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hazyange1s · 2 months

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1901 (Sebastian Sallow x F!MC)

so. I generated the middle photo with midjourney months ago and people on tiktok seemed to like it 😂 probably because we are desperately in need of some happy endings….

which brought my aching little heart to write a painfully self-indulgent one-shot based off of said picture (ft. my two brainchildren). this is from October and I’m cringing; I feel like I’ve improved a bit since but we’re here for vibes so who cares.

Synopsis: the year is 1901, and after a lifetime of dealing with the turmoil he became so accustomed to, Sebastian has finally gotten everything he could ever want. a night with his wife and best friends reminds him exactly how lucky he is.

Warnings: slightly suggestive reference (but still keepin it SFW), dad!Seb and Ominis, tooth-rotting fluff, aged up characters, alcohol use, pregnancy, not edited just raw word vomit

The stone and wood that made up Hogsmeade had hardly weathered since the first year Sebastian could remember coming, when he was a sprightly six year old boy with his parents. Back then, the buildings had looked larger than life. The people seemed wonderful and strange and extraordinary; their wands aloft to float signs or move merchandise. He had tugged on the folds of his mother's skirt upon staring with rapt attention, whining, "Mummy! When do *I* get to make things fly?"

"Soon, sweetling." His mother had smiled, the most beautiful sight he could comprehend at that tender age. "Soon, you yourself could be flying above the clouds."

Now, Sebastian found himself doing just that.

Cold wood bit into the callouses of his palms, which gripped the handle of his broom securely as the biting October wind tousled his dark hair into knots. He might have already frozen solid where he sat, had it not been the warming charm on his coat and the heat of his wife's smaller body pressed up against his back.

She shouted something just then amidst the roar of the wind in his ears. Sebastian turned for a split second to get a glimpse of the wide grin on her flushed, freckled cheeks.

The most beautiful sight in the world to him now.

"What?" He chuckled, turning back around as they neared the stone path leading into the quaint village.

"I said; they're going to have our heads for being late, so you better take full responsibility." Raegan repeated with her lips grazing Sebastian's ear.

Another laugh was dragged from his dry throat. Raegan had a special ability that when beyond just her fire-wielding, ancient magic, and skills on a broom. She was also one of the only people in the world who could make him laugh without really trying.

"I don't suppose you want me to tell them WHY?" Sebastian replied wryly as they landed and climbed stiffly off of the broom. The feeling of solid ground beneath their feet was a certainly a relief after miles of dark skies above the Highlands.

Raegan gave him a taunting little smirk that he'd come to understand was one she reserved especially for her husband. "Doubt you'll have to. It's hard to hide anything from those two. Ominis will probably sniff us out the moment we enter the pub."

She smoothed down the wild, russet tangle of waves Sebastian had run his hands through just an hour ago as they walked hand in hand over the bridge. He smiled at the memory as if he could still feel the softness of each lock between his fingers.

"I have considered the theory that he's part bloodhound."

The pair came to the familiar, flickering facade of the Three Broomsticks, pausing just outside when Sebastian tugged on Raegan’s hand to bring her to a stop beside him (a feat in itself, really).

“You know…” he mused, eyes crinkling at her questioning look. “Technically, we had our first date here.”

“If you call nearly getting…what were the words you used? Pulverized by a troll a romantic outing.” She laughed.

“Don’t forget the bar fight you nearly got me into. Honestly, it’s a wonder I managed to stick around for so long, with all the trouble you bring.”

The words were made in obvious jest and followed by an affectionate press of his winter-chapped lips to her temple. Because they both knew damn well that trouble was Sebastian’s middle name (it could replace Alexander for all he cared), and that chaotic whirlwind of a fifth year when they’d met was precisely what had him falling head over heels for her in record time.

“Well, as much as I love a good troll fight…the only thing you have to be scared of tonight is Ominis.”

A half-hearted scoff had Sebastian’s breath clouding in the air. “I wasn’t scared.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t wet yourself.”

“I was not scared!”

Raegan grinned indulgently at her husband, who rolled his eyes at the all-too-familiar teasing. Still, Sebastian found himself imitating her expression as he pulled her flush against his side and leaned down to fit his mouth to hers.

How many times had he enjoyed the saccharine taste that clung to every bit of her skin? It was far, far too many to count, surely, and the proof was in the way their lips moulded together like two pieces of a well-loved puzzle.

A rush of warmth hit their wind-chapped skin once the couple had finally broken apart, Sebastian opening the door for his distinctly kiss-drunk wife.

The Three Broomsticks was just as he remembered, too. Sirona, ever the dedicated businesswoman, spotted them instantly and offered a friendly wave. That was almost certainly Mr. Pippin and Mr. Hill chatting jovially over pints, and that blasted portrait of Ferdinand Pratt that had somehow withstood the ire of the patrons.

Raegan breathed the smallest of fires into her cupped hands before rubbing them together to generate more heat. It was not needed, though; for their friends had clearly planned ahead and already snagged the table just adjacent to the roaring hearth in the back center of the first floor.

Ominis's corn silk hair seemed to reflect its golden light, acting as a beacon for the Gyrffindor and Slytherin alumni to meander their way through the crowd and plop down eagerly at the round mahogany table.

"I was just about to send a Patronus if you hadn't shown up in the next five minutes." Diana gave them both an exasperated look, her brows shooting up as she took in their disheveled appearances. "Did you fly here?"

"Of course we did. It's a gorgeous night." Raegan leaned in to give her lifelong friend (sister might have been a more accurate term) a hug, despite the smaller girl's grumbling.

Ominis, who had his arm slung casually against the back of his wife’s chair, shook his head at Sebastian and Raegan like a disappointed father. It was a gesture so familiar to them both that it had been permanently seared in the back of their minds.

"Well, while you two were wasting time doing god knows what and flying fifty miles instead of Apparating like reasonable people, we've already been through half a flagon of wine." Ominis held up his half-full goblet as evidence.

The Hogwarts Professor was usually not one to indulge so heavily, but with the start of a new school year keeping him busy and his youngest daughter clinging to the chaos of her terrible twos, Sebastian supposed he had more than enough reason tonight.

"Well, you know me. I'll catch up in no time." Sebastian said with a roguish grin as he poured the rich, sweet-smelling liquid into a goblet that had clearly been waiting patiently for him.

Ominis, ever the gentleman, waved his wand to take serve Raegan from the flagon next, its contents tipping into a fourth cup.

"Oh, er...none for me, Ominis; thank you." Raegan said politely, the flush from the cold now returning for an entirely different reason.

His eyebrows furrowed into a mask of disbelief, as though the very fabric of the world had suddenly been torn open. "Are you ill? Or has someone taken Polyjuice Potion and replaced your wife, Sebastian?"

Raegan couldn't help but pair her laugh with an eye roll at Ominis's over dramatic display of surprise over her refusal to drink. Though she supposed it was true, there were very few times in her life she'd turned down a casual drink.

"Oh my-"

Diana's soft gasp broke the suspenseful silence, her pale, delicate fists causing ripples in their goblets as they collided with the table's surface. "I knew it! I told you that dream was a vision, Ominis!"

Now it was Raegan and Sebastian's turn to look confused, their shifting eyes replacing the self-indulgent grins they'd donned long before they'd arrived in the village.

"What dream?" Raegan asked, grabbing her friend's hand to recapture the raven-haired Seer's attention. "What did you see?"

Sebastian could see the tension in her grip, the light reflected by the fireplace that shone in her brilliant amber eyes. She had been dying to share this news; and if he knew her at all, Raegan was nearly bursting to deliver it herself before Diana could answer.

But it appeared her curiosity had won out over her flair for the dramatics at the present moment.

Diana beamed when she met Raegan’s imploring stare. Her voice had lowered, as if sharing an important secret.

"Last week, I dreamt of a little girl. She had the most beautiful auburn hair. Plus these adorable freckles and big, brown eyes. She was playing outside your house with a boy who looked exactly like Samuel, if he were ten years older."

Sebastian and Raegan both sported round, awestruck eyes that flickered to each other before they returned to Diana.

"Wait, I'm having a girl?" Raegan squealed, getting miles ahead of herself while Sebastian put the pieces of the puzzle together in her head.

"It's a girl?!" He gaped at the same moment.

Now, his other two friends were forgotten; his gaze solely on his exuberant wife, tears brimming despite himself.

A girl. It seemed all too perfect. A daughter and a son. Just like him and Anne, and Raegan and her brother Ronan.

"Oh...sur...prise?" Diana smiled sheepishly. "So, are you going to say it, or not?"

"It seems pointless now, since you’ve stolen my spotlight," Raegan raised her brow playfully in the beautiful Seer's direction. "But yes...I'm pregnant!"

Ominis's face broke into a huge smile, its brilliance so rare the honor was rarely bestowed upon anyone , save for the three people seated at the table now.

"Congratulations, Raegan. And you, Sebastian."

