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#okay. now that i got that out of the way i should finish queuing this chapter before i go to sleep

fluentmoviequoter · 6 months

Text

Merry and Bright

Day 9 of 12 Days of Ficmas

Pairing: Tim Bradford x fem!reader (The Rookie)

Summary: You invite Tim over on Christmas Eve, but he says he's working. A Christmas miracle occurs and Tim knocks on your door, presents in tow.

Word Count: 1.4k+ words

Warnings: so much fluff. How the Grinch Stole Christmas references. Tim is probably OOC. I made up some stuff about Tim and his sister.

A/N: I haven't written for Tim Bradford yet, so please feel free to leave feedback and let me know what you think! I'd like to keep writing for him and try to capture his amazing character better so please feel free to send requests if you have any!

Masterlist Directory | Request Info (& full fandom list)

Since you inserted yourself into Tim’s life, barging your way in with a basket of goodies after moving in next door, he has quickly become one of your best friends. If he’s undeniably handsome and one of the most caring men you’ve ever met despite his grumpy exterior, so what? You asked yourself that the first time you invited him over for dinner, but now it’s a weekly occurrence, and it is your week to cook.

Your favorite one-pan dish is in the oven, and the game is queued on your television, but all that’s missing is Tim Bradford. As you decorated for Christmas this year, you thought about him and how his sister isn’t coming to LA for the holidays, leaving him alone. You’ve since decided to do something about that.

“Anyone home?” Tim asks as he opens your door. “Because I know I’ve told you more times than I can count to lock your door.”

You look around the corner and smile at him as you argue, “My neighbor’s a cop, it’ll be fine.”

“Sergeant, not a cop.”

“My apologies, Sergeant Bradford.”

He smiles at you, less rare than it used to be, but a moment you take the time to appreciate, never knowing when he will grace you with another one.

“So, I know your sister isn’t visiting,” you begin, “and I was wondering if you’d be interested in spending Christmas here?”

Tim glances at your Christmas tree before answering. “I would love to, and I can’t thank you enough for thinking of me and offering, but I’m working Christmas Eve.”

“Okay,” you say, nodding as you smile. “I just wanted to extend the invitation.”

You turn around to remove dinner from the oven, and Tim places a hand on your arm, stopping you.

“Thank you,” he repeats quietly and bordering on reverent. “I really appreciate it.”

“Of course. You’re always welcome here.”

“I’m sorry. I would come if I could.”

“Tim, it’s fine. I’ll just have to give you your giant stack of gifts later,” you tease.

Tim nods, removing his hand from your arm and watching you turn away, his heart trying to decide whether it wants to shrink or grow.

✯✯✯✯✯

“Bradford, are you good?” Wade asks as he leaves the station.

“Fantastic,” he mumbles. Wade looks at him, unconvinced, and he sighs before saying, “I just wish I could be somewhere else. I’m glad I could help out the officers with families, with kids, and give them the night off, but…”

“You’re regretting it?” Wade finishes.

“Not exactly.”

“Well, if you want to come over when you get off, we’ll leave the lights on,” Wade offers.

“Thanks,” Tim says. He doesn’t add: I’ve got somewhere else I’d rather be.

Someone walks up behind Tim and places a Santa hat on his head.

“Cheer up, Grinchy,” Angela calls, walking out of the station. “Merry Christmas, Tim!”

“Yeah,” Tim says, more to himself than her.

“Dude, we need to find you a K9 named Max, finish off the Grinch look,” Aaron teases, sitting next to Tim as his shift begins. He’s working tonight for the same reason Tim is: to let the officers with families spend Christmas with their loved ones.

“Oh, should we get him a little heart pin, too, and try to make it grow?” Nolan chimes in.

“Sorry, Bradford, but you’re just so… Grinchy,” Aaron says.

Tim laughs, shaking his head as the Santa hat shifts with his movement. Nolan and Aaron look at each other in horror and amusement at the fact that Tim Bradford, who is wearing a Santa hat, just laughed. Tim, however, is only thinking of you and how you’d absolutely agree with them. Although, if you were here, or if he was with you, he wouldn’t be quite so Grinchy.

“Merry Christmas, LAPD!” Officer Jan announces, entering the station in a full Santa costume. “I have come to relieve one lucky soul of Christmas Eve duty.”

“Bradford!” Aaron and Nolan yell. “He has somewhere to be.”

“How do you-?” Tim asks.

“It’s all over your face,” Aaron says as Nolan answers, “Go get her… whoever she is.”

Tim looks at Jan, who nods encouragingly. Tim jumps to his feet and runs to his locker. He’s heading home for Christmas, but he has one stop. As he changes before climbing in his truck, he makes a mental list of everything he needs. Merry Christmas to all, Tim thinks.

✯✯✯✯✯

You smile at the ending of the Christmas movie on your television, your thoughts drifting to Tim as you wonder what it would be like to have him here. As you try to focus on the movie again, someone knocks on your door.

When you open it, you don’t expect to see Tim in a Santa hat and holding several gift bags. Your eyes widen, and your smile returns as you let him in, closing the door behind him. He opens his mouth to say something, but you wrap your arms around his shoulders and hug him tightly before he gets the chance. His arms wrap around you, loosely at first, before tightening when a Christmas song begins playing through your speakers as the credits roll.

“I brought gifts,” he says against your shoulder.

“You didn’t have to. I just wanted to see you,” you reply.

He squeezes you once more, and you slowly step back, pulling out of the hug and looking up into Tim’s eyes.

“You brought hot chocolate?” you ask, stealing a peek into one of the bags.

“It’s Christmas,” he answers, as if it’s obvious.

“Didn’t take you for the sentimental type.”

“I’m not always.”

You smile and gesture for him to follow you, leading him into the kitchen and pulling two Christmas-themed mugs from your cupboard.

“Thank you for coming,” you tell him.

“Thanks for inviting me.”

✯✯✯✯✯

After making the hot chocolate, you return to the couch and turn on A Charlie Brown Christmas as you resist leaning into Tim’s side.

“This is one of my favorites,” he says quietly, “my sister and I watched it every time it was on cable growing up.”

“It’s a classic,” you agree.

“We would watch it, drink hot cocoa or cider, whatever was in the kitchen, and exchange one gift on Christmas Eve,” Tim adds.

“Do you want to open a gift?” you ask, facing him. “There’s only a few hours until Christmas anyway.”

Tim thinks for a moment and then smiles at you. “Just one.”

You stand, retrieving a small box from under the tree while he pulls a gift from one of the bags. When you sit back down, you sit a little closer than before. He opens his present first, smiling and leaning in to hug you as he thanks you. When you open yours, you see a gift you’ve wanted for years but no one ever remembered. You start to thank him, but something happens along the way, and instead, your lips land on his. His hand raises to your arm as he reciprocates, but you realise your mistake (was it really a mistake? you ask yourself) and pull back.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

His hand slides up your arm to rest at the back of your neck. You see a new smile as he pulls you back in. Pressing your hand against his chest, you stop yourself.

“Are you sure?” you whisper.

“Have you ever seen me so merry and bright?” he asks, his smile the widest you’ve ever seen.

You pick up the pompom at the end of his Santa hat and chuckle. “You are pretty cuddly,” you reply, noticing his other arm has wrapped around your waist.

He rolls his eyes, still smiling as he kisses you again. You shift backward, your hand landing on the remote and resuming the movie. Tim laughs as he pulls back, pulling you against him.

“How’d you get off work?” you ask.

“Jan came in and offered to cover for one of us, and I was volunteered because I was being too ‘Grinchy.’”

You gasp in faux surprise. “Tim Bradford? You? Grinchy? I can’t imagine it.”

He smiles, and you lean in to kiss him again, your new favorite pastime.

“Thank you for coming. This is the best Christmas ever,” you say against his lips.

“Until next year?” Tim asks.

“What happens next year?”

“We’ll see.”

“And for now we’re merry and bright?” you respond.

“The merriest and the brightest,” Tim jokes, pulling you against his side as Charlie Brown appears on screen.

Merry and Bright, indeed.

#fluentmoviequoter12daysoffics #tim bradford x reader #tim bradford fluff #tim bradford imagine #tim bradford x you #tim bradford #tim bradford the rookie #the rookie

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nishisun · 1 year

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DOCTOR’S PET — MATSUKAWA ISSEI.

paring: optometrist!issei x reader

summery: you should’ve known something was up when you stumbled across that sketchy advertisement... dr. matsukawa is a fucking nut job.

warnings: nsfw, dub-con, fingering, vaginal penetration, manipulation, uses of vibrator, he’s like in his 40’s, reader is in her 20s. PLEASE READ AUTHORS NOTE BELOW.

a/n: suprise! i am not back, but i realized that i had 14 drafts so i am queuing them because i will soon deactivating this blog, but i’m not sure yet. i’m not sure if this work is finished, so i apologize for any cliff hangers my works have! this was originally written back in late 2020, so excuse the writing if it’s horrible. thank you for the support i received in this blog! i do plan on creating a new blog so this work may be transported to that one if it seems familiar, but i will also make note of that to avoid confusion.

It should not have gotten to this.

Seriously. You’d think that as medical school enrollments expanded the system would do the best they could and resolve the physician shortage by adding more residency slots in the Miyagi Prefecture. That wasn’t the case at all.

In fact, all the residencies and medical internships you’ve applied for haven’t gotten back to you. It’s been over a month now, and the only emails you’ve received from them are ‘I’m sorry to inform you’ letters and ‘waitlisted’. Not even one acceptance letter. It sucked.

Just when you lost hope, you stumbled across an article for one that was unrealistically near you.

‘Medical Internships Available for Upcoming Optometrist! Miyagi’s Hospital Center: Medical Training Program ran by Dr. Matsukawa Issei, MD. Location: Dr. Matsukawa’s Office.’

It sounded way too good to be true... and it was only a 15-minute drive from your place..? Out of mere curiosity, you clicked on the advertisement without a second thought and ah — there it was; a catch.

Only one person could be accepted.

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures, so you filled the application anyways and hoped for the best.

And for some odd reason, you were actually selected.

You don’t know how, but you actually got chosen. Now here you are, in front of his office in your car. You take one last anxious look in your rear-view mirror, reassuring yourself that you looked somewhat presentable before gathering your belongings and heading to the entrance.

“Here goes nothing.”

Once you push past the doors, you couldn’t help but notice how empty the lobby was. There weren’t any patients waiting, and the T.V used for entertainment purposes was off. Maybe the office was closed? You brush these thoughts off before turning your head to be greeted by a lady. She seemed young, about the same age as you or a little bit older.

“Hello?” she calls, she doesn’t bother looking up at you as she continues to type away on the computer. You turn your head around swiftly to face her, offering an awkward smile.

“Oh! Uh, Hi! I came for Dr. Matsukawa’s internship program?” The woman makes a face that you can’t read — confusion, you might say? Either way, she does an excellent job concealing it as she rolls a pen and a few papers your way.

“Fill these forms out for me and I’ll tell Dr. Matsukawa that you’re ready for him.” she explains, giving you a tight lipped smile.

You take the papers and pen, taking a seat on one of the many comfortable chairs in the room. You finished filling out the form rather quickly, getting up to return the papers back to the front desk, until you suddenly hear bickering. It sounds like the lady that was at the front desk not too long ago and oh, a male voice too. Although you shouldn’t, you let your curiosity get the best of you.

“Hey, is everything okay here — oh.”

It’s the doctor himself. He raises an eyebrow at you, his attention that was once on the lady was now at you, then looking down at the folders he was currently holding, rummaging through them. He looks back at you, using his pointer finger to gently lift up his glasses.

“You must be L/N?” he clears his voice, as if he wasn’t just arguing with the lady next to him seconds ago, waiting for you to reply.

Dr. Matsukawa is extremely attractive.

The hell? Since when did you have a thing for older men? Is that wrong to say? He looks like a very busy man, even though there were no patients currently in the office. There’s a huge height difference between him and the lady and the way he has to look down at you leaves you with no choice but to close bite on your bottom lip.

Your eyes wander down to his lower body, meeting the dress shoes he was currently wearing, and from there, your eyes take in the tight black pants and the way his fitted navy blue shirt outlined his abs slightly, his white lab coat topping the outfit.

“Ms. L/N?” The man calls out again, his fingers gripping the stacks of files in his hand a bit tighter as he gave you a concerned look. Your head jerks up immediately to face Dr. Matsukawa, your stomach doing flips when you make eye contact with him. “Ms. L/N Y/N is your name. Am I correct?”

You gulp, eagerly nodding your head. “Uh, Yeah — Yes. Yes, that’s my name.” You stammered. You break eye contact with the doctor, eyes drifting to the lady standing next to him.

Dr. Matsukawa flashes you a bright smile before giving you a firm nod, lifting his arm to direct you to another room. “You can follow me — Is everything alright, miss?”

“Y-Yes!” You mindlessly shake your head, struggling to move your feet from where they’re planting. You’ve suddenly realized how unprofessional you’ve been acting and it’s because of the extremely hot doctor in front of you.

“Please, take a seat.”

He’s taken you to a.. patients room..? You were expecting an office. You’re assuming this is where he’ll be discussing the activities you’ll be doing today. You take a seat in the medical recliner, examining the room as he brings out your information in a folder. “Your files show that you’re a really good student, who has a great amount of experience on leadership skills and opportunities,” he affirmed. He looks up at you, shifting in his seat as he continues to look over your papers.

“Uh, Yes, that’s true. I can name some—“

“Let’s get straight to the objective for today, shall we?” The way he suddenly interrupted you by slamming the folder together causes you to flinch, there’s a sudden mischief in his eyes that cause your throat to dry up, and now he’s staring at you. Like boring his eyes on you waiting for a response. You swallow hardly before nodding, causing him to grin. “I’ve already reviewed everything I need to know about you. I don’t want to waste another minute.”

He’s nice. Weird, but nice. Which doesn’t help because his odd (yes, odd) behavior was turning you to someone who you weren’t, which was shy. You’d like to say you’re a pretty confident and outgoing person who’s able to maintain eye contact and keep a conversation going with others, but for some reason, this man in front of you was different.

“I’m going to be running some test. I hope that’s fine with you?” He announced, leaning foward while adjusting the nobs on the lamp. You should be asking questions, you should, because you didn’t know this interview would require “tests”. You don’t even care to at this point, you’re just grateful you got selected, so you nod your head. “Perfect. I’ll start by checking your eyesight.”

“Uh, Dr. Matsukawa, forgive me for overstepping , but what do these test have to do with the internship?” The doctor hums in acknowledgment, leaning down so he can get a good look at your eyes through the lens.

“Can you see the dot?”

You squint your eyes so you can see the so called ‘dot’ he’s talking about more clearly “Yes, I can, but—“

“This was mentioned and is definitely part of the internship Ms. L/N. Did you not read the form?” He sighs, writing some notes down in his paper and you can’t even feel guilty because you’re too distracted at how big his hands are, huge knuckles and veiny. How can someone’s hand be so attractive?

“Well, I did but I just didn’t really see where it said that on the form, so I didn’t think that you’d be running some ‘tests’.” You quote his words from earlier, nervously chuckling. He sighs again.

“I’m going to test your eye pressure.” He stands up, holding an object similar to a pointer. He moves towards you, pointing to the red dot on the wall across the room.

“Keep your eyes focused on the dot and try not to blink. This won’t hurt, but it may feel uncomfortable.” You nod once again, resting your hands on your lap as Dr. Matsukawa squats in front of you so he’s eye-level with you. He gently places his hand in your knee, causing you to flinch.

Seriously, get your shit together.

“Are you alright? He basically snickered, you’re pretty sure he can feel the warmth radiating at your core.

You nod your head, eyes locking into the dot, cheeks heating up and turning into a bright pink shade. Dr. Matsukawa positions the equipment right in front of your eye before pressing a button that activated the device to blow a puff of air into your eye, causing you to blink.

“We’ll try again.” He maintains eye contact, refocusing the device on the center of your eye as his hand that was on your thigh slight reaches higher, going under your pencil skirt causing you to flinch again.

“I’m sorry,” you breathe, letting out an extremely nervous sigh.

“I’m going to hold your head so you don’t pull away. Is that alright with you?” He explains, giving you so soft smile.

You nod your head rather keenly. Your heart flutters at the contact, the grip on the back of your neck not too tight but strong enough to prevent your head from moving.

He starts the device again, watching you fight the urge to blink. He smiles when you don’t blink, removing his hand from the back of your neck.

“Good girl. You just need someone to keep you in place, yeah?” his other hand rubs your thigh and you couldn’t help the whimper slips out your mouth at the nickname.

Dear God help you. It’s like this man knows that you find him attractive.

“Yeah..” you answer, he stands up with the equipment, writing some notes down on his note book before closing it.

“We have one more test and that’ll be all for today.” He leaves the room for a short period of time and comes back with the other lady from before, she’s carrying a box and places it right next to you.

Dr. Matsukawa follows behind the lady, taking a seat across from you. Why the hell did they look like they were about to dissect your body?

“Do you know what’s inside that box?” he beamed, you turned your head to look at the box the lady had placed next to you, tilting your head and slightly squinting your eyes so you could get a better look at the text.

‘Magic Wand — Vibrator Sex Toy.’

What. The. Fuck.

Dr. Matsukawa grins when he watches the harsh breath you take, the lady next to him staring to the side with a bored look.

“W...What’s that for?” You eyes remain staring at the box.

He grins, “You do know what this is used for, right Ms. L/N?” You stare back up at him, swallowing hard.

“Is... Is this why you put these restraints on me?” Your eyes are filled with pure terror, your breathing becoming uneven when Dr. Matsukawa chuckles darkly. What was going on in your head when you willingly let him tie your hands up?

“No need to fret,” He attempts to touch you and you only flinch in response. “What, you can’t handle getting touched by a vibrator?”

You cringe at his word choice, shaking your head when he takes a closer step at you.

“Also,” He’s hot in your face, your breath hitches when you remember that you two aren’t the only ones in the room. You look over to the lady with a pleading look, but she only looks away. “I’ve noticed the way you’ve been looking at my most naughtiest places, Ms. L/N.”

“No... No! It’s not like that I swear!—“

He swiftly faces away from you and you bite your bottom lip. “But of course, if you’re not comfortable with this, I won’t force you. I’m not into stuff like that anyways.”

It’s only then you finally remember to breathe, you shift uncomfortably when he places a hand in your thigh.

“But you’re a good girl, right? You know how to follow directions.” It takes a while to register his words, you’re too busy in your own world, wondering how the hell you got yourself in this position. You don’t even notice his hand was cupping your cheek.

“You see,” he starts, “I don’t want to hurt you.. I just want to study you. That’s all.” He assured with that charming smile that could get you to obey his every order.

So you nod.

“Perfect!” he gleams, “Nina, would you mind stepping to the side for me?”

She follows his request, clipboard in her hand. You give her an unsure look and she looks like she’d rather be anywhere else but here. You don’t blame her.

“Nina over here took her test 3 years ago,” He announces, “Took it like a pro, isn’t that right, Nina?”

She glared at Dr. Matsukawa, before nodding, “Yeah.”

“She’s a very hard working doctor and very successful, too. You should see her when the office is open! Handles the patients so well.”

He continues to ramble and proceeds to remove the object from out of the box, placing a battery and flicking the switch on.

