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soullessjack · 8 months
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not only should any autistic character who’s ever been infantilized by their fanbase kill and maim more people, but they should also fuck as nasty as possible too. as a treat
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tekatonic · 3 months
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Some of you were curious about the concept behind the Elise painting. These are the concept doodles of that AU ! ( Blaze looking at a bug is unrelated but very cute )
plus some later additional doodles :
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Summary of wtf is going on here under the cut.
Basically in the AU everyone's born with a sort of invisible aura of chaos energy coating them. Some people have stronger chaos auras ( the people with special powers ), some like Knuckles and Blaze, are made to have special auras through stuff like guardianship of chaos artifacts. You might notice Sonic's aura is especially wild as hell.
So Elise right ? Elise used to have the standard aura coating, but what happened to her as a kid actually completely destroyed it. So now she's completely unprotected against other people's active auras. That wasn't really ever a problem because she never had anyone around her with a strong aura.
But then guess who she happens to spend a lot of time with in 06 ? Yeeeeup our wild boy Sonic the Hedgehog. So this wing mutation she has is because of that ! She's been absorbing Sonic and his friends' energies and her body is NOT AT ALL able to handle this stuff, so it corrupts her.
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dathen · 8 months
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You know in my Frankenstein analysis I tend to conclude that Victor and the Creature both learned nothing over the course of the story, but had completely forgotten that right at the beginning of his narration to Robert Walton, Victor hit us with this banger:
If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.
Now “if everyone was more chill, there would be less genocide” is certainly an oversimplification—our soggy twenty-three year old hallucinating ghosts may not be the best source for geopolitical cause and effect, but the underlying viewpoint critical of violent imperialism was pretty damn rare in his time period. Hell, when I was growing up none of my history books even treated the genocide of the Mayan and Inca peoples as a bad thing. Go off my dude.
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hella1975 · 9 months
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my airpods decided to disconnect themselves so lana del rey just very loudly declared to the train that her pussy tastes like pepsi cola
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mantisgodsart · 1 year
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After carefully revising our Vi design, we think we know where we went wrong... not enough fluff. Obviously, we did the other two members of Team Snakemouth with her. This is the first time we've ever drawn a beetle this... non-anthromorphized, we think. New experience.
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PERHAPS Mary was not, as some would later assume, particularly gentle or serene. Perhaps she tried to be sweet and patient, but failed nearly as often as she succeeded. Mary had a personality, after all: her own set of quirks and failings, for all that the annals of time and church history would try to cleanse her of it.
So, for lack of more definitive information, allow us to imagine a spitfire Mary who struggled with a temper all her life. Not a doe-eyed, pleasant woman who mutely moves through the motions of the Christmas story, nor a perpetually-grieving marble statue; a Mary who was human.
This Mary gave her parents fits as a little girl. She answered back to her elders and got in fierce arguments with her siblings until she was old enough to know better. As she grew up, she learned courtesy and responsibility, but she never quite managed to live up to the ideal her own mother set.
Yet one day when Mary was fifteen and recently engaged, she turned and suddenly saw what could only be an angel of the Lord standing a few paces away. His clothes were lightning-white and his tawney wings jutted up from his back in vaulted arches. It was difficult to look at his face straight on, yet she could not look away. When she blinked, Mary thought for an instant that she saw many eyes looking back at her.
“Greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you!” the angel said. His voice echoed like nothing else, like a thunderclap or a crashing wave. Mary squeezed her eyes shut and took a step back.
“Do not be afraid,” the angel said in a softer voice. Then, smiling, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
“How?” Mary demanded at once. She was overwhelmed, and perhaps it was this feeling alone which prevented her from voicing any of the objections which coursed through her mind in that instant, save for the most obvious: “I am a virgin.”
The angel—“Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God”—gave her answers equal parts lofty and lovely. Mary had not quite made up her mind how she ought to respond until the angel declared in a voice fierce with joy, “nothing is impossible with God.”
When she heard those words, it felt to Mary like a challenge. She was hungry to see God do something really impossible, wanted to be party to whatever miracle He was finally going to do after so long. “Let it be to me according to your word,” she said, dimly aware that they were the most dangerous words she would ever utter.
