#interested by how they’re playing the different ‘identities’ so far

[lilycolbertsstuff]

Ok let’s talk all things Bridgerton.

First things first, we’ve all binged it the day that it came out, right?

Second, Nicola Coughlan the woman that you are.

Now let’s move on to the serious stuff.

I have to say that so far I’m liking this season but there are some things that I really don’t understand, namely all the subplots. Some of them should’ve either been cut or they should’ve had less screen time. I understand for example the introduction of Francesca and John because of how their story plays out in the future but what about the Mondriches? Don’t get me wrong I like their characters and their chemistry but I really don’t get why they’re such a prominent part of this season, hopefully their presence will be justified in part 2 for it would be heartbreaking to see unnecessary hate towards them.

Another aspect I liked is Eloise and Cressida’s friendship. In the beginning I didn’t think it would be something genuine but turns out that El does actually come to care for Cressida, who is finally not just relegated to being the mean girl.

Kate and Anthony are a dream to watch on screen, their chemistry is out of this world and they most definitely deserve the long ass honeymoon for god knows how hard these two have worked for their families.

I found Francesca to be such an interesting character and her and John were cute but the side couple that I’m really curious about is Violet and lady Danbury’s brother.

The Featheringtons were a highlight of this season to me. They had no business being this funny. Every time a scene with them came on I was prepared to laugh.

Queen Charlotte and lady Danbury are such icons you can’t help but love them.

Last but not least, Benedict. My boy what have they done to you? It’s so painfully obvious that they didn’t know what to do with his character because give me a valid reason why his storyline this time around is him going to bed with a widow; I would’ve much rather liked to see him in those artists’ parties or whatever like he did in season one and maybe explore more of that aspect of his personality in preparation for his own season, which hopefully will be next.

Time to talk about the leads:

I wish we could’ve seen more of Colin’s identity crisis but I feel like whenever the script was lacking Luke did a great job compensating with his body language and facial expressions. Also can we all agree that he’s just so whipped for Pen after their first kiss?

As a fellow wallflower I really related to the scenes where Penelope felt frustrated with the ton and all the socialising. I can confirm that even when we get all dolled up and feel confident in our own skin for once it’s still so hard to put ourselves out there. We feel called by the wall and somehow we find it more fascinating to observe all the different dynamics going on around us rather than actively taking part in them, even if sometimes we want to.

The scenes where Pen threw herself on her bed and sighed? Yep, I felt that.

I honestly didn’t mind that Colin and Pen got together by the end of the first part of the season for we’ve been watching the build up to their relationship for three seasons now. These two have been friends for ages so it’s not like they had to go through all that getting to know each other phase. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure that part 2 will focus on the unfolding of the lady whistledown storyline and having Colin and Pen be together makes more sense because now he loves and wants to marry her leading to an even more crushing reveal.

The carriage scene?! I died and resurrected in the span of like 3 minutes, and that’s just their first intimate scene I don’t know what will happen to me with the ones to come.

These were my overall thoughts on Bridgerton season 3. I can’t wait till part 2 comes out but also I will be deep in exam season so it’ll be a wild ride, let’s hope everything turns out for the best.🐝🩵

#bridgerton #polin #bridgerton season 3 #kanthony #penelope featherington #colin x penelope #colin bridgerton #romancing mr. bridgerton #carriage scene #netflix #tv shows #tv series #nicola coughlan #luke newton #johnathan bailey #simone ashley #claudia jessie #luke thompson #hannah dodd

[daydreamerdrew]

Marvel Spotlight (1971) #28

#interested by how they’re playing the different ‘identities’ so far #it seems to be taken seriously with Marc saying ‘guess I’m just not cut out for Stephen Grant’s high society shenanigans’ #and Marlene saying ‘well you /are/ Steve Grant’ #which reads to me like Marc is genuinely referring to Stephen as a different person #and Marlene is frustrated with that #but not necessarily like the readers are intended to agree with her #I really don’t know yet if at this point the different alters were taken seriously narratively or not #the Jack part feels a bit performative #like how he quickly stops working at a cab driver to search for info instead #and he frames it as him having ‘business to attend to… like drinking coffee I don’t really want’ #which makes the whole thing seem less like a legitimate life in his eyes and more like a job that he’s doing #and how his boss says that it seems that he’s always doing something other than actually working as a cabbie #but at the same time the way he says ‘the name is Jake now lady’ to Marlene seems to be taking it seriously #like I think that if the identity was intended as a guise as not as an actual person that that would be phrased differently #like that’s he’s going undercover as Jake now #hmm #figuring out these comics as I go #my understanding is that the DID is taken seriously in modern comics but I don’t know if it was at the beginning #marvel #moon knight #marlene fontaine #my posts #comic panels

[abeautylives]

Something About You

a/n: A huge thank you to Stef and Evana for your help and input, I think this is my masterpiece lol

pairing: Joshxfemale!reader

word count: 15.5k get comfy

summary: Drawn to you from the moment you met, consumed by you before your first date, he would do anything for you. There’s just something about you.

warnings: 18+ minors stay far away, language, drinking, mentions of sex, extreme fluff, deception, explicit sexual content, mentions of oral (m. and f. receiving), fingering, unprotected penetrative sex, a twist, angst, breeding!kink, more fluff, it’s a novel so if I missed anything I’m so sorry

“I dunno Jake, what if they’re on a date?”

“I mean, maybe but… I don’t think so.”

Eyeing them from across the room, Josh takes another sip of his drink as his brother continues to assess the two women in question smiling across the table at each other in a booth.

“I don’t think they’re together, I think they’re just friends. We should just go find out.” Mind made up, the younger twin moves in that direction without waiting for a response.

Josh remains standing alone at the bar, watching Jake introduce himself and work his charm and within moments the two women are laughing with him. How does he do that? When Jake lifts a hand and gestures toward the bar, all three heads turn in Josh’s direction. Typically comfortable under scrutiny, he suddenly feels heat bloom across his cheeks as his brother waves him over.

“There he is, ladies, this is my brother, Josh. Josh this is… Nic? Nic and Y/N. They are not on a date, I asked.”

You’re both laughing again but Josh’s eyes are drawn to you as you lift a hand to him.

“Hey Josh, it’s nice to meet you.” He’s staring blankly at your mouth until Jake, as indiscreetly as humanly possible, nudges him with an elbow prompting him to look into your eyes and take your hand in his. “Do you guys wanna join us?”

They’re both very cute, but this one seems shy compared to the long-haired one that came over first and he hasn’t let go of your hand. His brother nudges him again and he appears to shake out of a trance as the most perfect smile you’ve ever seen stretches across his face, sullied only by a small gap between his two front teeth that somehow works to make it more alluring. Holy shit. You feel your eyes go wide as you drop them to look at Nic, who is also beaming at you as she scoots farther into the booth to make room for Jake. Josh, still holding your hand delicately in his, bends as he lifts it to his lips and presses a light kiss to your fingers.

“It appears that we already are! Are you sure we’re not interrupting?”

Ah, so he does speak. His voice has a similar timbre to Jake’s but their accents are completely different. You turn to him as he settles in next to you, ignoring his question completely. “Didn’t you say you guys are brothers?”

“Ha, yeah, we’re actually twins. Identical.”

“Bullshit.” You and Nic speak in unison and Jake chuckles while Josh just grins.

“We get that a lot,” Jake offers.

They’re easy to talk to, the conversation flows alongside the drinks and when Josh opens up you find that he’s soft-spoken but an animated storyteller. He uses his hands to emphasize his points and you watch them move through the air as he works toward a punchline directed at his twin. You use the moment to take in his profile - his haircut is interesting, shaved tight on the sides while the rest of his head is covered in long fluffy curls, but it leaves his face in full view for you. It’s a really nice face. His eyes, a light amber full of warmth, find you often and they lock onto yours when you’re speaking.

Nic convinces Jake to dance with a level of persuasion only she can achieve but you can still see him insisting that he’s no good at it as they cross the room. He loses the argument as her arms loop around his neck, as soon as their bodies are touching you know he’s done for. She has that effect on men and women alike and you’ve seen this play out before, she wants him and she’ll probably have him. As your gaze lingers on the two of them, you can feel Josh’s on your face.

“So,” he clears his throat, “Y/N, um…” You’re looking at him now as he transitions back into the shy person who had first walked up to your table. This side of him is baffling, he’s really attractive and he has to know that. There’s no obvious explanation for his bashful demeanor.

“Josh, do I make you nervous?” The thought is preposterous to you. Nic is usually the one that leaves strangers speechless or stammering over their words, but now that you’re alone, a distinct light pink has crawled its way over Josh’s nose and cheeks.

“Wow, um, yeah a little? What gave it away?” He finishes with a self-deprecating chuckle that’s charming in a way. “I’m sorry, I swear I’m usually more… normal. You’re just really pretty.” Good one. He’s being truthful though, he usually has no problem talking to… anyone, really. He’d swear he’s typically confident, sometimes even attention-seeking but, “There’s just something about you.”

Hours later you were standing outside the bar waiting for your rides, an Uber for you and yet another brother on the way for the guys, Jake and Nic were tangled with one another and making out right there on the sidewalk. Josh stood in front of you with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket and an awkward grin on his lips.

“You wanna…?” His eyebrows had quirked up as he nodded his head in their direction.

Smiling back at him and speaking softly, you’d said, “Maybe next time.”

He asked for your number and promised to call.

⏰

Next time proved to be difficult to arrange, you knew it would be but it didn’t deter him. He called, just as he’d promised but your schedule left you little free time and meeting him on one of the rare nights out that you allowed yourself had been serendipitous. The calls became regular occurrences and every night, as exhaustion set in and you’d try to cover a yawn, he’d ask when he could see you again.

“I’m actually free next weekend…” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you're nervous and fidgeting with the bottom hem of your sleep shorts. He’s so easy to communicate with and eager to see you, but you’re already overthinking things and you’ve never even hung out with him one on one. The phone starts ringing against your ear and you pull it away to see a FaceTime call coming in. From Josh. Confused, you click over before considering that you’re laying in bed, freshly showered and makeup free.

“Hey?”

He’s staring at you again, lips hanging slightly open like he’s forgotten what he was going to say. It looks like he’s probably also in bed, sitting against his headboard and while you can’t see too far below where the neckline of his shirt should be, you can tell that it’s absent.

“Josh?”

“Hi, sorry,” he laughs softly, “I just didn’t think you could possibly get even more lovely.”

The warmth of the blush moves up your neck but you can feel it spread through your chest even though you’re brushing off the compliment.

“Really, you’re beautiful. Let me take you out next Saturday. Wine and dine, the whole thing.”

You can feel yourself smiling like an idiot as your head starts to nod in confirmation. “Yeah… yeah, of course. Just tell me when and where and I’ll be there.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I can pick you up and-“

“No. No, let me meet you there.” Realizing how abruptly you’ve turned him down, you lighten your tone. “After all, I hardly know you. What if you’re a psycho?” When he laughs you let yourself relax into your pillow.

“Like the film? You a Hitchcock fan?” He’s graciously moved on, happy to do things on your terms.

“I’ve actually never seen it.”

Appalled, he makes you promise that you’ll watch it together someday and soon enough you’re holding back a yawn.

“Go to bed, beautiful. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

⏰

“Oh he like likes you.” Nic is sprawled across your bed watching you pull clothes from your closet and toss them haphazardly around your room.

“Nic, he doesn’t even know me.”

“Then why do you care so much about impressing him, hm? You like him too!” Her wide grin, usually contagious, is only serving to set your nerves on edge. “And don’t tell me ‘I don’t even know him’ because that’s BS, you guys literally fall asleep on the phone together every night. You know him, at least a little.”

“Okay, I get it. We know each other. Are you actually gonna help me find something?”

Once she’s standing next to you shuffling through your hangers, you ask if she’s been talking to Jake.

“Here and there. He’s great though, amazing in bed. Did I tell you how big-“

“Yes you told me, thank you. I don’t need another recap.”

“You know what they say about twins.” She’s stopped sifting through your clothes to wag her eyebrows at you. “Just sayin’. I bet he’s working with a hors-“

“Nic!” She wards off a slap from the back of your hand and then holds a dress out to you, wiping tears of laughter from her cheeks with her other hand.

“This one’s perfect. Plus he looks like his favorite color’s green.”

As the hostess leads you to your table, you’re pleased with Nic’s choice. The restaurant’s vibe seems pretty casual and the other guests are dressed in a variety of attire. You feel comfortable, like you’re not standing out at all until your eyes meet Josh’s. As he comes into view you can tell he was already watching and waiting for you, but when he sees you walking in his direction you feel like you’re the only other person in the crowded room.

You’re suddenly ecstatic over Nic’s choice. His mouth is open again but his eyes drop from your face to your feet before they take a slow journey up your body. By the time you make it to the table, they’ve reached your eyes again and he flashes that smile. God I forgot about the smile.

He stands to greet you with a hand placed delicately at the small of your waist and the other grasping one of yours, but then he leans in and places a soft kiss to your cheek. It’s barely a brush of his lips over your skin but you weren’t expecting it, or the way you felt it jolt through your body like crackling electricity. When he pulls away your other hand comes up to place your fingertips to the spot.

“Oh…”

Hands still attached to you, he grins sheepishly with his bottom lip pulled between perfectly straight teeth. “You look… exquisite, really. Beautiful.” He drops his hold on your waist to run his hand through his hair and scratch the back of his head, shy again. “I love your dress.”

“Oh this old thing? Just threw it on.” You make a mental note to thank Nic. Exquisite is not an accolade you think you’ve ever received. He moves around you to pull your chair out and you’re pretty sure you’re hallucinating, or dreaming. Is he even real? When he’s seated across from you, you’re finally able to take in his appearance.

He’s in a white shirt again but this one has a small v at the neckline, and he’s added a long beaded necklace that ends below the edge of the table. You’re positive that ‘you’re one of the prettiest people I’ve ever seen’ is not an appropriate compliment for a grown man with a mustache, but unfortunately when you open your mouth to tell him he looks handsome, a combination of the two escapes.

“You look pretty.” A hand is clasped over your mouth immediately as your face bursts into flames, but a loud bark of laughter causes several heads to turn in his direction before he reigns it in to a silent chuckle that shakes his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, that’s not what I meant-“

“No, please don’t apologize.” His smile stretches impossibly, every equally impossibly white tooth on display. “Thank you Y/N, I feel quite pretty right now.”

A waiter appears before you can fumble through another embarrassed apology and Josh orders a bottle of wine after asking what your favorite type is. He gracefully moves past the awkward moment and suggests looking over the menu, and when the waiter returns you’re ready to order.

You quickly find that you’ve covered so much small talk in the hours you’ve spent on the phone, that you pretty much have to dive into big talk. He tells you more about his job, which sounds like a dream more so than work, and you’re enthralled by the way he speaks about making music. When he asks about your life, you’re intentionally vague since your world seems a little boring and insignificant in comparison, but he hangs onto every word.

Hours later, after you’d finished your meal and given up your table to move to the bar, you found yourselves standing outside once again. Leaning against the driver’s side of your car, you watched as Josh slowly moved closer to you and placed his hand on your waist. This time when he leaned in, you’d been hoping for it and when he kissed your cheek and pulled away, you pulled him back in and pressed your lips to his.

He’d seemed surprised for just a second, but quickly his other hand was on you and he took half a step closer. Your bodies didn’t meet but you were sure that you were feeling exactly what they describe in books and cheesy movies. You could feel it across every inch of your skin, in every cell.

Fireworks.

You felt his lips break from yours but they found you again, two more gentle touches of your skin against his before he moved away to look at you.

“I should be driving you home.” A hand had found the side of your face and settled back at the base of your neck, keeping you so close that his breath, lightly scented of grapes, had fallen over your still-tingling lips.

“Maybe next time.”

⏰

“Wait, so you didn’t fuck him?”

“Hey! You’re on speaker…”

“Sorryyy. But why not? Do you not like him anymore?”

“Nic, have you even been listening? I like him a lot. He’s like… kind of perfect, actually.” You can feel yourself making moony eyes at nothing in particular as you say it.

“So what’s the issue? Are you gonna fu- sorry, do it next time?”

Next time. Next time was already tentatively scheduled for two weekends from now, as long as nothing fell through on your end.

“I don’t know, I’m not going to plan getting laid in advance. If it feels right then, we’ll see I guess.”

“Y/N you plan your entire life in advance. And I know for a scientific fact that you haven’t gotten any since that guy… shit I don’t even remember his name. That guy you dated for like two months. That was over a year ago!”

“Yeah and I fu- I slept with him after our second date. See how well that worked out?”

“It’s not your vagina’s fault that he was an asshole. Sorry, but he was. And Josh has already been around for weeks and your date was ‘kind of perfect’ as I recall. I mean, how did he react when you told him about-“

“Ihaven’ttoldhim.” It comes out as one huff of air.

“Oh. Ohhhh no.”

“I just like him so much.” Nic can hear the sorrowful frown in your voice. “I didn’t want to ruin it… yet.”

“You need to tell him. No matter the outcome, you need to tell him. I dunno babe, I feel like Josh might surprise you.”

⏰

You let him pick you up in front of your house. Waiting at the window to see him pull up, you didn’t give him the chance to get out of the car and come to your door but he didn’t seem to mind when you hopped into his Jeep and leaned over to kiss his cheek.

“I would’ve opened the door for you, ya know.”

“I’m absolutely sure that you would have, but I’m a big girl. I can handle a little car door.” He lifts the corner of his mouth in a lopsided grin as he puts it in reverse and backs out of your driveway. “So where are we going?”

“Ah, to the movies of course.”

The movies ends up being a completely empty theater. There were plenty of people in the lobby when you’d entered, but you and Josh were escorted to an auditorium where he chose seats near the top in the middle. When no other patrons trickled in after about five minutes, you turned to look at him and found mischief in his eyes.

“Josh… what’s going on here?” You circle a finger in the air, gesturing to the empty room. “What are we even seeing?”

“An American classic, my dear.” Taking your hand in his, he brings it to his lips and presses a kiss to the back of it before lacing your fingers together and resting them on his thigh. He offers no further information but as if on cue, the lights go down and you can actually hear film as it starts rolling. The screen in front of you is lit but turns black before white letters appear in the center.

PSYCHO

Snapping your head to face him again, you find the mischief is still alight in his eyes and in the grin stretching across his mouth.

“How did you…?” Your whisper trails off but he understands your confusion.

“You don’t have to whisper, really. No one else will be joining us.” He takes in the way your jaw has dropped slightly and your eyebrows are tilted upward. “I know the owner. I put in a special request, told him my girl has never seen the greatest psychological thriller of the 20th century.”

My girl. His girl.

Stunned into silence, all you can do is return his grin and snuggle into his side as the black and white film continues to roll. Familiar with the premise of the movie but having never seen it, you were appropriately shocked by the twist revealed about halfway through, much to Josh’s delight. With your head lifted from its place on his shoulder, he reaches across himself to press the tips of his fingers into your jaw and turn you to him. You feel it again when his lips, soft and searching, meet yours. The tingle spreads through your body and lands distinctly between your thighs. When you cross them in Josh’s direction, he moves his hand from your jaw to rest just above your knee as your lips separate. He watches it move higher until his fingers are squeezing the muscle and you can feel the heat radiating from your own chest.

