reflecting on how different things are. music is so accessible now- pretty much any song you can think of, by any artist, from any era, is available in some form on the internet. all you have to do is remember the name (sometimes you don't even need that much) and plug it into youtube.

naturally, this is true for "Wonderful Christmastime." the song is on spotify, both in its original and extended mixes- there are also 57 different covers of the song, enough to listen continuously for just over 3 hours.

it's such an extreme reversal of the circumstances of my childhood that it's almost comical, and it's been making me think about how much of American culture in the 2020's relies on hyperabundance and the illusion of choice

it's been observed by parties cleverer than myself that the modern American myth of freedom is intrinsically tied to consumption- we American citizens have been conditioned to view freedom through the lens of what we're allowed to buy, and how much of it there is, and how many choices there are, and how fast we can get it. sure, our leaders regularly disregard the will of people and none of us have the ability to influence how our nation is run, but there are six different brands of mustard to choose from at Wal-Mart, and we can buy as much of it as we want, whenever we want! how can you say we aren't free?

i guess i don't know exactly where i'm going with this, except to observe there seems to have been a shift in the last 20 years toward drowning the American people in a deluge of options that seem distinct, but aren't actually different in any way that's actually meaningful, as a way of pacifying our growing dissatisfaction and providing the illusion of stability. we may not be able to control that our tax dollars are funding genocide, but we can control what brand of donuts we buy. we can control what month of the year in which we listen to Christmas music

#christmas music #wonderful christmastime #paul mccartney #Youtube

[mindutme]

Tlette Tlursday #1

For my first post-Lexember Tlette post, I’ll be sharing a few corrections to posts from the last month (in addition to the changes noted in this post). Unfortunately there are quite a few errors to correct! To save space, I’ve put all the Tlette writing at the bottom of the post.

⁕ In the Lexember 5 post the example sentence has a couple of incorrect conjugations (the verb forms are for multiple humans rather than a single non-human) and I forgot to show the pronunciation, so here’s the corrected sentence with IPA:

Fyon lé sankı konenlle ta seq sankı kú. /ˌfjõ.ˌles.ˈsã.kɨ.kõ.ˈnẽl.le.ta.ˈsɛq.ˌsã.kɨ.ku/ The cat took a brush and ran away with it.

⁕ In the Lexember 11 post the example sentence was I hlì latwí lehlláy wi so’’úy, but it should be:

Hlì latı lehlláy wi so’’úy. /ˌɬɨl.ˈla.tɨ.leɬ.ˈɬaj.wi.soʔ.ˈʔuj/ I heard birds singing in the trees.

The change from latwí to latı is due to me deciding after making the post that the word latı should be the collective “birds” rather than the singular “bird” (I later used it in the compound latihì).

Including the first word of the original example wasn’t a mistake per se, but it does give a slightly different meaning. Tlette is a pro-drop language, so first- and second-person pronouns are usually omitted when they’re the subject, since the form of the verb will make it clear which is meant. They can be used, but it would be for some sort of emphasis, like “I’m the one who heard birds singing in the trees” or “Well I heard birds singing in the trees.” Neither of those is really what I was going for, so I should have dropped the pronoun.

The other mistake in the original was translating it into English with present tense, when it should have been in the past tense. To say “I hear birds singing,” the verb form would have to be hli’ì /ɬi.ˈʔɨ/. Technically in Tlette it’s an aspect distinction, not a tense one; the forms of the verb marked only with person agreement are perfective (indicating a completed action, more or less), and the imperfective form (describing an ongoing or continuous action) has an extra marking. In this case, that translates to a present/past tense distinction in English, but it’s not a one-to-one correspondence.

The remaining mistakes were all related to this same aspect difference; while making example sentences I repeatedly forgot that the basic form of the verb is perfective.

⁕ In the Lexember 14 post the second part of the second example requires the imperfective. With most serial verb constructions, aspect is marked on both verbs, though the person agreement only comes on the last one.

Qá tut qhupi te yar tuta’i qhupi’ì pahl! /ˈqɑt.ˌtut.ˈꭓu.pi.te.jaɾ.tu.ˈta.ʔi.ꭓu.pi.ˈʔɨp.ˈpaɬ/ Don’t bother me while I’m frying potatoes!

⁕ In the Lexember 17 post the verb also needs to be imperfective:

Te sán’ikı fyon tlatlawi ı’e: tlatlawi pewi, tlatlawi latı, ta qakhı tlatló khehyomen. /ˌte.ˈsã.ʔi.kɨ.ˈfjõ.tɬa.ˈtɬa.wi.ˈʔɨ.ʔe | tɬa.ˈtɬa.wi.ˈpe.wi | tɬa.ˈtɬa.wi.ˈla.tɨ | ta.ˈqɑ.xɨ.tɬa.ˈtɬox.xeh.ˈjõ.mẽ/ My cat has many toys: mouse toys, bird toys, and even a fruit toy.

⁕ In the Lexember 27 post there are three verbs and they’re all wrong. The last one should just be imperfective, and the first two could either be in the habitual imperfective, or just the plain imperfective. In the original post I didn’t even remember to conjugate the first two verbs at all!

The habitual in Tlette is formed as a serial verb construction with the verb pa /pa/, which otherwise means “stay.” However, the plain imperfective is often used for a habitual meaning when the meaning is clear from context. I think it is in this example, so I’ll avoid the extra syllables and just put lé “make” in the imperfective, as le’’ikúy. Otherwise, it would be pa’i lekkúy instead of just lé, adding the imperfective form of pa and adding the subject agreement to lé.

Tokkúy le’’ikúy hikı pikı ta murréy le’’ikúy hikwí mantáy … qere le’ì pyo tokkúy! /tok.ˈkuj.leʔ.ʔi.ˌkuj.ˈhi.kɨ.ˈpi.kɨ.ta.mur.ˈrej.leʔ.ʔi.ˌkuj.hik.ˈwim.mã.ˈtaj | ˌqɛ.ɾe.le.ˈʔɨp.ˈpjo.tok.ˈkuj/ Drums make a ruckus and violins make nice sounds … but I like drums more!

P.S. Regarding the header: Tlette doesn’t actually have a word for Thursday so that says Tlette Tlurstéy (/tɬuɾs.ˈtej/), which is about as close as I can get!

#conlang #neography #Tlette #Lexember #(ish)