#the similarities between these two never stops and i start frothing at the mouth when i think about them for too long

[cloysterbell]

Okay okay hi I won't be around as much this week since I'm in apartment moving hell HOWEVER I've been thinking about Polivia again as I am wont to do and how fuckin wild is it that they were both basically orphaned as teens but were given the opportunity to meet their mothers again on the Other Side..... the red string of fate strikes again

#dumb text posts #the similarities between these two never stops and i start frothing at the mouth when i think about them for too long #anyway happy mother's day to marilyn dunham and elizabeth bishop only #also unrelated but the leverage episode i watched today had eliot and hardison refer to themselves as agents moffat and davies #so naturally leverage and i are no longer on speaking terms

[return-of-a-space-cowboy]

Yandere halloween ask yandere mad scientist! Bruno uses mind control chip to get darling to be the perfect spouse?

This ask right here made my mouth froth, I love Stepford wives so this ask just rolled along perfectly. Anyway enjoy!

This love

(Yandere mad scientist Bruno X female reader)

You had always thought so highly of Dr Buccirati, you were his apprentice after all but there were times that you thought he just went a little too far with his work and this was one of them.

As he explained to you about how he made a chip that could modify an animal's behaviour. How the chip was planted in the rat's brain that you were holding.

"See (Y/n), look at how tame she is now" he said as he petted the poor creature's head.

"What do you intend to do with what you have learnt?" You asked with anger in your words.

"I intend to have the chip used to help with the conservation of the many animals that are close to being extinct. The animals will have the procedure and be put into captivity, they'll have no more issues with stress or aggressive behaviours which allows for them to be safely cared for and less risk during the reproduction cycle" he explained.

"So what you are saying is that you're going to be suppressing their natural survival instincts so they become domesticated?" You asked with a bitter taste on your tongue.

"That's exactly it, they'll have a safe place to repopulate and have nothing to worry about" he answered as he expressed his delight but it only made you grit your teeth in anger.

"I'm disgusted by what you are doing! You're essentially performing a lobotomy on these poor animals! You're playing god and taking away the emotions of a living creature!" You yelled at him.

"I've helped you work on some crazy things before… but I cross the line here!" You continued as you put the rat down in her cage before folding your arms at Bruno.

"Come on (y/n), you're overreacting… what I'm, no what we are working on is going to change history. So many species will be saved from becoming extinct. we will be two of the greatest scientific minds the world has ever know" he held your shoulder and lightly massaged it as he tried to convince you that there was no wrong in it.

"I don't know why you insist that this is a joint effort but I don't want anything to do with it, if people figure out how it works then it won't be long before this is used on humans… how many corrupt governments do you think would love to have this kind of technology used on their own people?" You rebuttal.

you glared at Bruno as you could see his usually calm demeanor wearing thin. He had his hands gripping his short black locks.

"(Y/n) the truth is that I love you, more than I could love anyone else. I want you to be by my side and I want you to be my equal…" he as his grip on you grew tighter.

"You are so intelligent and so beautiful… I just want you to do your best" he continued.

You pulled away the male with a shocked expression plastered on your face.

"Bruno… I didn't know you felt that way about me but I'm afraid I don't share the same feelings, I just don't think the chemistry is there between us" you told him before you headed to your bedroom.

🧪🧪🧪

You had decided you needed to cut ties from Bruno and finally begin your own work. You don't think anything could keep you working with him now. You began to pack your clothes back into your suitcase.

"(Y/n) are you planning on leaving now?" He asked as he rested himself against the door frame, he seemed to have recollected himself but to you something was off about his almost carefree tone.

"I intend to leave tomorrow" you said as you sat on your bed and folded your clothing.

"Don't you think you're blowing this out of proportion, can't we put the breaks on just talk about this over some tea..." he said as he slowly drew closer to you.

"I understand that you're upset and I didn't make things much better" he continued calmly before violently grabbing your hand causing you to fall back onto the bed before you heard a metallic click. You screamed as you tried to pull your hand back to find it was handcuffed to the head of the bed.

"What the hell?!" You screamed at Bruno who was now on top of you.

"I'm sorry that it had to come to this but I can't let you leave" he said.

"I love you too much to let you go… you're too good for this world" he continued.

You felt your stomach twist horribly and your vocal cords seize up. Your eyes were wide with horror.

"I dealt with my unrequited love for so long, I tried to just to put my feelings aside for you but I feel like if I keep it up any longer I'll explode" he rambled you tried to push him with your free hand but he was quick to hold it down.

🧪🧪🧪

It had been a month since he'd locked you up. You were curled up with your knees to your chest, you could see every little mark he'd ever left on your body, you still felt the sting that each love bite left on your skin. Today was cold and the chain and cuff around your ankle made it worse as you shivered in a silk nightgown.

You flinched as you heard the front door open. You had hoped that maybe that was anyone but Bruno, someone that could free you from this place. You heard a pair of footsteps draw closer, your hope dying as the same pattern tore into your brain… you knew he was home.

"(Y/n) I'm home" his voice was cheerful as he opened the door.

"I'm sorry I was later than usual… I found so many things I thought you'd like" he explained as he walked in with a large bag in his hand before placing it on the bed. You were hesitant to look but his sapphire eyes stared at you in anticipation, making your skin crawl.

You grabbed the bag and the first thing you pulled out was a 50s style white and black polka dotted dress. You looked at Bruno with a forced smile on your face.

"Bruno this is really nice but I've never really been a fan of dresses" you told him. He didn't respond. You pulled out another similar dress before picking out various boxes with golden jewelry till there was one more box inside, however it was rectangular in shape unlike the others. You pulled it out only to gasp in horror as you gazed upon the packaging of a pregnancy test. You looked back at him.

At this point you knew something was wrong, your stomach was telling you.

"What's going on?" You asked him with shakey words.

"I just need you to take it" he responded.

"Why?" 

"I need to know whether or not you're pregnant, it's urgent"

"Urgent, what's urgent?!" You yelled at him.

"You're being extremely vague, it's scaring me" you replied, unsure of what was so urgant. You really hoped you weren't, having to live knowing your child was of his blood.

"Just take it please, wouldn't you like to know as well?" He begged.

You had a bad feeling about this but if you knew now then you could try to do something about it if it did come back positive. You let out a defeated sigh as you unboxed the test.

"See you didn't need to make such a big deal about it dear" he said in a light hearted tone as he walked towards the bed and unlocked the shackle on your leg and allowed you to go to the bathroom.

You felt the relief wash over you as you saw the results. It was negative, perhaps you were getting yourself all worked up.

"(Y/n) dearest, what's the results?" Bruno asked from outside the bathroom door. You opened it and showed him, his eyes lit up with joy as he hugged you which was very odd indeed, you assumed he'd had baby fever… if that was the case shouldn't he be disappointed.

You recoiled as you felt a sharp jab on the inner side of your elbow. You saw the now empty syringe in his hand.

"What are you doing?!" You screamed as you stumbled back from his grasp. He looked at the syringe and let out a content hum before his eyes returned to you.

He contemplated on whether he should tell you or not but at this point you couldn't do anything to stop him so there was no point in hiding it.

"I remember back on the night you tried to leave fondly, in hindsight you gave me the most brilliant idea" he explained.

"That whole talk on how my chip could work on humans was really inspiring, so I'm going to do just that… if you won't love me like this, then I can just make you love me" he continued as a smile grew on his lips.

The shock hit you as he explained it all, it horrified you to imagine it. It shook you to the very core. Everything else seemed like a luxury in comparison to losing everything.

"Bruno, please don't do this! I love you so much!" You screamed as you draped your body over him.

"My dear I love you so much… I'll stay with you forever… I'll give you as many children as you want, please oh please don't do this!" You were practically sobbing as you tried to pull on his strings.

"I'll do anything for you, anything at all!" You continued as you felt everything becoming numb, he had you in his hands and he could do anything he wanted to you.

"Please Bruno, we can put this all behind us and start over… you never imprisoned me, you never did those things to me… we can be the happiest couple!" You pleaded to him as your eyelids grow heavy.

"Please… please… I won't be the same person you feel in love with if you do this…" your screams turned into a mutter and as you tried to fight off the deep abyss of unconsciousness you swore you could see a glimpse of your whole life with every slow blink.

🧪🧪🧪

"What you've made is amazing Bruno, you should be proud of your work" the man in front of Bruno complimented his work.

"Thank you sir, to be honest I wouldn't be here showing you this if it wasn't for my wonderful wife" he said as he beamed with joy.

"Oh, your wife must be an amazing woman to help you" the man replied.

"Yes she is. She always gave me the right idea when I was unsure, she'd be here with us right now if it weren't for the upcoming baby. She's just been so ecstatic about it since we found out" he stated as he had his head in his hand. He was over the moon with joy, he couldn't talk to someone without bringing up the fact that he was going to be a father soon.

"Oh congratulations, how long till it's due?" The male congratulated him.

"Oh it's close, we're expecting around October… It's hard to imagine that I'll be a father in two months"

"And how's the lucky lady feeling about this? My wife was pretty worried before our first" he asked.

