#tony babel

[fencehopping]

Incredible 1930's style animations by Tony Babel, designed in Photoshop and Illustrator and animated in After Effects.

#gif #art #tony babel #vintage #animation

[jammythedodger]

#metal gear: ghost babel #solid snake #tony the tiger

[waytray]

Artist Spotlight: mcbess

#mcbess #rubberhose #art and stuff #i saw some of Tony Babel's art on twitter and i thought they had done the animation for mcbaise #but it turns out it's this artist with (fittingly) a very similar name

[unravelingwires]

Orts

One of my recent projects has involved quote gathering. It’s based on an assignment from my creative writing class intended to make us think about turns of phrase in our free time: we were supposed to gather quotes from our everyday lives and read them aloud in class. After the class ended, I started writing quotes from the books I read on sticky notes and putting them up on my room walls.

Over Thanksgiving break, I gained six new quotes. I’m torn between two for my favorites. My first is a Brennan Lee Mulligan quote from The Wizard, The Witch, and the Wild One: “Many who have destiny curse it, but what a burden to choose any path under the sun.” My second is from Terry Pratchett’s Soul Music: “It was sad music. But it waved the sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could but you were still alive.” 

I have an old love for turns of phrase so sharp my fingers bleed. It feels a little bit like blasphemy to steal sentences from their home, rob them of their context, and dangle what’s left from the walls of my room. I can’t help it, though. The brilliance of wrapping yourself in the wisdom of the world is too good to pass up. 

#An ort is a scrap of food #if it sounds at all appealing #I would really suggest this project #it's done wonders for my depression #also I think the soul music quotes is about the mountain goats #i'm not saying that's the original intent I'm saying that's what it's about. Like intrinsically. sorry sometimes that happens #you would not believe how careful you have to be to cut out toni morrison quotes #I will not turn quotes about specific types of bigotry into generic feel-good messages #incidentally I feel like we don't talk about word-for-word brilliance in writing enough #like oscar wilde was asked why he didn't write a longer book #and he said something like “there aren't 100000 beautiful words in the english language” #i think that aspect of writing is often overlooked #let's hear it for the hedonists #creative writing #library of babel #unedited #my writing #twtwatwo #soul music

[familyabolisher]

2022 reading list >:)

fiction:

charlotte brontë, jane eyre

n.k. jemisin, the stone sky

victor hugo, les misérables

susanna clarke, piranesi

james baldwin, giovanni's room

tamsyn muir, gideon the ninth

tamsyn muir, harrow the ninth

emily brontë, wuthering heights

ursula k le guin, the left hand of darkness

oscar wilde, the picture of dorian gray

isaac fellman, dead collections

joan lindsay, picnic at hanging rock

shirley jackson, dark tales

gretchen felker-martin, manhunt

herman melville, moby dick

octavia butler, parable of the sower

shola von reinhold, lote

larissa lai, the tiger flu

alison rumfitt, tell me i'm worthless

julia armfield, our wives under the sea

shirley jackson, the haunting of hill house

miguel de cervantes, don quixote

toni morrison, the bluest eye

isaac babel, odessa stories

alexandre dumas, the count of monte cristo

daphne du maurier, rebecca

clark ashton smith, the dark eidolon and other fantasies

rivers solomon, the deep

akwaeke emezi, freshwater

e.m. forster, a room with a view

vladimir nabokov, lolita

ayse papatya bucak, the trojan war museum and other stories

sheridan le fanu, carmilla

e.m. forster, maurice

tamsyn muir, nona the ninth

vladimir nabokov, pale fire

shirley jackson, we have always lived in the castle

jorge luis borges, fictions

henry james, the turn of the screw

tamsyn muir, undercover

ling ma, severance

orhan pamuk, the museum of innocence

shirley jackson, hangsaman

nonfiction:

vijay prashad, no free left: the futures of indian communism

eduardo galeano, open veins of latin america

hakim adi, pan-africanism: a history

paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed

a rainbow thread: an anthology of queer jewish texts ed. noam sienna

kwame nkrumah, africa must unite

vijay prashad, red star over the third world

norm finkelstein, the holocaust industry

robin wall kimmerer, braiding sweetgrass

vladimir lenin, the state and revolution

saidiya hartman, wayward lives, beautiful experiments

john aberth, from the brink of the apocalypse

erik butler, metamorphoses of the vampire in literature and film

amin maalouf, the crusades through arab eyes

anandi ramamurthy, black star: britain's asian youth movements

christopher chitty, sexual hegemony

shakespearean gothic, ed. christy desmet and anne williams

cervantes' don quixote: a casebook, ed. roberto gonzález echevarria

edward said, culture and imperialism

emily hobson, lavender and red: liberation and solidarity in the gay and lesbian left

audre lorde, zami: a new spelling of my name

ghassan kanafani, on zionist literature

afsaneh najmabadi, women with moustaches and men without beards: gender and sexual anxieties of iranian modernity

jamie berrout, essays against publishing

beverley bryan, stella dadzie, suzanne scafe, heart of the race: black women's lives in britain

jamaica kincaid, a small place

friedrich engels, socialism: utopian and scientific

poetry:

trish salah, lyric sexology

melissa range, scriptorium

wendy trevino, cruel fiction

june jordan, selected poems

#.txt #i skipped a few that were just like. very famous plays or whatever but! #you see what i mean abt how much i need to Read More Poetry :( #also: posts that make you think about the inadequacy of the fiction/nonfiction distinction

[sizhui]

