#boardwalk parallels

[texaschainsawmascara]

Boardwalk Empire / oh_de_laval on ig / Rhythm 10, 1973 - Marina Abramović / American Tradition - Nicole Dollanganger

#what an obscure web weave #michael pitt #boardwalk empire #jimmy darmody #nicole dollanganger #marina abramovic #marina abramović #parallels #web weaving #comparatives #art #lyrics #music #comparison #comparisons

[meowzilla93]

Love Language with the Boys!!

I feel like its quite self explanatory in the games but I wanted to explore more into it so

Here is the primary and secondary Love Languages the Boys have!

Derek Suarez

Primary  - Acts of Service!

This boy loves and needs someone to just make his life even a fraction easier

You need someone on your side boo? We got you!

Lets start the day

Are you a night owl and sleep in? Well, you made sure to make some snacks and prepare his workout drinks in the fridge the night before – gotta make sure muscle man is eating right and getting his protein

Early bird like he is? Sweet! If you both go to the gym you pack his bag for him as he is getting dressed, or maybe you’ll go ahead and make a quick breakfast for the two of you to get some energy before a work out

Not going to the gym? No issues! You give him a kiss on the cheek and hand him his protein shake as he leaves, then whilst he is gone you can start prepping a good after workout breakfast for him to come back to

Has he got work or meetings he needs to go to afterwards? You could make sure his clothes are ready to go, or maybe the papers he was reading through the night before are packed away into his bag

You’ve got the day off work? Maybe we plan a nice dinner surprise with his favourite meal

Or you order in cause it’s a Friday and its game night (GO TEAM SUAREZ) and you both aren’t getting much sleep that night

Oh you noticed his favourite protein powder is running out? Better put an order in and top it up before he notices (of course he notices, he is absolutely touched!)

Poor boy has gotten sick? You just know he doesn’t want to let that slow him down

Guess what you are doing?

You are one step away from strapping him down to that bed (kinky, but not really HE IS SICK) but he finally relents, so you get to nurse him now

Mama Suarez has told you his favourite go to home remedies to get better, and you make it all! Tea, soups, hot chocolate, you name it

He is going to know what it means to be taken care of

You have Dereks Day! But its not once a year, its once a month

He needs to have one day every 30 days where its just about him and letting him let loose

The Boardwalk is always a winner, but sometimes its just a picnic, or go to the water park, or go to the movies. Whatever he wants to do, its getting done

Secondary – Words of Affirmation!

I swear this man, LIKE ALL THE OTHERS, doesn’t understand when we compliment him or anything

So guess what guys

Daily Affirmation Texts

He really needs these ones

Just a reminder of how amazing he is, that he is kicking goals (pun intended)

That we are so happy to be with him

Just remind him that he matters, because baby, you really do!

Cove Holden

Primary – Quality Time!

So we know how much Cove loves just spending time with us

Its his favourite hobby, pastime, memory, you name it

Oh our favourite resident merman has a new fish?

You are sitting down and letting that man gush about it, telling you all about its species and what the care is going to be for it

You don’t even have to say anything, just sitting there and listening to him is all that matters

Hard day at work?

He just needs to vent to you, same thing. You could even provide tips (im talking like, hit them in the kneecaps advice) to him just to get him to smile and laugh about it

Some think that Quality Time means you need to give each other attention all the time, but not for you two

All he wants is to be in your presence, and you don’t even have to be doing the same thing

You guys have aced Parallel Play

The most important thing is making sure you are within each others vision and you Gucci

He is reading, you could be watching something on your phone

He is cleaning the fish tank, you could be there just listening to music and maybe doing a hobby of your own

He just wants your presence

BE IN HIS PRESENCE

Any time away is torture to him, every Step in the game literally explains that

Secondary – Gift Giving!

Remember how excited he gets over the orange shell? The poppy? The fudges? The windchime?

This man is so ecstatic that you thought of him WHEN HE WASN’T EVEN THERE

And you are giving him something that he would like, and you did it unprompted

Prepare for waterworks

Listen, sometimes you just need to leave it on his pillow to come back to

You got up earlier than him (shocker that one) cause of work, so as you are quietly bustling around getting ready, you leave him a little letter or a present on the pillow next to him

When he finally wakes up and sees it, there are tears, and then there is an urgent call coming your way

Because of course he needs to thank you for it!

Just be prepared that you will get gifts too. That’s his way of showing his love and care too

Baxter Ward

Primary – Physical Touch!

Look, I swear this one is so obvious, but in case it isn’t I will go into HEAVY DETAIL OF WHAT HE LIKES

See he loves being in your presence all the time, but it simply isn’t enough

He needs some part of him touching you, even in a minute way, he just needs it

Driving? You are holding hands, this is a rule

Walking? Holding hands or he has your arm draped on his all gentlemanly like

Sitting together at a function? Somehow you have contact

You could be holding each others hand on the table

Or simply linking fingers, even just the pinky finger (YOU MJST BE TOUCHING)

Linked ankles underneath the table

Pressed up next to each other so your thighs or shoulders are touching whilst talking to others

Home alone and you are sitting on the couch together?

Position A: he is laying his head in your lap, you will brush your fingers through his hair that is the LAW

You could always give him a small head massage, he would love you even more for it

Position B: leaning against each other, watching a movie, he will have his arm wrapped around you and holding you in close, you could hold his hand as well

Position C: You are lying on him. Oh he will be brushing you hair, but say you don’t like that, he is content holding you hand instead

Oh this man is a sucker for hand holding (have you read anything above)

But you know what would make him weak?

Giving him a hand massage. Or just caressing his hand, feeling his fingers, brushing them across his palm. The lot of it

Can say the same about his neck and head; you could just be caressing him, admiring him and his skin and softness and he would 100% be lulled to sleep by it

Or, if you do it the right way, something else entirely would be on the menu (play prawn-hu- gets shot)

He is making dinner for you? Gently hug him from behind

Come home from work? A hug and a kiss is required for this tired man

Is there music playing? Oh a dance is required. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just a chance to hold onto you and sway is enough for him

Kisses – lord this man would accept a kiss any where

Hands, cheeks, chin, nose, shoulders, legs (alright we need to get back on track)

But forehead touches are supreme

Sharing a hug, foreheads pressed together, just being in each other space?

His heart couldn’t be more full

Bedtimes? You would consider yourself lucky if you can untangle yourself from him

You are 100% wrapped up in a Baxter Burrito and you aren’t escaping

But if that’s not your thing, don’t worry he is respectful of that

At this point as long as he can feel your body heat and movement in the bed, he will be content

After all he gets all the touches during the waking hours

Secondary – I Feel like this is almost two, cause He does need Words of Affirmation even though he doesn’t believe in it half the time, but also Quality Time is a big hitter for him...

With Baxter, because he is emotionally stunted, there is only so far you can provide him in words of affirmation before he just doesn’t listen anymore

So these ones need to happen sporadically, and during very important moments

Like when he is really beating himself up, rather than tell him he is wrong, you just need to flip the conversation to be positive

Sometimes you do just need to give him time to process what has happened and let him come back to you to talk, and that’s when you can gently re-affirm the positives with him

Quality Time just links in with Physical Touch

He loves being with you, and just plain talking with you

If you are long distance, he just wants to make every moment count, over the phone or in person

And if you do that back to him, well then you are just the more remarkable person ever

Don’t need to be doing anything fancy, voice calling is just fine

Going for a walk and chatting

Trying a new restaurant when you are both together again

DANCING COME ON

Thank you for reading my TED talk.

A small part of me is sad that Coves is so little, but honestly mans gets so much screen time, the other boys deserve a chance to shine!

cough I do not have a favourite cough

#our life beginnings and always #olba #baxter ward #our life #olba baxter #our life headcannons #baxter x mc #olba cove #cove x mc #olba derek #derek x mc #love language #olba mc #headcannons

[suraemoon]

Get Ready With Me

- Elvis x Reader -

Summary: It's the 1960s and Mr. and Mrs. Elvis Presley are getting ready for yet another Hollywood party.

Warnings: a paragraph talking about a girl's measurements and a scene getting into a tight dress, skin getting caught in a zipper (not graphically described), sexual innuendos and metaphors that you might blink and miss including a subtle implication that he wants to suck her tits, a sentence talking about “breaking” a woman in, and implying that she might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer. also some references to Christianity.

WC: a cute little 4.5k

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For someone like your husband, Elvis Presley, possessive and protective in every way of what was his, he did not mind showing his wife off. He loved it. A beautiful woman is a man’s best accessory, right? 

Sunset Boulevard parties where businessmen of all the major Hollywood studios would parade around a gleeful smile. Wives were dressed to the nines in expensive getups and accessorized their jewels with apparent frowns.

Diamonds were a girl's best friend. Diamonds were a girl’s pacifier to soothe from the all too quick world around her, a world not made for her or her satisfaction. A man with an arm around her cinched waist, who really could not give a damn that an hour ago she asked when they were leaving, only to be met with a shrug by the man meant to care for her needs the most. Get her a diamond to hold onto for security just in case things go south.

Elvis was different from these men in more ways than one. When the back of your kitten heels lifted slightly from the ground to reach up to your husband’s ear and ask in a hushed whisper when you were to leave and go back home, your husband made it his plan to leave as soon as you two could.

The truth is he did not want to be at those parties either but being ousted in the business meant he had to get his footing and swim along with the school of fish. Any wrong move and you are left behind, forgotten. For as much as he desired to swim the opposite way, he had too much to lose; too much and too many depending on him.

The dim lights above the hotel’s small, tiled bathroom provided a yellowish, comforting tint over the room as if a grandmother had not yet gotten the memo of the newest trend. Those bright, enhancing Hollywood-worthy style mirrors, similar in all ways to the vanity that Elvis bought you last Christmas, were in. As you were a couple who both came from humble beginnings and cracked mirrors neither you nor Elvis complained––at least you aren't in the dark. Checking how your makeup looked under the sun’s natural light cascading through the window helped ensure that your face wouldn’t parallel one of the clowns that walk the boardwalk of Coney Island the moment you step out of this personal Garden of Eden.

After being unveiled with much anticipation from the ribbon-tied gift box on the counter, the candy apple red satin dress slipped easily over your figure, ending a few inches above your knees in length. It was like a glove, except for the fact that it was loose and not yet zippered; the true fit and form waiting patiently to be physically revealed to its wearer. This layer of mystery stayed sitting and waiting.

Elvis picked out this dress for you at a local Los Angeles boutique just last week; this along with many other garments, ranging from a knit sweater for winter and an array of panties for the bedroom. All these he surprised you within gift-wrapped boxes, the box with today’s dress in it taken away before you can get your hands on it. He had to keep at least *something* exciting for today, at least one thing to look forward to, no matter how small. 

Elvis Presley bought most of his wife’s clothing and took pride in knowing all of her measurements by heart. He was sure he could rattle them off on the spot like an accomplished kid at a school spelling bee. This he wouldn’t dare do though. It was a quiet contract of trust not needing to be formally established, one of manners that his mama was sure to have raised him with and should just come with the subconscious of being a human anyway. 

He found that some men were a little too eager to talk about the personal details and inner workings of their relationships. A competition of who’s got the best broad and on some days who's got the worst nag. The one with the smallest waist. The one with the smallest brain. The one who can’t get slick or the one who’s too damn clingy she won’t get off you. 

Anyone who has the chance to get to know Mrs. Presley knows that she is a keeper. Any eye who glances at her knows she is gorgeous. Any quiet spectator who notices her behavior and body language around Mr. Presley knows that she is a very satisfied woman, and no words are needed, that’s enough.

You had no doubt in your mind, under that well-hair-sprayed do of yours, that this dress would resemble all of the other pieces that Elvis had bought many times before and fit both your figure and the latest trends seamlessly. He really was a stylist if you think about it.

You hum a melody as your hands go to zipper your dress, only to find that the zipper is both too small to get a proper grip on and stuck on its track. 

“Elvis?” You call out your voice’s first word in a while.

When hearing his name called, your eager-to-please husband quickly makes his way to the door of the bathroom. He moves suave and smooth as ever with his hands in his pockets before stopping and leaning his forearm on the doorframe taking the rectangle up, admiring the beauty you radiate reflecting to him in the mirror. What’s better than one of you? Two of you. A view from the back and the front simultaneously. He’s got a good one. He’s got the best one. The cream of the crop.

“...Elvis?” You repeat unsure if you should just get on with what you need or if he was even paying attention.

He licks his lips as his eyes go to admire your backside in front of him. “Hm? What is it, honey?”

Your left arm goes behind you, hand gently motioning to the undone zipper of your dress. Elvis hums, a breath of amusement escaping his mouth. The dress didn’t come with your pretty back on display like that? What a damn shame. “I gotcha, honey. Was just a little distracted there is all.”

“Mhm. I could tell you were distracted. Liking what you picked out?” You decide to perform a little shimmy, lips pouting in a playful, seductive manner. As you moved, your cleavage moved side to side with you, the cups of your dress not yet close enough to your body to keep them modestly contained.

He bends to kiss your soft temple. His breath and velvet-covered voice caused the words leaving his mouth to vibrate against your skin in a seductive whisper. 

“Like is an understatement, doll. It's hard to stay focused when ya got such good candy in front of ya.” 

He turns his head back forward and those sky-blue eyes of his that you love so dearly are fully visible to you in the reflection. The diamond on your ring seems to shine brighter when in the presence of his diamond eyes, while they look over you again.

 “Candy so sweet you just wanna put your lips all over it….”

His sight rests again on your teasingly half-covered chest,

“...Candy ya just wanna suck.” 

A blush, not the artificial pigment you powdered on your face earlier with a brush, but the natural light pink of your skin flushes your face. In that moment, Elvis touches your cheek, moving your head sideways for eye contact, getting a glance at the final product of your makeup while doing so. He feels the warmth spread and grins in satisfaction. The illustrious fantasies infiltrating both your and your husband's brains at that moment weren’t as pure as that pink.

He shakes his head as if being physically pulled out of his daydreams and told to remember the task at hand before fantasies turn into realities (they easily and quickly could in a matter of seconds with the two of you) and the remaining minutes are spent on something else other than getting ready. Elvis’ dress shoes then take a step back and his warm hands go to the small zipper on the back of your dress, right above your ass. 