“Come home with me when the movie’s over.”

The heat turns into a flush of slight panic and he sees it flit across your features as you pull away.

“Sorry, no, it’s no pressure. Please don’t look like that.” The panic must be more obvious than you’d hoped as you try to fix your expression into something resembling poise and confidence. “I just- shit, Y/N I’m sorry. I thought you’d want to, I thought we were-“

He’s starting to ramble but his eyes widen when you reach a hand up to cup his cheek and you run your thumb across his lips.

“Next time. Is that okay?”

“Don’t ask me that. Anything you want is okay, more than okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

The drive back to your house was comfortably silent, music playing softly through the speakers as Josh drummed his fingers against the top of the steering wheel. His other hand was in your lap, wrapped around yours. When he pulled into the driveway and put the Jeep in park, he tightened his hold on your hand before telling you to stay in the car. You watched him get out and walk around to open your door, and laughed as you hopped down into his open arms that wrapped around you as your feet hit the pavement.

At your front door, nervous that he was going to ask to come in, you’d fidgeted with the edges along the zipper of his jacket that your hands had made their way to. His own were resting at your hips as he studied your face in the glow from the porch light.

“Thank you, Josh. That was really special, and very cool. No one’s ever taken me to an exclusive private screening before.” You’d giggled as he watched your lips move in silence. “Aren’t you gonna kiss me goodnight?”

“Oh I absolutely am, after you agree to see me again. Sooner, this time?”

“I’ll try my best for sooner, maybe next weekend. I will definitely let you know. Tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it…” He’d inched closer to you, pressed his body to yours for the first time as he pulled you against him.

“Please kiss me.”

And he did. Once your lips were touching he changed his hold on you, slid a hand up your back until it was tangled in your hair and you were gripping his jacket. He hummed into the kiss, the sound pulsed through your bloodstream and you’d let a quiet moan slip out and over his skin. You felt his hand turn into a fist full of your hair before his tongue slid out and over your bottom lip. Your hips had pushed into his as your own tongue sought his out and tasted him for the first time. A groan pushed it’s way from his throat and you accepted it hungrily as your hips moved again, this time against his very obvious arousal.

“Y/N…” His voice had dropped an octave or two, his forehead rested against yours.

“Next time, Josh. Next time.”

He’d kissed you again, pressed his lips to yours with a tender kind of force before pulling away and smiling that smile at you. “I’ll see you soon. And I will talk to you tomorrow. Have a good night, beautiful.”

You watched him hop down the two steps from your porch and practically skip down the driveway.

⏰

“Hasn’t it been like, over a month? We met them,” Jake pauses to calculate the time on his fingers, “almost six weeks ago. What’s the hold up?”

“There is no ‘hold up’, we’ve only gone out twice. I’m sorry her friend skewed your expectations of women by fucking you the same night she met you.”

“Whoa whoa, first of all, don’t be sorry that I get laid more than you. Second of all, my expectations are not skewed. I respect the sexual decisions of all people, not my business.” Josh rolls his eyes and begs his brother to get to the point. “I just thought you said she seemed into you. And it’s been six weeks.”

“Since you’re so concerned, I’m seeing her again tomorrow. Here. She’s gonna come here for dinner.”

“That’s great! Wash your fucking sheets you lazy bastard.”

⏰

You’re running late on your way to Josh’s house, having gotten held up and you’re working through a string of poorly constructed excuses in your head as you exceed the speed limit as safely as possible. When he opens his front door and welcomes you inside, your worry stays on the front porch. He smiled that smile, looked so happy just to have you in his space, that you instantly forgot you’d even shown up late.

As the door closes, the click of the lock rings through the entryway and you turn to each other expectantly. You make the first move, by a fraction of a second, and your bodies collide in a tangle of limbs just before his back meets the door. The kiss is a little messy, frantic as your tongues slip against each other and your hands roam. You’ve hardly touched him the whole time you’ve known him and you're almost surprised to feel lightly sculpted muscle under his t-shirt. He hasn’t let his hands move farther than up and down the expanse of your back but his fingertips are dragging across it, you both need to feel more.

Breaking the kiss, you’re breathing heavily as you murmur, “Sorry… I’ve been thinking about that for a week.”

“Don’t ever be sorry for that. You can do that as much as you want, when ever you want. I’ve been thinking about you too.” His grin is shy and lopsided again and you get just a peek of his teeth before he kisses you again. “Kick your shoes off if you want, you can leave your bag here, get comfortable. The tour will have to wait, I’m in the middle of cooking.”

He’s cooking me dinner.

Tugging you along by your hand, he guides you through the house to the kitchen, pointing out the obvious along the way. Livingroom, hallway (there’s a bathroom down there), stairs are over there.

“It smells amazing in here, what are you making?”

“Nothing crazy, just pasta.”

Nothing crazy looked an awful lot like a whole production. Thin strips of already seared steak as well as mushrooms, garlic, and various spices are prepped along the counter and red onion is simmering in a skillet. He checks the pasta boiling on a back burner before turning back to you with a bottle of red wine.

“This is too much Josh, really. It’s so nice of you.”

“I promise you it’s nothing. Or it’s really impressive and you’re extremely turned on by my culinary talents right now. Want a drink?”

“Yes please.” Taking a seat at his kitchen island, you watch him pour two glasses of wine. “We’ll have to wait until I taste it before I decide if it’s nothing or if I’m extremely turned on.”

He laughs with you but the truth is, you’ve been thrumming at a low frequency of arousal for the last week. The memory of your last kiss on your porch has been on heavy rotation, especially at night after you’ve just hung up the phone with him. You’d considered just taking care of it, several times, but you’ve been sure about your decision to take things further and concluded that you wanted your next orgasm not to be self-induced.

It’s been a long week.

Holding a glass out to you, Josh is staring like he’s trying to read your thoughts. You think letting him in a little could be fun.

“Thank you.” He smiles brightly before taking a sip from his own glass and setting it down to turn back to the stove. “Do you always work this hard when a girl already wants to sleep with you?”

His hand, stirring the noodles, comes to an abrupt stop as he whips his head to look at you over his shoulder. He takes a moment to formulate a response, but you haven’t rattled him as much as you hoped. “Only for the exceptionally captivating ones, mama.”

You sputter around the sip you’d just taken.

Turning back to the food, he just chuckles softly. “Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it, my dear.”

The meal was close to complete in no time and you chat easily while he cooks. In moments of silence, he hums quietly and continues to add ingredients and stir, and as you watch his back move and flex beneath his shirt you realize he’s not using a recipe. It’s kind of sexy.

With a flourish, he wipes his hands with a towel from the counter and lifts them above his head as he tosses it back to the marble. “It is done!”

Clapping your hands softly and focusing on the strip of skin exposed by his lifted shirt, you congratulate him on his performance as he starts to plate the meal. At his wooden dining table, he pulls out a chair for you and waits until you’re seated to lean down and place a soft kiss to your lips. Once he’s sitting next to you, enough distance between your chairs so he can look at you easily, he smirks and raises an eyebrow.

“Moment of truth. Try it!”

He watches closely as you bring the fork to your mouth and close your lips around it. For effect, you pull it out slowly but the moment your eyes roll back in your head is not an act. After you’ve swallowed, which he also watched as if hypnotized, you take a sip of wine before speaking.

“I’m extremely turned on right now. Josh this is so fucking good! Do you cook a lot?”

His expression shows that he’s very pleased with himself, but his cheeks turn pink under your praise. “I do when I’m home and have the time, gotta keep things interesting. I’ve been working on perfecting this particular dish for a couple of years though… I’m glad it’s garnered the desired reaction.”

It doesn’t take long for both of your plates to be cleaned but you stay at the table slowly emptying the bottle of wine. Comfortable and satisfied, you’ve got a foot up in your chair, chin resting on your knee as you chat and Josh has put on music from his phone that’s bleeding out of some strategically placed and well hidden speakers.

“You strike me as a physical format type of guy when it comes to music. Don’t you have a record player or something around here somewhere?”

“Ha, I actually have three.” He’s not boasting, just stating a fact and also proving you correct. “I enjoy the concept of playlists though, creating a certain setting or mood appeals to me.”

At that moment, the silence of the last song’s ending is filled with soft acoustic guitar playing a familiar tune. Josh’s eyes instantly go soft as a wistful smile appears. Not wanting to disrupt the moment too much, you speak at a volume just above a whisper, “I love this song…”

He’s out of his chair instantly with a hand held out to you. “Dance with me?”

When you take his hand in yours, you’re pulled up into his arms that circle your waist as his palms meet your back. Looping your own arms around his neck, he moves in so that your cheeks are touching as he gently begins to sway. You’re not expecting it when he starts to sing along softly, his breath tickling over the shell of your ear.

Let me give my life to you

Let me drown in your laughter

Let me die in your arms

Let me lay down beside you

Let me always be with you

He seems to purposefully only hum the next few lines, taking the opportunity to press his lips to your hair before singing the rest as you continue to shift back and forth, wrapped in each other.

You fill up my senses

Like a night in a forest

Like the mountains in springtime

Like a walk in the rain

Like a storm in the desert

Like a sleepy blue ocean

You fill up my senses

Come fill me again

As the final notes float through the room, he kisses over your hair again before pulling back to look at you. The emotion swimming in your eyes is obvious and your pupils are blown wide, his own eyes bounce from yours then down to your lips and back.

“Josh…” Your mind is racing with thoughts that you know you need to speak out loud, this feels bigger than yourself but you can’t bring your mouth to form the words. Not yet. “Take me to bed…”

He doesn’t question it. He’s been sure that you’re exactly what he wants and he thinks you’re sure of it too, so he simply leads you to the stairs that he’d pointed out earlier and prompts you to ascend ahead of him. As you reach the top he moves you along with a palm against your lower back but at his open bedroom door, he pauses before guiding you through.

“You’re sure?” He feels like he knows the answer but couldn’t live with himself if he pressured you into it.

In response you take the lead and turn, pulling him into the room by the front of his shirt and into your body as your hands frame his face and then slip back into the curls at the base of his neck. He reaches back for the wall, searching for the light switch and you’re eternally grateful when it activates only a warm glow from two lamps equipped with Edison bulbs on either side of his bed.

“Interesting mood lighting you’ve got here, Josh.”

“Ehh, I don’t like harsh overhead light in my room. Ruins the energy.”

You’re giggling against his grin as you pull him into a kiss that quickly turns serious, and he moves you backwards until the backs of your knees meet the mattress. Lifting a leg, you move back over the surface then sink into it without hesitation and keep your grip on his shirt so his body follows, landing on top of yours. Held up by his hands pressed into the comforter on either side of your head, looking down at you with all sincerity, he asks if he can touch you.

Reaching up and circling his wrist next to your face, you guide his hand to move over your shoulder and down your chest until it reaches the bottom hem of your shirt that’s just barely ridden up your stomach. Once his fingertips meet the skin there, he takes over and slides his palm under your shirt and over your ribs until he’s got a handful of your breast. As he runs his thumb over the thin material covering your nipple, you answer.

“Everywhere. Touch me everywhere.”

He’d like to take his time, watch as every inch of your skin is revealed to him, but he’s been waiting for this. He’ll go slow next time.

Your shirt is being tugged up your body and you both shift to allow him to pull it over your head before you do the same to his. Leaned back and settled onto his knees, his chest is rising and falling with his breath as he tosses it to the floor to land next to yours. You let your eyes roam over each other for a moment before he’s leaned over you again and trailing his lips from your neck down to your clavicle. Propped up on one elbow, he lets his other hand explore your chest again, running fingers over the lacy material covering them before tentatively squeezing your breast. His hips move into yours involuntarily when you let a whimper slip out into the air next to his ear, but then he’s shifting his body to the side, next to you but still pressed fully against you. He captures your lips with his own as his hand slides down over your rib cage again and his fingertips meet the waist of your jeans.

Mouths still moving against each other’s, you nod your head in encouragement but he breaks the kiss to look at you.

You think he’s going to ask again but instead he moves his gaze down your bared torso until it lands where he’s touching you, and he watches as he pops the button and pulls the zipper down and skips touching you over your panties. His fingers delve past the lace and he groans as they skim over the little bit of hair there before landing on the soft skin of your core. When his eyes snap back to yours, you nod again as you shift and use your hands to push the denim past your hips and down your thighs until you can wiggle the jeans down and kick them to the floor.

His hand remains still, just cupped against you as you bend a knee and let your leg fall aside just enough that he can feel you spreading open to him under his fingers. Moving them, they slip through the arousal that’s pooled there and he bites back another groan.

“Fuck baby…” He slips them through again before moving them up and swirling a soft circle over your clit, your back arches off the bed. “So sensitive,” he chuckles lowly at your body’s reaction before circling over it again, “You want more?”

One of your palms is splayed out in the center of his chest but the other is gripping the bicep of the arm that’s extended over you. “Please, I’m gonna cum.” You’re not faking it, not being dramatic. The pent up sexual energy already feels like it’s threatening to spill over and while you’re not surprised in the slightest, his eyebrows have lifted in amused shock.

“Baby I’ve barely touched you.”

“Keep touching me.”

His fingers dip down to circle through the wetness at your entrance before he pushes one slowly past it. Your fingernails are digging into his arm, sure to leave tiny crescent-shaped marks on his otherwise flawless skin and he can feel your body clenching around his finger inside you as he pumps it slowly.

“Relax, I’ve got you.”

You try, you really do, and he can feel the tension release but as soon as he slips a second one inside, your body reacts the same way. He figures if it’s gonna happen, he should just enjoy it so he presses his palm over your clit while his fingers move and curl, buried deep. Your back has left the mattress again, he admires the way your skin stretches over your ribs for a moment before leaning down for a kiss. When his lips meet yours, your hand flies from his arm to the base of his neck to keep him there as your tongue begs for an entrance that he welcomes. Your hips are moving to meet the gentle thrust of his fingers, but he slides them from your cunt to press them to your clit again. He swallows the cry that rips from your throat, hums into it as he draws tight circles into your sensitive skin. His kiss moves from your lips to your cheek and when he reaches your ear he whispers, “Let go for me.”

The soft command grips your body and pulls you under. The string of oh and fuck and Josh spilling from your lips on repeat shoots straight to his dick and he’s silently praying that he’ll figure out a way to hear those words tumble from your mouth every day for the rest of his life. His fingers, swirling slowly against you, come to a stop as your body sinks back into the mattress and the fist curled into his hair releases its hold.

Your body is flushed and you can feel the heat on your chest and your cheeks, and when you’re able to crack your eyes open the sight of him is something to behold. The warm amber of his irises has almost completely disappeared around the deep black of his pupils, he looks drunk, and hungry, intoxicated and starving for more. Before he pulls his hand from your underwear he swipes his two fingers through your release, then brings them up to his mouth without thinking twice about it. You watch his lips, pink and perfectly shaped, close around them and his eyelids flutter the way yours had at your first taste of the meal he’d prepared.

When he pops his fingers out, he mumbles, “Next time. Next time, I need you to do that on my mouth.”

“Next time…”

Silence falls over the room and he lets his fingers trail over your skin, from your chest and over the lace of your bra, then down to circle around your navel. As soon as he’s paying closer attention to your stomach, it tenses and you hope he won’t notice your reaction but of course, he does.

“Sensitive everywhere huh?” His lips are stretched into a grin and you allow his question to be the explanation.

“Yeah… Josh?” His reply is a soft hum. “Are you gonna fuck me now?”

It sounds vulgar coming from your mouth, but he feels his heart rate speed up and blood rush to his dick again.

“No.” He answers simply.

“No?”

“No. It’ll be a little more romantic than that, I think.”

With that, he rolls and stands from the bed and you scoot yourself up to the pillows as you watch him move to undo the button at the waist of his pants. The muscles of his arms and chest bunch and flex as he moves, his stomach tenses when he pushes the fabric over his hips and it drags over… oh.

Nic was right.

Still covered by the cotton of his briefs, his dick is hard and sitting to the right, and it’s… impressive. He looks up to find your eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar. He’s not unused to that reaction but something about it being you causes his dick to twitch under your stare and he reaches a hand down to rub his palm over it. The small groan that passes his lips snaps you out of it and you look him in the face, expecting some kind of cocky grin or retort.

“Stop looking at me like that or I’ll get a complex.”

Of course he finds the humor in the situation, but you’re a little intimidated. You decide to be honest about it, “We can’t have that. Um, Josh?”

He’s slipped his thumbs under the elastic at the top of his underwear, about to pull them down but he pauses. “Hm?”

“I haven’t- um… it’s been a while, since…”

Understanding softens his features and he smiles as he abandons removing his briefs and kicks his pants from his ankles before crawling onto the bed. “Do you… wanna stop?”

“No. I don’t. Just…”

“I’ll be careful with you, gorgeous girl. I promise.” He crawls over your body, knees straddling one of your thighs and presses a kiss to your forehead before placing another on your lips. When your arms circle him and your hands skim over the smooth skin of his back, he shifts his knee until it’s resting against you between your thighs. Your hips move, grinding your still covered pussy over him but he makes no further moves even as you whine into the kiss.

“Mm, do you wanna take these off?” A fingertip is running along the top of your underwear and dips just below it. You nod your head and he pushes himself up to slide them down your legs, trailing their journey down with his eyes until they slip past your toes and he tosses them away. His hands take that journey back up and when they reach your knees, he gently pushes them apart. He only lets his gaze linger on your bare cunt for a moment before he raises it to your face and asks if you want your bra off too. When you nod again he smiles and pulls you to sit up, reaches around you and unclasps it expertly with one hand. You let it fall forward, nervous for him to see every part of you but when you pull it away and toss it to the floor his eyes light up.

“Undeniably worth the wait, my pretty, pretty girl. You get more lovely every time I look at you.”

“I wanna see you too.”

He flashes that smile, wide and bright. “By all means, my dear.” He gestures down to his body with both hands.

You scramble to reach for the waist of his underwear, impatient and embarrassed that he’d felt the need to stop removing them just to soothe your nerves. Tugging them down his hips and over the length of him, his cock springs up once it’s freed but hangs heavy between you.

“Oh my god.” You hadn’t meant to say it out loud but it’s out there now so you figure you might as well go with it. “I know I’m not the first person to tell you this but… you’re kind of perfect, everywhere.” He responds with a sharp laugh and before you can get your hands on him he pushes you softly back to the pillows and begins to push the fabric the rest of the way down to his knees. Once he’s wriggled out of them he kicks the briefs away, the last piece to join the clothing’s now scattered over his bedroom floor. Lying across his bedding, spread out for him, wet and waiting, he wonders over how it is that you still look so innocent and completely untainted.