IT was not fear of what people would think that drove her haste to visit Elizabeth, she told herself, nor was it anger at her family’s incredulity when she told him about the angel’s visit. No, the urgency with which she made her preparations to visit her cousin was driven only by a desire to share her joy—and, indeed, the rational part of her mind asserted, it would not hurt to confirm the angel’s words.
She was not intent on leaving Nazareth because of her father’s reaction the night she finally tried to explain things. His hard glare had made her want to run off and earn the epithet that he couldn’t quite manage to spit at her, but instead she had merely stood there, silent in her righteous rage. She did not want to see him again for a long time, but this alone would not have driven Mary to Elizabeth.
Likewise, her mother’s conviction that Elizabeth’s influence would be good for her made things easier, but it was not the reason. Mary did want to visit Elizabeth in order to experience the proof of Gabriel’s word, God’s promise; she did. But, as she ventured off into the hill country, she admitted to herself that the other things might have been factors in the decision too.
“My soul magnifies the Lord! He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty,” she proclaimed to her cousin. There was power in her voice which Elizabeth said reminded her of another Miriam singing prophecy on the shore of the Red Sea.
Yet to Mary, it felt not like prophecy but like catharsis. Her prayer was an expression of all of the good things that had been brimming up in her soul since the angel had visited her and a cleansing of all the bad. Her soul magnified the Lord. It was the right response, the outpouring of her heart; it was all she could do.
WHEN she returned to Nazareth, nearly halfway through her pregnancy now and the shape of her figure impossible to overlook, most people greeted her with awkwardness. “Oh,” most of them would say when they saw her, eyes and mouths going wide. Not, “Hello, Mary, it’s good to see you” or “How did you find the hill country?” Then, once she had gone, the whispers would begin. Nazareth was a small town, after all, and thus rife with gossip. Occasionally, childhood friends made pointed comments in Mary's presence and angry words scalded her throat, but at least—at least it was better than the blatant staring and the whispers. How dare they? Mary thought. This is God’s child!
Joseph spoke to her father about plans to break their engagement privately (kindly) and Mary was less angry at him than anyone. Joseph was a good man; this proved it, and wasn’t that ironic? The thing that gave her the most insight into her fiancé’s character was the way he broke their engagement.
Yet Joseph appeared outside her father’s house early one morning, quiet but animated with dreams of angels. “I will take Mary as my wife,” he was saying, and Mary was so relieved that she nearly wept there on his shoulder.
IT was no easy thing, to be so heavily pregnant and travelling amidst so many men with only Joseph at her side. At night, she loudly enumerated each of her aches and pains to her poor young husband, who could do little but nod sympathetically to ease them. Her sleep was restless and she could not remember the last time she was cool and comfortable. Even the nighttime breezes did not make her feel any less sticky.
In the day, travel was painful and strenuous. She was exhausted and irritated and tired of the winces Joseph involuntarily made when she cursed under her breath. Joseph was patient, though, and his carpentry-rough hands were good to grip when the pain became too much to bear alone.
The long days of travel also left Mary too with too much time to think. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve such a precious honor from her God, fifteen and frightened and frail as she was. Yet in her best moments, Mary rested her hands over the places where she could feel God’s son kicking and she sang for joy.
MARY started snapping at Joseph well before they arrived in Bethlehem, as soon as she saw the sheer mass of people who had arrived there ahead of them. She had a throbbing headache and hadn’t yet had supper, and the city was far busier than either of them had expected. When the innkeeper gave them use of his stable, it was not so much out of sympathy for an expectant mother as fear of a couple who both seemed dangerously close to devolving into an open shouting match in his doorway.
Not long after arriving in the innkeeper’s little stable, Mary’s contractions began, hard and fast. Joseph was saying something about going to find a midwife, and Mary bellowed, “Don’t you dare leave me!” But he only squeezed her hand and took off running, leaving her alone with the cattle. Mary panted and screamed and cursed until at last someone was at last behind her— “push,” the woman murmured, “and breathe. That’s the way of it. I’ve had four myself, you’re doing fine. Don’t be afraid."
"Don't be afraid! Like hell." Mary was terrified down to her very marrow.