“Wait!” you yelp, he switches off the vibrator and gives you a confused look. “What— what does this have to do with the internship? And what were the eye test for?”

“I’m going to review your vision before and after you achieve an orgasm.” he deadpans.

Your head cocks to the side, in fact, you feel light headed and you wonder how he said something like that so casually.

“You see, I’ve noticed that you’ve been holding your breath quite a lot every since you’ve gotten here, and I can’t help but wonder if you’ll do the same while your vagina is being stimulated.” you blankly stare, waiting for him to continue. “If this is true, and you do hold your breath while you orgasm, you could temporarily lose eye sight, or receive blurred vision due to the pressure that would be building up in your eyes.”

Help. Someone help. This man has lost his fucking mind. And the lady, Nina, why the hell is she not saying anything? Did she seriously go through this too?

Your jaw gapes as well as your eyes, staring at Dr. Matsukawa with a frightened look. Maybe you shouldn’t have applied for this internship. And then the dam finally breaks.

Honestly, you’re surprised you didn’t start crying when he restrained you. You’re absolutely too frightened to even fight back at this point, and even though he said you didn’t have to, you’re too afraid to speak at the moment. If you knew you’d meet crazy doctors like this, you would’ve quit med school.

“This causes your blood vessels in your eye to burst and trigger a small hemorrhage and temporary vision loss.” You let out a sob, “But don’t worry, it’s temporary.”

Like that was supposed to help.

He gently pats your head before placing a strand of hair behind your ear. “It’s okay if you don’t want to do it, baby.”

You face the floor as he rubs his thumb softly over your cheek. You find comfort as he cups your cheek, it’s almost as if it’s only the two of you there.

“I’m sorry if I frightened you, dear. I’m just so very excited because I’ve never met someone so... Inspiring,” You lift your head up to face him, and he lets out a soft chuckle. “With such leadership skills you have, I’m truly greatful you accepted this internship. I honestly find a strong interest in you, too.” His hand travels down your sides, pushing you closer to him.

“Really?” it’s barely above a whisper, breath hitching when his lips softly brush against yours. He nods against your lips, just about to bring them in before he hears a soft ‘tch’ coming from Nina.

“Ah, no need to be jealous, Nina. You’re still in my top 3.” He pulls away from you to grin at Nina, who doesn’t respond. She’s awfully quiet. You don’t know why, but those words sent a pang to your heart. Top 3? Does he have affairs with all his co-workers? Just how many girls has he done this to?

He turns back to gave you once again, delicately trailing his fingers on your sides. “You think you can be a good girl for me?”

You bite your lip, looking up at him and it’s the way he’s staring at you with such adoration — like he’s the only person you can count on.. You just want to make him proud. So you nod.

“Yes.”

You can see the way his eyes light up, and you can’t help he smile to yourself. It finally feels like you’re being useful for once.

“If you ever need me to stop, call out ‘strawberries’”

“Okay.”

Dr. Matsukawa grabs the small vibrator once again, turning it on to the lowest setting, testing the power of it in his finger before lifting your skirt up and placing it against your panties.

“Hah!” you gasp out, your hands pull hard against the restraint, causing Dr. Matsukawa to grin.

“Subject 5 has been restricted for a approximately 10 minutes now. An increased blood flow towards her genital has been detected after realizing what was about to happen to her.” Nina speaks into the recorder.

Subject 5, really?

He moves the wand from your clit, down to your folds, as he watched you writhe underneath the restraints.

“Poor baby,” he pretends to pout, “I don’t think you’ll be able to fully enjoy yourself being l restrained like this. You need to comforting, isn’t that right?”

“Mmm! Mhm.”

He chuckled to himself, before helping you remove all of your clothing, discarding your panties as well as your bra. Your nipples began to harden as the cool air got in contact with them. As he was pulling down your panties, he kneeled down and inspected the slick covering your pussy.

“Subject 5 has increased vaginal discharge, signifying that her body is preparing itself for sexual intercourse.” Dr. Matsukawa calls out before licking a long stripe on your pussy. Your hips buck, causing Dr. Matsukawa to chuckle as he rubbed the side of your thigh.

You weren’t one to get embarrassed easily, but it’s not everyday a hot doctor almost 2x your age sees you naked.

Your head bolts up when you realize Dr. Matsukawa was doing the same, removing his lab coat as well as his right-fitted navy blue shirt, to reveal nibs insanely fit body.

“You’re drooling, Ms. L/N.”

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pliablehead · 8 months

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I guess if I want to write a travelogue/write up post about my 4-stop journey following the first chunk of Everything Everything's 2023 US tour then I have to just... do it!! If this is of interest to anyone other than me then GREAT and if not then it's still special to me to try to write down and remember everything I can uwu

FIRST STOP WASHINGTO-- wait, no, actually, first stop, on my way out of town, the local donut shop in my neighborhood, a place that I absolutely adore and patronize all the time with staff who mostly know me by now/some of whom are my instagram friends/etc. i'd checked with the Pittsburgh venue ahead of time to see if it was okay to send in outside food as a gift to the band even though they have a cafe/bar in their own right, and whoever I corresponded with said it would be totally fine, so I talked to the donut shop manager and set up a delivery of a dozen for the lads for Saturday before their show here. advance paid for that, as well as getting my own breakfast and coffee hehe, and then hit the road. OKAY FOR REAL FIRST STOP WASHINGTON DC!!! This was the second-longest leg of my Car Driving and it was definitely a wee bit exhausting but I had a podcast or two and a ton of E E on shuffle to bolster me through and I made it to my mom's friends' house, where I was staying, with relative ease. The venue was within a not-too-unreasonable walking distance too so after a change of clothes (I had very distinct and deliberate Show Outfits for each night that were fully separate from my travelin' clothes) and a bunch of fussing with the bracelets™ I headed over!! stopped for empanadas and a smoothie on the way and then queued up!!

aaaaahh this was such a nice fun queue. I was maybe about a dozen-ish people back from the front, down about half a block, and once I finished scarfing down my food this was my first real experience with doling out the bracelets. so fun! I'm glad it was basically an instant hit! AND I even got a few trades in this queue--one person gave me a Man Alive / Tin / E E bracelet with teeny tiny beads, super fun, and one person with a SHITTON of kandi stuff gave me one that had the name of a flower genus on it?? i think they said it was?? I love the colors on this one! And one person traded me a Blow Pop. lmao. I should eat that before it sits in my fanny pack for too long. I also really enjoyed chatting with the two guys right in front of me (Nick and Alex?), who were from south-central PA and had a couple other fandom touchstones in common with me (mcelroys/dnd/BDG! I love this Venn diagram!!) as well as a big love for E E. We didn't really see much of each other beyond the point of getting inside but I liked y'all a lot!! Hope you had as great a time as I did!!

Black Cat is where I saw E E the first time I EVER SAW THEM, which was almost exactly six years ago from this gig, which is insaaaane. The space is kind of narrow so there's not a huge amount of stage barrier space right at the front, so Becky and I ended up pretty much at the front but almost aa-all the way stage left/Jeremy-side. coulda been worse hehehe. We kind of loitered and chatted with nearby folks, I think maybe becky checked out merch ahead of the show ? but I kind of just held down the fort, enjoying setup stuff, pete running around etc hehe. getting BLASTED by the AC, which was nice.

the ummmm the opener! our first experience with Pierre! I gotta say his general style is not for me, despite the fact that I do think he's very talented and good at the thing he's doing. this first night especially he was SO sweaty and I felt bad for him lmao, you could like see it dripping off him. i am so curious as to why/how he got paired with the boys for this tour, like, what aligned in such a way that this match was made, because my general vibe on the crowd/his audience/etc was that we the fans of the nerdy white english mathy rocker guys were not exactly his demo LOL. BUT i will say in DC I do think he had one little pocket of strong-contingency fans because I kept hearing big whoops and cheers coming from one specific audience spot and I loved that for him lmao. for some reason i cannot explain I actually almost found his backing/support musician guy (the guy who was basically his version of peter) more compelling. I wanna know THAT dude's story lol.

so when he finished up we had a little interlude aaaannndd the setlist appeared... hehe. I could def have peered up to look at it from where I was, but I was telling myself I wanted to be surprised, and was deliberately looking away........ until suddenly everyone around me was gasping and going HOLY SHIT and I was like, ugghhh okay, I will check JUST enough to figure out what that's all about, and what that was all about was immediately apparent because smack in the middle of the set were a Man Alive track (which we never get in the states bar MY KZ) and something that just said "New Song." AND LIKE, OKAY, THAT'S A JUSTIFIED HOLY SHIT. new song????? so now we had THAT to contend with coming up, and aaaaaaah. ahh. yeah holy shit indeed.

it's also while we're standing there that AG pops into view, (or maybe I first spotted him during Pierre's set? Chronology is irrelevant), back off behind Becky from me in the other direction, and we waved over at him to say hi and he says to us, "All four of them are bleached blond." And my gut instinct was to be like, I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, but also the truth in my heart was that there was absolutely no justification for not believing them, because of course they would, and sure enough these bozos roll out onto the stage and they are all four draco malfoy-ass bleach blond. God it looks a mess on Jeremy LOL and while the color/dye job wasn't bad on Alex, it was clear his finer hair wasn't holding up as well against the chemicals because it was just a fluffy riot mess. BUT GOD IT WAS REALLY SO INCREDIBLY STRIKING OF A VISUAL for them to be all be wearing all pure white/beige clothes and then to have this bleach-white hair and all of it catching and glowing under the stage lights... god... clearly the effect they were going for and it WORKED, IT REALLY DID. I think it looks so damn goofy (mostly on jez) out of context but it's ABSOLUTELY nailing the Everything Everything Gig Costumes energy/uniform thing that I felt like they'd drifted away from a little the past couple tour cycles, I'm so incredibly here for it

The set!!!! The gig!!!!!!! it wasn't a wildly different set from what we'd seen in CA last year, obviously RDF-heavy supplemented with a heaping helping of singles from the other albums too, but I remember thinking Leviathan and Pizza Boy were especially excellent aaaah. And Schoolin'! And the NEW SONG! The two pieces of it I IMMEDIATELY absorbed and retained were 'the image of a little yellow face to tell you that I'm sorry' and 'I love you like an atom bomb,' and I was spouting those two pieces back to anyone who wanted to talk to me about it for the rest of the night. I'm so lyrics-pilled/vocalist-biased. Which was.... Unfortunate, for this DC gig, because I do think the audio mix was pretty rough - at least from where we were standing so close to the front, I wonder if it was at least a tiny bit better further back into the crowd in the area the sound system was probably primarily calibrated for - and we were REALLY losing Jon in the mix, especially underneath how enthusiastically the crowd was singing along a lot of the time. We were on Jeremy's side of the stage and we were really just getting a LOT of Jeremy. (Which, the bass did sound absolutely fantastic, so hard to complain about that, at least, but still.) I was very thankful to be going to a few more gigs beyond this one so that this wasn't my only experience with it, especially New Song!!! Plus there were a bunch of other little tech difficulties too? Near the beginning of the new song, Jon's guitar strap came detached and wouldn't reconnect, and after struggling a bit with that he decided to just drift back and pass it off the stage to their tech guy--but he was still kind of singing/holding the mic, so as he moved on stage, the mic cable yanked the microphone stand straight over, too. Then the rest of the night that stand was pretty precarious and nearly fell two other times, only caught at the last minute by a true homie who was standing directly in front of it in the audience lmao. I think Becky yelled HIRE HIM! at one point. Annnnd also for like a whole verse of NOTLK jez's bass boards just kind of Gave Up. He tried switching to his other instrument but that wasn't working either, and then finally it all sort of came back online, so he played a little stretch with the wrong bass and then was able to switch back to the right bass when there was a lull in his part. SHAMBLES. lmfao. god it was a great gig though. SO FUCKING GOOD TO BE BACK I LOVE BAND UWAAAAAHH I WAS SO SWEATY AND HAPPY

afterrrr da gig, we needed very badly to drink water and so we managed to do that I believe, and we kind of loitered in the Merch Line Situation trying to figure out what was going on. I had kind of resolved not to buy merch until at least NY, part because I really didn't want to be lugging anything around with me for too much of my trip (esp on this night where I walked) and part because I'd read a post that Irving Plaza was among the venues who'd committed to not taking a cut of band merch sales and letting them keep it all, and I was like, well obvi that's where I want to spend my money. Plus it was cash only in DC and since I'd kind of told myself NY I didn't even have cash out, so it was nothing. BUT!!! homie Adrian whomst I had met at the DC Foals show last December had been there, a few people ahead of me in the queue and also rocking out yaayyy, and he was trying to get merch but the ATM inside the venue literally did not have any more cash left inside it to dispense because everyone was taking out so much of it to buy merch AAAH. so he reached out to me like 'you're going to more shows than just this one right?' and asked if I'd pick him up the stuff he wanted later and then mail it to him so he didn't have to contend with international shipping and I was like aaaah absolutely! yay gig comradeship!

so I think becky finally committed to getting in the merch line and I was mostly just waiting With Becky and there weren't a ton of people left because the venue was trying to clear out, but the handful of us who were still there, a wild Alex Robertshaw appeared up near the stage/bar. we vibed out whether he was receptive to Fan Bothering at this time but it seemed legit, so a bunch of us went over and socialized with him and took some pics, got some signatures, etc, woooo. We tried to vibe out from him also if the other guys were gonna be coming out, and when and where, but y'all know Alex is the awkwardest member of this band by a country mile and we didn't really have too coherent of a discourse at this point in time lmao. Not sure who talked to him about what at this point as I was just trying to hold down the fort and be Normal. I was able to give Alex the bracelet I'd made for him at this point (he was so cute studying on it and reading it ahaha - "rave-- kevin-- kevins rave KEVIN'S RAVE" and he smiled and I felt cool), and also meanwhile Pete was still running around stage doing roadietech type stuff and I sort of politely flagged him down like "do what you need to do if you need to do it but also: Hi lol" and I got to give him his bracelet as well! yay ♥. He complimented my shirt--I'd been getting a lot of compliments on it honestly, it's their Yellow Bird Project shirt that Jon designed some time ago, only I replaced the plain white sleeves of the original unisex tee with some sort of vermilion "girly fit" sleeves that are more comfy to me and kind of give the shirt a different look haha--and I sort of joked on that, said as much, oh, I swapped the sleeves out, "It's to cover up how sweaty I get." and Pete gave me a deadpan look and went "You don't even want to go there with me" and I was like "YEP I FEEL MUCH THE SAME" and I think we both enjoyed a moment of feeling very Seen about the sweatiness hehehehehe. I love Pete he is my heckin Friend With no additional merch purchases (merchases) (hm, no) the venue was finally for realsies ejecting us so we drifted back out into the streets and just like... okay... now what........ this was the point at which I think our Band Groupie-ing Crew became me, Becky, Danielle in the fox ears/tail, and a lanky youth named S.P. whom I'd talked to in line earlier while doling out bracelets (he had the good E E baseball cap; he asked for an Arc bracelet and I commended him for being an Arc fan, since I feel like they are a dwindling/rarer breed, and then I offered up my hot take that Violent Sun is just the second coming and second pass at Duet, which he thought was spicy, and then he asked for my most controversial E E take and I told him that I don't really like Tin very much and he told me he doesn't really like Shark Week very much and we agreed to disagree and have a good night LOL) (anyway I digress !). It was a warm enough night and none of us really had places to be so we didn't mind just loitering and trying to suss out some more Guys other than just Alex and Pete, but slowly but surely we became basically the only fans left sticking it out. so we stuck together! We split up to try to find if there was a rear stage door at the back and SP and I went one way (the long way RIP) and Becky and Danielle went the other way and it turns out the way that SP and I went was an alleyway just FULL of rats. Too many rats in DC!! People like to talk about rats in NYC but I saw WAY more in Washington just vibing out on the sidewalks and eating trash. I'm not anti-rat, they live there and deserve to live, but oh man it was just. I did not especially want a rat encounter LOL. The rat alley DID actually lead us to where the bus was though!!, but there was also a venue security guy there who was immediately like "Nope, back up, leave, bye" and we were like. understood have a nice day, and doubled around a different way to meet back up with the other two. wwwwelp.

We loitered a bunch more and eventually saw Alex and his homies like, AT LEAST two more times, but we ultimately never saw anyone else. They p much confirmed for us that because this was the first night of the tour, they had a really intense load-out, and everyone was jetlagged to all fuck, that they probably wouldn't ever make it out, even though at least once Alex had said something ambiguous/optimistic enough to imply that they might yet, but really it just got SO late that we couldn't justify still being there for nothing instead of being like. asleep. lol. SP and Danielle got rideshares, Becky and I walked back as far as her hotel together, and then I hiked the rest of my way back too and went the fuck to SLEEP!!! FIRST GIG IN THE BOOKS!! WHAT A LOVELY NIGHT GOD IT WAS JUST SO BEAUTIFUL TO BE SEEING THEM AGAIN ngl I think the blond is really attractive on Mike with his darker brows/beard and I'm always a sl*t for jonathan so like. beautiful. finally some delicious fucking food

it was super nice of my mom's friend to let me stay with him!!! I was so delighted to see his cats again, I remembered them from the last time I was there like six or so years ago, they're sooooo floofy and beautiful aahh. he also provided me with a white noise fan without me even asking which was SO choice. zzzzz. My plan was to get up in the morning, get coffee someplace nearby at wherever he recommended, and then hit the road forrrr... Philadelphia!!! Night two!!!! I got some breakfast tacos at a hella legit place, messed up my coffee/milk/sugar ratio ever so slightly but not in an undrinkable way, and then frickin. autobot rolled out. This drive was not bad at ALL, I timed it pretty much exactly like I planned it to, which was to: get to my friend's place where I was crashing in philly with, ideally, enough time to take a small nap before I had to do anything else, because, god, despite being pretty exhausted and sleeping okay on the nice guest bed in DC, I had BARELY slept the night before I left just from Travel Antsiness and from both staying up way later and waking up way earlier than I meant to unintentionally, and a second little recharge zzz before I went and did it all over again really hit the spot.

It was soooo nice to see Mads again and to see Mr. Angus and also meet BENNY!! More host cats!! They are suuuch silly good little lads, Mads and I had a ton of Kitty Chat and just vibing out and talking about concerts and fandom and stuff, I was so thankful she let me stay with her and getting to hang out was icing on the cake of this trip! She pointed me toward the trolley I'd need to take to get to the venue, and after my baby snzzz and drinking a ton of water and suiting up in my Arc-inspired look (literally just a sweatshirt dress I bought specifically because it was color-blocked very very much like the jackets/outfits they toured Arc in, I saw it and bought it immediately lmfao) I journeyed into the city, hoping to just find a place to eat in the vicinity of the gig! I was way closer up in the queue this time, the people in front of me were really just like.... the usual suspects, Annika+squad and David+squad (incl. Becky, who'd apparently already been there when I got there but wasn't there when I arrived), and also a super-nice woman immediately in front of me named Robin who I MEGA hit it off with!!! Hanging out with her was such an awesome part of my experience at this gig!!! she's COMPLETELY Offline which is so powerful for her but I hope there's some capacity in which we can continue to be friends because she ruled.