I am so autistic about my books if I don't take them out and rearrange them once a week its over for me 🙂‍↕️ listed under the cut for the like minded

Mo Xiang Tong Xiu: The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (1-4), Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (1-5), Heaven Official's Blessing (1-8) [Legally buying MXTX's entire opus may just be the worst thing I have ever done, and I ran Stardoll scams of young children when I was in middle school]

Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou: Remnants of Filth (1-2), The Husky & His White Cat Shizun (1)

Meng Xi Shi: Thousand Autumns (1)

Gothic & Lolita Bible, volume 45

CLAMP: Cardcaptor Sakura (Collector's edition), volume 3

Min Jin Lee: Pachinko

Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre

Nakahara Chuuya: Collected Poems (Translated and edited by Paul Mackintosh and Maki Sugiyama)

Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis (and other stories) (translated by Cristopher Moncrieff)

Pat Barker: The Silence of the Girls

R. F. Kuang: Babel

Masashi Kishimoto: Naruto (volumes 22 & 24)

Yoshihiro Togashi: Hunter x Hunter (volumes 8, 14 & 36)

The Diary of Lady Murasaki (Translated by Richard Bowring)

Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Mexican Gothic

Milivoj Solar: Literary Theory

Sophocles: Tragedies (volume 1, edited by David Greene and Richmond Lattimore)

Liu Cixin: Death's End, The Three-body Problem (translated by Ken Liu)

Veljko Gortan, Oton Gorski & Pavao Pauš: The Latin Grammar

Masashi Kishimoto & Shin Towada: Sasuke's Story [Sunrise]

Osamu Dazai: No Longer Human (translated by Donald Keene)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust (1-2)

The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem

Oyinkan Braithwaite: My Sister, the Serial Killer

Toni Morrison: Love

Joan Anim-Addo, Deirdre Osborne & Kadija Sesay: This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelves in 50 Books

Ovid: The Metamorphoses

Zen Cho: Black Water Sister

Judy I. Lin: A Magic Steeped in Poison

Sue Lynn Tan: Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Heart of the Sun Warrior

Xiran Jay Zhao: Iron Widow

Kazuo Ishiguro: Klara and the Sun

Toni Adeyemi: Children of Blood and Bone

N. K. Jemisin: The Fifth Season

[frankiesbugs]

Okay some of these I haven't read so I can't 100% endorse (I'll asterisk those). It seems like you really like a more reflective/meditative book than a huge plot so that's what I'm prioritizing.

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova*

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (I LOVED this book, best to go in blind)

The Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie (hard scifi)

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (if you want something a little lighter)

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Not exactly new but if you haven't read any Shirley Jackson I'd start with The Haunting of Hill House

Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill*

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers*

The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

Light Years From Home by Mike Chen

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

The Luminous Dead + The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling (Two very different books but I really enjoyed both. The latter of which is kind of Crimson Peak if Crimson Peak was extra weird)

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth (A real TOME of a book, back and forth in time sapphic horror)

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (less magical realism and more surrealism but the books are VERY different from the movie and definitely worth checking out)

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots (very dry and darkly funny superhero book

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

The Water Dancer by Ta Nehisi Coates

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward*

basically anything by Rivers Solomon

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah* (haven't gotten to this yet but I've heard nothing but good things)

Babel by R.F. Kuang*

Nothing But the Rain by Emily Salman* (this sounds a lot like The Memory Police but idk for sure)

If you're looking for modern magical realism, I'd especially keep an eye out for African American/African Diasporic authors (Rivers Solomon, Colson Whitehead, Toni Morrison, etc etc).

Sorry if this is overwhelming!

I think you grasped my tastes because I've read some of the books you mentioned already. <3

Thank you SOOO MUCH! And thanks for adding authors from all over the world!

[osmiumpenguin]

It's the solstice tonight, and a good time to reflect on my favourite books from the past year.

I'm making very little attempt to rank these titles. They're simply the books that I enjoyed most, and they're presented in the order I read them. • "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet," by Becky Chambers (2014) • "The Galaxy, and the Ground Within," by Becky Chambers (2021) • "Locklands," by Robert Jackson Bennett (2022) • "Beloved," by Toni Morrison (1987) • "Exhalation," by Ted Chiang (2019) • "Fugitive Telemetry," by Martha Wells (2021) • "Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future," by Patty Krawec (2022) • "The Vanished Birds," by Simon Jimenez (2020) • "The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family," by Joshua Cohen (2021) • "Utopia Avenue," by by David Mitchell (2020) • "The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery," by Amitav Ghosh (1995) • "Moon of the Crusted Snow," by Waubgeshig Rice (2018) • "Bea Wolf," by Zach Weinersmith; illustrated by Boulet (2023) • "Fighting the Moon," by Julie McGalliard (2021) • "The Empress of Salt and Fortune," by Nghi Vo (2020) • "The Glass Hotel," by Emily St. John Mandel (2020) • "New York 2140," by Kim Stanley Robinson (2017) • "When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain," by Nghi Vo (2020) • "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Omnibus," by Ryan North et al; illustrated by Erica Henderson & Derek Charm & Jacob Chabot & Naomi Franquiz & Tom Fowler & Rico Renzi et al (2022) • "Buffalo Is the New Buffalo: Stories," by Chelsea Vowel (2022) • "Greenwood: A Novel," by Michael Christie (2019) • "The House of Rust," by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber (2021) • "Children of Memory," by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2022) • "Jade Legacy," by Fonda Lee (2021) • "A Deadly Education: A Novel: Lesson One of the Scholomance," by Naomi Novik (2020) • "The Last Graduate: A Novel: Lesson Two of the Scholomance," by Naomi Novik (2021) • "The Golden Enclaves: Lesson Three of the Scholomance," by Naomi Novik (2022) • "To Be Taught if Fortunate," by Becky Chambers (2019) • "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution," by Carlo Rovelli (2020), translated by Erica Segre & Simon Carnell (2021) • "A Psalm for the Wild-Built," by Becky Chambers (2021) Ah, but I said I'd make "very little attempt" to rank them, not "no attempt." So here is that attempt: my favourite five books from the last solar orbit — the five I enjoyed even more than those other thirty — also presented in the order I read them.