Yet when all was over, the child was dearer and lovelier and tinier than she had ever imagined him. His fingers were impossibly little, barely enough to grip one of her fingers, and his soft head fit in the palm of one hand. Her lips lightly glanced over his soft tufts of hair and Mary did not think much about the fact that she was kissing the face of God. He was only her baby; she had carried him nine months, had delivered him there on the hay, and saw her own nose there in the middle of his little, scrunched-up face. He would save her from her sins one day, but first she would be mother to this little seven-pound bundle that cried and blinked in her arms.
WHEN she saw the shepherds making their way towards their stable in a stinking, noisy crowd, Mary turned to Joseph and moaned "make them go away." Exhaustion made her bones heavy and the baby had finally, finally nodded off to sleep in his makeshift crib. Yet before Joseph could respond, they heard the word angels and froze.
The shepherds were a rowdy bunch, but their voices glittered with joy as they tripped over the story of what they had seen. It was not a very well-told story; no one was able to get through more than a few sentences before another voice cut in with more detail, another perspective, or even simply to add emphasis. Their voices woke the baby soon enough and Mary rocked him in her arms until he quieted. Yet then one of the older shepherds asked tentatively if he might be allowed to hold the child and within minutes, they were passing the Son of God around the tiny stall between eager pairs of sun-worn arms.
By the time the shepherds departed, Mary was overjoyed into silence. Everything, every word and moment and gesture of the evening, was tangled together to form a beautiful, messy knot of wonder in her chest. “Later,” she thought, “I’ll think about it later. Maybe tomorrow I can make sense of it.” So, she did not speak as she finally drifted off to sleep.
MARY and Joseph took their child to Jerusalem, of course, to the temple and, although she did not know it then, to Simeon. Mary marveled at the words that Simeon spoke over her child, peppered him with the questions that she had been wanting to ask someone, anyone since Jesus’ birth. Simeon quoted the law and the prophets and told Mary about the promise that God had made to him so many years ago.
Mary opened her mouth to ask another question, but Simeon was not finished speaking. “This child,” he said, one wrinkled hand resting on her shoulder, “is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”
“But what does that mean?” Mary cried in frustration. Angels notwithstanding, no one had given Mary any information for bringing up God’s Son. Simeon did not really understand it either, for all his years of study, but Mary felt somehow as though she had a right to know what God had planned for her child. It is frustrating to have the son of God dropped into one’s arms and then for the angels to disappear.
IT was said that nothing good can come out of Galilee, but Mary’s family did. (Her family! Even as time passed, sometimes she still felt like a stranger to the word.) Her family was good, and their home was in Galilee, and that was all there was to it.
Joseph worked hard in his workshop and came in to meals with wood shavings caught in his beard. Her boys took turns learning the trade while her girls cleaned house and baked the bread and answered back when they felt contrary. Mary did her best to corral all six of her unruly children, including one Messiah. She would have liked to say that she ran her household with good humor and patience, but she snapped at everyone when she was cross, forgot important things that they told her, and called Jesus ‘James’ and Jude ‘Simon’ more often than not.
Her other children resented their oldest brother before they were very old and it felt like Mary’s failure. They accused her of favoring him, of always siding with Jesus in disagreements, and she could not dispute it. Sometimes, when Mary was alone, she thought that she could have been a better mother to her other children if Jesus had never been born. It was a horrible thought and ordinarily she kept it in a secret corner buried deep in her chest. On her best days, she would open herself up and offer the thought up to God with a song and a prayer. Most days were not her best days.
Yet Mary raised her children (all of them) on stories of their forebearers: David and Hezekiah, Ruth and Rehab, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. They all went to the local synagogue for Sabbath and to the temple in Jerusalem for holidays, sat quietly in their seats, and once, memorably, even lost track of Jesus for a few hours. But when all the children were young, Mary told them the stories of Scripture in her own words. You come from a chosen lineage, she would say. God has already used this family mightily. And yet I think the best is still to come.
Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and began explaining the Scriptures back to his mother before very long. As he grew, Mary was mildly disappointed to discover that he never really grew into his looks. Her other sons were handsome, but Jesus was unfortunately rather plain.
But let it never be said that Jesus was ugly. Smiles and laughter came over his face like rain in summer, and that made all the difference. He was like his mother in that way; they were both of them so rarely expressionless, always laughing or thoughtful, furious or incandescent. Yet where Mary could be mercurial, Jesus was simply honest and open.