“This is what it must be like to dress one of ‘em Barbie dolls. My perfect lil’ model, looking good in anything put her in. Later we’ll hafta take some more polaroids…some showin’ the dress, some showin’ underneath it too.” 

Elvis loved taking intimate photos of you in different outfits: some sheer lingerie, some completely nude, some without you wearing a top, some without bottoms. Mixed and matched photos were kept in a little box tucked in the drawer of his nightstand. He did it any chance he got. Well, any chance he remembered to do so before completely ravishing you because when your husband needs you, he needs you and who cares about the camera in a moment like that?

Your peaceful disposition is suddenly met with a flinch and your bright smile is interrupted by a yelp as halfway up your back the zipper catches on your skin. Elvis immediately flinches as if he had felt your pain and quickly moves to undo the zipper all the way, leaving you back where you started a few seconds ago. The only thing indicating his presence and touch on you was the small mark of red on your back. A flood of apologies immediately leaves his mouth.”O-oh Jesus, baby. I'm so sorry. I'm real sorry. I-I didn’t mean to hurt ya.”

“It's alright, Elvis. Don’t worry, I’m okay.” You reply, quick to comfort him as if he was the one who had gotten hurt.

“It’s not alright. My lil’ baby’s gotta boo-boo now.”

He crouches down and lowers his head to place a gentle kiss on the red mar that made itself home on the small of your back like a stork bite. The unexpectedness and quickness of his action causes a shiver to move like a wave crashing a peaceful coast throughout your body. But instead of a chilly shiver, it's bundled in warmth, like love sent a lightning bolt reminding you of its presence. Not that you would ever let yourself forget.

“I need to be more careful with my little dolly. If God made ya out of porcelain, I would’ve broken ya by now. Ain’t no doubt about that.”

His soft, tender pecks start to move up your back.

Your breath hitches, “Elvis…”

He whispers against your skin softly before continuing to kiss you, “Gotta make it up to hers.”

“Hers forgives him.” You close your eyes in bliss.

Oh, how much both of you wished not to attend this stupid party. Bedsheets that are beautifully tossed and messy instead of perfectly steamed suits and ties. Warm, passionate kisses instead of cold drinks and equally as cold shoulders. The love marks left on your neck from last night, since covered beneath a layer of foundation, regain their tenderness at this moment. Your body reminds you of what it wants more of, what it desires. Little do you know, so does his as the fabric of his slacks starts to get a little tighter around him.

After leaving a trail of kisses from the bottom of your back to between your shoulder blades, Elvis even more carefully than last time, if that was possible, gently brings up the small zipper all the way to the top using all his concentration to focus intently on not nipping you again. Your focus falls back on the mirror, watching as your body and the dress meet and fall in love. Everything that is supposed to hug, hugs. Everything that is supposed to hold, holds. It’s as if it was meant to be.

“There we go. Atta girl.” You’re unsure if he’s praising the zipper on your dress or you. If asked, Elvis would say both.

Then, your husband looks up to see the finished product of his work in the mirror like an artist would admire his masterpiece. His hands don’t stay off you for long as they are placed on your hips moving up and down in a massaging motion before giving your love handles a soft squeeze.

“Thank you for helping me, E.”

“No problem, honey. It’s what I’m sposed to do. Gotta have my girl looking perfect and you look more than it.”

You turn around for the first time since putting on the dress, assuring him at that moment that all that perfection and body he saw in the mirror was indeed real and not just a dream. Both of your hands cup his sculpted face and you give him a soft, tender, and very rewarding kiss. A small lipstick transfer leaves his lips just a tint pinker than they were before, unnoticeable to anyone but you: the person who made that change happen.

The last step of your personal routine awaited you and that was perfume. A bottle of Chanel Number 5 glistened on the counter as if awaiting the moment and you quickly take it into your hands. Your mind has been trained over the years to know the right spots to put perfume. You spray a little on one of the main pressure points, the inside of your wrist. Before the “getting ready” automatic machine in your brain can rub the now dripping solution into your skin, Elvis takes on the responsibility for you. Your husband swiftly takes your palm-up hand into his and rubs the liquid into your wrist in a soft, circular motion with his thumb. This process is then repeated with your right wrist. When finished, Elvis brings one of your wrists up to his nose, your skin brushing the tip, and smells it. 

he hums satisfied then picks up the bottle, examining it. “When did you get this perfume, honey? It smells really nice.”

“Elvis…you bought me that perfume.”

“Oh.”

“You’re already so sweet, I thought those rose scents came with ya.” He says with a smirk in an attempt to smoothly cover up his mistake.

“Mhm, I was born with citrus running through my veins.” 

“I’d believe it.”

You giggle and while the laugh escapes your lips, your sight falls on the usual next step of your joint getting-ready routine: your husband’s baby blue eyes and what was at this moment not highlighted around them. 

“Need help with your lashes?” You ask softly. Neither you nor he needed to ask technically; both of you knew that this came next in the assembly line of tedious little tasks and that he would say yes.

“I was just about to ask ya,” Elvis replies comfortably and not totally in truth. He knows full well that you, his wife with the beneficial trait of getting the two of you properly in line and ready to go when it came to all sorts of schedules and plans, would’ve gotten to it anyway and frankly, he isn’t in any dire rush to leave. Mascara meant one more stride towards abandoning the warm comfort of this little hotel room. 

“I gotcha.”

Elvis looks over you one more time before dragging his feet on the tile and leaving the bathroom to go sit, making himself comfortable in the dark grey upholstered lounge chair positioned at an angle in the corner of the room.

You grab the mascara tube out of your old light pink makeup bag sitting on the cold counter, now half empty due to products being placed all over the counter in a messy organization, and quickly go to where Elvis is sitting in all of his man-spreading glory. You stop in your tracks for a second to look over him. Elvis smiled, entertained by the fact that the purple tube of mascara and your cute wide eyes were the antonyms to all of the nasty stuff running through his mind while looking at the woman standing before him in all of her obliviously sexy magnificence. 

His being sat down and you standing was the only time where you were taller than him. He looks up at you through those dirty blonde lashes not yet polished, as if you were the holy grail. An angel before him. A picturesque statue needing to be worshipped and he was damn well willing to kneel before you and give you that praise.

Your hesitation was not only due to Elvis’ seductive aura but also apprehension in thinking of a way to get close enough to his face to actually apply the makeup. The bed was a good distance away and continuing to stand wouldn’t be a good angle for application. There were no other chairs around either. Getting on your knees is always a good option, one both of you enjoy in different circumstances; it's just the rug burn would be a pain…

“Sit on me, baby. Don’t act like you’ve never done it before.” 

He continues, his tone nonchalant, “My girl might still be a lil’ innocent but the angels didn’t make her clueless, did they?”

You shake your head with an embarrassed blush arising. “No, they didn’t, sir.”

“You know, by breaking ya in, I’ve put those dirty thoughts in ya head too. Just feel like you’re too scared to act on ‘em sometimes. Ain’t nobody here. Spread ya legs and sit on me. I need your services, honey…your makeup ones and all the other ones my girl gives so well.”

You giggle, cheeks never failing to flush at Elvis’ vulgarity. His subtle innuendos that would've gone over your head just a few months ago before he opened your eyes and made you his on your wedding night. You became one in three ways that day: mind, body, and soul.

Trying not to be hurt by the fact that your husband thought you were too embarrassed to sit on him for a few seconds, an unintentional attack on the state of your womanhood, you do just that.

You spread your legs to straddle him, the tight fabric of your dress trying to work against you as harsh friction on the plush of your thighs as you spread them around him. The fabric after having lost the battle, rolls up your thighs scrunched in the defeat, getting hiked up to an improper length as you adjust yourself on Elvis’ lap with a slight roll of your hips.

Both of you notice how his hips twitched, a bit like a spark, as they met yours. Energy already attracted and apparent in behavior, showed itself physically.

Your lined lips meet his for a passionate but quick kiss before pulling away teasingly. “Sorry.” You peck him again, not sorry in the least about it. “I’m getting a lil’ distracted.”

He laughs before stealing another kiss from those oh-so-tempting red lips of yours. He reflects back on grade-school bible study, this is what Adam and Eve must’ve felt when they ate that apple. “I don’t wanna go to this stupid shit.” 

He kisses you again gently as if normal habit, “Just wanna stay here with my lil wife.” 

You giggle while backing your head away further, knowing that if you keep this kissing up, it will lead to other events and you’ll never make it to this party. Your mind goes back to the memory of last month’s luncheon and how Elvis’ manager was not too pleased that the singer-turned-actor and his wife arrived an hour late to the event with hickeys and flushed cheeks.

“Cmon’ Elvis. You can have me when get back later.”

“Damn right, I will.” He responds matter-of-factly.

You lean forward, both palms pressing next to each other on his chest, and whisper into his cheek before kissing it, “Now sit still, be a good boy, and let me do your eyelashes all pretty.”

He looks at the mascara in your hand before looking back up at your eyes, his mouth slightly parted, “You’re right, lil mama. I got ahead of myself there, didn’t I?”

“You can say that.” You bite your bottom lip as your hands go to untwist the mascara tube, pulling the wand out slowly and wiping the excess product on the side of the entrance before taking it out all the way.

You hold back a giggle as you think of Elvis’ previous words coupled with the opening of this mascara…he really has corrupted your thoughts.

You gently place the tube down, careful not to make a mess and get the product on anything. Then, you adjust your straddle position as you would on the saddle of one of the horses back home to get more comfortable on your husband’s lap, holding the wand in your dominant hand as both of Elvis’ hands go to rest on the round of your ass.

His sky-blue eyes look straight into yours, holding a deliciously intimate and beautifully intense eye contact as you graze the mascara wand on his light brown lashes, careful not to poke his eye like that one mascara incident a few months ago where you were apologizing profusely. 

The sweeping of the curved bristles in an up-and-down motion mirrors the gentle rubbing of his hands on your backside; back and forth, back and forth, with the brush being a little faster than the hands. Both have important purposes and both do their jobs flawlessly.

You accompany your light strokes with soothing whispers of praises and admiration, “Such a pretty boy. My handsome man who I love so, so much. Never loved anyone more.” You hear him respond pleasantly in a warm hum.

You point your pointer finger up and your husband immediately looks up at the beige ceiling above to allow you to coat his tinier, bottom lashes as well.

“Good boy.” You whisper concentrated.

When you finish the willingly made slow process of applying the mascara to your model, his eyelashes have grown a little longer in length and their color has changed from a dirty blonde to jet black, matching his hair and the dying process he first did to it all those years ago.

“All done.” You declare quickly like a toddler finished with their meal.

His eyelashes flutter to adjust to the layer of newly coated polish before his sight rests on your face, giving you an opportunity to admire your hard work.

“Thank ya, baby. You’re the best at taking care of me, aren’t ya? Needed a woman’s touch to finish off the look.”

You twist the cap of the mascara back on and toss it onto a nearby dresser before letting yourself fall more into him. 

Your voice comes out as almost a whine as your head rests on his shoulder, “Do I gotta get up?” 

“You know I’m not gonna make ya, doll. Maybe we should both take off a few layers and then you can come sit on my lap again. We could have a lot of fun like that.” 

His hands start roaming under your skirt but cannot go far due to the tightness of the material, another, now physical, barrier keeping desires away from each other.

You begrudgingly shimmy off of him, like you feel a sense of duty to hosts that you’ve never met to make sure Elvis Presley gets to attend their event timely as promised.

Adjusting the hem of your dress back to its proper length as you get up, Elvis follows suit in getting up from the chair and straightening out his shirt. His mascara was the finishing touch to you two’s getting ready process, like cutting a red ribbon at the opening of a new building.

The air turned bittersweet, anticipation and melancholy almost selfish and uncalled for with the fact that you will have many, many more nights like these and you both know that. For you that doesn’t thin the chill of social anxiety that comes with going to events with arguably the most famous, and perhaps the most recognizable, man in the country. You’ve never talked about these restless feelings with him for it comes with the duty you love so much, being his wife.

His hands go to outline your body shape again, taking you in as he has done so many times before. He whispers to you as he has numerous times in the past. It never gets old, a love so evergreen it can never age.

“You look so pretty, mama.”

“And you look so handsome, Elvis.” You whisper back as if in the middle of exchanging beautiful, not-so-hidden secrets.

These sweet nothings between lovers are cut off by lips suddenly catching on to yours. This being the most intimate and passionate kiss so far tonight, one with enough energy and need to change the tide of your minds and blur the lines of plans already set in stone. 

Your hands immediately go up to cup his face, the kiss not yet broken for the desire to have each other is too strong to pull it apart, almost like a magnet. A pure magnetism that feels so right.

His hands, touchy and soft, trace the silhouette of your figure from the cups holding your boobs to the satin that stops halfway down your thigh. His right-hand tugs on your dress’s hem once it reaches it, granted it is not too far down to find in a moment of such passion. The left hand slithers its way back up the sea of red to cup and squeeze your breast through the delicate fabric. 

He’s moving all these parts simultaneously, both hands and both lips, but the main focus is always on you: the target of his desires, the common denominator to every one of his moves. Meanwhile, you are struggling to keep up with the quickness of this series of events so all of your energy is going toward the, hopefully never-ending, kiss. You moan into it, your need vocal.

Your padded fingers and perfectly manicured nails, not a chip to be seen since you fixed them last night, leave the sides of his pretty face to run through his hair like water would, your heels clicking on the ground as he backs you up. These rhythmic noises of your kitten heels come to a halt when the back of your calf is met with the wood of the bottom of a bedframe behind you.

You lose your balance: thighs, ass, and then eventually whole body meeting the soft sheets of the bed. They are still messy and undone from this morning. As you lay back you quickly glance at the clock sitting high on the wall next to you, seeming to be ticking faster than normal, and then your enlarged pupils go back to your ravager of a husband. His lips have since left your mouth and have moved to your neck, then down to your collarbone. 

The clock reads 7:00 pm, the time the two of you had scheduled in your planner to be the last call to get going. The only sound you hear now is your own heavy breath when Elvis’ lips start to suck the sweet spot on the right side of your neck, you whine out any ounce of doubt you may still have possibly had. 

7:02 now and Lord forgive the both of you, you aren’t gonna make it.