• "Nona the Ninth," by Tamsyn Muir (2022) • "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands," by Kate Beaton (2022) • "Record of a Spaceborn Few," by Becky Chambers (2018) • "Briar Rose," by Jane Yolen (1992) • "Babel, or, The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution," by R.F. Kuang (2022)

#books #Becky Chambers #Robert Jackson Bennett #Toni Morrison #Ted Chiang #Martha Wells #Patty Krawec #Simon Jimenez #Joshua Cohen #David Mitchell #Amitav Ghosh #Waubgeshig Rice #Zach Weinersmith #Boulet #Julie McGalliard #Nghi Vo #Emily St. John Mandel #Kim Stanley Robinson #Ryan North #Erica Henderson #Chelsea Vowel #Michael Christie #Khadija Abdalla Bajaber #Adrian Tchaikovsky #Fonda Lee #Naomi Novik #Carlo Rovelli #Tamsyn Muir #Kate Beaton #Jane Yolen

[themculibrary]

Pepper And Tony (Pepperony) Masterlist 3

part one, part three

absolved by the sky (ao3) - sandyk M, 3k

Summary: Pepper says, "Fine and good isn't just 'I'm no longer bleeding from twenty places,' fine and good is that you're not bleeding at all."

Access Granted (fanfiction.net) - Elorapid T, 23k

Summary: A series of "firsts" for Pepper and Tony. Movieverse. Pepperony, eventually. Please note rating change. Complete.

A List of Times Tony and Pepper Saved Each Other (ao3) - crumpled_up

Summary:

Pepper: I got you. Tony: I got you first.

Who really had whom first?

A Long and Winding Road (ao3) - LadyDeBrief M, 4k

Summary: It was, much like he'd told Bruce, a terrible privilege, this power Pepper had over him. That she was aware of that and gave it the due seriousness was one of the reasons he so easily trusted her with it.

babel, babel, look at me now (ao3) - jumpfall T, 6k

Summary: [IM3 Spoilers.] Fixing Extremis doesn't mean removing it. Tony Stark may in fact be dating a superhero. (There's a line in the budget for it.)

Blow the Man Down (ao3) - sabinelagrande E, 11k

Summary: Tony Stark. A boat full of women. What could possibly go wrong?

Close Quarters (ao3) - outtabreath M, 3k

Summary: For this kinkmeme prompt: "tony and pepper somehow end up in a small storage room in one of the conference rooms at SI. Then suddenly there's a meeting going on outside, so they're going to have to try their best to be quiet."

So...closet sex with app abuse, banter and a broom.

common pleasure (ao3) - preromantics E, 5k

Summary: In which Tony has bruises and Pepper takes care of him, and maybe wants some bruises of her own, too. Tony aches getting out of the suit, can feel three hours worth of being hit in his bones as each piece of it is screwed off his body.

Five Times Tony Stark Proposed and One He Didn't (ao3) - Jaina M, 12k

Summary: The first time that Tony Stark proposed to Pepper Potts, it was...unexpected.

Four Times Pepper Potts Didn't Let Tony Stark See Her Cry (And One Time She Totally Did) (ao3) - FrodaB T, 2k

Summary: He doesn’t ask how she is, nor does he say he’s sorry.

Goatee (ao3) - londowney (fateandcircumstance) E, 518

Summary: Pepper loved that goatee.

know your devils and your deeds (ao3) - irnan T, 3k

Summary: fifteen simple rules for dating Pepper Potts.

Lost and Found (ao3) - VR_Trakowski M, 17k

Summary: Pepper goes looking for answers.

My Heart in Your Hands (ao3) - secondalto E, 10k

Summary: Pepper won't ever let Tony see her mark, until she does.

Palmer's Kiss (ao3) - VR_Trakowski M, 82k

Summary: Tony takes advantage of serendipity. Written after Iron Man and now AU.

scenes from our mansion, after the war (ao3) - avocadomoon T, 3k

Summary: "Apologies, madam," says JARVIS, "but both you and Mr. Stark made me promise to prevent you from being one of 'those couples.'"

Snowed In (ao3) - tiny_spy T, 9k

Summary: “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Pepper whispered.

Tony and Pepper end up sharing a room in an overbooked hotel during a snow storm. Takes place in the middle of Iron Man 2.

Speaking in static (ao3) - isevsianne M, 3k

Summary: She leaves while she is still convinced it is the right thing to do.

Or: Pepper & Tony, torn apart, still together. It's complicated.

Winging It (ao3) - VR_Trakowski T, 5k

Summary: Pepper deals with the aftermath. Set directly after Iron Man 2.

yet turning stay (ao3) - irnan T, 4k

Summary: "Tony - you're all I've got too, you know."