Mary had known the mother of the bridegroom all their lives; they had played with dolls together and gossiped about boys and gone to the synagogue and commiserated about their children as they grew. As a result, when the wine ran tragically short before the celebration was over, Mary felt a certain responsibility to do something about it. So it was that Mary found herself marching up to her oldest boy, who also happened to be the Son of God, and rather pointedly telling him, “Jesus, they have no wine.”
HE gathered followers gradually at first. Mary noticed new faces appearing in her son's orbit: young men who believed him when he spoke without the benefit of angels as proof. Mary wondered sometimes whether she would have had faith enough to take Jesus at his word if she had only seen him in the temple or spoken to him on the shores of the sea. Some days she imagined that she would, could, might; others, she sincerely doubted it.
Then, at the wedding of a family friend, Jesus performed his first miracle.
“Woman, what does this have to do with me?” he asked.
Mary raised an eyebrow at her impudent, holy son. “Oh?” she replied. “Are you sure that’s how you want to address your mother, boy?”
Jesus laughed, a full-bodied, warm sound, and said in a softer voice, “Mother, my hour has not yet come.” It was exactly the response he had given the last half-dozen times Mary had insinuated, half-joking and half in frustration, that she wanted her son’s supernatural help solving an impossible, if rather mundane problem. She gave him a nod of understanding, though, and, still within his earshot, instructed the servants to do whatever Jesus asked of them.
Much to her astonishment, Jesus decided to humor her that day and turned pitchers of water into the best wine she had ever tasted. As they left the celebration that night, Mary reached up to fondly ruffle her son’s hair and said, “I suppose your time has come at last.”
A FEW months later, Jesus returned from the cliff where the people of Nazareth had wanted to kill him and found Mary back at home, preparing to excise several long-time friends from her life with a vengeance. When she turned and saw him, her jaw was set dangerously, eyes flashing and back straight. She did not want to listen as her son patiently explained to her exactly which Scriptures were being fulfilled in their scorn; she knew only How dare these people hurt her child? How dare they threaten Jesus when he came before them with God’s truth? How dare they?
She had been there, of course, in that lovely old synagogue which had been more constant in her life than any other place she could think of. She had watched, giddy with pride and anticipation, as Jesus unfurled the scroll of Isaiah and proclaimed himself the fulfillment of God’s promises. “He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” he had said, “Today the Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” and they had laughingly called him Joseph’s son and refused to listen, those foolish, hateful people.
They had driven him from the village where she had raised him—friends who had doted on him as a baby, who had passed him in the streets and commented on a recent growth spurt, whose tables he had sanded and whose children who had played with—and they had actually tried to kill him. Never acknowledging those people again was too kind, Mary thought.
But Jesus was still speaking, and the words were registering in her mind somewhere now, even if she wished that they wouldn’t. Mother. Oh, mother. I am sorry for your pain. This will not be the last time. It is written that the Son of Man must be despised and rejected by man in order to save his people. He was looking at her and speaking so gently, and Mary only barely met his eyes.
MARY sobbed hot, angry tears at the foot of the cross. She was furious all that night while they waited for her baby’s broken corpse to be taken down off the cross, furious the next day as there were Sabbath rituals to carry out, and the next as funeral preparations were made. What an awful price must be paid for those foolish, dangerous words she spoke to the angel so long ago. It was appalling that such a price must be paid for loving her son, the way a mother does. How could God think to demand it of her, to demand it of him? Wasn’t God supposed to be her son's Father? How dare He?
She stubbornly refused to speak the words of the Sabbath liturgy aloud. She moved her lips in pantomime and tried to stuff down her anger at God for ever giving her Jesus, for daring to call it a blessing. She dug her fingernails deep into the heels of her hands.
The disciples tried to give her kind words and gentle touches, but Mary was angry at them too. She knew the name and face of every one of them who had fled from the insinuation that they might know Jesus. So many of them had not stayed till the last, and all she had left was how dare they?
Jesus had given her to John, and the boy made good. Mary went back to stay with him and his brother James with no notion at all of what she ought to say or do. She was mostly drowning in her own thoughts, and so were they.
In the still of the second night, John sat beside her, gazing into a dying fire. “If you could go back—I mean—knowing how it ends—do you regret—” He wasn’t looking at her, and Mary was glad of that.