“You look like a flower.” You lift an eyebrow in question alongside a hand to coax him back to you, which he accepts. When his body is hovering over yours again, his dick nestled between your thighs and resting against the slick moisture coating your flesh there, he leans in closer to whisper, “Soft and pink, delicate and naturally beautiful. You look like a flower. My flower.”

You crane your neck to capture his lips, and he kisses you back firmly, pushing you back into his pillows. Snaking a hand down between your bodies, you run it over his stomach until you reach the base of him, wrapping your fingers around him. A soft hmph huffs against your mouth at the contact, the first time you’ve touched him there. You’ve hardly touched him at all but he doesn’t seem to mind right now as you’re guiding him to your cunt and the head of him is nudging you, begging for entry. He reaches down to replace your hand with his, rubs himself through your arousal before asking if you’re ready.

“So ready, please…”

Slowly, so so slowly, he pushes into you. As your hands move up his arms and over his shoulders he keeps his eyes on your face, searching for any sign that he should stop, but he doesn’t find one as he rocks his hips and eases in inch by inch.

“Jesus, flower, you’re so fucking tight. Relax for me.”

“I am relaxed, keep going…”

Not sure that you’re telling the truth, but positive that you can handle him, he thrusts into you to the hilt.

“Fuck!” You can’t help it yelping out of you but there’s nothing but pleasure behind it.

Throat tight, he asks if you’re okay and you’re quickly assuring him with a nod of your head, soft words of confirmation and finally pulling him in to connect your lips. You move your hips, encouraging him to do the same and the drag against your walls as he pulls back draws a low moan from deep in your chest. His thrust back into you knocks the air from your lungs and your mouths part as you gasp to get it back.

He rests his forehead against yours as he moves inside you, settling into a slow rhythm of deep strokes that are lighting you up from the inside out.

“So fucking good, you feel so good Jesus fuck,” his typical eloquence leaves the room as you squeeze around him. “Mm tell me, let me hear you.” He delivers a harder thrust, punching a string of expletives past your lips. Instantly drunk on your hazy murmurings, he picks up the speed of his hips until your legs wrap themselves around him and a heel is digging into the flesh high on his backside.

“Just like that, it’s perfect, perfect…” He doesn’t change a thing as you trail off, but your own hips are pushing into his and the sounds of skin meeting skin are echoing through his room.

“Gonna move, just a little bit. Need to see you.” When your head nods he pushes up from you, the skin of your chests audibly separates, a thin layer of sweat having formed between you. Hovering over you, you watch his eyes move down your body but they stop and focus on your chest, tits bouncing with every thrust of his hips. When he moves lower and realizes the view he wants is still obstructed, he lifts further and settles back on his heels, hands wrapped around the small of your waist and pulling you into him. Now he can see everything, but what he’s interested in rests between your legs and he zeroes in on it. His eyes squeeze shut as he shakes his head, like he’s trying to wake up but when they open he’s still watching your pussy suck him in, over and over again.

“God, look at you. Taking it all, I knew you could. A perfect fit, fuck…” His words have you clenching around him. “So good for me, perfect.” He lifts his eyes to your face and finds your eyes closed and mouth open, soft sounds of your pleasure floating from it. “Look at me, beautiful.”

You obey, opening your eyes and instantly moaning a low oh my god at the vision above you. You’ve never seen anything like him, he’s definitely meant to be naked, every inch of him is flawless. His normally fluffy curls have gone loose, damp and sticking across his forehead and his jaw is clenched tight even as he smiles at your expression.

You let your gaze roam over his chest to his stomach, the muscles there are tight as he pumps his hips into you. The v that leads down to where you’re connected stands out, the low light from either side of the bed casting perfect shadows.

“How- ohh… how are you real?” The thing you’ve been wondering for weeks leaves your throat as a whining question.

“Mm, I’m real, my flower. Don’t you feel me everywhere? Here?” One of his hands moves from your waist and comes to rest flat against the skin under your navel, pressing into it. You confirm, yes yes I feel you, and he moves his hand higher, skimming it up your stomach and the center of your chest and letting it land there, over your heart.

“Here? Do you feel me here too?”

You do, you know you’ve been holding him there since well before your first date, your first kiss.

“Yes, yes Josh. I feel you there.”

His expression goes soft and wistful, as it had downstairs before he’d asked you to dance. “I feel it too. I think before I even spoke to you…” The rhythm of his hips has slowed again as he lets himself get lost in his feelings for you. “There’s just something about you…”

One of your hands that have been anchored to him wrapped around his forearms, moves to rest over his on your chest, you want to remember this moment exactly how it is. Just you and him, bodies connected and letting yourselves admit that something more has been happening here. Lacing your fingers together, you’re gripping this moment tight because you know it’ll change, and soon. You pull his hand up to your lips and place kisses to his knuckles before moving it down your body until you’re pressing it into your mound, just above where he’s still moving when gentle purpose.

“Touch me, make me cum. I wanna cum for you, give you everything.” You can feel his cock pulse inside you before he starts thrusting against the backs of your thighs harder and faster again, and he slips his thumb to run over the slick arousal that’s spread over your skin. As soon as he swirls it over your clit, your back leaves the bed.

“Are you always so… responsive?”

Breathless from the emotion and burning under his touch you tell him no, it’s him, it’s all him. The words squeeze his heart and he feels you fluttering around his cock as he adds just a little pressure to his movements over your flesh. “Yes just like that, just like that, I’m there Josh. Don’t stop!”

“Give it to me, beautiful. So pretty when you let go.”

Your body obeys, the explosion of colors behind your eyelids when they snap shut is just like him. Bright and consuming, all that you can see and feel around you as everything else disappears.

Above you, he watches you writhe against his pillows, feels your cunt clench around him impossibly tighter, basks in the sweet curses rolling off your tongue. He’s hanging on by a thread to his own release, fucking into you softly as yours moves through you. When your legs slip from around his hips and your feet hit the bed, he whispers a request for you to open your eyes and look at him again.

You can barely hear him over the buzz in your head, but as soon as you can crack your eyes open and focus on him he’s pulling out of you quickly and stroking himself over you. You watch his mouth fall open as he spills over, his hot release hitting your stomach and pooling there. When the last of it lands below your navel he whimpers before he pulls his hand away and takes a few heaving breaths. You open your mouth to speak but he leans over you and swallows your words, lips and tongues pushed together and bringing your pairing to a soft closing.

He lets his body drop and tucks his face into the crook of your neck, unconcerned about the mess now trapped between you. As you bring a hand up to run over the dampened curls at the back of his neck, he speaks into your skin, “Absolutely worth the wait. I’d wait a thousand lifetimes for you.”

You think it might be a poetic version of the truth, and it’s heart wrenching. Your feelings are the same but you’ve been hiding a part of yourself that you should’ve revealed the first time you met. Now is not the moment, and you’re not sure exactly when the right time could possibly present itself, too far gone. Resigning to the fact that as perfect as this feels, you’re going to ruin it soon, you decide to let it wait. Just a little longer.

Josh eventually, begrudgingly lifted himself from you and left to clean up, returning with a warm cloth to do the same for you. He asked you to stay and you agreed, but told him you had to leave in the morning, you have to meet someone sort of early. Not questioning it, he settled you both under his comforter and pulled you close, lulling you into sleep with kisses pressed into your hair.

⏰

You wake up before him, the sun is already high in the sky and you can tell by the way it’s streaming across his face when you open your eyes.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Jolting up, you leave the bed without bothering to wake him or attempting not to, plucking your clothes up from around his room and tossing them onto the bed as you find them. When he sits up and finds you pulling your shirt over your head, the rest of you already clothed, he asks what time it is.

“I slept too late Josh, I have to pick up Sam-“

“Wait, what? You have to pick up Sam? Why are you picking up my brother?”

Oh god.

“Not your brother. Josh I don’t have time for this, I have to go.” He watches you leave his room as he jumps out of bed to find his pants, tugging them on as he follows you. You’re almost at the front door when his hand wraps around your arm.

“Y/N stop. Talk to me. Who is Sam?” His eyebrows are knitted together as he searches your face for an answer. “What’s going on?”

You let your head fall back as you stare at the ceiling, willing the right words to come to you. None of the words you come up with are going to make this any easier, a defeated sigh floats from your lips and up into the air before you face him. He looks confused, obviously, but there’s a little bit of fear in his eyes.

“I’m sorry…” It’s hardly a whisper, you’re not sure you even said it but the fear behind his eyes slips into sadness.

“Y/N… please just tell me what is happening here. I’m very confused.”

“Sam is my son.”

His hold on your arm loosens until his hand falls to his side. He’s studying your face as if your expression will bring him some clarity but he only finds regret there. “What?”

“I have a kid. His name is Sam. Ironically enough.”

Now that you’ve repeated it, it’s sinking in. “You have a child.”

You wonder how many times you’ll each have to say it out loud before he’s kicking you out of his house. “I do. And he is my whole world, Josh. Or he was, until I met you.”

He shakes his head and huffs out a sardonic laugh. “And you didn’t think I should know about that? You didn’t think you should tell me that before I let myself fall for you?” It chokes you into silence, the hurt tightens your throat and burns your eyes as your vision blurs. “I think you should go. Go get Sam…”

You turn and walk out the door before he can see you cry.

⏰

How many times can a toddler ask you why you're sad before you have a full mental breakdown? You’re pretty sure you’ll soon find out, Sam is too smart for his own good and too intuitive for yours.

Josh hasn’t called. You haven’t spoken to him in weeks and all you could do was fall back into your regular routine of wake up, drop Sam off at daycare, work, pick him up, playtime, dinnertime, bathtime, bedtime. Every day, and Josh hasn’t called. Hasn’t texted. Hasn’t asked his brother to ask your friend how you’re doing. It’s been over two weeks.

⏰

“You’re being a fucking idiot.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. You’re being stupid.”

“Jake she lied to me. And not something small, she failed to tell me about an entire human life that she created. A whole child. For months.”

They’ve already had several versions of this conversation. Josh had called his brother the same day that you’d left his house, screaming incoherently about sex and lies and Sam but before Jake could make any sense of it his twin was crying over the line.

He’s pissed off, sure, but more than anything he’s hurting. Jake had told him to reach out to you, to clear the air, and most importantly to apologize for shutting you out.

“I get it, Josh. I do, I fully comprehend why you’re upset. But correct me if I’m wrong, you have feelings for her, yes?” Josh, head in his hands propped up on elbows rested on his knees, grumbles a confirmation. “And you miss her. You’ve been moping around here for weeks. What’s the issue?”

Snapping his head up to face his twin, he throws an incredulous look in his direction. “What’s the issue? She hid him from me. I had no fucking clue. I’m sitting here building a fucking life with her in my head and I don’t even know her.”

Jake nods in understanding, turning Josh’s words over in his head before responding. “So it’s not that she has a kid, it’s that she didn’t tell you.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being serious right now. Yes, she deliberately lied to me.”

“You like kids.” Josh just shakes his head, suddenly infuriated with how flippant his brother is being over something that he deems extremely serious. “You actually love kids. Everybody knows that.”

“Your point?”

“Like I said, you’re being an idiot. Do you love her?”

Josh sits up and leans back in his chair, scrubs his hands over his face then runs his fingers over his mustache before scratching at his chin. “Yeah, I think I do, but-“

“And you don’t think you could love her child? Why? Because he’s not yours?”

“I never said that. It has nothing to do with-“

“Stop being stupid about this. Call her.”

⏰

The days crawled by, each one the same aside from nights that Nic would come over for dinner, help you put Sam to bed and then sit with you for hours. Filling the empty time that you used to spend on the phone with Josh.

Tonight is not one of those nights, and you’re sitting in front of your tv as some mindless reality show drones on. You almost jump out of your skin when your phone starts ringing on the table in front of you, but your heart is hammering in your chest when you pick it up to see Josh on the screen. It’s a picture you took of him at the bar on your first date, he’s leaned on one elbow over the bartop, smiling that smile, cheeks rosy and eyes focused beyond the camera lens. Focused on you.

You almost miss it, your hesitation to answer losing out right before it can go to voicemail.

“Hello?” You’re met with silence, he doesn’t answer right away and you think maybe he’s called accidentally, phone in his pocket as he’s out living his life without you. “Josh?”

“God, it’s so good to hear your voice.” His own sounds constricted, tight with emotion though you can’t imagine why. He cut you off and you’ve wallowed in your own misery alone.

“What do you want?” You can’t help but cut to the point, almost angry that he’d dare reach out and open with a line akin to I miss you.

“Just to talk. I know I should’ve called you sooner. Actually, I know I shouldn’t have even let you leave. Not like that… Y/N I’m so sorry.”

“You’re right. You should’ve called.” You know he had every right to be upset with you, but to go weeks with complete radio silence and call out of the blue with an apology seems too little, too late.

“I’m actually outside.”

You’re on your feet and moving to the window before you respond, and you move the curtain aside to find his Jeep in the driveway. “Go home, Josh. Now is not the time, Sam’s here and he’s asleep- actually I don’t owe you a reason. Just go home.”

He immediately does the opposite and you watch him climb out of his car and walk toward your porch. “Come outside and talk to me. Please, flower.” By the time he says it, he’s looking at you through the window with pleading eyes.

You sigh deeply before ending the call.

When you step out onto the porch you can see him fighting the urge to touch you, and you keep your body close to the closed door behind you.

Looking you over, he takes in your outfit, sweatpants and a hoodie, your hair tied up in a knot at the top of your head, eyes tired and a little sad. Also a little angry. “Beautiful as always.”

Unfortunately his words have the same effect on you that they always have, and you feel a blush creep over your cheeks. “Don’t. Please just say what you need to say.”

“Okay…” He takes a deep breath and you know he’s about to deliver a monologue. It’s just how he is, so you try to mentally prepare yourself but anything you could’ve expected is tossed aside immediately.

“To say I reacted poorly would be an understatement. I hope you can understand that my complete shock was not unfounded, I’m sure you know that. But you may not know exactly why I was surprised to find out that you’re a mother, especially after hours, and hours spent getting to know you.” He pauses to take another deep breath, you nod at him to continue and he inches just barely closer to you.

“I thought I knew you already. I spent a lot of time thinking about you, when we weren’t together or on the phone, I was thinking of you constantly. Dreaming of you. I’ve always dreamt of you. I think that’s why I was so drawn to you when we met… I’ve known you in my dreams for years.”

He’s taken a full step closer to you now, his fingertips are aching to reach out and touch you but he doesn’t. Not yet.

“The problem is, in my dreams we built this fantasy life together. The whole thing, we fall in love, a whirlwind romance really and you let me whisk you away. Travel the world with me, do everything you could’ve ever imagined. We have babies, if you want them, and they’re perfect little manifestations of our love.”

You haven’t moved from your spot, arms crossed as he speaks but silent tears have spilled over onto your cheeks and you let them fall, dropping to the ground at your feet. His fantasy of you is exactly that, and it’s something you could never give him. Not the way he’s imagined it.

His hands come up to cup your face and he moves in until the toes of his shoes are touching your slippers. You let him wipe your tears away with his thumbs and he keeps your jaw cradled in his hands as he continues.

“Now the other problem is, when you told me about him, about Sam, I suddenly felt like I didn’t know you at all. Like you had kept such a big part of yourself from me, that that life I had dreamed of was impossible. It took awhile but I’ve realized something.”

He wants you to speak, to let him know that you need to hear his next words.

“What?” It whispers past your lips and he leans in to press his against them. You can’t help but to kiss him back. When it breaks, he rests his forehead against yours and continues.

“I’ve fallen in love with you, my beautiful girl. My flower. And I could love him too, if you give me the chance. How could I not love every part of you?”

You release a sobbing breath and he pulls back to look at you. “Please stop crying, I don’t want you to cry anymore. Not because of me.”

“It’s just not that easy Josh.”

“It can be. Let me try. How old is he?”

“What?”

“How old is Sam?”

You can feel him trying, he wants to know more so you wipe your tears and give him more. “He’s three. Three and a half, really.”

“Three… it’s a good age. You know, Jake started playing guitar at three. Prodigy, that one.” It makes you laugh, exactly as he’d hoped. “Y/N… will you give me the chance to show you? I can do this, I want to.”

“Okay…”

“Okay?” There it is, that smile, perfectly imperfect and wide and bright and all for you.

“Yeah… yeah. On one condition.” He raises his eyebrows and tilts his head. “Kiss me again and then go home. And I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Oh absolutely, my dear.”

⏰

“What have you told him about me?”

You’re sitting across from Josh at a table in the same restaurant he’d chosen for your first date. His curiosity makes you chuckle.

“I already told you, he still doesn’t know what a boyfriend is. No concept whatsoever.” Boyfriend. He grins like a little kid every time you say it, and it’s probably why he asked, again, if you’d talked to Sam about him. “He’s seen pictures of you. He knows your name, and knows I spend time with you when he’s at grandma’s house. He also knows that you like movies and you play the vocals, as requested.”

“When can I meet him?” Ah, that question. Though you’ve technically been with Josh for almost four months, you’re still not sure what the right answer is.

“Soon, I think. Maybe you can… I don’t know, go to the park with us or something. I just don’t want to confuse him too much, babe.”

Satisfied for the moment, he leans back in his chair and smirks at you over the table. “Ya know, if you’d let him get to know me, I wouldn’t have to sneak into your house after bedtime to fuck his pretty mama while she bites the pillows to keep quiet.”

“Josh! You’re disgusting.” You feign offense but you’re laughing with him as you throw your napkin at his face.

When you leave the restaurant, he drives you home and follows you inside. You lead him through the house, past the scattered Hot Wheels, monster trucks and Legos that tend to litter the floor of your living room, into your bedroom where he lets you undress him slowly. With your lips wrapped around him, cock nudging the back of your throat, he reminds you that he loves you. When his tongue is lapping at you, softly drawing you nearer and nearer to release, he shows you that he loves you.

When he’s buried inside you, whispering praise into your ear, calling you his flower, a goddess, you feel that he loves you.

⏰

One more month. You gave it one more month before you told Sam you were going to meet Josh at the park.

“Josh at the park!” He’s going through a phase where he repeats everything you say.

“Yep! Remember, Josh is mommy’s boyfriend. Is that okay?”

“Mommy’s boyfwiend is okay. Go outside?”

His beautiful one-track mind makes you giggle. “Yes sweet boy, let’s go outside.”

You’d told Josh where to meet you, instructed him on how to approach your child, coached him on what to say.

“Flower, I love kids. I myself am just a slightly bigger kid. I can handle this.”

Nervous as you make your way to the park, hauling Sam behind you in a red wagon, you think that maybe you should call Josh and remind him of what to do. On cue, your phone starts to ring in your back pocket and you stop walking to keep your eyes on Sam as you answer.

“Hey babe, we’re almost there.”

“I thought you might be. Do me a favor?”

“What’s up?”

“Tell him I’m excited to meet him, and stop worrying. It’s gonna be great.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right. I’ll tell him. We’ll be there in a few.”

“See you soon, my love.”