-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-

A/N: This took me too long to write for what it is. I was sick for a whole week straight and that just threw me off my newly boarded writing train. This idea came from a wip that it is similar to but didn’t quite fit with (they’re sisters, not twins). I hate to be a tease with the ending, it cuts off unsatisfyingly, but your good sis is still a little unsure of her ability to write smut. I’ll get there eventually and we can rejoice when it happens. I'll come back to it. Also just noticed the second pic near the title isn’t the most “x reader” friendly and as a brown girl myself that’s my bad. Everything aside, enjoy some Grace Kelly in Rear Window.

#elvis #elvis presley #not beta read #so enjoy my madness #that there is no method to #elvis x reader #elvis presley x reader #elvis fanfic #elvis fanfiction #elvis presley fanfiction #elvis x y/n #60s elvis #elvis fans

[possibilistfanfiction]

I loved the little Detail where Ava wears a strap in footy!Au so my prompt is just any AU but Ava wears a strap (you can decide if its smutty or silly lol)

‘just because i struggled to accept my sexuality doesn’t mean i’m not open to…’

you wait for a moment, raising a brow when she doesn’t continue.

‘toys?’ you offer when it’s clear from her deepening blush she’s definitely bluffing.

‘yes,’ she says, trying to act very sure and certain, and truly you are god’s strongest soldier for not laughing at her, which would be both unkind and also detrimental to your mission. and, sure, you’ve died a few times, whatever, and won a holy war a few months ago, but there is, at the moment, no task more important to you than getting bea to finally go to the sex store with you. you’d talked about it in couples counseling for weeks now and you really, genuinely can’t stop thinking about how hot the potential is. whenever bea has been out you’ve taken care of those thoughts yourself, but sometimes you just stare at her hands while she does the most mundane tasks and feel like you’re about to explode.

‘sooooooo, we can go? now? like you said?’

she rolls her eyes but you’re unfazed. yes, ava, we can go.’

‘fuck yeah!’ you gather all of the things you might need — phone, wallet, sunglasses, backup pair of sunglasses, a little crystal someone on the venice boardwalk gave you — into your purse and grab your cane; beatrice neatly tucks her wallet into one back pocket, her phone in the other. her bun is perfect and, while her button up is slouchy and oversized, it is tucked impeccably into her slacks. you’re so, so fond of her you have to kiss her, and you feel her smile back.

she’d made you research which sex stores are queer-friendly, and even, if you were lucky, queer-centric, and you were relieved to find one not too far away. she’s turning red before she even parallel parks a few stores down from it, her neck flushing, and sometimes you forget the shame she’s felt around want. you’ve felt shame; you were intimate with it for a long, long time, a bedfellow you could never move away from, but never for this. 

‘hey,’ you say, as soft as you can while you’re so excited, ‘if you feel overwhelmed, we can totally leave. there’s ice cream, like, right there.’ you point across the street. ‘and you know i’m always happy to have ice cream.’

she takes a deep breath, as brave as always, braver by the day. ‘while i appreciate the sentiment, and trust that you do love ice cream, i — i would like to try this with you, ava.’

she’s so sincere you might cry, but you shake it off and nod. ‘okay. okay! let’s do it. if you feel weird, do you want a safeword.’

‘for a sex store?’

you laugh, shrug. ‘i mean, they support it.’

she smiles, clearly amused, and squeezes your hand, then gets out of the car to open your door, chivalrous as always. ‘i’ll be okay. thank you though.’

‘sure thing. kumquat, though, if you do need one.’

she laughs.

/

‘okay,’ you say, ‘ready?’

you wait for her quiet but confident yes and then walk out of your closet. beatrice had been the picture of casual composure in the sex store while you excitedly looked at everything, and had nodded when you decided on the strap and harness you liked best — with the help of a very cool employee who seemed to find bea’s blush very endearing, understandably so, and was kind and patient answering all of your questions — but now, when you walk out of your bathroom, her eyes widen and she worries her bottom lip in a way that makes you feel absolutely insane. 

‘oh,’ she breathes, lying on her back on your big bed in just a pair of practical black boxers, her hair loose around her on the pillows.

‘yeah?’

you crawl over to her, on top of her, so the strap just barely pushes against her, and you can feel her tremble beneath you, trying to keep all that desire inside. it’s the second most intoxicating thing you’ve ever felt. she touches your hip, then the leather of the harness, then the silicone of the ribbed dildo — a very nice teal, if you do so say yourself — you picked out. ‘i — wow,’ she breathes. 

you smile into her neck, follow it with a kiss. ‘let’s get this show on the road, then.’

‘ava.’

you push up a little so you can see her face; she tucks a strand of hair behind your ear sweetly. ‘sorry. i’m just really excited to fuck you.’

that gets her to take in a shaky breath and pull you down so your bodies are flush. and, like, you’ve been to a lot of different realms, seen a lot of holy shit, but nothing really compares to the expression on beatrice’s face when you, very carefully — after going down on her first, thank you very much, and then making sure to coat the dildo with lube — push into her. she clutches so hard to your shoulder blades you’re a little worried but then she moans, obscenely, by her standards, and breathes out a pained, desperate, ‘keep going.’

it’s, like, the best fucking thing, oh my god, and, afterward, you take the harness off and drop it unceremoniously on the floor next to the bed, then she curls up by your side, rests her head on your chest. you run your hands through her hair, sleepy and soothed, even though it’s definitely not late enough to really sleep. 

‘thank you,’ she says.

it’s sweet and so genuine; you smile to yourself and bend to kiss her forehead. ‘for railing you with a strap? my pleasure.’

you can sense her roll her eyes, even if you can’t see them. ‘for… i don’t know,’ she says, and you just wait patiently for her to gather her thoughts. ‘for helping me enjoy being myself.’

and, oh. ‘of course; it’s my favorite thing in the whole universe,’ you tell her. ‘and if it involves that, count me in, quite literally any time.’

her laugh is bright, happy, unafraid.

#prompts #avatrice fanfic #avatrice #wn #wn fic #silly little one for ya #butch bea 🥺🫡

[gorbalsvampire]

V:tM at the Movies: a film rec list

THE UR–EXAMPLES

The Hunger is about as close to the Platonic ideal of Vampire: the Masquerade as you can get. Nightclubs! Gratuitous Bauhaus! Lesbian kiss! The aesthetic is spot on: it looks and feels like early Vampire art, or rather early Vampire art looks and feels like this film. V:tM may have come out in 1991 but it's rooted firmly in the 1980s and the vampire chic this film defined. The Hunger will dump the vibe of the game right between the eyes and it's as close as I dare come to "must-watch."

V:tM's Gehenna concept is heavily mirrored/inspired by the novel Queen of the Damned, which was filmed around the time Gehenna was actually happening and the line was coming to a close. The Hunger defines where V:tM came from, all Eighties post-punk writhing - this chuggy post-industrial apocalypse-glam perfectly sums up where it's going.

Although they have no real connection to each other besides parallel evolution, Night Teeth absolutely nails the "rival conspiracies" energy of Hunter: the Reckoning and Vampire: the Masquerade, as well as the burnout, the irony, the neon and the party-at-the-end-of-the-world vibe of V5.

THE META TAKE

Shadow of the Vampire is about a vampire playing a vampire in the first vampire movie ever made. In a weird way I think that's perfect for the sense of the Masquerade, hiding in plain sight, preying on the worst instincts of humanity and encouraging them to let you get away with all the awful things you want to do. In microcosm, it's the perfect analogy for the "vampires secretly run society" vibe.

YOUR FLAVOUR OF BASTARD

Depending on what type of vampire you want to be (and I'm going with V5's categories here), I recommend at least one of the following:

Thinbloods lend themselves well to the What We Do In The Shadows conceit of vampire flatmates (or The Carmilla Movie, I guess, but I haven't seen that one). They're millennial vampires; all the power and resources are concentrated in the hands of previous generations, so they pretty much have to bind together and find something else to enjoy in life, 'cause they're never going to be powerful in the conventional sense. Thinblood games are low power, a bit domestic, and often the closest to "normal life but we happen to be vampires and bigger vampires try to kick our heads in occasionally."

Neonates are your classic Gen X eighties/nineties vampire movie - The Lost Boys. Still weak enough that they're better off standing together, strong enough that they can afford to be a bit cocky around humans. Probably share a sire, mentor, authority figure of some sort and should probably be working on his agenda once they've finished prowling the boardwalks and clubland at night. They're a step further removed from society, but they can pretend to be human for an hour or two if they really try. Also, this is the other one that was in the air and influential when V:tM first came to be - along with The Hunger, I'd recommend it as the closest to a must-watch.

Ancillae (the upper reaches of age and power offered by the V5 corebook) are more your Interview With The Vampire  kind of deal. You've lived a long life, your adventuring days are behind you, and now you're something of a mover and a shaker - you're probably permitted or at least not prevented from siring and you're looking to give someone the choice you never had. Modernity gives you a headache but at least you can work a smartphone four times out of five. Ancillae games are a nice balance between "you're powerful" and "you still have to answer to someone".

If you're extending into Elder territory, settle down with a small glass of something and enjoy one of my favourite films ever, Only Lovers Left Alive. It's a slow story, and not a lot happens, but that's elders for you. They become introverted. They fall into a groove. They keep to each others' company. It's beautiful and haunting until some clueless childe comes along and screws it all up for them and they have to admit what they really are.

Want to figure out the Sabbat? Watch 30 Days of Night and thank me later. The vampires there are getting away with something horrible because they've fallen through the cracks in the world. They act alpha-predator but they still live on the fringe or civilisation, the little savages. (I am told that Near Dark is basically Sabbat: the Movie, but I haven't seen it, so I'm going to have to take that on trust.)

REFLEXIVE ACTION

It would be deeply remiss of me not to talk about Underworld, the film series transparently inspired by V:tM,.to the point where White Wolf as was took the producers of the original to court over it. Underworld reflects V:tM at its most "gamery" – all custom weapons, trenchcoats and corsets, fighting werewolves in the dark, flashing back to the Middle/Dark Ages and preoccupied with impenetrable why-does-this-matter world-building. It sits at the end of that unfortunate tendency toward Desert Eagles, katanas, Dragonsbreath rounds and C4 appearing on every character sheet that found its way into V:tM's DNA from Shadowrun, along with the penchant for double handfuls of d10s and wearing sunglasses indoors. I dislike that sort of game and I'm not mad keen on Underworld either, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that this sort of thing is also peak Vampire.

WAIT, THIS ISN'T VAMPIRES!

V:tM is synonymous with politics and backstabbing, and there isn't in my opinion a vampire movie that really hits that. Thing is, Rein-Hagen also loves Mafia movie and cites them as an influence. Vampires exist as organised criminals, after all, and the concept of omerta is atomic to that of the Masquerade. This is why, to grasp how a Prince or Baron holds court and influences people, you really should just sit down and watch The Godfather. Pretty basic recommendation, granted, but I don't know if anyone else is here for my "Guy Ritchie's V:tM" style of action storytelling...

YOUR OWN PERSONAL JESUS TASTE

What are your top three movies? Why? That'll give you an idea of what you, as Storyteller, are most interested in running. Now grab some friends and ask them the same question. Wherever you find an overlap in your tastes, that's something that's worth focusing on in your actual game. Try to make sure there's a couple of vampire-themed answers in there, but also something else, because "being a vampire" in and of itself doesn't make a story (unless it's a quiet, short one like Only Lovers Left Alive, but that's a one-off, not a chronicle). 

People often expect an RPG to come ready-made and ready-to-go ("We're playing the Lost Mines of Phandelver") and Vampire, at its best, is a bit more bespoke. Asking players about their taste in media is one way to start that tailoring process, making your V:tM something a bit different from everyone else's and getting into that transformative stuff that makes RPGs so gosh-darn amazing.

Mine, discounting the one I've already gushed about up the line, are a nebulous "pick one from Guy Ritchie's early career" and Franklyn. My games run on generally have a couple of seemingly indestructible SPCs nobody likes and a dark secret that can absolutely take them down, someone WILL have an impenetrable regional accent, but there's also a layer of exaggerated Gothickry over everything, neuratypical characters will perceive the world very differently, vengeance and trauma will drive the major players and love may conquer all but you'll have to lose a lot to get there. None of this is essential to V:tM but it's what makes my V:tM different from A. N. Other Storyteller's.