There was a Dominican(? I think) place like one block down from the venue where a couple in front of me had gotten some stuff and so I ran down there to snag food too and holy shit this man gave me so much goddamn food. Just a HUGE pile of rice and beans and some pork ribs, and I got a pineapple fanta, and I just popped a squat on the sidewalk and ate as much of it as I could which was probably not even half of what he gave me but it wasn't even that expensive so god bless. Once I wasn't dealing with my food sitch any more I was freed up to pass out a bunch of bracelets again, and I even got a couple more trades, one that was just a bunch of black beads and a bunch of Xs and one that says 'BUSSY' which I am elated about, thank you so fucking much lmao. Also someone offered to trade me an ibuprofen LOL and I was like no that's fine the bracelet can be free... for now, but I will keep that in mind if I change my mind later LOL aaahhh i was just so excited to give the bracelets out it was such a good vector for socializing and making Friends and Gig Buddies. I did learn p quickly at Philly that I should have made way more Man Alive, GTH, and Raw Data feel bracelets because those were basically the first to go every night and then I got stuck with just sad unloved Re-Animators and AFDs :( I was trying to like! do equal amounts of everything to give everything the love because I love them all! but people got favorites out there damn lmao. I was happy to be able to give Robin the MY KZ one because she said that's the first song she ever heard by them and it's special to her because of that (and then also it's been in the touring set and she got to hear them perform it too yay!!! I don't remember if she said she'd seen them before but it had just been a very very long time, or what, idk, aaaah).

We were R I G H T on the stage at this venue, slightly more to Alex's side this time, and the lip/rise of the stage was not very high at ALL and it felt almost like... intimidating, or like it shouldn't have been ALLOWED, for us to be that close to the stage. :flushed emoji: jeez lmao. I didn't fuck w merch here either but some people around me did I think and I held their spots, and a nice kid from right behind me in the queue brought me a Liquid Death which was so incredibly sweet. Pierre's set passed much as it had in DC, lmao; his other musician guy had a sweet fit on, though, this like two-piece set that was a really really dark/muted camo, a blazer over a black top and then matching like athleisure-fit pants and black boots, it was a fuckin look. They had a song at the very end of Pierre's Philly set that I don't think they'd done in DC (and that I didn't get in PGH either, it turned out), and ironically that was actually probably far and away the song of his I enjoyed the most, so I got kind of into it there at the end! but MAN was I ready to see the boys instead. hnnnn.

LADS SO CLOSE TO ME. JUST RIGHT THERE AND SINGING AND ROCKING. the set was aaaalmost exactly the same as DC, but in Philly they shifted Bad Friday up out of the encore and back into the set proper, and then replaced it in the encore with Violent Sun, which I admit I'd been bummed to not see in DC because I think the Violent Sun/No Reptiles encore double whammy is so incredibly crucial to the vibe. Warmed me to have it back in. Obviously Pittsburgh had so many other contributing factors that put it over the edge, but if it weren't for all of those, I think Philly would've been my favorite/best experience of these four gigs. Jon was spicy (he sang so many of the Original Rejected naughty lyrics, this is where we got 'he's a vegetable now' for the first and only time and also the only gig of the four where he leaned into the 'Arch Jeremy' gag in Arch Enemy, hehehehe, plus also motherfuckin' distant past which is not uncommon), and we got way more of the New Song-- through the whisper network of Becky, AG, David, etc., etc., we'd pieced together enough info to know by now that apparently the title of the song was in the lyrics of the chorus, and so I think it was in Philly that we all pretty much determined/decided that this was Cold Reactor. I love you like an atom bomb and I've become a cold reactor. I wasn't diving as DEEP into SONG DECIPHERING as some other folks were, but I did like kind of working on it at my own pace and absorbing it into my heart and my understanding of the band and what they're about to start doing, and so this was really great, for me, here, beautiful, beautiful. I took almost NO pics and vids at this one because my phone was kind of dying but also mostly just because I was honestly having such an enormously great time and I didn't feel the need to try to do anything other than be present in my body at the gig and experience it live. you KNOW?? LIKE!! MUSIC. man. EDIT TO ADD: I forgot to mention a small tech flub that was actually so charming, where near the very end of Arch Enemy jon seemed to be having trouble with his guitar board in the front, and he spent so long in the outro squinting down at it and trying to resolve the issue that he didn't fully come in on the It's time to show your face! bit at the proper time, and he ended up just saying "It's time to show your face." right into the mic very unaffected and straight-up in his regular speaking voice at the very, very end when the song was basically over. lol. he is cute. everyone is cute.

(I WILL ALSO SAY I got the giggles SO BAD at david and amanda's gudetama they slipped onto the stage, oh my god--I was going to take a joke video just dramatically zooming in on it, as one does, except right when I went to do that it got caught up in jon's mic cable and just TUMBLED AND JOSTLED ALL OVER THE PLACE and that fucking GOT me and I was DYING and it was right at like. the serious, heartstring-tugging, fuck-yeah parts of No Reptiles where I'm supposed to be at CHURCH and instead I'm losing my shit into hysterics over this poor gudetama just rolling everywhere alksdhjglaksd, I had to bury my face in Becky's shoulder for a measure or more and try to recover, oh my godddd. EGGS!) -- (OH ALSO I LMAO I HAVE SEVERAL AUDIENCE MEMBER ~BITS THAT I AM DOING just like, clapping here or there, participating actively in certain parts of things, and one that I kept doing for some asshole clown reason was singing along with/lampshading Alex's quick backing vox on the second verse of Spring Sun Winter Dread-- Philly was probably the place where I was the most prominent/obvious/easy to see doing it, and it made both him and Jeremy REALLY snicker, ahahaha I'm sorryyyyyyy for being obnoxioussssss)

The merch/loitering sitch was sli-iiightly more locked down, in here; there was only so long Marty and I could pretend to be thinking about merch/hanging out with people who were actually in line but not actually being in line before they really truly wanted us to leave, and they were pretty pissed that I even left the venue with an empty/ice-only water cup, never mind any dreams of re-entry. The militant energy of the security at this venue compared to how relatively chill and normal DC had been (for two venues I would say of comparable size/seriousness) was def my least favorite part of the Philly experience. I was outside, finishing my water and chitchatting with some artsy youths who were also unimpressed with security, and Becky's messaging me like "they're in here!" and I'm like "well I'm not and I can't come back so you gotta tell them to come out here!" lmao. But they did!!! All the guys came out before too long and I very delightfully got to talk to everyone. I gave Mike and Jeremy the bracelets I'd made for them - THEY both apologized to ME outright for not coming out to chat the night before?? like hello you’re the band we’re the fans you don’t owe us anything - they kind of came toward my side of the door first, and talked and chatted some, vs Jon sort of peeling the other way to the other half of the loiterers - I honestly have lost track of the sequence of events here and what happened when, but it was largely unimportant hehe. (Gosh, but then I keep randomly remembering other unrelated details. Like, for example, Black Cat gave me their big ol' signature black cat hand stamp, and I'd been thinking, oh this will be fun to watch my four hand stamps stack from these four gigs, the way I got two together from The Altogether/Matt Duncan double feature back in July, and then Underground Arts put theirs on the INSIDE OF MY WRIST and not the back of my hand, and both Irving and T-Bird just did wristbands. BUMMER.) But mostly just Seeing Band, Talking To Band. This was when I overheard Alex definitely confirm to someone that the new song is called Cold Reactor, and he sort of half-seriously half-not said they just didn't call it that on the setlist in case there was another "New Song" they might want to decide to start playing there instead at the last minute, even though the longer this goes on the more confident we are that they're not going to do that and that Cold Reactor is gonna be a new single that probably drops once this tour is over <___< eyes emoji. Also, between Wednesday and Thursday we also knew that the bleach-blond hair is for Lore Reasons, which we assume are to do with Cold Reactor and the album it will be on, because of course it is. stupid. jonathan higgs I want to crawl inside your deranged pisces mind and meld with it vulcan style.

anyway, as far as my short term memory can be relied upon/will tell me is the truth, I think Jon was actually the last person I ended up in contact with on this night; I was drifting over toward him but someone else was still engaged in an active conversation with him, so I was like, well obviously I will wait my turn and let other people have jonathan time even though I'm the biggest jonathan girlie, I can just hang and go in when he frees up, and so I was turned slightly away from him listening in on other convos and talking to Becky and maybe Annika or a couple other people, and then suddenly there's a delicate hand on the back of my shoulder and Jon's right in my fucking ear ominously going "hello." askdjhgka. He was soooo cute and nice, I gave him the bracelet I made him as well (which was "I wanna be there" from Violent Sun and shades of re-animator orange) and he was immediately like Oh, of course you, are the bracelet distributor, and I was like hehehe yes, and he asked if I also had to do with the gudetama and I was like absolutely not I have no idea what is going on there lmfao. and I think amanda and david did take credit for it at that time of course so yes hehe. Ended up in a fun casual chitchat with Jon and Becky for most of the rest of the time here, with her trying to squeeze him for info about the new song and album and lore hehehe and him being his typical cryptic trolly cagey Jon, and it was all in incredibly good fun; he noticed her bracelet too, and she pointed it out like Yes I got the one that says This Is The Prophecy from big climb because it hearkens back to that bit they were doing on twitter from way before that song even came out so I gave her that one on purpose duh lol, and Jon says "Oooh yep I forgot about that. .. Album..." and mimed swiping his hair back like whoopsie lmao and it was such a silly little half-self-neg on Re-Animator lol, and so I said "WELP too bad! because the one I made from you is one of those too haha!" and he took another look at it as if to remind himself about it and then went "Well yeah that one's good" with a wryer wickeder laugh and I was like lmao tell us how you really feel. But like he's right violent sun is perfect and I actually labored so long over what I was going to have jon's say because he was the only person I didn't have a really solid concrete idea of what to make for and ALSO he was the only one I REALLY wanted to get PERFECT because it's important to me and yeah. so it was. reassuring for him to like the violent sun one. idk anyway.

The woman we'd seen running around doing a lot for them, including merch, who recognized us from DC the night before and was fun and glib about it, and who turns out to be: Tour Manager Sam, finally had enough of our fucking about and started very efficiently organizing us all into "everyone who wants a pic with themself + all four guys come get in Now and I'm gonna play photographer and then we all gotta go the fuck home" and I respected it SO much lmao, so we had sort of a rotating queue of group picture taking and then the guys all went back inside the venue (I kind of fingerguns'd Jon like "New York :D?" and he looked at me just SO Put Out and just deadpanned "Of course you're going to be there." of course!! lmfao) and we started talking amongst ourselves just out of reluctance to let the night end/social energy we still wanted to wallow in and that was cute and nice. I said goodbye to some folks who weren't going any further on the tour. I had such a wonderful night. Then, lo and behold, we turn around and Jeremy's up on the stoop of the venue, and he's like, I think I've locked myself out. I am locked out and I also don't have my phone on me. lmfao jez. he goes "I am going to blame jonathan" and we allowed him that. I was like, do you want me to TWEET AT SOMEONE LOL and he was like good god no they'll come back for me eventually, and then yes they did, and THEN we all left hahahaha. becky insisted on sticking with me part of the way to the trolley but I was like, it is coming in 14 minutes and it says it's gonna take me 12 minutes to get there I gotta GO!, and I freaking missed it anyway!!! and then I had to wait like OVER HALF AN HOUR MORE for the next one and i didn't even get ON the trolley till like 12:50 and it was soooo late before I was back at mads's place aiyaa. But, all in all, TRULY SUCH A GOOD NIGHT I JUST LOVE BEING IN AN ACTIVE BUZZY FANDOM SPACE AND MEETING FANS AND PARASOCIALING AND DANCING AND SINGING AND DOING ARTS N CRAFTS. you KNOW?? you know. you're on tumblr you get it.

The Philly to Jersey (pre-NYC) leg of my road tripping was set to be Thee shortest drive I had to make the whole time, so I let myself have time in the morning to keep snoozing and fucking about, even though I once again woke up way earlier than I'd hoped to and didn't ever make it back to sleep after that. But the tradeoff was still super nice and relaxing vibing with Madeline--I offered to buy her breakfast in exchange for the couch-crashin' and we got hella bagel sandwiches and cold brew from a place real close by her apartment, and scarfed 'em down while watching the most recent ep of Make Some Noise and just shooting the shit (again, largely about either fandom or kitty cats. We are simple folk). My sandwich contained salmon, a fried egg, and the most incredible sloppy caramelized onions, what a banger. The last truly good food I truly enjoyed before my mega super Travel Tummy set in and wrecked my whole shop metabolically speaking, rip. I took a little rinsy-rinse shower at her place too, and then finally made myself get up and Go to do the runaround silly business of driving to and parking in NJ, taking the ferry in to Manhattan, and then taking the subway to Allegra's place for NIGHT THREE IN NEW YORK CITY WOOOOO. I LOVE going to E E with Allegra!!!!! Once again I used her place primarily as a spot to change out of my car clothes and into my gig clothes (it's RDF night; I wore an oversized pale beige button-up shirt, actually left over from my Foals Antidotes costume from last halloween hahaha, gussied up with E E pins and jewelry) and to fuck about with bracelets. I made Allegra a special In Birdsong bracelet, the only one I did from that song :) because allegra is my special E E friend!! and she needs one of her special song!!! Fandom... is good. Allegra also had a kickass outfit. We stopped in at a tex-mex place she really wanted to try that was nearby the venue, and i got pretty nervous that it was gonna be a little late before doors for us to be hitting a sit-down dinner spot, but we rushed it along pretty well on the food and got our slice of dessert cake to go in a box and everything was A-OK. And I had time to hit a bodega for merch cash from the ATM and a pineapple soda for fortitude! let's GOOO irving plaza.

God, Irving was kind of a shitshow when it came to queuing and security though. There were a fair few people in line ahead of us, maybe just as many or slightly more than what I'd had in DC (definitely further back than Philly, although in line near us were the same also-eating-Dominican-food couple from the Philly gig, and I recognized them and was glad to see them again-- I FULLY DO NOT REMEMBER/DID NOT CATCH Y'ALL'S NAMES, AND I FEEL TERRIBLE BECAUSE WE HUNG OUT AND WORKED TOGETHER SO MUCH, i am so sorryyyyy), but then because it's not a sweet local friendly indie venue but is in fact Livenation As Hell, there's some person affiliated with the venue wandering up front offering some sort of VIP/fast pass line experience where you can just cough up some extra cash and get in your own special line and get to go in first regardless of how long other people have been queuing--you know the deal. Wack as hell. I think David and Amanda opted for this in some capacity, so I was happy for them about it, but a lot of the other people who ended up doing it had kind of rancid vibes of just like "concert-going" and not the very lovely communal sardine megafan energy everyone else had had thusfar. Also it put us where we were at in the queue standing in a place that just had a really terrible smell of sewage, which persisted almost the entire time we were there only to suddenly be replaced by a very powerful smell of bleach, as if whatever it was was suddenly being cleaned/sanitized. ICKY!! Annika was enough further ahead of us in line that I thought it might have only been over where we were but she said no she was definitely getting it too. new york city babey

Bracelet distribution got a little silly here, too, since the queue was wrapping SO far back and was being policed a little more stringently, but I had kind of figured I may need some kind of additional plan, especially since I'd decided not to wear my fanny pack (bum bag--fanny pack, says Jonathan Higgs in a derisive American accent, even as he's telling me he likes mine a lot, skdjshgalkj smh) since my shorts under my shirt had really capacious pockets and that just made for one less thing to worry about--I snagged a sheet of paper at Allegra's place, along with a gallon-size ziploc bag, and I put all the bracelets in there with a note that said to just take one if you wanted one and pass it back through the queue while we waited. It was kind of a crapshoot how effective I thought this was going to be, especially since I had to kind of wait to deploy it once there was a substantial queue BUT by the time there was a big queue it meant that I couldn't see exactly HOW big from where I was near-ish enough to the front, so I didn't know how far the bag was going to make it, if someone was going to end up stuck with my whole big bag at the back of the line (esp since I had a fair number of extra Philly bracelets left over that I lumped in with the NYC ones just because I still Had them).... whew...! BUT by the time Marty was there, he was further enough back from me that I asked him to kind of check up on it when it made it to him and keep passing it; and, by the time we were going inside, I could see zero sign of the bag itself but I DID catch a lot of people milling around me wearing bracelets, and one or two of them did stop me to thank me (since I'd indicated on my note in the bag that I was the person with green hair hahaha), and then I never saw 'em again, so I guess it was a relative success!! Yayyyyy!! WAY less conducive to making New Line Friends than the DC/Philly setup had been, but incredibly effective at making sure that all my bracelets found new homes rather than me having to take a huge handful home with me again and them just sitting in my house forever LOL. success! :)

tl;dr about the bracelets. not important compared to concert and band. WE GO INSIDE!! They have such dumb security/bag check. a gender-split process where the men get patted down by a dude guard and the women get patted down by a lady guard? In TYOOL 2023? you hate to see it. She felt the Sharpie in my back pocket and made me take it out and surrender it???? MY METALLIC BRONZE SHARPIE ? ? no sharpies in the venue I guess. Talked to at least one other person who got sharpie-confiscated too, but also at least two people who fully didn't and still had markers just fine. Absolute shenanigans. Allegra and I didn't quite get barrier due in part to fastpass line nonsense but we did end up right exactly behind Annika &co. with perfect sightlines, once again stage-left/Jeremy-ward-of-center. we don't hate it! my Philly pals to my left with David, Becky et al in front of them. Me fully surrounded by redheads. LOL.

this was the laaaatest show of my whole run, a whole lot of standing around just waiting for Band, and also definitely the energy of "trying to politely vibe to pierre kwenders's set because he can clearly see me and look straight at me even though I would much rather just skip to the bit I actually came for and don't necessarily need to see his set" just slowly increasing every night RIP lol. BUT WE MADE IT! ohhhh new york. EXACT same set as Philly but I couldn't even be mad about it because I was still so grateful to get a Man Alive song that wasn't just MY KZ (not that I don't love my kz obviously, but it HAS been in the set literally all eight times that I have seen E E live as of this Irving Plaza gig, and something else from that album is fun fresh delicious) (OH, SWEET THREEP OF FRIDAY EVENING, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW) and to be getting COLD REACTOR again, especially becaussseee by this point I knew just enough of the lyrics that I felt confident singing/mouthing along conspicuously with the parts that I Did know, aka I See You Sir I'm Doing The Thing Just Watch Me, god I wish I knew how to be not so fucking extra but then again no I don't. we did get saddled with some Rather Annoying audience members in our near vicinity--a couple I'd spotted in the fastpass line earlier wedged themselves hard between me and my tall redhead/mask-wearing homie from Philly, all like "ummm we're short :)" because they. were, but that didn't give them a right to be pushy and rude, and their vibes were kind of shit because the sense I got was they were mostly there because the girl really loved the band and the dude didn't know much about them at all, and also they were already drunk so early on in the set, and they were talking loudly with some other fans they'd just met and getting Lore™ explained to them and it was just a lot of. loud talking and shoving. in my vicinity. when I would have preferred for there to. not be. BUT Also materializing behind me was someone who said "I saw your bracelets on twitter do you still have any!!" and I had to be like UHHHH FUCK, NO, I turned them loose into the queue, did they not make it as far as you..?? and she sadly said no, and I was like, well the only one I have left is this one I just left on for tradesies/advertising purposes, and it says "akon in the butterfly house" so that's kind of a deep cut, if you're familiar-- and she went WAIT REALLY and seemed SUPER jazzed to get a Dave Sardine-ass bracelet and I was like OKAY YOU KNOW WHAT, GOOD, ACTUALLY, because I'd made four of these and I knew they were going to be the deepest cut/hardest sell and I was really really hoping that whoever ended up with them would actually get and appreciate them. so thank you, andrea, for being that person, and for appearing exactly when the bracelet needed it most. so glad to have hung with you this night. sorry that you too found yourself among the ranks of the sharpie-confiscatees.