Diana began to gush as she hopped up from her seat, throwing her arms around her best friend once more. "This is amazing! How far along are you? Do you have any names picked out yet? How's your morning sickness? Mine was positively awful with both of the girls, I couldn't-"

Ominis chuckled affectionately at her elation. Gently, he placed a guiding hand on her arm to bring her back down to Earth - which was usually her least favorite place to be. "Darling, you're doing it again. Let her breathe for a moment."

To her credit, Diana looked positively pink as she relented and settled back down in her chair without losing her grin.

"Sorry, Rae. I'm just...so happy for you two."

"To answer your questions as my poor wife gathers herself, Di," Sebastian echoed Ominis's affectionate sound with his fingers intertwining through Raegan's. "She's seven weeks along, which is why we weren't sure about telling you just yet. But i suppose now is as good a time as any. And, for names, we were thinking-"

"Kassady Anne." Raegan jumped in for him, squeezing his hand as if she could pour all the love she had into that one gesture.

Diana almost teared up at this revelation, as Ominis let out an uncharacteristic, "aww". The namesakes of Raegan's late mother and Sebastian's only sister. It hadn't been a very difficult decision to come to. Though Sebastian had tried to insist on Anne as the first name in their hypothetical discussions.

"Fair warning," Ominis broke in, a knowing grin stretching his pale face. "Your second child will be your undoing. Little menace; our Gwen."

"Hey, I'm a second child." Raegan retorted, though her offense was clearly falsified. Nothing could break through the bubble of pure joy that seemed to radiate from her like the rays of the sun.

"I think you're proving his point, my love." Sebastian smirked. He barely dodged the well-aimed elbow to his side with a soft sound of indignation.

Ominis raised his glass once more after happily listening to the familiar sounds of his friends' excited chatter. "To Helen, Gwen, Sam, and Kassady-may they leave their own remarkable legacy on the world under our expert guidance."

The four of them all laughed, the sound like a chorus of church bells signifying the end of a long, fulfilling day. Three glasses of wine and one filled with water were raised in celebration, connecting the circle of lifelong friends with a resounding clink.

It had been over ten years since they'd all first sat in this pub together. Back then, the topics of conversation had centered around the goblin rebellion, Professor Black's latest warpath, and the homework that had led to countless sleepless nights.

In a way, things hadn't changed all that much. Except the rebellions now came in the form of arrests made by Raegan at the Auror's office or the tantrums of Ominis and Diana's three year old daughter. War was still in the backs of their minds, but for the most part their arms had been laid down in favor of peace.

And the sleepless nights, well...

Sebastian's mind again wandered back to the blissful visit of his youth. How he'd been unsatisfied with his feet on the ground, longing to soar above the rest.

Now, he got to feel like that every day of his life. No broom required.

#hogwarts legacy #sebastian sallow #harry potter #hogwarts legacy mc #ominis gaunt #sebastian sallow x f!mc #sebastian sallow fanfiction #sebastian sallow x mc #sebastian sallow x oc #ominis gaunt x oc #ominis gaunt x mc #hogwarts legacy fanfic #hides after posting cuz it’s my first writing on tumblr

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precious-little-scoundrel · 5 months

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Regency Elvis

No I haven’t got a title for the series yet send help

…to seem like cherries in the spring…

Unedited, written today in between work because I have a brain worm with this idea and y’all have been requesting more Honeymoon vibes and while this has no learjets or even smut in this installment, I think I’ll be able to provide that shortly as i build a lead up. So heads up, this story will become quite mature. And dubious. So if that’s not your jam, be aware. For now have 3k of Pg 13 virginal musings on an arranged marriage to a roguish man. 😏

I picture 1973-ish, post divorce Elvis for this era, it’s part of the morose, vampiric kick he was on, he was serving such kitsch and seemed like he was pissed and maybe a tad bitter and I’d really like him to take that out on me so…here we are. Also, I’ll be joyfully ripping off Jane Austen’s writings and Beau Brummell’s life for this, as well as smushing Pre-Raphaelite artists too near to the Napoleonic wars. Also, I won’t apologize for overusing the word “oneself” to describe…oneself. But this is mainly about being ridden hard by grumpy, divorced and needing an heir Elvis so, let’s not fret over historic details. Lord knows the man may end up having unseen depths, kindly ones, one hopes

It didn’t take one as experienced as yourself and your maid longer than five minutes to don one’s evening gown in private and add the last touches to the arrangement of one’s hair.

You had been gone from your bridal party more than twenty.

Yet no one noticed.

Too busy in the adjoining sitting room discussing your business behind the closed door, such as marriage was a woman’s business, or perhaps your mother knew you needed such peace before stepping out and spending the evening making happy over your engagement.

A Husband.

You were bound to be given to one at some point but that didn’t help one resign oneself to it as much as one might hope. Yet it wasn’t a shock, not if you were being honest and it helped perhaps that he was your father’s acquaintance and that anyone so young and penniless and handsome as to have caught your girlish yearnings beforehand had, in a polite fit of heroism, gone off to France and got themselves summarily pulverized by Napoleon's artillery. Finest cannons in the world, it was said, killed half a generation of young Englishmen in the flower of their youth.

So now, adorned with spring blossoms about your virgin head and stood in your childhood room for close the last time, you hoped those bright young men were pleased with themselves for leaving you in such a lurch.

There were worse fates than marriage to a very wealthy, very reticent, very bewhiskered stranger. Cannon balls to the gut, for instance, or a hussar’s saber to the neck. That’s what you told yourself hourly in these days of lonely, neglected engagement. But according to your mother’s friends, commonly chittering over your head as they readied you for the day and even now in the adjoining room, heedless of your prolonged absence, you were facing a martyrdom of sorts.

“-such rank and such commendations, they are the product of wartime and now that peace is in sight, really Hortencia, what will there be of their social standing? Your poor girl. This match is a disgrace waiting to happen.”

“The Prince is bound to tire of Mr. Presley’s fashions and his sports, then where will the new couple be? Where will you stand? How can you bear it, Hortencia?”

“His commonness aside, it’s in poor taste of him to marry the daughter of one’s investor. It speaks of…of leverage.” This later part was hissed as if it were a terrible scandal.

That was very much the point of your marriage, you had surmised -leverage. But with the slowly tanking fortunes of your own noble family, just about anyone who condescended to marry you would be in a position to be a savior, one might as well have a wealthy and impressive savior, if one was going to be saved, than have a squalid and portly savior, no matter how very royal and inbred his noble blood. Not that the ladies saw it that way.

Common, quite common your groom was, and yet far too wealthy to be ignored. Companion to the Prince Regent, Arbiter of Dandified Refinement and a coal mining tycoon from the country. Filthy rich, passably handsome from your brief observations and rich. Did we already mention that? That he was Rich?

You were going to enjoy a wealthy husband, you were determined, and you were going to aid your poor, cheated parents as best you could in your new wifley position. Which was more than what those chattering crone’s outside could boast in terms of their own daughter’s loyalties or affections.

You dismissed your maid and twirled before the mirror, allowing yourself one last moment of peace and preening -eavesdropping, too- before joining them. You looked very fresh. That much was commendable, you hoped you didn’t look too young or if you did, you had hopes he wouldn’t mind. Not that first impressions mattered much, the engagement settled and the contracts drawn up, but you did so wish to not be spurned. You had only met him once, and you’d been a child then, tiny gloved hand shaking his when you should have been curtseying, he was younger then, too, and happy and gay enough to laugh it off.

That was before her.

You hadn’t met him since, though at times he was at the far upper end of your fathers table or across the room at court or else straddling the enclosures at ascot. But he had been younger then, merrier, less…hairy, less maudlin and less tanned than he was now.

But all of this erstwhile gallant merriment had been witnessed by you from a distance, and you had not seen much of him at all during his brief marriage, his wife’s preferment of town and its vanities grew with his one disillusionment of them. They had taken to the country in what one supposes was an attempt at refocusing. Harmonizing, a chin up try at domesticity and fidelity.

What occurred instead had the whole nation reeling in scandalized shock.

“There are far more unsuitable candidates in the upper echelons of society,” your mothers voice floated in, soft yet strained in her effort to

maintain civility with her supposed friends, “she could do far worse. A girl can grow used to the mature habits of an older man, she does not grow used to cruel caprices of vain peacocks.”

”Hortencia, it is natural to console oneself in the face of tragedy, but dear friend, you are handing your child to a wolf.”

You wanted to snicker at the thought that mother’s friends had waited until days before your wedding to showcase their tender, loving concern. You would be glad to move to the country with your new husband, to leave behind such stupid circles, loneliness on the open moors of Northumbria was welcome compared to the shiny cesspools of London and Bath.

“And his wife not yet dead!” Mrs. Turvydrop would be the one to object to that aspect.

In your occasional fits of honesty regarding the entire situation, you had to admit that the living existence of his divorced young wife, somewhere thriving in the continental Riviera, gave you a mild panic. The church was not at all fond of such breaking of covenants, but the woman had been in the wrong, there was a lover, there was a midnight abandonment of her husband‘s house, and there were the acquittals for manslaughter given to your groom.