"Oh she's been great, she's been taking it all in stride. I haven't seen her sick or having any mood swings like what most of us tend to expect" Bruno chuckled as he slumped back into his chair.

"We should probably get back on topic… I should probably explain how these chips work in detail"

#yandere jjba #yandere jojo's bizarre adventure #yandere x reader #yandere bruno #bruno x reader #halloween au

[heartslogos]

outtakes [9]

It looks like Chongyun is the last of them to arrive. Xiangling, Hu Tao, and Xinyan are huddled around the small table with the last empty space open between Xiangling and Xinyan. Xinyan sees him, waving him over as he struggles to escape from his coat and scarf at the same time.

Xiangling moves the dishes sitting on the small stool to a little cart on her other side.

Normally Chongyun wouldn’t even be here — hot pot, especially hot pot with broth that red — is the exact opposite of what he should be eating for his health. But the weather has been gloomy and it’s hailed twice since last night. And this place has a good selection of seafood and they’re amiable enough to giving Chongyun large bowls of ice to quickly cool whatever comes out of the pot.

Thankfully there’s a divider in the pot. Half of it is dark red broth with a glaze of orange froth, several sticks sitting in it. Chongyun counts no fewer than a dozen bright red chili pieces at a glance. The other side — with several fewer sticks — is a much more docile looking warm golden brown color with a slight milky texture.

Chongyun sits, layering his coat and scarf over his lap, shooting suspicious glances between the three women around him. The three of them have the air of people up to mischief. Specifically mischief centered on Chongyun. He’s seen this look enough on Xingqiu to know. It’s survival instinct.

“Before you get comfortable,” Hu Tao coos, eyes curling into crescents that bode ill for his prolonged health and make him regret coming, “Would you be so kind as to get us more water, Yun-didi?”

Chongyun freezes in place, eyes stuck on Hu Tao’s shit eating grin. And then he turns to Xinyan, who’s sporting a similar expression. She’s leaning towards him, chin on her folded hands. And then he looks to Xiangling who looks just as amused, leaning slightly away from him with her cheek on her fist.

“Oh no,” Chongyun says, “No. No, no, no. No way in hell am I the didi here. No.”

“So we’ve been talking,” Xiangling says, free hand gesturing to the other two women, “And we’ve come to the interesting conclusion that you are the youngest among our little group, Yun-er.”

“I am not the youngest. I’m not.”

“Didi,” Xinyan puts a placating hand on Chongyun’s shoulder. Hu Tao and Xiangling begin to snicker as she leans in further towards him. “It’s bad enough you’re in denial over how medicine works. You can’t start denying how time works, too.”

“If you aren’t the youngest who is?” Xiangling asks before Chongyun can protest about how he definitely knows how medicine works, he’s been seeing a doctor once a month since he was born.

“Xiao-ge and Ganyu-jie are definitely the eldest,” Hu Tao points out, starting to tick names off on her fingers. “Yanfei is only a year or so younger than Ganyu. Next is Keqing. Then yours truly. That leaves Xingqiu, Xinyan, Xiangling, and you. Literally in that order.”

Chongyun stares at them.

“I can’t be the didi,” Chongyun insists. “If I’m the didi —“

He turns to Xinyan, voice cracking as he struggles to keep it under control. “I gave you hongbao! I gave Keqing hongbao! She’s the Yuefeng of Liyue and I gave her hongbao!”

“Alright, no, that’s not because you’re the youngest. That’s because we’re still single and you’re in a committed relationship and well off. That’s different. That’s all your fault. It’s like how you have to pay taxes differently if you’re married.”

“Xingqiu and I aren’t even married yet!” His voice definitely does crack and he can feel his neck flushing because he knows that a few of the other customers and staff are staring at him. He forces himself to speak at a quieter, much more appropriate volume. “That’s not fair. Why am I giving hongbao to you? How come no one ever stopped me?”

“You’ve been getting hongbao from Yun-di?”

“Don’t call me that.” Chongyun is now starting to understand why Xiao-ge always looks so sour whenever they call him ge or xiong.

“Yeah. But now that I know for sure he’s the baby of the group — “

“I’m hallucinating because of all the chili oil I can smell. This isn’t real.”

“ — I can’t see why I thought he was older than me,” Xinyan says. “I think I thought he was older than me because he’s very polite. You know, the whole polite gentleman thing he does where he carries your bags and offers to walk you home and texts you to make sure you’re safely inside your apartment and stuff.”

“These are things normal people do and it doesn’t have to do with age.”

Xiangling pats Chongyun’s arm. “No, no, you definitely project a big brother vibe sometimes. But now that we all know you’re not the big brother here, we are absolutely going to be turning this around.”

“You aren’t getting any hongbao, though,” Hu Tao says, looking unfairly happy. Chongyun scowls at her.

“I never get any hongbao from any of you.” Except Xiao-ge and Ganyu-jie, but that’s different. They give hongbao to everyone. Chongyun jabs Xiangling in the ribs. “We’ve known each other since we were in high school and you’ve never given me hongbao.”

“Why should I?” Xiangling retorts, jabbing him back. “You’ve got more money than I do! And you’d just use whatever money I give you to pay me back for something. The exchange rate is a constant flat.”

She’s right but Chongyun can still be mad about it.

He swats away Xinyan’s hand when she goes to poke his cheek.

“Come on, Yun-didi,” Hu Tao pulls one of the sticks of meat from the side of the hot pot with clear broth and waves it at him. “Stop scowling. Isn’t getting mad bad for your health? Eat. Eat. We didn’t call you here to tease. We called you here because the discount is for a four person party and you’re the only one in the area who was free.”

Chongyun snaps his teeth onto the skewer of meet, yanking it from Hu Tao’s hand. His eyes water with how hot it is but he holds on for the sake of saving face.

After pulling the skewer out of his mouth he points at the three of them with it. It’s very rude but these people are terrible and they can stand a little rudeness.

“You’re all terrible elders,” he declares. “I’m not paying for anything today. See if I do after this.”

#heartsfic #genshin impact #venti

[bigskydreaming]

Small response ask to that anon who brought up Chris Priest and your response of DC should focus less on Bruce being abusive to his kids. Not sure if you noticed the up and down of the Batman comics but it seems the arc that have him being a caring dad has less asshole dad and abusive dad in them and yet the arc that have Bruce hitting the boys or kicking them out of the house has Bruce not acknowledging the boys as his sons and even the writers say Dick is more of a brother of partner than son.

Oh for sure, its absolutely true that a huge part of the problem with the Batman comics is the sheer inconsistency in writer visions of the characters - which is why IMO its up to DC’s editorial staff to maintain internal consistency for how the characters officially relate to each other at the very least. 

Like I’ve said before, you can’t roll back the clock on them being his kids once you’ve established they’re his kids. People haven’t forgotten that Tim was adopted by Bruce in the old continuity just because they decided to have his parents alive in the New 52 - and ‘teenage kinda sorta ally’ is an inherently weaker emotional tether compared to ‘actual adopted son’ so when presented with two options, most people aren’t going to give a shit about their attempt to ‘unbond’ a character from their actual parent and will stick with viewing them as father and son, whether DC likes it or not.

So its just plain foolishness IMO for DC to attempt to apply any sort of ambiguity to Bruce and his kids. Along with his biological son Damian, Dick, Jason, Tim and Cass at least have all been officially adopted by Bruce (or in Cass’ case, they were stated to be starting adoption proceedings last we saw before the Reboot). Like....those are just hard facts, no matter how much people try and ‘undo’ that if they don’t personally like the idea of Bruce as a father of five....fans are not going to cooperate and its just sheer stubbornness to pretend otherwise. People before the current writers and editors made a creative choice to have Bruce adopt these kids. Readers liked it. Readers know what they like and once given the option of having Bruce the father of five, you can protest all you want as the ‘official’ overseers of Batman, but you can’t erase what was already written, and you can’t ask readers to forget they liked something better than how you’re currently trying to push it.

But that’s just me being like hey DC what if you weren’t a flock of fucking dumbasses, just to try something different for a change.

And related to your ask, there’s absolutely a direct correlation in my mind between the DC writers who intensely dislike the idea of Bruce as a father and writing him as being callous, insensitive, aloof and outright abusive with various of his kids. Because it all goes hand in hand with them - they dislike the idea of Bruce as a dad because they’re all about him being the brooding lone wolf whose entire life is just an endless pursuit of justice for the sake of others because he’s convinced himself that he can never be happy and shouldn’t try. YAWN. But this view of Bruce is outright threatened by the warm, caring father Bruce rendition, so they try and erode the latter as much as possible in pursuit of the former....

Only to later have writers revert to the latter and erode the former.

And around and around and around we go. And they all keep trying to reset things that fundamentally CAN NOT BE RESET because this is the problem when you staff a creative industry top to bottom with fanboys who can’t and won’t separate their personal desires from their professional shepherding of these IPs. And so each new crop of writers tries to write Batman and related characters the way they like them, most often the way they remembered reading them as kids through the lens filter of nostalgia, and thus Bruce’s kids’ status flip flops either officially or unofficially every five to ten years, Hal Jordan is replaced by Kyle Rayner is replaced by Hal Jordan and a wave of new diverse characters are created in the span of a couple years and ten years later no one’s heard of any of them except for Jaime Reyes.