ANYWAY, OTHER THAN THAT, THIS AUDIENCE WAS FIRE AND THIS GIG SLAPPED. We were finally in a space and an environment that REALLY lent itself to the crowd actually full on bouncing/dancing instead of just kind of wobbling and vibing and everyone in my immediate zone was really going hard. I LOVE this fucking BAND. I love every song by this band. I love when Jon just points the mic at the crowd and the entire crowd sings the whole song word for word and note for note. I love that Jon was still desperately trying to cram the name of the host city into the start of My Kz, despite the fact that "Washington" subs for "Lucifer" perfectly (he has done this both times I've seen them in DC lol) but "Philadelphia" is WAY too stupid long and "New York City," while a syllable shorter, scans metrically in an extremely busted way and you could have just said EN WHY CEE or. y'know. lucifer. but okay man you do you. Jon was just as rowdy as the rest of us lmfao. he was like, climbing up and down off Mike's riser, he was finding people who were taking photos/videos and staring directly into their cameras (me fucking included--I'm sorry, Jon, you can't make eye contact with me while singing the "When I saw you, I fell in love" part of Leviathan, I am pretty sure that is illegal and a crime against my humanity), and basically all the tracks from Get To Heaven (plus like, Cough Cough and NOTLK) blew the fucking roof off the place. I think he donked some My Kz lyrics hehehe he just skipped to the alt lyrics of the chorus too early without completing the standard chorus first at the end, and a little flubbo in NOTLK and a tiny stutter in No Reptiles too, everyone was just TOO ROWDY and he's THROWN LOOPY and man did we not care. I said multiple times to people on this tour that pretty much the closest things I've ever experienced to true Religion are a) being in an E E audience for No Reptiles and b) being in a Hedwig audience for Midnight Radio. they're the same spiritually in my heart and also like do people who love Jesus feel this way and is this why. insane. the cult leader imagery was Not Wrong!!!!!

I wanna MERCH! I got in the line not too long after the show wrapped, but true to reports I'd heard about the pre-show merch line, it was moving verrryy slowly, with just one guy manning it who was not exactly quick and a card reader that seemed pretty chuggy too (but hey, at least NY was taking card). I'd known I wanted the poster--it's got my favorite neon orange on it, it really really slaps, and I wanted something to get signed--but I let myself talk myself into a t-shirt too, mostly because I was REALLY excited to buy E E merch apparel that wasn't black or white. Yellow!! a really freaking good yellow!! I wish the yellow ones had actually had the tour dates on them like the black and white ones did but the yellow branding has been pretty exclusive to this leg of tour (i.e. vs the red branding of the west coast one last year) and it looks soooo good with my hair that I don't especially mind. I also knew that Adrian wanted a copy of Caps Lock On, but that he also wanted a shirt, but I hadn't heard back from him about which shirt or what size so I just got the book and my stuff and then bounced. Communique from outside was that Alex had surfaced but no one else, but that Alex had promised appearances by the rest of them, but that also Alex was already gone and unlikely to return by the time I made it outside. I posted up with all my friends from inside, god this was SUCH a good sardine squad this night, and it took some waiting but eventually the promises came true! All the other boys surfaced and we had some REALLY great fan chats and mingling this tiimmmmee. oh my gosh. A guy came with a Modern Bison CD that Jon and Jeremy were really truly overjoyed to see and to sign and take pictures with; I talked to Jeremy about the bracelets some more because he'd been wearing the one I gave him the WHOLE GIG IN NEW YORK SO LIKE THAT'S GONNA BE IN ANY PHOTOS THAT WERE TAKEN PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING, oh my gosshhh, he was so nice about it and enjoyed that his Arch Jeremy matched my Arch Emily, the vibes were impeccable; and then I got everyone to sign my poster, but of course Alex was gone already, so Jon offers to forge Alex's signature and goes "look it's like this" and draws some loopy scribble on there and I'm like, lmao, sure.

thing was... I had absolutely heard Jeremy signing something for someone else the night before talking about how he was getting really good at forging Alex's signature for him, since I guess it's normal for him to be the one that disappears the sneakiest (god he really is just the Justin Craig of this band, it's 1:1, huh), and so when I told Jeremy this, he was like "I'll do it" and I was like "no Jon did already do it" and he was going to just leave it then, like, oh, well, okay, but then he saw the mess Jon had made and he was like "--that's quite dreadful actually-- the trick is to not overthink it--" and so now my poster has two forged Alex Robertshaw signatures and zero authentic ones. l m f a o. (To be fair, I do have other things they've all four signed, and Jeremy's fake Alex is at least passable, and Jon's fake Alex is Absolute Dogshit Nothing. I am obsessed.) I even got Peter to sign! He was talking with another fan about a gift she'd given them in the past that had sadly been part of what they lost in their studio fire, it was really heartbreaking to hear. He also thanked me again for his bracelet and told me he planned to give it to his daughter and that she would love it. We took a pic together! Pete the GOAT.

While I was making the rounds with the other boys and other fans, Allegra mostly in tow, swapping sharpies among those of us who still had them, Becky was back with Jon, taking a couple videos for people who weren't there in NY to talk about stuff that they were curious about--I think in the context of Maria, Becky said something like, she thinks the hair is crazy, and Jon said into the camera something like, "If you think it's crazy Now, give it like two or three more weeks, and you're really gonna think it's crazy." SIR WHAT. If the blond is a precursor to something else happening I'm gonna be so the opposite of normal about it, and if the bleach is a stepping stone toward the boys dyeing their hair Other colors I am going to be PROFOUNDLY NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT, AND IF ANY MEMBER OF THE MANCUNIAN ROCK BAND EVERYTHING EVERYTHING HAS THEIR HAIR DYED GREEN ANY TIME IN THE NEAR FUTURE I AM GOING TO BE ABSOLUTELY COMPLETELY INSUFFERABLE. tyler the creator unfollow me right now etc. etc. etc. The more I've thought about it I don't THINK this is what's up--my sense is that any Cold Reactor music video is probably already filmed and ready to drop alongside the single pretty quick after the tour ends, rather than being something they're going to film/put together entirely post-tour, so they probably needed the bleachblond for some energy similar to how I felt about them when they first walked on stage in DC, but Oh man...... OH MAN............ I digress. anyway.

following up from that, Allegra (I think? Or maybe still Becky and allegra was just Present) addressed the notion of the hair being related to the Lore, and like, did that mean lore for the single/the upcoming album ? ? which was what we were assuming, and Jon said some demented and ominous and extremely exciting phrase like, "The lore for this one is.... b o t t o m l e s s" in his always-startling real deep Jon voice, and that was the fucking sound bite of the evening, folks. FOLKS. ALLEGRA AND I WENT ALL THE WAY BACK TO HER APARTMENT JUST CONTINUALLY SAYING "THE LORE IS BOTTOMLESS!" my body is so god damn ready.

We bid farewells to all our friends for whom NYC was their final stop on this tour!! SAD!!!!!! Going to miss all the homies T___T it's not fair that we're not just all going to every single stop on this tour I don't think? it should actually be illegal for us not to be present when the band is performing?? the hugest RIP. Hugs exchanged all around. Me trying to say bye to Jon but he's engaged with someone else so I think I just awkwardly said "See you tomorrow" twice and then we left. becky maaaybe trying to last minute scramble to also come to pgh now despite not really having accounted for it in her plans originally ? ? I was not certain what she intended here but I supported her. yes. me, annika and AG for sure being there at least. we ride. Back to allegra's where I did, unfortunately, sleep ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLY/BASICALLY NOT AT ALL due to being so hot and stuffy in my little nest on the floor that it was making me nauseated, I think I got maybe 2.5 hours tops, but I didn't really have a choice because if I wanted to be back home in time to do ANYTHING other than just rock straight over to the queue for Thunderbird then I knew I was going to have to leave so GOD DAMN early in the morning to haul ass back to where my car was and then drive the seven hours to pgh. But I did exactly that!!!! bitch!!!!! Other than some issues like, managing to make a timely pit stop for gas/potty/coffee, I endured the miserable long roadtrip despite myself, raging my way through the poconos, downing the largest cold brew Wawa would sell me, having a truly tragic car vs quesadilla incident, etc. My BFF Francis even got on the phone with me for the last hour or so and we chatted and I got to give them the whole update on the tour thus far, so fun! They MIGHT try to go to the Chicago stop next week!!! if they feel like they can swing it, and I was like ok no pressure but also it's been an extraordinary experience for me thusfar and I highly recommend. So if you see Francis at E E Chicago please holler at them kindly from me!!! :) But at the very least they said they did want a T-shirt and venmo'd me money to buy them one, since I was already still gonna have to get one for Adrian. woooooo

I got home with, yeah, basically exactly enough time to shower, get my outfit together, and regroup before heading to the venue !!! I JUST BARELY missed the bus that would've gotten me there the most promptly, largely due to not being able to find another fucking Sharpie since irving plaza took my first one lmfao, and it ended up being quicker to walk there than to wait the 36 minutes it would've been for another bus or whatever. I still had MEGA travel tummy so I just snagged an apple and scarfed it down on the walk over. Annika was already there queuing! so we hung out in line together and waited and drank the waters we had definitely brought in from outside the bar and just vibed lol. and she was like, I heard them checking two new songs that haven't been in the setlist yet, and I was like ha ha lol like what, and she said, kevin's car and leave the engine room.

and listen, I was optimistic. that my social media obnoxiousness and well-known, easily observable public desires might yet sway them, because come on it's my hometown and it's the last show i'm gonna see on this tour and I sent them donuts, and those were MEANT as a KINDNESS and an ENTHUSIASM FOR DONUTS and not as a bribe, but if anyone wanted to interpret them as a bribe anyway whomst was I to say no, but like. just because I want the band i like to do a thing absolutely does not mean that they have to fucking do it. I want to be crystal clear that i have never at any point EXPECTED them to do this. i just. hoped. yearned in my heart of hearts. and also had very sound rationale for how possible/likely it was. Here's How Engie Room Can Still Win. yfm. but the soundcheck all but confirmed it in my soul for me. and I was like... glad, that she'd been there and caught it and could tell me about it, because it gave me time to like, come to terms with the reality of it, emotionally. AAH. AAAAAHHH, OKAY. BITCH, PLIABLE HEAD, IT'S ALL HAPPENING.

we lingered and watched the queue form behind us-- I spotted a kid I'd seen at the Philly show, god bless. Everywhere we turn, repeat customers. I was telling my work friend today, I feel like the US fanbase for E E is significantly smaller than the UK audience, but we make up for it in that we go fucking hard. Every US fan is a superfan. there are no half-assed american sardines. and that has been so BEAUTIFUL and means the WORLD to me to be sharing it with the other ones of you. Bracelet sharing rocked at this gig!! I had exactly as many as I'd set aside for Pittsburgh and no more, since all my spares had evaporated up at Irving, A new person ALSO HAD BRACELETS!!! LIKE, for realsies Made For Trading At This Show Specifically bracelets, it was suuuuch a delight, so in addition to my eclectic collection from the previous gigs I now also have one that says RAW DATA FEEL with some truly choice glow in the dark bric-a-brac on there as well, and my heart was so warm aaaaaah. fwiendship :) Also spotted in the pre-doors queue were the Pizza Boy costumed guy and a woman I met at Foals in 2019?? who I guess automatically recognizes me because of the green hair, but just. omg. the community!!!! I'm dying!!!!!!

There was a slight will-call kerfuffle that nevertheless did not stop me from being dead center dead at the front right in front of where jonathan's mic was destined to be, and I was like. god. here we go. the home stretch. This was ABSOLUTELY the WORST place to be to be pretending to be interested in pierre's set, because he kept looking straight at me and dog I gotta admit four shows in I was feeling pretty tired. like, the energy of E E Itself was going to fully reinvigorate me, but nearly everything else on the planet was like totally disinteresting and I wasn't really up for it, especially when it's my semi-sex-repulsed ace-spectrum ass being just really put off by the suggestive gyrations of a performer that is not to my tastes. UM SORRY BYE HAHA. they didn't even play the one song I kind of liked. I managed to miss like two and a half songs of his set being still locked in the merch line at least lmao. literally WHILE I WAS STANDING IN THE MERCH LINE they sold out of the yellow shirt and I couldn't get me and francis matchies so I had to get them the black instead :( but thankfully they still had the one Adrian wanted because idk what I would have done if I had to scramble for a plan B with him on short notice haha. and I had EXACTLY enough cash for the two shirts left from the day before and I was paying Tour Manager Sam with it like oh my gosh I'm so sorry this is like my sweaty pocket cash from last night this is kinda gross and she was just like, No actually that's honestly exactly how I've been rolling as well and it is kind of gross so like agreed hahaha. She's the best. Idk how long she'll be tenured to them but I'd love to see her continue to exist in like their coterie moving forward. impeccable vibes.

also used merch waiting as a way to distribute more bracelets and get a drink of water! WOOHOO NOW I AM READY TO RECEIVE MY COMMUNION THANK YOU. they put the setlists down and there was a very small fraction of me that wanted to avert my eyes but like I. I had to know. and annika said yes there are new songs in the list. and I peered into the list and my song was there.

hey guys. hey guys? look, this was for me. I have to be honest with you. i manifested this. by being annoying on twitter. by being god's specialest costume-making donut-gifting bracelet-slinging weirdo. I'm owning it and it's mine. I was exactly EXACTLY right with "well, if they put Engine Room in they'll probably take Leviathan out, because they'd kind of fill the same role of slow moody song in the set, and then they'll probably swap in a different non-Man Alive song to compensate for Engine Room being there instead," and this is exactly what happened, and so then not only did I get Engine Room but I also got REGRET, WHICH IS ALSO AN EMILY THREEPWILLOW PLIABLE HEAD SONG, BECAUSE HERE THESE NERDLORD KINGSHIT BANDBOYS ARE IN MY GODDAMN BACK YARD, they're in my house and god it took me the whole fucking set up to then to just prepare, like I had to try not to think about it so I could enjoy what was right in front of me. God it was so fucking, fucking good. our position along the stage had Alex's stuff REALLY forward in the mix which was kind of new for me, but jon was just right there and every time I lifted my hands to dance and to yearn it was like, the only thing stopping me from touching you is my own sense of propriety and not any kind of physical barrier or distance, and the person immediately behind me was seeing the band for the first time and felt similarly about NOTLK as I did to Engine Room and those two songs were literally back to back in the set so we kind of screamed and cried and died together, I gave her a huge hug, and LOL SORRY NOT SORRY THAT I GOT MY KZ AND LEVIATHAN TAKEN OUT OF THE SETLIST FOR Y'ALL, PITTSBURGH, I DO FEEL KIND OF BAD BUT THIS WAS UMMM IMPORTANT TO ME, THANK YOU, goodbye. goodbye I left the planet. I thought I was going to cry and I nearly did but I didn't, but I did actually maybe start hyperventilating. like I'm glad I knew it was coming ahead of time because if it had been a full surprise I think whatever was happening to my lungs would have been exponentially worse and I may have even fainted.

(which, btw: jonathan. jon. when he came out on stage, he almost immediately got his mic cable caught on the edge of where his setlist was taped down, and in jerking it around, he whipped the setlist up off the floor and way upstage toward where Pete was; when he finally put it to rights and taped it back down, he just left it where it was at, far enough away from me that I definitely could not read it anymore; and like DID YOU DO THAT ON PURPOSE? TO MOVE IT OUT OF MY LINE OF SIGHT, TO MAYBE KEEP ME FROM READING IT? SURELY YOU HAVE TO KNOW THAT I'D ALREADY SEEN IT LIKE 15 MINUTES AGO. NICE TRY BUT IT'S TOO LATE I SAW EVERYTHING. i love him. i'm in physical pain.)

knowing this was my final one, I went so, so, incredibly hard, I let myself dance and mosh and scream and take way more pics and videos than I had before, I leaned on the lip of the stage, I had an absolute fucking blast. When the set was over a few other people who were more strategically positioned (i.e. people who had not had their most easily accessible setlists unceremoniously yoinked several feet away) snatched up the closest ones way quick; there was a general tension in the crowd at being able to see jon's, but it being further away out of reach, and one ballsy-ass kid (the "Kevin" person who'd accompanied the pizza boy person) actually clambored up onto the stage and ninja'd over and took it for himself, which inspired two copycats to do the same for some discarded guitar picks (and all of which definitely provoked a very loud, unimpressed, authoritative barking of "HEY!!!" from some security somewhere, like, they definitely shouldn't have done that!! yikes!!!!). I, instead, very patiently waited for an opportune moment to get the attention of their short king guitar tech as he was running around doing teardown, and someone else flagged him first and got pete's setlist, and in my final moments I got him to get me mike's. Gang, I'm gonna be real with you, I was not leaving my Pittsburgh hometown show in which they played Leave The fucking Engine Room without a setlist. there would've been blood or at the very least tears. so like. thank god lmao. Satisfied, we got some water and then headed out!!!

It was a long, chilly wait for the boys outside--god, the chilliness was REFRESHING, though, it's October for crying out loud, and DC and Philly and NY had all been muggy sweaty hot with no need for even long pants, much less a jacket, but I was glad I'd had the forethought to wear my flannel around my waist to cover up the YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT printed around the ass of my shorts on my walk over to deter questions, lmfao. We easily identified the spot on the side of the venue where we assumed the guys were coming out, it was all just a matter of time. (AG and I getting some confusing-to-parse messages from Becky? Idk my phone was SUPER dying so I was trying to leave it on airplane as much as possible, I didn't even make it to the end of the night, RIP needing to use my map all day in the car and even with it plugged in spending more than I was juicing of the battery. Listen i needed PICS and VIDEOS!!) I saw Jon first, and he almost looked past me before spotting me there because I was pretty close to the corner of the block, and I just stared at him, and said, May I hug you. and he said, of course! and I hugged him so long and so hard just like, thank you, I was extremely emotional then and I'm also getting extremely emotional now just typing about it, and he was like omg haha what for? Coming to your town? and I was like coming to my town and playing my SONG!!! And then he said something with the tone of a snarky teasy joke but that was like flusteringly truthful underneath about them legitimately rearranging the set quite a lot for me, and I have not stopped screaming internally since then, and Jeremy joked that I'd just seen the exact same set three times and they felt they ought to give me at least something new ha ha ha but like it wasn't entirely a joke, and I just don't even know how to process this. i am perishèd in the soil. anyhow.