“I don’t know,” she replied. The corners of her chest felt like open wounds. “I don’t regret loving him. But I—I think I might have said something different to the angel.”
WHEN she first saw Jesus again, Mary didn’t think Messiah or Savior first. All that would come later, sitting among the disciples and pulling apart all the things he had said and done in their midst. But when Mary first saw him, the first thing she thought was my baby.
She hugged him and kissed him and held him, all the while certain that his body was different than she remembered—somehow brighter and truer than before—yet not caring a whit. Mary knew every line of her son’s face and they were all precious to her. Somehow, in spite of the differences, his nose still looked like her own.
After that, it was all Mary could do not to start yelling at Jesus. There was a monumental need in her chest to demand answers of her son and to scold him for upsetting her so. In the end, though, she managed to tamp it down. All she said was, “don’t you dare do that to me again. Do you understand? Not ever.” She said it in her don’t-cross-me voice to show that she meant it.
Jesus laughed, and Mary fairly vibrated with the joy of it.
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mejomonster · 5 months
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To get good at telling stories... writing stories... one must... practice by writing stories ;-;
#rant#i tell u what i think id have functioned well in a wrbnovel publishing format. but i dont think#any good sites for that exist in english as of yet? (i think theres one but its contract is Yikes i heard)#but just like. the idea of publishing chapter ever 1-2 weeks until youre done. maybe 20 chapters maube 2000. maybr you never finish.#most of the chapters free and maybe idk you make some advertizing money on ads viewed on your chapter page. or make the last couple extras#paid only idk. but the big thing? the point im getting to - sorry i got lost in the sauce -#my point is: you probably DO write shit at first. or write fine with some SHIT ARCS or rushed chapters to hit ur weekly updates#and 5 years from then youll look back and wanna overhaul some of those fucking stories (weve seen many a jjwxc writer revise later).#but wow will you have practiced writing a LOT.#youll have 100k 500k 1 million 5 million words worth of writing under your belt in a few years#and youll probably be a hell of a lot better at knowing how to make more chaptwrs on average interezsting and Building Consistently to your#main plot and arcs. you'll probably get much bettwr at raw scheduling of wriitng and pre-planning that works for you and structure mapping#youll have a much better idea of your personal strengths whrn you need to lean on them for a rough month when your story's turned#into a mess. youll value your own writing more (i hope) cause LOOK how much you fucking accomplished.#like. npss? dmbjs author? idk about others but i can definitely see the improvement in wriitng skill#between dmbj book 1 and the recent heihua book and mountain village book#(in terms of style in word choice. and goals for the story set out to be told)#i look at priest and newer novels by priest are as impressive as any literary novel ive ever analysed#(and older ones while i also love i do see their slightly rougher word choice and how some were executed a bit#more up and down/not as tightly)#i just. agh. i am :c feeling that ill probably write 200k words this year#and none of it will be as good as i want. but i NEED to write these first 200k#because the only way i get better. get to the way i want to write. is to make the progress of improvement with this first 200k.#ToT fun fact i wrote 170k words this year. WOW. and maybe 400k words of fanfic in the 4 years prior (so 100k words on average)#i know i am imptoving. i just gotta keep at it.#also? annoying i cant focus my attention lmao. 160k words is mkre than enough to finish a 1st draft novel#but me? i split those among like 20 projects this year. so the novel most written so far is still only at 40k#and im probably going to need 60k more words to finish it
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skhardwarevers1 · 4 months
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me when i rant to my corporate journal (I can’t post it because im afraid the wording will stir up problems centered around misinterpretation of what im trying to say)
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gay-jewish-bucky · 11 months
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Whenever I talk about my experience with elective reconstructive plastic surgery in support of people doing whatever the fuck they want with their bodies, I always get people who are like, "well that's a valid reason, [insert something that might very well be beneficial for an individual's mental wellbeing] isn't" I get so annoyed. Like you have no right to police what strangers do with their bodies. If you make pronouncements on what is "allowable" you are always going to wind up hurting someone who wouldn't have had to needlessly suffer something that could easily have been fixed if you could keep your nose out of other people's business.