Indeed, were it not for this public shame hanging over his otherwise irreproachably fabulous career as a national success at everything he set his hand to, you doubted that Mr. Presley would even consider marrying someone with so little to offer as yourself. Life is full of things we wish were different, and you wished your fiancé did not have a living first wife. So did Mrs. Turvydrop, it seemed, although you doubted the deadness of the previous Lady Presley would have done much good to the reputation of a man so ruggedly unconcerned with convention.

“His wife was adulterous. The Bible and the church give room for such annulments.” Your mother was at the ready, though her voice was weary. “This marriage will be Sanctioned before God, it is all quite proper, I assure you.”

“Indeed, but is he? A prince's companion is no recommendation for a husband.”

“Truly!” Another voice rose up to agree, “it leaves open all sorts of speculation as to what kind of man would drive his young wife to such extremes! She was every bit as sweet and delicate as your child. To have been driven to madness from such a genteel beginning suggests much blame on his part.”

“He is common. What did they expect?”

“Common? He is uncouth, why his taste for food and confectionery is so bizarre as to be nearly repulsive, forget that it is served on gold plates.”

“You could even say, without much speculation, that it serves to reason his marital tastes are similarly appalling.”

“Rough appetites those mining men.” Lydia Carmichael’s voice agreed and you laid your hand on the knob, knowing your procrastination was inexcusable but far too invested in the subject being discussed to think of interrupting. “What if he -what if he’s brutish?”

“Yes!” Countess Jessop warmed to the theory and a Cacophony of scandalized voices rose like girls adding to a ghost story in the upstairs attic of a finishing school. “What if he was so…so brutish…that his poor lady wife had to flee from him?”

“Horse flesh and steam engines.” Mrs. Turvydrop sagely expounded, “It’s the only thing I’ve heard tell that interests him.”

“And a good waistcoat.” Countess Jessop tittered.

“Mark my words Hortencia, he has foul designs for your child.” Lydia Carmichael sighed, “He’ll break that girl like a licorice stick.”

“By your own admission he’ll likely be too busy with horses and steam engines to bother with her.” your mother returned wryly and filled yourself with smug comradery for her wit, you opened the door and presented yourself to the doubters.

The picture of you was hardly settling.

Virginal and swathed in blushing pink silks, your copious flowers were perhaps overdone but you looked a May Queen, airy and bright, like one touch of a masculine finger on your porcelain self would wilt you like a peony, breathed upon too hard.

Your eager face questioned your mother, a silent, unspoken query: “do you think he’ll like it? Will he like me?”

Her eyes filled with tears, seeing in you her promising young babe and a bound bride all at once. She saw you briefly as a man might, and she trembled at the sudden vision she had of Elvis Aaron Presley, Esquire and Dandy sinking his teeth into you like a delectable pastry.

“You are a vision of loveliness, dear.” she expressed with a choked voice, eyes watery and hands trembling as she grasped your own. The confusion shown on your face at her grief hurt her deeply, she knew you were not naive but you were a hopeless optimist, and as such you could beam and blush at so grave a prospect as marrying a wounded man. Like stags, spurned husbands tended to be crueler in their second rut. “Come, let us go down and join the men.” she urged with a brave smile and you followed her, gloved hand pressed in hers.

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sillyfriendssharingablog · 6 months

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a rant about my favorite mgs character :D

I don't care that I write him too often out of character, I don't give a single fuck about it. He deserves it. I don't care that he is a smartass that manipulates people, in my eyes he will always be a hoe that likes to annoy people that have a better life than him. His personality sucks ass and he deserved everything bad that happened to him.

Forever in my heart there will be a special place for my hate for this motherfucker. I despice him, I want him pulverized into dust. Im glad he died. Im glad he never had parental love. Im glad that Big Boss doesn't want to fuck him. He's a stereotypical middle-aged white woman. He looks like he eats avocado on toast and calls women he dislikes whores when he goes around with a thong up his wrinkled ass. Like there are some characters that I like that are like this but at least they wear it better than this dude here. He was slightly bearable in snake eater but he had such a downfall from then on.

He's ugly as fuck too, like he looked like he was thrown off the stairs when he came out of his mother's coochie. He aged like fucking ricotta and people can simp over him?? He has a terrible sense of fashion and he even MEOWS!? He probably purs during sex. He's an absolute slut too. I mean, Im against slut shaming but this bitch deserves to be shamed about everything istg. He's a dick rider in every sense of the term.

It's not that I hate him for what he did, I just can't stand his general vibe, like he gets on my nerves. I want to beat the living shit out of him like he deserved. He didn't deserve to be present in every mainline game and don't get me STARTED on my absolute RAGE over that shitty choice of creating LIQUID OCELOT. Like Kojima could have left my bbg Liquid to be dead and move on with the series, but NOOOO! He made him be violated by this HARLOT that stole his arm and pretended to be him. LIKE BITCH YOU WISHED YOU WERE THE OG CUNT, DIDN'T YOUI!?

I never hated someone more than him. Not even a real person. And he did absolutely nothing to make me so angry about him, he just breathed. I don't care if his apologists are gonna come at me I FUCKING HATE REVOLVER (SHASHALASKA OR WHATEVER HIS MIDDLE NAME IS IDK) OCELOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#just wanted to vent a bit #life has been hell for me I just needed to calm myself :3 #anyone else >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>ocelflop #i need to create an ocelot-hate fan club I'm feeling like Im part of a minority #mgs #metal gear solid #metal gear #metal gear series #mgs1 #mgs2 #mgs3 #mgs4 #mgsV #mgsV tpp #revolver ocelot

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windvexer · 2 years

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hello!! if you don’t mind me asking, how do you undo a spell?

If you were the caster and you have spell remnants (the thread that was knotted, the wax of the candle that was burned, etc.):

Bring the spell remnant back into Magical Space (whatever space, mindset, or rituals you require in order for your mundane actions to become magical).

Perform Undoing actions on the spell remnants. Cut or untie a knot, melt or pulverize wax, mix ashes with magically nullifying substances such as salt and iron, etc.

While performing Undoing actions, also give clear linguistic Instructions on what you expect to happen. These instructions may be spoken, thought, signed, written, read, or be imposed upon your Magical Space in any way you prefer.

Tie your instructions to your physical actions, such as:

This spell is undone as this cord is cut, the magic binds no longer

This spell is melted and reduced as I melt and reduce this wax; the magic dwindles into nothing

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; my spell is consumed by this iron rust - the magic no longer functions

I highly recommend using clear and direct sentences to the effect of "I am undoing this spell and I don't want the magic to work any more" (for those who only use present-tense intents: "this spell is undone, the magic has stopped working."

Dispose of the remnants in a permanent way.

If you were the caster and you do not have spell remnants:

Consecrate a new object (new thread to be knotted, new candle, new piece of paper) to represent the old spell. Ideally, this object will be chosen or modified to resemble the vibes of the old spell as closely as possible.

Any consecration ritual will do. The goal is to give a new physical body to your old spell; you are making an "poppet" of the spell.

Once the new physical object has become synonymous with the old spell, perform the Undoing and Instruction method that was described above.

(New candles should probably be snapped in half or burned upside down; burning them normally is more likely to empower the old spell).

If you were not the caster:

The "poppet" method above will tend to work if you know what you're doing with things. However, one of these might be more reliable:

Method One: Bless a thread with binding, limiting energies (Saturn is ideal) and trap the unwanted spell by tying it in a knot. Then burn the thread, ideally while Instructing what is supposed to happen.

Method Two: Carve the end of a taper candle so that the wick is visible on the bottom. Treat this bottom as your new "active" end, and draw correspondences from the new active end, downwards.

Coat the candle with a pepper-infused oil, score the surface lengthwise with iron nails, or otherwise mark the candle with destructive and banishing correspondences.

While doing this, Instruct the candle that its job is to banish, burn away, and destroy the unwanted spell. Light the candle. (A temporary holder may be obtained for the awkward shape by filling a deep dish with sand, soil, or salt).

Notes and Bits (Beyond 101):

It is generally wise to construct all spells with "kill codes" in case you need to undo them. This is essentially a special sort of intent that you build into the spell which undoes the spell on your command.

To avoid intrusive thought anxiety, it is almost always best to have this "code" require a specific set of physical actions, such as writing "Spell Cast on [date], be undone and begone" seven times over on a piece of paper.

Undoing a spell does not teleport you back in time to before it was ever cast. Imagine a valley with a river. A spell is cast that dams up the river. The entire ecosystem of the valley changes because the river was stopped.

Later on we can dismantle the dam and let the water flow again. But the valley will not "magically" go back to what it used to be. The spell may be undone but there will also still be significant changes already affected on this valley.

Record keeping is one of your best allies in knowing how to undo your own spells. The more you know about your spell (or anyone else's), the easier it is for you to undo or counter.

Once a spell is undone, you may still have more work to do. Suppose someone hexes me. Even if I undo the hex, my house may still be filled with nasty energy and I can still have anxiety. I will have to do a good self-cleansing and home-clearing before the effects are fully erased. Undoing a spell is not the same thing as cleaning up after it.