#vampire: the masquerade #vtm #movie recs #reddit repost

[killer-wizard]

my mini fuckin essay apparently. this is about rapid eyes! go watch it here. tw for mental health problems, amnesia, death and loss, suicide mentions, ect. also a long ass post!

this is about the main character of rapid eyes being a system. maybe not canonly but. i see some parallels between my system and the player <3

ahh okay i have an interpretation of this series.

as a system, i see a lot of parallels to a system in this character and game. in a previous episode (#6?) red eyes refers to the player as "they" and while i am all for the player being nonbinary or using they/them, i do personally think it could also be the plural they/them, and our main character is a system.

the way red eyes acts, is very much a persecutor move, being rude or self-destructive in the way a verbally abusive person is. (sometimes introjects of abusers repeat the abuse out of a trauma reaction or other fear) i think red eyes showing up first in the forest where the player grew up, maybe they represent a childhood trauma, like an abusive parent, or maybe an outside person hurting the player. i saw another system say they didn't like the "evil alter" trope, but honestly? i think, if this is a system character, then it's done pretty well, as this character is just self destructive and not harming outside people. sort of like, a representation of how OCD/PTSD can make you spiral and think about it uncontrollably, and how people can beat themselves up about loss like this.

i totally respect if it makes other systems uncomfortable though!! anyway.

radio comes off as very genuinely kind and sweet, only trying to help and reassure the player. sort of like an emotional protector. she reminds me of some of our child alters, she's so silly. i love her. she's silly and lighthearted but clearly is a traumaholder, or at least aware of the trauma.

the game represents an inner world, something many systems develop as a coping mechanism. these can look like anything. the game (and in our case) has many different popular places from various horror games, but also from their real life. the scary "slenderman" woods (which the player says they lived near when they were a child), the backrooms, the school (based off of their old school), the boardwalk, the parking lot (player says they were afraid of them as a child). it's all familiar to our player, and so was put in their inner world as to make sense of the scary reality they were living in. (a little funny, but our headspace has a part of an among us map in it lol)

to add to this, the constant, changing nature of the game is reminiscent of an inner world of a system. ours changes mildly often, and who can or cant access parts of the inner world also changes, which explains radio being unable to contact the player in places red eyes controls (like the backrooms, and this cave).

now, DID (and other dissociative disorders) has amnesia attached to it. the fact that the player seems unable to remember that they made rapid eyes, is very in line with DID (i have a lot of art we've made that i have no memory of making.) but also kind of implies that the game was worked on by the other characters. the boardwalk changes, the parking lot changes, and we can assume that the player didn't do that (it implied they gave on the game entirely).

also, the name. "rapid eyes". it reminds me of looking around quickly out of terror or fear, but i also saw someone mention REM sleep (RAPID EYE movement) also being a meaning, which i think makes much more sense.

now, episode #11. radio breaking because of the fall, representing how kind words don't help when youre in the pits of your mental illness. or at least, not as much as they would if you had heard them in a better state. the nooses, the notes, the ruined lockers, it's all memories and urges, traumatic and otherwise coming together when you're at your worst and trying to stop ruminating on the past.

and the phone call: this teal character (who i'll just call static for now) has called before, when radio was out for a second to take care of something. they clearly have a lot of suicidal ideation and worthlessness related thoughts. i don't really know if static is the player, or another part of them, or what, but we've only just met them, so maybe we'll find out later?

in the phone call, they talk to their grandmother, who says their dad is sick. the player reacts very instantly to this, as if remember the phone call with terror. static plays the concern off, saying he was fine and just taking a nap. the player is audibly crying now, though it's quiet and horrifyingly sad. the acting in this part is insanely good and i love it. anyway,

"i should have called someone" (responded with "yeah, you think?" which is another example of the player constantly using humor to cope) clearly, this character and the player share guilt. over their father's death, presumably. the player begs to be left alone, maybe to red eyes, who is implied to be torturing the player.

a note for this scene is, someone in the comments mentions the "as above, so below" note, and how that is the title of a movie in which a character misses a phone call right before her father commits suicide. it lines up pretty well, and can be assumed to be a reference.

episode #11 is the final episode as of now, and is very interesting. i'll be watching for more! anyway.

disclaimer: this is my opinion, and is probably not canon. pls take what i say with a bit of salt.

OKAY wall of text over. i might be overthinking this and this is the most ive ever talked about having DID online. good lord.

#rapid eyes #ive left this as a comment on youtube but im posting it here because im afraid i'll have to delete it on the youtube video lol #i dont trust YT comments to be civil about DID. anyway! #dissociative identity disorder #did system #sysposting #OKAY

[thursdayglrl]

thinking about how on some level being in the rcm and being white means harry can on some level “afford” to hit bottom. like obviously he can’t escape like the sunday friend or like dora he is decidedly not upper class but like. people are more forgiving of officers of the law. and people did die and leave him but the thing is that he’s allowed a grace period to “get his shit together” when he doesn’t even remember his own name. it’s not the first time that (what’s left of) his unit is there to play cleanup crew. it’s kim and his kineema that make him get up that first day. like the idea of being abandoned and left for dead sucks but it sucks because we’ve seen what happens to those people. the only other people who have that kind of loyal backup are like. the hardie boys and the mercs. (who are also police on some level, or serve as parallels to it). like i look at all the other characters and i think like... there’s no one coming to save them. cuno? the smoker on the balcony (”[...] he won’t be there when times get rough, i guess.”/”is that even a friend?”)? the man on the boardwalk? the drunks? the pigs? *kim*? like i don’t even have a very solid point here it’s just bleak

#like one of those cults that 'save' people. from poverty or mental health issues etc. and its like #its bad. but its a lifeline #and on some level its also like an addiction. the thrill. the power. all the cops in game very much ENJOY that authority #its like.... can we get some community here please. #disco elysium

[ewingstan]

Alright, so a lot of characters are pretty good parallels for Taylor, some even to the extent that they’re acknowledged as such by the text. Basically every group leader gets this treatment: Satyr is noted to share Skitter’s creativity in power usage as well as her murky place in the hero-villain dichotomy. The similarity between Taylor and Jack Slash becomes an important plot point when it prompts Golem to realize Jack’s secondary power, letting him turn the tide of the fight. Weld commiserates with Taylor on the oil rig about not being able to turn away from the fight. And Teacher shares a place with Khepri in the highly specific “mind controller whose specific abilities give them the capacity to become exponentially dangerous” category.

But you know who she isn’t deliberately compared to as often? Trickster. Which is kind of weird, as Francis Krouse is startlingly similar to Taylor in a lot of ways, and their points of divergence are really useful for identifying what Wildbow is doing with these characters. 

Skitter and Trickster are both incredibly quick thinkers who use their wits to win fights they have no business winning. This sometimes feels like it gets forgotten, since the one team plan Krouse proposed with the Undersiders is the one that got Brian dissected, but Krouse was able to come ahead of the Wards, quickly dispatch a rampaging Cody clone with an unknown power set (once on-screen and multiple times off-screen), and substantially contribute to the fight against Leviathan. Hell, even his quick thinking on how to appease Accord after Sundancer interrupted their meeting shows a pretty amazing ability to stay calm and think on his feet in the face of extreme danger. The main problem is that he’s much better at working alone than directing a team—unlike the Queen Administrator. This is even specifically called out during his e-sport days:

 This is partially due to never really being on the same page as others—he doesn’t seem to genuinely care about many people, and will default to brutal tactics that his teammates won’t get behind. This is less of a problem for Taylor, both because she has a much stronger bond with her teammates and because they tend to match and exacerbate her more ruthless tendencies.

On the subject of teammates, its worth noting how both Taylor and Krouse are able to get others to follow them for reasons outside of any natural charisma. Skitter is a notably bad speaker, relying on people to follow her through shock-and-awe tactics. She cultivates an intimidating reputation to scare potential enemies off and keep her subjects on the Boardwalk in line. She gets old nemeses like Lung, Shadow-Stalker, and the entire Protectorate to work with her by presenting herself as mythically competent and necessary to the defeat of larger enemies. She makes herself a legend, someone you work with because you really don’t want to work against her. But she’s not a leader like Chevalier, or even Faultline; there’s very few people who follow her because she’s an inspiring presence or worthy friend. They exist, but they’re few and far between. As Tattletale notes, Taylor never really asks for help. She just maneuvers you into a position where you have no choice but to work with her.

Meanwhile, Trickster actually has some natural charisma. He’s a good negotiator, and has a flair for the dramatic which could make him easily likable. But he’s not really using this to get the Travellers to follow him; most of them are in some stage of coming to hate him, even. He doesn’t make himself very pleasant to be around in the best of times; even before the Simurgh he “thrived on being annoying.” He just happens to be the only one with an idea of how to move forwards, so they have to follow along or risk getting left behind to deal with their strange new status quo. Even at the beginning, they didn’t follow Krouse because he was their friend—they followed him because they wanted to help Noelle, and didn’t want to be stuck in the walled-off city, and Krouse seemed to be pretty good at the whole “villain” thing so they might as well work under his leadership for the foreseeable future. This maps on pretty well to how Taylor’s eventual leadership role was largely due to being the only Undersider with an actual goal for the future—something she would carry into her de-facto leadership of the Chicago Wards.

But what moving forwards means isn’t very clear for Trickster, who up until Coil approached him seemed to just be going through the motions. There’s no actual way he can find to fix Noelle, he doesn’t care for his teammates enough to find contentment in their companionship. He’s convinced that he’ll always be hated, and decided that’s okay, he can take it, just keep using them before they hate you enough to walk away.

He’s convinced that he’ll  always be in danger and decided that’s okay, he’s good at getting out of scrapes and he doesn’t have much to keep him going anyway, so he might as well keep plunging into danger.

He’s convinced that the Simurgh has already doomed him and that no future is available, so he may as well doom himself for the person he loves.

This is, I maintain, the main substantial difference between Krouse and Taylor. Trickster is what Skitter would be without hope.

Taylor always has something driving her. She latches on to causes: finding the Undersider’s sponsor, rescuing Dinah, stopping Jack Slash. She is absolutely convinced that she can throw herself at any problem and find a way of overcoming it. It’s why she picks fights against people like Mannequin or Lung, and part of the reason she’s able to come away successful. Krouse has much less confidence; he doesn’t think his problems are actually solvable, and doesn’t let himself believe he can take on larger threats, even though his tactical abilities could actually be up to the task if he committed to them. So he runs, or settles for strategic defeats.

Same with allies: Taylor and Krouse faced similar problems in joining their teams. Rachel and Bitch both felt threatened by the new members’ introduction, resentful of their sway among the rest of the team. Both responded with violence multiple times before their conflict was “resolved,” one way or another. Krouse saw this as a problem he would work around until he couldn’t: he kept Cody on board without trying to patch things up, until he cut his losses, decided he was too much of a liability, and sold him to Accord as a scapegoat.

Taylor, in contrast, never gave up on Rachel as a potential ally: she made the effort to befriend her after facing nothing but cold shoulders and aggression, and then made the effort again after their relationship seemed completely unworkable in the wake of the data heist. And while Taylor certainly doesn’t give the same level of grace to most people, I think its a pretty clear indication of their differences that when presented with the same problem, Taylor made her strongest ally while Krouse made his biggest enemy. Taylor had hope that she could get to Rachel. Krouse never even considered making an effort to pacify Cody.

Finally, there’s the fact that Krouse has no real big picture he’s fighting for like Skitter. Not really, anyway. He goes through the motions of searching for a cure for Noelle, trying to find a way back to their home dimension, but he doesn’t really believe its possible.

As such, there’s no point in working hard for a future that’s impossible. He doesn’t ingratiate himself with his teammates because they won’t actually be helpful. He plays fast and loose with the unspoken rules because hey, its not like he can go on like this forever anyway, so he might as well get a death-on-sight order. The only thing he can do is live for the present—for Noelle. Keep her alive, safe and sated, even if she hates him. He lets himself hope for a real future after getting hired by Coil, but it doesn’t last—Coil makes no obvious attempt to follow through on his promises, and eventually Noelle goes on her rampage and the possibility of saving her is smashed completely.

And this is where it gets really interesting. At the beginning of Gold Morning, Lisa asks Taylor how she’d like to spend what would surely be her last days on earth. Doing anything but fighting barely seems to cross Taylor’s mind. It’s not clear if she actually thinks they have a chance, but she fully commits herself to it. At the end of the Echidna arc, the Travellers go to do what they’ve always promised: stop Noelle if she ever lost control.

And like Taylor, Krouse decides to go out fighting instead.

As with Skitter facing down Scion, chances of success are pretty much near zero here. He betrays his friends to do it, even pushing them into the line of fire, much like Taylor does as Khepri. The difference is that Taylor was motivated to save humanity, while Krouse was motivated by....what? A desire to stay loyal to the one person who gave him a chance to be decent? A need to help what’s left of his girlfriend go on a revenge-spree against the world? Maybe he just never stopped listening to what motivated him at the start:

Taylor made her play as Khepri because she saw a narrow hope, and took it. Krouse made his play because he’d lost all hope, and decided the only thing he could do was self-destruct spectacularly alongside the person he loved.

#wildbow #worm #parahumans #francis krouse #taylor hebert #trickster #skitter #khepri #noelle meinhardt #leo says #leo reads worm

[max1461]

completely ignoring the practical and speaking purely on aesthetic grounds the twentieth century is like

40s

20s

80s

30s

10s

90s

70s

50s

00s

60s

god 60s aesthetics sucked shit. 50s also sucked but are elevated by adjacency to the 40s which were SO GOOD that their lingering afterglow elevates the fifties from dumpster fire to less dumpster fire. don't care for the 00s but not much to say on them really. 70s mostly are lame but I love that old school technology aesthetic so they get a bit of a boost above 50s/60s to which they are otherwise similarly tacky. 90s are whatever, who cares.

now we're getting into the good shit 10s had ww1 I love that shit, 30s interwar years we're doing liberalism and it's never looked so sexy 80s they've got star wars and the nes bleep bloop I fuckin love it and they've released the song "girls just wanna have fun" which is SO TRUE 20s fuckin love the twenties they've got new machines and diplomats from all around the world now people are sailing back and forth. 40s. oh the 40s. what did they have? I like their haircuts. I like their boats. maybe you are a sailor. maybe you have a girl back home. read it all in the news. they've made this and that. go down to the boardwalk. they're doing the same thing across the pacific in some sort of parallel about human universals. get in your 40s car go to the forties place look at his suit he is wearing isn't it fucking cute? but also. theres negotiations. things are happening. bigmen here and there are Making decisions that will Affect the fate of humanity. did you hear they are building a new device? very scary in the desert. the sensor is going off its going scshchch shcshchhc. people are going around in boats. Things are happening and all the household items are not made of plastic yet. god I love that shit.

#navel gazing

[clarepreed]

Lifeguard Not On Duty

Story Content and Summary - 4,544 words. Larissa and Mitchell pull a drowning neighbor from the ocean. On-site resuscitation.

The previous installment of the Larissa & Mitchell series: Interlude

--

“If you sell the company to Mark, we could buy property here, right?” Larissa asked.

Mitchell looked over at her, surprised. She was leaning back in an Adirondack chair, her hands folded over her stomach. Her eyes were on the ocean.

“I didn’t think you wanted to sell,” he said, stretching his hand out toward her. She took it, their hands dangling clasped between the chairs.

“I didn’t want you to make a decision when you were still scared, honey.” She squeezed his hand. “You love that company.”

“I love you more, Larissa.”

“I know.” She looked over at him and smiled. “I have never doubted it.”

“You want to buy property here?” He wove his fingers between hers. “There are houses in this neighborhood for sale. And we can afford it even if I don’t sell the company.”

Larissa sighed. “I should know that. I’ve seen our financials. I just didn’t remember…”

Her eyes were on the ocean again, but she was frowning now. Mitchell gently shook her hand. The ring he’d bought her glimmered in the sun.

“It’s okay, baby. You remember most things,” Mitchell said, his worried gaze on her profile. “It’s more normal to assume we have to sell a company to buy a place in Hawaii than it is to assume we can have both if we want.”

