#my writing style here is so old and gross and clunky

[vanderilnde]

a toxic ghoap wip i had in my drafts from months ago but will no longer be continuing. i just wanna dump it here lol

cw for misogyny, smut, (internalized) homophobia, hedonism, sacrilege, prostitution mention, ghost is an ass

pls heed all tags, this was a vent fic, and also bare in mind im never gonna finish this lmao

-

Johnny's world is asymmetrical.

His world. His beginning and his end. Humvees and Dauphin 2 helis and deployments around the globe. Undercover operations, saving women and children, the comforting carbon steel of a rifle in his hands. 

It’s an unspoken stigma, but it’s there. Materialising as insults while his lads take the piss out of each other, and in the form of dishonourable discharges. 

The stigma has always been there. It has no start and no finish, so Johnny can’t remember where it came from, but he knows it was there since primary, where boys would kick girls at the bends of their knees and yank on their pigtails, squatting to the floor to get a look-see up their chequered skirts and cackle, all while Johnny stood off to the side, overtly uncomfortable. 

Mum’s complained. Teacher’s were involved. Dad’s simply said, “Boys will be boys,” and the situation was brushed under the carpet.

The stigma tailed Johnny into secondary school. His older cousin lent him a suit for formal, which prompted Johnny awkwardly standing on his doorstep with his date—a pretty lass named Rory—as his mam snapped a spate of photos. 

Johnny’s disposition was a grave juxtaposition to Rory’s. She was all grins and giggles, cantered into Johnny’s arm, while he was inelastically poised with tight lips. 

His mam wouldn’t stop pinching his supple cheeks, trying to shepherd a smile out of him. She gave up, throwing her hands in the air and wheedling them off the porch, tacking on an ornate, “Have fun, kiddos!” as they pooled into Johnny’s scrap metal car. 

Johnny felt as if he was lacking something. As if his wings had been clipped by the world a little too soon. It’s always been like that. A piece of him plucked from his wracking ribs and stolen, ever since he was a little boy. So in a lapse of judgement, in order to prove himself, to shatter the bubbling stigma, Johnny sought out the most masculine thing to offset his failure: follow in the steps of his cousin, and enlist. 

It was a rashly undertaken decision, but a decision he stuck with, because, for the first time in forever, Johnny’s old man clasped his shoulder in pride. 

But stigma was an incessant little thing. Because even in military school, it followed him closely. As Johnny’s school brothers had Playboy rafts and pin-up girls folded into their pillow cases, he would blunder upon being asked, “Who’d ye shag?” by his mate. 

In boot camp, he was a lowly private, whose hands would jade and cramp from cleaning rifles. They gave him blisters. And so his bunkmate—a nice lad from Glasgow with a crooked nose—would tend to his fingers during their lunch routine. Hidden somewhere in the corner, making jokes about their Drill Instructor. Callum, was his name. He’d swathe Johnny’s hands in gauze and garnish it with a lopsided smiley face. It always sucked, fell apart half way, but he did it anyway. 

That’s when Johnny started blistering his hands on purpose. 

Wedging his thumb in the dip of a garand and not pulling it out until it was swollen. Then he’d snivel, seeking Callum out in their barracks. There was a pull in Johnny’s stomach, half of an ebb that finished Callum’s flow. It would give him rashly undertaken ideas—such as fixing his hand in the lid of an armoury shell—for Callum to fix up. Johnny would find him among their other friends, beseeching with his cobalt eyes, holding out a hand.

In enlistment, his confusion ripened into a gravely miscalculated realisation. That it wasn't an affinity for men Johnny wanted to be—to attract ladies with his chest candy and the brandished title of military man—no, it reared its ugly head when Johnny finally became his own private. Grinning, at the time, clean-shaven and giddy as his mother snapped a spate of photos of him saluting in his new uniform, plaintively whining when she reached out to adjust his garrison cap because “It’s lopsided, pumpkin!” To which Johnny, under the searing gaze of his fellow privates, would clip, “‘Cos it’s meant to be like tha’, ma!”

Johnny didn’t know when it started. He just remembered realising how good Callum looked one day at the range—sweat sluicing down his pale neck, disappearing behind his lapels, ass filling out the space of his pants as he would squat to the ground and aim for the faraway target. Before he knew it, Johnny was seizing lights out. Using the time to sneak off to the bathrooms and cramp a fist around his leaking cock, beating his dick to the thought of him. Him, him, him. 

Johnny’s sordid thoughts didn’t emulate what his granny had planned for him—to pass down her old wedding stack once he “Found the right lass,” to bring home to her; it wasn’t what the Orthodox spiels of sermons and hymns and praise on Sunday’s drilled into him; it wasn’t what his uncle was anticipating—“Got a girlfrien’ yet, Johnny-boy? Ah, why’re ye frowning! Soon enough, ye will.”

His fantasies rivalled those of his squadmates. Because on his first tour, a summer ten years ago in the chilly expanse of Northern Ireland was a woman that approached them. Denim skirt and a mulberry red halter top. Kitten heels, sunglasses. Shiny lipgloss. She tried to ply them by batting her eyes, offering her services. She was smart. Military men always paid. It’s the desperation that got to them most of the time, a tinge of worry, and a hint of entitlement. They took the bait. Rode her back to camp and took their turns with her.

When it was Johnny’s turn, he listlessly declined and hung his head. He said he had a lass waiting for him back home—Rory—that’s the first name that popped in his head. His secondary school girlfriend in which he sobbed on when he tried kissing her. Johnny said he had a bird, just like all his other lads, with pictures of their wives and girlfriends pinned to the massive cork board in the middle of their camp. But they had no problem indulging themselves. 

They were shoving him around, calling him all sorts of names, bullying him into following them. And that’s when Johnny caved. A cacophony of hollers flared out around him as he ducked into the tent where the woman lay, thin bed sheets hiked up to her collarbones, her previous lipgloss smeared over her chin.

Johnny said, “Hi, how are you?” Because that’s what his mother taught him. She softly giggled. 

Not at him, but with his overdue respect.

Johnny shucked off his uniform with trembling hands, mounting her with his dick flaccid and stomach flipping. He remembers ruminating, “Why don’t you like it? You should like it. Love it,” but his heart leapt to his throat and his navel twisted, heart seized as the head of his cock kept slipping around her messy opening, poking her thigh. His throat constricted, dry, then slackened. A muffled sob wracked through him. Barely concealed by the threshold of his thin lips. He pushed his tongue into the roof of his mouth and buried his face in the crook of her neck, collapsing into her bare chest, furiously wiping his tears into the inflatable mattress.

Then, the body beneath him quivered. Johnny hoisted himself up, a spiel of apologies curling off of his tongue, when he realised she was crying too. The same type as him—wrung out, jaded, tired. She blindly reached out for him and pulled him close. Not reaching for his dick nor biting sensual whispers into his ear. They held each other for a little while, coalescing as their cries muffled into each other’s skin. Then, she pushed him off. Slid off the mattress and snaked her into her clothes. 

They both left the tent shaking. She was still sniffling. His lads cheered as she walked away and clapped him on the back. 

That’s when Johnny realised there wasn't a place for him in his world. Johnny shrunk himself, half the light he used to be, pushing himself into a little box as his world around him clipped off his wings. 

Now, Johnny’s world consists of something a little different. 

Something sinewy and rough around the edges. Gruff, but tactical. Calm, akin to the placid sea, but could flip a switch and emulate its choppy waters if he wanted to, too. Big, striking, with eyes that could kill a sailor. A deep timbre mandated by Manchester. Wide-set shoulders but a willowy waist, hips that sway as he walks. A macabre mask and skeletal gloves—ones that have Johnny wrapped tightly around his fingers.

Johnny grew into himself between serving in the parachute regiment to selection for the SAS. He got rougher. Learned how to hide himself better. Perfectly fit himself within the Task Force, around men who would become his best friends and brothers. He’s otherwise your normal guy. Goes to the bar with the team when they’re able. Shooting darts with Gaz (“You’ve got a Marksman badge but can’t score more than two points? C’mon, mate…”); pool with Price; and drinks with Ghost.

Beer always sloshes over the lip of Ghost’s glass when they clink their drinks. It crashes up and over the Brit’s fingers, dripping down his hands, between his thick fingers. Johnny always resists the urge to lean in close and lick the wash of alcohol glistening Ghost’s knuckles. 

But they’re just friends. Apparently. Because friends don’t fuck.

It started way down in Chicago’s heart, after another op. Gaz—ever the exploiter of his puppy eyes—managed to ply Price into stopping at a bar instead of heading straight back to base for paperwork. So they stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall, still rife with adrenaline, spreading out and all doing their own thing.

Johnny and Ghost were sat around a rickety table with wobbly legs. A spread of peanut shells around them and sticky rings of alcohol from their glasses glossing the surface. Ghost raised an arm to wipe his eyes, knocking over Johnny’s beer in the process. An expletive crossed the Brit’s tongue and he apologised, grasping a fistful of napkins and scrubbing it over Johnny’s soaked shirt. 

It ebbed and flowed in long, rough strokes. Ghost’s hand gliding over Johnny’s legs, Ghost’s middle finger and thumb snapped around Johnny’s thigh, his grasp cutting into the sinews. 

It wasn’t that different from suturing a teammate up after a mission. But with the unsaid admiration Johnny had for him, tempered by the hint of alcohol on the roof of his mouth and the hazel canopy of Ghost’s lashes, over his focused eyes, arousal quickly seized Johnny.

Ghost’s hand brushed over a tent on Johnny’s jeans. One that hadn’t been there before. He cut his next stroke from the root, pausing, and blinked up at his friend. 

The Scotsman felt a wound up spring in his stomach. He turned away, smacking Ghost’s hand, and ran a hand through his black tuft of hair, slapping both sides of his shaved heads. He felt his lungs betray him—squeezing like dried fruit and refusing to expand—to yield to his sudden heavy breathing and quick succession of heartbeats.

Johnny shook his head. Sputtering. “Lad, y’know, sometimes we can’t control ‘em–” 

The words died on his tongue when Ghost flattened hand against the bend of his knee. He was testing the waters. 

Johnny looked back, gulping, and took the bait. He inched his knee closer, until it met with Ghost’s thick leg. It’s something he’s done so many times. When he was starved for friction but couldn’t make it overtly obvious—grazing Ghost’s hand passing him a flare; knocking his foot under the table during debrief (“Sorry, lad,”); applying extra gauze to a slice in his torso just to feel Ghost’s chest throb below his fingers a little more.

But this is different. Something Johnny’s chased for so long. A tangible ghost on his tongue for a flavour he’s longed for with just fantasies while he fucked his fist late into the night. 

Ghost tightened his hold on Johnny’s thigh. “Sons of bitches, ain’t they?” 

His voice was taut. As was the muscle between Johnny’s shoulders.

They exchanged a glance. Soundless, but not wordless. Then Ghost slunk his hand down and wrapped it around Johnny’s swelling cock. 

The feeling of it—a sensation so foreign, so yearned for—penetrated Johnny’s core. It made him yelp and jerk his knee into the table, sending more beer spilling over the rim of his glass and onto his pants. 

Ghost hummed, shook his head. “C’mon, Johnny, let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?” And he inclined his head towards the bathroom in the back. 

Johnny blindly nodded, yielding to Ghost’s hold as he hoisted him from his seat. Ghost directed them through the sea of gyrating bodies and towards the toilets. They bursted inside, and the Brit pulled Johnny into the last stall. A seedy little thing, with graffiti and the ash of cigarette butts welded into its walls. 