I wanted both my setlist and my Supernormal EP vinyl signed by all the boys, and I managed this with relatively little doing ("A deep cut!" jeremy remarks of the supernormal, haha), but I didn't want to be crowding them and getting in the way of other people getting lad time, so I kind of took a backseat and just talked when the time was right, but Jon did kind of keep wanting to talk to me. We talked about the new song, and we talked about the donuts I sent over--oh my GOD, because I was like, they're from that place over there, you can see the big neon donut sign from here! haha, and he was like dyou know what, I knew that's where they were from, because I went over there earlier in the day and got one for myself, I got a huckleberry one and I came back with it and everyone was like, what's that, they were very jealous, and then not too long after that this box of loads of them just shows up-- And like I am a donut fairy psychic wizard. Also everyone who is ever in Pittsburgh should go to Oliver's donuts and eat their fabulously good products. I will shill for them literally any day of the week. This is the second band I have given Oliver's to this year. I cannot be stopped. ANYWAY. i honestly almost could have written that prediction on an envelope and sealed it, that they'd end up wandering in there on their own only for me to send them some too. i was so tickled that jon got the huckleberry one because it's their signature flavor and it's SO PINK and allegra and I had just decided the night before that jon higgs is hot pink coded. like, in the universe where they are dyeing their hair multicolors for the lore. anyhow. it's good shit.

i had SO much fun after this show, even though it was so chilly and dark and we were scrungling around on a literal street corner outside a wine and spirits store, I was like holding people's things so they could get pics and signatures, I was showing off my supernormal booty shorts, I was talking to Jon about lore----- ohhh, my god, I had exactly two bracelets left when the night was over, literally the end of my stash, and it was one Final Form FIRST BODY LAST BODY that I said, y'know, I'm going to save this for my bestie francis when I send them the shirt, because that's the lyric I wanna get a tattoo of, and it'll match with my PLIABLE HEAD bracelet, and it'll be another sort of besties matching thing; and my one lone AKON IN THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE bracelet that remained, where I'd kind of said, well, if this one doesn't find the right home tonight, then at the end of the night I'm going to give it to Jon too. So I dug in my bag and passed it off, and he was like "what does this one say.... kon... Akon... Akon in the house--what is--OH AND THERE'S A LITTLE BUTTERFLY ON THERE, God--" and he was GRINNING and he was SO TICKLED BY IT and Jez chimed in with just like "The attention to detail--" and Jon was like "this is my favorite one actually," he LOVED IT AND I WAS SO CHARMED AND EMOTIONAL ABOUT IT, and then he offered me up something like "you kno-ow, this, the song, of this, there's actually a reference to it in something, something you've never heard-- and--that you never will," doing his cryptic Jon troll grin, "the one thing that didn't make it," with the implied end of that sentence being "onto the album," and 'album' in this case being implied to be Raw Data Feel, which they have very publicly said that for once was an album where they just put everything on and didn't cull any songs or reserve any bonus tracks to release later or whatever. So I said, "Oh, from the one that we've been told had no cuts...?" also not explicitly saying RDF, and his answer to that was vague/nondescript enough but was probably an affirmative, but then he did follow that up with "that's lore that's SO far down the line, WAY WAY out there," and god, just, how deep does this man's brain and nonsense even fucking go. how far into the future is there LORE. BOTTOMLESS!!! I am obsessed with him. i cannot stress enough how blorbo he is to me.

The shorts came back up in conversation too ("Sorry, let me just look quite closely at your ass for a moment--" "It's okay, the shorts are designed that way--") and him saying, yeah, we do talk about some of the costumes still, and then segueing into asking if I had plans for this year and what I was doing, and I said, maybe, I'm not sure if I want to tell you, and he said, Is it to do with us, and I said, Neither confirm nor deny, and he said, Well if it's not, then, I want to know, with kind of a 'duh' tone ahahaha because like true there would be no reason to be coy if it was nothing to do with E E at all, and I explained that like I kind of have to have two costumes ("of course you do."), WELL because y'know the E E ones don't really play to or land with the general populace (a very cheeky "No!") so I have, just, one that's for going to parties, and one that's for fucking around on the internet. He seemed to find that acceptable hahaha.

Anyway what I REALLY wanted with wearing the Supernormal shorts was a group pic of all five of us normal frontways, and then a group pic of all five of us facing backward/ass to the camera a la the picture of them outside the White House, where you could see the goof of my shorts but also all of their butts, but this was an ABSOLUTE DISASTER TO DO when it was so dark that phone cameras were taking everything long-exposure, and also they'd all had just enough beer to not really be following on what the bit was. Absolute shit results on the backwards pic because I couldn't, y'know, see to coordinate it, because I had my back turned. (Me yelling, "Not just MY butt, EVERYONE'S butts, come on!!" into the streets of Lawrenceville.) Utter failure. Didn't care. I love these fucking guys. The vibe was finally kind of winding down, closing-time energy, the guys still had to get on the bus to Boston right away even with tomorrow being their day off, it was a Boston day off and not a Pittsburgh day off where I could offer them free ice cream sadly, so they all sort of bowed sweetly out. Jon gave me his like, I Am Part Of The Band clearance ID badge from the venue, kind of out of nowhere, he was like "sorry this is all I have to give you, it's the least I could do," and I was like WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU'VE ALREADY GIVEN ME SO M-- YOU COULD DO WAY LESS ??? but I guess now I have that, too. I tried to give him the King Of Oil sign from my fatberg costume, which I'd initially brought because I thought it would be a fun photo taking prop but the photo situation was the aforementioned disaster so that never really came to any fruition at all, so I was just going to gift it to them, and he said "My suitcase is already so full of so much random shit-- that you've given us--" and then right as he was leaving he just said "Thank you for being such a weirdo" with a voice full of all the kindness and affection in the world and I just yelled "ANY TIME!!" and then oh so tragically the night had to be over.

it's been nice, though, because I'm so used to driving the long drive home at the end of an adventure and having that signify the end, of getting to the end of the car ride and having nothing beyond that but the rest of my regular life; and this time, I drove all the way home, but when I got there, the adventure was still happening, right in my neighborhood, right down the street, and all I had to do was walk back home alone in the dark and climb into my own bed at the end of a long and beautiful night. i can already tell that this is going to be one of my most special memories basically forever, and now every time I drive or ride the bus to and from work each day I will be passing by the place where Everything Everything performed Leave The Engine Room for me, and that's so profoundly special that I don't even have words to describe it. I love this band, I love the people in it and I love the people its gravity pulls in to orbit around it, I'm just so goddamn happy. I don't even know what to say or how to end this.

#everything everything #e e #RDF US tour 2023 #this has been a post #jonathan fucking higgs.#god.#they all just like. referred to me plainly by my name a lot more than i was expecting in a way that was overwhelming #like to one another/other people and not just to me directly #i exist???? sounds fake #i will be thinking about this week for a hundred thousand years #my pliable head IS a walking hope thank you so much for NOTICING!!!!!!#pics to follow maybe on here but maybe just on twitter #where I am yes you guessed it @pliablehead if people want to lurk and see #ok fucking goodnight

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kittyofalltrades · 1 year

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Benny's Favorite Librarian

Benny gets rejected by his favorite librarian, but Frankie has an idea to turn his night around. So off to the strip club they go to find an even bigger surprise.

Words: 1977

Rating: Explicit MINORS DO NOT INTERACT 18+ ONLY

Beta: @welcometostayingawake (ILY!!!!!!!)

Warnings: Strip club, grinding, hickies, no full smut but you get the idea

Saturday night found Benjamin Miller pouting in front of a vase of flowers. Frankie and Santi had done their best to pull an answer out of him for his sour mood, but they only received grumbles in response. The usual boisterous Benny was unwilling to confess what was wrong, he didn’t want his friends attempting to make him feel better.

After another hour of quiet sulking and heavy sighs, Santi tracked down Will to demand answers. He was followed closely by Frankie as curiosity got the better of the other man.

“Okay, spill. Why the hell is Benny acting like you kicked his dog?”

“His favorite librarian turned him down for a date,” Will sighed. He had warned Benny that he might get his heart broken with a girl like that, but he hadn’t listened. Now, he was slung across their kitchen table moping, like a heartbroken teenager.

“Benny can read?” Frankie asked in surprise.

“Benny asked out a librarian?” Santi asked incredulously.

Both questions came out louder than planned, making Benny lift his head off the table. “She wasn’t just any librarian. She was smart, beautiful, her laugh made my heart swell, and I somehow messed it up. Something about me being sweet but it wouldn’t work out,” Benny said with a bitter laugh.

All three men listened to Benny’s outburst before he dropped his head back to the table. Nobody called Benny sweet, stupid maybe, but never sweet unless they were trying to get in his pants. These days it was surprisingly few because women their age were looking for stability and tended to drift toward the elder Miller. Will strolled over and patted Benny on the back in a comforting manner.

Will glanced at his watch and then at Frankie and Santi. “I’ve got a date tonight. Can y’all look after him? I’m afraid he’s gonna drink himself into a stupor.”

Santi and Frankie nodded the affirmative and watched Will hurry out of the apartment. Santi busied himself making food, while Frankie paced the kitchen. Each heavy sigh from Benny pushed their nerves further on edge. After Santi finished cooking and slid food across the table to Benny, Frankie slid into the chair across from him and pulled the plate to himself.

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve got an idea. We’re going to the strip club,” Frankie said between mouthfuls. “I know a few good girls that give great dances.”

Benny lifted his head off the table to give Frankie a dirty look. He didn’t want a lap dance from a random girl, he wanted to be on a date with his girl. Or at least the girl that should have been his. He wanted you.

“Frankie’s right, you can’t just wallow in misery for the rest of the night,” Santi said while he slid another plate of food in front of Benny.

Benny glared between both men before digging into his meal. “Fine, I'll go. But don’t expect me to enjoy myself.”

Two hours later found Benny, Santi and Frankie at the local strip club, Big Leo’s. Frankie was greeted by name and dragged off to a hidden corner leaving Santi and Benny by the door. Santi nodded at the stage and they made their way forward ready to watch the next performance. They arrived just in time to take the last two seats just as the announcer started to talk.

“She’s prettier than a magnolia in May, presenting Raisin to the stage,” the announcer called. The lights dimmed and a sultry song queued up. Just as the words started, money started to fly onto the stage and Raisin the stripper crawled across the stage with a slow sultry movement that drew his eyes. Santi pulled out some cash and waved it in an attempt to get the woman’s attention before Benny could stop him.

You made your way across the stage on your hands and knees stopping to give certain patrons a little attention when they waved more than a few dollar bills. An attractive man waving a hundred dollar bill quickly drew your attention and you climbed off the stage and wrapped an arm around his neck, giving him a prime peek at your cleavage. Movement on your left caught your eye, causing you to pause as you made eye contact with the man. Sitting next to the pretty man ogling your tits was Benny. The same Benny you’d rejected just this afternoon in fear of this exact situation.

Your song continued, pulling you away. You gave both men a sweet smile before climbing back onto the stage to finish your set. You had two more songs to go before you could hide from the fact that the guy you liked and rejected was sitting at your stage, watching you undress.

“Pope, stop waving money at her,” Benny hissed when another hundred dollar bill came out. He tried to pull the man’s arm down but you’d already noticed the money and made your way over to collect and give Santi a secret wink.

“Why? We’re here to have fun.”

“That’s her, that's my librarian,” Benny whispered back, half in anguish and half still in shock.

Frankie returned with lip prints across his collar just in time to hear the words. “Well, I see why you fell for her. She has a very nice– smile,” Frankie said in an aborted sentence as Benny whipped his head to glare at him. He knew better than to finish the original words. Frankie let his regular girl drag him away to a booth before he could stick his foot further in his mouth, leaving Benny and Santi watching the rest of the set.

When the set finished, you were tapped on the shoulder. You turned to find the stage manager beaming at you, “You got a big one tonight, a thirty minute VIP. Get cleaned up and changed, they'll be waiting in room three,” he said while he passed you a stack of cash. You counted out the money, happy to see four hundred and fifty dollars in your hand. The fifty dollar club fee had been taken from the cash. Not bad for a night’s work on top of your tips from the stage.

“I bought you a dance,” Santi said with a satisfied smirk. “Room three.”

“No, I don't want a dance, I wanna talk to her. I wanna find out the real reason why she turned me down,” Benny said while he looked around for you. He’d seen you step off the stage but he didn’t see where you’d gone.

“Looking for Raisin?”

“Yeah, that’s not what she goes by at the library by the way.”

“Room three.”

Benny turned confused eyes onto Santi. “What did you do?”

“I bought you a dance with Raisin. Cost me five hundred dollars. You’re welcome,” Santi intoned distractedly while he watched one of the dancers walk by. He patted Benny on the shoulder and followed the woman that was sashaying away from him, eyes glued to the sway in her hips.

You were perched on the lounger when the door to room three opened. Your sultry smile was ready for the client until you took in who walked in the door. Your smile faltered when Benny stepped completely into the room and looked you over. You wore a tiny, barely there skirt, and a crop top that barely covered you. He didn’t look at you as he walked in and sat as far from you as possible.

“Come on, baby, how am I gonna dance for you if you’re all the way over there?” You asked with a fake pout. You had appearances to maintain.

“I didn’t buy the dance, my friend did. I just wanted to talk to you.”

You cocked your head and waited for him to elaborate on what he wanted to talk about.

“Why did you reject me earlier today? I thought we were getting along well. I thought there was no way I misread the signs that badly, especially after you recommended your favorite romance series while touching my arm,” Benny said softly.

You chewed your lip while you listened to him, deciding to explain with a heavy sigh. “You didn’t misread the signs. You’re sweet and I like you a lot, but I don’t date.”

“Why not?”

“Benny, a room full of men just saw my tits, including your friend, not to mention Frankie multiple times. Most men aren’t okay with that, so I don’t date, it’s just easier,” you answered softly.

“Well, I’m not like most men. I like you and I want you. I don’t give a shit that you’re a stripper,” Benny stated firmly.

His words made your heart melt, most men would say it didn’t matter and then try to have you quit, or try to have you switch to working the bar. Benny genuinely didn’t seem to care if you stripped or not.

“What about my job at the library?”

“You’re always gonna be my favorite librarian, babydoll,” he laughed.

You laughed with him for a minute until a natural break happened. You wondered if you should give him the dance, you weren’t sure if he’d appreciate it. You crawled over his lap and straddled him, making his hands fly to your waist.

“What are you doing, babydoll?” He asked while his hands held you in place, unwilling to let you go.

“You’ve got fifteen more minutes until I go back, so I figured we could have some fun,” you told him with a devilish smile.

“What kind of fun were you thinking?” Benny asked with a matching smile.

“Nothing bad, just a kiss.”

“A kiss sounds nice, babydoll,” Benny agreed. He guided your hips in a slow roll across his hips drawing a small moan from you and widening his smile. You nodded in agreement while you rolled your hips again before leaning forward to capture his lips in a searing kiss. A kiss that broke the rules, but you didn’t care as you leaned into him, working your lips against his. You tangled your hand in his hair, giving a gentle tug that made him moan against your lips and his hips jerk up involuntarily to meet yours. You gave a second small tug before kissing your way down to his neck. You pulled the collar of his shirt down and sucked a mark into his skin at the junction of his shoulder and neck, while his hips worked against yours slowly. Benny moaned and his large hand gripped your hips tighter while you sucked and bit at his skin, leaving behind the impression of your lips. Quickly pulling your mouth back on his, the dance continued to leave you two breathless.

Twenty minutes later, Benny stumbled out of the room with his hair a mess, looking slightly dazed. His lips were swollen and he looked fucked out and on cloud nine. Santi and Frankie stood outside the door, both watching as you flounced out after blowing Benny a kiss.

“So Pope bought you a dance with Raisin, huh?”

“If it stops him from sighing like earlier, I’ll do it again.”

“I think I’m in love,” Benny said, turning to watch you talk to the stage manager. You gave him another smile before disappearing into what he assumed was a dressing room. “We’re supposed to meet after her shift tonight. She promised toys.”

“Toys, huh?” Santi asked in surprise.

“Yeah, she said it’s been a while since she’s had something that didn’t run on batteries so she wants to put me through my paces,” Benny answered with a smile.

Santi and Frankie made noises of disgust while Benny just grinned. Maybe coming here was a good idea after all. He was going to be going home with his favorite librarian, and he hoped she ran him ragged like she’d promised.

All interactions welcome and appreciated. Hit me with you opinions i want to know what you think and thanks for reading.

#benny miller #triple frontier #benny miller smut

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mojowitchcraft · 1 year

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Fave WIP Round Up [Part 3]

Find the rest of my WIP Recs here

This might become a regular thing! I'll post a new list every time I have 5 or so queued up! Here's all the WIPs I'm loving lately:

i come back to the place you are by @glitterfang Rated E | Chapters: 7/8 | Words: 160k

Steve should have known that Eddie was lying when he looked right into Steve's eyes and promised not to try any heroic bullshit. He should have known based on their conversation in the upside down that Eddie felt he had something to prove. And he definitely shouldn't have left Eddie to face the horrors of the upside down alone. And now? Now Eddie's in a seemingly unending coma and Steve is wracked with guilt. So, he pours himself into trying to fix his mistake. He helps Uncle Wayne move into a new house, he spends hours in the hospital reading to Eddie, and he even keeps the Corroded Coffin boys company. He's getting to know Eddie really well while Eddie's out cold. Or: Steve is surrounded by every single person who loves Eddie Munson. How could he not fall a little bit in love with him?

So Scarlet it Was Maroon by resakaye, t1red_gay Rated M | Chapters: 11/? | Words: 55k

Dear Eddie. I'm sorry I got you killed. I don’t know how to apologize to you in a way that matters. I don’t know how to talk to you at all. The doctor says I should, and Robin says I should. But neither of them have to do it. Neither of them get it. And sorry doesn't really seem to cut it. - For months, Steve's been writing letters to a dead man. So you can imagine how awkward it is when Eddie shows up in his apartment, very much alive.

Evening Botany @lostinadmiration [Now Complete] Rated E | Chapters: 3/3 | Words: 18k

🌸 “What are you thinking about?” The voice comes from the driver's seat. He smiles, doesn’t turn to face them, but the voice, warm and familiar, melts in his ears. He glances down, and the floorboard is covered in flowers. The wind dislodges pollen, and it wafts into his face, bristling his nose hairs. It prickles and stings until he sneezes into his hands. Fear floods Eddie’s veins as he pulls his hands away to check them. Sure enough, there’s blood. He whirls his head to the side in horror, searching for reprieve in the driver. Steve Harrington. He’s frowning, and his tone shifts. “Come on man, tell me it’s not that.” Eddie gapes at him, feels a wet gurgle tickling his lungs and he coughs into his hands again. “Don’t,” Steve warns. He coughs harder, choking, gasping for air, eyes pleading. He doubles over and—

Red Eye by @alinafewwords Rated T | Chapters: 11/? | Words: 65k

“Can I get a hot, medium dirty chai?” “How dirty do you want it?” “Excuse me?” Steve Harrington is a struggling college student. Eddie Munson is a hot barista. Somehow things will work out.

Put the Lights Out and Cry by @bluelitho [Now Complete] Rated T | Chapters: 17/17 | Words: 85k

With Starcourt burnt to the ground and Family Video not returning his calls, Steve decides to take up serving at Dellah's Diner. The job would be almost perfect if not for the metalhead line cook bent on making his life a living hell every chance he gets.