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drewsaturday · 5 months
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environmental storytelling about how outdated and poorly researched my social media textbook is
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LIKE.
revolve festival was like fyre fest 2.0. and i know this because i'm chronically online and love influencer drama which tends to pop up in the form of marketing scandals.
they really just. spent paragraphs hyping up revolve for a specific event that STRANDED INFLUENCERS IN THE DESERT JKL;SDFLJK. but this is how they talk about it
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and for a bonus bad look, though this controversy was enough years ago that MAYBE they've incorporated more diversity into their promotion since then...
revolve got in trouble for having exclusively thin white influencers showcased from their brand trips in ~2018.
so the textbook praising them on selective influencer partnerships...
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SURE IS CHOICE
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styllwaters · 1 year
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Tbh I've been considering redesigning some of the Vivere 44 species. These past few weeks I've been feeling unsatisfied with most of their designs; I want to go for a more 'alien' take than just a bunch of earth animals mashed together. I think the Splitfangs will have the most extreme makeover - the other species will probably only need minor tweaks.
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concernedlily · 2 years
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cousins WIP 9
pt 1
pt 2
pt 3
pt 4
pt 5
pt 6
(note: now posted in slightly revised form up to the end of the tumblr pt 6 on AO3)
pt 7
pt 8
Porsche has been putting off going to see Pete. They’ve exchanged some awkward text messages, but Pete barely leaves the hospital room where Vegas is drifting in and out of consciousness. Arm had mentioned another surgery a couple of days ago, trying to drain another infection, and Porsche hasn’t been up to dealing with how Pete might be feeling about that. He wants to support his friend but he still hasn’t totally got around to reconciling himself with Pete leaving the main family to be with Vegas; and another, worse, part of himself is even resentful that even if Vegas is still dangerously injured Pete and Vegas get to be together. <I>Vegas</I> gets to be with the person he wants, and Porsche and Kinn are alone doing the soul-killing work Vegas doesn’t have to worry about anymore. 
The main sign that Vegas is still on a long road to recovery is that the room next to his on the private medical wing has been cleared out of hospital equipment and made into a little studio for Pete. It’s even smaller than the two rooms he’d shared with Porsche, but it’s his alone. The fixtures and fittings are a confused mix of brought up from staff quarters and brand-new main-family luxury, a signal that his circumstances have changed to something more than staff and yet with Vegas not properly in working order something still less than a confirmed and acknowledged life partner. 
Pete welcomes Porsche into it with the carelessness of someone who hasn’t noticed anything either way, clearly with most of his attention stuck next door. “Khun Porsche,” Pete says, and he sounds like himself but there’s an archness to it; Porsche can’t tell whether it’s new, or whether it was always there and he’d just never recognised it for what it is, Pete carefully hiding whatever part of himself it is that’s capable of loving Vegas behind an affable expression and a go-along attitude. 
“Come on,” Porsche says anyway, and drops into a chair from the bodyguard canteen. Pete is looking haggard and Porsche pulls his cigarettes out, takes one for himself and tosses the pack at Pete across the table. Both of them light up with subtly trembling hands. Neither of them mention it. 
“How is he?” Porsche says, jerking his head next door although it’s obvious who he must be talking about, not to mention he’s not sure that Pete could answer the same question about anybody else up to and including his own self. 
“The latest infection is stable,” Pete says, and then rattles off a load of barely comprehensible information about antibiotics and sutures and test results in the matter-of-fact way Porsche remembers from nursing Chay through a million childhood illnesses, when their medical status is the only thing that matters and it’s hard to talk to anyone who doesn’t have the same assumed level of interest and knowledge about the crucial details of their health. 
“Is he awake much?” Porsche says when Pete finally takes a breath. 
“Some,” Pete says hesitantly. “He’s - quiet.”
“Lucky him,” Porsche says. He takes a long drag of his cigarette and blows the smoke upwards. Neither of them should be smoking, technically, but even in the domain of the hospital wing Theerapanyakul employees won’t tell off the head of the minor family and the lover of a cousin, even a demoted and disgraced one. 
“He almost died,” Pete says defensively, but there’s a fascinating flash of anger in the way he looks at Porsche, quickly smothered. “He’s almost died… fuck. I don’t know how many times now.”