The succeeding acts were a blip in the streamline of Johnny’s memory. He remembers Ghost shucking his pants down, then settling himself behind him. He remembers Ghost’s gloveless hand reaching around and working over his drooling cock. He remembers a voice in his ear, “What the fuck are we doing,” and a bulbous cockhead poking his ass. He remembers the shrill rattle of the stall hinges as he withered against it, trembling under Ghost’s deft hands, the finger that swept over the slit of his cock and slipped down to fondle his balls. 

Before white-hot pleasure seared his vision, Johnny remembers emptying his come into the crotch of his denims, shaking, as it dampened his pants and as Ghost commanded him to pull it back up. 

They left the bar alongside each other, meeting everyone else on the pavement. Johnny’s lips were popped open and swollen. Peeling, from how his teeth had sunk into them. His eyes were glossy and his hair was tousled in the middle of his head. He had a wet patch on his jeans.

“Oh, you are pissed, mate,” Gaz exclaimed, “I– that’s pee?”

“Spilled some water,” Ghost lied to the other teammates, “had to sort him out.”

They made it back to base within hours, signing off to their quarters. 

The next day, Johnny didn’t see him at all. 

The day after that, too; Ghost didn’t even spare him a glance.

He tried reassuring himself. Ghost hadn’t talked about men before—not in this calibre—so Johnny told himself it’s because he was digesting what rashly happened in Chicago. 

That was, until, he was paged one night. A command from Ghost to meet him in his quarters. The message was succinct: one sentence, leaving no lines to be read between. Johnny walked ambled to his room with his heart in his stomach and his blood rushing to his ears. Nudging the door open, Ghost was on the edge of his bed, legs parted, smarting denim-washed jeans and a black pullover. A simple, soft gauze balaclava. 

His eyes slid upwards first. Then the rest of his head. Ghost pinned Johnny under his smouldering gaze, then beckoned him forward with the tilt of his head. No words were swapped. Ghost simply tugged Johnny forward, between his thick thighs, and bullied the Scotsman to his knees with a hand splayed over his half-shaved head. 

Johnny’s eyes widened. He popped his lips open to speak—lips Ghost whispers his thumb over to seal shut, uprooting his words from its step. Ghost shook his head, undid his belt with a single hand, and shucked down his jeans. He palmed himself for a while, watching Johnny’s eyes sheen over, before pushing his boxer-briefs scarcely over his meaty thighs, pinching the head of his cock. 

Ghost didn’t even bother pulling his balls out. Just his dick—long, thick, a comely vein running beneath it—better than anything Johnny’s ever wanted. Better than the images he’s fucked his fist to, memories of Ghost, freshly out of the shower after sparring, his thin towel outlining the barest hint of his dick. 

Johnny reaches out, but Ghost swipes it back. He tuts and softly smacks his cock against Johnny’s ruddy cheek, watching as a string of his precum connects to Johnny’s face. 

“How bad do ya wan’ it, Johnny?” Ghost had prompted, swiping his cockhead over the Scotsmans lips, then pulling it back whenever his jaw readily slacked. 

“Real… real bad, Lt.” He breathed. 

Ghost tapped his cheek again. “Open.”

And so Johnny did. Like it was second nature, like he’s been wanting for so long. Waiting for so fucking long. 

Johnny’s lips popped open and closed around Ghost’s wet tip. He swirled his tongue around it, clumsy in his movements, teeth grazing Ghost’s skin.

He winced. “Easy…”

Johnny blinked in a rapid succession, nodding, sucking him in a little deeper, mindful of hollowing out his cheeks and relaxing his jaw. Ghost’s eye twitched, hands digging into his tuft, hanging his head back, softly bucking his hips up into Johnny’s mouth. 

“Atta boy, Johnny, fuck– where the fuck’d you learn this, eh?”

Johnny replied with a gargled purl of precum and saliva coalescing in his mouth, gagging over the wide girth splitting his jaw open. Ghost laughed, his gloved hand settling on the scruff of Johnny’s neck, pulling him a little closer; sinking his cock a little deeper, rutting his pelvis into his squadmate's pliable mouth.

Ghost cums. Johnny laps it all up. And in an undertaken lapse of judgement, rises to his feet, puckering his frosted lips, ready to hike Ghost’s balaclava above his nose and share his taste with him. But Ghost set a hand to Johnny’s face, shaking his head. He tucked his softening cock back into his pants.

That was the first instance Johnny disregarded. One he ignored in favour of indulging himself in something he yearned after for years. He didn’t realise his grave digging began there—when he witlessly nodded in response. 

And from there, it became a cycle. It was always on Ghost’s call. Never Johnny’s. When Ghost wanted his dick sucked; when Ghost wanted a wet and tight hole wrapped around his cock. Johnny knew better. He knew he was being shepherded into something bad, but he couldn’t help himself.

Trembling under Ghost, his whole world encompassed by the Brit’s towering stature, was all that mattered to him. Getting spread over a cock he’s wanted for so long, a long ways from the taboo fantasies that’s collected cobwebs in his thoughts for so long.

Johnny was less of a teammate, more of an outlet for Ghost to exhaust his frustrations into. Even then, it was a pill Ghost had trouble swallowing. As if he’ll acknowledge it, and a relationship will materialise. So he stays still—fucks Johnny like a dirty little secret then turns the other way. 

Johnny tries talking to him. Tries telling him he struggled with the same thing. That he isn’t alone and that he belongs here. That there’s no shame in it. 

Simon collapses Johnny’s pleads with a final, resolute bark. “I ain’t gay, mate. You’re a friend helping a friend.”

-

basically it ends with Simon shepherding Johnny into some hedonistic, one-sided relationship. Johnny just accepts it bc if Simon wont love him, he’ll do it by proxy, because hes all fucked out and desperate for him🖤🖤

#my writing style here is so old and gross and clunky #ghost/soap #ghostsoap #soap/ghost #soapghost #ghoap #simon riley x john mactavish #ghost x soap #ghoap writing

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #6:

Neil Young and Promise of the Real's The Monsanto Years

Somehow this album is cursed in my biography. Every time I try to listen to it something goes deeply wrong. And it's no wonder: in the silly recording session photo above it looks like Neil is casting an evil spell on all of us. Monsanticus!

When the record came out in in the summer of 2015 I was suspicious; Neil had just released Storytone, and it sounded like he'd focused on painting the record's cover and washing his hogs rather than writing good songs. Plus I'd never even heard of his new backing band with their too terrible to be ironic name. Crazy Horse was alive and well; what was Young up to now?

But 20 years previously I'd been equally suspicious when Young got spooked by the Horse and buddied up with a different group of young hipsters to make Mirror Ball, and that record turned out to be awesome. And so I knew The Montsanto Years deserved my open-mindedness in spite of its clunky title and fairly gross cover art.

So I turned it up loud for the first time with my buddy Matt. It was a beautiful day and we had an open road with two hours of drive time ahead of us. Maybe we'd listen to it twice!

But halfway through the album's third song, People Want to Hear About Love, with its inspired-by-Stephen-Still's-very-own-Joe-Lala bongos, and its gather about me young squires chanting, not to mention Young's crankiest grandpa vocal stylings to date, Matt and I simultaneously announced that the song sucked. We put on Zuma instead.

Even so, People Want To Hear About Love, stayed annoyingly in my head all day, and that day was dedicated to attending our friend's younger sister's funeral. I couldn't shake crusty grandpa Neil off at the graveside as my friend's 20-something little sister was lowered into the earth, her life cut short by cancer that came with touches of abhorrent irony: she'd been a nurse; her dad was a cancer doctor. You're wrong Neil, I angrily thought, no one wants to hear about love. Nor do they ever want to hear your song again.

I've given the record sporadic second chances since then. And every time I get to the fourth track, Big Box, I perk up. After all, it opens with Neil alone, playing a demonstrative and churning, here's how it works kids, follow my lead, riff that sounds like it's lifted straight from Mirror Ball.

But before you know it Neil croons "Too Big To Fail" in overdubbed fashion and rhymes "excited" with "Citizens United" (you know, the Supreme Court case that gave corporations the power to essentially buy our elections) and, despite some pretty exciting guitar interplay whenever Young shuts his trap, rather than echoing Mirror Ball the whole thing sounds like Young is hanging out with Kai Ryssdal or David Brancaccio on Marketplace. Come on Neil, that's my least favorite show on NPR.

Yesterday I gave the record yet another try: but again, no dice; my 15 year old ipod (no, I don't own The Monsanto Years on vinyl; I got it in true Dollar Bin fashion by checking it out at the library) played me the first two songs, the lyrically regrettable opening track, which isn't amazing but does not suck, and the pretty lovely, quavering Wolf Moon, before the device (it's the kind with a dial on the lower half; there are 22 thousand songs on the thing, and around 1600 of them are Young's), perhaps disgusted by my choice for this week's Shakey Sunday, cried uncle and died in what appeared to be the very real Steve Jobs kinda fashion.

I was able to resuscitate it eventually but I'm unsure whether or not to risk resumption of the album. After all, it's cursed! And when the terrible day comes, and my ipod refuses to wake back up no matter how many times I pressed down all the buttons at once while cursing, will I need to find another way, either through a very nonDollar Bin purchase of the vinyl or through Neil's old timey, betamax website, to listen to The Monsanto Years ever again? Or can I just stick with Zuma?

Well, let's find out the answer. It's a Shakey Sunday and I'm about to roll my ipod's dice, press play, and go song by song through the rest of Neil's far too long screed against agrobusiness.

The fifth song, A Rock Star Bucks a Coffee Shop, is a big No vote for the record. Yikes. I'd rather drink a big cuppa GMO than hear Young rhyme GMO with Mont-san-to ever again. Whoever is responsible for the whistling in this song needs to never purse their lips in my presence again.

I suspect POTR (I refuse to ever type the band's terrible name out again; I wish they'd named themselves Promise of the Real Sausages instead) are big fans of Young's live bender record Time Fades Away. Working Man's got that vibe but it's slick instead of shakey. Yuck.

In Rules of Change Neil gives us yet another version of the story he's been telling over and over again for the whole record: the farmers have woes; climate change is real; we're doomed unless we get on Uncle Neil's groovy train of love. Look: I'm an environmentalist already. I do what I can to eat sustainably; I ride my bike to work alongside my sweet daughter as much as possible; and I've got a bootleg gray water system already running out the back of my house as we speak, watering my trees with our laundry water. The simple truth is that I never needed this concept album, or any of Young's too numerous to count environmental anthems. I already know this stuff. I'm already angry and I already vote and if Trump gets elected next fall I'll lose my mind a second time. Frankly, Neil, I'd much rather imagine sleeping with Pocahontas.

But it's when we get to the album's title track that I start to wish my ipod was indeed broken.

The song is a terrifying double to Danger Bird: it's slow and brooding with caveman vocals. But the guitar is mostly sickening instead of life changing and everyone's chanting "Safeway" instead of telling me about Carrie Snodgrass sleeping around with some still unknown famous enemy of Young's and ruining his life in 75. I guess Neil's right, people do want to hear about love. And Marlon Brando. And the Astrodome. And me.

I haven't got much to say about the final track, If I Don't Know. It occurs, and it sucks less than most of what we just sat through. What I fear is that Young is letting some young hipster solo at the end of the song while he stands by, contemplating corporate sin. Jimi Hendrix is dead, Ira Kaplan is busy, Richard Thompson isn't interested and Stephen Stills sucks; no other man on earth should be allowed to solo on a guitar while on stage with Neil.