#themculibrary #mcu #marvel #tony stark #pepper potts #pepperony #pepperony masterlist #masterlists #f/m

[justahappycloud]

@duquesademiel tagged me to share my top 10 books (1) of the year so here they go in no specific order bc i read a lot this year and if i think too much about it i will combust (it's dec 30th, it's illegal to think too much)

but since it's still me, you also get a loose synopsis and we can pretend this is also a book rec list, okay? it's a win-win, i know.

📚 Babel: An Arcane History by R. F. Kuang

a postcolonial view of steampunk magic England from 1982. revolution and all its ugly but powerful reality. long, but really worth it.

📚 Cenizas de Carnaval by Mariana Travacio

a collection if short stories focused on the fragility of life. read it in august i think but i still think about the stiry of the man and the glue

📚 Under The Whispering Door by T. J. Klune

magic and grief and gay and death and gay and life and GAY. loved it. not as much as the house in the cerulean sea, but really loved it

📚 Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

reading this with sand under my feet and the sound of the ocean was one of my best ideas, ngl. interesting story, not one of my faves, but it was good

📚 A Spoonful of Murder by J. M. Hall

murder solved by retired teachers. 10/10

📚 The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield

the story of the life of marie antoinette and her sister charlotte except they can do magic. what are you waiting for??? go and read it!!

📚 Operación Masacre by Rodolfo Walsh

non-fiction retelling of the events that occurred on july 9th, 1956, when 12 civilians were arrested in Argentina before being illegally executed

📚 Orlando by Virginia Woolf

mock-biography of the famous poet of the 17th (and 18th, and 19th, and 20th) century, Orlando.

📚 The Grimrose Girls by Laura Pohl

fairytale retellings with a macabre twist, very focused on friendship and #girlpower [part of a duology]

📚 Nosotros dos en la tormenta by Eduardo Sacheri

historical fiction about two friends from opposing revolutionary units in 1975's Argentina

📚 A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

fantasy historical fiction about two members of the bureaucracy who represent two different worlds (that of magic humans and normal humans) who must work together when the imposition of one world over the other puts all of them at risk. [part of a series]

📚 The Foxhole Court by Nora Sakavic

invented sports. found family. mafia. gay and ace. it reads like a fanfiction both derogatorily and affectionately, so read at your own risk, but i did read all three books in three days

📚 El Juguete Rabioso by Roberto Arlt

alternatively titled "Silvio Astier Tries To Be The Most Successful Thief Of Buenos Aires And Fails Spectacularly At It (HAPPY ENDING)"

📚 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

not a synopsis bc you know what the book's about but just a note to say that i had this books since my last year of highschool and only now i got to read it, so yay me, tying loose ends from the worst period of my life

📚 Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhis

a prequel to jane eyre told from the point of view of bertha mason, previously known as antoinette cosway

📚 A Mercy by Toni Morrison

1680s story about a family of misfits and what happens to this group of slaves when the man who enslaved them dies

open tag bc if you made it this far i want to know what you've read so i can get recs for next year 👀

(1) sol fucked up so you get +10 recs, but you don't have to be insane like me and you can o it the normal way

#damn #i did read a lot in spanish this year #but good for me bc that's what i wanted hsjfsh #tag you're it #also i cheated with like three of these bc i read them for uni #but since i enjoyed them and they didn't feel like work i'll count them

[the-everqueen]

WHAT I READ IN 2023

all the books i read this year, not counting DNFs or books that i'm still working through (the Wiliad and Genji are on brief hiatus while i'm traveling over the holidays). an asterik marks a reread, but this was largely a year of new reads for me. shorter than previous years but with several long and/or dense texts. i also went into this year with the goal of intentional reading (what purpose does this serve?) and i feel like i fulfilled that. i welcome any and all asks about this list! i'm going to reblog an end of year book ask lists so if you want to reference any books in particular feel free!

fiction IT - Stephen King Embassytown - China Mieville Hell Bent - Leigh Bardugo Summer Sons - Lee Mandelo Lolita - Vladamir Nabokov The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson Matrix - Lauren Groff The World We Make - N.K. Jemisin Yellowface - R.F. Kuang The Late Americans - Brandon Taylor The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco Sula - Toni Morrison The Terror - Dan Simmons Fledgling - Octavia Butler Lone Women - Victor Lavalle Holly - Stephen King Out There Screaming - ed. Jordan Peele Biography of X - Catherine Lacey Our Share of Night - Mariana Enriquez (trans. Macdowell) Babel - R.F. Kuang Family Meal - Bryan Washington

comix/graphic novels Far Sector - N.K. Jemisin Earthdivers - Stephen Graham Jones Nightmare Country: The Glass House - James Tynion IV She Bites - Hedwig Hale and Alberto Hdez Something is Killing the Children Vol. 1-3 - James Tynion IV

poetry Bless the Daughter Raised By the Voice in Her Head - Warsan Shire Promesas de Oro - José Olivarez

nonfiction Self-Defense: A Philosophy of Violence - Elsa Dorlin How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind - La Marr Jurelle Bruce Hijab Butch Blues - Lamya H The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs - Steve Brusatte Ordinary Notes - Christina Sharpe Weavers, Scribes, and Kings - Amanda Podamy Unpayable Debt - Denise Ferreira de Silva Creep - Myriam Gurba All Incomplete - Fred Moten & Stefano Harvey The Undercommons - Fred Moten & Stefano Harvey* Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun - Jackie Wang Mestizo: Critical Uses of Race in Chicano Culture - Rafael Perez-Torres Black Trans Feminism - Marquis Bey

#books i read #booklist 23 #about me #bookblr

[bookcub]