And its the reason IMO that superhero comics have never grown beyond a niche industry despite the VAST appeal of superheroes that superhero movies have proven still exists....and its why superhero movies will end up in the exact same stagnated niche if they don’t learn from the former’s mistake and let their characters grow and age and be replaced by new ones rather than just rebooted versions of the old one, because there’s only so many times you can go round and round on the merry go round before people just flat out stop caring because you’re not doing or saying anything new.

Change is good, except for when people refuse to let it happen because they’ve settled for what they know as being the optimal plateau, never to truly be reached past because the unknown and untested is scary and might bite.

Anyway. All of that is to say yes, I agree, and as a PS I just have to froth at the mouth a little on a personal note because god do I hate the interpretation that Bruce and Dick are more like brothers than father and son, lololol, and can’t refrain from mentioning that any time its brought up even in passing. 

(This is totally not directed at you btw, just the concept itself, lololol, sorry). 

People can talk about the smaller age gap between them all they want, but the fact of the matter is, Dick isn’t Damian, and the relationship between Dick and Bruce has NEVER been nearly as ambiguous or as open to interpretation as the one between Dick and Damian.

Because the contrast between the two is Bruce had something that nobody who is just an older sibling has over a younger....absolute uncontested parental authority, total responsibility for his education, living arrangements, emotional development, etc....with no other comparable figure in the younger’s life occupying a same or even similar role. Dick occupied that role for Damian for about a year of his life, but Bruce has occupied that role for Dick every single year since his first parents died. It might have taken awhile for them to individually and together VIEW their dynamic as parent and child, but from the moment Dick stepped foot into Wayne Manor, Bruce started out day one as someone who stepped into the role of sole guardian and caretaker with no prior emotional attachment.....and that just is NOT a sibling. That’s a legal guardian or parent.

(And yes, Alfred was there of course, but despite being viewed as a father figure to Bruce himself, Alfred never ever ever once has been shown to occupy an equal position to Bruce in Dick’s life....he’s very firmly slotted into the grandfather role himself, and has never stepped forward to definitively intercede between the two of them or usurp or even truly challenge Bruce’s parental authority of Dick).

If people want to say that at times Dick and Bruce’s dynamic has been more relaxed and they’ve related to each other as more like siblings than parent and child due to the relatively small age gap between them (still well over a decade, like yeah Bruce would have had to have been fourteen or so to have Dick himself, but the point is he DIDN’T, and he was already completely done with education and globe-trotting and was firmly established in his life and life’s purpose by the time he became Dick’s guardian, so the small age gap is not quite as influential as I think some people try to make it out to be - the reality is the Bruce that Dick met as a child couldn’t be any more decisively in the ‘adult/equivalent of a parent’ category in Dick’s eyes if he were five years older....it wouldn’t have changed a single thing about their actual situation or the positioning of their dynamic.)

But anyway, my point just being that yeah, due to the relatively small age gap between them, I can see people making a case for them at times enjoying a more relaxed camaraderie more akin to brothers than father and son, but the part that’s a pet peeve is when people try and outright replace the idea of them having a father/son dynamic with one where they’re brothers and partners and equals because.....no. Bruce always had full authority and guardianship of Dick from the day he met him, and he’s never been anyone BUT the figure who occupies that role in Dick’s mind, no matter whether the name for that changed over time. And that’s not a sibling, because even siblings who end up raising their younger siblings after the death of their parents, say....except for extreme cases like Dick and Damian, they usually still already have prior connection and perceptions of each other....like the younger, if already Dick’s age when raised by someone Bruce’s age....like, if they were siblings and Bruce ended up raising Dick himself, Dick would still have an image in his mind of a time before their mutual parents died, before he shifted into that parent role....and thus there’d be some ambiguity. 

But like I said, Bruce always (and without exception or alternative) from day one existed as the one responsible for Dick’s care, the one responsible for raising him, the one who got the ultimate say in every aspect of his life from education to what he ate to whether he could go hang out with his friends...and call that whatever you want, but that’s a parent. Not an older brother.

And more importantly, that dynamic between parent and child, rather than between older and younger sibling, is never going to fully shift into true equals. There’s a degree to which our parents will always be our parents and exist on a different footing than us in our mutual perspectives. There’s no getting around that. And Dick will never ever be positioned to be Bruce’s brother-figure rather than his son. Never someone who can challenge Bruce on ACTUAL equal footing rather than always with the vestiges of ‘this is the man who raised me’ and ‘I raised this man’ hanging over them. 

Anyway, like I said, pet peeve, and I always get a little grrr about people suggesting they’re more brother and brother than father and son because its disingenuous in my mind....there’s never been any kind of reality to it. And more importantly, its one of those things that only really seems to serve one purpose - and that’s to lessen Bruce’s responsibility to Dick, because if they’re just brothers, then the times when Bruce has done less than stellar as his parent, let’s say - like, those aren’t as big a deal or big a failing or an injustice to Dick if Bruce is JUST his brother and not actually his father and thus not actually responsible for filling that role.

Its the exact flip side of why I argue that its shitty to heap the kind of expectations on Dick that fandom usually does....because he’s NOT Damian’s father or any of his siblings.....but the key point I always bring up there is that this is more than just a matter of labels, but rather due to the fact that someone with significantly more and undeniable parental authority than Dick exists for all of his siblings....Bruce himself.

And that’s why Dick will never truly be Bruce’s equal within the family rather than his son - he doesn’t carry equivalent power even if equivalent expectations or responsibilities are heaped on him. And that’s why Bruce will never truly be Dick’s equal rather than his parent - because from day one, he DID carry sole parental power and responsibility for Dick. And there’s no getting around that and no changing that.....unless you CLAIM that Bruce is ‘just’ Dick’s brother DESPITE all the evidence of him being the only parent Dick’s had since he was eight years old.

And the other thing that bugs about the Bruce is more Dick’s brother than parent thing....even if Alfred has never officially been designated Bruce’s father, there’s never been any doubt that they are far more a parent/child dynamic than an older brother/younger brother. And all of Dick’s siblings have unequivocally been interpreted as Bruce’s children.

So.....

According to the Bruce is more Dick’s brother than parent argument, Dick is the one and only member of the Batfamily who just....doesn’t get to have a parent figure after he loses his parents at age eight? He never needs or wants one after that point? Bruce is more kinda just his brother and partner and Dick wants it this way, because he loved his parents, and so the eight years he got with them was all the parental love and guidance he needed, he was all set, no need or desire for any more after that point, because that’s how it works, apparently, if you love your parents and they die while you’re still a kid, sorry but you can’t have new ones? You can have a guardian but not another parent, you already filled the ‘I had parents who loved me’ quota so whether you only got eight years with them or eighteen, that’s all folks, but its okay because its not like you’d even want parents again if you had even just eight years with ones already?

LOLOL.

Yeah. 

DISLIKE.

[theculturedmarxist]

The New York Times is literally a propaganda outlet and Timothy Egan is a deceitful chode. His every word drips with the anxious desperation of the Democrats who know their goose is cooked.

Watching “Succession,” the HBO show about the most despicable plutocrats to seize the public imagination since the Trumps were forced on us, made me want to tax the ultrarich into a homeless shelter. And it almost made a Bernie Bro of me.

That’s the thing about class loathing: It feels good, a moral high with its own endorphins, but is ultimately self-defeating. A Bernie Sanders rally is a hit from the same pipe: Screw those greedy billionaire bastards!

Sanders has passion going for him. He has authenticity. He certainly has consistency: His bumper-sticker sloganeering hasn’t changed for half a century. He was, “even as a young man, an old man,” as Time magazine said.

But he cannot beat Donald Trump, for the same reason people do not translate their hatred of the odious rich into pitchfork brigades against walled estates.

Because powerful oligarchs that own their government murder them with impunity when they do.

>March 7 was a bitterly cold day in Detroit, and a crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 gathered near the Dearborn city limits, about a mile from the Ford plant. The Detroit Times called it "one of the coldest days of the winter, with a frigid gale whooping out of the northwest". Marchers carried banners reading "Give Us Work, "We Want Bread Not Crumbs", and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor". Albert Goetz gave a speech, asking that the marchers avoid violence. The march proceeded peacefully along the streets of Detroit until it reached the Dearborn city limits.

>There, the Dearborn police attempted to stop the march by firing tear gas into the crowd and began hitting marchers with clubs. One officer fired a gun at the marchers. The unarmed crowd scattered into a field covered with stones, picked them up, and began throwing stones at the police. The angry marchers regrouped and advanced nearly a mile toward the plant. There, two fire engines began spraying cold water onto the marchers from an overpass. The police were joined by Ford security guards and began shooting into the crowd. Marchers Joe York, Coleman Leny and Joe DeBlasio were killed, and at least 22 others were wounded by gunfire.