In sticky situations, you may also want to cast additional spells to protect against the effects of the unwanted spell.

#answered #spellcrafting #spell reversals #reversals #spellbook #grimoire #book of shadows #witchblr #just starting

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oldsoul--newmachine · 5 months

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Sleepless Nights Get More Done: A Fallen Hero Playlist

I lived and breathed this playlist for a long time. These are only the songs I conglomerated together while working on the Retribution guide to get me by in the dead of night. In the order that I had added them, over a period of 9 months. You can see the cutoff point, when I was made to think of The Void (just listen, you may understand). It's an interesting reflection for me on where my thoughts were at; I certainly found something special to express about self confidence, and the Outside scar. During this time is also when I finally named my MC Wicke. Shamelessly after John Wick. And also Citizen ("There isn't any miracle... I'm leaving. These are my last lines. Farewell to you, my unknown, to whom, when I came down with 'soul', I revealed all of myself, right down to the last pulverized screw, the last busted spring... I'm leaving.")

I've listed all below. Most having meaningful connection for me, some are just series vibes. I actually removed a few I later decided had no real significance. Snatched a few from other playlists.

Boats on Fire - Seeming

2. If You're Shooting With The Left It Means The Right Side Is Working - Ashbury Heights

3. Sick - ThouShaltNot

4. Blue Lips - Regina Spektor

5. Machine - Regina Spektor

6. Tear Me To Pieces- Meg Myers

7. Celebrity Skin - Hole

8. Sarcasm - Get Scared

9. I Really Want You To Hate Me - Meg Myers

10. Blue - The Birthday Massacre

11. The Green Room Pale - Pale Shapera

12. Bodysnatchers - Radiohead

13. The Fighter - In This Moment

14. Blue - A Perfect Circle

15. The Outsider - A Perfect Circle

16. Annihilation - A Perfect Circle

17. The Invisible Plan - Kidneythieves

18. People Are Strange - The Doors

19. Sections - God Module

20. Floating Angels - Kidneythieves

21. Monster - Imagine Dragons

22. Angry Too - Lola Blanc

23. Killing In The Name - Rage Against The Machine

24. Left For Dead - Ksenia Lewis

25. I'm Back - Royal Deluxe

26. Another Way Out - Hollywood Undead

27. Outside - Staind

28. Blast Doors - Everything Everything

29. Appetite For Destruction - Vo Williams

30. Top Of The World - Dorothy

31. Can't Sleep, Can't Breathe - Digital Daggers

32. Drilled A Wire Through My Cheek - Blue October

33. Dude, Where's My Skin? - Schoolyard Heroes

34. Synthesize Me - Diorama

35. Control - Halsey

36. The Noise Inside My Head - Assemblage 23

37. Cut The Cord - Shinedown

38. I'm Alive - Shinedown

39. Blood Code - Le Castle Vania

40. Sharks - Imagine Dragons

41. Cult Leader - King Mala

42. You Don't Own Me - Nikki Williams

43. The Death Of Me - Meg Myers

44. The Noose - A Perfect Circle

45. White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane

46. Hurt - Nine Inch Nails

47. Right Where It Belongs - Nine Inch Nails

48. Liar - The Arcadian Wild

49. Coma White - Marilyn Manson

50. I Love You Citizen-Extended Version - Seeming

51. Green Valley - Puscifer

#fallen hero #fallen hero retribution #fhr #fallen hero rebirth #malin ryden #sidestep #fallen hero revelations #playlist #I also like how this photo edit came out #a glitchy green fuzzy grey explosion #what did the nanosurge really look like?#fun fact: the glowy clouds I used are The Nothing from Neverending Story #if you're unfamiliar #“the existence of The Nothing is the result of 'human apathy cynicism and the denial of childish dreams'”#title is a reference to Sidestep AND myself #get some sleep people

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riddle-me-ri · 1 year

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Oooo, you know what might be fun? Mad Hatter (of your choosing) falling in love with a selfdefense pro!

Like, she looks soft and sweet, he plans to take her to his home yandere style, but she just... pulverizes the hell out of his goons white rabbits. (She thinks they're thieves or something, and is like 'Nuh-uh, get out of my place *Smack*')

He has to go himself, has to hypnotize her into compliance. No need to fight anymore, my dear, your Hatter is here! (Ong I didn't even think of that rhyme, that's so cool of me)

If she likes her new life of not having to fight, or hates it, is up to you! (I personally like fluff, but up to you if you think angst would work better!)

A/N: ok ok ok so hear me out anon…I don't know why but like…when I first read this prompt my head went to Harley Quinn: The Animated Series' Mad Hatter I have no idea why. I hope you've seen or heard of this version at least lmao. But yeah here's some HQTAS Hatter love! Also bear in mind it's even a minute since I seen the show and I can't be bothered to keep up too much with the canon so there maybe some wee divergence based on the events I recall…sorry lmao

Trigger Warnings: violence (nothing crazy but you do beat the shit out of some hench-rabbits), blood mention, yandere vibes-ish(it’s Jervis so a normal amount) and strong language (sorry I make y'all sailor mouths it's second nature to me rip)

Word Count: 956

HQTAS Mad Hatter x F!Reader - The Mad Hatter's Bodyguard

One night you were hesitant to enter your home.

Something just seemed off, like that part in the horror movie where things are unsettlingly quiet and calm.

You fidgeted with the keys on your keyring, anything to delay you actually entering your home.

You tried pushing through your wracked nerves; you were stressed, tired…paranoid. Just go in, take a shower, make another late dinner…

Definitely not get jumped by dudes in rabbit masks.

Which is what happened when you opened the door, there were a handful of them just lounging in your living room before they heard you open the door.

They jumped up from their spots and darted towards you. You grabbed one of the rabbit heads by the ears and barrelled them towards the others. While they tried to regain their footing you snatched up the Louisville slugger you had by the door. Yeah it’s overrated but it got the job done.

After subduing the men, some unconscious, a few possibly dead…You looked around at the carnage. Your living room is a bloodied and bruised mess. Lamps, tables were broken. Your wooden floors were being caked with blood.

Now lies the question as to what the hell was going on–

You felt a slight pressure on your head, like a hat being placed and everything goes dark.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Now, now, don’t struggle…you’re safe now!”

You had to blink a couple times as you tried to get your bearings. You gasped as you felt the lack of mobility of your arms and legs. You were tightly confined to a wooden chair.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, this-this isn’t how this was supposed to go!”

A short scrunkly looking fellow with a long nose, spikey red hair, and prominent buck teeth came out. He looked like he jumped out of a children’s book…like someone from Wonderland…

“The Mad Hatter?” You quirked an inquisitive eyebrow.

He giggled gleefully. “Oh, so you do know me?”

You shrugged. “Ah…well not by choice…but that explains the rabbit men in my home.”

“Ah yes, I must admit my dear, I was not…not expecting such…resistance from you.”

Your jaw almost dropped. “Are you fucking kidding me? There were men I’ve never met before in my own home–”

Hatter gasped. "Such language! You don't have to be so crude about it!"

Is…is he for real?

He continued. "But, yes, I can understand a means of self defense, but I only wanted them to bring you to me! Bah-just goes to show if you want something done right you must do it yourself!”

Hatter walked closer towards you, with you sitting you were able to see him eye to eye as he stood at your side. As your mind started to clear you noticed you were in front of a round table…that looks set up for a tea party.

“Wait, wait, wait…you wanted them to bring me to you? Why?” You tried shimmying away on the chair from Hatter but he put a hand on the back of your chair, hindering your escape.

"Oh, yes, why, why indeed..well you see, it's simple really! I'm absolutely enamored with you!" He shrilled gleefully.

"What? You-you don't even know me!"

"Ah but that's where you're wrong! I know everything about you!" He took a step away from you and rounded to the other side of the table and took a seat on the opposite side of you.

He took a generous sip from his teacup.

You shivered slightly as you recalled all those times you felt someone watching you, but brushed it off as paranoia.

However a funny thought happened in your head. "Yet, you didn't know I took self defense classes?"

The Hatter nervously murmured "Ah, mm…yes a mere oversight on my part…"

"Listen…Mr..uhh..mm…Hatter I-"

"Oh please do call me Jervis, Jervis Tetch at your service!" He walked back towards you again.

"Okay…Jervis. Um, not that this hasn't been…uhh an experience. I really don't think–"

"Its okay, you may not see it now, your affection for me. But you will soon enough!"

He began walking away again, not before dragging his long pinky nail along your shoulder.

You shuddered slightly at the sensation. "Wait! Wait no-can..can we work something out? Where I don't have to wear the hat?"

Jervis held the unconventional western hat in hand. "Bold of you to assume you had an option in the matter."

“I mean like…wouldn’t you like to get to know each other..? Or at least let me get to know you?” You offered.

Jervis put the hat down on the table as he pondered. “You…want to get to know me?”

“Sure! Of course! But I can't do that with your..eh…contraption on.”