23 Books for 2023

every time i do this, i lose my list from the previous year. so i am gonna pin it to my blog in the meantime

my general goal is to read more some more classics and more diversely and more nonfiction

took this from @ninja-muse 😘

kindred by octavia butler

and then there were none by agatha christie

giovanni's room by james baldwin

emma by jane austen

the bluest eye by toni morrison

the ashfire king by chelsea abdullah

these infinite threads by tahereh mafi

highly suspicious and unfairly cute by talia hibbert

the last tale of the flower bride by roshani chokshi

planning perfect by haley neil

iris kelly doesn't date by ashley herring blake

lost in the moment and found by seanan mcguire

the fire rose by mercedes lackey

white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide by carol anderson

refusing compulsory sexuality: a black asexual lens on our sex obsessed culture by sherronda j. brown

dread nation by justina ireland

girl, serpent, thorn by bashardoust

seven days in june by tia williams

that time i got drunk and saved a demon by kimberly lemming

legends and lattes by travis baldree

babel by rf kuang

the black veins by ashia monet

ship wrecked by olivia dade

tagging anyone who wants to play

#if you are like #wow there arent many classics or nonfiction on here #its cause i dont read many in the first place #and i cant go from like 1 to 15 #unrealistic you know?

[unravelingwires]

Coffle

I do not think it’s my place to write creatively about slavery, particularly for a one-day prompt. If you’re interested in this prompt, there’s a segment in Toni Morrison’s book Beloved where a group of men escape slavery while their ankles are chained together. It’s incredibly evocative, and even as a stand-alone piece it’s horrific and awe-inspiring.

#A coffle is a group of slaves or animals chained together to control them during movement #Uh. Yeah this one was pretty beyond me. So thoroughly not my place. #read toni morrison she's amazing #my writing #library of babel #unedited

[darsynia]

Trust Fall | ch4a سورج کی روشنی

(MCU, Tony/OC 'terrorists made us fall in love,' IM1 timeline)

ARC reactor image by Eury Escodero on Unsplash | gif by @villainelle

Summary: Emory Autumn works as a PA to pop star Rory Fall. While they’re in Afghanistan performing for the troops, Emory is taken prisoner along with billionaire Tony Stark. The terrorists think she’s Rory, and they’re expecting a ransom...

Length: 3,638 ((this chapter is in 2 parts))

Also! All chapter titles translate in some way to 'Sunlight.'

In this chapter... Tony starts building his project out of Stark weaponry, and he and Emory have a heated discussion about attraction dynamics between men and women

I’m shy as hell about saying this but if anyone wants to be tagged or ask me to write something please do! Tags: @starryeyes2000 @raith-way @arrthurpendragon

First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Chapter Four: سورج کی روشنی

“We have to get her out of here,” Yinsen says. “Before they figure it out.”

“We can’t even get ourselves out of here,” Tony says, scraping the last of the food from his bowl. He looks down at the spoonful and leaves it, pushing the whole thing away.

“I’m sure they’re looking for you, but they’ll never find you in these mountains.” 

The other man reaches for Tony’s bowl, stacking it with his own. “What you saw out there? That is your legacy, Stark. Your life’s work. In the hands of those murderers.”

For the first time, an emotion other than false politeness shakes the man’s voice, and Tony grabs his arm.

“Who are you? Cook? Interpreter? Conscience?”

He laughs bitterly. “My job description is a little above your pay grade right now, wouldn’t you say? You’re a contractor. Maybe even an engineer. But it seems obvious that you work alone, hmm?” The man looks over to where Boots is lying, still awake, her body curled up in the fetal position and radiating fury.

“Your name. Give me a name. Or I’ll start calling you something ridiculous, like the Babel Fish from Hitchhiker’s Guide.” Happy Hogan always says Tony’s recklessness comes out best when he combines it with humor, but he’s not coming up with his best material in this environment.

“How about I call you Bruce Wayne?”

Tony lets go with a sound of disgust. “I have way more money than Bruce Wayne’s fictional fortune.”

“You both lost your parents at a young age, inherited a fortune. Maybe even squandered it?”

They’re in the middle of a cave in Afghanistan, and this man knows trivia from his life? For a few seconds Tony has an awful suspicion that he’s a plant, on the side of the terrorists-- but his behavior towards Boots belies that. His behavior towards Tony belies that, too. It’s not deference, and it’s not contempt. Tony hopes that by the time he has a name for it, he’ll have done something to change it, and it won’t matter anymore.

“You’re confused. We met once, if you can believe it. At a technical conference in Bern. My name is Yinsen. Told you my first name in Bern, but I doubt you’d remember.”

“I don’t,” Tony says, brows furrowing, looking at Yinsen with a lot more respect. His conscience pricks him. Why does he respect this man more because he’s been to Switzerland, to a conference that Tony attended? Why is that what did it? Saving his life, albeit in this terrifying, body-altering kind of way, that wasn’t enough?

“If I had been that drunk, I wouldn’t remember me either,” Yinsen laughs.

Tony suddenly wants very much to change whatever it is that’s making Yinsen cover his true feelings with this humor that doesn’t become him. He wants Boots to look at him like someone she respects, too. A lifetime of people kowtowing to him, Tony thinks, and it ends in a cave in the middle of nowhere, with two people who think he’s a murderous piece of shit? Money isn’t going to get him out of this.

“Doesn’t look like I’ll get the chance to get that drunk ever again.”