(But I'd be more than happy to have any number of women do so, however, from Leslie Feist to Myriam Gendron to the recently resurgent Joni Mitchell herself.)

Okay folks we did it. We made it through The Monsanto Years. You have my permission to never listen to it again.

Me? As of this moment, while I hit post, I'm already half way through the record for the second time today, and I'm kinda digging my time at the Big Box store. Looks like I like the record anyway.

Neil Young: even his garbage swings.

#Youtube #neil young #the promise of the real #stephen stills sucks #shakey sundays #feist #myriam gendron

[captainkippen]

I don't know where I'm going with this, it's just a piece of free writing because I felt inspired. Might keep going and turn it into a short story or something.

TW: Implied abuse.

1994.

The door clatters open like a twister is blowing through and I jerk up with such violence I almost slide right off my seat. There are a few bleary-eyed moments of confusion as my heart calms down before a takeaway cup of coffee is thrust under my nose and I'm forced to take it before it ends up decorating my shirt.

"Rise and shine, loser. You fall asleep at your desk again? You know you're gonna have permanent keyboard marks on your face if you keep doing that."

I bat Jay's hands away from my neck, saving myself from one of his terrible massages. He keeps telling me he has magic hands, but I'm pretty sure the crick in my neck only sticks more stubbornly when he tries to get rid of it. I give my shoulders a roll, sighing into the satisfaction of feeling my joints click, and swivel around to face him.

He's dressed in the same clothes he wore to mall yesterday and the heavy stench of too many cigarettes clings to him which means he probably spent the night at Ricky's - our local 24 hour diner - periodically ducking into the alley to burn through a new pack of Marlboroughs. A fresh smudge of dark purples and blues stains the skin around his eye. I hope he at least gave his brother a bruise back to match.

"What time is it?" I punctuate my question with a yawn just to make a point, but he just grins and holds up his watch.

7:15AM. Wonderful. At least he waited until he used the front door for once. My parents fret about him breaking his neck every time he leaves scuff marks on the window ledge to avoid waking them up.

"Did you actually get any sleep last night?"

"Did you?" He fires back with a raised eyebrow, shrugging off his jacket and flopping onto my bed to grab the latest issue of Rolling Stone from where he left it strewn across one of the pillows last time he crashed here. Comfortable silence falls as I admire the way his fingers bend the magazine back. There's this little crease that forms between his brows whenever he's concentrating, physical evidence of him trying to force his brain to focus on one thing at a time and not the myriad of random thoughts bouncing in there at any given time. I hide my smile in my coffee - he knows I'm not really annoyed, but I refuse to give up the illusion. It's a ageing routine, but one I never get bored of.

I count the minutes until the silence breaks. One. Two. Thr-

"So I was thinking," he says, the sighs like he's exasperated at his own inability to keep words in. It's one of the many things I like about Jay - he always speaks his mind. It makes it easier to understand him.

"Dangerous task for you."

An unimpressed middle finger greets my words before they're completely out. I hold back a snort.

"Sorry. Go on?"

We've known each other since we were seven. Across the street neighbours. He was the first person I met when I moved in with my foster parents. In a street full of unfamiliar tree and looming white houses he sat there on the curb pretending to fish with a stick and a piece of string. He'd called over as I got out of the car, asked if I liked trout. I didn't even know what trout was. That was okay. It was gross anyway, apparently.

I don't remember ever making friends so easily, like we just fell together and that was it. No fuss. Ten years on and the surprise hasn't waned.

"You guys want breakfast?" My mom pokes her head around the door with a tired smile, interrupting whatever train of thought Jay was hopping on.

I shake my head and lift my coffee, ignoring the disapproving look she gives me. Coffee is not food nor is it particularly good for you, but it's also not worth a battle over nutrition before eight o'clock.

"All good here, Mrs H." Jay smiles, all teeth and charm and twinkling eyes, then pats his stomach as if to confirm it. It's a smile that's impossible to disagree with when it's directed right at you.

"You sure? Alrighty then," Mom says, doubt creeping into her tone despite her fond look. She was forever trying to feed Jay, convinced he was too skinny. Worried he wasn't getting enough to eat. I can't say I blame her - some days Jay looks like he's auditioning to play Mike Teevee right after he got put through Willy Wonka's stretching machine, but it's all an illusion. I've watched him consume an entire box of donuts in one sitting more than once. His stomach might as well be a trash compactor for all the junk he eats. Plus he always has snacks tucked into the glove compartment of his car in case of emergencies, right alongside a sock full of laundromat destined quarters, a spare toothbrush and his shaving kit.

"Sawyer, honey, can you please clean up a bit in here? It looks like a bomb hit it. Guests don't want to sit in this."

"Half of this is his mess!" I splutter as my mom smiles and disappears back down the hall. "He's not even a real guest!"

Jay only laughs and ducks out of the way when I throw a balled up sock at his head. Asshole.

"So as I was saying..."

"As you were saying," I roll my eyes, gesturing for him to continue.

"I think we should do something."

"What, like go to the movies?" There's nothing good out at the moment, I'm pretty sure. We spent all last weekend debating whether or not to go see the latest Keanu Reeves movie only to spend all our cash on popcorn and get kicked out halfway through because Jay's running commentary made me laugh so hard I choked.

"No man, like... something interesting."

"...bowling?"

He shoots me an unimpressed look and I raise my hands in surrender. What else could he possibly have in mind? Our town only has three things to do; movies, bowling or the mall. We've been cycling through each option all summer. It's the same thing every year and it does get old after a while, but it beats sweating to death outside and spending all day playing video games sets my dad off on the perils of computer addiction. If I ever have to hear another lecture about technology rotting my brain it'll be too soon.

"For a writer you sure are lacking imagination."

"Well what do you suggest, then?" I huff.

There's a gleam in his eye and the warning lights start flashing in my brain just a beat too late. I know that look, it's the kind that got me put in detention three weeks in a row last semester for filling Roy Jackson's football helmet with food dye after he called spread a false rumour that Mary Harring blew him in his backseat. In my defence, it was all Jay. In his defence, I didn't stop him. Principle Ikener's never looked so disappointed. Roy Jackson's face was pink for a week. Scraping gum off the bleachers has never been so satisfying.

"Okay, hear me out first, alright," he says as I groan. We both know I'm already doomed to agree, but we play the part like he has to convince me anyway. Like I said, an ageing routine.

There's a pause in which I repress a sigh and let him dramatically drum roll his fists through the air and then he says, "Europe."

The word is emphasised with jazz hands and I can only stare at him for a moment, my brain trying to compute it. Did I mishear? Did he get part way through a sentence then forget the rest? He stares at me expectantly and it's all I can do to repeat the word slowly after him. His resulting nod is reminiscent of my aunt's excitable golden retriever.

"What about Europe...?"

"We should go."

"What?"

"To Europe," he insists. "We should go."

"You want us to go to Europe."

He looks at me like I'm being deliberately stupid. "That's what I said."

"But... why?"

Summers at home are dull. Three long months of sweltering heat and so many snow cones we make ourselves sick, and weeks on end of trying to think of new things to do, but it has never been so bad that we've resorted to leaving the country before. I'm confused.

"You're always talking about how much you want to travel! And we've got time. two and a half months before school. Think about it, we could be spending that time on the beaches in Spain, or looking at fancy architecture in Italy! I can drag you 'round some museums, you can force me on a tour of places famous English writers lived and we can get sick of each other in style."

Morning light spills through the window and highlights the dustmotes in the air. The bruises on his face seem darker with his face haloed in gold. I get another whiff of cigarettes and realise the smell is staler than usual.

"I don't know," I say. "My parents-"

I get a set of pursed lips in response. His expression is strained.

"Your dad is always saying we should broaden our horizons. He'll be thrilled. Besides, think of all the cute European girls we'll meet."

"How would we even afford it?"

It's a deflection. For a pair of teenage boys, we're both pretty good with money. Weekend jobs at Blockbuster and Baskin Robbins. I still have money saved from my Bar Mitvah, mostly because I've never really wanted anything enough to really splash out. My clunky computer works just fine and I'm content with books and notepads. Jay saves like his life depends on it, and maybe it does. Money for gas and food for the infinite hours spent avoiding his own home. Money for college. Money for escaping.

He stares me down.

One, two, three days since he left the Rolling Stone on my pillow only to pick it back up this morning. I'd noted his lengthy absence yesterday, but I'd just assumed he'd gone fishing. I should have known something was off.

"Please?" There's a desperate edge to his tone that rugs at my heartstrings and it's all I can do not to demand he tell me why he's suddenly so keen on visiting Europe when he's never expressed any such desire before. Instead I just sigh.

"Okay, but you get to convince my mom."

#my writing #tw implied abuse

[rat-apologist]

A Semi-In depth Review of Anna Todd’s After

So I’ve been seeing the trailer for the movie adaptation of this book every five seconds on my Instagram feed, and as a proud dyslexic unwilling to sit down and read it, I listened to the audiobook.

Again, these are all my opinions, if you don’t agree that’s okay.

Here is a quick, spoiler free plot synopsis for those who want/need it: Being moved from Wattpad into the real world of publishing, After follows a girl named Tessa, who simultaneously has the mentality of a five year old and an old man from the 1800’s. She is eighteen years old and is going to college to be an English major. Tessa loves control, planning, and books. She's an introvert at heart, and “not like other girls” (i.e. dresses conservatively, is a virgin (the books words, not mine)). She has a shitty mom and a nice, preppy, boyfriend who is still in high school, and her life is completely planned out. That’s all turned upside down when the poster child for emotional abuse named Harden (harry styles) waltzes into her life during a frat party her first week of college. Your typical Wattpad/teen movie drama ensues.

(the actual review under the cut)

This review is chock full of spoilers for Anna Todd’s book After. If you want a good idea of what I thought about this book without any spoilers I’ll just say this: I can really honestly say I was never bored while listening to this book. However, that is not necessarily a good thing. Often times I was just too much in awe of the clunky writing and truly evil supposedly “redeemable” characters to be bored. On a one to five star scale, I’d probably give it a two. More on that later.

Here are the things I liked:

(this one is only applicable to the audiobook) the narrator was amazing, her voice acting was very appropriate (though she did tend to drop accents sometimes- but that is forgiven because of how otherwise amazing her line delivery was- especially considering the quality of the dialogue).

Landon and Dakota were my favorite characters, and even though they had no personalities beyond what they meant to Tess and how they interacted with Harden (Hardin? Again, I listened to the audiobook I’ve got no idea how to spell that lmao) they still made the book better to listen to.

Despite the repetition of plot/narrative structures I can happily say again that I was never really bored.

Okay moving on to more mixed-bag feelings:

So the last chapter was from Harden’s perspective, and I thought that was an interesting idea. Learning what one character thinks, especially since our protagonist is, how you say, a little bad at reading/interacting with other human people. However the execution left something to be desired for me. It quite literally was just the exact same scene we just saw from the previous chapter, but from Hardens perspective instead of Tess’s. Which was just ended up being unnecessarily repetitive at times.

I liked how Tessa tried to be less judgmental throughout the book, however her growth is very, very limited.

I liked the fact that they mentioned they used condoms in pretty much every sex scene, and that most of the time clear verbal consent/clear nonverbal consent was given for the sexual stuff. That does not happen often in books, especially in fan fiction from what I understand.