Minutes later you’re rolling the wagon to a stop next to a red and blue bench and Sam is already bounding out of it and toward the slides. You know you don’t have to worry about him on the smaller ones but you hesitate to sit down, preferring to stand a little closer to the playground just in case. When a pair of hands come to rest on your shoulders, you grin as Josh leans into your ear and immediately asks where is he? Having seen hundreds of pictures and videos of Sam, he easily spots him amongst the few children begrudgingly taking turns going up and then coming down the slides when you point in their direction.

“Can I go, mama?”

He’s literally vibrating with excitement, you can feel it in his palms that have moved to hold onto your upper arms.

“Go ahead. Have fun!”

He presses a kiss to your cheek and then whispers against it, “I love you. Thank you.”

With that he leaves you, and you watch closely as your worlds are about to collide. Josh approaches the playground casually, and waits until Sam comes down the slide. Crouching down on one knee, he waves your baby over to him and the only part of the conversation you can overhear is the very start.

“Josh at the park!”

You smile as your vision clouds and you blink the tears away before they can fall.

When Sam reaches him, Josh smiles brightly. “Hey Sam, I’m Josh.”

“Mommy’s boyfwiend Josh.”

“That’s right, that’s me! It is sooooo nice to meet you, bud.”

“Nice to meet you bud.” Josh chuckles, remembering what you’ve said about how he repeats things in lieu of actually replying.

“Hey, Sam. Do you think I could play with you for a bit?”

“Play on the swide?”

“Yeah, can I go down the slide with you?”

“Go down the swide Josh! C’mon!” Sam reaches for Josh’s hand and grabs onto two fingers before tugging at it. Josh stands and let’s him “pull” him to the steps, looking back at you over his shoulder. His eyes find yours as you flick a stray tear away with your finger tips and smile. He uses his free hand to give you a thumbs up before he’s being pushed by the backs of his knees to climb steps.

You watch your son push your boyfriend up the tiny steps to go down the slide ahead of him. Josh is laughing when he comes down, the trip especially short for a grown man, even a rather small one. When he reaches the bottom, he turns and squats at the end of the slide, and you watch with fresh tears in your eyes as your baby lands in Josh’s arms. He’s wrapped up and lifted into them, smiles stretched across both of their faces and you can hear Josh’s raspy laughter mixing with Sam’s giggles that you love so much.

What you can’t hear, when Josh shifts Sam onto his hip and points in your direction, is Josh telling him, “Hey buddy, let’s go see your mommy real quick. She looks like she needs a big hug.”

Josh sets him down and he runs to you, arms wide open so you kneel to meet him with open arms of your own. Over his tiny shoulder, you watch Josh walk toward you both, hands shoved into the pockets of his pants and a soft grin on his lips.

“Mommy needed a big hug.”

You pull away to look at your son, his face so similar to your own, for which you’ve been grateful for the last almost four years. “Yeah baby, I did need a hug. You give the best hugs.”

“Are you sad?”

“Not at all, I’m very happy. Are you having fun on the slides?”

“Fun with Josh on the swide. Josh is fun!”

You look up at him, a man you’d completely underestimated, and find him swiping his fingers over his cheeks and grinning that sweet lopsided grin. Eyes still on Josh, you reply, “He is fun isn’t he? Go play some more sweetheart, I need to talk to Josh for a minute. Then we can go on the swings.”

“I go on the swings!” Sam repeats your words before bouncing away, past Josh and back to the slide.

Josh steps forward and offers his hand to pull you to your feet. “I told you it would be fine. He’s so great, Y/N, really.”

You keep his hand in yours and pull him to sit with you on the bench, with your eyes still focused in the direction of the playground. “He’s really special. I- um, his dad has never been in the picture. Didn’t want anything to do with either of us when I told him I was pregnant.”

Josh hasn’t ever asked for further information on Sam’s father. It was clear that he wasn’t involved, your mom and sometimes Nic being the only people you ever mention helping you with him, but this admission only further solidifies what he’d already been feeling. He squeezes the hand that’s clasped in his, his eyes also on your son. “I’m here. Look at me, just for a second.” You both pull your eyes from the playground to look into each other’s. “I love you. Don’t you think I can take care of you? Both of you?”

“I love you too… Josh this is a big thing you’re offering, I don’t think you understand how big. He’s… not yours. You don’t have to-“

“Hm, that’s where you’re wrong, my beautiful girl. My beautiful girl, you are mine to love and take care of, yeah?” He waits for you to confirm, which you do with a nod of your head. “Then he’s mine too.”

Hours later, after many trips down the slide, careful pushes on the swing and lots of baby giggles, Sam began yawning and showing Josh another side of himself. He’d gotten easily upset with another child over whose turn it was to scramble up the tiny climbing wall, and when you’d reminded him that he needs to share, he’d yelled a frustrated no in your face. You knew what needed to be done but Josh seemed to know as well, and he’d scooped Sam up into his arms.

“Hey buddy, I think it’s time to go home and chill out. Let’s go, what do you think?”

Rubbing his eyes, Sam had said, “What do you fink?”

“That’s what I thought you’d say. Let’s go home.”

“Josh go home too.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna take you home.”

He moved toward the bench, you thought he was going to place Sam down in the wagon but he grabbed the handle and started to pull it toward where his Jeep was parked.

“Josh you can’t drive us home.”

“Why’s that, flower?” You’d followed behind him as he reached the Jeep and unlocked it, swung the back passenger door open to reveal a car seat. You stood there, open-mouthed and wide-eyed as he turned to face you, Sam’s head rested on his shoulder. “I did the research, I know it’s the right one for his weight. I even drove to a fire station to make sure it was strapped in the right way. Did you know they do that? You wanna buckle him in? I’ve never done it before.”

Struck speechless, you’d taken your child from his arms and climbed up to buckle him in as Josh pulled the wagon around and stuffed it into the back of the Jeep. Once you were in the passenger seat and Josh had climbed in beside you, you’d told him he didn’t have to do all of this.

“I think that I did, babe.”

⏰

“Oh fuck, just like that baby, just like that.”

Josh growls in response and you can feel yourself clamp down around him. He feels it too and leans to the side to see your face, cheek pushed into his sheets, eyes squeezed shut and mouth hanging open.

“Like that?” He’s pumping his hips against your ass, one hand gripping it tight and the other wrapped around your hipbone. He delivers a sharp thrust that pushes your body forward but the sheen of sweat on your face keeps you stuck in place. “Pretty girl likes it a little rough?”

He knows that you do, sometimes, when the mood strikes. It had struck hard earlier in the night, and you’d practically tackled him the moment you heard his front door click behind you. His back had slammed against it as your body collided with his, a hand immediately sliding down his torso and lower to palm his cock over his jeans. You’d felt it begin to harden under your touch as your tongue slid against his, before you pulled off of his mouth to lick a wet stripe over the sharp angle of his jawline.

“Want you in my mouth, let me taste it.”

He’d groaned against the shell of your ear.

Not long after, he’d lifted you off your knees from the floor and thrown you over his shoulder, hauled you up to his bed and you’d torn the clothes from each other’s bodies.

Now, he’s fucking into you, eyes bouncing from the delicious view of himself retreating and disappearing into your pussy stretched around him, to the expanse of your back, the graceful curve of it arched below him. He hears you mumbling against the mattress, begging for harder and more, and as always he’s trying his best to give you whatever you need despite the bruises you might have on the backs of your thighs tomorrow.

“Christ, I can feel you baby, are you gonna cum for me?”

You’d snaked a hand between your body and the bed and you’re doing your best to swirl frantic circles over your clit, moaning in response to his question. He needs to feel you let go, he wants to flip you over so he can see your face when you do but you’re so close already. He can wait.

When it hits you, he slows his hips to work you through it slowly, drawing it out as long as he can. The way you’d yelped out his name and then continued to murmur it softly into the sheets let’s him know that it’s working. He’s not there yet, and when he feels your muscles relax around him he slips out of you and lets you sink to the mattress. Using his hands to encourage you to roll over, he soaks in the dopey smile on your face once you’re looking up at him.

“Did that feel nice, flower?” You nod your head lazily and reach for him, running your hands over the sticky skin over his ribs before wrapping your arms around his back. “Are you gonna let me back in? I’m not done with you yet.” You let your legs fall open wide, inviting him to settle between them. He slips back inside as he tucks his face into your neck, pressing his lips along the column of your throat. His hips start moving again, he’s really just rocking into you but it’s deep and persistent and you know that sometimes this is just exactly what he needs.

“Mm, I love you like this mama, so sweet and soft for me after you get what you want.”

“Lucky for you, I always get what I want.” He chuckles at that and nips at your neck.

“You do, don’t you? Aren’t I always so good for you?”

His question warms your cheeks and tugs at your heartstrings. He wants to hear your praise and you know him well enough to know that he’s probably about to surprise you with some other minor kink he’s been hiding. You’re correct of course, and you’re definitely surprised.

He pulls away from your neck to hover over you, pets a hand over the damp hair at your temple and settles his hold against the side of your head. He nudges the tip of his nose against yours before he pulls a gentle kiss from your lips. When he opens them again, his eyes are begging for the words.

“You’re so good Josh, always perfect for me.” It causes his hips to break their rhythm momentarily as he twitches inside you.

“Y/N?”

“Hm?”

His voice drops to a whisper. “Let me fill you up, give you another baby.”

Oh.

Your brain turns it over rapidly. It wasn’t a real discussion you’d had, but even though you’d gotten back on birth control months ago and you’ve been together for almost a year, you’ve been using condoms all this time. Unless you didn’t, in which case he’d never even asked, he just didn’t cross that boundary. He’d paint your body with his release and you’d welcome it.

“Please.” His voice sounds strangled now, he’s hanging on by a thread and begging again for a response, his eyes locked onto yours.

“You wanna be a daddy, Josh?”

He clamps his eyes shut for a moment, a deep groan rumbles through him. He liked that, that’s obvious but it’s not a confirmation. “I’m already a daddy, my love. A damn good one. But I wanna see you all round and glowing with my baby inside you.”

A soft moan passes your lips. This is working for you in a way you would never have expected, and you can tell by the way he’s trapped his bottom lip between his teeth that it’s working for him too.

“Do it, cum for me. Inside.”

“Yeah… m’gonna knock you up, pretty girl. Make you a mama again. Fuck-“ His hips push into you hard and you can feel him spilling deep inside you as his mouth crashes into yours. You let him inside you there too, connected everywhere that you possibly could be. He stays tucked inside after he cums, and you whisper love into each other’s ears as you run your fingers up and down his back and over his shoulder blades.

When he finally lifts himself from your chest, propped up and smiling down at you, he surprises you again.

“You and Sam should move in with me.”

⏰

Things were not always perfect, but they usually came pretty close.

Josh had to leave sometimes, which you’d always known, he’d traveled for weeks at a time over the years, sometimes months and while it was never particularly easy, you and Sam got along just fine at home alone. As you always have.

He would call often, as much as he possibly could, and over FaceTime he would tell you all about what’s gone wrong, what’s gone right, and how he wished you were there with him.

“Where’s my boy? Isn't it almost bedtime? Lemme talk to him.”

You called for your now six-year-old who came running into the room, sliding to a stop and jumping onto the couch.

“DAD!! Dad I lost a tooth today, look!” He stretches his lips into a wide grin, showing Josh that one of his front teeth is in fact missing. “Mom said I have a gap like yours.”

You’re stifling a laugh with your palm as Josh flashes his own gap-toothed grin.

“That’s awesome buddy, I heard the tooth fairy is giving out crisp hundred dollar bills for high quality teeth like that one. I hope she delivers.” Your eyes roll back in your head, knowing you’ll have to make that happen. Josh notoriously spoils this kid. “Hey, someone else wants to say hi real quick.”

Josh passes the phone off and you see both of his brothers squeezing together to fit on the screen at the same time. Sam squeals in delight as Uncle Jake and “Big Sam” tell him that they’d heard that front teeth were worth $200.

“Nice hair dude, you’re gonna look just like me soon!”

“No, he looks like me. His namesake.”

Little Sam had decided he wanted to grow his hair out, and you’d let him give it a go. In reality, it just makes him look even more like you but you’ve decided not to hurt their feelings. Which is why you also choose not to reveal the truth, that he’d told you he wanted long hair because “Uncle Jake is so cool, Mom.” Sorry, Sammy.

When Josh takes the phone back, he tells you both how much he loves and misses you, and tells Sam that he better be good because he’ll be home soon and if he’s not good, he won’t get any of the gifts that are packed in Josh’s luggage.

The reunions were sweeter after the two of you had moved into Josh’s house, just a couple months after he’d first floated the idea. He would come home, to your shared home to be greeted first by your little boy and you’d watch as Josh kneeled to the floor to envelop him in a crushing hug that would make them both laugh wildly. He would scoop your baby up as he stood, keep him propped on his hip as he made his way to where you stood. His other arm would circle your waist and he’d pull you in to press his lips to yours, and Sam would make exaggerated sounds of disgust until Josh delivered a kiss to his forehead.

“It’s good to be home. I missed you guys so much.”

⏰

“Hey Sam, can you come with me real quick? I need to talk to you about something.”

You lift an eyebrow in question that Josh ignores as he leaves the kitchen with Sam, who’s happy to abandon his homework at the dining table.

Up in Sam’s room, which used to be a second guest bedroom (why Josh needed a house so big when he lived by himself, you’ll never know), Josh sits on his bed and asks him to sit next to him.

“First of all, you need to clean this room. What the hell are you doing up here?” Sam gasps and then giggles. “Don’t tell your mom I cursed.”

“She’s gonna be mad if I don’t go finish my homework.”

“You’re right. And she’s right, she’s always right, don’t forget that.” Sam’s looking at him expectantly, waiting for whatever he needed to talk about. Josh takes a deep breath and Sam knows this is gonna be a long one, Dad talks a lot.

“Sam, I love your mom very much.”

“Duh.”

“Smart ass. Let me finish. I also love you very much, and I’m so lucky to be your dad. Incredibly lucky that she was willing to share you with me.” Sam knows that Josh is not his real dad, but it doesn’t matter to him. “You two are my whole world, you know that?”

Nodding his head, Sam’s hoping he’ll get to the point soon so he doesn’t get in trouble about the homework.

“I wanna ask your mom to marry me. But I wanted to make sure that was okay with you first.” Josh is chewing over his bottom lip nervously while Sam stays quiet.

“Does that mean you’d be my real dad?”

“Oh, buddy I’ll always be your dad. No matter what. But, we could make it more official, if that’s what you and your mom want.” He’s holding back tears that are burning his eyes as his son studies his face.

“Yeah that would be cool. I hope she says yes, you’re kind of a dork.” The tears spill over as Josh laughs loudly, totally and completely in love with the little boy in front of him.

Later that night, long after that pesky homework is completed and dinner has been eaten and dishes cleaned up, after having sent Sam off to bed at least an hour ago, Josh is leaned against the pillows scrolling on his phone. Waiting for you.

The bathroom light goes dark and he looks up to find you leaned against the doorframe of the en suite, draped in a short forest green robe that’s belted around your waist.

“Don’t you look lovely? You know green is my favorite color.”

“No kidding? How fortuitous that I bought a sexy little slip of satin in your favorite color. Who would’ve known?”

Blood is already rushing to his dick, your voice is low and seductive and having the exact effect you’d hoped for. The robe is for show however, and as you walk toward the bed your fingers pull the belt apart, allowing him a glimpse of the bare skin underneath.

“God I love you.”

“Mm, why don’t you show me how much?” As you reach the end of the bed, you let the satin slip over your shoulders and flutter to the ground.

He’d moved quickly to pull you in, limbs and heart tangled with yours, and he showed you how much he loved you, over and over again, leaving you both breathless and sweating, chests heaving as you rested your head against his.

Drawing soft circles over the shape of his muscles, he stopped the motion of your fingers to grasp your hand and bring it to his lips. When you lifted your gaze to his face, he knew anything he had planned wouldn’t compare to this moment

“Flower?” You hum in response, eyes not leaving his as his expression turns serious. “Baby, I want to adopt Sam.”

You push off of him to sit up and see him clearly, whispering, “Really?”

“Yeah. And I think he wants that too. I should’ve talked to you about it first but it sort of just… came up when we were talking earlier. Would you want that?”

You’re nodding your head enthusiastically before realization hits you and your smile slips. “Josh, I don't think you can if we’re not-“

“Married?” You’re nodding your head again, mouth turned down into a full frown. He sits up to lean into you, a hand coming up to wrap around the back of your neck and pull your lips to his and then rests his forehead against yours, as he so often does. “The thing is, more than anything really, I would love it if you’d marry me.”

Pulling away, eyes wide and jaw slack, you stare at him until he speaks again.

“Will you marry me, Y/N?”

There’s a ring hidden away, but the plan has been abandoned and he has nothing to offer you right now aside from himself.

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, absolutely yes.” You’re crawling into his lap, kissing over his face held in your hands and he’s laughing as your kiss lands on his lips.

When you pull away again, love swimming in both of your eyes, he says, "Thank god, Sam said you might say no because I'm a dork. Am I allowed to start grounding him now?

Taglist:

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#greta van fleet #gvf #greta van fleet fic #greta van fleet fan fiction #gvf fic #greta van fleet smut #gvf smut #gvf fanfiction #gvf fan fiction #gvf fluff #josh kiszka fic #josh kiszka #josh gvf

[heliza24]

Being a physically disabled Dimension 20 fan breaks my heart sometimes

I’ve been thinking about this since last Wednesday’s episode when we finally got a real scene with Lydia, one of the few physically disabled characters in the entire canon of the show. It was nice, but it was really just a lore dump. An excuse for exposition. A moment for Kristen to look good by expending sympathy/pity. (I’m a little frustrated about how that interaction went down. Extending the help action was nice but patronizingly touching the neck of a full-ass adult without consent was not. It was weird and not something she would have done to a nondisabled character).

I have watched almost all of D20 (still missing a couple of seasons) and as far as I know here’s where our list of canon physically disabled characters stand: Lydia Barkrock, Jan de la Vega (who feels pretty problematic to me, maybe more on that in a later post), one of the Dwarven statues in the temple in The Seven (who is not given the dignity of being brought to life like Asha), and Pete’s coworker in TUC2 who is in exactly one episode and is so unimportant I have forgotten his name. I guess you could make an argument that Gunny is disabled, but I don't feel that Lou or Brennan really talk about him or play him through that lens. So in terms of canon physically disabled PCs-- that leaves us with 0.

We do a bit better with neurodivergent characters and characters with mental health problems; Ayda (my beloved) is very well developed and Adaine is a PC. There have been some openly neurodivergent players, like Omar and Surena, whose characters also read ND to me. But that isn’t labeled or discussed in canon, so it's hard for me to know where to class that. I am going to focus the rest of this post on physical disabilities, since that is my area of lived experience. If another fan wants to write about their perspective of neurodivergence rep in the show, I would love to hear that, and will happily amplify.