Porsche can’t tell whether Pete is mad Porsche wasn’t there for him through any of that, or glad of it. Vegas had basically had a miracle to survive the initial shooting, Porsche knows that much. It’s hard to shake the feeling he’d shared with Kinn, that it would’ve been easier on Porsche if he hadn’t. 
“Well, he hasn’t,” Porsche snaps. Pete’s open concern, quitting his job, acting in love with someone who’d done the things to him Porsche saw on Pete’s body in that bathroom - Porsche doesn’t get it.
“He almost killed himself,” Pete shoots back, almost yelling, and Porsche draws back instinctively, readying himself to spring out of his chair and fight, before he catches the reaction and forces himself to relax. Pete is so often calm and affable, it’s always a surprise when he unleashes the part of him that had got him to being a senior bodyguard, the part Porsche had had to look away from as he calmly, affably kicked the shit out of Mes.
“Are you trying to make me feel sorry for him?” he says quietly. “They came after Chay, Pete. I told Vegas where I’d put my brother so he’d be <i>safe</i>, and he sent men to kidnap him.”
Pete softens abruptly, then grimaces, but his eyes are still clear when he looks at Porsche. Like he’d have expected nothing else from Vegas. Like, maybe, as Kinn thought, Porsche is the idiot for not having expected what Vegas would do with that information. Like Pete would have expected it, even though he loves him.
“I assumed you were -” Pete waves at him, his cigarette sketching out a smoke figure in the air, “Like this about Kuhn Kinn. Although I heard you broke up.”
Porsche lights another cigarette and wishes he had a fucking drink. “Who did you think she was, the woman upstairs?”
Pete looks surprised, visibly searching his memory like he’d barely even noticed her. He guesses, “Kuhn Korn’s mistress?”
“Fuck no,” Porsche splutters, and then he’s hit by the unwelcome thought that this could have been <i>even fucking worse</i>. He wouldn’t even have put it past Korn to have hidden that he and Kinn were brothers. “She’s my mother. She’s Korn’s sister. I’m Kinn’s cousin. Vegas’ too. His papa had a picture of her in his office.”
He hasn’t thought of Vegas as his cousin before, or Macau. It’s an odd glimpse into how Kinn must be feeling about Porsche, to have been so content to carry on; no feeling of family connection, no visceral response to being aware of the blood that gives them one kind of relationship and precludes another. 
Pete really looks at him for the first time, his full attention on Porsche and not half stuck in the adjoining room. “Your mum? Aren’t your parents dead?”
“I thought so,” Porsche says heavily. “My dad, yeah. But Korn took my mum and kept her here for years.”
“So that’s why they gave you the minor family,” Pete says. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Porsche says. He feels jittery, tries to find the stillness in himself that comes harder every day. “Does Vegas know?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t told him.”
“Have any of the main family been to see him?” Porsche asks.
“Kuhn Korn,” Pete says. He’d pledged his ongoing love and loyalty to the main family, but there’s a tinge of disgust in his voice, and when Porsche looks at him he can see the studied artificiality of Pete’s familiar neutral expression for the first time. Vegas does probably know, then, if one conversation between he and Korn is making Pete look like this.
Porsche sighs. “You’re going to have to take him away, you know. I won’t have him. Unless you want Korn to get whatever it is he wants from him.”
“We’ve got nowhere else to go,” Pete says, quiet but desperate, and Porsche closes his eyes and looks away from him. “Nobody really gets out. If you don’t know how many enemies the minor family makes compared to the main family, you will soon. Vegas and Macau won’t last a week out there without protection.”
Porsche knows it’s true. He grits his teeth and says, “How close is he to discharge?”
“Ages,” Pete says fervently. He still has to sleep after walking to the bathroom. When he is allowed to walk to the bathroom.”
“Then he’s got time to come up with a third option,” Porsche says. 
Or Porsche has time to be pushed into taking him, by Korn or Kinn on Korn’s orders, no matter how much he hates it, or Pete. Porsche knows himself well enough to know that if they make it about Macau, he’ll probably fold. He won’t be able to leave Vegas’ little brother in danger as easily as Vegas put his.  
“He can help you,” Pete insists and Porsche looks at him flatly and Pete looks away from him, lights another cigarette with economical motions. “I can stop him trying to hurt you.”