I like that Tess does stand up for herself, while I could sometimes see myself comparing her to Bella Swan considering how much of her personality does kind of revolve around her relationship with Harden, she certainly was more vocal about her feelings. And boy, did she have a lot of feelings.

Moving on to the things I didn’t like, this is probably going to be a mix on writing, characters, and plot points so bear with me. (I’m saving my many thoughts on the twist for last)

Okay so a big number one is the biggest plot driver, the love story. So, I feel like it goes without saying, but the main relationship is SUPER unhealthy. Harden constantly stalks, manipulates, and bullies Tess throughout the whole book. He is pretty much abusive, using her caring for him to his own advantage and then dropping her when it suits him. Plus his hyper-sexualization of her “virtue” is really really nasty. Tess pretty much cries in every interaction they have together, and even acknowledges how toxic their relationship is, and yet I’m supposed to root for them? Hmm… I don’t think so

The near constant slut shaming and girl hate in this book bothers me, especially when it’s mixed with the hints of “I’m not like other girls” from Tess

The character descriptions kinda weird me out considering how much Harden is described like Harry Styles, like literally a tumblr punk edit of Harry Styles

The dialogue is… bad. To all the writers out there (myself included) make sure you read your dialogue out loud to see if it sounds natural, that way if your Wattpad fanfiction ever does get published, and your book is adapted into audiobook, you’ll avoid a situation like this one. Because, especially listening to it, the dialogue in this book is really really bad. Honest to god it sounds like robots imitating humans are talking to each other, only they’re trying to convince the other robots that they are humans. For some reason Anna Todd avoided using contractions for most of the book, making the characters sound unnatural and completely out of their predefined characters. Why would these college students not use words like “it’s” “we’ll” and “we’re”? It is truly astonishing, and it makes the few uses of contractions really distracting. Normally I don’t give a shit about grammar since I don’t really understand grammar, and normally grammatical errors aren’t that obvious when listening on audio, but the dialogue was seriously that bad.

The pacing was bad, that’s kinda all I have to say. It was generally too quick during plot development but then took a screeching halt for each fight/sex scene (of which there are many)

The repetition of certain words/phrases really got annoying. Everyone's always screaming, biting on their lip, or smirking. Harden is rude, as Tessa mentioned about eight million times, and Tessa finds his dirty talk arousing. We know this, because Todd uses those phrases about a billion times a chapter.

The sex scenes kind of grossed me out. I’m (in general) fine with sex, but the way the sex scenes were written seriously ucked me out. These college kids avoid using words like “penis” “dick” “pussy” etc. and use really really juvenile words like “down there” and “length”. Maybe this is a fanfiction thing, and I’ll admit that I have not read essentially any fanfiction, but it is truly a disturbing way to write sex. Especially since Tessa is written to have the experience and understanding of sex as like a child, not even understand what an orgasm is and unwilling to say words like penis or vagina, something our loverboy Harden is super attracted to, by the by.

I hate that this book uses “girl almost gets assaulted so man can come in and valiantly protect her” trope. It is super gross and I hate it. That’s kind of all I can say, the use of women's pain so that men can get some amount of redemption is awful.

More on Harden: I am sick of the “violent, broken man that I promise I can fix!” trope. It is used to justify and excuse abuse and I hate it. Tess is honestly scared of him several times in the book and it’s played as a personality quirk of his? Like everyone just accepts that’s how he is? I know for the most part we aren’t supposed to “like” him for the first part of the book, but it’s obvious that the author wants us to root for him and Tessa in some capacity. Especially with the inclusion of his perspective at the end, which in a way is exactly the kind of manipulation that he is into so idk. Also he is possessive despite the fact that they weren’t dating, and he is very clear he does not date. That’s already abuse, but of course there is more. On top of that he is cruel, and pretty stuck-up throughout the book- making him pretty much insufferable to me. And all of this shit just gets worse once the twist is introduced, and no amount of his whining from his chapter could at all change that.

The rest of the characters are all either boring, or the worst people you could ever meet. Tess’s mom, Molly, Jace, all really terrible to offset the horror of Harden. To almost justify what he does- because comparatively he doesn’t seem as bad (up until the twist).

The twist. Dear god the twist. So, as it goes it isn’t an extremely inspired twist. I’ve seen it done before in a similar way (I’m looking at you, Ten Things I Hate About You). For those who are wondering: the big twist is that Harden only really pursued Tess in the beginning because after she revealed she is a virgin at a party early on in the book he makes a pricey bet with Zed (another side character only used to add ~drama~ to Tessa and Harden’s relationship) to see who can take her virginity. All of the subsequent bullying, possessiveness, manipulation, etc. were all a ploy to have sex with her before Zed could. I feel like it goes without saying that that’s disgusting, but let me tell you exactly why: at least if he was actually interested in her at first his weird behavior could possibly be passed off as hormones (I wouldn’t like it, but I’d understand it  more if you’d try to make that argument), but the fact that it was all for a bet not only makes his disgusting actions worse, but makes the fact that he supposedly falls in love with her so much more annoying. Plus, the fact that he literally tries to trap Tessa in a lease so she can’t leave him, and tries to bribe his friends into silence really shows how little he actually cares about Tessa and her thoughts and feelings.  

So, why two stars? Honestly, because I was entertained (for lack of a better word) by this book. Maybe if I actually read it and not just listened to the audiobook it my rating would be lower, maybe if there was just one more sex scene to slow down the pace I would have been more bored. Who knows, but I was entertained. Sometimes by how terrible the dialogue is, by how astonishing the characters decisions were, sometimes by the actual plot. It’s like watching a shitty soap opera, it’s not good by any means, but it certainly keeps your attention.

#pj speaks #book review #after book #after book review

[cowboy-crimez]

5 times stan tries to make bill blush plus the 1 time he succeeds

 stanley uris/bill denbrough

tags: modern!au, no pennywise, nothing is Bad Ever, technically it’s a thot stan au, teenaged losers club

@stenbrough this is less of a thot stan au and more of a thot in theory stan au but ty for saying it was okay to use some of ur hc’s !! they’re a hoot and a half

read on ao3

brief a/n: im a minor/around the same as age the characters which is why i felt okay writing/posting this

1.

Stan doesn’t think he’s at all conceited or vain when he says that he’s attractive. At 17 he’s mostly grown into the lanky limbs that plagued his childhood, his face filled out to be nicely angular but still soft and kind. His hair is still curly but now he knows how to style it, knows how to make the curls fall across his forehead, almost into his eyes to make him look cute. The scars around his face from the time that a dog attacked him smoothed out over the years; instead of them being puckered, raised, and uncomfortable, they now lay flat, only paler than the rest of his face. Even those aren’t ugly anymore.

 So Stan doesn’t think he’s too full of himself when he says he’s attractive. And he doesn’t think he’s tooting his own horn when he says that a lot of people are attracted to him, want to date him, even. His only problem is that the one boy who he’s attracted too, and he wants to date, seems to be a fucking idiot.

 “Bill, can you help me with this?” Stan says, twisting a curl around his index finger. Bill nods, and leans across the table where the Losers are eating lunch. He looks down at the binder full of paper in front of Stan.

 “T-t-this is chemistry.” Bill says, looking up at Stan, “I’m shit at chemistry.”

 Fuck. “No, you’re not,” Stan says, biting the end of his pencil a bit. He thinks it gross, the metallic taste, and oh lord, the places the pencil has been. But apparently it’s cute. “Just try to help me, please?”

 Stan flutters his eyelashes a bit. He did it last week with a girl in his history class, and she turned red as a tomato. Bill looks at him, tilts his head. For a second, Stan thinks he finally has him.

 “D-do you have something in your e-e-yes?”

 Stan sighs. Out of all the boys in the school, it had to be Bill.

 2.

 I really commit and sacrifice so much for style, Stan thinks, dragging his feet along. His boots are way too heavy, and his pants are a bit too tight to be comfortable, but, fuck, if they don’t make his - admittedly, flat - ass look good. It rained recently, so the ground is damp but the air is fresh.

 Another sacrifice: all he has is his off the shoulder sweatshirt, so if it rains again, he’s screwed.

 He walks up to Bill’s door, knocks, and a few moments later Gerogie opens the door.

 “Bill?” he asks. Stan nods, and Georgie closes the door slightly, so he can turn and yell, “Bill! Stan is here!” before opening the door again.

 “What’s up, Georgie?” Stan asks, laughing at his antics. He’s growing up too fast, Stan thinks, and he knows that soon Bill will be crying over how big his baby brother is. Richie sometimes jokes that when they go off to college, Bill will cry the most purely because he’ll be leaving Georgie behind, and Stan has to admit, he might not be wrong.

 He makes small talk with Georgie for a few minutes, not much to talk about since he saw him only a few days ago. Bill comes clamoring down the stairs, and starts pulling on his shoes. He waves, and Stan waves back. Bill grabs his car keys from the key hook, ruffles Georgie’s hair and shuts the door behind him.

 Ever since he got his license and his car, he’s basically been the group’s personally taxi. As Stan climbs into the front seat, he has a brief moment where he imagines kissing him in the back seat, Bill’s long fingers tangling into his curls. Bill’s lips are always slightly chapped; Stan wonders how they’d feel against his own soft ones. The thought leaves quickly, and Stan is left there, face a bit warmer, as Bill turns the car key.

 They drive to the library where they’re meeting Mike and Eddie. Bill parks and shuts the car off. As Stan opens the door he sees the library steps, and the perfect plan pops into his head. He makes sure to walk a little bit faster than Bill, just enough so that he’s a few steps ahead, but not enough for it to be suspect. Even with Bill’s much longer legs, Stan reaches the steps first, and puts his plan into action.

 He makes sure that when he steps he moves his hips more than strictly necessary, aware that he’ll be at the perfect height for Bill to look at his butt. He’s about halfway up when he hears Bill mumble something to him, still at the bottom of the stairs.

 “What?” Stan asks, turning his head slightly, as he takes another step. Except with the damp ground and his clunky boots, instead of gracefully taking a step, the toe of the boot gets stuck on the lip of the stair. “Fuck!”

 Stan’s knees hit the concrete, and his forehead hits the flat of the library entrance.

 “Oh my god, S-s-stan, are you o-okay?” Bill asks, rushing up the stairs to kneel next to him.

 “Fuck, shit, piss, fuck,” Stan grumbles, putting a hand to his forehead as he turns to sit on the offending stairs. “Ow. Am I bleeding?”

 Bill gently takes a hold of Stan’s hand, moving it away from his head. For a moment, Stan think this would be so sweet, if he hadn’t just ate shit in front of his crush.

 Bill inspects him for a moment, “No, b-b-ut you’ll have a n-n-nasty bruise later.”

 Stan pouts, “Help me up.” He makes grabby hands, and Bill laughs, standing up, before pulling Stan up too.

 If Stan is limping slightly when walking into the library, Bill doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t get the same luxury when he goes home later that evening and his mom freaks out over the huge blue mark on his forehead.

 3.

 Eddie’s house is always too warm. His mother must pay a fortune on heating. Ever since Eddie got into a huge fight with her when he was 13, she’s loosened her grip slightly, especially after he couch surfed on all their couches for a few days when she refused to change her ways.

 But she still refuses to let the house to cold, less her precious baby Eddie bear catch a cold in the night. So whenever the losers hang out there, they always end up sweating, stripping out of their coats, hoodies, and sometimes shirts within minutes.