There has never been a character with a sensory disability or a limb difference or a chronic illness (not a fantasy one, a real one) on Dimension 20. The only NPCs we have are nondescript, similar wheelchair users. And there has never been a physically disabled player at the table. On the flagship show of Dropout, a company founded on diversity and inclusion. It feels extremely pointed to me.

In fact as far as I can tell there has only been one (1) physically disabled performer on any of Dropout’s shows. (Shout out to Brett, you were great on Dirty Laundry.) Obviously I haven’t seen every episode of everything they have produced. If I have missed someone, please do let me know in the comments/reblogs. But it’s a problem. And Sam Reich even agreed with this criticism when I asked him directly about.

I do really hope they’re working on it, as Sam says. But why has it taken so long?

Dimension 20 has had trans and nonbinary and queer players. It has had players of many different races. I’m not saying that the diversity here is perfect; there should always be more POC in the dome, more queer people. We should keep pushing for that. (And we should also push for performers at the intersections of these identities!) But we’ve seen the ways this diversity has expanded and improved the different seasons, because diverse players create sensitively drawn, diverse player characters. They add details to their PC’s experiences that make them feel rich and alive. I’m thinking about each of Ally’s PC’s incredible capital G gender and Aabria “all my characters (even the stoats) are Black” and how excellent they all are. D20 would not be the show it is without this input.

And yet. And yet.

There are 1,000 interesting and complicated themes to explore around disability. Dealing with access. Dealing with ableism. Dealing with compassion and community care. Dealing with none of it and just being a cool fantasy or sci fi character that happens to be disabled. We don’t get any of it.

I watch my favorite show and I see myself in the ace rep and the female characters. But I don’t see all of me. I see a silent but ever present message: you aren’t quite welcome here.

I have this fantasy that I play in my brain sometimes that someday I’ll get to talk to Brennan in person, like maybe if I buy a VIP ticket and risk Covid to go to a live show or we run into each other on the street or something. I am able to look him in the eye and articulate why he NEEDS to include a physically disabled player in an upcoming season. I reference the ways he’s talked about inclusion and writing diversely on Adventuring Party. Maybe I hand him a handwritten letter, or hell, a printout of this post. And because he really cares about diversity and his shows and his fans he would listen to me, and cast a physically disabled performer in the next season.

But I think that might be giving that nondisabled man (whose work I adore, who I respect so much) too much credit. Because he’s had Jennifer Kretchmer, a physically disabled actual play performer, on adventuring academy to talk about access in gaming. He’s hired disability consultants. He knows about physically disabled people, enough to give us shoutouts as inconsequential npcs. And he still hasn’t thought to include us at the table. In over 20 seasons. None of that other stuff matters if we aren't given a seat at the story telling table, and the agency to craft our own narratives equal to other participants in the game.

When Lydia was telling her story in the last episode, I kept wishing for a prequel, where she is more than a plot delivery device and a kind but unimportant parent. I want to know about her adventures with her adventuring party. I want to see a talented, wheelchair-using actor play out the scene when she decides to put the gem in her chest. I want to hear about what happened after. I want to know how she survived. I want it so badly it hurts.

I am in the process of trying to find new indie actual plays that feature more disabled talent. I am learning how to GM myself so I can tell these kinds of stories. But it’s not the same as being a fan of something. Sometimes I don’t want to have to make my own representation. Sometimes I just want to turn on my favorite tv show, the one that I have cosplayed from and written metas about and loved whole heartedly, and see myself included.

If you’re another disabled or neurodivergent fan I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. If you’re not, I’d love for you to reblog this. I would love for the absence of physical disability in this show to be a topic of fandom conversation, at the very least.

#dimension 20 #d20 #my crip media reviews #being a fan is hard sometimes #and being disabled means you get left out of “diversity” all the time #I love this show so much it hurts #I wish it could love me back a little bit more #fantasy high junior year #fantasy high #my meta #dropout #dropout tv #Sam reich

[joyfuladorable]

Any headcanons about peni and miles and Gwen.

A few!

I have a fondness for young characters who end up gaining a bunch of surrogate older siblings, so Peni now holds that honor as well!

I think the events that (further) traumatized Peni are the incident with Addy Brock and VE#m and the death of her Aunt May. The comic issue didn’t really have the time to dig into that, but I’d love if Spider-Verse changes it so that Addy and Peni get to be friends before the disaster with VE#m happens. And then after all that, it’d be like the end of that story where she’s talking with her Uncle Ben before Spider-Ham portals to her to invite her into the Society.

At some point she learns about Canon Events and is Devastated. Like, she really Couldn’t have saved her aunt and Addy even if she’d Tried? Her dad was Meant to Die?? She gets comfort from the older Spideys; but I think especially Gwen, who’s absolutely avoiding thinking about her own dad and what him being a Police Captain means. Once things have (hopefully) settled in Beyond, I like to imagine Miles also gaining the older sibling status.

Anyways, headcanons!!

- Peni Canonically Loves Music, even going so far as playing it while she fights crime, so her and Gwen and Miles (and obviously Hobie and Pavitr and Margo) enthusiastically share their musical tastes with each other

- In the same vein, I just want them to hangout as friends so they have like weekly game nights sharing different card and board games and Pavitr keeps trying to convince everyone to let him run a ttrpg he really likes

- Peni and Margo figure out how to make inter-dimensional Wi-Fi so the teens also play MMOs together even when they’re in their respective universes

- Peni watches Hobie and Gwen play a gig and is enamored by the drums so she asks Gwen to teach her and oh Wow what a great outlet she should’ve tried this Sooner (please imagine Spider hanging from a cymbal as Peni plays and doing that cartoon zaggy vibration whenever it’s hit)

- Lots of hopping between each other’s universes cuz I want them to spend even More time together and have like cultural exchanges and stuff

- When Peni eventually divulges how she got her powers and what happened to her dad and the whole Oscorp technically being her employer thing, the protective older siblings instincts come out and one day her Uncle Ben looks up from his work to see his niece flanked by several angry looking teens

- I know this is supposed to be a Peni Gwen Miles friendship dynamic ask but Peni would get along so well with the other teens like if you’ve seen Peni’s room in the comics she’s a big fan of punk rock and would absolutely be besties with Hobie. Then there’s Pavitr and their sunshine personalities would elevate each other! And, as I’ve mentioned before Peni and Margo are Tech Buddies!!!

- A sign of trust from Peni is if she lets you hold Spider. A high honor! Miles doesn’t get it when she just drops em on his shoulder one day when she goes to do something, so when Gwen tells him he tears up a little bit (a lotta bit)

- okay, and finally, if you’ve read the Spider-Verse Unlimited: Infinity story with Peni, you know she wants to be Normal very Badly and does the usual awkward kid thing of trying to fit in with the Popular Kids’ interests while keeping her secret identity safe during the inevitable calls to hero duty interrupting her time with friends. She doesn’t have to do that with her Spidey buds/siblings!! An alert of trouble while hanging with them means some epic team-up fights!!! Chosen family, My Beloved…

#spiderverse #atsv #across the spiderverse #still spoilers I think so #atsv spoilers #across the spider verse spoilers #peni parker #not tagging the other kids since this is Peni-centric #took me a bit to answer cuz I work a full-time job lol #sea rambles

[literallyjustanerd]

Tease (Fives X Fem!Reader)

You're a student at Coruscant U. The boys of the 501st are guest speakers for a class on galactic politics. But one particular ARC trooper gets more than he bargains for when he starts checking you out...

My first time attempting anything close to smut, hope y'all enjoy! Lmk if it's good enough that you'd want a continuation ;) This also may be partially inspired by a dream i had oops

Words: 1.9k

Warnings: eye-fucking, teasing, showing off, making out, hints of both dom reader and dom Fives, suggestive ending

Rating: 18+ (minors DNI please)

Credit for the Fives divider to @freesia-writes with helmet art by @lornaka !

You have to stifle a yawn as you settle into your desk, stretching out heavy limbs. Your last lecture after a long day of classes. Galactic Relations and Conflict wasn’t really relevant to your major- you’d picked the elective on a whim, but it had proven to be your most interesting class this semester by far. Today promised to be no different: your lecturer had pulled some strings and arranged for some pretty interesting guest speakers.

You hear them before you see them: boisterous laughter echoing down the hallways. Then, the boys in blue file through the door. The one in front corrals the others into order as they come to stand at attention at the back of the hall. Five in total- two ARC troopers, two lieutenants and their Commanding Officer. Armour proudly polished where it isn’t scuffed or dented, painted helmets slung under their arms. Two things hit you in quick succession as your eyes cross the five identical faces. One: these clones are nothing like the carbon copies you’ve seen on your holoscreen. As alike as they look under their haircuts and tattoos, they’re individuals, plain as day, from how they style themselves to the way they stand and speak. Two: one of them is looking your way.

There’s a cool confidence in his demeanour, an effortless assurance to his movements, and he’s not at all embarrassed to be caught looking: though he’s still in conversation with the others, his eyes don’t waver from yours for a moment. It gives you ample time to take in the view, and what a view it is. The angle of his brow highlights the tattoo at his temple, and from there you follow the sharp cut of his jaw down to the well-kept goatee at his chin, up to the inviting curve of his mouth. Solid, square shoulders shift when he laughs at something another clone says. There’s a stray curl falling over his forehead you want to tangle in your fingers. You fight the urge to bite your lip as your eyes venture lower, sweeping down a broad, thick chest to his deliberately cocked hip. You force yourself to look away. Can’t be caught ogling the trooper, like the self-proclaimed “bucket fuckers” you see on your social media feed, lining up at 79s every weekend. You’re not that desperate. Subconsciously, though, you realise you’ve straightened in your seat, pulled your shoulders back. You’re even toying with your hair. 

You cringe internally, chastising yourself for looking so eager. Calm down, you think, it probably doesn’t even mean anything that he’s looking. The lecture isn’t due to start for another ten minutes, and among the smattering of early students, you’re the only one in the front row. He’s just getting a look at his audience. But when you chance another look up at the ARC trooper, you find his gaze still locked onto you, even as the clone beside him continues to speak. Cockiness is a trait you usually find irritating. But much to your dismay, instead of scoffing when he arches his brow and quirks his mouth in your direction, you feel your pulse quicken and your skin heat.

He winks, and your mind is made up in an instant, caution thrown to the wind. It’s been too long since you’ve taken a break from your studies and had this kind of fun. If he wants to play the game, you’ll play. And you’re not going down without a fight.

You bring your eyes back down to your desk and pretend to be deeply focused on laying out your datapad for taking notes. Hot as blaster fire, his gaze still burns on you, but you refuse to give in. You’re no stranger to this dance, and you’ve gotten pretty good at it, even if you do say so yourself. Your lecturer enters soon after and begins the talk, introducing your guests. You get your first taste of the ARC trooper’s deep, gravelly voice when he steps forward in turn, as well as his name. Fives. It loops in your mind as you wrap your lips around it, trying it out. As Captain Rex takes the podium, you make your first move. Slowly, deliberately, you cross one leg over the other, and lean your elbows on your desk, shoulders pulled proudly back. The stars must have aligned for you this morning: you’d picked one of your lower cut shirts, and it frames your cleavage perfectly. A few carefully counted seconds later, you tilt your head away from the podium back to Fives.

Oh, yeah. You’ve got him. 

He’s looking. He’s staring. His gaze has darkened, intensified. When his eyes roam down low and creep back up, you feel it like it’s his fingers on your skin. Your body warms under the stare, liquid heat pouring over you, pooling at the top of your thighs. Not wanting to seem too self-satisfied, you allow yourself a small, restrained smirk. A twitch of your eyebrow, just to gloat. Such a small gesture, but it lights a fire in Fives’ eyes. You’re enjoying the game, but you want to stretch it out, so you leave him hanging, and go back to listening to Captain Rex, your stylus working across your datapad, dutifully taking notes like you’d been paying attention the whole time.

You don’t let up on Fives, though. As his brothers each take their turn to answer questions from the cohort, you pull out every trick up your sleeve. Mussing your hair, adjusting your top. You swear you see his upper lip twitch into a growl when you shift your legs, gliding one foot up and down your calf. He has his arms folded now, the end of a thumb jammed into his mouth, chewing on the tip in a way that makes you hungry to replace that thumb with your lips. He makes no attempt to hide his want: he’s undressing you with his eyes, and you’re quickly getting drunk on the power. The killing blow comes when Fives has to wrench his attention from you long enough to take his turn at the stand. You can see him struggling to keep his focus on the rest of the lecture hall and away from you. At first, you feign innocence, letting up the act for a few short minutes, playing nice, giving him a reprieve. And in truth, it’s not hard to actually stop and listen to his words: he speaks with confidence, cracks a few corny but endearing jokes, and answers the audience’s questions with a thoughtfulness and insight that catches you off guard. Shit, you think, swallowing down the flutter in your chest, he might have the edge on you. 

But in the end, he will get no mercy from you. The third time he gives in and glances in your direction, he finds you with your stylus poised at the corner of your mouth. Your pulse throbbing, you grind your thighs together, making a show of it. Your tongue darts out for just a moment and, soft and delicate, you press the stylus past your lips, teasing the tip. The effect is instant. Fives chokes on his last word, stifling a groan that quickly turns into a string of coughs. His eyes are blown wide, his cheeks several shades darker as he tries to regain his composure and remember what he had been saying. 

You win.

You back off for the rest of the lecture, content to enjoy the feeling of his eyes on you and the playful glances you exchange from the moment he leaves the podium. He takes your little trick in stride, and even gives back what he gets, a sway in his hips as he walks back to rejoin the other clones, taking it slow to give you ample time to enjoy the view from behind. All too quickly, though, the talk ends, and so does your fun. You shoot Fives one last wink as he and his brothers leave the hall, and he fixes you with a cutting smile that’s equal parts charming and dangerous. You gather your things and leave with the other students, with full intention of returning to your apartment to take care of the ache between your legs alone. The memory of Fives’ gaze lingers on your skin, drawing an involuntary shudder. 

The train home is going to be torture.

But you don’t make it to the station. You don’t even make it off campus. You’re rounding the corner away from the lecture hall when you hear him. He clears his throat, and your nerves thrill when you turn to see Fives leaning heavy against the wall, one hand propped on the inviting curve of his hip. The pathway he stands in is seldom-used, small and quiet, and the shadows from the towering buildings throw his face into shadow. His voice is pitched low when he speaks, thick and sweet, dripping like syrup.

“Quite a show you just put on,” he purrs, and the words go straight to your cunt. “What’s your name, gorgeous?” You give him your answer, careful to keep your voice in check while the rest of you quivers with anticipation. Fives repeats it, the sound rolling heavily off his tongue.

“Thought this gig was going to be boring,” he muses, “you certainly proved me wrong. Thought it would only be polite to return the favour. Show my… appreciation?”

The curling grin on your face is all the answer he needs: a thick hand on your waist pulls you into the alleyway, cold brick at your back and hot breath on your neck. You’re trapped in an instant, bracketed by his arms on either side. His lips hover an agonising inch from your skin, sparks of honey-sweet electricity dancing along your shoulders and down your spine.

His body is still angled away from yours, yet the tiny, twitching roll of his hips draws an answering thrust from you all the same. The lack of friction tears a tiny groan of frustration from your throat before you can stop it, and Fives’ chest rumbles with his answering chuckle. The end of your rope dangles so close. It would be so easy to just give in and let him win. Your defences weaken further when the warmth against your throat sharpens, searing breath giving way to the scorching wet heat of his lips at the top of your jaw. The dizzying thrill of finally feeling him against you is what gives you the strength to regain control. A firm hand at his cheek shifts his mouth away from your ear and onto your lips, kissing him hard and merciless. He moans when your fingers dip low to scratch teasingly through his goatee, and the sound sets your every nerve singing symphonies. In an instant you know you’d do anything to hear that sound again, to feel the high of him melting under your touch. With dwindling patience you reach out, grabbing at the belt of his armour and trying to pull him flush against you. He resists, breaking your kiss just barely and tutting against your lips.

“No need to rush, mesh’la,” he taunts, settling a warm, gloved hand on the swell of your hip. He’s firm but gentle, coaxing you back into the wall with just enough pressure to tease you. You recognise the Mando’a, though you can’t quite place its meaning. You find you don’t much care- not when Fives is kneading at your waist and mouthing at your collarbone. 

“We’ve got plenty of time Besides…” With one fluid movement, he forces your legs apart, pressing one thick thigh between your own. It's your turn to moan, trying to shift your hips, though Fives' grip keeps you maddeningly still. ”You gave me a whole lot of grief back there. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

You swallow thickly, the shifting column of your throat catching against Fives’ teeth and making you gasp. This one might be harder to win than you thought. A devilish grin slides onto your lips.

You still won’t go down without a fight.

#fives x reader #fives x you #clone thirsting #clone thots #sw tcw fanfic #arc trooper fives #x reader #reader insert #sw tcw #drabble #fem reader #fives smut

[allzelemonz]

Explore: Bill Williamson X Male Reader

Pronouns: he/him, Reader is referred to as ‘hustler’ which is a term used by male prostitutes Physical Sex: AMAB Rating: E/Smut Warnings: Bill is cute when he’s pining, incredibly gay and closeted Bill, prostitution, Top Bill and bottom Reader, Reader is an experienced prostitute, references to period typical homophobia, mentions of past sexual experiences, exploring sexuality and preferences, not his first time but it might as well be, teaching/learning about sex, anal fingering, anal sex, Summary: Bill finally has the courage to seek out another man and you’re happy to show him a good time.

Men like you are rare, you only know of one other. Being an insider makes it a little easier, you’ve been here long enough that you consider the women sharing your space and occupation to be family. They’ve defended you when the law comes asking, saying you’re one of their brothers or cousins just making sure they’re safe, then they’ll turn their tricks with the law and they stop asking around. They’ve helped cover for you when getting hotel rooms for your own johns, keeping your identities safe when the rooms at the saloon are full. It’s a calculated business, one you couldn’t do without this little family of whores. It was the mother figure, the oldest of the girls, that helped you learn how to be as careful as you are now. She was the first to call you a hustler, a term she’d heard a man like you use so he wasn’t so obvious. She taught you how to tell if men were interested, if they were inclined to you or one of the sisters. You all help each other, reading all of the signs and working to make money in a profession you all find to be very noble.

That’s why one of the sisters introduces him to you. It’s nothing abnormal. The girls will play the floor, finding a john they think wants a nice night. They’ll flirt and laugh, offering their services when the time is right. But sometimes they pick up on certain clues, men that shy away or seem far too disinterested, sometimes they even look at you. The girls will smile and ask if they’d be interested in a friend of theirs. If they’re sure, then you get an easy john. If not, you fish on your own.

But, tonight, they bring you someone different from the norm. Most men that come to you are either very old or just old enough to be considered at all. Most men that come to you are clean shaven, maybe a little rich, maybe escaping a wife they’ve never enjoyed. This one is very different. He’s broad shouldered with a heavy beard on his face and the distinct look of living rough covers every inch of him. Still, as one of the girls leads him over to you, he looks like a nervous animal. His face is red beneath his beard as if he’s unsure of himself. You can guess his story easily, it’s nothing new. He’s never been with a man, only looked and longed. He’s finally worked up the courage and when he talks to you he will either follow you shyly or run away.