“I’m just frustrated. Sometimes I feel completely like myself. Then something will happen and I feel like I have pieces missing. I had physical therapy, speech therapy… there’s nothing for this.” 

“Time. Just time. Which we will have even more of if we sell.”

“Time, and our very own Hawaiian beachfront home.” Then she cackled, and Mitchell couldn’t help but grin. “Oh, look! There’s a neighbor. Out there in the water.”

Mitchell looked out over the water. Sure enough, he could just make out someone’s head and shoulders as they swam parallel to the shore. “So it is. Do you want to go out later?”

“It’s supposed to be overcast around eleven. That might be the best time.” Larissa leaned back into her chair, making a visible effort to release her distress from moments before.

“I’m going to run inside for coffee,” Mitchell said, squeezing her hand and releasing it. “Do you want anything?”

“Water, please.” She smiled up at him. “Thank you, honey.” 

Mitchell climbed out of his chair and then leaned over Larissa, giving her a kiss when she turned her face up to his. 

A few minutes later, he had coffee brewing and a glass filled with ice. He was filling the glass with water from the filtered refrigerator tap when he heard Larissa scream his name.

“MITCHELL!” The shout was raw, and followed by a series of thuds.

Mitchell flinched, and the glass slipped from his hand. It smashed on the floor, spraying his leg with cold water and shards of glass. He took off, slipping a little in the puddle but staying on his feet as he rushed out onto the deck. He expected her to be sprawled on the decking, but the deck was empty, Larissa nowhere to be seen.

He hesitated, calling out to her: “Larissa! Larissa?”

When he spotted her, the sight was so out of context that he initially stopped and stared. Larissa was running from their condo’s boardwalk toward the ocean, bare feet kicking up sand and her hair streaming behind her. Mitchell had never actually seen her run; her health had prohibited her from running most of the time they’d been together. He had a few seconds to appreciate her beauty before his mind caught up and he remembered something was wrong.

“Larissa!” he shouted, taking off after her down the boardwalk. He hadn’t gone running in a long while himself; between taking care of Larissa, visiting her in the hospital, working, and trying not to die, he was out of the habit. 

Ahead of him, she ran into the surf, water splashing up to her knees. He saw her stumble, but she didn’t fall. She was wading into the ocean as fast as she could in her street clothes, seemingly on a mission.

“Larissa!” he shouted, running off the boardwalk and into the sand. Larissa brought her arms up above her head and then dove. He was trying to run through the sand and keep an eye on her, flabbergasted and afraid. His fear burst out of him in a shout: “What the fuck are you doing?!”

Larissa swam perpendicular to the beach. Mitchell made it across the sand and into the surf before he realized what she was about. The water foamed around his legs, cool against his stinging skin. He could see Larissa wrestling with a limp body, trying to pull the motionless swimmer back toward the shore. He thrashed toward her, meeting them halfway. Larissa was towing a petite woman in a swim cap, goggles, and a black one piece. The woman appeared to have drowned, her body completely limp.

Larissa struggled, trying to keep both her head and the unconscious woman’s head above water. “Take…” She was only able to speak one word, shoving the woman’s body in Mitchell’s direction.

He accepted the limp burden automatically and immediately headed back to shore, though he kept looking back to see if Larissa was behind him. She was, and by the time he could put his feet down and scooped the unconscious woman up in his arms, Larissa was staggering toward the beach beside him.

Mitchell thrashed through the surf, wincing when Larissa fell face first into the water. Larissa struggled back to her feet, coughing and sputtering as he laid the unconscious stranger out in the sand. The smaller woman’s arms flopped out to either side, her skin an ashen color.

Mitchell pulled the woman’s goggles off, discomfited to see that her eyes were open, staring up and through him. He leaned over her, his hand on her chest and his ear close to her mouth. He could still hear Larissa coughing, and then he felt her hands at his hips, patting his pockets.

“Your phone?” Larissa asked, sounding breathless.

The woman, he realized, was not breathing.

“Shit! My phone is on the deck!” Mitchell tipped the woman’s head back, her head wobbling loosely on her neck. “She’s not breathing!”

“I’ll get… it,” Larissa wheezed. Mitchell heard her wheezing and felt torn as he pinched the stranger’s nose and rushed to seal his mouth over hers. Larissa continued, staggering to her feet. “I’ll call for… help, and get my… inhaler.”

Mitchell broke the seal, his eyes shifting from the stranger to his wife, who was hurrying back to the house, listing as she moved. Then he gave the woman another breath. Both breaths were difficult to force into the woman, and she made a gurgling sound when the air escaped. 

He shifted in the sand, trying to move into a better position and feeling the time ticking away from her. He ran his hands down her sides, searching for her bottom ribs and following them to her sternum. Or attempting to. Her bathing suit compressed her chest, forcing her breasts together. He started chest compressions anyway, trying to force his weight past them.

“One, two, three, four… Dammit!” Frustrated, seeing he wasn’t reaching the proper depth, he reached for the straps of her suit, jerking them one at a time off of her narrow shoulders and down her arms. He yanked at the neckline, the wet fabric clinging to her skin. Finally, he got the suit pulled down to her navel, the straps pinning her arms to her side and leaving her breasts exposed. He found his mark again.

“Five, six, seven, eight, nine…” The woman’s small frame bent beneath his hands, gurgling and sucking sounds emitting from her slack mouth each time he compressed her chest. Mitchell looked up toward the house, staring until he spotted Larissa there. It was far enough away that he couldn’t see what she was doing, but he could look at least tell that she was still on her feet.

“…twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two…” Satisfied, Mitchell looked down at the stranger. A wash of white foam erupted from her nose and mouth, running over her face and pooling in her eye sockets before it ran down her cheek and temple. Mitchell pinched her nose again, grasping her chin with his other hand and forcing her mouth open. Her jaw felt tight. He hesitated a fraction of a second before he tipped her head to the side, water trickling out of her mouth and carrying with it a wave of foam.

Thumbing the foamy liquid from her mouth, he turned her face back to the sky and gave her another breath. He could hear fluid gurgling in her mouth and throat as he blew once, twice. Mitchell tipped her head to the side again and resumed chest compressions. 

The woman’s distended stomach swelled further each time he thrust his hands into her sternum. He heard water sloshing in her belly, an accompaniment to the gagging noises she made. Her shoulders shrugged in time with his thrusts. Foam dripped continuously onto the sand.

“…ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…” Mitchell felt uneasy every time he looked at her face and saw her staring eyes. He looked further down her body, where her breasts jiggled as he pumped the woman’s otherwise petite chest. He looked back up at the house and saw Larissa was still on the deck.

The woman sounded like she was choking, but when he looked back at her face, she still stared into nothing. Mitchell counted to thirty chest compressions and then changed tactics, swinging a leg over her prone body. He clasped his hands together and pressed them just above her navel. He gave her five deep abdominal thrusts, which made her chest bow and a wet belching sound erupt from her mouth. More foam and water gushed from her mouth and nose. After the fifth thrust, Mitchell stretched himself out over her body and tipped her head toward the sky. Pinching her nose and pressing his mouth to hers, he gave her a deep breath. He felt her chest rise, heard her gurgling exhalation. He gave her another breath.

Mitchell didn’t bother switching back to her side. He clasped his hands together and found his reddened mark. As he began pumping her chest, the woman’s eyes stared up at him. Another round of foam oozed out of her airway, running down her chin and pooling in the notch between her clavicles. Mitchell squeezed his eyes shut, trying to concentrate on counting and pressing his hands down to the correct depth. “…nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…”

He wrenched his eyes open and looked back up toward the house. He didn’t immediately see Larissa, and it was hard to scan the property with his head bobbing up and down. 

Before he could become even more concerned, she appeared, walking quickly down the boardwalk with a phone pressed to her ear. He could tell from the way she carried herself that she wanted to move faster but couldn’t; one arm tight down her side, her stride reduced to a third of its length.

Mitchell shook his head, torn between his ingrained desire to look after his wife and the immediate need to pay attention to the woman dying underneath his hands. He looked away from Larissa and bent over the stranger, trying to blow past the foam, past her cold lips. He tasted the salt of the ocean and felt the grit of the sand on her face. Sweat ran down his temples, dripping onto her damp skin.

He’d climbed back off the woman and made it through another cycle before Larissa reached him. She dropped to her knees by the woman’s head and laid the phone on the sand, calling out: “I’m with the victim and my husband. He is still performing CPR. I’m going to help him.”

“Don’t,” he warned, leaning over to give the woman a breath. He panted a little between breaths, then resumed chest compressions. Larissa reached out and turned the woman’s head to the side, letting the foam and water trickle out. 

“I used my inhaler,” she murmured. “I’ll be okay.”

“One, two, three, four, five…” His arms burned. He knew he needed help, and he could tell Larissa was feeling better than she had when she’d dragged herself out of the water. Still, he was afraid he would end up with two victims, and he knew that his attention would go to his wife over the stranger stretched out beneath him.

“An ambulance is on the way. Continue CPR and let me know if there is any change,” the 9-1-1 operator’s disembodied voice said.

“…twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty!” Mitchell halted compressions and Larissa waved him off, quickly turning the woman’s face toward the sky and pinching off her nose. Mitchell leaned back on his heels, breathing hard as Larissa sealed her mouth over the other woman’s, both of their cheeks rounding out as she exhaled. As she gave the stranger a second breath, Mitchell buried his hands between her breasts.

“One, two, three…” 

Chest compressions still produced a prodigious amount of foam. Larissa kept the woman’s face upright, holding her airway open with one hand and trying to clear her nose and mouth with the other. Abruptly, the woman made a loud gurgling sound and a large amount of water surged up into her mouth.

It was enough that Mitchell stopped pumping her chest, exclaiming: “We have to roll her!”

They rolled the woman onto her side. Her lips were still a harsh shade of purple. Mitchell slid his hand over from the woman’s hip, pressing it flat against her abdomen. He pushed in and up against her stomach, trying to force more of the water out of her. The woman’s body convulsed, and another surge of water spilled out onto the sand. 

Larissa wiped her hand down the woman’s face and swept two of her fingers between her teeth. “If she threw up, she didn’t have anything solid!”

They quickly placed the woman on her back, and Larissa gave the woman two full breaths, her breasts rising and falling. Mitchell found his mark again and started pumping her chest, trying to judge if he was compressing her sternum deep enough. 

The force felt like enough; her ribcage groaned, and he felt something pop under his hands. Each compression made the small woman’s shoulders shrug and her legs rock, feet swaying side to side. Her belly looked less distended, and it rippled each time he shoved his hands down. She was emitting a quiet sound with each compression, a rhythmic “hunh, hunh, hunh,” that became less wet sounding as time passed.

“…eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one…”

“How long until the ambulance gets here?” Larissa asked. She looked at Mitchell, meeting his gaze. Her face looked pale and grim.

“…twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty!”

As Larissa bent to give the woman another breath, the operator piped up: “ETA to your address is five minutes.”

“And it will take them another couple to get out here,” Mitchell groaned, breathing hard. “Fuck!”

As he bent over the woman, Larissa said: “Let me take over for a while.”

“One, two, three, four… Is that a good idea? Nine, ten, eleven…”

Larissa braced the woman’s head again, but her eyes were on him. “You need a break, Mitchell. If I can’t do it properly, you can take back over.”

“Rescuers should swap out every two minutes if you can do so safely,” he heard the operator say.

“Alright. I’ll breathe this time and then you’ll start. Thirty!” Mitchell leaned straight over the woman, his hands replacing Larissa’s and his mouth sealing over the slack, cool lips. As he completed the second breath, Larissa got into position, her knees wide for balance and her hands stacked on top of the bruise forming over the woman’s sternum.

“One, two, three…” Larissa didn’t have his strength, not after everything she’d been through, but he was relieved to see that she was compressing the woman’s chest to the correct depth and at the proper speed. Her hair, wet from jumping into the ocean, was drying, the long strands blowing in the breeze. “…twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight…”

Mitchell pressed his mouth over the stranger’s. Breathing for her seemed easier now; he could only hope he’d helped her. He was afraid for her, given that she hadn’t responded so far. Mitchell leaned back on his heels, still holding the woman’s airway open and avoiding her stare by watching Larissa’s hands on her chest. 

His wife’s hands looked graceful, her long fingers interlocked together as she rolled her weight into the woman’s sternum. Mitchell’s body ached with worry and exhaustion, but he couldn’t help but admire her. Their rigorous sex life aside, he rarely got to see her looking physically strong. In his mind, she was mentally strong, but physically fragile. 

He bent to give the stranger another pair of breaths, spitting to the side when his mouth came away coated with salt and sand. Then his attention returned to Larissa.

Her cheeks were pink with exertion, hair tangled in salty clumps around her face. She wore a determined expression, small wrinkles furrowing the skin between her brows. Mitchell listened intently to her breath, rushing in and out of her as she counted. She looked like she was trying to use her body weight instead of her strength.

Smart, baby. 

“…fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…” Larissa counted quietly, shoulders rocking. Beneath her hands, the woman’s sternum dipped and her stomach popped. Mitchell could hear air coming out of her in short, watery puffs.

Mitchell tipped the woman’s head to the side to let some of the fluid and foam drain before it was time to breathe for her. As Larissa reached thirty compressions, Mitchell turned her face back to the sky and pressed his lips over the woman’s cool, gritty skin and exhaled.

“That went…” Larissa trailed off, sounding uncertain.

“What?” Mitchell asked, before drawing another deep breath.

“Her stomach rose,” Larissa said, her light eyes meeting his. “When you gave her a breath. Not her chest.”

Mitchell leaned down and gave the woman another breath, this time more slowly as his eyes cut to the side. He heard a voice from the phone but didn’t catch what the operator said. The woman’s chest rose, and Larissa exclaimed: “That did it!”

Then she was back on compression, her voice a little louder and quavering with excitement. “One, two, three, four, five, six…”

Mitchell tipped the woman’s head to the side again, his eyes on the woman’s chest. Larissa held strong, her compressions forcing the woman’s sternum down by what appeared to be two inches. The motion made the woman’s breasts quiver, and Mitchell jerked his eyes over to her stomach, feeling a little guilty for noticing. He could still hear gurgling and sloshing sounds from the woman, along with the skin-on-skin sound from Larissa’s hands on the woman’s chest. 