 Richie, since he goes over the most, came up with the perfect solution: bring popsicles. Even though it’s hailing outside, the Losers are inside, not really watching their Texas Chainsaw Massacre marathon, and eating the fruity popsicles that Richie brought over.

 Someone is screaming on screen, but they’re too busy listening to Beverly’s reenactment of how some kid managed to flip his desk in math while leaning back in his chair.

 “So it’s dead silent, Cole and Phillip are getting absolutely destroyed by Ms. Jackson, and then BAM! All we see is papers flying everywhere-” She takes a break, laughing too hard at the memory. Bill smiles at her. Even though his crush is long gone, Stan knows that there’s a Beverly shaped soft spot in his heart, probably right next to the Georgie shaped on. Stan wonders if there’s a spot in there that will be shaped like him one day.

 A drip from the popsicle runs down his hand, onto his wrist. Stan starts to lean in to lick it off, when he notices that Bill’s eyes have shifted from Beverly onto him. Without thinking, Stan meets his gaze, sticking his tongue out as he runs it up his arm, catching the juice on his tongue. He’s moving more slowly than necessary, but no one else has seemed to notice him. He sees Bill gulp, his own popsicle melting in his hand, forgotten. Stan takes that as a sign to continue.  He runs his tongue up his own popsicle - strawberry flavoured - and once he gets to the tip, he slowly puts it into his mouth, hollowing his cheeks as much as he thinks will look hot.

 Bill is still watching him, even though Beverly has recovered enough to continue her story. For a second, Stan thinks maybe he should quit while he’s ahead, most of the popsicle isn’t in his mouth and he can see the tips of Bill’s ears are pink.

But that could be the heat. It could be because they came from the outside only a few minutes ago, so it could be the temperature change. Stan wants, no, needs  to know that Bill is red because of him.

 So he keeps pushing, looking right at Bill, who’s eyes keep flickering from his lips to meeting Stan’s gaze. Stan can almost feel it at the back of his throat, and he’s about to pull it out, having enough evidence that he thinks proves his point. But then Mike starts laughing, and his arm flies out and nudges Stan’s arm, the one that’s holding his popsicle.

 Then Stan’s eyes go wide, pulling the popsicle out of his mouth quickly, as he retches.

 “Oh my god, if you throw up on my carpet, I’m kicking you out.” Eddie says, from where he’s laying on his bed. Stan doesn’t reply, only covering his mouth with his free hand as he gags and coughs. Mike pats him on the back, saying, “Sorry!” over and over again.

 Stan waves it him off, “It’s okay.” he says weakly, eyes a little watery. His face is red, and while it’s mostly from choking, a part of it is because Bill saw him choke while he was trying to be sexy.

 Stan doesn’t meet Bill’s gaze for the rest of the night. He finishes eating his popsicle normally.

 4.

 It’s a warm weekend, and for the first time in years they ride their bikes around again. When they all got to be 16, they stopped, thinking it was too childish, too immature for them. Then they started getting licenses and cars, so for most of them, their once cherished bikes sat in the back of their garage. But Ben texted them all the night before saying that it’d be fun to ride around town for all times sake, go by their usually haunts, old and new.

 For once, Stan decides to dress for the weather, not for the secret fashion show that is constantly going on inside his head. He puts on sneakers, the first (okay, third or fourth) t-shirt that he sees, a zip up hoodie, and a pair of shorts that he knows he won’t care about if they get dirty.

 They have fun, riding around town, stopping to get snacks, window shopping, the likes. Richie falls off his bike twice, and Stan always has fun laughing at him, especally when he knows it’s not a serious accident. They throw their bikes down on the grass at the quarry, sit around and hang out. At some point Mike shows off his double jointed elbow (just one) which makes Eddie gag, and then the coversation is about flexabilty. Richie can put his foot behind his head, and while doing that he falls off the rock he’s sitting on. Beverly can do a back bridge and walk. Ben surprises all of them by also being able to put a foot behind his head, and unlike Richie, doesn’t fall. Eddie admits that the only reason he can touch his toes is because his leg to arm ratio is way messed up, and that he’s not flexible at all. Bill isn’t flexible, but he can do a handstand and cartwheels. Then, they’re all looking at Stan, waiting to see what he can pull out of his sleeve.

“I can do the splits.” He says.

 “Bullshit.” Richie replies, “You can’t.”

 “Can to!”

 “Prove it!”

 Stan huffs, stands up from his log, brushes off his pants and walks a few steps to wear there ground is flat. As he’s starting to spread his legs - one in front of him and one behind - he notices that he’s closest to Bill. He starts lowering himself, low enough that his palms can be flat on the ground.

 Richie wolf whistles, and for a moment Stan stops so that he can flip him off. He looks up when he’s a few inches from touching the ground, and sees Bill staring, mouth agape. Stan smirks slightly, then smiles sweetly at him.

 Then his back foot slips, and what was a slow descent is now a fast drop, arms not quick enough to stop him, and his crotch, from hitting the ground without warning.

 Stan screams.

 “FUCK ME, HOLY SHIT, FUCKING-” Stan groans, arms giving out and torso flopping over, so his forehead touches his knee.

 He can hear Richie laughing in the background as he moans in pain. He wills his arms to move to try and push him back up, but he’s at an angle where it’s hard, and his thighs hurt now, refusing to move.

 “I’m stuck.” He groans. “Holy fuck, I swear, if one of you doesn’t help me right now I will murder you.”

 “How you gonna kill us if you can’t even stand?” Richie asks, still snorting. Bill stands up, slowly makes his way over to Stan.

 “G-give me your hands.” He says. Stan raises his arms, hold onto Bill’s elbows as he grabs his forearms. Planting his feet, he starts to lift Stan up.

 He thought that getting out of the painful position would feel good, but instead it feels like Hell, so he groans in pain again as Bill lifts him up. Once he’s high enough that he can move his legs independently, he automatically brings them together, letting go of Bill so he can drop to his knees and hunch over. Forehead pressed to the dirt and hands between his legs, he lets out one more scream.

 “Richie, I blame you!”

 Stan decides to walk his bike home that day.

 5.

Stan and Bill are in Bill’s bedroom. Alone. In his bedroom. Alone. Not that it hasn’t happened before. When they were younger they hung out alone all the time. Hell, they hung out alone a few days ago. But a few days ago Stan wasn’t wearing a crop top and tight fitting jeans, sunglasses perched on top of his head, as he leaned over Bill’s shoulder to watch a video on his phone.

 Stan’s always been aware that Bill grew up well, but this close he can really see how much he grew up. His shoulders are wider than they were when he was 13. His cheekbones more prominent. He’s still tall and thin, but years of baseball and noncompetitive football with Mike, Ben and Richie made his arms a bit more muscular, legs and thighs a bit thicker. With his head almost on Bill’s shoulder, he can see the tiniest amount of stubble on his chin, in places where the razor missed. Even his stutter is getting better, and sometimes through the pride of seeing a friend get over an insecurity, Stan almost misses the day when Bill would stumble over his words, have to slow down and speak clearly. It feels like they’re all growing up, and Stan isn’t sure how to feel about that.

 The video ends, and Stan can’t say that he really paid attention to it. Bill looks at him. Stan has nothing to say, so he just stares.

 Bill’s eyes flicker from Stan’s lips to his hairline, unwilling to make eye contact. Stan doesn’t have any tricks up his sleeve, nothing to try and seduce him with. He bites his lip without thinking.

 Bill leans a bit closer. Stan has to sit up straighter in order to get closer to him. Bill presses his forehead against Stan’s, noses almost touching.

 Stan’s eyes flicker close as he feels Bill’s breath against his lips. If he concentrates he swears he can already feel them brush, feels the chappedness of Bill’s against his own, can taste the peppermint of the gum he was chewing a few minutes ago.

 Stan is about to lean up a little bit more, close the almost microscopic distance between them, when he hears a loud knock and, “Billie! Billie! You said you would drive me to swimming lessons today!”

 Bill leans away as Stan’s eyes shoot open, a blush covering his face, working its away down his neck when Georgie opens the door.

 “Billie, I’m going to be late.” Georgie says with a pout, already in his swimming trunks and a hoodie, towel thrown over his shoulder, “Come on.”

 “I’ll be d-d-down in a minute, Georgie, go put your shoes on.” George nods and leaves the room, pointedly not closing the door. Stan looks down at his lap, plays with the fraying edge of a hole in his jeans.

 “Do you w-w-want a ride home? I’m sure I could just drop him off, drop you off t-t-t-then make it back to his lesson.” Bill asks, always the gentleman. His face isn’t red, and even his stutter is just from the fact that he stutters, not embarrassment. Stan shakes his head.

 “No, it’s fine. I can just walk home.” He stands up and quickly makes his way out of Bill’s room, rushes down stairs and pulls his shoes on. His face is still warm as he says bye to Georgie, giving him the customary high five.

 When he gets home, he doesn’t slam the door to his room, even though he wants too. He quietly closes it, then lays face down in bed and wonders why he has to like such a fucking dumbass.

 +1.

 They haven’t spoken about The Incident as Stan likes to think of it. Stan continues to wear the same clothes, make the same suggestive looks, and laugh at the same dumb jokes that Bill makes. He’s good at acting like nothing is different. Except now, he can see Bill making suggestive looks back at him, can feel it when Bill places a hand on his arm for a second too look, can hear the flirtation tone in his voice when Bill tells him that he looks good, that his pants make his legs look good or that his shirt is showing off his midriff.

 But nothing changes. They still hang out with the same people, and they still hang out alone with nothing happening.

 Bill is driving Stan to a drive in theatre that they wanted to go to,  the next town over. The rest of the Losers were either working, busy or were on one-on-one dates. It’s just him and Bill. Alone in a car for 45 minutes there, two back to back movies then 45 minutes back.

 Stan is tired of waiting for change.

 “Pull over.” He says suddenly, making Bill jump a bit.

 “Why?” he asks, glancing over, “Do you f-feel sick?”

 “Just pull over.” Stan repeats. Bill nods, indicates, and pulls over to the side, cutting the engine, and looking at Stan with concern.

 Stan unbuckles his seatbelt and leans towards Bill. He puts his hands on either side of his face.

 “You’re such an idiot,” is the first thing he says, “I have been flirting with you since I was 14 years old, and you have been flirting with me since you were 16. You are literally the most beautiful person I have ever met, the sweetest person in the world, one of the most caring, but you’re so dumb for not making a move yet.”

 The bridge of Bill’s nose is a light pink, “Well, you c-c-could have made one by n-now too.”

 “Shut up.” Stan says, before pressing his lips against Bill’s. His chapped lips are rough against his own, but it’s not unpleasant. Bill’s fingers get tangled in his curls, just like he always imagined. Stan smiles against Bill’s lips when one of Bill’s hands rests against his waist.

 When they pull apart, Bill’s face is red, and for once, Stan’s isn’t. He grins at Bill, and leans back in.

 They don’t make it to the drive in theatre.

#it (2017) #stanley uris/bill denbrough #stanley uris #bill denbrough #there's better tags on ao3 + like notes n stuff but yeah #funfact: idk the ship name!

[antionetterparker]

Ranking the 31 best ways to get rich in 2019

So you’re trying to get that paper. You don’t want to be a businessman, you want to be a business, man. I don’t hate it.

You’re gonna need some mad skills though, or at least a lot of patience. Don’t think anything worthwhile comes easy.

Be sure to check out how to make money fast, how to save money, and ways to make money online.