Swing and a Miss by @dead-on-arrivals [Now Complete] Rated E | Chapters: 5/5 | Words: 35k

“Hey so … I have some mixed news,” Steve says. “Uh oh,” Eddie says, “are they changing your position, are you gonna be a — like a third base catcher man?” Steve laughs and shakes his head, “no, nothing that bad - I found out more about the whole like, bringing a person along thing.” “Oh cool,” Eddie says, sliding down on the couch next to him, “do I get like a fancy VIP pass?” “You do,” Steve says, “there’s just one catch.” “Okay?” Eddie asks, tilting his head and reaching for the tv remote. “Apparently they usually reserve the box for the wives and girlfriends … so either you’re gonna have to be my boyfriend or you’re going to have to sit in the stands with the fans.” Eddie makes a noise that must register to Steve as alarmed or upset because he rushes to finish. “It’s not that bad, you just need to like, pretend to be my boyfriend so you can sit with the other WAGs and like, then you can be in the box and have all you can drink alcohol and snacks.” “Did you agree to this!?” Eddie asks. “If I say yes, how mad are you going to be?” Steve asks.

Edited May 7 to update & note completed works Edited May 26 to update & note completed works Edited Aug 3 to update & note completed works

#wip recs #steddie fic recs #steddie fic rec #steddie wip #stranger things #stranger things fic rec #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #publicly outing myself as a simp for all these writers #mojowitchcraft wip recs

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asksoldieron · 7 months

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SO-12: The Spirit of Harpo Marx

If there's a lot of engagement on this, this post is liable to get real long, beware before you expand.

Welcome to the Engagement Lounge, for Alight at the Window (SO-12) an instalment! Short comments can go in the replies, but there's a 475 character limit. Longer ones will need a reblog. Remember to @asksoldieron if you're reblogging someone else's reblog, so I can see it too!

Awwwwww, ya know? Awwwwww ❤️!

Poor Erik is in ⚡🔋no shape🔋⚡ to communicate, but he's doing his best. Maggie has no idea whether he's messing with her on purpose, or what's wrong with him, but she won't let him go. They'll get to him eventually. (I've just finished that part, actually. They've got him! Uh. Sorta. At least he's... safe now? 😅Oh, I can't say that with a straight face.)

This is the last of my queued posts/instalments, and I have no idea where my reading and drawing ability will be when it goes live. If I can't update you on my condition (and the condition of the next six instalments) I'll hafta have the spouse type a note for me. I want to do six more right away, or I might take a two week break, or - if I'm really struggling - it'll be a break of indeterminate length. I hope I'll be okay to just keep going, my Patrons have been so patient this year. Thanks, y'all.

But, either way, there will be a break at some point, because I'll have a while where I can't write or draw and that's going to eat up my backlog. Also, recent updates have done more stupid things to my theme and I think the site needs a redesign - maybe including some radical simplification. I'm just not mobile friendly and I can't make the current format behave. People with better eyesight than me do a lot of reading on their phones.

I have no idea how to build a community and I'm flailing, really, but maybe if I can get the interface more convenient, more people will like me? (I have no idea. Probably they won't.)

Look, though! You've got some extra art to tide you over! And a song!

I'm not in love with how Erik's design looks right now - he looks like a train wreck, but he should look like a train wreck. Nobody is going to fix his hair. I still feel self-conscious about it. He used to be cute. I've got to do a full-body rendering of how he'll clean up, but I don't have time for it now.

However, I did do a page of something trying to get comfortable with his ability to emote in train reck form. I don't have time to finish it, but I think it looks cool so I'm sharing.

This is potentially a way for me to serve you the music without lyric backgrounds that you can't read! It's very labour-intensive, but I was figuring out how to do it and it might get a little easier with practice. Also, my current tablet is struggling with the resolution and I plan to update it by the end of the year - depending on sale prices.

After I saw Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I found out the original Off-Broadway incarnation had filked music with lyrics by John Cameron Mitchell. 🥹😊I'm calling it! This is something other people sharing my identity do to tell their stories! Filk musicals are an enby thing! We do not give a shit about the music industry's copyrights! I'm performing nonbinary correctly!

So here's the lyrics again, and maybe I'll give you the rest in comic form as my vision and my tools improve.

You Are Found! (based on "We Are Young" by fun.) I need a minute, I… I don’t know if I’m ready yet I’m tryin’ to get my shit together, Maggie, please don’t be upset My family must be looking for me somewhere very near Guess I knew you must be coming but I can’t believe you’re here, and… It’s been forever since I’ve seen your face I know you want to take me home But although it hurts to do this work they need my help for what it’s worth — Oh, gods I’m not sure if I wanna go So maybe if, next time you see me, You can take me by the hand, You’ll steal me away At last I am found So I guess the party’s over Time to get sober, and come down At last I am found So I guess the party’s over Time to get sober, and come down No, I wanna go home I’m just not done I guess that I, I just hoped We could visit and I’d get right back to work But I can’t go yet So I must forget 'Cause I think you’ll hafta steal me away At last I am found So I guess the party’s over Time to get sober, and come down At last I am found So I guess the party’s over Time to get sober, and come down Steal me away at last (na na na na na na) Come steal me away at last (na na na na na na) Steal me away at last (na na na na na na) Come steal me away at last (na na na na na na) The gods have their own plan (na na na na na na) But I’m just one weary man (na na na na na na) So you're gonna hafta steal me away at last (na na na na na na) I have so much to do (na na na na na na) How can I go with you? (na na na na na na) So you're gonna hafta steal me away (na na na na na na) At last I am found So I guess the party’s over Time to get sober, and come down At last I am found So I guess the party’s over Time to get sober, and come down So maybe if, next time you see me, You can take me by the hand You’ll steal me away at last

See you soon! Ha, I hope!

Late edit: Two week break, folks. No drawing ability yet, so we're stuck with it. I still hope to get you the next six by the end of the year. I'll keep you posted!

[Back to Site?]

#tin soldier and soldier on #instalment #engagement lounge #music #covers #comic #lyrics

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iamanonniemouse · 4 months

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End of Year Book Asks

Okay, @vector-to-the-heavens, to add insult to injury, after I drafted a reply to your ask, and then tumblr wouldn't let me edit my draft but instead queued my incomplete draft, and then forced me to delete the queued post -- THEN it ERASED your ask!!!

the good news is I screenshotted my drafted reply so ALL IS NOT LOST no thanks to tumblr though

Seriously vec why does tumblr hate our friendship so much????

Anyway, you asked for 3, 11, and 16 from this list of books asks!

Putting this under a cut now cuz my ranting took up most of the post lol

3. What were your top five books of the year?

Oh man. VEC. HOW. WHY. God. Lemme see :pulls up list of the 265 books I read in 2023:

Okay, in no particular order:

Babel, by R.F. Kuang Incredible, mind-blowing, heart-breaking, just :flails: The magic in this world is fascinating in its own right but then Kuang turned it into such a pointed look at the results of colonization and how important language is to culture and identity andandand--

American Eden, by Victoria Johnson My friends know I have gotten into an absolute obsession with reading nature-related books, from the history of natural science to biographies about famous nature people to plain old books about birds and bees (literally. really.) This book is one of my favorites, it's the biography of a man who was a ground-breaking surgeon in America after the American Revolution -- who also was a huge botanist and created America's first botanical garden. (He was also the Hamilton's family doctor and was The Doctor present at the Burr-Hamilton duel.) I adored this book on so many levels, truly. It was just incredible to read.

The Scholomance Trilogy, by Naomi Novik (ssh I can absolutely count a trilogy as one book)@silverbrume has been singing this series' praises to me for AGES and I finally read it this year and WOW. It's just so good! Love the world, love the characters, love the found family, lovelovelove that it's a well paced and well tied-together trilogy where things from the first book that seemed like minor mentions turned into major plot points by book three. Just incredible and lovely and I already want to reread it.

The Seed Keeper, by Diana Wilson Really beautiful writing and so delicately handled. Speaks to so much about what America has done to the Native American peoples in terms of cutting off entire generations from their heritage with the boarding schools, and how difficult it is for someone to find their way back home when they feel so separated from it. I'm summarizing this one so bad, but just. Trust me. This book is incredible and you all should read it. I've got my MOM reading it, and she is awful about finishing books, but she is like...80% of the way through it and just keeps telling me how good it is.

Cherryvine, by Marina Vivancos Hey look since I've been reading majority MM romance I need to have at least ONE on here okay?? But more seriously, Vivancos is a phenomenal writer and almost always has stories that involve healing from past trauma/abuse. And what I love about her writing is how much she focuses on the healing process itself, and how gentle it always is. I could write you a laundry list of all the Vivancos books you should read, but that's for another post probably. This one is just beautiful though, really beautiful.

Honorable mention to The Cider House Rules, by John Irving, which honestly should be on this list but since I raved about it in my other ask response it felt like cheating to put it here again. But lemme just say -- JOHN IRVING MY BELOVED.

11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

I answered 11 in this one but I'm going to cheat and answer again because I also read Pride and Prjudice this year and omg it was ADORABLE. I was over the moon with how much I enjoyed it. I am shamelessly obsessed with the 2005 movie (Matthew McFadyen as Darcy my beloved) and I was tickled with how many lines from the book were in the movie! Anyway, 10/10 highly recommend, it was just FABULOUS.

16. What is the most over-hyped book you read this year?

Okay, not necessarily over-hyped but I read More Than This, by Patrick Ness. As backstory, I read A Monster Calls years ago and omg. Talk about an incredible book. One of my all-time faves, forever on a recommendation list, just. Really good. And I never read anything else he wrote haha. But I heard a lot about More Than This, so I grabbed it from the library, and it was really intriguing at first. It seemed like some interesting, mind-twisty kind of story, like an inception limbo fic almost. I really really intrigued and I loved it. And then the last third of it just went....totally off the rails. Like what the FUCK. It was wild and whacky and also just so extremely violent??? In the final fight?? Like, in a way that was jarring because everything to that point had been suspenseful and tense but not gory. Anyway, yeah I was very disappointed in that.

#mousie rambles #omg i get asks now #ask thingy #vector to the heavens #books #mousie talks books #look vec i finally got this posted!!!

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storiesbyjes2g · 2 years

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I enjoyed having company again on my morning jogs. Tofu struggled to keep up at first, but after a few mornings, I think she'll be just fine. I grinned like an idiot for our entire run. My doggy friends always made me happy, but helping the ones in need gave me joy I could not explain. The closest example I could think of was meeting your newborn for the first time. I don't know. Adoption was cool and all, but I think taking in strays is the move for me.

After our jog, I took Tofu to the vet's office in Newcrest. It beat going all the way to Brindleton Bay, but if Newcrest will be our new home, I may as well begin establishing our life there, eh?

The building was really cute and had an urban vibe. The doctor arrived around the same time I did, so I assumed they opened late on the weekends. She was very young. At first, I thought she may have been an assistant or something. She greeted me and asked for a few minutes to prepare for opening. I apologized for arriving so early and told her to take all the time she needed.

I loved the waiting area. It had plenty of kiosks to check-in, but just like the other place, someone still insisted on queuing behind me. At least he wasn't annoying like the cute cat guy. How was he doing, anyway? He should be really old now.

When I finished checking in, the doctor looked at my information on her phone. How progressive! She turned toward Tofu and greeted her like an honored guest.

"Hello, Tofu! Welcome! I'm so happy to meet you! Come, let's get you checked out."

Regardless of her age, she knew exactly what she was doing, and I knew I picked the right doctor for my new baby. Tofu followed her and only looked back at me once. She must have felt comfortable with her, and I was glad.

There were only two rooms in the office. One for examinations and the other for surgeries.

"You run this practice by yourself?" I asked.

"Yes ma'am! Your fur babies get nervous about going to the doctor just like you do. I run this place alone so your pets can have a consistent experience and only need to get to know one person."

"That's very thoughtful of you!"

Surely, being the only doctor placed a high demand on her time and allowed little room to grow. But I got the feeling she wasn't in it for the money, anyway.

She got Tofu on the table and took out a blank form.

"One way I get the animals comfortable with me is to talk to them. I'm gonna ask her some questions, but I'm really asking you, okay?"

"That's so adorable," I said.

She asked Tofu about her favorite food, toys, fears, quirks, and all kinds of stuff. But I didn't have many answers.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know her that well yet. You see, I took her in yesterday."

"Oh! Well, that's wonderful! And it's okay. We don't need to do this now. We can fill in the blanks as we all get to know each other. Isn't that right, Tofu?"

I think she smiled at the nice doctor. I wish I remembered her name.

"I like to create a personal profile for my patients so I can provide individualized care. Okay, Tofu, I'm gonna check you out now. Is that okay?"

The doctor did her thing, and Tofu sat quietly and let her.

"Aren't you the sweetest," the doctor said.

"Yes, Tofu," I said. "You are sweet!"

She finished her examination and concluded Tofu was very healthy, which was exceptional since she lived on the street. She didn't have on a collar, but the doctor wondered if she wasn't a stray but a lost dog a long way from home. It pained me to think I may have stolen someone else's dog, but I put that out of mind. She belonged to me now, and I wouldn't give her up.

Doc helped Tofu off the table and thanked me for bringing her in.

"It's really cool what you did. Not too many people will take dogs off the street like that."

"Oh, it was nothing. I didn't give it a second thought. I've done it before. I think it's my thing now."

"Well, it's great," she said.

She gave Tofu some treats and got ready for her next patient. We went to the backyard for a little playtime, and she had the time of her life.

#ISBI challenge #sims 4 story #sims 4 gameplay #adolting #adolting gen 2 #Emerald Pope #Tofu #I think we did steal someone's dog though LOL #WOOPS!!!#better luck next time

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pickled-fics · 2 years

Text

Your Favorite

A snuggly night in with the tsundere (ex)boss himself. [old fic] [ao3 reupload]

After closing the apartment door behind you, it doesn't take long for you to smell something incredible coming from the kitchen. Your exhausted body dragging itself towards your small, but workable kitchen, you hear some quiet music in the room. Coming around the corner to find your boyfriend standing at the stove cooking something, unable to see past him to see what exactly smells so good. “Hey Smartass, set your stuff down and take a seat. I’ll bring you your food in a minute, it's almost done cooking.”

“...”

“Well, if you would sit down and wait a minute, you would have your answer. I’m aware you’re not exactly one for patience, but I know you’re at least capable of it.”

“...”

“Oh shut up and sit down already. Let me surprise you for once.”

You watch as Aaron turns the stove off and removes something from the heat, making sure to keep it hidden from you. He really wasn’t giving you any hints on this one. He pauses, turning his head to look at you and smirks a little.

“Close your eyes.” “...”

“Please? Trust me on this one okay? I want this to be a true surprise for you.”

Begrudgingly, you close your eyes, hearing the clanks and tinks of dishware and silverware, the mystery scent still hanging in the air. In the moments of waiting in your chair, you realize how tense you are. Your job had been going great, and it still is, things have just recently picked up around there. A lot more deadlines than you were used to and a lot more work being piled onto you. You still loved your coworkers and the job itself but all in all it was still a job, a job that was in a busy season. This little surprise of Aaron’s feeling like a much needed break from it all. Hearing the dishware clink onto the table in front of you, your thoughts of work stopped.

“Okay, go ahead and open your eyes.” Eyes opening, you look down immediately and upon seeing the food in front of you, you were thrown into a memory from not too long ago. A memory of Aaron asking what your favorite food was. A memory of showing him how to make it exactly how you liked it and spending a night in the kitchen with him. A smile immediately dawning your face.

“I know I’m not the greatest chef and that you usually do a lot of the cooking, but this seemed like a fitting addition to your shitty sounding day.” His eyes serious, awaiting your response.

“...”

“Of course I remembered! We had a whole night dedicated to this, of course I remembered. You told me about your terrible day at work on your lunch break and with the way you look it doesn’t seem like it got any better.”

“...”

“I didn’t think so. Now, could you try your food? I want to make sure I did it correctly.”

A laugh and nod on your end and you pick up the silverware, excited to eat a good dinner after a hard day. The taste hitting your tongue and it was exactly as you remembered, just how you loved. Your feelings towards it apparent on your face earning a laugh from Aaron.

“So I’m going to say that you like it?”

“...”

“Good, I'm glad, you deserve something good in this long day. I was thinking after dinner you could take a shower and I could set up a show or a movie for us? Something to help you unwind.”

“...”

“Alright, perfect. It sounds like a plan, Smartass.”

After finishing your dinner, you left Aaron to clean up the kitchen, after much argument of why you should be able to help him with that. Leaving him to get the dishes cleaned up and get your show set up on the tv. The warm shower only helping to remind you of the pent up tightness in your shoulders from the week.

Getting out of the shower, you find yourself in the living room staring at the coffee table. A few of your favorite drinks and snacks laid out on it, your favorite show queued up on the tv, and your boyfriend. Your boyfriend sitting on the couch, blanket at the ready, ready to cuddle with you. A very welcome sight.

“Are you going to stand there and gawk in surprise all night or come sit down with me?”

His lips pulling up into a teasing smile making your love for him deepen just a little bit. Curling up into him on the couch, taking him in as he wrapped the blanket around the two of you. Settling in, eyes coming to rest on the tv as he clicked the play button. His arm around you, holding you close. It doesn’t take long for him to shift his arm on your shoulders though.

“Jesus, it’s like I’m holding a brick wall right now.”

“...”

“Yes, a brick wall, you’re still so tense. Turn sideways.”

“...”

“Just do it, I'm going to rub your shoulders for you. Maybe after that you won’t feel so rigid and I can properly hold you.”

His hands carefully digging into your shoulder and neck, quickly pinpointing the exact locations of the pain. Pain you didn’t even realize was there anymore, it had just become a dull ache in the back of your head. His thumbs pressing into spots that shot pain straight to your skull but in the best way possible. Feeling the pressure from his hands loosen the muscles in your shoulders and neck slowly. Your quiet hums of relief making him laugh to himself. After a long few minutes, his hands come to a stop, resting on your shoulders.

“Is that feeling any better?”

“...” A laugh from him, his hands dragging down your back and rubbing softly as he pulled down and away.

“I’m glad it’s feeling better for you, you feel a lot less like a wall and a lot more like a person.”

His arms looping around your waist and pulling you close to him again. Your head now resting on his chest, faintly hearing his heartbeat as he pressed play on your show again. Your body and eyes now even more tired than before you tried to focus on the show. Your attention soon shifting to the repetitive sound of his heartbeat. The sound slowly bringing your eyes shut and leading you into a peaceful sleep against Aaron.

#redacted asmr #redacted audio #redacted aaron #redacted smartass #pickle fics #fluffy pickle #reuploaded pickle

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meltwonu · 3 years

Text

56. “You have no idea how much i want you.”

92. “We’ve been at it like rabbits, how are you still horny?!”

notes; hot-yoga-instructor!chan, rivals!au, a wee(a lot) bit of dom!chan, mirror fucking, fingering, a widdol cum play, dirty talk, degradation! 🥂 🎉 YALL TO FINISH OUT THIS WELLNESS!AU thank you so much for your interest as always, this was a fun cycle and I can’t wait for the next one! 🥰🥳 Also this is almost 2k words so… sorry about that LOL 😆 A reminder that next week I’m gonna reupload the fics that got taken down by tumb1r before starting a new cycle for drabbles~! A bit of a nuisance but oh well dfdskjhf 😭💕 As always, thank you so much for requesting! Enjoy! 💕

*queued post

You sit at the back of Chan’s class - lips pursed into a firm line at the way he smiles and effortlessly encourages his clients.

“You’re all doing great! Let’s move into another position now, okay? Don’t worry, nothing too hard, I promise~” He grins, fingertips pushing his sweaty hair back and out of his face before his eyes meet your own.