She lets go of his arm and joins you, leaning against the wall with a smile on your face. “Bill, this is my friend. I think he might be more suited for ya.”

The john, Bill, looks up at you and his eyes dart the way most first timers’ do. He looks at your face, then below the waist, then to the side. He looks older than he must be, his eyes have some youth in them from what you can catch. Reading johns is important, especially when you’re outing yourself every time you try to make money. Plenty of men have attacked you for who you are once you’re alone, plenty of them have been stabbed by the knife you keep on you for that very reason. You note that this john has a gun, most do, but the way he stands gives you the sense that it’s always on his hip.

“Hello, Bill.” You say, light and calm with a smile.

He meets your eyes for a moment before glancing away again. “H-Hello.”

“So.” You glance at the girl that brought him over and she takes the hint to leave. “You, uh, looking for a nice night?”

Bill shuffles on his feet and rubs the back of his neck. “I-I ain’t so sure about all that.”

You nod. “That’s alright. I’m here for whatever you want.” After a beat of silence it’s clear he doesn’t know what to say. “How about we go upstairs and talk? Just talk.”

He glances over you again, just your face and chest this time. Then he nods. You give him an attempt at a reassuring smile and start towards the stairs. The girls point you to an empty room as Bill sheepishly follows you with his head dipped down to hide his face with his hat. You open the door for him and close it once you’re both inside, locking it as usual. Bill stands awkwardly in the middle of the room, looking everywhere but at you. Usually you’d want to get paid before anything, but with men like Bill it’s important to make them comfortable. The shy ones are always the type to pay, compliment, and tip all in one. It’s not like you get johns too often anyway, you don’t mind taking your time because a lot of guys that you treat nice come back and it’s much easier than guessing which men might be interested.

“You have any interesting stories?” You ask, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Anything interesting you’ve done?”

Bill snorts a laugh. “Sure I do.”

He seems a little at ease in the privacy of the room, not comfortable by any means, just less on guard. Most men are, they don’t have to hide from you like they do every other man in the building.

“Tell me.”

Bill licks his lips. “Well, uh, when I was in the army we had these boys that’d go around and, uh-” He stops himself as he joins you, sitting as far away as he can on the bed. He swallows his nerves and glances around as he finds his place again. “These boys that went around playin’ jokes. Colonel didn’t like that, captain didn’t mind but the colonel hated it.”

“What kind of jokes?”

Bill smiles, reliving the memories. “They was runnin’ around and putin’ syrup on whatever uniforms they’d find lyin’ around.”

“Syrup?”

Bill laughs. “Anything sticky, just ta annoy folk.”

You smile along with his laugh, putting on that slight flirtatious attitude you try to have with johns. “So you were in the army?”

“Cavalry.” Bill nods.

“Did you like it?”

You’ve had johns that were military before. Most of them were gruff old men that realized things about themselves a little too late. Bill seems different. Uncertain about his desires, but he has enough of an inkling for his eyes to wander over your body when he talks.

“Sure.” He says, nodding. “I suppose.”

He seems nervous again, so you change the subject. “What do you do now?”

“Oh.” He chuckles lightly, shaking his head. “Ya don’t wanna know about all a’ that.”

“Sure I do, you seem like an interesting man.”

Bill’s face goes red again and he looks down, flattered by the slightest compliment. “I ain’t so interestin’. Yer just saying that ‘cause ya have ta.”

You smile. “I don’t have to do anything. I liked your story, that’s all.”

Bill glances up, then right back down as he clears his throat. “How, uh, how does all this work?”

“You’ve never done this before?” You ask, wanting to make sure his experiences align with your guessing.

He shakes his head. “Well, I-I tried. A couple girls, but I never got that far.” He pauses for a moment as his fist grips at the blanket. “There was a feller a few years ago. He robbed me blind afterwards.”

“Well, I’m not gonna rob you.” You say, softly, not wanting to put any pressure or influence on his decisions. “You just tell me what you’d like to do and we’ll do it.”

Bill shuffles in his seat. “Anything?”

“Generally.” You say. “There’s some things I’ll say no to, but I don’t think they’ll be a problem.”

“Can I kiss ya?” Bill asks, faster than he’s talked all night.

You nod. “Of course you can.”

His eyes light up, but his expression is still nervous. He wants this, but he has that hesitation so many men do. The uncertainty forced on them by society that nags them into believing what they want is wrong. You scoot a little closer to him, making it easy. He leans in, keeping his eyes on yours this time until they close as your lips connect. It’s barely a touch, like the feeling of a wind. Then he must feel it, the desire that pushes past the expectations of a man that looks like him, because he leans in more and actually moves his lips against yours.

His beard scratches against you as he grows in confidence, finding a familiar rhythm. His hand moves to rest on your knee, then he slowly moves to lay you back against the bed. His lips don’t leave yours as he positions himself over you, but he stops when his lower half brushes against you.

“It’s alright.” You assure him, a hand slowly reaching to remove his hat. “You do what you want, I’ll let you know if anything’s wrong.”

Your hand goes to his hair, smoothing it down as you try to reassure him. He takes it, leaning back down to kiss you again and his hands move to work on getting rid of your shirt. You help him where he needs, letting him toss the shirt away. He looks down at your chest as his hands run over it, feeling over your pecs and down your stomach then back up. His breath hitches as he does it and he’s not really breathing, just admiring the fact that he’s running his hands over another man’s bare skin. Then he seems to come-to, unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it aside as well. You follow now that he seems sure of himself and what he wants, ridding yourself of clothes as he does until you’re both bare.

His eyes move over every inch of you, processing what he sees with a now obvious consequence out in the open. His hands run over your thighs, feeling the warmth as they travel closer to your own obvious arousal. He looks up at you and you give him a nod and a smile, telling him it’s okay to continue. So he takes you in his hand and feels the weight against his palm. His thumb runs over your tip, spreading the pre-cum and it makes you hiss slightly. Bill’s other hand feels at your balls, just running his fingers over your sack and massaging lightly. His wonder as he explores your body isn’t overly unique, men that haven’t done this before often want to touch because they’ve never gotten to feel another man this intimately before. It’s one of the perks.

You can’t help when you buck into his hand as he squeezes you, needing to feel friction. Bill looks up at you and your gaze meets his with a look that makes his mouth go dry. He leans back over you and kisses you and on hand stays to jerk you slowly while the other finds your hair. You press against him, kissing him back and meeting the motions of his hand.

Then he stops, pulling away just and sitting back on his knees. “I, uh, I ain’t sure how ta do the uh…” He gestures downwards.

“Prepping?” You ask.

He nods. “I-I know it hurts if ya don’t do it, I just ain’t sure how.”

“Do you want me to do it or do you want me to walk you through it?”

Bill looks away for a moment as the red on his face comes over his ears too. “I-I wanna learn.”

You take the hand he had near your hair and he watches as you take a few of his fingers in your mouth. His mouth drops open as he watches you and you can tell his dick is doing the thinking as his eyes keep steady on your mouth. You coat his fingers in spit with a skill acquired long ago, then you bring his hand downwards.

“Feel around, it’s not hard to find.” You instruct, voice soft so as not to freak him out in this new situation.

Bill blinks, trying to think clearly as he runs his hand between your thighs until he feels the right spot.

“One at a time, go slow.”

Bill slowly pushes a finger inside of you and you lift your hips with him to give him a better angle. He moves the lone finger around slowly, then he adds another.

“You want to make room for yourself, so spread them out and stretch the muscles.” You say, keeping your voice as steady and clear as you can with Bill’s large fingers inside of you.

Bill follows your instructions, spreading his fingers apart as he rotates them. He thinks of his size, making sure to spread his fingers wide and ensuring you’re stretched until he’s not nervous about hurting you so much.

“Okay.” You say, breath taking up most of your voice. “Okay, that’s good, Bill.”

“S-So I can, uh…”

You nod. “Go on. It’s okay. Just make sure you get some spit on yourself too, it makes it easier.”

Bill nods as he removes his fingers. He spits into his hand and runs the liquid over himself, spreading the pre-cum as well. He feels slick, he thinks, so he aligns himself. You help him, raising your hips so he can come closer and properly have access. He looks at you one more time and you give him a nod, encouraging him. He takes your hips in his hands as he pushes into you, slowly, careful to watch your face for signs of pain. It’s mostly easy, the stretch nothing too new to you, allowing you to relax in the pleasure of the friction inside of you. Bill fully sets himself inside, his balls flush against your skin and his breathing heavy.

You relax into the bed as he moves, letting him explore the feeling for a bit. Bill moves slowly, grinding and circling to figure out what feels good. The men he’s slept with before took control, he’s never had the time to figure out exactly what he likes.

“What was yer name?” He asks, stopping his movements when he realized he never learned it.

You tell him and he repeats it before he starts a solid pace. You let him settle into it before you move with him, earning a groan when you do. Bill’s pace turns faster and you can feel the ache more and more, but he beats you to it as he wraps his hand around your dick and pumps it as best he can in time with his thrusts. You focus on moving with him, trying to get him off because you can feel your own end coming. Bill does cum first, his thrusts faltering but his hand keeps strong long enough for you to follow him. Your eyes find Bill in time to watch as he pulls out of you and leans forward to kiss you again.

It’s heavy, full of a lot of emotion, and unmistakably more than just a kiss. Not just from Bill, partly from you too. It’s not unheard of, johns falling for their hustlers, but the other way around is much less common. Something about Bill has you though. Not just the sex, his demeanor, his seemingly caring nature, his enthusiasm. So you let your hands tangle in his hair as you enjoy the kiss. It lasts for a long time, Bill not wanting to pull away because he knows it’s supposed to be over now. But he does, once his lips hurt and his jaw aches, he pulls away just an inch and rests his forehead against yours as you both catch your breath.

Silently, unconsciously, he nuzzles against your cheek. It makes your heart skip and you press a kiss to his cheek. You’ve never been so affectionate with a john before, but you’re feeling things with Bill. So when he falls onto the bed next to you, you curl into him and rest your head on his chest. He watches you, face red and heart skipping as he puts an arm around you.

#red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #red dead redemption x reader #bill williamson #bill williamson x reader #bill williamson x male reader #red dead redemption x male reader #x reader #x male reader

[robinnsblog]

✨Who did it?✨

Or, as an alternate title:

I can’t believe I have to play Devil’s Advocate for Ozzy…

Yes, your honor, he did haunt Elise until she passed away, ruined Roman’s life as collateral, sort of kidnapped Henri and almost murdered Goldia. I can’t deny that he is, in fact, the main villain in Pocket Mirror and sole responsible for the events in that game.

However!

In Little Goody Two Shoes, he isn’t the only schemer behind the scenes. Our second player is Walpurga — and I don’t think we’re giving her enough credit. It’s easy to misjudge her as a secondary threat in Elise’s path when, actually, she’s the main instigator.

I dare to say that she’s even the one to start it all, the one who led Elise to her eventual downfall! Ozzy just took the merit after she was out of the picture.

But before I go through the events of the game, let’s review what some characters have to say, in special when it comes to the lore. We’re going to be judging…

… their credibility.

Our dear Rozenmarine here is talking about Ozzy by the way, and we have already established that he is, in no shape or form, a benevolent entity. Nonetheless, she’s the most truthful character towards Elise: she even warns her of the heavy price she’ll have to pay for her wish. Not even Walpurga, who is the first one to mention all of this information, alludes to such a thing; in fact, she even outright lies about it when she says that the Gifts will be “all that’s requested in return”.

The other character that gives the most exposition is Father Hans, and like Rozenmarine and Walpurga before him, we have to take his words and judgement with a grain of salt — in special when it comes to Walpurga and her sanctification.

Case in point: if a witch is a human woman and Walpurga is the consciousness of the woodland surrounding Kieferberg, can we truly call Walpurga a witch? Or is a human woman a forest now?

Despite the flaws in his logic, Father Hans doesn’t question much the nature of what he’s trying to summon and when he does, briefly worrying about the possibility of Walpurga being a demonic entity masquerading as a witch, he foolishly believes he’ll be able to take care of it. If you’re aware of one of the endings, you know how well that went.

His judgement, therefore, cannot be trusted.

On one hand, the demons themselves refer to Walpurga as a witch as well — and it’s likely they know more about this than our two faced priest. On the other, they also don’t hide their contempt by calling her creature and wretched thing, so it’s just as probable they’re insulting her and refusing to respect her as a fellow “patron saint”.

Meanwhile, in one bad ending, Rozenmarine is way more respectful and names her “old god”…

Either way, my previous statement about Father Hans still stands. However, does that make the demons a more trustworthy source of information? Several characters —mostly Golden Maidens and Walpurga, who has ulterior motives— disuade Elise from listening to them, and to tell the truth, they don’t reveal much about themselves or their reasons to not raise suspicion. In a twist of irony though, they do reveal the deceit of others more than being deceitful themselves: it’s Murim who points out Walpurga disguising herself as Rozenmarine and being the actual culprit behind the horses and Apfel’s disappearance, after all. And it’s also Ozzy who lets Elise know that Walpurga had been misleading her from the very start — although far too late, at the very end: “You’re yet to pay for what you truly desire! That witch made you think otherwise, did she?”

In conclusion, we can’t take what they say at face value — or at least, not all of it. Still, they do offer important insight into the lore if you know who and what to believe.

An interesting bit I want to highlight and that gives a different interpretation of the game is related to Walpurga’s true identity: if she isn’t a witch, but a being similar to Ozzy and his Marquises, her inactivity during the 18 years Elise was alive could be linked to the need of a witch of her own, since they act as a sort of medium between realms.

Although that raises the question: who could be Walpurga’s witch? Let’s review the story from the beginning first.

Around the time of Elise’s birth, in a far away place, Rozenmarine and her dreams of fate were born as well, while one of the last remnants of Walpurga’s cult was being burnt at the stake — that, instead of Elise being conceived, might have been what truly weakened Walpurga.

Later, during their pilgrimage, her granny taught Rozenmarine everything she knew, including Ozzy’s folk tale. Like His name being lost to time, the reason his story was spread about in Rozenmarine’s coven could also had been forgotten; Elise did mention it sounded like a cautionary tale and perhaps, it originally had been — do demons like competition, I wonder.

As previously said, Elise’s genesis had fascinated Walpurga. She wanted back what was taken from her and also recreate what Ozzy had done that day to no avail. No matter how much that ate at her, in 18 years, she didn’t target Elise yet.

Not even Father Hans, perturbed by Granny Holle’s dead bed confession 10 years ago, acted upon his suspicions until both demons and Walpurga made themselves known in town. Or maybe he did, if Elise saying she felt ostracized after her granny passed away is anything to go by.

It’s when Rozenmarine reached Kieferberg, when everything happened all at once again: she met Flocke and her fateful dreams stopped; Elise got attacked by roots in her own home, but never again, and she dreamt of Ozzy’s realm even before getting the shoes; and a windstorm hir town, stirring Father Hans into action, believing it was the result of Granny Holle’s pact with the demons years ago.

Suddenly, everybody had a bone to pick with Elise. What changed? Rozenmarine.

This scene here is what makes me think Rozenmarine is Walpurga’s witch. In the bad endings where Walpurga kills and possesses Elise, she does so by impaling her with roots or branches like the ones that appear here. Not to mention, it all occurs next to a St. Walpurga’s statue, like it were a macabre foreshadowing of her involvement in the plot. If she could always have done an attack such as this, why then and not before? Elise had been alone for years, living in a house far away from town — nobody would have heard her scream for help. It’s, however, easily explained if Walpurga required of an intermediary to physically manifest.

The curious thing is, like I mentioned earlier, that it doesn’t happen again. For some reason, Walpurga doesn’t get a second chance to attack Elise within her own home. Coincidentally —or not—, in the next morning, we are introduced to Flocke, who mostly stays around the house with Rozenmarine.

That incident, and Rozenmarine’s dreams about fate coming to an end, I believe are related to Flocke’s presence. It would be in Ozzy’s best interest, if Rozenmarine was supposed to aid Walpurga, that she were to be as much confused as possible about her true purpose in Kieferberg — lo and behold, depending on the ending, she has a different idea about what that purpose was.

Thus far, we have a back and forth between Ozzy and Walpurga, and it keeps going: unable to go after Elise directly and following the demon making his move to snatch her first —the shoes—, Walpurga lures the girl into venturing the woodland by telling her about the Gifts.

You’ll think that Ozzy would be pleased with the idea, after all, it played in his favor. But, judging by this mysterious line of his: “Although you didn’t quite need them (the Gifts), did you?” And the look he gives Elise after she returned with the basket, maybe things weren’t going according to plan at all.

This is going to be pure speculation, however, it’s undeniable that Elise and Henri have certain parallelisms between them: their isolation and desire to escape it. Perhaps it goes further than that and Henri’s fate was supposed to be Elise’s as well: I don’t think he had to go through the Trials or sacrifice The Good Company, after all, he wouldn’t have followed her mother’s footsteps had there been someone in his life to alleviate his solitude, and it’s highly doubtful Elise would have told him about the Gifts to begin with. Like Henri, maybe she would have died in her sleep after the deal was sealed and she gave her name as payment, becoming Ozzy’s new loyal servant.

Furthermore, it could be possible that Ozzy only asked for her first born to spite Walpurga, who had been a sore thorn in his side through the whole game. Failing to procure Elise, she lost her only chance to become a woman and bear life in her womb, so what better way to twist the knife than to ask for a child with the sole intention of eating it? Because then, I don’t know how to explain the presence of the moths in the bad endings where he wins otherwise: did Ozzy kill Walpurga offscreen and steal her familiars? Maybe so.

As I said, it’s pure speculation, like Ozzy slowly grooming Henri into a demon, treating his name the same they do their own —with mystery— and giving him duties that eerily resemble what Murim and Aziel are tasked to do. So, in other words, let’s get back in track.

Before Murim was sent to meet Elise, Walpurga had kept herself busy with Eugen’s horses. We later find one, twisted into an enormous monstrosity —inspired by Mari Lwyd, maybe?—, which attacks Elise. It could have been Murim’s doing, however, he had already given Elise the Testament, meaning she had passed the Trial and was free to leave — like in Aziel’s domain. Not only that, the monster only appeared after the reason our heroine stayed —a disguised Walpurga—, finished her creepy monologue.

Walpurga apparently had something to gain if Elise died within the woodland, or else she wouldn’t have forced her back in Murim’s grove to rescue Apfel. In this second incursion, she also made an interesting revelation that supports this theory.

She always wanted the Gifts for herself — like Rozenmarine had explained at the start of the game, they represented Elise’s whole being. If she were to get her hands on the Tender Flesh, she gets Elise’s body; if she gets the Sweetest Nectar, Elise’s blood; and if she gets the Good Company, Elise’s love. And it illustrates so wonderfully why the endings happen the way they happen: if the Tender Flesh and/or Sweetest Nectar are offered, she can’t possess Elise and would rather she died in a pyre or have her turned into a tree; if the three Gifts are correctly offered, Elise is untouchable, the parts representing her under the protection of demonic sigils; and if Elise failed to offer any Gift, because they’re on her person one way or another, Walpurga gets to wear her like a costume.