There’s a sound at the door. Yinsen goes over to see who it is, comes back with a pile of clothes, all men’s. Tony snags a black wife beater, changes into it right away. Even in the short time he’d worn it, the white shirt Boots had given him had been rough on the wiring, kept snagging. He doesn’t want to stop wearing it, though. He likes the way it smells. Does that make him what she said? Tony doesn’t think so, but he does like to see her hair down. He would never force her to do that, and the more he thinks about it, the more he sees her point.

He was framing her looks as a commodity, something she, if she really were Rory Fall, would have already been in the business of selling. But he’s in the business of selling his innovations, his weaponry-- and he’s furious to be told he must build a version of his own designs against his will. Enough to be considering not doing it at all, and risking the consequences.

The parallels are so obvious he should stop calling himself a genius.

“So?” Yinsen says, interrupting Tony’s self reflections.

“So, what?” Tony asks, grabbing a beanie hat from the smaller pile. He wonders where some of the other clothes went, and then looks over to see that Yinsen’s set a small pile of them over by Boots’ cot. “She asleep?”

“Either that or a fury coma.” His condemnation is damning.

“Yeah, I owe her an apology,” Tony allows. “I don’t want them to use me, either.” He sighs, shakes his head, puts on the hat. The fire is dying down, and the cave’s not as warm as it was just a half hour ago.

“So what are you going to do about it? Wear their hat and tell them no?”

If Yinsen had been Obie, Tony would tell him to stop busting his balls about it. That phrase, though applicable, doesn’t seem appropriate at all for this slight, determined linguist/scientist/doctor. He does notice one thing, though. There’s less humor in Yinsen’s tone, now. That feels like somewhat of a victory.

“I can’t build what they’re asking me to. And when I don’t, I’ll be dead in a week, along with you and the girl.” Tony clenches his jaw. The words feel true in a way that makes him want to punch a wall that will collapse under the strength of his arm. That won’t happen here, he knows.

“Well then. This is a very important week for you, isn’t it?” Yinsen says. His expression is challenging, fatherly, man to man, in a way Tony’s never really experienced. Obie doesn’t relate like that, though Tony knows he thinks he does.

A disturbing thought floats through his consciousness, not staying long enough to make much of an impression. Obie’s been awfully jovial lately, too. Tony lets it go, chalks it up to cave fever, or something.

He looks over to where Yinsen was just sitting, but the man is gone. Tony sees him over by his own cot, meticulously setting his suit coat on a hanger protected by some kind of colored cloth, before sliding it into a garment bag.

Was Yinsen at a different conference, when he was kidnapped? He certainly hadn’t packed for this ‘job’ of his, and his attitude toward the terrorists isn’t that of an ally or a contractor. It’s more like that of a useful slave. Tony can be one of those, if it’ll keep them alive long enough to come up with a way to get out. Hell, if he stalls for long enough, maybe Rhodey can find him.

An important week, Yinsen had said. A week isn’t long enough, not at all. Tony knows his products, always has. That part of the business is important to him, and it impresses colleagues and women alike. There are a lot of his products out there in that stockpile. If he has to be building something, does it have to be a Jericho missile? And how long can he realistically take to construct it?

Yinsen wakes Emory up early in the morning the next day.

“Stark’s going to have them bring in all of the materials he needs to build something. It’s going to be a lot,” he predicts. “I brought you this. Sit here, seem busy, even if you don’t wish to read it.”

He hands her a well-worn paperback book with a cover that seems straight out of 1970’s sci fi. Emory doesn’t have time to examine it closely right away, because as soon as she and Yinsen move a second rice bag onto her cot and turn the one that was already there sideways as a bit of a barricade, the door bursts open.

The next three hours are full of activity. Stark’s in his element, it seems, his voice confident and droning, listing off things that he wants for his proposed assignment. She’d heard he and Yinsen speaking about the vast array of weapons with his name on them that had been assembled outside, but now they’re assembled inside their cave. Emory hopes to hell it’s safe, doubts it is, but oddly trusts Stark to be at least smart about how to make the space as safe as it possibly can be. He’s a well-known narcissist, after all, so his safety, she presumes, is paramount.

Yinsen had been clever in his warning. She covers herself with the blanket, leans on the rice bags, and tries to tune out the noise and bustle as best she can. The rice bags break up the shape of her body on the cot, the book gives her an excuse not to look around and make eye contact.

She’d been right about the cover (it was from the 70’s), but the book was published in the 50’s. It’s by Arthur C. Clarke, a name she recognized but had never read anything of. Childhood’s End is solidly science fiction, something she wouldn’t have expected Yinsen to read, though Emory supposes she doesn’t know him that well. The book’s set in the late 20th century, a time period that probably felt distant and exciting to Clarke in the 50’s. At the dawn of the space age, a technologically superior race shows up and halts war and conflict, imposing their will to create a kind of utopia.

When she reads that Earth’s new ‘overlords’ interfere to prevent behavior seen as harsh or barbaric, Emory understands more about why the mild-mannered doctor might have been drawn to the book. It’s hard to pay close attention to reading with all the noise, and she’s just barely gotten to an exciting point when it seems like the terrorist work crew are finally finished carrying things in. In the book, a human has smuggled an object designed to let him see what the physical form of the overlords are onto the ship where he acts as liaison. The character is desperate to see what they look like, why they’re hiding, and he uses the item-- and seems to be so horrified that he agrees with the idea that humanity must wait fifty years to see what he’s seen.

“You like it?” Yinsen asks, startling her. He’s standing beside the cot. She’s spent so much time ignoring the movement of multiple men around the room that she had trained herself not to notice.

“Yeah. Hard not to want to make some sort of strange parallels to our situation, though,” she says. “I guess that makes you Stormgren, the liaison. Have you seen the overlord here? It’s not that bearded guy, is it?”