>The leaders decided to call off the march at that point and began an orderly retreat. Harry Bennett, head of Ford security, drove up in a car, opened a window, and fired a pistol into the crowd. Immediately, the car was pelted with rocks, and Bennett was injured. He got out of the car and continued firing at the retreating marchers. Dearborn police and Ford security men opened fire with machine guns on the retreating marchers. Joe Bussell, 16 years old, was killed, and dozens more men were wounded. Bennett was hospitalized for his injury.

> All of the seriously wounded marchers were arrested, and the police chained many to their hospital beds after they were admitted for treatment. A nationwide search was conducted for William Z. Foster, but he was not arrested. No law enforcement or Ford security officer was arrested, although all reliable reports showed that they had engaged in all the gunfire, resulting in deaths, injuries and property damage. The New York Times reported that "Dearborn streets were stained with blood, streets were littered with broken glass and the wreckage of bullet-riddled automobiles, and nearly every window in the Ford plant's employment building had been broken".

The United States has never been a socialist country, even when it most likely should have been one, during the robber baron tyranny of the Gilded Age or the desperation of the Great Depression, and it never will be. Which isn’t to say that American capitalism is working; it needs Teddy Roosevelt-style trustbusting and restructuring. We’re coming for you, Facebook.

Yeah, just look how well that’s worked out, you fucking idiot.

The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders, who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans will rip the bark off him. When they’re done, you will not recognize the aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry’s dystopian dairy. Demagogy is what Republicans do best. And Sanders is ripe for caricature. 

The same Republicans that got their breakfast ate by the dottering windbag cheetoman? The same Republicans that are unpopular with over half the fucking country? The same Republicans which have shown majority support for Sanders’s policies in the past? Those are the Republicans you’re talking about, right, Timothy, you fucking asshole?

I’m not worried about the Russian stuff — Bernie’s self-described “very strange honeymoon” to the totalitarian hell of the Soviet Union in 1988, and his kind words for similar regimes. Compared with a president who is a willing stooge for the Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, a little vodka-induced dancing with the red bear is peanuts.

Nor am I worried about the legitimate questions concerning the candidate’s wife, Jane Sanders, who ran a Vermont college into the ground. Again, Trump’s family of grifters — from Ivanka securing her patents from China while Daddy made other promises to Beijing, to Don Jr.’s using the White House to leverage the family brand — give Democrats more than enough ammunition to return the fire.

This is fun. Due to a complete lack of incriminating conduct, little Timmy has to invent wrongdoing to libel Jane Sanders. I suppose he’s relying on his readers being too stupid to read the article that he himself links, another NYT hitpiece that desperately tries to paint Ms Sanders as a shady character without anything in the way of tangible proof.

>Federal prosecutors have not spoken publicly about their investigation, though late last year, Ms. Sanders’s lead lawyer said he had been told it had been closed. And while doubts remain about the contribution pledges claimed by the college, the lawyer has said that neither Ms. Sanders nor her husband was even questioned by investigators, indicating a lack of significant evidence of a crime.

>After Ms. Sanders’s ouster, the college’s troubles worsened. It abandoned a promising effort she had undertaken to sell some of its new land to improve its finances, interviews show. A few years later, when it did begin selling, it was to a consortium that secretly included at least one member of its board, raising conflict-of-interest questions.

>There is little question that the college’s 2016 demise can be traced to Ms. Sanders’s decision to champion an aggressive — critics say reckless — plan to buy the land. But with potential students put off by the lack of a campus, and with many such colleges struggling at the time, her move was the academic equivalent of a Hail Mary. Her allies said she never had a chance to fulfill her vision.

>“Jane made an audacious gambit to save the college,” said Genevieve Jacobs, a former faculty member. “It seemed to be a moment of ‘change or die.’”

>In interviews and emails, Ms. Sanders expressed frustration at her dismissal and the college’s failure to continue her rescue plan.

>“They went a completely different direction in every way than what we had proposed and decided upon as a board — with the bank, with the diocese, the bonding agency,” she said. “They didn’t carry out any of the plan. It was very confusing and upsetting at the time.”

The TL;DR seems to be: Jane Sanders tried to save a struggling school with an audacious but risky plan that ended up being aborted when she was let go by by a board, some of the members of which may have had a stake in seeing it fail. At the very least, a much more complex situation than the aspersion of “running it into the ground.”

Trump bragged about sexual assault, paid off a porn star and ran a fraudulent university. He sucks up to dictators and tells a half-dozen lies before he puts his socks on in the morning. A weird column about a rape fantasy from 1972 is not going to sink Bernie when Trump has debased all public discourse.

No, what will get the Trump demagogue factory working at full throttle is the central message of the Sanders campaign: that the United States needs a political revolution. It may very well need one. But most people don’t think so, as Barack Obama has argued. And getting two million new progressive votes in the usual area codes is not going to change that.

“Ah jeez, ah fuck, he has no sexual indiscretions that I can dredge up and his Feminist polemic against pornography and the rape culture that it engenders is old news, and if I actually reported on it honestly people might actually read it and support his ideas. Oh, well, you see, despite the incredible groundswell of support for just such a thing, Barack Obama, the man that gave the banks trillions of dollars and then allowed the state apparatus to function as their gestapo-cum-storm troopers, says we don’t need one!”

Timothy Egan wants to dismiss “two million new progressive votes” after doing a little gaslighting. His Democrat masters don’t want people to remember that it was Obama’s promises of Hope and Change after 8 years of Republican tyranny that generated a record breaking voter turnout. They would also like you to forget that 2016 was a 20-year low in voter turnout. Do you think those things are related, Mr Egan? Do you think that there might be some connection between Obama taking advantage of the desperation of millions of people, betraying them, and then those people not fucking showing up next time, causing your party to lose to the dimwit that they themselves boosted to the position?

Give Sanders credit for moving public opinion along on a living wage, higher taxes on the rich and the need for immediate action to stem the immolation of the planet. Most great ideas start on the fringe and move to the middle.

But some of his other ideas are stillborn, or never get beyond the fringe. Socialism, despite its flavor-of-the-month appeal to young people, is not popular with the general public. Just 39 percent of Americans view socialism positively, a bare uptick from 2010, compared with 87 percent who have a positive view of free enterprise, Gallup found last fall.

“Just” 39 percent of Americans, up 4% from 2016. This is ignoring for the moment that due to Americans’ piss-poor education system they have no idea what “Socialism” means aside from “more government.” Looking at the breakdown of results, it seems as though they just asked people off the top of their head what they thought about X, no definition or elaboration given. Unsurprisingly, when you look at the actual numbers on specific issues, you can see exactly why Egan has to play this deceptive bullshit: of respondents 18-34, 52% have a favorable view of “Socialism,” as opposed to 47% supporting “Capitalism.” This is in sharp contrast to the 35-54 and 55+ cohorts. 65% of Democrats have a favorable view of “Socialism.” Those with a “Liberal” ideology are even more in favor at 74%, Timothy Egan, you massive shithead.

What’s more, American confidence in the economy is now at the highest level in nearly two decades. That’s hardly the best condition for overthrowing the system.

"The highest level in nearly two decades.” That’s faint fucking praise right there.

You can see the tremendous fucking crater caused by the crash in 2007/8, a reversal of a whopping -81 points from the previous year. With many economists forecasting recession beginning either this year or the next, we’ll see how long the confidence lasts. 

So-called Medicare for all, once people understand that it involves eliminating all private insurance, polls at barely above 40 percent in some surveys, versus the 70 percent who favor the option of Medicare for all who want it. Other polls show majority support. But cost is a huge concern. And even Sanders cannot give a price tag for nationalizing more than one-sixth of the economy.

A ban on fracking is a poison pill in a must-win state like Pennsylvania, which Democrats lost by just over 44,000 votes in 2016. Eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another Sanders plan, is hugely unpopular with the general public.

“Medicare for all is really unpopular, except when it isn’t.”

Hmm, you know? Hmmm.

As for fracking, from his own link:

>A November poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report found that only 39 percent of Pennsylvania swing voters saw a fracking ban as a good idea, even as nearly 7 in 10 of those same voters said they supported the idea of a “Green New Deal” for the environment.

Democrats are whinging on the jobs “lost” to a fracking ban as though it exists in isolation. 39% might support a fracking ban, but 70% support the GND, which could potentially offset the “job loss” with industry that has the potential not to leave their state as a fucking environmentally ruined horror show. I haven’t run the numbers on this, but not living in a cesspool of polluted air and water tends to be pretty popular, Timbo.

More shellgames from Mr Egan regarding abolishing ICE.

> Only 1 in 4 voters in the poll, 25 percent, believe the federal government should get rid of ICE. The majority, 54 percent, think the government should keep ICE. Twenty-one percent of voters are undecided. 

That sounds bad. Maybe it’s not such a good ide

>But a plurality of Democratic voters do support abolishing ICE, the poll shows. Among Democrats, 43 percent say the government should get rid of ICE, while only 34 percent say it should keep ICE.

Oh.

Sanders is a rigid man, and he projects grumpy-old-man rigidity, with his policy prescriptions frozen in failed Marxist pipe dreams. He’s unlikely to change. I sort of like that about his character, in the same way I like that he didn’t cave to the politically correct bullies who went after him for accepting the support of the influential podcaster Joe Rogan.