Luckily, thanks to the world wide web, you can learn just about anything from your home.

But I won’t make you wait any longer… here are the best ways to stack that paper in 2019.

32. Network marketing

I live to knock it, lol, but even I was raking in 5-figure paychecks through MLM before I gave in to my own sense of self-respect.

If you’re crazy enough to think you could somehow make it into the top .0001% as I did, network marketing could work for you. The first step is to lose your shame. The second step is to lose your friends and family.

Still want to do network marketing? You’ll want to make sure you aren’t joining an actual pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes are illegal basically everywhere, but that doesn’t stop people from starting one and hiding behind an MLM label.

Here are a few ways you can distinguish between the two:

Primary earning method – Is the compensation plan set up in a way where you earn more from selling products or recruiting new members? Pyramid schemes tend to do the latter.

Emphasis – Aside from the compensation plan, does the company make a huge deal out of recruiting without caring much about their products? Could be a pyramid scheme.

Do they pay attention to their market? If there’s no interest in consumer demand, that’s a sign they care only about adding new members to the pyramid.

Upfront investment size – Pyramid schemes usually require a large upfront “investment”, which just gets you your items. MLM’s sometimes charge upfront, but the fee tends to be pretty small.

None of those bullet points will 100% tell you if a company’s legit or not, but they do point you in the right direction.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to research the network marketing company further.

31. Real estate

Barbara Corcoran did it, and you can too.

While the average real estate agent banks about $54,000/year, there’s no limit to the amount you can earn in this job.

The Wall Street Journal recently published the salaries of the top 1,000 real estate agents, and the #1 head honcho grossed a whopping 1.4 billion, with a B. Even #250 made $60 million in annual sales. (1)

Normally, I’d say start investing in real estate yourself.

But not everyone has the money to buy up rental properties, nor do they always know what they’re doing.

Starting as a real estate agent is a great way to earn a nice paycheck while you’re learning the ins and outs of real estate.

Then you can jump ship and start your own little real estate empire.

30. Index funds

When Warren Buffet hits you up with investment advice, you listen: index funds.

This is the slow way to riches, but it’s almost certain. You can average a solid 8.5% return on index funds, which means that you’d be a millionaire in 20 years if you start investing $1,587/month now. (2)

29. Virtual reality

So, a couple years ago I blogged about how the VR industry was expected to blow up. Over 12 million in headset sales predicted for 2016. (3)

A funny thing happened in 2016: almost 100 million were sold. (4) 

The best part? 96% of these were low-cost, partial VR headsets, and the market for those in China is expected to hit $8.5 billion.

You don’t have to invest in crazy tech and clunky, futuristic headsets. Plastic and cardboard units that cost $30 and attach to your smartphone will do just fine.

Start up an SEO heavy e-commerce store if you’ve got the digital marketing skills, or start a highly targetted niche business, like selling VR headsets to the wedding market (except don’t, because that niche is taken by LiveKnot). (5)

28. Networking

There’s this legend of an Italian billionaire who was asked, “If you had to start all over again, from zero, what would you do?”

He said he’d take any job he could get that paid $500, buy a nice suit, and go to a party filled with successful people. If you’re not a people person, learn to be one.

Why?

Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Dale Carnegie (yep, the dude from How to Win Friends and Influence People) once taught public speaking to Warren Buffett. His advice? Smile, listen, be genuinely interested in other people, remember their names, and offer lots of praise.

27. Consulting

You can start off at a big 5 consulting firm (think PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Accenture) and make over $70,000 as an entry-level consultant, easily hitting 6-figs when you go Senior. (6)

Then go freelance for more freedom and more money.

Alternatively, if you don’t have consulting experience but can get a very specialized skillset, go into freelance niche consulting (financial consulting, marketing consulting, etc). Without decades of consulting experience, you’ll have to charge based on your performance – in other words, your rate will be based on the results you deliver. If you’re good, this just means more money.

26. Investment banker

Think Wall Street. Think Goldman Sachs. Think J.P. Morgan.

Banking has produced some of the world’s richest people…. if you can avoid getting thrown in Martha Stewart prison, that is.

That being said, the median salary for investment bankers is $100,000. (7) 

However, you’ve gotta hustle if you want to get to that 7-figure salary. It’s not just 40 hours a week.

It’s more like 90-100 hours most weeks for your typical analyst/associate, according to a former investment banker and author named Andrew Gutmann. (8)

To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to a little over 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, but usually that involves coming in on the weekend as well.

Not everyone will succeed in a job with those hours.

But those that make it to a VP position can easily pull 7 figures a year.

25. Public speaker

Build a brand for yourself and a recognizable name, and you could be snagging 6-figure speaking engagements presidential-style. PublicPaidSpeaking.com is a good place to start…some of their “non celebrity professional speakers” are banking “individual profits of over $800,000 a year.” (9)

Yeah, you read that right.

24. Life coaching

If you’re that friend that everyone goes to for advice, life coaching could potentially bank you a multi-million dollar practice on the internet. The industry has been booming ever since the economic crash in 2008. (10) People in hard times will spend every last cent they have for someone who can fix their problems.

Becoming a thought leader by starting your own blog, guest blogging, writing on LinkedIn, and self-publishing on Amazon. As soon as you score your first high-profile client you can start name-dropping, and the requests will fall into your lap from there.

23. Kid-Friendly YouTube videos

How many times have you gone to dinner and seen a kid glued to their iPad watching YouTube while Mommy and Daddy get some private time?

There’s an entire app called YouTube Kids, and it gets 8 million weekly users. (11) The best part? The quality of your vids can be absolute garbage, because kids don’t care either way as long as you keep them mesmerized. One of the richest YouTube millionaires is a 5-year old who makes videos of him opening toys. Literally, that’s it. (12)

22. Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin skyrocketed in 2017, reaching almost $20,000, but has since fallen to hovering around $8,000-$10,000.

While not as big of a moneymaker as it used to be, cryptocurrency is still a promising way to make money.

There are two routes you can take depending on how tech savvy you are. If you’re less tech savvy, invest. It’s a gamble but one with potentially huge returns. If you’re more tech savvy, launch a crypto ICO. Basically, you start your own cryptocurrency and hack it via a crowdfunding technique called “Initial Coin Offerings”.

Ethereum started as an ICO, and it was priced at only $12. Nowadays, it hovers around $180 depending on the day.

Keep in mind that your coin has to have a unique, useful idea behind it. Pumping and dumping coins might’ve worked years ago, but people aren’t going to invest in random coins anymore unless there’s a compelling reason.

21. Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology that cryptocurrency uses to record transactions. It’s basically a decentralized, encrypted way of recording transactions digitally so they can’t be hacked or altered (or at least without a genius hacker).

Companies are currently developing blockchain solutions for nearly every field, meaning plenty of lucrative investing opportunities await.

If you’ve got a blockchain solution idea and you can sell yourself to angel investors, you could start your own company instead.

20. Gaming

Everybody would’ve laughed in your face if you said you were going to become a multi-millionaire by playing Doom back in the 1990s.

Fast forward a couple decades, and you now have people like Ninja making half a million for live-streaming his Fortnite sessions. (13)

You wanna make money playing video games? Playing in tournaments and being an e-sports athlete is one way, but the big money’s in streaming on platforms like Twitch and making YouTube videos because the income is much more passive.

Granted, it takes a long time to build an audience, but I mean you’re playing video games while you’re doing it, not running a blog or anything.

It’s a brave new world.

19. Podcasting

Everyone’s favorite podcaster Joe Rogan was allegedly earning $75,000 per episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast back in 2016. (14) That number’s gotta be much higher now.

To start a podcast, you’ll first need a topic, preferably something interesting. You’ll also want to decide on a name as well as the length you want each episode to be.

Aside from that, the rest of it comes down to creating your brand and planning/recording your episodes.

18. Dating apps

Almost half the population of the U.S. uses online dating now, and a third of new marriages start online. (15)

This is a huge market to capitalize on. Sure, you’ve already got your Tinders and Grindrs and eHarmonies, but there’s plenty of space left for the niche dating market.

Just look at Spark Networks, owner of Christian Mingle and Jdate (a Jewish dating site). They consistently gross over $100 million a year for matching up religious singles with other singles of the same religion.

Find a niche that’s not taken, turn it into a mobile app, and pair it with the addictive gameified interface of Tinder. You’re welcome.

17. Niche Sites

You can get rich selling products without having to manufacture them or even set up a store with affiliate marketing.

Niche sites are one of the easiest ways to go about this. You basically build a site/blog around an extremely niche topic and target ultra-specific keywords to bring in visitors that are highly likely to buy. All you need are your standard website pages (home, affiliate disclosure, privacy policy, etc), a few simple blog posts targeting your keywords, and some affiliate products.

Once your niche site pulls a decent income, you can scale by hiring writers or VAs to manage your site and pump out posts, then you can start another site and repeat the process.

You won’t get rich overnight, but as your site reaches more people thanks to your SEO efforts, more people will buy through your affiliate links, growing your income.

If you ever get sick of running your niche sites, you can always sell them for a nice profit.

16. Marijuana

Large-scale legalization of weed in the US started with Colorado and Washington in 2012, but it’s slowly spreading all over the states.

And in Canada, it’s been legalized federally.

If you have no moral qualms with your money flowing into the marijuana industry, you can capitalize on the legal acceptance of pot in two ways.

The first would be investing in marijuana stocks. As you’d expect, these are quite volatile what with all the political battles over the little green plant. Don’t worry, though, as the industry is expected to reach over $23 billion by 2022. (16)

Or, if you live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, you could start your own marijuana business in the form of either a dispensary or a grow operation.

Neither are cheap, and starting either one requires jumping through a ton of legal hoops for obvious reasons. Plus, you gotta operate your business on an all-cash basis since it’s still banned federally.

But nearly 90% of dispensaries, wholesale cultivators (grow operations), and even companies making weed-infused products were profitable in 2016. (17)

What better way to make some green than with some green?

15. Flip websites

Imagine making $58,000 in profit over the course of 2 months just by buying and selling domain names. Well, it’s been done. (18)

Domains are basically digital real estate. Domain flipping sites like Flippa make it easy to try your luck, but if you really want to make good money, do your research and base your domain purchases on knowledge and skill. (19)

14. Amazon self-publishing

Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish a book now for free. But you have to put in solid marketing effort to make sales.

You don’t have a publishing house doing all the work for you, but you’re also raking in most of the profits. Self-publish on Amazon and sell your book for $2.99 or less, and you get to keep 70% of the royalties. (20) If you can sell 477,783 copies (indie self-publishing star Amanda Hocking was doing 100,000/month in sales in her prime), you’ll make your first million. (21)

Then if you want, start your own website and sell your books on there at whatever price you want. You’ll get to keep all your profits.

Just make sure you can handle all the admin and marketing stuff, or better, hire someone else to do it.

13. Content farm

If you’re looking for the next big thing, content marketing is already it. The industry is on track to rake in $313 billion by 2019, so get on it now. (22)

If you can learn how to write epic content that drives sales (and get your name in Forbes and HuffPo), you can charge hundreds per article.

Even better, start a content farm, hire writers off of freelancing websites, and skim passive profit off the top.

Starting a content farm will require you have the cash to pay your writers. Without it, your best bet is to do the writing yourself until you’ve got some money.

12. Instagram influencer

Grab that iPhone, download some photo editing apps, slap a filter on your selfie and post. Simple.