There’s a glint in his eyes that has you biting the inside of your cheek.

Chan knew he was charming and he made use of it - using those annoying charms to get people to sign up for his hot yoga classes in a blink of an eye while you sometimes struggled to get new clients for your normal yoga classes.

You, however, were not phased by his boyish charms and smoldering eyes - or so you told yourself.

‘Staff Contest! Instructor with the most new sign-ups and clients will receive a voucher for a resort stay for two people!’

“Wait, what? Where’s this from?” You ask; yoga mat rolled up underneath your arm as you stare at the big, neon flyer pasted up on the wall in the employee room.

Soonyoung shrugs at you, “I think ‘Shua put it up. Management said that we should be advertising more and taking on more clients so they’re trying to give us an incentive. I think it’s also, like, a week off of work, paid, if you win.”

Chan all but barrels towards the flyer himself, slightly pushing you to the side as he reads it over. “Oh man, I’m gonna win that. A resort vacation and it’s paid time off? Sorry, but this is mine~” He singsongs.

You scoff back in return, nudging him with your yoga mat before turning to leave.

“Sorry, but I think it’s mine. Nobody wants to take your sweaty class anyway.”

Chan rolls his eyes at your retreating back; lips easing into a smirk.

“Come sit in on one of my classes if you think so. I’ll get you sweating faster than you think.”

The flashback has you pursing your lips again - you don’t even know why you agreed.

It’s ‘cause he’s hot, and his white tee sticks to his abs when he starts to sweat, your mind screams at you.

Shut up.

“Okay class, we’ll end here for today! I see a lot of new faces in today’s class so I probably shouldn’t overwork you all, huh?” He finishes with a friendly laugh as he sits on his own yoga mat, brushing the sweat from his brow as people start to pack up to leave.

He praises everyone on their way out; small words of encouragement making their faces light up as they say their goodbyes.

And you did have to give it to him in the end - he was a good instructor and was very meticulous with his students. Not to mention, friendly and inviting in the way he made everyone feel welcome.

But you still wanted to win more than anything.

The class empties out after a few more minutes and by the time the last person leaves, you’re already getting up from your own spot at the back of the class and making your way over to Chan.

“Well? What did I tell you? There’s a reason why there’s so many new clients in my class. Sorry that you---mmph!”

You shove him down, straddling his thighs as you grind down onto him.

“You have no idea how much I want you,” you moan, “Shut up for ten minutes and just fuck me, will you?”

Admittedly, you might’ve fucked Chan once before.

“Mmh, y-yeah, right t-there! Fuck, feels so goooood…”

The two of you had been at a party held by management and the two of you had one too many drinks before you’d stumbled into one of the empty studios - hands all over each other as you raced to get enough clothes off before Chan fucked you on the floor in the middle of the room.

You’d never spoken of it since and even though Chan never brought it up either, there was always a knowing look in his eyes whenever he’d glance your way.

“Fuck, your tight ‘lil cunt feels so fuckin’ good around my cock, sweetheart~” His voice drops an octave, hips snapping into you from behind as you try to watch yourself in the foggy mirror. “And I slid right into your wet pussy like it was fuckin’ made for me… Wanna tell me what you were thinkin’ about while you were sitting in on my class?”

Your hand swipes off some of the condensation off of the glass - your own hazy eyes greeting you in the mirror as you moan and clench around him when the head of his cock grazes your g-spot.

“T-thinking about that--that resort stay that, mmh, I’m g-gonna win…”

“Oh? Hmm, sounds like a lie to me…” Mumbling, he watches your expression through the glass; licking his lips at the way your face contorts in pleasure when he grinds his cock into you. “I don’t think that’d get you this wet… Ah, I was thinking more of the last time we were together…”

You whimper at the memory again; Chan had your legs bent over your head while he fucked you against the floor that time and you’d spent the entire rest of the night mingling with the other instructors with his cum soaking into your panties and trickling down your inner thighs before you’d gone home and given yourself another orgasm with your fingers soaked in his cum.

“N-no, ngh, j-just the thought of, a-ah, beating you gets me this w-wet…”

He rolls his eyes before doubling his pace out of annoyance, “Won’t you be sad when you lose though? I mean, I have people signing up everyday. I’m gonna have to start a waitlist at this point.” He boasts.

“Y-you’re not even that g-good…” Mewling, you work your hips back to meet his thrusts.

“And you are?” Chan retorts.

“Fuckin b-better than, ah, you…!”

Chan smirks, fingertips digging into the skin of your ass as he angles his thrusts to slam into your g-spot with every snap of his hips. “Are you? Or are you just good as a cocksleeve for me, huh, sweetheart? You took my cock so easily, your pretty ‘lil cunt was made for me and we both know it, don’t we?” He chuckles cockily, cock throbbing inside your walls as you whimper.

“We should do this more often, sweetheart~”

The heat from the studio and the way his cock, admittedly, fills you up perfectly makes your head spin and it’s not long before you find yourself begging him to let you cum.

“Why should I let you, hmm? After all you’ve said about me, why should I let you cum?”

Your walls clamp down onto his cock, sucking him in deeper as he growls.

“‘Cause I know you wanna fill up my filthy ‘lil cunt with your cum again, Chan~ Don’t you wanna see it pouring out of my pussy like the cocksleeve I am for you? We can cum together if you want~ I’ll compromise~”

“Fuck you.”

Your head feels fuzzy as it lolls against Chan’s shoulder - legs spread wide in front of the mirror as he fingers his cum into your cunt.

“I want you to watch yourself in the mirror, sweetheart. Watch the way my cum drips out of your spent ‘lil hole when I thrust my fingers in. You’re such a messy ‘lil thing. Tsk, ruining the yoga mat underneath you too.”

He’d taken a second earlier, after the two of you had cum, to shut off the heaters in the room - allowing the mirrors to clear up enough for you to see your entire naked body as Chan sat behind you now.

You blink slowly at the image that greets you back - Chan’s smirking face over your shoulder with his hand between your open legs, cum-soaked fingers spreading your cunt open again as you mewl.

“We’ve been at it like rabbits. How are you still horny?!” You whine; hips canting up to chase his fingers despite your own words. His cock was still hard and pressed firmly up against your lower back as you shivered under his rough touch.

He scoffs back before positioning a third finger at your entrance - his voice soft and alluring as he watches you through the mirror.

“Can’t help it. I like the way my cum looks dripping from your pussy.”

“It’s time to announce the winner of the resort voucher!” Joshua announces - beaming at the other instructors as he waves the tickets about.

You all stand in a semi-circle around him, giddy and excited to see who had won.

“Now, before I announce who won, I have to make an unfortunate announcement...” Joshua sighs, “Chan, I’m so sorry. It would’ve been you but I had to disqualify you.”

“What!?” The younger male stomps his foot disbelief written all over his face. “Wait, why the hell was I disqualified?!”

Grimacing, Joshua tries to get Chan to calm down. “We had an anonymous complaint that said they… saw some unsavory activities happening in your studio. And as a reminder to you all, please don’t use your studios for those kind of activities... You know, we don’t allow that so…” The older male trails off, hoping that Chan gets the hint. There’s a few snickers in the room, but Chan isn’t that quick to give it up.

“Wait, hold on a second, that’s not--”

“Ooookay, well you heard Joshua so let’s just get on to the winner, huh? You shouldn’t dwell too much on it, to be honest. Just use it as a learning experience.” You cut Chan off, grinning at the way his face is completely flustered.

You might’ve been the anonymous complaint that started that rumour.

Just this one time, you tell yourself.

“Right, okay, so the winner is…”

Joshua calls your name, naturally, as you walk up and collect the two resort vouchers.

You grin at the other instructors who clap for you - snickering at the way Chan scowls from the semi-circle.

“Thank you so much! We all worked sooo hard so don’t be discouraged! I’m sure everyone will get a chance to win one of these contests too!”

Chan corners you later - eyes cold when he presses you up against the wall of the empty employee room.

‘Take me with you and I’ll make it worth your while,’ He’d whispered, lips kissing your cheek gently despite the chill in his voice.

‘Don’t you think you deserve to be punished for cheating?’

#dino smut #chan smut #seventeen smut #svt smut #dino scenarios #dino imagines #seventeen scenarios #seventeen imagines #svt imagines #svt scenarios #chan imagines #chan scenarios #dino #lee chan #svt fic

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jordanstrophe · 3 years

Text

Basement Whumper, the Partner

Masterlist

CW: branding, held captive, restrained, mild choking, gag mentioned, two whumpers, (but not really, one’s turning caretaker)

*Bang bang bang!* The door knocked aggressively. Whumper had frozen in place, the color draining from their face. No one comes here. No one should even be here! Was it the police? Had they found Whumpee in the basement?

They crept to the window, moving the curtains just a sliver to try and see a vehicle. There was nothing... Just their own lonely car sitting by itself.

*Bang bang bang!* The knocks became more frantic, impatient. Whumper reached for the doorknob, noticing their hand trembling as they embarrassingly held their wrists.

Don’t take Whumpee from me. Not yet.

They swung the door open, first, a rush of relief struck their nerves, then, a drain of horror. Their partner leaned against the frame with their arms crossed, a tired look painted their face.

“Bout time, I was starting to think you went out without me.” They smirked. “Wh-What.. What are you doing here?” Whumper asked. They let themselves in, nudging past to look around. “Come now! Can’t a friend drop by for a surprise visit?” They twirled around, their eyes scanning the room.

“You? No no no, you don’t do ‘surprise visits‘. What do you want?” Whumper crossed their arms. Their partner instantly dropped the act, the smile faded right along with it.

“Where are they?”

Whumper sighed, pouring a cup of coffee for themselves, and tea for their partner. “In the basement.” They murmured. Their partner snatched the cup of coffee before they could even offer the tea. “And how’s the little hostage? Behaving?” They purred. “They’ve been an angel.” Whumper gulped.

They won’t talk about all the times Whumpee successfully tripped them when they walked past.

“Angel huh? Sounds... Boring.” They huffed, inviting themselves into the basement. “WAIT!” Whumper shouted, slamming the door shut and guarding it before they could make it down. “What!? What’s gotten into you!?” They barked. “Nothing. I just... They’re frightened.” Whumper admitted, their eyes hovering just out of their gaze.

“Okay... Good?... Look, that thing has my life on the line if they escape. I just want to see you’re securing them properly and have them under control. Got it? Now move along.” Their partner pushed their way in, climbing the stairs into the basement. They found Whumpee bound to a pole on the floor, staring up at them with a wide, confused expression.

In the corner of the room were dozens of pillows, boxes, snacks, blankets, it was a mess. Their partner rolled their eyes. “No gag?” They cranked their head around to glare at Whumper. “There is! ... Well, there was, for a while. I took it off.”

“What do you mean you ‘took it off‘? Don’t they scream?” They dug their fingers in Whumpee’s hair, queuing a crying yelp. “Hey! Be gentle with them.” Whumper scolded. Their partner’s head cranked around with a smirk. “Come now, what’s wrong with testing the waters a little?” They untied their wrists from the pole and yanked them to their feet, half dragging Whumpee up the stairs.

“H-he-hey! What are you doing? Let me g-go! Please!” Whumpee cried, as they were thrown to the middle of the floor. Whumper stood behind their partner, nervously chewing at their nails. Whumpee’s wrists were still bound as they scooted backwards until their back hit the side of the roaring fireplace. They froze when a hand wrapped around their neck, pinning their head against the frame.

“P-pl, pl -ase?” They rasped, their eyes fearfully following the hand that set a poker in the fireplace, watching the flames smoke the leftover ash. “Don’t be shy, now. It will only hurt for a day or two.” They grinned.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Whumper yelled, taking a step closer.

“Doing you a favor.”

“I’m not kidding, whatever you’re up to? It’s not happening. Now put it down, you’re scaring them.” Whumper growled. “Aww, but don’t you want them to be obedient? Look at them, not a bruise, not a scratch, nor a hair on their head is damaged. They have no concept of consequence. You, never taught them.” They cooed, watching the poker turn red.

“Now this is just madness! Whumpee is mine, partner. Mine. Now put that thing down before you take someone's eye ou-”

Before they could finish, Whumpee’s sleeve was torn off, the burning rod brought down to their upper arm as a blood-curdling cry choked from Whumpee’s throat. In an attempt to jump back, they only pushed their neck harder into the grasp.

Their partner gasped, dropping the pole when they were shoved off Whumpee with enough force they went halfway across the room, hitting the couch.

“NO!” Whumper yelled, collapsing to their knees by Whumpee, who was barely gasping for air, their teeth clenched into a lock. A painful growl escaping their throat. “Easy, I’ve got you.” They whispered, they were about to pull Whumpee into their arms, but they stopped, glancing back at their partner who had snapped to their feet. Anger painted their face in red, wiping the sweat from their cheek.

“Get. Out.” Whumper hissed. “Or what-?”

“GET OUT!” They hollered, their voice booming through the living room. Whumpee flinched and cowered, finally letting out a choking cry. Whumper didn’t peel their gaze from their partner, who had silently shut their lips. They watched them the entire time as they quietly collected their coat and left.

Whumper scooped Whumpee up in their arms, carrying their sobbing mess onto the kitchen counter. They left one arm tucked across Whumpee’s lap keep them still while they soaked a washcloth with water.

“AAhh!” Whumpee hissed when the cloth was pushed against their shoulder, their hand instinctively gripping Whumper’s hand. “It’s alright, you’re doing good.” Whumper tried to encourage, their heart was burning with rage and guilt as they gently held their hand back. Whumpee’s posture went slack as they slumped against the counter, sniffling with a wince.

“I've got you now... I’m going to fix this.” They murmured, thumbing away their tears, resting the palm of their hand on their cheek.

ʕっ• ᴥ • ʔっ Thank you for reading!

Tag list: @grizzlie70 @alien-octopus @lave-whump @amethysts-sideblog @whump-it-like-its-hot @thingsthatgowhumpinthenight @yet-another-heathen @princessofonward @whatwhumpcomments @ill-eat-you-if-you-cross-me @mascmasochist @hamiltonwhumpdump @shokuhoemisaki @as-a-matter-of-whump

extra- @starnight-whump @lonesome--hunter @chartreusephoenix @as-a-matter-of-whumpo

#tw branding #tw cauterizing #whump #whumpee #whumper #basement whumper #whumper turned caretaker #kidnapped whumpee #restrained whumpee #branding whump #burning whump #possessive whumper #protective whumper

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dialovers-translations · 2 years

Text

Diabolik Lovers LUNATIC PARADE ;; Kanato Route ー Sub Scenario w/Kou

–> In between the main route chapters, the player is taken to the area map of the Parade where you can freely roam around. There are four different places to visit, each with different mini games and sub scenarios to enjoy.

AREA: GLIMMER MAIN STREET

CHARACTER: KOU

ー The scene starts inside Sapphire Sweets Shop

Yui: ( We’re standing in line over here to try and get one of the strawberry tarts distributed only to the first 300 customers but... )

Kanato: ...What a crowd.

Yui: Yeah, I just hope we’ll be able to get our hands on one...

( Seems like it’s almost our turn. Let’s see how many tarts there are left... )

Ah! Kanato-kun, seems like there’s still a few left!

Kanato: Really? ...Phew, thank godーー

*Ring ring*

???: Hooray~! Thank you so much!

And this is the final one too? I’m so lucky!

Kanato: ーー !?

Yui: ( Eh!? N-No way...! )

Kou: M-neko-chan and Kanato-kun? What’s with those looks on your faces?

Yui: K-Kou-kun...!?

Kanato: ...Kou. Return that tart to me.

Kou: Return...? Even though I’m the one who got it?

Kanato: I was waiting in line for it as well. However, right before it got to my turn, you...!

Kou: Ehー? Not my problem. It’s not like I cut in line or anything...

Besides, if you wanted to eat this tart that badly, you should have just queued up sooner.

Yui: Y-You’re not wrong but...

Kou: I’ve always wanted to try this one! The most famous strawberry tart of the whole Demon World!

...There you have it, so without wasting any more time, let me dig right in...Nn...

Kanato: ーー Kou!!

Kou: Nn~ ...Haah, what’s this? It’s delicious!

Yui: ( He ate it right in front of our eyes...!? )

Kou: The tartness of the strawberries combined with the sweet flavor of the custard spreads on my tongue...No wonder it’s so popular!

Ahーah. Too bad. You would have been able to try it as well if only you had gotten in line a bit sooner.

Kanato: ...Kuh...

Kou: ...Ah, right! M-neko-chan, want a bite?

Yui: Eh? I-I...

Kou: No need to be modest! Come on, say ‘ahn’...Ow!?

*Woosh*

Yui: ーー Are you okay!?

( Something hit his head just now...!? )

*Woosh*

Kou: Owow...Kanato-kun? It hurts...It really does!?

Kanato: ...Unforgivable.

I’ve wanted to try one of those for so long as well...Yet...Despite that!!

*Woosh woosh*

Yui: ( Kanato-kun’s hurling random objects from inside the store at Kou-kun!? )

Kou: ー Wait! Watch out! Cut it out...!!

Yui: K-Kanato-kun! You shouldn’t throw the store’s goods! You’ll get scolded by the staff...!

*Woosh*

Kanato: Shut up! It’s Kou’s fault for mocking me!!

*SPLAT*

Kou: ーー Uu!?

Yui: Kou-kun!?

( This time he grabbed a slice of cake from a customer’s plate and threw it at Kou-kun’s face...!? )

( The customer in question is sitting there dumbfounded... )

Kou: Uu...I’m covered in sticky whipped cream~ ... I’m an idol, remember...!?

*SNAP*

Kou: Eh!?

Kanato: Fufu. ...Caught on camera.

Kou: Camera...Eh!? You took a picture of me!? While looking like this!?

Kanato: Yes. I took a photo of your cream-covered face.

I wonder if people will be able to tell it’s you? Fufu...You are making quite the interesting expression.

Kou: Eh? No way! Delete that photo right now!!

Kanato: Let’s go, Yui-san. Our job here is finished.

Yui: But shouldn’t you delete the picture?

Kanato: Now why would I do that? I’m going to print a bunch of copies and distribute them amongst the people at the Parade.

I’ll say that I managed to take a funny picture of a wildly popular idol.

Kou: Eh!?

Kanato: I will up your popularity even more! Fufu...You should be grateful to me.

Come on, let’s go.

Yui: Eh? K-Kanato-kun!?

ー The two of them leave the store

Kou: Eh? Wai...Hold up!!

That’d be seriously bad! My career as an idol...!

Give it back...! Give it back, pleaseー!

ー He chases after them

ーー THE END ーー

#diabolik lovers #dialovers #kanato sakamaki #kou mukami #lunatic parade #diabolik lovers translation #lpkanatosubkou

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helpistolethesecharacters · 3 years

Text

Stealth Mission Part 2

A/N I finished the request, queued it up ready, and then was hit with inspiration. Since the other one is already 1611 words, I thought I would just make a part 2.

Also,

Y/n - Your name

Y/n/n - Your nickname

Bucky Barnes x Male Reader

Word Count: 1636

----------------

Y/n was going out of his mind. He had woken up in the medical bay after their last mission, totally confused. It had been a long time since he had been so seriously injured on a mission.