“And how do I know this isn’t a trick?” He sneered.

“Well,” you cocked your head in thought. “I mean…I wouldn’t mind getting to know you, you are kind of cute..” You muttered, not even sure where that came from…but it wasn’t necessarily a lie.

Whatever it was, it worked, as Jevis gasped in shock. “Really?”

Well, you can’t take it back now. “Uh…yes..”

Jervis chuckled giddily as he went and untied your binds. You brought your hands up to you and began soothing your wrists.

“Ohh…this is perfect! Despite the slight hiccup this is already going better than planned!”

“And! I know just the position to put you in!”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, come on, that wasn’t even slightly suggestive!”

“Yeah…yeah it was. What posit-role! Role did you have in mind?”

“Why, with your fighting prowess and defense skills…a bodyguard of course!”

So, you began your life as a part time bodyguard for the Mad Hatter. Little did you know that at the beginning Jervis was right. You’d see your affections for him after all.

#ri writes #harley quinn the animated series mad hatter #harley quinn the animated series jervis tetch #harley quinn the animated series mad hatter x reader #hqtas mad hatter x reader #hqtas jervis tetch x reader

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captainkurosolaire · 1 year

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Dreamer of Dreams

How important are dreams? Chasing things beyond us sometimes grant us strength to surpass limits, to courageously endure for our vision. Over time a Pirate’s own became misconstrued, failures, losses piled up and his grandeur became murky. Losing a partial, vital piece of essence. Children call them dreams, but upon nurture, it was called Ambition! Without having a strong-self interest, he couldn’t relate or jump the hurdle for others, initially sought. Now rectification came to retrieve what was lost. The First-Stage to Healing.

By plucking his lost spirit within obscurity, a reversion of his zenith came. That horrendous fog vaporized to magnificent sunlight. Matured figure of the boy-to-be, extended his arm’s out, it was time to go home. In their embrace, unbridled warmth quaked from a reunion of resolve. A wide-spread grin surfaced externally Captain’s injuries stung, ached, nevertheless something swelled within himself, the belief to achieve, in absolution. He sprung a bounce to his soles, kip-up. With finesse, began reassembling his own mind-games against his Skull Brethren, since started off this way, donning his original attire, fetching dual-blade’s of Hingan that were sworn off to prevent incidental death. Black-blood face paint ran across his eyelids, not only repulsing the dead itself; used to aid him in becoming brave that required adversity, now just meant to trigger Sol's distress. Sol took aim to shoot-down Captain’s butterfly who came from the cabin’s keyhole to cause misdirection, the spirit-guide, named Perish, fluttered between his limbs, barely evading swatting and squishing attempts. Soon found himself pulverized by a door that flew off the hinges suddenly as the Seeker sprinted with full on collision from a drop-kick, then surfboarding it, trampling his rib-cage. “Always told ye t’ fix that blimey door!” Giving a befitting punishment to the Shipwright, squished with the cabin’s door on him, Kuro kicked Sol’s silver-wind pistol into the waters, then blitzed towards climbing to the top-mast where their sail-flag awaited. Mistbeard’s mask still onlooking their pirate-battle. The ex-Garlean conscript, struggled temporarily, wind knocked out of him, before angrily following pursuit, spare pistol <Live Free> brought out taking shots at the climbing cat-folk, who intelligibly utilized line-of-sight climbing alongside the mast’s with his heritage-expertise, forcing the gun-wielder to pursue, climbing up to the top with sheer agitation, this would be done in a duel-fashion now.

Atop the mast, where they’d wage their last-sequence as blood-brothers turned enemies. Sol finally arrives behind in his pursuit, seeing Captain more closely. He was unnerved, a deplorable golden-crest smile was on him, the markings of jolly, complete fulfillment, it always brought him anger. As if a Sun was looking beneath him, nothing he could do would discourage the heat, his traditional means to kill, erase, all left meaningless in pursuit. His brow twitched into a frown. That deviant-rogue staring across him spoke, “Thanks t’ ye mate. I found irreplaceable value in me. I’m afraid… I’ll b’ stealing n’ cucking ye, again of something. Could race to see who reaches ascension firstly or lastly there! Like ol’ times… But I’ve got t’ slay your dark-cloud, it’s cramping my vibes.” Candidly bringing back a memento, it’s like time-flowed back, to not-long-ago, they used to rock-paper-scissors for who rigged, or climbing up on the masts, doing contests to one-up another in brotherly competition. “Also – I’ve decided. I’ll become a King.” Calmness and overwhelming peace said with a matter-of-fact from the Scoundrel’s following words, after the storm-breeze howled.

Sol, overtaken by envy, frustratingly growled, “...Y-You can’t just decide that!” Where did this abundance of confidence come from? Teeth grinding and grating together blood rushing into his temple. His concentration was caught lacking and those winds nearly took him off balance, but Miqo'te remained perfectly still…

Energy shifted in an instantaneous, an explosiveness out-cried from Captain with a thunderous shout of his declaration. A Challenge against ALL of Destiny, Fate, anything in-between was committed, throughout the rumbling tides and passed air. “I’ll become King ov’ th’ LIVING!” A dream so far-above, outlandish, impossible echoed. Jolly laughter tantalizingly followed, against Sol’s ire, a splitting image of their own Founder was reminded. To know, Living is to understand the existence of infinity! There was no-one way to live. This particular Pirate knew this and had connection to everything that resided between the spectrum's, life to death, and was born from a Mother’s Light and Father’s Shadow. Be that as it may, he ambitiously stared at the path of transcendence. Unwavering determination highlighting his visage. Upon his crew and varied people across in adventuring, to most-natural or supernatural, soul’s encountered. All uplifting and inspiring him to heights leaving their imprints, scars, traces upon his singular vessel, these were the stupendous keepsakes, to preserve! Wanting this stead. Survival was instinctual because this was his perceived ultimate treasure. A challenge traversed the realm, shaking with a bewilderment of unyielding certainty. An individual-cloaked frozen-between-time peered over to the skies and gave halt from galloping.

They who stood at the highest summit, a GIANT, woke from disruption. Hinted with Captain’s Presence, awakening. Enraged Sol, lashed out in foul spite, fear, quivering and whining jealousy, “Nonsense. Die, Die, Die!” Pulling his trigger, reloading with rapid-fire, pupils went bloodshot from crazed-fury. The amber-eye, determined Seeker, predicted the trajectory of every fired-shot just by familiarizing Sol’s aim, countering by sliding against bullets with his dual-blades shield, deflecting and parrying him, to having them shred against his flesh in minor grazes, fearlessness, continued forth closing distance. Where Sol was useless in. They battled akin to this when pint-sized deckhands, back then using bb-guns or slingshots versus wooden kendo, this entire scene felt like reversed-time. Captain with a blade-rising upwardly in the air, spun his blade with realignment allowing glaring-rays, letting what all others were seeing. Sunlight had broken throughout the canopies of those undesirable clouds, vanquishing them. His steel-reflecting light, brought a blindness causing the Raen to misfire, his last shot in the chamber, the Seeker predicting this response, taking advantage of his discombobulated state, gave a devastating cross-slash against the Raen’s bare-chest, secondary dual-strike following-through with momentum to strike his gun-slinging wrist, forcing a disarming in one flawless-swoop.

♫Undefeatable♫ - Reference - Last Chapter

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beemers-hell · 2 years

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Nobody asked this!! But how saw Hank and the others reaction about Bank losing a eye???

They were all pretty fucking pissed about it! Not towards her of course, that wasn't the poor things fault.

Doc felt particularly angry with himself cause he couldn't recover her eye in time to salvage her sight. That shit got pulverized by the bandits that gouged it out, so there was no chance of him repairing her sight. Bank isn't at all mad at him for it but he's mad with himself.

Sanford n Deimos kinda just played up their "Cheery n Fun Uncles!" vibe with her after the incident, she needed a lot of comfort and distracting to take her out of the pain and stress. Sanford brought the comfort, Deimos brought the distractions.

And like, yknow, Hank is Hank, so you know how he handles it lol

#beemer asks #beemers lore #beemers ocs #dad au

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dramioneasks · 1 year

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Hi! I'm looking for a fic that has sort of dark academia vibes...I believe Hermione and Draco were fighting over a classroom they had to share in a university where they were teachers. I believe the fic was on AO3. Could you help?

Bone Mortar by mightbewriting - M, 6 chapters - Draco clenched his teeth, forcing sharp, shallow breaths through his nose as he ripped open the door to his usual lecture hall only to find—someone at his desk. Well, he supposed it was technically less his desk and more the desk as he didn’t actually own this particular classroom. But since he’d taught in it for the last four semesters he at least felt like he’d earned a sort of common law ownership. The woman—presently possessed by what looked like a semi-sentient mass of curls atop her head—looked up, eyes widening before she graced the space between them with a kind smile that could cut through any density of grit or dust or grime. The sort of simple smile that could pulverize rocks: be them buried in the earth or caged behind ribs. He stared at her, belatedly and painfully aware that his mouth had curled into a sneer mostly without his consent. [In which two otherwise intelligent and dignified people fight over a classroom and realize they are very, very into each other.]