Instagram “micro-influencers” (10k-50k following) don’t make huge bucks…more like $50-$100 per post. But if you can grow your following up to 6-figures, you could rake in thousands for posting one sponsored photo. (23) Making a paycheck has never been easier.

11. Software development

Unlike web development, this is learning coding and development that’s focused on building software. It has a lower ceiling but a higher average income.

Learn some of the more lucrative frameworks and systems (like Spark and Cassandra) and some of the highest paying programming languages (like Scala and F#), and you’ll hit an average salary of $125,000. (24)

With enough experience, capital, and entrepreneurial skills, you could launch your own software company and maybe even become the next Silicon Valley success story too.

10. Video post-production

Video is IT. By 2020, video is expected to make up a whopping 90% of all internet traffic. It’s already on a huge upswing, having grown 71% year-over-year in 2016. (25)

You could go through the trouble of writing scripts, hiring actors, directing, and getting expensive filming equipment, or you could just start your own company that offers post-production video services (editing, adding in music, credits, etc).

That’s the part that most people outsource anyway. Once you build your name, start your own video editing training school to really bring in the passive income.

9. Web design

Websites like Codeacademy and SkillCrush will teach you web design for fairly cheap, and some websites even teach it for free. (26) (27)

Web design is the less technical, more design-oriented side of creating websites. You get to design layouts, make sure color schemes work well, and all that fun stuff. While it doesn’t pay quite as well as web development, you don’t have to learn as much code and you can still earn $75-$100/hour. (28)

8. Social media consultant

Facebook has over 3 million companies using their ads, and over 60 million using their pages to promote their business. (29) Instagram has over 1 million advertisers, and it’s bound to keep growing. (30)

If you’re that friend who’s always scrolling social media, editing photos, hashtagging, and whipping up clever captions, you can make money doing that. Get analytics and ads on lock on your skills list, and you can make good money doing what you do best.

7. Data scraping

You can do this manually without any programming skills, it just takes a lot longer. But if you come up with a good, unique idea like

Scraping emotional reactions to certain types of content on Facebook

Gathering leads from online business directories for B2B service providers

Gathering contact info for homes that were recently purchased

Scraping for keywords in user reviews of a certain product

Businesses will pay for the data if it helps them sell their products.

Now imagine if you did know how to code and could create computer programs that scrape all this data for you in seconds. You’d be making sales faster than you could keep up with them.

6. e-Commerce

Pick a niche product. I mean really niche (think “Disney coffee mugs” or “small travel backpacks”).

You don’t have to manufacture the product – you can fill orders via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), dropshipping (basically online retail without inventory), or even plain old affiliate marketing.

Kick your SEO into full gear. Once you’re #1 on Google you’ll start seeing some handsome profits with little to no effort aside from maintenance.

You can boost your sales by spending on ads (or hiring an expert to do the ads for you) once you’ve got cash rolling in. No need to if you don’t want to, but do it right and your profits will increase.

Then you can scale it by outsourcing all the menial stuff to virtual assistants. Hey, you’re creating jobs now!

5. Web Development

Again, you can learn this online, even for free.

Unlike web design, learning more advanced coding languages and becoming a web developer PAYS. One developer wrote in Business Insider of a typical job offer – $150,000 salary, $10,000 signing bonus, all kinds of freebies, from gym memberships to free meals on the daily, and flexible work hours. (31)

Of course, if you take all that coding knowledge and use it to start your own hit website (think Facebook), the sky is the limit.

Again, websites like Code Academy, Khan Academy, and Code.com (among a ton of others) are filled to the brim with coding lessons and other good stuff.

But as you know, the best way to get better is to practice. Once you’ve learned some stuff from your free online resources, you’ve got to start building websites with your skills.

4. Blogging

Bloggers don’t actually make money, right?

Nope, not a myth. If you hit it big with your blog you can clear six figures a year EASY.

Just look at Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. I mean, he regularly clears six figures every MONTH.

Sure, he’s got like 100 income sources at this point, but according to his income reports, affiliate marketing alone earns him around $100,000 a month give or take.

For more proof, just search the web for “blog income reports” and you’ll get endless lists of, well, blog income reports.

If you get really big, think Mashable, Tech Crunch, and Endgadget status (yes, they all started as blogs), you can even score a lucrative takeover. Ariana Huffington eventually sold the Huffington Post for $315 million to AOL. (32)

3. Mobile app creator

Mobile apps routinely hit 250 billion downloads worldwide this year. (33)

Platforms often pay 70% profits on your app sales, so if you’re selling an app for $4.99, that can add up quickly. Sell half a million downloads, and you’re looking at a $1,746,500 profit.

That might sound hard, but there are actually thousands of apps that have hit over a million downloads, so hitting half that is definitely possible.

2. SEO consulting

Having a digital presence is a must for any business nowadays, and the only way to get there is through SEO. Because of that, companies will pay huge amounts to someone who can provide results…I’m talking page one Google results.

The hourly consulting rate for a legit SEO specialist is $100-$300. (34)

1. Lead generation for local businesses

If you’re looking for automated, digital, and scalable, this is it. If you’re looking for a market with low competition that is almost impossible to saturate, this is it. If you’re looking for guaranteed five-figure paychecks, this is also it.

The bottom line is that this method works better and more consistently than almost any other for generating passive income. You’re building out niche websites that focus on specific products and specific locations, so when your competition is cut down to people advertising limo services in Dayton, Ohio, hitting it big is a lot more do-able.

Use SEO to get to the top and let the leads come in overnight. Once you can offer local businesses a stack of contact info for people who have already said they’re interested in the product or service, they’ll start handing you money faster than you can count it.

via https://mlmcompanies.org/get-rich-in-2019/

[mlmcompanies]

So you’re trying to get that paper. You don’t want to be a businessman, you want to be a business, man. I don’t hate it.

You’re gonna need some mad skills though, or at least a lot of patience. Don’t think anything worthwhile comes easy.

Be sure to check out how to make money fast, how to save money, and ways to make money online.

Luckily, thanks to the world wide web, you can learn just about anything from your home.

But I won’t make you wait any longer… here are the best ways to stack that paper in 2019.

32. Network marketing

I live to knock it, lol, but even I was raking in 5-figure paychecks through MLM before I gave in to my own sense of self-respect.

If you’re crazy enough to think you could somehow make it into the top .0001% as I did, network marketing could work for you. The first step is to lose your shame. The second step is to lose your friends and family.

Still want to do network marketing? You’ll want to make sure you aren’t joining an actual pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes are illegal basically everywhere, but that doesn’t stop people from starting one and hiding behind an MLM label.

Here are a few ways you can distinguish between the two:

Primary earning method – Is the compensation plan set up in a way where you earn more from selling products or recruiting new members? Pyramid schemes tend to do the latter.

Emphasis – Aside from the compensation plan, does the company make a huge deal out of recruiting without caring much about their products? Could be a pyramid scheme.

Do they pay attention to their market? If there’s no interest in consumer demand, that’s a sign they care only about adding new members to the pyramid.

Upfront investment size – Pyramid schemes usually require a large upfront “investment”, which just gets you your items. MLM’s sometimes charge upfront, but the fee tends to be pretty small.

None of those bullet points will 100% tell you if a company’s legit or not, but they do point you in the right direction.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to research the network marketing company further.

31. Real estate

Barbara Corcoran did it, and you can too.

While the average real estate agent banks about $54,000/year, there’s no limit to the amount you can earn in this job.

The Wall Street Journal recently published the salaries of the top 1,000 real estate agents, and the #1 head honcho grossed a whopping 1.4 billion, with a B. Even #250 made $60 million in annual sales. (1)

Normally, I’d say start investing in real estate yourself.

But not everyone has the money to buy up rental properties, nor do they always know what they’re doing.

Starting as a real estate agent is a great way to earn a nice paycheck while you’re learning the ins and outs of real estate.

Then you can jump ship and start your own little real estate empire.

30. Index funds

When Warren Buffet hits you up with investment advice, you listen: index funds.

This is the slow way to riches, but it’s almost certain. You can average a solid 8.5% return on index funds, which means that you’d be a millionaire in 20 years if you start investing $1,587/month now. (2)

29. Virtual reality

So, a couple years ago I blogged about how the VR industry was expected to blow up. Over 12 million in headset sales predicted for 2016. (3)

A funny thing happened in 2016: almost 100 million were sold. (4) 

The best part? 96% of these were low-cost, partial VR headsets, and the market for those in China is expected to hit $8.5 billion.

You don’t have to invest in crazy tech and clunky, futuristic headsets. Plastic and cardboard units that cost $30 and attach to your smartphone will do just fine.

Start up an SEO heavy e-commerce store if you’ve got the digital marketing skills, or start a highly targetted niche business, like selling VR headsets to the wedding market (except don’t, because that niche is taken by LiveKnot). (5)

28. Networking

There’s this legend of an Italian billionaire who was asked, “If you had to start all over again, from zero, what would you do?”

He said he’d take any job he could get that paid $500, buy a nice suit, and go to a party filled with successful people. If you’re not a people person, learn to be one.

Why?

Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Dale Carnegie (yep, the dude from How to Win Friends and Influence People) once taught public speaking to Warren Buffett. His advice? Smile, listen, be genuinely interested in other people, remember their names, and offer lots of praise.

27. Consulting

You can start off at a big 5 consulting firm (think PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Accenture) and make over $70,000 as an entry-level consultant, easily hitting 6-figs when you go Senior. (6)

Then go freelance for more freedom and more money.

Alternatively, if you don’t have consulting experience but can get a very specialized skillset, go into freelance niche consulting (financial consulting, marketing consulting, etc). Without decades of consulting experience, you’ll have to charge based on your performance – in other words, your rate will be based on the results you deliver. If you’re good, this just means more money.

26. Investment banker

Think Wall Street. Think Goldman Sachs. Think J.P. Morgan.

Banking has produced some of the world’s richest people…. if you can avoid getting thrown in Martha Stewart prison, that is.

That being said, the median salary for investment bankers is $100,000. (7) 

However, you’ve gotta hustle if you want to get to that 7-figure salary. It’s not just 40 hours a week.

It’s more like 90-100 hours most weeks for your typical analyst/associate, according to a former investment banker and author named Andrew Gutmann. (8)

To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to a little over 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, but usually that involves coming in on the weekend as well.

Not everyone will succeed in a job with those hours.

But those that make it to a VP position can easily pull 7 figures a year.

25. Public speaker

Build a brand for yourself and a recognizable name, and you could be snagging 6-figure speaking engagements presidential-style. PublicPaidSpeaking.com is a good place to start…some of their “non celebrity professional speakers” are banking “individual profits of over $800,000 a year.” (9)

Yeah, you read that right.

24. Life coaching

If you’re that friend that everyone goes to for advice, life coaching could potentially bank you a multi-million dollar practice on the internet. The industry has been booming ever since the economic crash in 2008. (10) People in hard times will spend every last cent they have for someone who can fix their problems.

Becoming a thought leader by starting your own blog, guest blogging, writing on LinkedIn, and self-publishing on Amazon. As soon as you score your first high-profile client you can start name-dropping, and the requests will fall into your lap from there.

23. Kid-Friendly YouTube videos

How many times have you gone to dinner and seen a kid glued to their iPad watching YouTube while Mommy and Daddy get some private time?