Yinsen’s expression is pleased, but he shakes his head. “The leader here might be described as a devil, yes, but he would never cease hostilities for the good of anyone, much less humanity’s future.”

Emory sets down the book with a mental note of the page she stopped. She looks around at the cave, which is now covered in Stark-branded weaponry, to a frightening degree. “This seems like it’s proving your point fairly well.”

“Yinsen? Do you know if they gave us pencil sharpeners?” Stark calls out. He’s taken off the black overshirt, the white shirt pushed up to his elbows, and he’s got a clipboard in one hand, and what she assumes is a pencil with a broken tip in the other. He’s wearing fingerless gloves, too, which she’s kind of jealous about, because her hands get really cold at night, here.

“They did. The alternative was a knife, after all,” Yinsen says, with amusement. He leaves to go help Stark, and Emory sits back down on her cot, scratching at her leg bandage yet again.

With a sigh, she unties the leather strap and pulls the white cloth away from one leg. The stitches are dry, and Emory supposes it’s healing, since it’s itchy as hell. After freeing both legs (one had bled a little, probably from the night before, but it is dry and clotted now), she decides to forego asking for a new bandage for a while, rolling the pants down and ‘pegging’ them at her ankles to keep them to stay. 

After going through the clothes Yinsen gave her, she finds a smaller shirt that buttons halfway down. Emory tosses a look over her shoulder, sees that both men are faced away and busy, and swaps shirts as quickly as she can. It’s grey, and she knows if she had a mirror, she’d probably see that it matches her eyes just about perfectly. With the sleeves pushed up, it almost looks like her size, too. There’s something really confidence-building about that, after what she has been wearing.

She puts on her sandals and makes her way around the various piles of actual freaking missiles over to the wide, new table that’s been set up in the middle of the room. 

“Excuse me, Miss, but I’m going to need your name for my records if you’re going to be in proximity of all of this dangerous equipment,” Stark says, from his seat at the table. It’s a cute way to point out that they haven’t really been introduced.

Yinsen has told her that there’s no audio for the terrorist’s cameras, but there’s no reason to take chances. “‘Fall’ has so many negative connotations to it, why don’t you put me down as Autumn?” Emory says carefully. 

Stark must be in a good mood, because this makes him smile. Like before, its effect on her is powerful, and she finger combs her hair over to the right side of her face and basically hides in it, trying to conceal the way her cheeks have to be turning red. Trying to tell herself that she shouldn’t think he’s attractive is like drawing a line in the sand and ordering the tide not to cross it. Even if the water could obey, the permeable, mutable state of the sand would mean the line would move.

“So you associate more with leaves than love, when falling?” he asks, his brown-eyed gaze direct and challenging.

Emory knows this man is way out of her league. “You’re the one who said I’m the hired help, aren’t you? I’m the gardener, not the roses, and definitely not the woman you give them to.”

“Would you agree that I have a certain… reputation, with women?” Tony asks Boot-- Autumn, a name he’s still isn’t sure is hers, but is better than the one he had been using so he’ll take it. Her expression when describing herself as some sort of onlooker to romance makes him feel a sense of responsibility to refute it. As the PA to a known flirty, flighty, fragile celebrity, surely she must know why she had been overlooked?  

She’s backing away, her forehead creased with regret. “Never mind, okay?”

“No,” Tony says, getting up. “No never mind. You say you’re a gardener, well I’m--” he snaps his fingers, pointing. “I’m the florist. I’m all about variety. I don’t worry about roots.” He throws his hands out, picking up his battery and starting toward her. “I’ll come to you for advice on gardening, you come to me for advice on women.”

He can finally see her eyes clearly enough to note that they’re grey. They’re flashing with defiance, and honestly, Tony’s cheering her on, in his head. She’s obviously been under her boss’s influence for far too long, has gotten used to giving in far too often.

“I don’t need advice on women,” Autumn says. She has to stop her retreat, because she’s literally backing up into a box-shaped stack of Stark-branded missiles. Tony quickens his steps, so she’s trapped.

“You clearly do. You don’t have any objectivity about yourself.”

“You think you know better than I do the experience I’ve had being ignored by men for most of my adult life? Just by observing me for a few days?” she asks, voice thick with derision.

Tony puts his free hand into his pocket. “As a man, I can tell you that was almost certainly not about you. As a man who spent time with your boss, I can tell you that the fame chasers were always going to go for her, and so were the guys looking for an easy lay.”

The word ‘lay’ leaves his mouth a split second before he regrets saying it.

“I should slap you, but I don’t want to risk setting anything off,” Autumn says in a low, angry voice. Something about the tone sparks a deep, desperate desire in him to hear it in a different context.

Her new grey shirt fits better than the others, the first he’s seen besides the black blouse which nips in enough to show the curve of her waist. Autumn backs up again and Tony realizes he’d taken another step toward her. They’re barely six inches apart, meaning she has to look up at him. Her full lips are parted, and if Tony could hit pause on the moment, it could easily be mistaken for a sexually charged one, instead of anger. They’re staring at each other, her cheeks flushed, his breathing quickened. 

“I could take it,” Tony says, leaning over to say the words like they’re in confidence.

“Take what?” she asks, brows furrowing, ready for a fight.

“The slap. Hit me.” Then kiss it better, he doesn’t say. It’s a line, one he’s said multiple times before, and it always works. Unfortunately, Autumn would probably be the exception. Power dynamics, again.