Why the demons would do nothing after technically being offered and accepting the Gifts in the good endings, is a mystery on its own. Perhaps the commitment they were all on about, was the commitment to love? That brings us to Aziel’s grove and all of its mixed messages.

The next morning Elise rescued Apfel, Flocke can be witnessed throwing a tantrum and promptly leaving — Ozzy obviously displeased with Walpurga interfering so brazenly. The back and forth between the two beings never stops, even if Walpurga makes no further appearances —thanks to Aziel— other than in the endings and those branch attacks inside of Ozzy’s realm which, judging by his sigil after they have already crossed the portals, perhaps he’s trying to dispel instead of summon — the mist is also suspicious, being almost identical to that which follows the moths.

While in her domain, Aziel kept insisting to Elise that she should indulge and dive deeper into her desires, while pointing out that she has yet to discover what they are. It might be a red herring, but after Elise had confessed her wish to the old hag in the beginning of the game, Rozenmarine warned her with urgency that she shouldn’t disclose it to anyone. We’ve got to remember that one of Father Hans’s documents also describes how the woodland —Walpurga— harbored people’s wills, wishes, desires and sins in the past. Was Aziel trying to make our heroine know that her desire had been tampered with? Truth be told, Elise seems to yearn leaving Kieferberg more than riches, giving weak excuses as to why she doesn’t: “… if only it was that easy.” It is, in fact, since in the good endings she just does that. So, it could be possible.

The mixed messages, however, made themselves present during Aziel’s boss fight. After encouraging Elise to pursue her wish until then, Aziel asked to be shown how much Elise cares for her love interest. And if that wasn’t enough, she one-hit kills her if her answers didn’t prioritize her paramour —heavily foreshadowing the requirements for the good endings— while giving her this quote:

“Rather self-serving, aren’t you? You’re not worth my time, let alone His!”

Recalling the scene with the Golden Maidens, you can’t make me believe that some of them truly loved anyone in their lives, lest pass this Aziel’s test. Like, between the three first Golden Girls, who was supposed to be The Good Company: the one being murdered or the one thrown under the bus? The main one fitted the self-serving moniker perfectly and yet, Ozzy was to await for her in his banquet.

The fact that Ozzy would allow the Golden Maidens prowl around and warn Elise left and right is suspect as well. In his defense, he does say that they’re hard to tame.

Did the demons want Elise to succeed? Or perhaps they were quite content with Walpurga losing. If it’s the former, what a plot twist!

Nonetheless, I believe we have answered the original question quite well: who did it? The one who kickstarts the whole conflict is Ozzy, being responsible for Elise’s very existence to begin with, but the one who actually makes the first move to snatch our gal and keeps the pace of the game is Walpurga. Father Hans is also there, aiding Walpurga by ruining people’s livelihoods, when the demons only pulled what amounted to pranks in comparison — crows standing around menacingly and stealing some grain, and floods that caused no lasting damage.

🦋Still, I hope you enjoyed my descent to insanity and that you now appreciate Walpurga as the proactive villainess she is — not everything was Ozzy’s fault, even if he would love you to think so.🦋

#robinn.txt #lgts #little goody two shoes #pocket mirror #I finally finished writing this I’M FREE!!

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

a thought on yuu

Nothing wrong with high school aged Yuus, but can you imagine how things would play out if Yuu wasn’t 16-18 years old? 🤔 Like… think about how differently the characters would interact with Yuu across the different stages of life. I don’t mean this like “wow, a potion or a magic spell turned Yuu into a baby!”, I mean it like “Yuu is isekai’d to Twisted Wonderland when they are a baby.”

BRUH IMAGINE DEUCE WITH INFANT YUU STRAPPED TO HIS CHEST IN A BABY SWADDLE OR ACE MAKING FUNNY FACES OR DOING VOICE IMPRESSIONS TO MAKE BABY!YUU LAUGH 😂 OR GRIM TRYING TO FEED CANNED TUNA TO INFANT YUU INSTEAD OF MILKn djsbwjsvhwvjagwhcwhSwfVwhavFD???? They just become glorified babysitters and everyone’s top priority becomes “hey, let’s make sure the literal baby doesn’t get decimated by the raging dorm leader—” Plot twist: Baby!Yuu is the one eating rocks in this AU because babies put everything in their mouths… OB Yuu time—

Or like??? A child Yuu (3 to 10 years old, not quite a teenager yet)?? That kind of looks up to some of the boys like they’re cool older brothers/actually good role models?? 😂 Some of the boys are nicer to little kids than people roughly their age, so that could actually mean slightly better treatment and more respect. For example, Trey and Jack have younger siblings of their own, so maybe they’d have a soft spot for child!Yuu. Even Vil and the twins are shown to be considerably nicer to children (they are patient and supportive of Ortho). Meanwhile, Leona just wants to chuck child!Yuu far away from him— The disadvantage of this youth, of course, would be naïveté and the inability to understand the full context of certain situations.

Infant/child/tween Yuu would also also be super impressionable; Twisted Wonderland and the events of the main story would shape their identity in their formative years. Aka this is peak time for the NRC boys to be bad influences and model bad behavior 😂

WHAT AbOUT A JADED MIDDLE AGED OR ELDERLY YUU (I’m lumping these two together because I feel like their roles would be slightly similar)???? They’re just tired of these kids’ bullshit, they only signed up for a 9 to 5 corporate job/retirement, they have commitments and other priorities, not whatever this is… and even funnier that Yuu would be old enough to drive the boys everywhere, drink, and potentially be their parent or grandparent. I think that’d actually make for a cool dynamic, putting Yuu in the position of being an actual mentor figure to those poor unfortunate souls also, Yuu might lose their mind being thrown back into high school again 🧐 They’d have more technical skills to offer; it could be interesting to have older!Yuu as a staff member instead of a student (bonus: this would open up more engagement with NRC staff)! They’d definitely get more respect and reasonable behavior from certain characters (like Riddle and Azul) just from the upgrade to being a figure of authority.

bdjsvwjwbwkw I just wanted to share those thoughts 😌

#twst #twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #twst en #twisted wonderland en #twst theories #twst theory #twisted wonderland theory #twisted wonderland theories #Yuu #notes from the writing raven #yes I have thought about these concepts a lot

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Good Omens 2 Episode 1: what’s in a name

So I have just watched the first episode of season 2 of Good Omens, and I am going to write this post instead of watching the next episode right away for two reasons: one, watching tv for too long gives me a headache, and second, I refuse to let the streaming companies’ obsession with dropping entire seasons at once stop me from enjoying the journey, and enjoying the journey for me means stopping to think and write about things.

So this is my reaction to episode 1 of Good Omens season 2. Spoilers, duh.

The fil rouge that runs through the episode is the theme of names. We have Aziraphale who introduces himself by name in the flashback to Crowley, who does not reciprocate that kind of introduction, which paints a picture of where they stand in relation to each other, i.e. not exactly on the same page.

And then we have Maggie, who makes a gift to Nina based on her name (the Nina Simone record), but Nina cannot play it, which represents how they cannot be on the same page at all due to circumstances.

Of course we have James long for Jim short for Gabriel. And then we have Muriel, who is asked her identity so she has to say her name but also insists she’s nobody. Also, in the first scene with Michael and Uriel, Michael states their names out loud, which emphasizes how their identity is tied to their name, which highlights how Gabriel not remembering his name and then being forbidden from using it is an encapsulation of his struggle with identity. (There’s also the clothes - being naked is as far as you can get from the normal condition of angels with their pristine outfits, but that’s quite an obvious imagery trope.)

So this is an episode that deals with identity and how it relates to interpersonal relationships.

The first scene is absolutely lovely. They are immediately comfortable with each other - Crowley feels free to act nerdy, Aziraphale, despite his fear of saying anything “inappropriate” at all, expresses his concerns regarding Crowley’s attitude. But they’re not quite on the same page, due to their differences in personality. Crowley is nerding out about the nebula and doesn’t quite get that Aziraphale is trying to connect in a different way (exchanging names). So Aziraphale feels that Crowley doesn’t care about him, but then Crowley shields Aziraphale with his wing. Crowley is not the kind of person who likes to use words to express emotional matters, Aziraphale is (thus how he makes Crowley speak his apology out loud, complete with dance). Crowley’s love language is actions, not words, more specifically actions to protect Aziraphale.

An additional difference between them that is highlighted in the scene is how Aziraphale cares primarily about people, while Crowley cares primarily about nature (stars, ducks). Crowley is interested in the universe as a whole, and doesn’t have much affection for people in general. Aziraphale loves people. And that’s why one stayed up and the other went down, of course.

And of course the difference between their priorities is the source of their conflict in this episode, as Aziraphale sees a vulnerable angel (something he can relate to very much) and automatically decides to help him, but Crowley’s priority is Aziraphale’s safety.

Nina and Maggie are wonderful mirrors for our main characters, although way behind on the relationship process than Crowley and Aziraphale are. Nina needs to keep Maggie at a distance, due to her being already involved with another person and thus being unable to let herself connect with Maggie. Nina is perfectly capable of being affable and sweet, as shown with Aziraphale, so her curtness with Maggie can only be explained by the fact that she finds Maggie cute, and that’s why she cannot let herself get close to her, so she does her best to put up a wall between them.

Basically, Nina doesn’t have the player to play the record on - she does not have the circumstances to metaphorically let herself listen to Maggie’s music.

On the other side, Aziraphale has a record player, and has started listening to his beloved music, but Gabriel’s arrival interrupts him, just like Gabriel’s arrival creates a conflict between him and Crowley.

(The records are gay love, yeah.)

Crowley’s anger, though, forces Maggie and Nina to connect a little more - I would say something about anger not being a primary emotion, but stemming from love, but we were all here for Supernatural meta first, so it’s way redundant.

Speaking of Crowley being, um, smoking, let’s change the topic to fire/heat and light.

At the beginning, Crowley is trying to make a nebula happen, but forgets the first step i.e. “let there be light”, and Aziraphale helps him remember to do it.

Then there’s the empty box of match sticks in heaven. Out of place, because there should not be any material object in heaven. I’d say it represents a source of light and heat, but it’s empty, so it is and is not at the same time.

Conversely, Gabriel is naked and cold but then Aziraphale gets him a blanket and hot chocolate and he stops being cold. Not quite fire/light, but still warmth. So, again, heaven is coldness (but not quite in the right conditions to change, thus the match stick box being empty) and earth is warmth. (Hell is coldness too, of course, with its damp, dark spaces and ineffective neon lights.)

Then we have Crowley’s lightning and smoke, which makes the electricity (light) go off in the coffee shop, but then Crowley comes back and fixes it.

(A note: the box with the arrows pointing up - clearly representing “up up” is empty. Boxes are empty, heaven is empty, Gabriel is naked. Something something metaphor.)

Cinematographically speaking, the episode all revolves around sources of light, like the sun (I love what they did with the lighting when Gabriel gets to the bookshop). In case you missed it, in the flashback scene Crowley protects Aziraphale from being hit by the sun, which bounces off Crowley’s wing:

And then, insert something about lamps here that traumatizes Destiel people.

In fact there’s the quote on the match stick box:

[ID: partial screenshot showing the quote “Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out - Job 41:19”.]

I’m sure the exploration of this theme is just the beginning.

I guess these are the things that stood out to me during my watch. I’ll conclude this post with a final consideration: this is it! Now we’re talking - it’s a queer comedy! It sets itself absolutely as a queer comedy. It goes straight to the point. It’s no longer a comedy with a queer overtone. It’s a queer comedy. I love it. I can’t wait to watch the rest. But still one episode at a time.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens spoilers #good omens meta #good omens 2x01 #my good omens thoughts

[vasilissadragomir]

a lot of people from older generations are shocked when they see how much our generation cares about those living across the world. they simply can’t conceptualize caring that deeply about people with whom we have such little in common. we can see it in the way ukraine was presented in western media (“they’re europeans, they look like us, this sort of thing doesn’t happen in the west and in places outside the middle east and africa”). the media wanted ukrainians to appear sympathetic to westerners, and it worked.

but when the same plight befalls palestinians, and all these young people care so deeply about them as we did ukrainians, older folks are startled. we’re not supposed to relate so much to a small group from the middle east. we’re not supposed to tie our oppression to theirs. we’re supposed to sympathize with the western-backed military force with all the munition, power, and leeway it could possibly want. because we’re supposed to have empathy only for those who most resemble us.

but what they fail to comprehend is that we see ourselves in others not because of the way we look or what part of the world we’re from, but because of what we love and are passionate about. we, unlike our parents, grew up connected to one another. we made friends around the globe from very young ages, because we didn’t connect with other kids based on how far they lived from us, but rather because of our interests. a boy from england could become best friends with a guy from india in a pokémon chat room. a jewish girl from the US could befriend a muslim girl from palestine in a star wars discord. as we grew up, being fed beliefs about people from other places, the sheer reality of our friendships superseded the stereotypes and bigotry.

so when we became adults and started to obtain power of our own, it became impossible not to care about the very real people who played such pivotal roles in forming of our identities. we see ourselves in them, in their struggles, and their fight becomes just as important as our own fight.

and that’s why those in power have always been so scared of globalization. the more unified we are, the less the arbitrary differences between us can divide us. they matter, because culture and ethnicity and language and belief systems matter. but the place where these things overlap is no longer a sticking point or a barrier, but rather an intersection, where we can come together and share in our dreams of collective liberation.

this realization is nothing new. it is the crux of intersectionality. it is something that anyone who has fought for liberation across history has emphasized as the critical point of their fight. but its imperative to remind ourselves of it nonetheless.

each friendship you make from across the world is another hit at the wall meant to separate us, to keep us from realizing how similar we truly are. each time you empathize with a struggle that is not your own, you’re another voice showing solidarity with the oppressed around the world. every day, choose to live with love and passion as your motivations for every action you take. love as hard as you can, regardless of distance or differences; it’s the radical choice.

#politics #palestine #ukraine #intersectionality #just rambling #bc i j want people to love each other as hard we can #bc that’s how we will guide the next generation into a better world

[patrocles]

❤️‍🔥 give us ur most unpopular opinion on hotd/asoiaf ships

well idk how unpopular this is and hopefully i can explain myself as concise as possible but i feel like the culture of shipping has genuinely eradicated so much critical thinking and analysis of how hotd and specific characters are talked about.

now i’m not saying that any individual ship is bad or shipping in general is (bc obviously that would make me a hypocrite). even if there’s ones i personally dont care for, i genuinely don’t care about their existence or people enjoying them.

my problem stems from how much personal identity is attributed to ships. this isnt necessarily unique to asoiaf/hotd but still extremely pervasive. what this looks like is people who get so invested in a ship that the mere existence of another feels like a personal insult. and instead of just accepting that other people have different tastes and preferences, their uncomfortable feelings puts them on the defense.

sometimes you cant even post about the thing you like without getting radioed and being insulted on a personal level bc your enjoyment of a ship directly contrasts with the way they enjoy a different ship. one person talks about the dynamic between alicent and criston and within minutes you can expect accusations of homophobia and being pro incel. one person says they’re interested in seeing what kind of character sara snow is, you’ll quickly see them accused of being an anti black racist. if you post about rhaenicent, you can soon expect accusations of shipping rhaenyra with her abuser. see what i mean?

i think people need to just unclench for a second

that all being said, i think the whole “i need it to cope” when talking about extremely taboo topics within shipping needs to be fucking eradicated. i’m all for advocating for people to curate their online experiences— if i don’t like a thing, i will do what i must to make sure i dont see the thing. however i think the promoters of things like p*dophilia in ships to a very extreme degree who like to default to a position of “well its all fictional its not serious!!” and even going so far as to mock people who dont like seeing pedo porn for being prudes make you look like an absolute asshole.

and to be very clear, i’m not saying that any specific theme or topic of dynamic is illegal and you cannot explore them. but shipping an adult with a child and writing explicit porn about it makes 🫵🏽 you the bearer of responsibility to make sure the people you dont want to see your content dont— that means utilizing tagging systems and more than just “dead dove” in bio cus that’s not a catch all term. and the whole “to cope” thing absolutely holds no weight when you’re going out of your way to trigger other people who may also be victims of the thing ur posting about. with HOTD especially, what i’ve seen a lot of is not even just a lack of grace or carelessness in a fandom space but a deliberate act of trying to be as extreme as possible to be edgy and to pwn the antis~

it’s really not other people’s responsibility to accept taboo ships/themes— that isn’t to say that you cannot engage with that thing, no one will stop you— but you also cant be shocked when people are uncomfortable if not wholly disgusted with explicit depictions of a character as played by a minor with an adult. like that’s just going to happen especially when you’re posting it on a public platform for everyone to see and it’s all just for your personal kinks

#asoiaf ask

[flecks-of-stardust]

what are those mods that were cooler than MSC? if they're that good i have to try them out

So upon further thought of this topic, I think i’m misrepresenting my thoughts on my enjoyment of MSC. A more accurate way to put it would be that I had more fun with a lot of other mods. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to compare MSC to them, because the goals of MSC are different from that of other smaller mods. I guess this counts as an analysis post; this will be long.

TLDR: I had more fun with a number of region mods and I think some modcats are cool, but Rain World’s design makes having a DLC that stays true to its core ethos difficult, so I find it hard to really blame the MSC team for MSC being a lackluster DLC.

Regions

When I say that I enjoyed other mods more than MSC, I think a lot of it is in the level editing (ie, lediting), in the sense that region mods have consistently wowed me far more than MSC’s regions ever did. Conceptually, the regions that it added were incredible; I loved seeing Moon as close to her prime as she could ever be shown in Spearmaster’s time (ie LTTM the region; DM), but also finding her ruined structure (MS) as Rivulet, and the idea behind Silent Construct (CL) is also fantastic. But gameplay wise? I didn’t particularly enjoy any of these regions, especially not CL. I hated the spider clogs that I had no way of dealing with, and overall I really just bumrushed it and cheated to get to the story. Metropolis (LC) and Outer Expanse were okay in terms of gameplay, but LC’s tiling and geometry is just kind of boring, if I had to be honest. It’s quite repetitive and not particularly unique, except for maybe Atop the Tallest Tower at a stretch. OE was fine by virtue of not really having another region to compare it to and also being comparatively more plant focused, but honestly, other mods have still wowed me more. So I dunno.