There’s an entire app called YouTube Kids, and it gets 8 million weekly users. (11) The best part? The quality of your vids can be absolute garbage, because kids don’t care either way as long as you keep them mesmerized. One of the richest YouTube millionaires is a 5-year old who makes videos of him opening toys. Literally, that’s it. (12)

22. Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin skyrocketed in 2017, reaching almost $20,000, but has since fallen to hovering around $8,000-$10,000.

While not as big of a moneymaker as it used to be, cryptocurrency is still a promising way to make money.

There are two routes you can take depending on how tech savvy you are. If you’re less tech savvy, invest. It’s a gamble but one with potentially huge returns. If you’re more tech savvy, launch a crypto ICO. Basically, you start your own cryptocurrency and hack it via a crowdfunding technique called “Initial Coin Offerings”.

Ethereum started as an ICO, and it was priced at only $12. Nowadays, it hovers around $180 depending on the day.

Keep in mind that your coin has to have a unique, useful idea behind it. Pumping and dumping coins might’ve worked years ago, but people aren’t going to invest in random coins anymore unless there’s a compelling reason.

21. Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology that cryptocurrency uses to record transactions. It’s basically a decentralized, encrypted way of recording transactions digitally so they can’t be hacked or altered (or at least without a genius hacker).

Companies are currently developing blockchain solutions for nearly every field, meaning plenty of lucrative investing opportunities await.

If you’ve got a blockchain solution idea and you can sell yourself to angel investors, you could start your own company instead.

20. Gaming

Everybody would’ve laughed in your face if you said you were going to become a multi-millionaire by playing Doom back in the 1990s.

Fast forward a couple decades, and you now have people like Ninja making half a million for live-streaming his Fortnite sessions. (13)

You wanna make money playing video games? Playing in tournaments and being an e-sports athlete is one way, but the big money’s in streaming on platforms like Twitch and making YouTube videos because the income is much more passive.

Granted, it takes a long time to build an audience, but I mean you’re playing video games while you’re doing it, not running a blog or anything.

It’s a brave new world.

19. Podcasting

Everyone’s favorite podcaster Joe Rogan was allegedly earning $75,000 per episode of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast back in 2016. (14) That number’s gotta be much higher now.

To start a podcast, you’ll first need a topic, preferably something interesting. You’ll also want to decide on a name as well as the length you want each episode to be.

Aside from that, the rest of it comes down to creating your brand and planning/recording your episodes.

18. Dating apps

Almost half the population of the U.S. uses online dating now, and a third of new marriages start online. (15)

This is a huge market to capitalize on. Sure, you’ve already got your Tinders and Grindrs and eHarmonies, but there’s plenty of space left for the niche dating market.

Just look at Spark Networks, owner of Christian Mingle and Jdate (a Jewish dating site). They consistently gross over $100 million a year for matching up religious singles with other singles of the same religion.

Find a niche that’s not taken, turn it into a mobile app, and pair it with the addictive gameified interface of Tinder. You’re welcome.

17. Niche Sites

You can get rich selling products without having to manufacture them or even set up a store with affiliate marketing.

Niche sites are one of the easiest ways to go about this. You basically build a site/blog around an extremely niche topic and target ultra-specific keywords to bring in visitors that are highly likely to buy. All you need are your standard website pages (home, affiliate disclosure, privacy policy, etc), a few simple blog posts targeting your keywords, and some affiliate products.

Once your niche site pulls a decent income, you can scale by hiring writers or VAs to manage your site and pump out posts, then you can start another site and repeat the process.

You won’t get rich overnight, but as your site reaches more people thanks to your SEO efforts, more people will buy through your affiliate links, growing your income.

If you ever get sick of running your niche sites, you can always sell them for a nice profit.

16. Marijuana

Large-scale legalization of weed in the US started with Colorado and Washington in 2012, but it’s slowly spreading all over the states.

And in Canada, it’s been legalized federally.

If you have no moral qualms with your money flowing into the marijuana industry, you can capitalize on the legal acceptance of pot in two ways.

The first would be investing in marijuana stocks. As you’d expect, these are quite volatile what with all the political battles over the little green plant. Don’t worry, though, as the industry is expected to reach over $23 billion by 2022. (16)

Or, if you live in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, you could start your own marijuana business in the form of either a dispensary or a grow operation.

Neither are cheap, and starting either one requires jumping through a ton of legal hoops for obvious reasons. Plus, you gotta operate your business on an all-cash basis since it’s still banned federally.

But nearly 90% of dispensaries, wholesale cultivators (grow operations), and even companies making weed-infused products were profitable in 2016. (17)

What better way to make some green than with some green?

15. Flip websites

Imagine making $58,000 in profit over the course of 2 months just by buying and selling domain names. Well, it’s been done. (18)

Domains are basically digital real estate. Domain flipping sites like Flippa make it easy to try your luck, but if you really want to make good money, do your research and base your domain purchases on knowledge and skill. (19)

14. Amazon self-publishing

Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish a book now for free. But you have to put in solid marketing effort to make sales.

You don’t have a publishing house doing all the work for you, but you’re also raking in most of the profits. Self-publish on Amazon and sell your book for $2.99 or less, and you get to keep 70% of the royalties. (20) If you can sell 477,783 copies (indie self-publishing star Amanda Hocking was doing 100,000/month in sales in her prime), you’ll make your first million. (21)

Then if you want, start your own website and sell your books on there at whatever price you want. You’ll get to keep all your profits.

Just make sure you can handle all the admin and marketing stuff, or better, hire someone else to do it.

13. Content farm

If you’re looking for the next big thing, content marketing is already it. The industry is on track to rake in $313 billion by 2019, so get on it now. (22)

If you can learn how to write epic content that drives sales (and get your name in Forbes and HuffPo), you can charge hundreds per article.

Even better, start a content farm, hire writers off of freelancing websites, and skim passive profit off the top.

Starting a content farm will require you have the cash to pay your writers. Without it, your best bet is to do the writing yourself until you’ve got some money.

12. Instagram influencer

Grab that iPhone, download some photo editing apps, slap a filter on your selfie and post. Simple.

Instagram “micro-influencers” (10k-50k following) don’t make huge bucks…more like $50-$100 per post. But if you can grow your following up to 6-figures, you could rake in thousands for posting one sponsored photo. (23) Making a paycheck has never been easier.

11. Software development

Unlike web development, this is learning coding and development that’s focused on building software. It has a lower ceiling but a higher average income.

Learn some of the more lucrative frameworks and systems (like Spark and Cassandra) and some of the highest paying programming languages (like Scala and F#), and you’ll hit an average salary of $125,000. (24)

With enough experience, capital, and entrepreneurial skills, you could launch your own software company and maybe even become the next Silicon Valley success story too.

10. Video post-production

Video is IT. By 2020, video is expected to make up a whopping 90% of all internet traffic. It’s already on a huge upswing, having grown 71% year-over-year in 2016. (25)

You could go through the trouble of writing scripts, hiring actors, directing, and getting expensive filming equipment, or you could just start your own company that offers post-production video services (editing, adding in music, credits, etc).

That’s the part that most people outsource anyway. Once you build your name, start your own video editing training school to really bring in the passive income.

9. Web design

Websites like Codeacademy and SkillCrush will teach you web design for fairly cheap, and some websites even teach it for free. (26) (27)

Web design is the less technical, more design-oriented side of creating websites. You get to design layouts, make sure color schemes work well, and all that fun stuff. While it doesn’t pay quite as well as web development, you don’t have to learn as much code and you can still earn $75-$100/hour. (28)

8. Social media consultant

Facebook has over 3 million companies using their ads, and over 60 million using their pages to promote their business. (29) Instagram has over 1 million advertisers, and it’s bound to keep growing. (30)

If you’re that friend who’s always scrolling social media, editing photos, hashtagging, and whipping up clever captions, you can make money doing that. Get analytics and ads on lock on your skills list, and you can make good money doing what you do best.

7. Data scraping

You can do this manually without any programming skills, it just takes a lot longer. But if you come up with a good, unique idea like

Scraping emotional reactions to certain types of content on Facebook

Gathering leads from online business directories for B2B service providers

Gathering contact info for homes that were recently purchased

Scraping for keywords in user reviews of a certain product

Businesses will pay for the data if it helps them sell their products.

Now imagine if you did know how to code and could create computer programs that scrape all this data for you in seconds. You’d be making sales faster than you could keep up with them.

6. e-Commerce

Pick a niche product. I mean really niche (think “Disney coffee mugs” or “small travel backpacks”).

You don’t have to manufacture the product – you can fill orders via Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), dropshipping (basically online retail without inventory), or even plain old affiliate marketing.

Kick your SEO into full gear. Once you’re #1 on Google you’ll start seeing some handsome profits with little to no effort aside from maintenance.

You can boost your sales by spending on ads (or hiring an expert to do the ads for you) once you’ve got cash rolling in. No need to if you don’t want to, but do it right and your profits will increase.

Then you can scale it by outsourcing all the menial stuff to virtual assistants. Hey, you’re creating jobs now!

5. Web Development

Again, you can learn this online, even for free.

Unlike web design, learning more advanced coding languages and becoming a web developer PAYS. One developer wrote in Business Insider of a typical job offer – $150,000 salary, $10,000 signing bonus, all kinds of freebies, from gym memberships to free meals on the daily, and flexible work hours. (31)

Of course, if you take all that coding knowledge and use it to start your own hit website (think Facebook), the sky is the limit.

Again, websites like Code Academy, Khan Academy, and Code.com (among a ton of others) are filled to the brim with coding lessons and other good stuff.

But as you know, the best way to get better is to practice. Once you’ve learned some stuff from your free online resources, you’ve got to start building websites with your skills.

4. Blogging

Bloggers don’t actually make money, right?

Nope, not a myth. If you hit it big with your blog you can clear six figures a year EASY.

Just look at Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income. I mean, he regularly clears six figures every MONTH.

Sure, he’s got like 100 income sources at this point, but according to his income reports, affiliate marketing alone earns him around $100,000 a month give or take.

For more proof, just search the web for “blog income reports” and you’ll get endless lists of, well, blog income reports.

If you get really big, think Mashable, Tech Crunch, and Endgadget status (yes, they all started as blogs), you can even score a lucrative takeover. Ariana Huffington eventually sold the Huffington Post for $315 million to AOL. (32)

3. Mobile app creator

Mobile apps routinely hit 250 billion downloads worldwide this year. (33)

Platforms often pay 70% profits on your app sales, so if you’re selling an app for $4.99, that can add up quickly. Sell half a million downloads, and you’re looking at a $1,746,500 profit.

That might sound hard, but there are actually thousands of apps that have hit over a million downloads, so hitting half that is definitely possible.

2. SEO consulting

Having a digital presence is a must for any business nowadays, and the only way to get there is through SEO. Because of that, companies will pay huge amounts to someone who can provide results…I’m talking page one Google results.

The hourly consulting rate for a legit SEO specialist is $100-$300. (34)

1. Lead generation for local businesses

If you’re looking for automated, digital, and scalable, this is it. If you’re looking for a market with low competition that is almost impossible to saturate, this is it. If you’re looking for guaranteed five-figure paychecks, this is also it.

The bottom line is that this method works better and more consistently than almost any other for generating passive income. You’re building out niche websites that focus on specific products and specific locations, so when your competition is cut down to people advertising limo services in Dayton, Ohio, hitting it big is a lot more do-able.

Use SEO to get to the top and let the leads come in overnight. Once you can offer local businesses a stack of contact info for people who have already said they’re interested in the product or service, they’ll start handing you money faster than you can count it.

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