Democrats win with broad-vision optimists who still shake up the system — Franklin Roosevelt, of course, but also Obama. The D’s flipped 40 House seats in 2018 without using any of Sanders’s stringent medicine. If they stick to that elixir they’ll oust Trump, the goal of a majority of Americans.

Democrats lose with fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists. Three times, the party nominated William Jennings Bryan, the quirky progressive with great oratorical pipes, and three times they were trounced. Look him up, kids. Your grandchildren will do a similar search for Bernie Sanders when they wonder how Donald Trump won a second term.

“Failed Marxist pipe dreams.” Aaaaay lmao. You should also have an inkling something is wrong when you have to go all the way back to FDR to find someone that supports your point. Talk about “poison pills,” Obama proved himself to be as much of a snake as the rest, and the effects of that resonated in 2016 when the Dems ran on a platform of “that’s a nice country you have there, you wouldn’t want Trump to get elected, would you?” How did that work out? You ran one of the most unpopular politicians in the country—after very blatantly rigging the primaries against Sanders to do so—against one of the most unpopular capitalists in the country, and lost, dipshit!

Ironically, I think Timbob’s closing statement will prove true, though not in the way his clown ass intends. Shills like Egan are doing everything they can to try and poison public perception against Sanders and his policies, who only proves increasingly popular as time goes on, so much so in fact that the DNC is already biting its nails and muttering to itself about ways it can try and cheat his supporters again.

In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

They deny it in the article, claim that changing the rules would be “bad sportsmanship,” but one would be a fool to believe them. If anything, their ambivalence towards relying on Superdelegates would make me even more nervous at this stage. Politico wants it to seem like the DNC is bent on playing fair, but more likely than not they have no intention of changing the convention rules because they believe there’s no need. With Warren’s flagging support and the luke-warm response to Biden, I doubt they’re overcome with optimism of beating Sanders in an honest primary. With all the shenanigans from last time’s primaries in mind, it’s likely that the machinery to rig the results their way is already in place—the primary could already be over before it even begins.

#iowa #2020 election #us presidential election #bernie sanders #bernie sander for president #DNC #timothy egan #new york times #propaganda #propagandists #universal healthcare #medicare for all #fracking #marxism #socialism #capitalism #donald trump #millennials #generation z #zoomers #economy #economics #recession

[gasoline-and-matches-story]

Gasoline and Matches--Chapter One

Author’s notes: Greetings, lovelies--Spirit here bringing some original content for once. I’ve been working on this story for a long time, started it in high school with my friend @tiltingplanet. I hope you all enjoy the first chapter, any feedback would be lovely.

Chapter One

“I swear to fucking god--I am not skinny dipping in a random cave pool with you assholes.”

Yomi winced at the overly loud voice of her fellow classmate, pressing her back to a cave wall while everyone bickered. The tucked away corner of stone was her only solace--Hard, cold despite the sticky heat that came with a summer day. Of all the things she could have done with her Saturday, this was by far the most reckless. Idiotic. Completely out of character for the white and black-haired girl. Not one for parties or celebrations of any kind, yet here she was on private property in the middle of that god damn night. Trespassing in an abandoned cave system with seven other rowdy teenagers, trying her best to sit and not be noticed while a small bonfire flickered orange hues onto the cave walls in tantalizing patterns. As if the evening wasn’t hot enough.

To be fair, she didn’t consider herself close to any one of these people, minus Bethany--the girl who dragged Yomi to the party in the first place. A beautiful, bubbly female with dark skin and a personality that stretched on for miles. Saying no to such perseverance was impossible for Yomi, who wasn't the most assertive to begin with. One thing lead to another, someone mentioning the caves and a bonfire before piling eight troublemakers into a minivan. Yomi was, literally and figuratively, dragged into the situation. To say she went kicking and screaming was heavily exaggerated, but boy it sure felt like it. Beth was way too aggressive for her own good, and Yomi considered herself a push-over despite all the rules she set to make sure these kinds of situations didn’t happen.

Should have stayed home. Shouldn’t have come out here, but...

There was  hesitation, a reluctance that clung to the walls of her skull and refused to let go no matter how much reason was thrown at it. Was it really so wrong to want to try and be a teenager for once? To be out with people her own age, kissing the final year of high school goodbye with something silly and reckless. At least, in this case, she could have done better. They could have chosen a safer, cleaner, less illegal place to kick up her feet. But alas, idiotic minds seemed to think alike in these cases--There were very few voices of reason, and the loudest ones seemed to be those aching to be as reckless as possible.

“Come on, Em,” Jack’s slightly slurred words drew Yomi out of her thoughts, the drunken creature sitting on a rickety arm chair and sipping cheap beer--issue number one? Check. Underage drinking was by far her least favorite part of the evening, “Where’s your sense of adventure? Some hot springs, a little consensual nudity...what could be more fun?”

Jack was a twin, the other member of the set being his sister Ann. Yomi peered between the two as surreptitiously as possible, analyzing the similar shades of blonde hair and green eyes. They were both equally aggravating when it came to starting grievances in school, bouncing off each other like a very bad game of pong. Attractive, but in a similar way to things like poisonous frogs. Bright, shiny, masking jagged edges and toxic skin underneath all the pretty smiles and charismatic exteriors. Yomi knew well enough not to get close, but they were friends with Beth as well.

Jack was addressing Emma, one of the other girls Yomi knew was as reluctant to be there as she was. Voice of reason number one--Closer to the fire, sitting cross-legged on a thin blanket as she tried to ignore the men imploring her to go. She was the definition of tall and curvaceous, the flickering fire light casting shadows over her form from head to toe. Yomi almost rolled her eyes at the men frothing at the mouth--judging by Emma’s figure, their flimsy excuses were pretty obviously hiding their real reason for wanting her to come.

Emma was not oblivious.

“Eat shit and drown,” She held up her middle finger at Jack, shoving his face away when he tried to make pleading eyes, “I have to drive you dumb fucks home later. I’m not letting anyone into my car while wet, and if any of you try its an automatic pass to walking home.”

The caves weren’t an extreme distance from the small town they all lived in, but it was far enough that most of the fire-side listeners actively winced. 

Jack practically whined, those green eyes wide and pleading as he implored, “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, Em…! Why would you wanna pass up on the healing experience?”

“You and I have very differing opinions on what is considered healing,” Emma retorted, sipping a bottle of soda and turning in a different direction, “I’m not here to dip into some glorified, stanky cave water. But by all means don’t let me stop you, Jackie. Just be prepared for the consequences of walking home on the interstate and explaining to the police chief why you’re out so late and dripping wet to boot.”

Several groans rang out, Jack flopping back in that chair and pouting like a sulking child. Drinking, as expected, turned the teen into the equivalent of a drunken toddler. Yomi still found herself sighed internally with relief, letting that curtain of hair fall forward to shield her face a bit. There were currently more girls than boys, so their dumb idea was overruled for the most part. But...she doubted that would be the case for long, not with a certain someone growing more and more intrigued with each passing second and gulps of alcohol. Bethany was the only one way too on board for her own good, eyes sparkling at the notion of even seeing a hot spring and spending time with the boys in general. She was such a smart girl, exceeding incredibly well in class and reaching top marks despite all the chaos she included herself in.

She just craved excitement far too much, compared to the girl she dragged along with her.

It seemed way too dangerous in Yomi’s opinion, especially considering these caves were abandoned for a reason. Mind you, they weren’t too far in. There was a large hole in the ceiling showing the night sky, venting the smoke so they wouldn’t spend the evening coughing and hacking. But the cave system further down had to be treacherous, carved out long ago by either flooding or miners, she wasn’t sure on the details to be completely honest. Each member of the town seemed to have their own take on just how the cave system got there. And with someone in the group walking with crutches, there was no way their desired spelunking adventure should come to pass, right?

Yomi looked at the girl in question, peering through the safety of her black and white hair to examine Mira’s face. 

Sitting opposite of her by the fire was the girl in question, seeming lost in thought while the others argued and laughed. She was pretty in an unconventional sort of way, with strong features and red hair cropped short at her shoulders. Out of everyone in the group, Mira being here was the only thing more surprising than Yomi herself--exploring in an abandoned cave system on forearm crutches was a terrible idea. After a car accident in freshman year, Mira had been through a slew of surgeries to fix extensive damage to her legs. It wasn’t perfect, but she could walk with the aid of a cane on occasion, more than that on others.. Out of everyone here, she was another one not drinking, sitting in a lawn chair with her scarred legs stretched out near the fire. Just close enough to warm her skin, the flickering flames casting dancing patterns over the roadmap of surgery marks, of cuts long healed and what had to be extensive pain. 

Strong.

Yomi admired her heavily, Mira had far more guts and determination than she ever could. It took strength to come back from what she endured, and even more so to keep going with an attitude of non-caring. Head held high, chin up, feet moving.

She seemed a tad bit annoyed with the boys as well, pushing her cropped red hair behind her ear and narrowing those emerald green eyes on Jack’s pouting face. He was still bitching, the alcohol making his words a bit sloppy.

“Didn’t take this lot to be a buncha pussies,” He complained, crushing the now-empty beer can against his thigh and tossing it to the side, “Came all this way and y’all won’t even follow through…!”