Larissa’s voice quieted a bit, and he could hear her breathing hard, though he didn’t think he heard her wheezing. 

“Do you need me to take over?” he asked.

“…twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty! I can go one more round,” she gasped, breathing hard as he blew two measured breaths into the woman’s lungs.

“Where are we on that ambulance?” he asked, as Larissa resumed chest compressions.

“One, two, three, four, five…”

“ETA is two minutes.”

“…nine, ten, eleven…” Sweat trickled down Larissa’s face, ran from her neck between her breasts and soaked into her shirt. “…twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…”

“Huh, huh, huh… hurgh!” Every time the woman made a noise, Mitchell’s heart rate increased, but then he’d look at her face and her features were still closed off and slack, and her skin still looked gray.

“…twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty!” Larissa leaned back with a gasp, and Mitchell bent over to give the woman rescue breaths. He opened her airway carefully and tried not to inflate her stomach again, or gag when water and saliva foamed up into his mouth.

Then he shifted over the woman, placing his hands back on her chest. Across from him, Larissa was sitting on her knees, hands splayed on her thighs and her eyes closed while she breathed.

“One, two, three, four, five…” The woman’s ribcage shifted beneath his hands, bowing under pressure and then springing back up when he released it. He tried to keep his focus, counting out loud and keeping the proper depth at the forefront of his mind. “…thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—”

The woman gagged, and Mitchell’s eyes darted to her face, his hands continuing to pump her chest. Larissa reached over and turned the woman’s head to the side, her thumb pulling the woman’s jaw down and open.

Another gag, and then he saw her eyes shift and close.

“Ma’am?!” Larissa called out, her voice hoarse.

Mitchell paused the chest compressions, his hands still in position. “Is she—”

The woman coughed, and he felt her chest heave beneath his hands.

“On her side!” Mitchell lifted his hands and reached for the woman’s shoulder and hip. He rolled the woman onto her side, Larissa attending to her head and keeping her airway open. The woman shuddered on the sand, her shoulders hunching and a wave of snot, water, and foam gushing from her nose and mouth. Mitchell was relieved when she drew a breath, even if she immediately coughed it back out.

“How is the patient?” asked the operator.

“She’s breathing!” Mitchell almost shouted, nearly laughing with relief.

“Hey, can you hear me?” Larissa asked, her eyes intent on the woman’s face. “You’re okay! You had an accident in the water, but an ambulance is coming!”

The woman didn’t open her eyes, but she continued to retch and take in short gasps of air. Mitchell tugged on the front of her bathing suit, trying to pull it up enough to cover her heaving breasts.

“Here,” Larissa said. “You don’t have to… I have a tank under this…”

Her shirt was damp with sweat and seawater, as well as covered in sand, but she peeled it off and then shook it out. She draped it over the woman, murmuring something calming under her breath and patting the woman’s arm. The top she had on under her shirt was low cut and translucent where it was still wet, showing the lace of her bra through the material. Mitchell mentally shook himself when he found his eyes tracing the constellation of freckles that ran from her collarbones to the tops of her breasts.

Not the time, you old horn dog.

Larissa’s graceful fingers were pulling at the edge of the woman’s swim cap, trying to pull it off her head. She peeled it back carefully, then dropped it on the sand before smoothing the woman’s damp hair. 

“You’re okay,” she said. “Open your eyes for us, okay?”

Mitchell’s ears picked up sirens in the distance and rapidly growing closer. “I hear the ambulance. They’ll be here any minute with oxygen and you’ll feel a lot better.”

The woman groaned then, though she still didn’t open her eyes. 

Larissa looked up at Mitchell. She looked exhausted, dirty, and a little sunburned. Her hair was desperately in need of a wash and detangle.

Mitchell thought she looked beautiful. He felt a tightness in his chest; not from anxiety or heart trouble, but from love and pride and relief.

“She’s going to be okay,” he said.

“She is.” Larissa beamed at him, then leaned across to give him a quick kiss.

The next several minutes flew by. He saw a couple of medics wheeling a gurney down the boardwalk, followed closely by a cop. Larissa waved both of her arms at them.

Soon, they had left the gurney behind and hurried across the sand carrying bags and what looked like a backboard, the cop assisting.

“Help is here,” Larissa said to the woman, whose eyelids were fluttering. “You’re going to be just fine.”

Mitchell scooted to the side as one medic crouched in the sand. “My wife spotted her in the ocean. We pulled her out and performed CPR until she started breathing again. She hasn’t been very responsive, and we don’t know her name.”

“Thank you, sir,” the second medic said. “We will take it from here.”

“Ma’am?” the first medic called out, squeezing the woman’s shoulder.

Larissa picked up her phone and put it to her ear. “They’re here. Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.” 

Mitchell climbed to his feet, still breathing hard, intending to go around and offer his hand to Larissa. The cop stopped him.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” the officer said. “I have to make a report.”

Mitchell brushed his sandy hands off on his equally sandy shorts. “I was… Sure. Sure, what do you need to know?”

  He couldn’t help but be distracted; the medics were attempting to rouse the woman while taking her vitals and giving her oxygen. He was also aware of Larissa climbing to her feet, staggering in the loose sand as she backed away from the scene. 

“Sir?” the cop asked.

Mitchell looked back over at him. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“Do you know what happened?”

“Actually, my wife…” Mitchell trailed off. Larissa was standing several feet away. She appeared to be looking down at the woman, but her eyes were unfocused. “Larissa?”

The cop turned to look as Mitchell pushed past him.

“Hey.” Mitchell slid his arm around her back, gripping her tight enough to keep her upright if she fell. “Baby, do you need to sit back down?”

“I just feel really tired.” She squeezed her eyes shut, swaying in his arms. “I’m sorry. I stood up too fast.”

Mitchell helped her sit, easing her back down to the sand. “Nothing to apologize for. We just got a lot of exercise.”

“Yeah.” Larissa chuckled and leaned against him. “I’m not exactly in fighting shape.”

 Mitchell wasn’t sure how long it took to wrap things up with the cop and for the medics to get the woman to the gurney and then up to the ambulance. He just knew that his arms were shaking as he helped Larissa up off the sand, and that their slow pace back to the house was almost as much for his benefit as it was for hers.

“We need a shower,” Larissa muttered. “I have sand everywhere. I don’t even know what to do about my hair.”

“Maybe a bath, so we can sit.”

“We might have to cut off my hair.”

Mitchell paused on the boardwalk and eyed her tangled hair. “You are beautiful. You will always be beautiful. And it’s your hair.”

“But?” she asked, giving him a sly, if tired, smile.

“I really like your hair.”

“Enough to help me detangle it?”

“You don’t even have to ask.” Mitchell leaned close and pressed a kiss to her gritty temple. “God, baby. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She turned, her arms sliding around him. “We did good.”

“We did.” Mitchell kissed the top of her head. “I’m proud of us.”

--

The story continues in: Protect

#resus writing #cpr resus #medical drama #female resus

[sarandipitywrites]

dead darlings tag

@ahordeofwasps tagged me for this one - thank you! check out her dead darling (slaughtered mercilessly) here.

since Dead Roots, Dark Water is on to draft 3, that means there's plenty of senseless slaying of darlings from draft 2 going on around here.

tagging (with no pressure) @winterandwords, @byjillianmaria, @just-a-local-dreamer, @rewritingrosie, @lordfenric-writes, and you, if you have anything you'd like to share from your editing :)

here's a bit from DRDW that didn't make the cut for draft 3. oh, the carnage.

The roofs of the buildings crowded in closer. Jak took a deep breath and peered over the dash. The street had narrowed, buildings closing in to force the two lanes of zoomers scarcely an arm’s length apart as they flowed in opposite directions. Pedestrians walked the cratered street below, skirting around or leaping over the largest potholes. No side streets or alleys broke up the parallel gray monoliths. Just metal and stone, pinning them in like swamp rats in a maze. All the blood rushed away from his head and into his stomach. Saliva pooled in his mouth and he shoved his hand up under his scarf and sank his teeth into his thumb. This wasn’t a trap. It wasn’t a box. It was a road, and it went somewhere. It went to the water slums. Daxter knew where they were going. He needed to trust— “Ah, fuck.” Red. Red cruisers in the air, speeder bikes on the ground. Red armor, stopping every pedestrian and vehicle that tried to pass through the bottleneck. People presented small cards to be scanned. The armor allowed them to pass, or sent them back. Beyond them, worn wooden boardwalks stretched over water dark as eco. Bile rose in Jak’s throat. He bit down harder. “Y’know what, fuck that. Right? Yeah, fuck that.” Daxter cranked a lever and spun the zoomer around to merge into the other lane — the one heading away from the water slums. “Hey, grab the comm outta my bag and call Brutter for me, wouldja?” Jak pulled Daxter’s bag from the footwell and sifted through the contents. His hand brushed against something damp and he recoiled, switching to his prosthetic hand until he encountered a small boxy shape. He pulled it out, took one look, and groaned. Half screen, half speaker, no keyboard. One button on the side labelled ‘HOV.’ The scroll wheel on the other side would serve all other functions. Commonplace tech in Sandover, but he’d figured Haven would have something more— “—suspicious vehicle. Checking it out.” One of the guards mounted up on a speeder before the street twisted and the red vanished behind stone. “Dax, I think they’re—” “Don’t sweat it. I get tailed, like, twenty times a day. Just keep your head down and get Brutter on.” Brutter. Right. He scrolled to Daxter’s contact list and clicked. Seventeen pages. A dozen entries scrolled by — including one mysteriously labelled ‘Boom Boy’ — before  he found Brutter’s contact. He clicked the scroll wheel and listened to one and a half rings before the comm picked up. “Orangey friend!” A guttural, booming voice rattled the speaker. Jak jolted in his seat and fumbled the comm, caught it again before it could tumble to the street below. “You found friend Jak, yeah?” Jak glanced behind them. The red speeder tailed them several vehicles back. Had the guard heard Brutter? Would it— “Dial it down, Sunshine. Yeah, he’s right here, but we got a change of plans. East side’s crawlin’ with swamp rats. Think y’could close up shop early tonight?” “Oh yeah. Got it, got it, see you guys quick!” The speaker clicked and went silent. Jak slipped the comm back into Daxter’s bag. “Guess I’m meeting Brutter sooner than we thought?” Daxter glanced back and tensed. A siren wailed. “Attention, green duplex: ground your vehicle immediately for a random search.” Daxter flipped a switch and the zoomer descended to the street level. “Yeah. A lot sooner.” He slammed down on the accelerator.

#writeblr #writeblr tag games #dead darlings tag game #dead roots dark water #my writing

[frogs-with-tea]

I think the One Piece Sound idea is Galaxy-brained. It has so much potential! The setting can be so rich, both in scenery and emotion: they’re all seeing the water and the sky and the forest all the time, but they all grew up there and they’re kinda stuck there so they don’t notice the beauty unless something brings their attention to it. And the potential for the characters! The main crew are 20-somethings living in a tourist trap - the older adults are going to consider their minimum-wage dead-end jobs (or lack thereof, looking at Luffy, king of the bums as far as they’re concerned) to be a sign of their laziness or whatever.

I’d like to think that Nami runs scams on the boardwalk to fleece tourists as legally as possible. She supports Luffy’s search for the One Piece bc she wants to be rich and famous.

I’d like to think Luffy is the goofy guy selling t-shirts out of Usopp’s van with absolutely incredible good luck (no matter what happens, he always bounces back). He’s always at every single one of Zoro’s kendo tournaments: he was the only person cheering Zoro on at Zoro’s first competition, where he foolishly challenged the current champion and got his ass beat to hell. Zoro calls him captain as an inside joke between them; they were friends first out of the group and they are each others ride-or-die. Everybody thinks Luffy is just a childlike dumbass until Luffy sets out to challenge and take down cruelty and greed in the town.

Since he was young, Sanji wanted to go to culinary school but he’s afraid to leave the town: ‘Zeff needs me, the restaurant needs me’. (‘If I leave, the Vinsmokes will find me’) After Zoro gets pregnant, Zeff is on Sanji’s ass constantly about mating/marrying the Cactus. Zeff’s views are a little old fashioned but his heart is in the right place. Sanji has the self-esteem of a flea so he’s really conflicted about it. When he finds out that people are looking down on Zoro bc he got knocked up by ‘just a line cook’ he goes nuclear (I’m thinking about a parallel between this mis-characterization of him and his bounty posters in canon being caricatures of him)

Usopp runs a “Ghost Tour!” that is 200% bullshit and he changes up the locations and stories every couple months. It is the highest-rated attraction on Trip Advisor for the town.

Robin works at the library and she’s got an extremely morbid sense of humor, which terrifies Luffy/Usopp/Chopper BUT she’s doing a lot of the reading research on the treasure and she helps in the search a lot.

Anyway, all of this is to say I think you’ve got a really winning concept on your hands and I wish you all the luck and energy to see it through!

Hey there!! It makes me really excited to hear that you're so passionate about my AU ideas!! I've actually laid out a lot of my ideas on my personal blog @spock-smokes-weed, all under the tag #one piece sound au.

My ideas for Nami and Usopp is that they would be the ones experiencing the most "my life is in a rut" type feelings since they don't have much outside of work and the straw hats. Nami works at a bait shop with her sister, cus I thought it would be fun to position Nami in the old-school economy of the town, fishing. I thought it would be a fun setting for Nami cus she's both a getting dirty with her hands kind of person and a girly girl. With Usopp, in my mind, he's that one friend who's always bouncing from job to job. If this AU is about early 20s eunni, then we all have a friend that can't seem to find a job that makes them happy or they can tolerate. Usopp is an artist at heart and a big personality, I think he'd find it hard to get fulfillment bussing tables or washing cars.

Luffy is pretty straightforward. Living in his van with his dog (Chopper), being a menace to society.

And honestly, I don't see Zeff being the traditional type at all or would give Sanji any grief about marrying Zoro. Since he exclusively hires ex-cons to work on his staff, and already has a non-traditional family with Sanji, I can't see him thinking marriage would solve any issues between Sanji and Zoro. Zeff is a big feature in the story and Sanji's biggest pillar of support, but his advice mainly comes down to "just do the right thing and take responsibility." He just wants Sanji to step up as a father and not run out like Judge did to him. Sanji doesn't react to Zoro being pregnant well (at first. he's terrified of being a father, and that causes him to lash out) and Zeff very much gives him some tough love about stepping up and taking responsibility for his actions.