“Doesn’t that depend on where I’d slap? You’re not used to having a weakness, are you?” she asks. Her gaze drops from his eyes to where his chest bulges out from the electromagnet housing, then back up. It’s still healing, hurts like hell, and she’s right, it’s a weakness in multiple ways. But the solution to weakness, Tony’s always found, is to project confidence.

“I tell you what,” he challenges. “You don’t have to slap. Just touch me. Anywhere. Do it and I’ll move back.” He can’t wait to find out where.

“How about for once this week I not be at the mercy of a man?” Autumn sighs, rubbing her eyes with the finger and thumb of one hand.

“I’m not a terrorist. I’m on your side. You need to stand up for yourself. Push me out of the way.”

“Honestly, I’m better at doing that verbally,” she says, almost to herself.

“You think you can do that, go ahead.” Tony’s voice is just a little condescending, and for good reason. When he looks at a woman’s lips, verbal sparring isn’t what he has in mind.

Autumn crosses her arms and looks to the side, thinking. She’s sinking her teeth into her full bottom lip, and Tony is completely certain she’s not doing it to up the tension between them, even though that’s exactly what’s happening. Suddenly, she shoots him a bit of a shocked look and sucks her lips in as if telling herself to shush.

“That, right there,” Tony says with a smirk. “Say that.”

“It’s--” she falters, but looks up at him. 

Her grey eyes are impish, teasing almost. Her attitude is slowly laying fuel for a bonfire of desire inside him, one whose strength is surprising. It’s more than proximity, he thinks. Tony’s standards are usually lower, when he’s got less of a choice-- but with every minute he spends with this young woman, the more unexpected respect he has for her. Except where it comes to her devotion to her boss. That’s her weakness.

“It’s none of my business, kind of an… intimate detail,” she confesses.

Tony would be glad to hear her describe something he did with Rory, if he can watch the effect the act of relating it will have on her. He’s already looking forward to it, despite having negative memories of Rory Fall. 

“Tell me and I’ll step back,” he promises.

Autumn closes her eyes, her cheeks dusted pink. “Before the convoy left, Rory made a comment. I remember it because it’s just--” she opens her eyes to roll them, shaking her head. “Rory said you liked kissing too much, as if that can even be possible. But the thing is--” she looks up at him, right into his eyes. Tony is pinned. “It’s better with feelings. Kissing.” Her lips curve up into a secret smile, her whole face lighting up with an inner fire he wants to have been the source of. “A thousand times better. So that’s my ‘gardener’ perspective, to you, the florist. Lay down some roots, if that’s something you really like. You won’t regret it.”

He steps back for her, wordlessly. She’s just made him desperate to kiss her, while simultaneously throwing up a vibranium wall between their lips. He’s not a commitment guy.

Fuck.

Is this what Henry VIII thought, when looking at Anne Boleyn? Somehow inventing a new religion just to get a woman to say yes doesn’t seem so outrageous.

Tony heads back to the table and picks the pencil back up to complete the list of steps to safely access the small amount of palladium in the style of missile he’s going to start with. He takes some deep breaths, focuses on the kind of breathing and thoughts that will ease his arousal back down to a low ebb. There’s only one impossible thing that’s going to be happening in this cave, and that’s building his father’s dream of a miniature ARC reactor.

It seems much more likely than managing to get that earnest young woman’s face to light up picturing a kiss shared with him.

Next chapter, the head terrorist comes in with one of Rory's CD's, demanding that Emory sing something.

#tony stark #tony stark fanfiction #tony stark x oc #tony stark x original character #iron man fanfiction #iron man #iron man x oc #iron man x original character #mcu #mcu fanfiction #mcu fanfic #marvel #marvel fanfic #tony stark imagine #series: autonomy #ocfairygodmother #fyeahsuperverseocs

[dweeeeeb]

Tony Babel - Lucky Stroke's

#Tont Babel

[theghostofashton]

9, 11, 16, 19, 20, and 35 :)

thank you :)

9. in an ideal world where you’re already super successful and published, would you want to see a tv or movie adaptation of your work? why or why not?

i think it would be cool! certain fics over others, for sure, but i think a tv adaptation would be a lot of fun. they're such different mediums, and i would really enjoy getting to explore what my writing would look like on screen.

11. what’s something neat you’ve learned while doing research for something you were writing? also, how much do you worry about doing research in general?

while i was writing you saw the truth in me i learned a lot about how press and promo tours work, the way all of it is organized, and that was really interesting. as for research..... i sometimes get so into it that i get distracted from actually writing the fic lol. i'll spend twenty minutes reading articles to write one sentence, it's bad.

16. where is your favorite place to write?

at my desk, with a fresh cup of coffee and a good playlist.

19. what are some books or authors that influenced your style the most?

toni morrison, james baldwin (giovanni's room specifically, but everything he's written is gold), rf kuang (babel), fatima farheen mirza (a place for us)

there are more but these four stand out to me most

20. what is your favorite trope to write?

i'm such a sucker for friends to lovers. when the lines start to blur and one character's feelings for another start to morph into romantic ones, when it happens in a way they don't realize for a while and then it's 'oh. i love you.' it gets me every single time. i love reading it and writing it.

35. tell us about a character who’s very different than you who you love a whole lot

assuming this means one of my characters, so probably.... tk, in you saw the truth in me. he's so different from me, but in a lot of ways, i feel like i connect with his struggle to find control and feel secure in his life. writing him was a lot of fun because i got to explore how someone with very different coping mechanisms than i have would react to things.

fanfic writer asks!!

#answered #xartofmovingonx