Like when it comes to having regions that feel interesting to explore and are also nice to look at, there’s always Pilgrims’ Ascent and Scorched District, both by Myrmice, and these two also fit so well with vanilla Rain World’s vibe to me. These two, along with the Mast from Snoodle, are all but canon to vanilla to me, because they just fit so well and add to vanilla while still maintaining their own identities as regions. And even beyond having to feel vanilla necessarily, because that’s not always the point of mods, there’s regions like Stormy Coast, Coral Caves, Howling Rift, more that I won’t list because of how long the list will get, but the point is that all of these regions give me more engaging gameplay and paths for exploration than I felt I got for any MSC added region. Granted it’s been a while since I played MSC’s content in full, and my memory of this stuff is generally poor, but I’d rather explore Aqueducts (OA) again than do MS. OA was big and I kept getting lost even with a map, but it was big and disorienting in a way that just felt better to me than MS. The same goes for Deserted Wastelands and CL, personally.

MSC regions feel very vanilla-like to me, in that they’re kind of easy to filter out of your conscious processing so you can focus on other things. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, but for the price that you have to pay for Downpour, I think it falls a little short. The thing is that MSC is very much story-focused, putting more emphasis on the slugcats you play as and their stories rather than the lediting of the regions exclusive to them (in my opinion anyways. I ain’t a leditor). Which brings me to my next point:

Modcats and Story

This might be a bit of a hot take, but I think Rain World is inherently a gameplay focused game that doesn’t support much overt story or plot. The lore in all three vanilla campaigns is entirely optional, and if you kill Moon? Fuck you! No lore for you! And even if you wanted the lore, you have to figure out that pearls have to be taken to her to be read, and that the colored ones have unique lore, and you have to find them and hope the scavs don’t take the pearl first. Even with Hunter, you can choose to toss the green neuron and do your own thing. It doesn’t even stop you from ascending either. The story is entirely optional in Rain World. So then to add any story focused campaign at all inherently takes it away from Rain World’s initial design. And on top of that, you’re playing as a slugcat. It’s really hard to add any sort of story in Rain World that doesn’t circle back to iterators in some way. But then what else do you do besides ascend? Eat a few specific types of food? Gourmand does that. Kill a specific creature? That’s Artificer’s thing. Talk to all the echoes? That’s Saint, and kind of Hunter in a way. What else can you do without radically changing the structure of Rain World itself? And to that end, would that still be Rain World? I’m not saying it’s impossible to have a story based campaign that doesn’t involve iterators, but I do think that it’s really difficult to have them be completely irrelevant to the story and still have an engaging story, because Rain World itself is so not story focused. But if you don’t add story, then what do you do in the campaign that doesn’t make it just a rehashed version of Survivor’s campaign?

So like. I can’t really take issue with MSC’s story based focus that much, because genuinely, what else do you do? And basically any modded slugcat available in 1.9 that I think is worth trying falls into the same category. I think Pitch Black is really promising, but it introduces A Lot of changes to the world, and there’s currently almost no story. Vinki isn’t iterator focused necessarily, but their story still hinges on pissing Pebbles off and is overall very silly (not in a bad way! But it doesn’t fit the vibe of Rain World). And Gravel Eater,, you can’t get more intertwined with iterators than with GE’s story, but they’re still my favorite modcat because of how detailed their story is and how interesting their mechanics are. And if you just have a scug with abilities and no story, that’s… not really interesting to play, because then it’s essentially just Survivor, but you’re able to like, say, make spore puffs for free.

Maybe I’m just not creative enough in this aspect, idk. But genuinely I can’t think of much else to do in this game that doesn’t involve iterators in some way. If you know me, you’d know I’m Iterators McGee who has written 70k+ words about a character who has literally no canon dialogue. I fucking love iterators, but I think their stories should be separate from that of slugcats, but in game, just. How? I genuinely don’t know.

Other Thoughts

I think in some ways I view MSC as more of a framework that has allowed other people to build their own stories off of it. The only other mod that has a scale even remotely comparable to MSC is Drought, which is also iterator centric in story. I can’t speak to its lediting since I haven’t played Drought myself (but I’ve heard the quality… fluctuates?), but story wise… yeah. I don’t know. I just don’t think Rain World can really have a DLC that doesn’t pull it away from its original ethos in some way. I would not want Drought to be a DLC either, as cool as I think it is, and I still value a lot of things about MSC. It’s lackluster as a DLC because again, what sort of campaign can you add that doesn’t add a story that isn’t iterator related in any way?

I guess the way to summarize this is that I think MSC tells some really interesting stories through its gameplay. Even the parts I hated are part of the story it’s trying to tell, and on that front I think it does well. But by virtue of being story focused (and, by virtue of story in this game being very iterator centric), it doesn’t feel as much like Rain World, and so it’s not as good as a DLC as it would have been as just a mod. And now that it exists and is widely used, other people have been spurred to make their own ideas and show their creativity, going bigger and bolder than MSC in some aspects. And regarding me enjoying region mods more than MSC’s lediting, I think enjoying the region for being a region is kind of the fucking point of playing a region mod, whereas that isn’t exactly MSC’s focus. So some things are hard to compare.

This is kind of an incoherent ramble but I hope I got the main points across. I still like MSC and I won’t tolerate anyone bashing it here. You will get blocked.

#not adding any tags really but. up it goes i guess

[wanderer-moonchild]

OK, BUT KAEYA’S LORE????? 

I'd just lowered my expectations for the Hidden Strife quest and hyv gives us more crumbs. I’m one happy girl. Time to theorize! There are maaaany implications about where the story can leads us with this new info.

Spoilers ahead!

Let’s talk about Kaeya first bc he’s my best boy. My understanding is that Kaeya's right eye can somehow identify him as Khaenri'ah. He was already playing pirate before his eye was injured, which is very ironic not only because of his lie, but also because of Khaenri'ah's whole one-eye symbolism. 

So... Does he have a very specific type of heterochromia that only occurs in a select group of Khaenri'ahns or a seal in his eye or what? He wore an eye patch long before his eye was injured, and it’s implied that he showed Diluc his eye as proof of his identity, SO? 

There’s also the discovery that the Alberich Clan are regent royals rather than actual royals. Kaeya doesn’t really have royal blood, but his clan is the one in charge at the moment. 

I've speculated before that Kaeya's family, or whoever survived the cataclysm, is conducting experiments to either break the curse or strengthen themselves to overthrow the gods. We don't know if that's the case, but I find it interesting that the letter Kaeya kept says, “although he could not restore Khaenri’ah to life”, meaning they've already tried that?

I also thought that maybe they were overconfident in their abilities and knowledge, which I think is possible since the rest of the letter says, “We of the Alberich Clan should lead lives as those who blaze like fire rather than those who wallow in the embers.” It seems that the Alberich clan acts on their own, but still have Khaenri’ah’s best interests in mind.

Another minor detail that can meaning nothing: in the letter, it says ‘when the strength of the one-eyed king Irmin failed’. This can be just how they talk, but in the context of the letter it looks as if the Alberich clan considered themselves more capable of ruling a nation than the king and seized the opportunity to take command after the fall of the Eclipse dynasty.

I wonder how much Kaeya knows about the curse, the Abyss Order, and everything else concerning his people.  

I've a feeling that he was trained as a spy as a child (and probably a warrior too since he has a different type of swordsmanship) and probably was born just for the purpose of... Destroying the gods? Avenging his people? Exposing the true of the world? We still don't know exactly what the Alberich clan wants.

The king of Khaenri’ah

We also have a name for the one-eyed king: Irmin, which is VERY interesting, because you know... Irminsul trees?

They're sacred trees that act as pillars between heaven and earth, and in Genshin also store memories of the world and give blessings to people (like the eternal grinding we do in this game because we're all crazy).

I did a little research and in Old Norse Irmin is called Jǫrmunr, which is also known as Yggr, one of Odin's names. There are many connections, so this is a very brief explanation.

I'm far from an expert on Germanic/Nordic mythology, but from what I've read, Odin travels to the roots of Yggdrasil and trades his eye in Mimir's well for knowledge. He gains a divine wisdom and a recognized perception of the world, even though he lacks an eye. This also gives him some powers...

Can the king Irmin in Genshin have done something similar? He gained a terrifying amount of knowledge and Celestia felt threatened by it? He has close relations to the Imirnsul trees and Celestia didn’t approve of that since they wanted to create a world suitable for them?

It is implied that the gods had several reasons to destroy Khaenri'ah - their advanced technology, their alleged thirst for knowledge, the experiments of Gold, their claim of being a godless nation...  

Jean calls the king of Khaenri'ah "heroic," so maybe he wasn't so bad, and the people around him, like the sages and alchemists and probably unknown forces, were the ones in the wrong. 

The Alberich Clan

Alberich is a dwarf who's the "ruler of supernatural beings", which makes more sense to me now. Kaeya's clan is the ruler of the present day Khaenri'ah, a nation now made up of supernatural beings.

If Genshin is going by the multiple epic tales featuring Alberich, I think the Alberich clan has magical artifacts or some other kind of power than we’ve known so far. They tried to restore Khaenri’ah and failed, so they might have started to search for power somewhere else.

They might have created them with Gold’s help? In Der Ring des Nibelungen, Alberich steals gold from the Rhinemaidens in the river Rhein and forges a magical ring. I don’t know if Genshin is going to follow this, but I find the connections very interesting. We’ve Rhinedottir and Alberich in the game, so maybe?

Also, Kaeya talks about a sword his grandfather had that gives its wielder unlimited power. This could be something like the Tyrfing, a powerful magic sword in Norse mythology, or could this be an allegory for Dainsleif?

I say this because Dainslief is the sword of Hogni, the Old Norse name of Hagen, who's depicted as the son of Alberich. He’s half-human and half-something (sometimes elft, sometimes dwarf?), and there are some theories that Kaeya isn't fully Khaenri'ahn, because he has a different appearance. 

Maybe Kaeya and Dain will team up eventually? I would love to see that.

A bit more about the eyepatch

When Pierro appeared with a mask covering his right eye, I thought it might be a custom of Khaenri’ah to show that they belong to a select group associated with royalty. Dain doesn't cover his eye and because he was only a knight, but still connected to royalty bc he was a royal guard, he wore a different outfit.

But Kaeya's right eye, as we know, seems to be important, so maybe it wasn't just a custom. Maybe there's indeed a connection between Pierro and Kaeya and maybe the Alberich clan was looking for the same source of power as the king of Irmin and in return their right eye was corrupted.

This may also be a side effect of the curse, as Dain seems to have been corrupted on his right side. Since Khaenri’ah worshipped the one-eyed king, was their right eye (or the entire right side) corrupted first or in some other way? It would be a very specific condition for the curse, but Celestia is known to be a bit sadistic, so...

#wow this is very long #lmao #kaeya is always making me think too hard #pls don't come for me for my limited knowledge of mythology #i just want to link things to genshin lore #genshin impact #genshin theories #genshin thoughts #kaeya #pierro #genshin spoilers

[amuseoffyre]

It’s 7:30am on a Saturday and I just rolled out of bed and natch, my brain has decided this is a perfect time to have a look at the Ed and Izzy confrontation in episode 10 from a gender-related perspective. Well done, self. Bravo.

Throughout the course of the show, Ed never loses the essence of who he is. This is important. Yes, he might like soft things and - when deeply miserable and depressed - might be happy to wrap himself in a velvet and silk-lined dressing gown and curl up in a pillow-fort. Yes, he might do soft sad things like write angsty emo song lyrics. But he’s still who he was.

What I find very interesting is that Izzy will absolutely tolerate it as long as it’s not presented in the public sphere. He takes Lucius aside and says “no matter what you see or hear” and forbids him to talk about Edward’s emotional state “on pain of death”. It parallels the way Ed cloistered himself in his cabin in episodes 2 and 3, never appearing on deck until Stede was in danger.

But this is where the gender-related stuff comes into play. I’m non-binary and when watching this with a trans friend (who - like me - is only out in a very limited way for safety reasons), it hit us both very, very hard.

Ed comes out onto the deck. Ed expresses himself. He shows his feelings. He wears soft things. He tells the crew and the increasingly-antsy Izzy “I do want to be called Edward from now on”. Like he told Stede in episode 9, it’s nice to “just be Edward”, something he’s never had a chance to be.

For decades, he’s been masking in a dozen different ways to fit in, to conform, because that’s how queer ND people work to survive. He’s finally seeing a way he can be himself instead of maintaining the lifestyle that made him feel like he was “treading water, waiting to drown”.

So the confrontation happens.

“This... whatever it is that you have become is a fate worth than death” has the distinct ring of someone who has not/will not accept their relatives GNC behaviour. Izzy saying he would rather have seen Edward dead than become something he does not accept and is physically repellent to him. We’ve seen him react that way as far back as episode 4, when Ed dresses in Stede’s clothes, snapping that Ed is just “an unpleasant shell of a man pretending to be Blackbeard”.

“I am still Blackbeard” “NO. This is Blackbeard”

No, Izzy says. No, I want you to look and act like you did before. I want you to resume your hyper-masculine appearance because that’s acceptable to me. I don’t accept your new identity. I don’t accept your new presentation. I want you to put aside these things that are clearly making you feel happy and better about yourself, because they’re not what I want/see in you. I want you to be like this picture of your old self because I - personally - do not like you like this.

The “I am still Blackbeard” line and Izzy’s rejection of it makes me think of so many posts where relatives of trans/NB people wailywail over the fact “the person I care about transitioned/came out and now that person I knew is dead and there’s someone else in their place” and the person in question is still there, they’re just in a happier and healthier place after transitioning.

It’s very deft writing on the part of the writing team, using these parallels. And the final and brutal stroke of it is when Ed loses his temper because Izzy mocks him for the loss of “your boyfriend” and then beams in delight because “there he is”. He’s proved a point that no matter how much Ed might just want to “be Edward”, what Izzy wants from him is still there: the aggressive, hyper-masculine man he finds palatable.

“Blackbeard is my Captain. Edward better watch his fucking step” is the final nail in the coffin. You want to be called Edward? I don’t accept this and will not call you by your preferred name. I will call you the name I want and respect and appreciate. Your wishes are not relevant here.

I can’t speak for others, but personally when I first tried to take tentative steps to come out and be myself and was shot down in flames, I slammed back into my closet so hard you would not believe it. They would only accept me behaving a particular way? Fine. I will do it. I will do it so hard you will never have a reason to doubt me, so I won’t feel as terrible as I do right now.

And that’s what it felt like to me when Ed donned the leathers again. Specifically because he didn’t just put them on. He pinned up the picture of how Izzy expected him to look and referred to it. He’s been himself for his whole life, but in this moment, Izzy wants him to be this version of Blackbeard? He will take this portrait and will make it so. He will look and act how he’s always been expected to look and act. 

But even if he puts on the leather and he puts on the paint and is Blackbeard again as Izzy sees him, he is also still Edward.

(also aaaaaaa on the parallels of “you brought the greatest pirate to ruin” as Stede being faced with his own learned belief that queerness is bad and destructive and this scene as an allegory for detransitioning for safety! Aaaaaa!)

#our flag means death #ofmd #blackbeard #thinkie thoughts #ofmd meta

[victoriadallonfan]

YOU DID THIS @ragingcitrustree

Ben Shapiro: I could not be more excited to speak with Max Anders—well, as Max knows. Before the show, we talked for an hour about interesting things. We should have caught that on tape. But now we’re actually going to get the chance to do it live. Max new book, if you haven’t bought it yet—everybody on the planet has bought this book. I was walking through the office today; we didn’t have a copy in the office; the person at the front desk had a copy of your book just sitting on her desk. 14 Words: How To Strengthen and Empower Our Country’s Blood and Soil . A fantastic book, obviously topping all the bestseller lists, all over the world. Max, thanks so much for joining the show. I really appreciate it.

CEO of Medhall, Max Anders: Thanks for the invitation.

BS: Obviously your prominence has just blown up in the last year and a half. We were talking before the show about why that is and why there are so many people suddenly very angry about you. I noticed there was an article in the Brockton Bay Gazette suggesting that young, angry white males—you are now their leader. So congratulations.

MA: Oh, yes.

BS: I wanted to ask about that: why do you think that, number one, your profile’s become so big of late? And number two, why do you think it is that so many members of the left are so angry about that? Why are they characterizing people who listen to you as "angry" and "enraged young white men"?

MA: Well, we can look at the characterization to begin with. I think it speaks to the pathology of the radical left, instantly. They’re absolutely incapable of viewing the world except through group identity terms. If someone comes out and disagrees with them, then they have to characterize them by their fundamental group attribute, whatever that happens to be. Maybe it’s gender, because that’s a favourite, or maybe it’s race. So "angry young white man"—there we go: sexist, ageist, and racist all at once. They’re angry, young, white, men. Well, it has to be that way, if you’re going to play the leftist game, like New Wave does, because that’s the only way that you can look at the world. It’s strange that they would attempt to make them reprehensible on the grounds of race, age, and sex, since that’s precisely what they stand against, hypothetically. But if you can’t make your enemy reprehensible along some dimension, then you have to contend with them seriously. And so if I’m not an alt-right fascist like Hitler or supposedly Allfather, which was how I was characterized in Canada—because the radical leftists can’t even get their bloody interests straight: "he’s like Hitler or Allfather." There’s no obvious difference between them, right? It’s just another attempt to pillory, as far as I can tell. I think that it’s dreadful. I really think it is.

There was an article written by, I believe, The New York Review of Books, which was just republished in The Globe and Mail, talking about the emergence of hyper-masculinity, and how I was somehow responsible for that or contributing to it, like Mussolini or Crowley Brothers. I read that and I thought, "ok, so what are you doing? I see: you’re conflating masculinity and hyper-masculinity at the same time. Then you’re virtue signally by being against hyper-masculinity. But really, what you’re trying to do is bring down whatever it is that’s masculinity. And what masculinity is, in this frame, is something like competence." And so it’s part of the radical leftists’ general war on competence as well, which I think is one of the most pernicious elements of the culture wars—the dissolution of hierarchies; the assuming that every hierarchy has to be based on power and serve the needs of your group, whatever that happens to be; that there’s no such thing as competence. And then the other thing that’s reprehensible about it—because that’s not enough—is that it’s just wrong.

So I was in L.A. about a month and a half ago. I was downtown L.A, and downtown L.A. is kind of rough, because you know what hero runs that city. I was wandering around with my wife, and this young guy pulled a car up beside me and hopped out. He was kind of a stylish looking twenty-one-year-old Latino guy. No Alexandria shirt but even then I was like, “oh no, here comes trouble”. But he was all excited. He asked me who I was, and I told him. That’s what he had presumed, so he was kind of excited about that.

He said, "I’ve watched all your lectures, and it’s really helped me. I’ve been straightening out my life and trying to get my room clean"—he laughed about that—"developing some aims and trying to tell the truth. I’ve really fixed up my relationship with my father." Then he said, "wait, wait. Just wait a minute." I thought, "sure." So he went back in the car, and he got his father out of his car, and he came over with his dad. They had their arms around each other. He said, "look, we’ve really improved our relationship," and they’re both smiling away. That’s… Man, if you’re going to target me for that, just go right ahead.

BS: Yeah. It sounds real "white supremacist."

#This made my eyes bleed #99% of this is actual dialogue by the way #parahumans #wildbow #ward #worm #parody #Kaiser #max Anders