-Lisa

#anonymous #forced partnership #university #muggle au #non magical #draco: teacher/tutor #hermione: teacher/tutor #arguments

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ladyhoneydee · 5 months

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30 Day Song(fic) Challenge: Day 18

I hadn't thought I'd get this one done, but here's today's Song(fic) Challenge entry! The prompt was "A song you like from an artist who is no longer living", and after multiple hours of going through playlists and discographies, I eventually ended up on "Grapefruit Juicy Fruit" by Jimmy Buffet. Yes, I am just as shocked as you are that this is my second Jimmy Buffet song of the month.

Compared to my other works this month, this fic is primarily based more on vibes/tone of the song and only a few lyrics, as opposed to fitting the majority of the lyrics, which I found surprisingly freeing! Additionally, this fic is brought to you by the fact that I just completed the Lurelin pirate quest in TotK today, and it just felt right to stick Link in the part of the game I myself ended at.

on a beach somewhere (listless and lovelorn)

Game: Tears of the Kingdom

Pairing: Zelink

Word Count: 856

Keywords: melancholy, lonely, introspective

Of course, he couldn’t leave Lurelin, even when the job of pirate-slaying was done. Not when there was a promise of healing the scarred village, of rebuilding the charming huts he’d visited so often with Zelda. Of helping the Lurelin diaspora return to their homes. Everyone deserved to be able to go home.

Read the fic on Ao3, or under the cut!

Ocean water, still warm from the sun beating on Lurelin’s shallow bay all day, rushed up and over Link’s ankles before draining back in a motion that felt like it was pulling him ever so slowly further into the surf. He could feel it leaving debris clinging to his feet and legs—sand, mostly, but also small, dark particles he knew to be pulverized chunks of charcoal from Lurelin’s burnt buildings. They scraped, ever so slightly.

If Zelda were here, she might have commented on how they acted as an exfoliator, how charcoal was actually beneficial for the skin and even teeth.

Link raised his fermented palm fruit cider to his mouth, and took a long, deep swallow.

It was his third day in Lurelin, his fourth night. He’d arrived as the village fell into darkness, and eliminated one lone monster after the other when possible; whole camps at once when it wasn’t. He snacked on the roasted fish he stole from their fires. He napped between kills to keep his strength up. Even when the sun rose, he doggedly continued around the crescent moon of the village, finishing with the pirate ship in the bay. He’d been worried about the silver boss bokoblin, but between the two muddlebuds he’d fired onto the deck and the six shots from his savage lynel bow as he launched himself from the upper deck, it had gone down easier than his tropical beverage currently was.

Everyone deserved to be able to go home.

Link looked up into the heavens despite himself, at the galaxies reflecting on the sea that stretched out before him. Somewhere, on the other side of it, there was land, and people he’d never met and probably never would. He wondered if they’d ever heard tell of Hyrule’s Light Dragon in the last ten thousand years. Surely her story would have made it somewhere besides his own ears in all those lifetimes.

His gaze fell back to the surf, and he took another long draught of palm fruit cider.

He and Bolson had spent the last two days rebuilding. Link had harvested logs from the evermeans along Atun Valley, loath as ever to cut down normal trees that wouldn’t just return from the blood moon’s gloom each month, but would have to slowly grow back themselves. Rather than utilize Rauru’s arm the entire time—he tried not to use it if he didn’t have to, it just didn’t…feel right—he pushed the fifteen logs one by one down the slopes towards the village. Luckily, he hadn’t needed to leave and return for the sheafs of rice Bolson requested; the lynel fight he’d struggled through in the rice field on the Kamah Plateau had been good for something, after all.

Tomorrow, Bolson was meant to finish up the foundations for the headsman’s home and Armes’ home. They’d decided to prioritize those buildings first, for the sake of the displaced and shelterless people already in the village; they’d move on to the inn next, for more housing while the news spread and Lurelines began to return in greater numbers. Bolson had mentioned something about central pillars as a next step as Link handed him a nail, but Link hadn’t been able to hear anything in detail over the pounding of his hammer.

That was okay. Link wasn’t in a rush. The wind had rather ceased filling his sails after he’d collected Zelda’s final Tear. Thank Hylia he’d already helped with the crises around Hyrule before that, or its people might still be languishing in their disasters.

His palm fruit husk ran dry. He tossed it lightly in his hand, appreciating its heft, and then let it drop to the sand beneath him.

Maybe he’d fall asleep on the beach tonight. The crashing of waves as the tide rolled in could drown out his thoughts as he tried to fall asleep; the eastern sun over the bay could awaken him bright and early for a long day of hard work. If he got washed out to sea, well, maybe that wouldn’t be too much of a problem either. Hylia would never free him from his labors, after all. He’d probably just wake up out on Eventide, or maybe some other island with some other problems he’d need to solve.

Somewhere out in the water ahead of him, a waterbird swooped down to spear a fish with its sharp beak. He couldn’t see it in the darkness, but recognized the whistling thrum of wingbeats, and the slightest dying splash of the porgy. The circle of life went on, even when something so horrible had happened to their habitat.

Link supposed he would have to go on, too. To finish his task here, and then take his rightful place in the cycle of violence, of blood moon and bloodshed, until he could finally rest.

Even if he rested alone.

#loz #tears of the kingdom #totk #totk spoilers #zelink #totk zelink #loz fanfic #my fanfiction #30 day song(fic) challenge

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kammartinez · 8 months

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When Roxy Music was recording “Street Life” for the 1973 album Stranded, they hung a mic out the window of AIR Studios above Oxford Street, but they didn’t like the results and they ended up mixing in the sounds of a Moroccan market instead. As “Street Life” begins, we hear traffic amid four haunting chords and a shimmering hi-hat rhythm, and then Bryan Ferry belts out that he wishes everyone would leave him alone. He goes out for a walk. “Each verse seems to have its own character,” he later said, “like blocks on a street.” A fan since my youth of early Roxy Music, I still hear that song’s ethereal city vibe when I, too, wish everyone would leave me alone and, like Bryan, hit the streets.

If I go left, heading into what I think of as downtown Echo Park, I glimpse the green folds of the Angeles Crest as I pass Craftsman and Victorian houses and courtyard bungalows. I turn onto Sunset Boulevard, passing barber shops, burger stands, bookstores, and botanicas. I can get my knives sharpened and my shoes repaired, shop for groceries, eat eighty different kinds of food. The streets are full of people of all kinds, even as Echo Park comes twentieth in a walkability ranking of L.A. neighborhoods, according to some website. MacArthur Park, which is more population-dense than parts of Manhattan, ranks higher, as does Hollywood. But here I have the option of avoiding commerce by going three blocks north to the park, where I can walk miles of shaded trails. Or stroll my little residential enclave, where people are sitting on their stoops, a guy is working on his ’68 Camaro, trees are heavy with citrus, softball-size dragon fruits shine redly through a fence. I can walk to Echo Park Lake, due west, entirely through an alleyway, where among overgrown fig trees and sidewalk pulverized to dirt you might think you were in some Mississippi backwater Barry Hannah was describing, but you’re parallel and just behind Sunset. At the lakefront are picnickers, food carts, fishermen creating what my son refers to as “pressure on the lake.” One day I watch a guy and girl furtively produce a pristine white duck from a knapsack and release it. They’ve clearly just bought the thing at a live-poultry shop and are trying to rewild it among the mallards and grebes, but the mission seems also to be a form of courtship.

On these walks, minutes from home, I am certain that Los Angeles, which I moved to from New York twenty years ago, is the most beautiful city in the world (and yes, I have seen the world). But that’s only if I go west or north or south. If I head east, toward downtown, 1.5 miles away, my booster talk ebbs. It’s freeway overpasses, empty lots, and fortress-like buildings, a dead zone.

I should be able to walk to the opera house, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Broad, the Bradbury Building, or City Hall, to the grand old theaters on Main Street, the jewelry district, Union Station. To Philippe the Original on Alameda, a hundred-year-old deli where undertakers from the nearby mortuaries park their hearses and stop in for a sandwich. To the new Frank Gehry building on Grand, across from my son’s music school. (Late in life, Gehry now seems to believe in design that prioritizes not postmodern showiness but plazas and shade and places for the passerby to sit.) But to get to the pedestrian-friendly world downtown involves several blocks of monolithic residential architecture along freeways, all by the same developer, inward-facing buildings with dark and empty storefronts, bunker parking, and sky bridges. The tenants of these places don’t have to ever step foot on the street. I’ve heard they are mostly USC students, but you don’t see them. The only people I might encounter are unhoused individuals, and those in this particular area often appear to be in severe mental crisis, as they linger beyond buildings that are as obdurate and closed as medieval armories.