“Careful, Jack, your hick is showing.” Mira retorted, sipping innocently from a can of soda when he whipped his gaze over to her. She remained unperturbed, as always.

“Saying the word y’all isn’t hick,” There was a frown on his lips, mingled with intense disappointment as those rusty gears that made up his alcohol-soaked brain started to grind in thought, “That’s cowboy shit, right?”

His sister Ann, who was spread over a sheet on the dusty floor, let out a heavy groan at his words and pressed her hands to her face in absolute exasperation. It was very clear who was in ownership of the shared twin brain cell at that moment.

“Jack you are the most humiliating fucking person I have ever met,” She sighed, tone sounding so tired while everyone else cracked up laughing at Jack’s expense, “Cowboys are a southern thing you absolute twat.”

Yomi purposely looked away while the others started cackling, sipping from a can of soda and trying to focus on the sugary contents as a means of avoiding laughter herself. Jack was never the brightest bulb in the pack, and cheap beer made it all worse. Underage drinking was never a good idea, and the quiet girl hated it with a passion, so this was just proving every point she had created for herself. Bad behavior? Check. Enhancing foolish ideas to the point that they seemed like good ones? Check. Turning an already idiotic eighteen year old into a god damn man child? Two checks and a very exasperated Yomi there to write them in.

Jack puffed up like an angry cat, glaring daggers at his sister as he stammered, “W...well I knew that…! I was just, y’know…”

“Being a dumbass?” Emma provided helpfully, sitting back and leaning all her weight on her arms, “Baby steps, Jackie. You’ll reach the basic level of human intelligence someday.”

Yomi felt like that was heavily unlikely, but she kept her mouth shut, instead fiddling with the trim on her shorts while the group erupted again. There was certainly a lot of drinking going on with Jack, Ann, Beth, and Jake. Ann handled it a lot better than the boys did, but Beth was turning into a giggly sorority girl, which was definitely not a good thing. They were the loudest of the group when it came to laughing and joking, whereas Clark, Emma, and Mira were as calm as Yomi was. At least there were some sane people in the group. 

How much longer was it going to be before she could go home? Beth had lost all interest in her now that she was bouncing off the others, the girl’s choice to drink not sitting well with Yomi. Alcohol as a whole always put the quiet group member on edge, an extra reason why she wanted to be free of these idiots.

They’re not idiots, She reminded herself, shoulders slumping a bit at her own rude line of thinking, They’re being normal teenagers. You’re the odd one here.

Reprimanding herself was the only way to correct her own negativity toward others, so she tried to make it a habit. Yomi also tried to force herself to relax--this was supposed to be fun, right? She was out with kids her age, doing “crimes” and nibbling on fireside food late at night. Trying to look on the bright side of it, to find good in the bad. Given the choice, however, she wished there was less underage drinking involved.

“Now now, kids,” Clark’s baritone voice pulled her out of her musings, looking up to see the dark-skinned male stand up and brush off the dust, “How about we just walk around for a bit? Some basic spelunking, no swimming involved.”

The two other boys perked up at that, practically bouncing in the orange hue of the fire as they stood as well.

“I like that word,” Jake, the other group trouble maker and notoriously horny on main, purred as he slung an arm around Emma and dragged her up unwillingly--someone was going to lose a finger, Jake the best candidate, “Come on now, kitten, let’s go spelunking. Sounds sexy, amiright?”

Em made a visible face of disgust, firmly peeling his arm off of her and gripping to the point of pain. Made obvious by Jake’s yelp of alarm. 

“Call me kitten again, and you’ll be experiencing the joy of my size seven shoes up your ass.” She said in a sugary sweet tone, one that barely veiled the threat she was putting across.

He whined in response, yanking his arm back and rubbing his aching wrist. Everyone else seemed to be standing as well, easily convinced by Clark’s reasonable tone, much to Yomi’s absolute dismay. So much for not  exploring the caves. This was shaping to be an incredibly nerve-wracking evening, the dark tunnels plummeting into the Earth seeming intimidating and empty when she turned to gaze into them. It made the timid girl incredibly nervous, coming to her feet as well and gripping the edges of her blouse with firm fingers. They were already in a place they shouldn’t be, so why add the extra danger to the mix?

 Even Mira, the one who seemed like she shouldn’t be cave diving at all, was now on board. Not wanting to be left out from anything. Yomi contemplated giving her an imploring look, but thought against it. 

“Jake, you would find the word ‘hamper’ sexy. Get over yourself.” With that, the redhead struggled to her feet, limping across the cave with both hands firmly grasping the crutches on her arms. She seemed completely determined, those green eyes sharp and gait suggesting she wouldn’t be swayed in the slightest.

“Mira, hold on! Let me walk with you.” Clark scrambled up, boy scout instincts kicking in to make sure Mira didn’t fall to her doom somewhere. Yomi liked that about Clark-- that he genuinely cared about people. Only problem was that he was a negotiator, trying to find a middle ground for what everyone wanted.

Too bad what Yomi wanted was to go home and be free of this situation. But Clark didn’t know that, especially not with her too nervous to speak up. 

Jake made a face at Mira's back, sounding incredibly immature as he mocked, “Myeh myeh myeh, I'm Mira and have to be sarcastic all the time.”

He blew a raspberry, which was further evidence that not a single male in the group could handle drinking without morphing into a child. Yomi almost rolled her eyes. 

“Grow up, Jake.” Several of the girls said dryly in reply, sounding like a choir of reason in the face of such nonsense. All but Bethany, who was seeming to have a great time now that the spelunking operation was back on board.

This was starting to become tiresome--Yomi would have rather not sit there and listen to the banter that cropped up when Jake got into one of those moods again. Not to mention the fact that staying with Beth would only result in her being sucked into all the horniness they were carrying around. And shockingly enough...someone seemed to notice her exhausted expression before she managed to hide it. Emma had been staring across the cave at Yomi, those stern eyes searching and missing nothing, especially not with her knowing full well that Beth had played a big part in dragging the reluctant new member of the group along.

What Yomi didn’t expect was for her to actually act on it.

“Why don’t you guys go exploring without us?” The woman suggested helpfully to one half of the group, eyeing Mira as she clung to Clark a bit for support and sounding incredibly disapproving of the situation, “I’ll keep an eye on the dumbasses while they look for water, and to prevent any potential cave ins caused by Jake and Jack’s stupidity--”

Cave-ins?

“Hey!” Both boys protested, looking thoroughly chastised--like somehow the idea of them causing trouble was absolutely ludicrous.

“Regardless,” Emma interjected loudly, rolling her eyes at their ranging expressions of insult and annoyance, “I’d rather Yomi and Clarke make sure Mira doesn’t fall in somewhere, you’re the only ones other than me who are sober.”

Clark and Mira seemed surprised to even hear Yomi’s name, turning to look at her with mirrored expressions of shock as if her presence had been lost on them both. It occurred to her that pair had probably not talked to her in school much before, outside asking for help with a question or for borrowing a pencil. Hell, Yomi hadn’t said a word the whole trip minus occasionally mumbling to Beth, replying to her constant questions and cheerful banter as much as she could handle. So those expressions they wore should not be hurtful.

Right?

“Oh, cool, the more the merrier.” Clark said, awkwardly dithering behind Mira as she sought to walk further into the cave. Almost impatiently. The redhead looked eager for adventure, green eyes sparkling in the firelight as she nudged the bigger male’s arm with her forearm crutches.

Am I doing this right? Yomi wondered anxiously, keeping her eyes on Mira like observing the girl would somehow teach her the proper ways to act, Should I be excited instead of worried? Shouldn’t I want to do something risky?

While she fretted, everyone continued on obliviously. Beth had zero complaints with Em’s demands, seeming more than happy to walk around with the other guys in her drunken state. She smiled cheerfully, giving a small finger wave as Emma locked arms with her, “M’kay, we’ll meet back up here, yeah?”

She didn’t wait for Yomi’s response, turning and practically dragging Emma down a branching path. Thank god the more reasonable woman was going with them, to make sure no one did anything stupid. All of it was all too much to bear for someone like Yomi, the drunken state of her fellow classmates a bit too intimidating. She was grateful for that at the very least, they needed one reasonable person to make sure the skinny dipping didn’t happen, and to keep Beth safe and sound from such exasperating indivduals. 

Regardless, she turned when Mira pushed forward eagerly, trailing carefully behind while Clarke shadowed the redhead’s steps.  The heat of the bonfire slowly started to fade as they pushed through the jagged edges of the tunnel entrance, wary not to trip on a few huge rocks and pieces of the cave wall. All the while Yomi was trying to shake her sense of worry, scrambling to figure out just what to say to her two classmates. Why was this so hard? Once upon a time she had friends, close to so many people in elementary school until...well. Things had changed, so much had happened that it sometimes felt like her head was still spinning from the stress of all of it. There was solace in silence, one she had come to rely on far too much.

Luckily...it would not need to be thought about long, because someone took the reigns out of her hesitant hands and spoke. The same someone she had started looking to for any indication on how to be a normal human being. 