He went back through his memories looking for clues. He knew he had been on a mission with his team, but something had gone wrong. They had been found out and then it got hazy. The only thing he remembered with absolute clarity was getting stabbed in the side.

Y/n felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. He must have been captured. But if that was true, why would they have healed him. Surely they wouldn't have bothered if they didn't have to. If they had needed to heal him, maybe they needed something from him. He must have been right when he thought earlier that they wanted information. You can't get information out of a dead man after all.

Y/n swallowed heavily. If he had been captured, and he couldn't get himself out then that would be the only way to stop them from getting what they wanted from him.

'Better to save that for when it becomes necessary.'

He glanced around to get his bearings and his eyes landed on the medical gear attached to him. That would have to go, but then someone would be alerted to his escape by the monitors changing.

Y/n felt his heart speed up in anticipation. He swore loudly as he realized that his escape was probably already compromised. He had been laying here awake for a few minutes and he knew that your vitals change when you are awake.

He ripped the IV out and pulled all the other unnamed wires and cords away from the machines. That might buy him a few minutes.

He bolted up and to the door, but just as he reached out for the handle he heard a loud click. He tried it anyway.

Yep, locked.

He spun on his heel and took in the room he was in. There, a window. His captors must be pretty sure he wouldn't wake up if they were stupid enough to put him into a room with a window big enough to escape through.

"Woah, slow your roll there Y/n/n."

The voice made Y/n spin around, but there was no-one there. He felt disoriented. The world was starting to spin again. He stumbled back from the window, he hadn't even realized he had made his way over to it, when had that happened?

When Y/n looked back up someone was in the room with him.

He stumbled back a step in surprise and cried out when he realized he had moved into someone else.

The walls were closing in now and he knew he had missed his chance to escape unnoticed.

-----------

Bucky was mad. He had been assured that there was no way that Y/n would wake up just because he had left his room for long enough to grab a quick shower and a bite to eat. He hadn't even eaten the food, planning to bring it back to the room that Y/n was still unconscious in.

He was on his way back to the room when the alarms began to go off in the tower. It didn't take long for the voice of Stark's latest AI to start talking to him.

"Mr Barnes, might I suggest you make your way back to Y/n's room? He is awake and seemingly unaware of his situation."

Bucky didn't bother responding, just dropped his food where he had been standing and sprinted for his boyfriends temporary room.

He reefed the door open and stepped in just in time to see his boyfriend spin toward him. He looked past Y/n to see Clint in the room already, standing near Y/n's bed.

Bucky stepped forward to help, but this apparently was too much for Y/n, and he swayed dangerously before loosing consciousness once again.

Bucky barely managed to catch his boyfriend before he hit the floor.

He carefully lifted Y/n up onto his bed and tucked him on once again. Then he turned to Clint for answers.

He was very aware that he was more Winter Soldier that Bucky Barnes at that moment, but he couldn't bring himself to care. The most important person in his life was once again laying unconscious on a bed in the medical bay, and it was Clint who was supposed to be watching him.

Clint swallowed obviously and held his hands up in surrender.

"I swear man, I didn't do anything. He woke up and I don't think he could hear or even see me. I was sitting there the whole time and it was like he didn't even register it."

Bucky glared frostily at him, jaw clenching tightly.

He took in a deep breath, then another. He couldn't bring himself to start yelling in your room, but he damn well wanted to.

"Maybe you should go get someone from medical to fix that." He ordered pointing at the broken machines.

Clint was out of Y/n's room before he had finished speaking.

--------------

The next time Y/n woke up there was a familiar face leaning from near by before he even had his eyes open properly.

"Hey"

Words were a thing right? It felt like words should be a thing that he knew how to use.

The familiar person handed him a glass of water and held on as he sipped it.

It didn't take long for Y/n's head to clear enough to recognize his boyfriends face.

He sighed and leaned back against his pillows, feeling like he had slept for the last century and like it still wasn't enough.

"Hey, just take it easy. You weren't really all here the last few times you've woken up. Just take your time."

"Ugh, what century is it?"

Bucky's low rumble of a laugh rolled over Y/n and he felt something relax inside. He knew he would be alright now that he was back with Bucky.

-------------

Y/n was going out of his mind. He had been on bed rest for the last week after he was well enough to leave the medical bay, and Bucky had taken that to mean that he needed waiting on hand and foot. Every time he tried to move at all, he got an attentive look from his adoring boyfriend.

"Do you need something? Should I get you something to eat?"

It was very sweet, and Y/n had been soaking up all the love that his big fluffy boyfriend had to offer, but it was starting to get old.

He was now at the stage where his body needed to start moving more, so that he could start working through the stiffness and build himself back up to where he had been before.

Unfortunately, Bucky didn't agree with him. Y/n was sure that he had been enjoying spending so much time with him and do things for him, but he was done now.

"Bucky, Doctor Cho agrees with me. It's time to start moving around more myself, or I'm going to lose these muscles that you seem so fond of. Besides, I need to start working through the weakness that stabbing caused. It's a liability out there, you know that."

That got him those dang puppy dog eyes that were the absolute worst. He must have learned them from somewhere, but for the life of him Y/n couldn't picture any of their friends ever making a face like that.

He shut his eyes and faced the ceiling instead.

"That isn't going to work this time. I've given you a full extra day, but now I need to start doing these things for myself again."

Better to keep it to himself that at some point he was going to have to go back to sparring with the others and all kinds of more dangerous things than simply getting his own food. They both already knew, but rubbing it in Bucky's face was probably not the smartest move in trying to win this argument.

Y/n was met with silence. He just knew that if he opened his eyes his boyfriend was going to be right in front of him, eyes bigger than ever.

He held out for a full two minutes more before peeking an eye open.

He was right. Bucky was standing right in front of him, but he wasn't pulling puppy dog eyes at him anymore. He had the softest smile on his face as he took in Y/n's antics.

Y/n opened both eyes fully and looked his boyfriend full in the face. Was he okay?

He went to ask him a question, but was met with a soft kiss. It was just a light brush of lips, but it caught Y/n by surprise. He melted into Bucky as he pulled him into his arms.

"I'm sorry, I know. This job that we do is dangerous, but it's something that neither of us would give up. It's a part of us, individually, but also together. I just worry. If something happened to you and I never got to see you again, I just hate that thought."

Y/n snuggled closer.

"I love you, you know that? I wouldn't choose to leave you if I had the choice."

Bucky was silent for a second and Y/n hoped he had read that right. It was the first time either of them had said anything like that, but what Bucky had said had sounded like a confession of love as much as the words themselves would have been.

Y/n looked up and was met with the biggest smile he had ever seen on Bucky's face.

"I love you too."

Neither of them were able to stop smiling enough to kiss properly, but that didn't stop them.

#Bucky Barnes x male reader #bucky barnes x male reader #male reader #bucky barnes #Stealth Mission #Part 2

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willowbird · 3 years

Note

For the ask game: 17 for au, 3 for trope and 19 for prompt? Have a great day!

Band au, meet cute, "suck on that"

Hope you guys are okay with another Andrew POV! I'm pretty sure this counts as a 'meet cute', as much as anything with these two meeting ever could lol

---

The sound guy had a very nice ass. Andrew wasn't sure what the rest of him looked like, but for the moment that didn't matter. For the moment, Andrew was satisfied with the pleasant view as the man straddled a ladder some fifteen feet up. He was poking around with one of the speakers, though Andrew neither knew nor cared why.

Again: nice ass, and that was enough.

At least, it was certainly better than paying attention to the building manager - who was being a condescending dickhead as he rambled on and on about the rules of the house.

Apparently, this was a "dignified establishment" and any "rowdiness" caused by the band's fans was going to result in them being permanently blacklisted. If Andrew gave an iota of a shit he might have told the man they had no intention of playing this venue ever again anyway, considering how ridiculous the fucker was making this process.

"Furthermore, if any-- oh, there he is! Good, I have far too many things to do to be stepping in as your manager as well." Andrew tore his gaze away from the sound guy's ass and fixed the asshole with an unamused stare. Erik, their band's manager, was currently wrangling the rest of the band through a photoshoot that Andrew had not been invited to.

("Not invited", meaning "expressly told not to come elsewise the contract would be shredded". Some people got so fucking uppity about being punched in the dick and held at knifepoint.)

Whatever. Anyway, because the rest of the band was off getting their pictures taken, Andrew had been volunteered (read: commanded) to head over to the venue early and oversee setup for their concert tonight. Hence why he was forced to put up with this dipfuck - who was now passing him off onto some underling.

The guy that joined them was conventionally attractive with a charming smile that Andrew didn't trust for a second. "You must be Andrew Minyard," he said as the building manager scurried off to sour the souls of small children. He put out his hand, then let it drop when he realized Andrew had no intention of shaking.

"My name is Jake." The smile never faltered and Andrew was very familiar with the way the man's eyes scanned the entirety of his body. It was hungry, predatory, and confident - and Andrew was having none of that shit today. There were two reactions that Andrew regularly got, being an out gay performer in an up-and-coming but still relatively small-time rock band: scorn and sex. Honestly, some weeks the sex was welcome but most of the time Andrew preferred the scorn, it was far less demanding.

Andrew sighed heavily. "I am not going to fuck you, so save yourself some embarrassment and do not even bother."

Jake recoiled instantly, his expression shifting rapidly from surprise to annoyance to anger back to a flawed mask of easy confidence. "Volunteering to bottom then? That's bold, but I like it." He stepped closer and though Andrew did not give ground he did narrow his eyes as he rested the fingertips of one hand at the edge of the opposite armband.

"Touch me and I'll stab you in the dick." Punches were just for warnings and this guy clearly didn't heed those.

"I don't got to touch you for you to suck my dick, though. Maybe if you--" Jake never got to finish his suggestion, because out of fucking nowhere he was nailed in the forehead by the handle of a screwdriver. He stumbled backward, eyes wide and a little bit dazed. "What..? Fuck." He pressed both hands to his forehead, which was already beginning to welt, crouching down with another ramble of curses. "What the fucking... fuck! Shit!"

What happened next was a fast, chaotic jumble that Andrew only later was able to piece together. Jake The Predatory Asshole stood up too quickly, still reeling from the hit, and stumbled into a nearby ladder. This ladder was there supporting the sound guy, who had continued to work on his task throughout this fun little encounter. The ladder, which hadn't been properly locked, snapped partially shut as it was pushed, causing it to overbalance. This, in turn, sent the sound guy crashing to the ground.

Well, not exactly to the ground.

That ass, which looked so round and plush from Andrew's vantage on the ground, was apparently made of solid muscle. One moment Andrew was watching Jake stumble, wondering if this meant he didn't get to stab him now, and the next he was flat on his back with a very compact, stunned sound guy sitting on his stomach.

Now, Andrew was all ready to get his stabbing on. He didn't give a shit if it wasn't this sound guy's fault that he fell from the ladder and Andrew just happened to be there to break his fall. Andrew just got clandestinely denied a chance to stab some overconfident bro that likely kept rufies in a pez dispenser in the pocket of his shitty designer sweatpants. He was primed and ready to stab, then some guy landed on him - that guy was about to be stabbed.

Except just as Andrew was pulling his knife the guy looked down at him and not only was his ass fucking impeccable, but he had the bluest goddamn eyes Andrew had ever seen, and that mouth. It was currently twisted up into amused sort of smirk that tugged up more on one side than the other. His hair was long and queued into a messy braid over one shoulder, a few wisps hanging around his face that with the backdrop of the houselights behind him made him look like a fucking mermaid or something. This fucker was almost offensively attractive.

Then, to make it all even worse, a spluttering sound came from beyond them to where Jake had landed. "What the fu--!"

Exceptionally Hot Sound Guy, materialized a screwdriver and heaved it with a suspicious amount of skill and form. It made contact, judging by the cut-off expletive and fleshy thunk. Also by the smug little smirk that folded itself across the sound guy's lips.

"Suck on that," he said. Then, with a pleased little 'hmph!', he got off of Andrew and held out a hand in offering.

Dazedly, Andrew accepted it. When he looked over at Jake, the fucker was out cold, spread-eagle in the middle of the stage.

"I can drop one of the lights on him," the sound guy offered casually. It should have been a joke; Andrew knew it wasn't.

"Who are you?" Andrew heard himself ask. It came out sharp and accusatory instead of fluttery and infatuated, thank fuck for small miracles.

The guy apparently had to think about that for a moment (which, really? what the fuck?) then he smiled, this one a softer, more personal smile that Andrew did not understand but needed to on a deep, inexplicable level. "Neil," he said. "My name is Neil."

Neil looked over at the downed creeper, then got a positively evil little look on his face that had Andrew's brain finally catching up to exactly how much trouble he was in. He watched as Neil jogged back into the wings and returned with a bottle of water. Bypassing Andrew completely, Neil crossed right to the fallen perv, crouched beside him, and poured the contents of the water bottle right on Jake's crotch.

That second screwdriver must have really hit home because the fucker didn't even stir.

Pleased with his work, Neil tossed the now-empty water bottle off stage right and returned to Andrew. "Good enough for now?" he asked.

Andrew stared at him for a long moment. When he opened his mouth to say something snarky and unbothered, what came out instead was, "I am buying you dinner."

Neil looked surprised, then the expression warmed to something else before he said, the edge of a smile teasing Andrew from the corner of his mouth, "Okay."

Oh yeah, Andrew was so incredibly fucked.

fun little prompt game

#aftg #aftg fanfic #asks #ficlet prompts #andreil #meet cute #band au #andrew minyard #neil josten #andrew minyard x neil josten #oh my god this is terrible #its so bad #but look #it fills the brief ok?#pls dont judge me by how awful this is XD

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ktarsims · 2 years

Text

TS3 64bit on Mac OS Adventures

So... not content to merely have my game running well on my desktop computer... I decided perhaps I’d like to sometimes play in my bedroom away from everyone, and hey, wasn’t there a 64bit version of the game now for Macs? That should work well on my Macbook Pro, right?

So I’ll share the misadventures... but it’s a long read, so first I want to give a few answers and tips for anyone else wanting to use the 64bit on Mac who has been previously played on Windows, and/or wants to port over a mods folder created with CCMagic.

Yes the save files seem compatible so long as you have the same mods.

Yes, I was able to transfer over all my library, world, preset saves, save files, etc. just don’t include anything from DCBackup or DCCache.

If your mods folder was created with CCMagic, you’ll have to do a little tinkering to get it functional. The Mac OS doesn’t seem to recognize the ‘scan’ directive that CCMagic adds into the .cfg file. I did the following: A) Take all the individually named set folders out of the Cache folder where CCMagic places them, and move them into a ‘CCMagicSets’ folder inside my packages folder. B) Deleted the cache folder. C) Edited my Resource.cfg file in my main mods folder to remove the line at the top with the ‘scan’ directive. I left the rest as it was. After this all my mods and CC loaded up just fine.

Awesomemod popped up an error when I went to load the game telling me that a non-critical core file had an unexpected value, and gave me a choice of ‘cancel’ or ‘ignore’. I chose ‘ignore’. Game loaded up fine.

So... the many misadventures... first there was the ‘simple’ installation of the game. I updated origin on my mac, and set about queuing up the download for all the various expansions and stuff packs. Then I left it to run...

Second step, I needed to transfer my mods folder, so I hunted for a flash drive big enough. I have a single 128gb drive where I do a lot of my TS3 backups, but.. it didn’t have enough space left on it. I have an external drive I also use for TS3 backups... but it’s probably formatted in a way only Windows will read. I could have sworn I had at least a couple 32mb flash drives somewhere, but all I could find was 16... my mods folder is a bit over 17gb currently. \

So, I had to transfer some files from the flash drive to my desktop, then delete them from the flashdrive, and transfer over my mods folder. This is not a NEW flash drive, or usb3, so.... it took a while. (After this I ordered some USB3 128gb flash drives for like $15 each. They’re so much cheaper than they used to be!)

Leaving those two transfers to get along, I took a shower, figuring they’d be at least close to finishing when I got out.

Upon returning, I found the file transfer to the flash drive had completed. Great! Let’s set to work also transferring library and world folders, etc. Good good. The laptop had also completed downloads of all the expansions, etc. Okay great!

Let’s boot up the game just enough to make it create a game folder..... ... I clicked play and after a few seconds an error message popped up telling me that the game could not launch because my basegame version was incompatible with my expansion version. “...”

Apparently it had queued up expansions and stuff packs for the 32bit version of the game, and only downloaded 64bit for the base game... >_<;;; Origin is so incredibly buggy! My best guess here is that I should have waited for the base game DL to complete before queuing up the expansions and stuff packs. Anyhow, so I set to work downloading the expansions, etc. again... this time one by one.

in the midst of the process of re-downloading all the expansions, Origin would sometimes minimize itself for seemingly no reason. Just suddenly minimize. When this happened, I could with some finagling get it to stay open again, but it would minimize again as soon as I clicked on it anywhere. -_-;;

So I had to start quitting Origin, and giving it a minute to fully shut down before restarting it again periodically. I had finally reached the last 3 stuff packs when this happened again, and this time when I started Origin back up, it said I had no games in my library. “...” Someone in discord told me the same thing had just happened to them, and it looked like the Origin servers were down. *whew* I mean, still aggravating... I’d have been done by now if it hadn’t downloaded the wrong versions the first time, but at least no long wait for CS to reply about my missing games.

Let me pause here just to say... in the 64 bit Mac version of the game, there is no ‘expansions’ tab in the Launcher. Nor does there seem to be any way to ‘disable’ individual expansions or stuff packs. My surmise is that I’d have to uninstall them. Hence, with all of them installed, but all the wrong version... my game literally would not open until I completed installing the correct versions of the expansions and stuff packs (though I could possibly have bypassed by uninstalling them instead?)

Also, while re-downloading, I got frustrated with how long it was taking, and decided I should plug my laptop into the ethernet... except... it’s a relatively new macbook pro and the only connection slots it has are all thunderbolt. The only thing you can plug directly into it are usbc cables, or thunderbolt cables. ie: I needed an adapter to hook up to ethernet, and I didn’t have one. >__<;; (After this, I ordered one! UGH.)

So, I eventually was able to complete the task of downloading the rest of the packs via origin. Yay! The game will launch now! To the launcher! Yay! I had in the meantime transferred from the flash drive the mods folder, library items, worlds, a couple save files, presets, saved outfits, etc. PLAY! I loaded up the save with Toby Stephens in it. It LOADED! However, items were missing... and... the game was curiously malfunctional. Like, I could not see inside the house. Some pieces of interface seemed to be missing, including the portrait for my sim, so since he was inside the house there was literally no way to select him... etc.

To make a very long story slightly shorter: Apparently if you save a game with a bunch of mods loaded, then when you attempt to load it without any of those mods, it may be highly nonfunctional. Once I had performed the above mentioned ‘fix’ for the resource.cfg file and transferred the ccmagic folders to inside the packages folder, the mods loaded properly and everything was functional again.

Hopefully this tale can help a couple other people avoid some of these pitfalls.

My last note is that after loading up the game I realized I’d also need to get a mouse for my laptop, because zooming without one is a PITA, and zooming in and out is CONSTANT with this game. ;-; Amazon made bank off me yesterday.

#installation adventures #ts3 mac 64bit #ts3 mac 64bit tips #ts3 transferring from windows to mac #tips #installation woes #origin sucks #graphics aren't as good on the laptop though #will probably use it for a side game #or something

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