Dubbed the Renaissance Collection, these buildings form a plaque that separates the people of Echo Park from downtown L.A. They were built by Geoffrey Palmer, a little man who resembles a ventriloquist’s dummy and is gifted at making enemies. Palmer buys up forlorn and odd plots alongside freeways, where he builds his “Italianate” developments, as Italian as leatherette is leather, but less charming. In 1973, the artist Gordon Matta-Clark purchased random little slices of land around New York City for a conceptual art project he titled Fake Estates. Perhaps the unsavory parcels that Palmer acquires would remain similarly conceptual were it not for the very real fake estates he builds on them. This is his own defense—that he’s building where no one else dares—but he seems to take almost libidinal satisfaction in perching rows of apartment balconies over the 110–101 freeway interchange. The off-white stucco exteriors of his buildings are coated with soot within days of completion. In 2003, he illegally bulldozed the last Victorian of Bunker Hill while building the Orsini, a few blocks from my house. Palmer is vehemently opposed to affordable housing and has spent tens of millions on lawsuits and ballot measures to ensure that he won’t have to build any. He recently settled a class-action suit over systematically keeping tenants’ security deposits. One of Trump’s biggest donors, he has bragged that his company hasn’t paid federal taxes in thirty years. In the fall of 2014, a fire was deliberately started in Palmer’s half-built and wood-framed Da Vinci, a block down from the Orsini. Flames shot higher than many buildings downtown, stretched a city block, melted freeway signs, and cracked one hundred and sixty windows in the iconic John Ferraro Building, headquarters of Water and Power. The consensus among architects, residents, and journalists was that almost anyone could have started the fire, given how many people hate Palmer. City commissioners joked, in a planning meeting, that they sure hoped everyone present had an alibi. The city sued Palmer for the reckless conditions that allowed the blaze to grow so large. The person who started it was caught and sentenced to prison. He supposedly did it for Michael Brown, to protest the police killings of unarmed black men. No one was hurt. The Da Vinci was promptly rebuilt.

“Why is Everything So Ugly?” wondered a recent editorial in n+1. The editors structured their thoughts on the subject around a Situationist-style dérive they take through New York City. They begin by pondering a new condominium tower limply called the Josh, which has been erected in place of a recently demolished hundred-year-old building. The Josh, they tell us, is made of plastic, concrete, and “an obscure wood-like substance”—materials that have been chosen not for quality and beauty but on the basis of global supply-chain availability, a cookie-cutter design review process, and a cost-saving preference for semi-skilled labor. The Josh is already looking shabby at five months old. When it rains, its façade gets “conspicuously . . . wet.” Their dérive continues past more than one Bank of America, alongside a vape shop, and into a theater, where a shitty franchise based on a TV show of a comic book is playing. After the movie, there’s a run-in with blindingly bright LED lights, resulting in a visit to urgent care.

Google reveals that the building the editors are calling the Josh is actually the Greenpoint—located, as you might guess, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn—but the Josh does more work to illustrate certain ideas than the real name might. I think I know eighteen Joshes. No offense to any of them; I too have a common name and would wager the Josh could have been called the Rachel in the blink of an eye. Still, the Josh has a certain sound when isolated as a branding mechanism, with its soft landing into sshh, whether put to service selling wine or machines for living. I chuckled about the Josh. It, or he, made me think of that guy Tom from MySpace, everyone’s first friend. I imagined Tom living at the Josh, enjoying an industrial salad at a particle-board table. But names are merely symptoms. They are not the cause of “the violence of the new ugliness” that the n+1 editors ponder. Branding arises from standardization. If the things that are made are more or less the same, difference itself must be manufactured.

The Situationists first began undertaking their dérives—which means to drift, to walk without a fixed plan—in response to a rail strike. Guy Debord and others tumbled drunkenly through the night, walking or hitchhiking, and found that the new routes they forged promised a change of orientation, a new outlook. In Debord’s autobiographical Panegyric, at a point in his life when he had lost hope in the city and headed for the hills, he regrets that a “flood of destruction, pollution, and falsification had conquered the whole surface of the planet, as well as pouring down nearly to its very depths.” (Had Debord, too, noticed how wet the Josh was looking?) Five years later he shot himself in the heart. It wasn’t just that everything was ugly and the revolution stalled, if not foreclosed. Alcohol had done him in.

I decided, on a recent afternoon, to conduct my own dérive, straight into the morass between my street and downtown. I left the house, took a right, another right, and then a left over the 101 freeway. If this overpass could talk, I thought. It might tell of the many women and the many nights of flinty bargains with men in cars. By daylight, it was empty. I turned left onto Temple Street, passing a hotel that abuts the 101, and a sun-blasted bus stop where my kid was let off in grade school, and from which he began conducting his own dérives. This block of Temple has a bakery, a liquor store, and until recently, D’Bongo Party Supplies, then falls into a post-human stretch: there is a tow yard, a recycling center, a cul de sac against the freeway where there was a tent encampment until it burned, and a huge and empty bus yard. That’s all on one side of the street. On the other is the massive retaining wall of a high school baseball diamond. The reason there is open land here, greenery, even if it’s chemically treated monograss beyond chain-link, is that this was an oil field, and it isn’t safe to put up buildings. (What look like lampposts around the field are actually vents that allow methane gases to escape.)

Beyond the baseball/methane field, I pass our own version of the Josh, but it’s called the Charlie. The Charlie is new. There used to be an auto repair and car wash here that was run by a family. Now there is a narrow eight-story building in “space gray” with a gaggle of red real estate balloons bobbing on the wind. I have driven past at night. The units are dark, while the Charlie’s eight-story “parking podium” glows meanly, prison-bright.

From the Charlie I cross the street toward a new Palmer monstrosity on a ten-acre site that used to be a Bank of America data center. Construction is not yet finished. The invasive palms that have been chosen as Palmer’s signature “lush Mediterranean landscaping” have just been trucked in and still have their fronds gathered into ponytails. Even with their fronds let down, they will provide no shade. There’s a giant piss-elegant fountain but it’s dry. now renting 2 months free + free parking, a big sign says. The name of this new addition to Palmer’s suite of Italianate freeway rentals is the Ferrante. Maybe the name came from his wife, a Parisian who seems a little more cultured than he is. Perhaps she’s a fan of Elena Ferrante’s books. I have no proof. I’m guessing.

We’ve been told for years now that Elena Ferrante is a fiction, a made-up name, like Tom, or the Josh. But someone is of course writing those books. Whoever they are, they’re talented, but the insistence on anonymity is starting to seem a little showy, even a bit tacky, if not as tacky as the Ferrante and its 1,150 units. I pass its blank row of street-level commercial spaces. Palmer won’t even try to rent them out. And apparently there’s no fine for leaving them empty. As an architect explained to me, he doesn’t build that income into his plans. Why should a developer care if there is street life? I turn left and walk under a highway overpass and approach the rangy back edge of our neighborhood CVS. What does CVS stand for? No one seems to know. Everything you might want to buy there is now locked up, and you have to press what feels like a panic button to get access to the shelves.

I cross through the parking lot, past a weird machine with a tower on it, flashing a blue light. This is some kind of automated security apparatus, but I’m not sure how it works. A barefoot boy asks me for a light. I don’t have one, I tell him.

Remember how outraged everyone was to discover that the author JT LeRoy, supposedly an ethereal rent boy/lot lizard, was actually a middle-aged woman? They acted like this was the ultimate con, something ugly and counterfeit masquerading as something genuine and tragic and hot. Meanwhile, Elena Ferrante is purporting to be a middle-aged woman. What if she’s a teen boy turning tricks in parking lots? I think, as I turn out of the lot and go right on Sunset.

I walk toward Palmer’s Orsini, which lines both sides of the street, all of its commercial space dark and empty and locked. There is no one here except one man in rags setting bits of trash on fire on the sidewalk. Is it Palmer’s fault that people are setting things on fire? It’s more complicated than that. But with no street activity, people act out. Or, their actions are starker, and less muted by a variety of people and vibrancies that a healthy street should reflect. At the end of this very long, sterile block is one other person, a young woman. Her arms are covered with injection scars. She seems not to notice me. She’s in a kind of Sisyphean struggle, attempting to push an e-scooter that is not activated, its wheels on lock.

The next day I drive back down this street, heading to pick up my son from music school. I spot the woman who tried to push the scooter. She’s still here, as if this bleak zone were her proving ground. Her shirt is off now, and she is throwing her half-clothed body against the brick exterior of the Orsini. But the building is constructed not to feel her, the street not to see her, and I barely see her myself, because my light is green.

While parts of the designed world might be ugly at any speed, it is only the slowness of traveling on foot that causes true discomfiture, by forcing a walker to behold, worry over, brood upon, those to whom this ugliness shouts loudest.