And for a note about the Vinsmokes, with this AU I'm not looking for a pure 1:1 with canon. So they might be evil royalty in canon, but since I'm taking inspiration from slice-of-life, I'd rather refit them to fit tropes from that genre. I have two posts on Judge specifically and my ideas for his roll in the story, but the TL;DR is that he's a narcissistic deadbeat who only resurfaces in Sanji's life to take advantage of him and ask for money.

As for the other straw hats, I have a post here about where I think they'd fit into the town.

Also, I have a post about Zoro's focus of the story, mainly being his battle with his strength and masculinity and his struggle with the judgment he gets from the town around him.

This was all super long but I just get so excited when ppl say they like my au and all I want to do is share all the ideas I have cataloged (both on here and in my brain)

#ask box #non art #one piece #one piece sound au #sorry it took me a min to get to this ' #you can only do embedded links on desk top and i was at work all day

[witch-and-her-witcher]

a playful kiss to make the other stop rambling  + ciri/cerys

"...And I told the lughead this was going to happen, but Hjalmar insisted he knew best! Now we've got another potential potato blight on our hands which will make it nigh impossible to keep the whispers of civil unrest down!"

Ciri walked on top of the seawall, parallel to Cerys on the boardwalk. She was sticking to Skellige for longer and longer stretches of time, supplementing her witcher's work with free room and board with Cerys. Free might have been a stretch, considering how frequently she sought out her counsel or listening ear on court frustrations.

But Cerys wouldn't point it out as long as Ciri would put up with it.

"If there's any hint of unrest he'll cry war and all of those relations I built between us and the clans will be for nowt - "

"Remind me, are we still discussing the political consequence to the unpredictable, rarely thought out, decisions your brother makes? The one everyone knew was a terrible choice for the crown, but they gave it to him anyway because...? Oh, right, he doesn't have breasts."

Cerys sighed. "Aye, I know I shouldn't care with the way everything went down ... But he's my brother and this is my home. How can I just watch it all go to shite?"

Ciri smiled fondly at her and playfully tapped Cerys' nose. "I don't care what the others say about you, you really are kind hearted."

"Kind hearted, pfft!" Making to elbow her in jest, Cerys' heart dropped into her stomach when her elbow made contact and instead of Ciri grabbing a hold of her for balance, her arms flew up and her face contorted into surprise as she lost balance. Right over the sea wall the witcher went with Cerys watching, horror struck.

"Ciri!"

Dropping to her belly and diving in the same motion to the edge, Cerys was ready to locate the disruption of water where she'd fallen in and either dive or get a rope -

She wasn't ready to come face to face with the cheekily grinning woman, clinging to the rocky side of the seawall like some barnacle.

"How in the name of Freya - "

With their faces nearly touching already, Ciri only had to flex to lift herself the rest of the way to catch the rest of her words and Cerys' lips with her own.

The kiss was salty, from sweat or seawater, Cerys couldn't tell - and didn't care.

"Y'know, if you wanted me to quit my bitchin', you could have just said so..."

"Bah, where's the fun in that!"

Ciri was still laughing when she kissed Cerys again. It seemed a precarious spot, but the witcher showed no signs of tiring, and Cerys wouldn't make a fuss as long as the silly woman didn't mind.

#ask meme #ooooh thank you for this little bit of wholesome sweetness 🥰 #ciri be trolling #ciri x cerys #witcher fan fic #my writing

[nadia-zahra]

A Curiosity Voyage into Will Byers and St5 Plot

He opened his eyes, and further words died in his throat. He forgot about the need to sick up that horrible parody of wine. He forgot about his mother, and Uncle Morgan, and his father, and almost everything else. Speedy was gone. The graceful arcs of the roller coaster against the sky were gone. He could feel the hair stirring on his neck, could feel a goofed-up grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Speedy! I'm here, my God! I'm here in the Territories!"

This is the excerpt Lucas read to Max from The Talisman in the season 4 finale. Whenever you first watch the scene, it seems like its a parallel to lumax's situation-- it sounds like whoever is narrating is dying and is with a friend as they pass. The phrase "sick up that horrible parody of wine" usually correlates to choking on blood, and them not seeing their loved ones anymore sounds like their memory is fading away with their life. And this little snippet with no context does parallel lumax...however something sticks out like a sore thumb.

He could feel the hair stirring on his neck

Byler senses are tingling, and something told me this was about Will because this is characteristic of Will NOT MAX. The duffers could've easily left out the second part of this excerpt because tbh it doesn't make any sense within the lumax parallel, but they chose to keep it even though they EDITED it. This is the original excerpt:

He opened his eyes, and further words died in his throat. He forgot about the need to sick up that horrible parody of wine. He forgot about his mother, and Uncle Morgan, and his father, and almost everything else. Speedy was gone. The graceful arcs of the roller coaster against the sky were gone. Boardwalk Avenue was gone. He was someplace else now. He was-- "in the Territories" Jack whispered, his entire body crawling with a mad mixture of terror and exhilaration. He could feel the hair stirring on the nape of his neck, could feel a goofed-up grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Speedy, I'm here, my God, I'm here in the Territories! I--" But wonder overcame him. He clapped a hand over his mouth and slowly turned in a complete circle, looking at this place to which Speedy's "magic juice" had brought him.

This clearly isn't about someone dying when looking at the whole text. This is actually about a boy named Jack going into an alternate dimension with help from his friend Speedy's "magic juice". And if my hunch is correct, then Will is going to get help from El to learn he has powers and strengthen them in order to save Mike from Vecna's curse.

******

For the people who know literally nothing about Talisman it's okay! Here's what you need to know:

Jack Sawyer is on a mission to save his dying mother by giving her a magical healing orb called the Talisman. Speedy is Jack's friend that helps him flip between dimensions. Jack's enemy is Uncle Morgan, and throughout the story, Uncle Morgan is trying to kill him. The story has an alternate dimension called the Territories; here, there are werewolves (soldiers of the Territories) and twinners (parallels of the people from the real world), and Jack's mother's twinner is the queen of the Territories.

Now cue the parallels!

The Territories & The Upside Down

The Territories and the Upside Down are both alternate dimensions that have to be traveled to with magic (The Territories you flip, UD you use your mind or a gate) Both have branches/vines that strangle people if touched and have monsters who will kill on sight. Both of these worlds were safe before our villains took control of them. The Territories was this cute lil world filled with nice people before Morgan took over and got the werewolves on his side. The Upside Down wasn't inherently bad either until Vecna took over and created the evil Hivemind (more so talking about his control over the Demodogs, but he did also morph the gas thing into the Mindflayer). Idk if this is a parallel, but it's really odd how these places have polar opposite air qualities. The Territories air is described as the freshest and cleanest air Jack had ever breathed. The Upside Down's air is so poisonous and radioactive that scientists use hazmat suits when even near a gate.

Arcadia & Hawkins

This one's pretty straightforward: both are small, creepy towns in the middle of nowhere up in the Northeast of the U.S.A, both have an heir of death to them (Jack says he can literally feel death when he first arrives in Arcadia and Hawkins becomes known as cursed/haunted), and in both stories, our heroes travel from California to this setting so they can begin their epic journeys.

Werewolves & Demogorgons

Both are controlled by their big bads, even though they aren't inherently evil. Jack meets a friendly werewolf named Wolf who tells him Morgan is why werewolves are considered dangerous since most sided with him, and we see the Demogorgons peacefully living their lives (like wild animals do) before Vecna takes over their minds and makes them killing machines. Also, both of them have defining characteristics that tell people when they're near; the Demogorgons have weird clicking noises and werewolves have bright yellow eyes.

Uncle Morgan & Vecna

Uncle Morgan is the main villain of the Talisman. His goal is to take full control and power in the alternate dimension called the Territories and all wealth imaginable by taking over Phil's company. He's already killed Uncle Tommy (Jack's other uncle) and Phil died, so the only thing stopping him is Jack because he's the heir to Phil's portion of the company. In relation to the Territories, he's already almost in complete control, but Jack is stopping him from taking full control because Jack's quest to save his dying mother from cancer will also heal the near-dead Queen of the Territories. All Morgan has to do is kill Jack to become unstoppable; however, Lily (Jack's mom) is adamant against Morgan getting his hands on Jack's ownership of the company and made sure Morgan couldn't find her and Jack by secretly moving. Morgan's plans are now to kill both Lily in the real world, and to have his second-in-power called White Coat (yeah isn't that a cute lil parallel to One only wearing white) and his men kill Jack in the territories.

Do I even need to say why this is a parallel? Literally just replace the names and botta-bing-botta-boom it's Vecna trying to kill/possess Will in order to gain his powers so that he can have all power imaginable and full control over Hawkins and the Upside Down but has to curse Mike first because Mike is always the one to ruin Vecna's Will plans.

Phil & Papa

Phil as a character is more known through his friendship with Morgan, not as Jack's father figure. With that said, Phil is the one to originally show Morgan the Territories...just like Papa was the first one to show Vecna how to control and strengthen his powers in the Lab. Papa and Phil are viewed the exact same way by Vecna and Morgan; both our villains feel like they were underestimated and were being used/controlled, feeding into their anger and hatred of the world.

"Phil Sawyer had underestimated him [from the time of their first meeting], and that still rankled. Because Phil had thought of him as a sort of rained rattlesnake to be let out of his cage only under controlled circumstances, so had others" (pg 83 & 84)

Uncle Tommy & Max

I already said earlier, but Uncle Tommy got killed by Morgan. Not saying Max is dead, but we do have to acknowledge that she died, came back, and is now in a deep coma that may or may not be permanent. But the more interesting parallel besides dancing with death is how their tangos happen. Both Max and Tommy are specifically targeted and had their secrets used against their lives. *Warning: homophobia* Morgan used Tommy's homosexuality as a reason why he should be dead (because Stephen King loves making queerness shameful). Vecna used Max's guilt of being happy Billy's dead as a reason why she should be dead. Oh, and both of these people were stepping-stones in the villains' plans. Tommy was a lawyer who was to be made executor of Phil's half of the business and legal guardian of Jack; killing Tommy was Morgan's first step to taking over the business and getting to Jack. Max was one of the four people Vecna used to open the gates and her death is why the Byers came back to Hawkins. Did I mention how both Max and Uncle Tommy were attacked while their respective heroes lived across the country?

Lily & Mike

Both Mike and Lily travel from California back to Hawkins/Arcadia. Mike is obviously from Hawkins, and Lily says she lived in Arcadia for three weeks before moving to California (either way both of them are going back to these places).

Both Mike's and Lily's love for Will/Jack causes them to protect them no matter what (Lily loves Jack maternally, Mike loves Will romantically). Lily literally tells Morgan over the phone that she doesn't want him to "take care of" Jack because she knows he "took care of" Uncle Tommy and made sure Morgan didn't know where they were moving to. Mike was on the same crazy levels as Joyce in st1 and st2 when it came to Will-- he let a random girl stay with him because she said she could help find Will with no proof and stayed with him all throughout st2 despite his possession.

Both of them are hinted at dying before it's revealed what's causing them to die. Lily is described as sickly and is a chain-smoker who smokes cigarettes nicknamed Black Lungers (as a person who smokes cigarettes, I have been calling mine this lmao). Throughout the entirety of Stranger Things, Mike's death has been joked about even though he's never had a near-death experience and in Nancy's vision she saw him die; parallels are paralleling, and Mike getting cursed in st5 would slowly kill him since that's what Vecna's curse does.

Lily is characterized as a person who runs away from their problems; she runs away from her cancer by not dealing with it and acting like it doesn't exist. Mike's playlist is filled to the rim with songs about running away even though he's never run away before, and st4 has a theme of "if you run you die"... if the parallels are correct then Mike is going to try and either run away from his feelings behind Will's painting or will literally run away from whoever tells him the truth about the painting.

Both of them also get in the way of the big bads' plans. Lily refuses to give Morgan Jack's share of the company and moves across the country to ensure Morgan doesn't find and kill them, and Morgan has to wait for her twinner, the dying queen of he Territories, to die as well in order to take over that world. Mike is always the reason why Vecna's plans are always ruined: s1 he treats El kindly leading her to help save Will, s2 he figures out the Mindflayer can use Will as a spy just like Will can to it, s3 he creates the plan to see if Billy is possessed (if he hadn't done that then they wouldn't have known Billy was possessed by Vecna), and s4 is the one time Mike leaves Hawkins and gives Vecna the chance to do his evil plan without any disruptions.

Also, Lily never told Jack that she was dying, he figures it out from overhearing her and Morgan's conversation and this leads to him going on his journey to save her. If the parallels aren't just coincidences, then that means Mike isn't going to tell Will he's been cursed and when Will figures it out, he's going to start his mission through the Upside Down.

Speedy & El

Even though Speedy and Morgan can both flip into the Territories, Speedy is described as his complete opposite: Speedy is the greatest good while Morgan is the greatest evil. El is the same, even though she does have great power like Vecna she is his complete opposite.

(this is the parallel that made me post that pic of El's shocked face edited over Mike) Both Speedy and El had met Jack/Will prior to officially knowing each other. Speedy reveals to Jack that years prior to meeting in Arcadia he met Jack, Phil, and Morgan. El obviously met Brenner and One before meeting Will, but how could she have met him before st2? Well, there is a theory that Will was secretly a lab kid, but I'm going the cannon route since in st1 El did talk to a sleeping Will at Castle Buyers in the UD and she knew who he was even before that since she pointed him out in Mike's picture.

If in St5 it is revealed that Will has powers, then she would be the one to teach him how to use and strengthen them. Speedy gives Jack really disgusting (like gag-worthy) wine called “magic juice” that allows him to flip between the two worlds easier, and he got this magic juice in California... El is going to help Will regain and strengthen his powers in st5 since she regained hers while also in California too!!

However, even though Speedy is a good guy he isn’t the hero of this story Jack is, and Jack parallels Will. Speedy tells Jack that he's already fought Morgan before, but if Jack wants to save his mother and the Territories then he's going to have to do it. El knows she can't be the one to defeat Vecna and it has to be Will which is why she helps him regain and strengthen his powers!