That surprises a laugh out of Porsche, hollow and humourless. “Can you?” Pete might want to think so, and Vegas might even believe it with how desperate he’d been to find a way to get to Pete, but the bruises and whipmarks on Pete’s body didn’t look like Pete could stop him. Vegas can’t even stop himself: he’d told Porsche he wasn’t going to let anybody do anything to Pete, but Porsche knows Pete had been on Kinn before Porsche showed up, right where Vegas and his men had attacked hardest. 
Pete looks flinty when he looks back at Porsche, taking a couple of quick, angry drags. “You think you didn’t change Kuhn Kinn?”
“Okay, fine,” Porsche says. “Who’s going to stop <i>you<i>? Kinn paid off Prawat’s parents.”
Pete flinches. “I didn’t mean to. He shot Vegas, it happened so fast… I just reacted.”
“Vegas attacked the main family and killed dozens of our men,” Porsche says. “I’m trying to establish myself. How does it look to my people if I can forgive their deaths so easily?”
It’s uncomfortably close to the kind of thing people said to him when Kinn was unkind to him, punished him; to what he knows Korn would say to Kinn. Never being able to just think of one person, always having to put the work of making and maintaining trust first. Porsche has never tried to make people loyal to him; he knows he isn’t good at it.
“They know the risk when they take the job,” Pete says, but he looks miserable. 
“I didn’t. I was desperate.”
Pete raises his chin. “And look at you now.”
Porsche shakes his head. “No heroes, no villains?”
“You forgave him Tawan and Big when you wanted his help again,” Pete snaps. “And - you paid him me, to get it, didn’t you? You took me to the bar that night so he could see me.”
Porsche breathes out, slow and measured. He’s wrinkling his tailored trousers over his thighs and he makes himself let go the death grip he’s taken on the linen. He says, “Yes.”
Pete ashes his cigarette and slumps back in his chair. “No heroes. No villains.”
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bobwp · 14 days
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Now this is one deep dive into the latest release of WordPress.
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The P[+]int The Lord’s missed guided Waiting for a good fascist They said grab ur ar Make a point for Superiority In the kingdom on Earth Warriors called Human needs to belong to a group Make a point of ineffective Mental psychosis The P[+]int of reflection Paid for by too many folds Needing to belong In something The need for “them” to be told No need to think for self Ask ur ar leadership Messiah Dictator Jesus Said follow or else The Holy Point The sights of cross crossed crisp America Jesus was always a political supporter Just reread the golfer / good-er book Old but read mostly in New The sights of cross crossed crisp America Jesus was always a political supporter Just reread the golfer / good-er book Old but read mostly in New Messiah Dictator Jesus Said follow or else The Holy Point Said follow or else The Holy Point Go walk on hot coals God will be with you for whole 21 foot steps The path of 33 feet It should be easy as 1 2 3 be Apostle Walk away unscathed, Be Lie Ver Add videos to honorary thyselves On TikTok, carry your ar’s Express walk through UR P[+]int Messiah Dictator Jesus Said follow or else The Holy Point Add Your own foot prints Add Your own foot prints Add Your own foot prints Add Your own foot prints Ad your Ad your Ad your Next steps
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kit-campbell · 2 months
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Enter Act Three
#amwriting
Well, squiders, I started this blog post three days ago, and then we got two feet of snow, which apparently not only shut down school and work and all that jazz, but also my brain and my productivity. Digging ourselves out, both literally and figuratively. I’m in Act 3 of my revision for Book 1 of the trilogy now, which I expected to go fairly smoothly–it does need a new scene, and there’s a…
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oveliagirlhaditright · 3 months
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One thing I don't like about the PJO adaptation (don't kill me) is how in this version, the kids are, like, knowing right away that a lot of things are a trap, that they most definitely did not in the source material.
I agree with Dominic Noble: that it feels like a second playthrough of a video game, where you already know all the twists.
And I liked them falling into the traps, because it fit with them being twelve-year-old children.
And as Dominic Noble also said, yes them continuing to fall into traps can feel a bit random... But that actually falls into lie with the ancient Greek and Roman myths, like the Odyssey, where that always happened to the heroes. It felt like the original story was trying to reference that and do a modern take on it. So having plot reasons for the trio to do certain things, like going to the Lotus Hotel to meet Hermes instead of just randomly ending up there, sort of hurts that feeling.
But this is just a minor complaint.
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