#essays

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neurodiversebones · 2 years

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hiii i'm the fellow autistic cam truther (off anon to minimize future confusion) and you invited me to rant so ahhh here goes!! as someone who is self-diagnosed and realized later in life, i really vibe with cam being a late- and (semi)self-diagnosed autistic. she just reminds me so much of myself in her bluntness (where she's not usually trying to be rude, she's just very straightforward) and perfectionism.

not to self-project but i really feel like she hyperfixated on performining femininity and fitting in as a kid in middle and high school and just flew under the radar of like everyone. and once she hit college she realized she didn't like anybody that she called her friends and ghosted them. and now she's very slowly learning how to express herself genuinely in front of other people, even if that means being seen as "rude" bc she just can't let her needs be bulldozed over anymore... because that shit sucks. and she already ignores all of her needs when it comes to work, partially due to hyperfocus and partially due to alexithymia but also because she's stubborn.

i'm only on season 6 but the part where everyone just left her for a year absolutely pulverized me and i know she had a complete meltdown and went in burnout for a while before trying to get herself back to normal.

i will definitely be thinking about this for a while so i may send more autistic cam feels your way if you're down :3

OH MY GOD I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING YOU JUST SAID !!!!

the overperforming femininity to mask autistic traits ,,,, calling out middle/early highschool me damn !!! i absolutely see her doing that- god that whole thing including ghosting her friends ,,,, im so . im holding her in my hands .

that explanation for her sarcasm and bluntness makes SO much sense- i also always hc'd that the reason for her sarcasm is bc . it is genuinely just how she naturally verbalizes her feelings, but other people thought it was funny (seems to be an . almost universal autistic experience). so she just ran with it- she went with being the overly sarcastic funny friend, even though she didn't quite understand why people were laughing, because hey !!! at least it made her friends !!!

and GOD the part where they all leave her just . destroys me . i still get so angry and upset abt it bc i just KNOW that absolutely destroyed her ?? it makes me so very sad . hashtag stop abandoning cam im so . </333

PLEASE continue sending me autistic cam thoughts it's one of my comfort hc's !!! she's one of my top comfort characters and i relate to her sm so . i love love love talking abt her .

#this made me so happy #i love talking abt this yall #also . 'realizing that she doesn't like most of her friends and ghosting them' lets just say theres a reason im suddenly so active #on tumblr dot com .#autistic cam

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kamreadsandrecs · 7 months

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#essays

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astrogations · 3 years

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I’m obsessed with this dynamic

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clickerflight · 2 years

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Found in a Crater

This is more emotional whump than physical whump and something I have been toying with in my mind for a while. Enjoy.

(CW: Emotional whump, broken leg, self-deprecation, 9/11 vibes at the beginning, fairly soft for the whump I typically read and write TBH)

...........................

Her brain told her that the flakes of grey coming down like snow around her were bits of ash, but it felt more like warning signs that the sky was coming unstuck from the heavens and would be crashing down around the hero in only a few moments, the rumbles and creaks from the sky echoing out lightyears into space.

Instead, Hero knew it was ash and dust from the destruction that now swallowed out 8 of the busiest blocks of her city. Supervillain had done something to collapse eight blocks down a mile into the earth, though how he did it, she had no idea.

Hero stumbled through the streets, wiping her eyes and spitting out ash. She knew with each breath that the smog was getting into her lungs, causing internal damage which would make her less effective as a hero in the long run. If she was still going to be a hero after this.

Hero quickly found something to keep herself busy. She didn’t have the skills to help in the crater itself, and she didn’t have any way to go with the more super powered heroes to chase Supervillain down, but there was plenty of work to be done around the sides of the craters. The vibrations of the city collapsing had caused buildings to shake, people to get stuck or buried, and cars to crash. She was currently working her way through a wreck, a pile up of about 6 cars. She shoved one car to the side, glad of her simple though effective super strength, and wrenched open a door. She pulled the unconscious woman out of the driver’s seat and looked into the backseat, afraid of finding children who had been pulverized in the accident.

There were no kids, thankfully.

The Hero took the woman to the nearest healing station, a simple sort of thing set up in the nearby library. The inside of the building was still fairly clear of dust, someone using some sort of power to block the windows and doors with a veil that let people in and out, but not the fog of destruction. The Hero paused there, taking a few deep breaths of the clear air and coughing deeply to try and keep anything from settling in her lungs. The healer gave her a concerned look, but the Hero just gave them a thumbs up and left to find more people to help. She had to keep the sense of doom out of her mind as much as she could. She just really wished she knew where her team was. She hoped they hadn’t been at the crater site when it caved in. None of them were suited to handle something like that. They were simple ‘patrol heroes.’

Still, Hero found herself wandering closer and closer to where the edge of the crater was. There was plenty to do, of course, but the morbid curiosity of the whole situation was getting the better of her. She came around a slightly tilted building and there it was.

It was horrible. Where once stood her city, there was now only a wound. A choked, hurting sound bubbled out of Hero’s mouth and she almost collapsed to her knees. She had patrolled her city enough times to know what used to be here. Her favorite park and ice cream shop were gone. The animal shelter where she would go to see the cats when she was having a bad day was gone. The apartment complex that housed a particularly cute guy she’d been working up the courage to ask out was gone. Now there was just a hole, cloudy with dust and ash, the only things to be seen were a slight glow where there were fires and the dark objects that were the fragments of buildings.

Instead of going to her knees, she took a few wobbly steps to the edge and looked down into the hole, a hand over her mouth mimicking the numb feeling over her heart. The concrete where she was standing seemed pretty stable so she wasn’t too worried about it randomly crumbling as she took a good long look into the abyss below. It took her a moment for her blurred eyes to make out the shape of a platform down below, mostly made of a fairly solid slab of concrete that didn’t crumble on impact and even longer before she realized there was something moving on it. She dropped to her hands and knees, squinting at it. The thinking seemed to be living shaped, rather than just some rags moving in the wind.

“Hello?” Hero called down, tilting her head as if that would give her a clearer view through the smog.

The figure jolted and moved as though looking up from where it was laying.

“H-hero?” A voice called, weak and croaky, and a voice Hero recognized.

“Villain!? What are you doing here?”

Villain winced, laying on his side and holding his leg, trying to work up the energy to shout again. “Would you believe me if I told you I had been out on a walk?” He silently cursed himself out at that and quickly said, “Sorry, I mean… I….” Villain swore at himself one more time and said, “Supervillain had me working on a project with him and didn’t like some of my criticisms so he left me to die in the collapse.”

There was silence from Hero for a moment, during which Villain very badly wanted to cough out one of his lungs.

“Okay!” her voice said from above. “I’ll be down there to get you in a moment. Stay there.”

“No!” Villain called out, wincing at the pain in his leg when he shifted a bit too much to give himself room to breathe better. “No, go help other people. This platform will hold me for a while anyways. I don’t want to waste your time. I’m fine to get out on my own.”

Hero was silent for a few moments. “What bone did he break?”

Villai pressed his forehead to the concrete. He didn’t think he would be that easy to read. “My shin,” he finally replied. “The right one.”

There were soft scraping noises as Hero started to work her way down to his platform. “I’m coming, Villain. You need help just like any citizen would.”

“A lot more worthless than one, though,” Villain muttered to himself.

“What?” Hero asked as she reached the platform, coming over to kneel beside him.

“I don’t want to bother you. I’m sure the police are too busy helping people to have time to deal with me,” Villain said, slowly forcing himself up on his arms, despite how shaky he was. Actually, taking a closer look at Hero revealed how shaky she was as well.

“Villain, please shut up.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Hero turned and scooped him up onto her back like he was a child, causing him to hiss and whine as his leg hung in the air. “Alright, step the first, we’re getting out of the crater and taking a breather up top. Then, I’m going to see if I can get you to a healer. As soon as you’re set, you’re going to help me with civilian rescue. Sound like a plan?”

“Uh….. but I’m a bad guy, though.”

“Aren’t you the one who said that the police are too busy to deal with you?”

“Yeah.”

“There you have it. In the aftermath, if people remember you helping out, you’ll probably avoid a jail sentence altogether and we can go to therapy together. Happy ending.”

Villain wrinkled his nose as Hero looked around, plotting her exit from the hole. “Um… what if I’m not sure if I want to turn to the good side or whatever? I know you hero’s like to preach that sort of thing, but isn’t that sort of my choice?”

Hero took a shaky breath and looked over her shoulder at him, their noses almost touching. “Villain, this doesn’t get to be your choice. At least, not today.”

Her voice was shaking, her eyes going suspiciously shiny, and not in the heroic do gooder sense.

Villain cleared his throat a little awkwardly, realizing that he hadn’t seen her sidekick or her snarky leader, nor had she mentioned either of them. “Right, sorry. I’m good to help today.”

He chivalrously pretended that he didn’t feel her ribs heave in a silent sob and unchivalrously swore loudly in her ear the entire way up the side of the crater everytime that his leg was jostled.

Still, even through the pain, he was quick to load up some jokes and good banter to use as they worked to help be a distraction. His day had sucked, for sure, but that day was probably the worst day of Hero’s entire life.

And Villain would rather die than contribute more to it than he already had.

#emotional whump #possible dead character mentioned #whump #hero #villain #city destruction #wonton loss of human life #broken leg #fear #the vibes at the beginning were inspired by watching video footage of 9/11 #ash #smog #lung damage #abandoned #self deprecation

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