Jack & Will

Honestly, there's only one piece of super solid textual/cannon proof that Will parallels Jack, but it's so solid that it lets us know these two obviously parallel each other. Before Jack begins his journey to save his mother, he has "daydreams" and "nightmares" that he believes is just him going crazy when it's really him unknowingly flipping into the Territories...before Will goes on his journey in st5, Will was unknowingly traveling into the Upside Down and believed he was going crazy in st2!!

Even though this was happening to Will because of his connection to Vecna, I 100% believe Will has been hinted at having non-Vecna-related powers prior. His ability to communicate to Joyce through the lights and open up a gate in his house's wall was way before he gets the Vecna connection; not to mention we know people can just have powers without it coming from the lab thanks to Henry's backstory. Here are links one, two, and three of other creators' theories surrounding his powers (I'm too lazy to reiterate what these people have already proven). The only thing I'm going to personally speculate is that El is going to go into Will's mind and make him remember his powers and will teach Will how to also go into people's minds and restrengthen what he was already born with.

You would think El would parallel Jack since she has powers, but she has never had the experience of unknowingly being in an alternate dimension like Jack and Will have (not to mention Will can still get powers in st5). Also, El doesn't parallel Jack because in the D&D game foreshadowing st5 Twenty kills Vecna not Eleven, and the only time throughout the entire show we're shown a twenty be related to characters was when Mike and Will had size ten shoes in the same shot.

The only info we have on st5's plot is that Will is going to be the main character and that the original pairings from st1 are making a comeback. Do you know who Will was paired with in season 1?? LITERALLY NO ONE!! He was trapped in the Upside Down by himself while El, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin were together! Put two and two together people! Jack went on this journey to save his mother through the Territories by himself, and Will's plot is going to be him on a mission through the Upside Down by himself to save Mike from Vecna!!!

*****

Y'all might be thinking, "Do you really believe Will's st5 arc parallels the Talisman just because Lucas reads an excerpt from that book and the excerpt has a Will parallel?" And to that I say a big fat YES.

EVERY SINGLE reference the Stranger Things writers and creators make, as in have the characters discuss or acknowledge it exists, parallels the show's story.

These are ones that were off the top of my head:

s1's hopper arc parallels Jaws (Will has a gigantic Jaws poster in st4 and shark props are shown throughout the series)

st1's mike arc parallels Star Wars (Mike shows El his Yoda figurine and he becomes her mentor for that season if that's not obvious)

s2's will plot parallels Ghostbusters (the party literally dresses up as the ghostbusters)

s3's villain plot parallels Day of the Dead (the movie lumax and byler go see)

s3's villain plot parallels The Never Ending Story (duzie sings the Never Ending story song)

st4 Hawkin's plot parallels Nightmare on Elm Street (a Freddy Kruger cut out hovers over Max when we see her and Dustin at the movie rental).

st4 m*leven plot parallels Doctor Zhivago (Robin literally says it's a movie about doomed love)

THE DUFFERS DID NOT WRITE LUCAS LITERALLY READING AN EXCERPT FROM THE TALISMAN ABOUT A BOY USING MAGIC POWERS TO TRAVEL TO AN ALTERNATE DIMENSION JUST TO PROMOTE THEIR NEW SHOW OR TO ATTEMPT A LUMAX PARALLEL!!!!!

So, since the Talisman was the very last reference in st4, why doesn't it parallel that season? The Talisman as a parallel to st4 doesn't work because El loses against Vecna, but Jack wins against Morgan. And since st4's last reference doesn't fit with its plot and the finale left us off at a cliffhanger...it means the excerpt is a hint to the st5 plot paralleling the Talisman baby!!!!

Oh, and I said in an ominous post that I may have found out why the duffers chose to name the show Stranger Things and not something UD or Hawkins-related. Well, the Talisman is apparently one of their favorite stories, and we all know they love references. Throughout the book, the people who are just visiting a world (whether it be a twinner going into the normal world or Jack going into the Territories) they are called Strangers (capital S- included). Stranger Things is literally about people traveling to an alternate dimension-- a dimension they are Strangers to. I wouldn't be surprised if they called the show Stranger Things because this is about freaky things happening to strangers of the Upside Down simply to pay homage to the Talisman.

#byler #will byers #will byers theory #will byers has powers #mike wheeler #jane hopper #el hopper #max mayfield #doctor brenner #vecna #st #st4 volume 2 #papa #the talisman #stranger things theory #st5 theory #the parallels #byler tumblr #byler brainrot

[imperpetuallylost]

@theniceandaccuratebookshelf i didn't have a better way to share this it wouldn't let me paste it into dms so here ya go

u cant point out any mistakes because it's already submitted

Throughout history, mythology has been shared in different ways, from written work to stories passed down orally, to songs. Many songs tell stories and contain symbolism just like mythology; they are an essential part of ancient and modern cultures. Neil Gaiman makes heavy use of mythology to develop and contextualize the characters in his novel Anansi Boys. Alongside the classic West African mythology used in this novel, Gaiman also uses music to develop and characterize the main characters in this story.

Anansi’s character is developed by his interactions with music and the songs he sings in the book. One of the first things the reader learns about Anansi is how he died- in the middle of singing “I Am What I Am” at a bar for karaoke. The song choice shows how confident and spirited the character Anansi is. Gaiman portrays Anansi as an extremely over-the-top character in several ways, but one way that he repeatedly conveys this message is through associations with music. Anansi is the epitome of a wild and free surface, and when describing the night that he died, Gaiman also describes the way that he captivated the audience with his singing the first time he sang that night as being “in a manner that would have caused Tom Jones to be festooned in flung feminine undergarments, and which brought Fat Charlie’s father a complimentary beer, courtesy of the several blonde tourists from Michigan who thought he was just about the cutest thing they’d ever seen.” (27) Anansi captivated his audience, and in the description of his singing, a characterization of his personality also becomes visible. Anansi’s singing serves as more than just a funny and embarrassing moment in the story, it also uses known media in the form of music to share insight into who he is as a character, in the same way that the excerpts of West African myths that are inserted into the story do. In addition to his night of singing, Anansi appears in the hospital while Charlie’s mother is on her deathbed, along with a jazz band, causing a commotion in the halls while playing her favorite song, “Yellow Bird”.  Though Charlie was wildly embarrassed by these actions, his mother told him that Anansi’s actions “did [her] a power of good last night” (20). Anansi’s over-the-top nature is shown through references to music that serve to portray his character the same way the references to West African mythology do, showing his wild side in the same way that the stories show his tricky side.

Spider is introduced as a perfectly suave character, much like Anansi, and everything Fat Charlie would love to be. One of the first things Spider does in the book is singing karaoke out at a bar with Charlie and Daisy, just like how Anansi died, singing his heart out at karaoke. His smooth demeanor and over-the-top personality are a lot like his father, and his interactions with music show those parallels. “Spider began to sing. It was “Under the Boardwalk.” It wouldn’t have happened if Fat Charlie had not liked the song so much. When Fat Charlie was thirteen he had believed that “Under the Boardwalk” was the greatest song in the world … And now Spider was singing his song, and singing it well. He sang it in tune, he sang it as if he meant it.” (83) On top of the parallels to Anansi singing karaoke and the way that they both charm the crowd, Spider’s song choice also has another significance. Picking this song that Charlie had loved as a child adds to the tension between the two characters, but it also foreshadows the development that the two were the same person back when they were young. By picking this song and having Spider sing karaoke, Gaiman cements him as a character with a lot in common with Anansi, and as a rival to Charlie. Spider is also portrayed as incredibly charismatic, and this is shown through his interactions with music as well. “When people stood near Spider on a day that he was this happy, their worlds would seem a little brighter. If he hummed a song, other people around him would start humming, in key, like something from a musical.” (195) Spider’s ability to brighten others’ days with a song is another parallel to Anansi’s personality and the way he brightened Charlie’s mother’s day when he brought the jazz band to the hospital. Throughout the story, Gaiman uses music and song thoughtfully to create parallels between the two characters that show similarities in their personalities. 

Charlie is initially characterized in a very different way from Spider and Anansi, as disliking music and being embarrassed by it. Gaiman uses Charlie’s relationship with music as a parallel for his relationship and similarities to his father. Charlie is embarrassed by his father’s appearance in the hospital with a jazz band at the beginning of the novel, and when he goes to the bar with Spider he is too anxious to sing. Though he initially decided that he was going to sing, he got overwhelmed and was unable to go through with it. “His mouth was dry. His heart was fluttering in his chest. On the screen was his first word: Unforgettable…” (83) Charlie’s relationship with music to this point is filled with anxiety and embarrassment. Gaiman uses this to show how Charlie starts as a very generic, boring type of person, a huge contrast to his brother and father. Throughout the story, Charlie’s relationship with his family changes, and as he sees how Spider lives he becomes less embarrassed by his father. By the end of the novel, his relationship with music has completely changed, and when he begins to sing in front of a crowd he doesn’t freeze up, he captivates the audience the way the rest of his family had when they sang; “As he entered the last chorus, he began to clap his hands above his head, and soon the whole room was clapping along with him, diners and waiters and chefs.” (308) Charlie has become much more confident, and embraced the parts of himself that are like Anansi by the end of the novel. In addition to this, the song that he sings is “Under the Boardwalk”, his favorite song from when he was a kid. Through this moment he reclaims those parts of himself and in a way proves wrong the things that Spider made him feel about himself by choosing to sing his song, and captivating the room while doing it. At the end of the novel, Gaiman shows that Charlie has fully come full circle both in his relationship with music and with his family; “Charlie’s a singer these days. He’s lost a lot of the softness. He’s a lean man now, with a trademark fedora hat. He has lots of different fedoras, in different colors; his favorite one is green.” (365) In addition to becoming a singer, Charlie has also adopted his father’s signature fedoras. Gaiman uses music throughout the story to show how Charlie’s character develops and changes as he embraces his family and becomes more like his father. Gaiman uses music throughout the novel Anansi Boys to develop the main characters and draw parallels between them. Charlie’s journey from being embarrassed by his father to emulating him is shown by his relationship with music and his ability to get over his fears and sing. The parallels between Spider, Anansi, and later in the novel Charlie are also shown by the similarities in the music they enjoy and the way the crowds react to them. Gaiman’s use of music throughout the story as a form of mythology that is commonly referenced allows him to share details about the characters and how they develop throughout the novel.

[sohannabarberaesque]

Postcards from Snagglepuss

Just "following the gulls" back to Ocean City

SITTING ALONG THE OCEAN CITY, MARYLAND BOARDWALK: "Follow the gulls" happens to be the motto of the authority behind the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel complex of some 18 miles northward on US 13 out of Hampton Roads ... and, for that matter, is their symbol. First opened in 1964 and seeing a second two-lane adaptation parallel and in tandem thereto in 1988, at least you have the breezes off the Chesapeake Bay cooling you off in the bridge and causeway sections.

Which was oh so evident when Huck and I picked up some crab cakes worth heating up in the motorhome for the next leg of the journey--back to Ocean City, Maryland. Where, as it turned out, our current motorhome came about during last year's Character Convocation at their Springfest celebrations.

"And you wonder how impressive this motorhome has turned out," Huck was quick to remark over some Cheerwine picked up at some store in Virginia Beach.

To which I responded, "Plenty of opportunities ... not to mention having the likes of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, Hokey Wolf, Wally Gator, &c., joining us."

"Who do you think we might pick up next?" discerned Huck.

Which seemed a little bemusing as, not that far off, those Goofy Guards, by names Yippy, Yappy and Yahooey, were offering for $20 a pop an opportunity for visitors to try their hand at sword play in the regal(?) manner. Over some French fries from a nearby stand, we were able to get the bizarre canine trio over, dress uniform and all, to have a chat.

"So," Huckleberry Hound remarked, "what exactly drives you here, and perhaps for the summer?"

"Call ourselves performance artists, as it were," remarked Yappy, the somewhat midsized, portly and brainy one of the three. "But with a difference."

"As in the opportunity for tourists to try their hand at fencing-type activity in the swashbuckler, Errol Flynn-stylee, manner," added the short and at once smarty Yahooey.

"And," added the tall and lanky Yippy, "who exactly wouldn't want to try the opportunity to discover their inner fencing artist?"

"I just hope people aren't bound to get hurt," remarked I.

"But at least we're filling in a niche which a certain Touché Turtle seems uninterested in," Yahooey remarked.

"Still, fellers," Huck chimed in, "Touché Turtle considers himself more or less the strong, silent type."

"With that bent-tip foil of his?!" was how Yippy parsed it.

Whereupon no less than Touché Turtle "himself" made his presence known, howbeit with the foil sheathed in his shell.

"I assume you were making reference to me?" was how Touché responded to the Goofy Guards' remark. (He probably must have heard it some distance away.) The three nodded their heads in agreement, then prodded their way back to their stand a couple blocks upward.

"Still, guys," Touché chimed in, "I try being modest in offering help." (Pause) "Even if it gets hilarious in the end."

"And I do understand," saith I, "that your compadre Dum-Dum is houseboating these days with Bristlehound on the Mississippi River."

"Which I can accept," Touché responded, "even if he sends me postcards from time to time. Oft making note of Friday-night fish fries he and Bristlehound come across."

"Which, come to think of it," Huck remarked, "might offer something of an opportunity. Maybe a couple days taking in the sea air and sunshine here in OC, Snag and Touché, and perhaps catch up with Dum-Dum and Bristlehound somewhere along the Mississippi for a few days ourselves."

"Heavens to Mark Twain ... perhaps going part of the way along the old Lincoln Highway, at least from Breezewood westbound."

Which had Touché asking what exactly this Breezewood is, to which I explained, "A rather unlikely crossroads in Pennsylvania. Disneyland it isn't." Which had Touché, plumed hat and all, chuckling. But at any rate, folks, stay tuned to see how this unfoldeth.

*************

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#hanna barbera #fanfic #fanfiction #road trip #on the road #chesapeake bay bridge-tunnel #huckleberry hound #snagglepuss #ocean city #on the boardwalk #the goofy guards #touché turtle #yippy yappy and yahooey #sea air and sunshine #hannabarberaforever