“Didn't want to listen to them either?” Mira asked casually as the light began to die away, sloping downwards into darkness and snapping Yomi out of her thoughts, “I don't blame you. The best people have brains in their heads...I think Jake has vodka instead.”

Clark snorted, laughing into his hand. At least he was finding amusement in this. She couldn’t help herself either--Yomi half smiled in agreement, surprised to find comfort in their company now that the more rowdy group members were separated and relieved that the other girl seemed at ease with drawing her into the conversation. Mira had the habit in school of saying the crass version of what everyone was thinking, speaking her mind at all times, but it was somehow...welcome, and accurate. Jake, best known for puking on his SAT thanks to a hangover, absolutely had a skull full of cheap vodka.

“I think you may be right,” Yomi replied, gaze turned away and pulling out her phone to light the path once it occurred to her how low the visibility was getting, “Do you guys think this is a good idea…? Maybe splitting up to go cave diving on abandoned property isn’t...the smartest.”

Mira let out a light laugh at that, leaning heavily on her cane as she replied, “This group isn’t known for their brains. Though I will say,” She gave Yomi a side-long glance, raising one delicate eyebrow at her, “Pretty surprised to see you at this little get-together. You never seemed to be the partying type.”

That made the girl wince, turning away from Mira’s searching eyes. She certainly had the knack for saying exactly what would make one squirm, which was fine when it wasn’t directed at the most nervous one of the group. There was a prolonged silence as Yomi thought over the comment in general, trying to gather the best thing she could say in response. This was the topic of the year, muttered in hallways with curious and skeptical eyes watching her. Why doesn’t Yomi “participate” in anything? Does she think herself to be better than everyone because of her family? To come out to a party such as this after three whole years of keeping to herself, trying desperately to stay under the radar--it was understandable that Mira would be curious.

Others were just too cowardly to ask.

“I...well...I wanted to try.” Yomi murmured in reply, feeling both sets of eyes on her as she stepped down over a lip in the path. She couldn’t remember ever speaking about this to anyone, keeping all the issues locked up tight without burdening another person. But in the dark of the caves, out of her element...something could change, right?

“Just for a day. To try and be... normal.”

Whether or not that made sense was the question, but Yomi didn’t think there would be anything to worry about on that front. They definitely understood what was being put across, there was no doubting that. She realized easily as she turned to watch Clark help Mira down the incline, meeting his now-sympathetic gaze and feeling a bit surprised by the serious expression he wore. It didn’t change much to send him into concerned, big brother mode it would seem. Those dark eyes were gentle in the dim lighting, reflecting the glow of her cell phone with a steady gaze meeting her own

“Is it hard,” He asked hesitantly, like the thought hadn’t entered his head before, “For you to be normal? Or rather...to feel normal.”

Mira pursed her lips, emerald-green eyes also glinting in the light from Yomi’s phone as she waited for the reply.

Yomi let out a light hum in response, meeting Mira’s steady gaze and trying to decipher the emotion there. Something akin to understanding, thoughtful in nature. Since she asked the original question, it felt only right to give such answers to her.

“Might sound  silly, but...it does,” Yomi admitted, feeling strangely at ease while talking to someone like the brash redhead. There was something about her, a silent camaraderie Yomi didn’t understand--maybe due to how much the troubled girl respected and admired her? Strong, steadfast and determined in everything she did. Mira was certainly not the type to judge, nor had she partaken in all the criticizing that went around the school. She simply felt...curious, “It felt easier to just stay quiet and get through school as fast as I could. I...wanted to try and have fun for once.”

Mira snorted, saying exactly what Yomi herself had thought previously in the evening, “Hard to call that shit fun. We could have stayed at Clark’s place, watching anime reruns and covering ourselves in crumbs from the safety of his couch.”

Yomi blinked in response. She had never been to Clark’s house before--the very notion of being able to was somehow strange, a nice change of pace. Her brain created its own images of someplace nice and cozy, domestic in comparison to the big, empty house she lived in on a daily basis. It sounded pleasant.

Mira’s words made their classmate smile, a flash of those pearly whites as he laughed, “You’re just saying that because you like my dog.”

“And what moron wouldn’t?”

Yomi hid her smile at their conversation, trying to instead focus on navigating the narrow path in the dark. It was eerily quiet in the caves besides the echoing words from the other two. No dripping water, no sounds of animals or anything at all. Didn’t caves have bats? Mice? Strange eldritch creatures hungering for their flesh? Her imagination was getting out of control, which needed to be halted before it got worse. The path was starting to widen a bit, the walls looking less craggy and jagged to...smooth? Almost curved at the top like an archway, air drifting in from their backs and overcoming the stagnant smell with the one of crackling firewood. This felt...odd--why was the floor so even, the walls spaced perfectly like the cave had been carved out long ago?

Maybe these were mining caves after all?

Yomi frowned a bit, feeling along the wall and noticing what looked to be something carved into the stone and rock. It was strangely out of place on the crumbling, misshapen tunnel--everything around it had long since been messed up by the earth shifting and changing, but it was only this area that seemed to remain untouched, smooth, undisturbed by nature or anything like that. Yomi probed her fingers further, turning the light on her phone to brighten up what she was feeling for further examination. But that only increaded the confusion, amping up the surprise when she saw first hand what her hands were touching.

Not cracks, not carvings. These markings were different than that, and far more precise.

It looked almost...runic, made up of intricately curved lines and shapes. They reminded her of something she had seen in a video game, or a fantasy movie with witches and wizards. It didn’t look chiseled either--almost like it was burned into the stone with lava or a razor thin torch. That...couldn’t be right though, could it? Was cave dwelling cultists another story told in town when people spoke of the caves? The memory wasn’t exactly there, which was somehow even more concerning. Someone definitely had to take the time to make such strange markings, it was incredibly intricate and beautiful in design. Who could have such dedication, to come into a dark cave and make something no one would ever see?

Yet here they were, seeing them.

This is so unbelievably bizarre.

“What’s wrong?” Clark asked, pulling out his phone as well to shine light on their feet. He took a few steps closer, leaning over Yomi’s shoulder to stare at the marking and letting out a low murmur of, “Wow, that’s strange. Never seen anything like it.”

An understatement to be sure. It was almost ridiculous, like something she would have seen in a movie or storybook.

Mira came up on the other side as well, leaning her weight against the white and black-haired girl without a care in the world. Yomi paused in surprise, not minding the sudden contact, but...it felt weird having people be so close.

“Maybe some dumb devil-worshipping teenagers were down here,” She said dismissively, eyeing the rest of the tunnel with a troubled expression despite her laid-back tone, “Did any of you see a sheep’s carcass on our way down? Candles? Shrines devoted to the dark Lord Satan?”

Clark clicked his tongue disapprovingly, “See now, that’s not funny.”

“I thought it was hilarious,” Mira smirked, shoving his shoulder with one of her crutches, “Lighten up, Superman. Most you have to be scared of down here is Jake’s wandering hands.”

Yomi sighed at their joking, pressing her fingertips to the marks and tracing out one of the more prominent lines. Satan worshipers was one thing, but in a small town like theirs people like that would have been incredibly obvious. Even then, what the hell did they use to get the marks so precise and small? It certainly didn’t  look carved, at least not to her eyes-- more like it was burned into the stone’s surface like a brand. But if there was any scorching, it was not found by her carefully searching eyes in the dark. Something about it felt ominous and strange--the hairs on the back of Yomi’s neck stood up, signalling to her that they should probably just turn back.

Skinny dipping was one thing, finding mysterious symbols in a dark tunnel was definitely outside her final walls of comfort. She had enough spooks for one day, that was for certain.

But when she turned to tell them that, Clark was pressing onward, sliding one hand along the wall and holding up his phone with the other. Mira was following slowly behind, managing fairly well on her forearm crutches and staring at what had now garnered the boy’s attention.

Yomi blinked, eyes widening when she saw more and more symbols lining the walls, different in their patterns and designs and now taking up almost every available space. What the hell was all of this? She quickened her step, keeping half of her focus on Mira to make sure the girl wouldn’t stumble, the other half on the newfound mystery. Marking after marking, curving up toward the ceiling and turning into swirling images as they danced over the curves and stone. Depicting otherworldly creatures, dragons and giant birds in flight as they clashed in the sky. 

They were beautiful, but wasted in a cave such as this.

“Where did these come from…?” Yomi murmured, tracing the patterns with each step and unable to understand any of it, “You would think someone else would have found these markings, but...No one mentioned them, did they?”

She spent a lot of her time observing and listening. Even when news of these caves spread, no one spoke of something such as this.

Clark frowned, his brow furrowing as he lost himself in thought, “Now that you mention it...I was told there was one tunnel system, not two paths. There was rubble around the one we took, the edges more jagged. Maybe this way was opened by a cave in?”

Yomi blanched, taking a very measured step backwards in the direction they entered in. If there had been a collapse before, it could very well happen again. Now that she thought about it, the entry way did have a bit of debris, and Emma had spoken of something like that being possible before herding the drunken members of the group away.

Not safe. We need to go.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Mira huffed, genuine concern on her face now as she mimicked Yomi’s motion and stepped backwards, “If cave-ins are a thing, we need to bounce. Too much danger for my liking.”

That was a hard agreement on Yomi’s part. She already felt uneasy about coming to an abandoned cave in the middle of the woods, especially when it was technically illegal. Mind you, kids had done it before and generally only got a slap on the wrists. But Yomi didn’t particularly want to be arrested, especially considering who she was. If she got arrested, if her step father and mother found out what she was doing…

Bad, very bad.

"Yeah, let's head back. We can go to my house," Clark gave Yomi a welcoming smile, putting a hand around Mira’s arm to hold her steady. "You can come too, if you want--my dog Ruby is a sweetheart, loves everyone. We call her Boobie.”

His words make Yomi pause, a hesitant delight blooming in her chest at how eager he was to try and be kind to her. Clark was known for being the friendly sort, but unlike Bethany he was nowhere near as pushy or forceful about it. A gentle giant, one who respected people’s personal space. Even people in their class who weren’t his friends know that he'd be there if they needed him, and having him extend that same courtesy to her despite the reputation floating around school…

I’m not used to this.

She opened her mouth to reply, trying to formulate some sort of coherent response or maybe ask if it was really alright with them, but something made her focus start to drift.

...What is that sound?

Yomi blinked, ears suddenly hyper-focusing on the cave around them in a brief second of clarity from the racing thoughts. It had been shockingly quiet in this area before, far from the crackling fire and rowdy classmates. No dripping water, no bats, nothing but the echos of their own voices bouncing further into the landscape. But now...something was there, making all three teenagers pause and glance at each other in confusion. It was low, so low that for a second Yomi thought she was imagining it, but it brought a sensation that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, vibrating the bottoms of her feet every so slightly. A humming, like a deep bass was vibrating through the cave and growing in quiet intensity. It was the sort of thing one could feel in their lungs, loud and quiet at the same time.

Mira shot a confused look at Yomi’s face, placing a hand on the wall while her forearm crutch dangled a bit. For whatever reason, it made the other girl mimic her action--the humming sensation felt like it was radiating from the walls, below their feet and rising upwards. Clark was the only one who didn’t seem compelled to touch the cool stone, shining his light down the tunnel with a worried expression on his face. What the hell was that sound? What is going on? So ominous, so...mysterious. Surely not from her fellow classmates, they had nothing that could cause something like this, not the pulsing waves of bass that seemed to vibrate from below.

Break...shatter to pieces. 

Was...that a voice speaking? The white and black-haired girl gasped, turning to look at Mira to see if she heard it too--the answer was a clear yes. Her green eyes met half-way with Yomi’s hazel gaze, filled with quiet alarm and fascination mingled in one. Clark was the only one who didn’t seem to hear it, still looking around with a perplexed gaze at the humming.

Break. Shatter.

Let us in.

I’m tired of waiting--I SAID BREAK.

A crackling sound suddenly range out, making Yomi flinch at the sudden shattering of silence and snapping her gaze to the ground. Bright, it’s bright--what is going on? A burst of light made them all gasp, the marks on the wall lighting up in a flash of purple energy that slithered through every curve, every line and circle all the way up into the ceiling with a searing howl that razed against her ears. It all happened so fast, so suddenly there was no room to react. As it traveled along her palm, Yomi yelped at a flash of heat, falling back and jerking her hand to her chest in unison with Mira. It stung terribly, like pressing against a hot brand under her skin was sizzling from the wound of it.

What the fuck was that?

Both girls stared in shock, Clark putting himself behind them to make sure neither fell onto the floor. Yomi felt her back hit his chest when she reared back, his heartbeat fast and just as alarmed as hers was as he stared in mute shock at the glowing runes all over the walls.

Quick as it came, the light left, traveling up to the images on the ceiling and disappearing in a flash of sizzling violet. Every hair on Yomi’s arms was standing on end, heart pounding in her chest and hand stinging terribly. What was that? What the fuck just happened? The air felt charged, like static electricity and smelled of something...strange, like nothing she had ever encountered before. There was no mistaking that it had happened, all three classmates stood huddled in a state of shock as the humming subsided ever so slightly. Mira breathing heavily, Clark’s hands firm on their shoulders as he held them as steady as he could with shaking fingers.

Something had just happened, something none of them understood.

“Holy shit,” Mira whispered, leaning against Yomi and wincing as she lifted her injured hand. Yomi stared in shock at her palm, seeing the same markings from the wall seared into her flesh--upon looking at her own, the girl was met with the same image. The skin around the wound tingled, charged with an inexplicable energy that made her whole hand uncomfortable, “What the fuck was that? You all saw that, right? I didn’t hallucinate some weird fucking energy burning my hand.”

Yomi shook her head, taking in a shaking breath as she stared at the stinging mass of markings now on her flesh, “N...no...we all saw it…” She turned her gaze to stare down the tunnel, hearing that same humming still radiating ever so slightly further along, “I’ve never seen anything like that...never.”

It had been...frightening, but incredible at the same time. Exhilarating, like an adventure she had never been allowed to have. 

And shockingly enough, Mira was feeling the same way. When Yomi returned her gaze to the red-headed girl, she saw her own excitement echoed there, growing in intensity as she too seemed to registered that they had been apart of something strange, something beyond their realm of understanding. Injured or not, it was outside the normativity of their everyday lives, and that was...was…

I want to understand this. I want to know more.

Clark was the only one who was visibly shaken from the incident, not sharing in their excitement as he stammered, “W...we should probably go...That shit isn’t normal, and you both are burnt…!” He took a step back, watching to make sure Mira had properly adjusted her crutches before pulling out his phone, “I’m gonna call Em and make sure she and the others are alright--let’s get going and tend to your wounds.”

Mira let out a light huff, wincing when she tried to grip the crutch with her injured palm and hanging back as Clark took a few steps in the direction they came from, “Hang on now--Aren’t you even a little curious? The walls were glowing, they burned like fire…!”

The eager redhead slid past Yomi, walking a bit awkwardly now that she was trying not to grip the one half of her crutches. Her gaze was locked on the markings, barely illuminated by her companion’s phone as she moved a bit further down the tunnel. Meanwhile, the more timid member of their group was torn, watching her actions and unconsciously trailing behind. Her brain was screaming at her to go back to safety, to leave before things got even worse--the mark burned into flesh would scar, a permanent reminder of this day, and yet she didn’t care. Mira was excited about what was going on...maybe it meant she could feel that way too? Maybe it was normal to want to understand the unknown.

But Clark wasn’t convinced, the only voice of reason as he turned to look at them a few feet away, “Not a chance--not where our safety is involved…!”

Maybe he’s right. Yomi frowned, still holding her injured hand cupped with the other one. Maybe another day, maybe after talking to the others about what happened? Leaving felt disappointing, but...some things were more important than discovery, right? The need to learn more, the curiosity swirling in her gut was so strong she almost spoke up on Mira’s behalf, pleading with Clark to let them look a little bit further. She was never the type to ask for things, it always felt so selfish. Especially now, with danger thrown into the mix.

How could Yomi possible hope to demand anything if it meant endangering the lives of both the people with her? It was not fair.

She instead returned her gaze to Mira, reading the same unhappiness there that she felt and returning it in kind. Both shared a silent moment of understanding, hazel staring into green, Yomi’s hesitant desires plain and clear on her face. The redhead looked ready to speak, spurned on even more by her classmate’s fellow eagerness.

But it was short lived, Clark’s words punctuated like fate itself was scolding them for their hesitation.

A loud rumble started shaking the cave, all three letting out varying cries of alarm and stumbling on their feet. Loud, everything was so loud--stone rattling, cracking, grinding with the force of the tremors rocking the small space.Yomi heard screams echo from the other side of the cave, bouncing all the way down to their tunnel and signalling that the others were feeling the tremor too--a cave in? Earthquake? There was so much was shaking, like the stone under their feet was shifting back and forth and threatening to make the unsteady girl fall to her knees. Clark tumbled back behind them, his phone clattering onto the floor but barely heard through the chaos surrounding the fearful students.

Yomi instinctively whipped around to look at Mira, reaching out to the girl as she screamed and started to fall in the dark. Everything seemed to move in slow motion for a moment--Yomi reaching, Mira falling, room rumbling...she’s still falling, further than she should. Yomi’s finger’s gripped one of the redhead’s arms, a slow sense of dread and alarm growing when she continued to plummet. Beyond the floor, beyond the--the floor is gone. The realization came too late, the shock snapping through her as it registered why the floor was so dark. It had given way, crumbling into nothingness and sending Mira into a free-fall.

A cave in, ground subsidence, Yomi’s head screamed at her, every warning bell going off as she prepared to hold Mira’s weight, She’s going to fall, she’s going to--

But when she tried to steady her weight, she felt it--a cracking underneath her feet. Yomi scrambled, a cry of alarm lodging in her throat as the cave in shattered more of what once appeared as solid stone. It bottomed out with a loud grinding sound, sending the frantic girls into a plummeting down toward the empty abyss. There was no true way to describe it, the feeling of falling with absolutely no purchase for her hands or feet. She’s going to die--we’re going to die. There was nowhere to grab onto, no footing, no nothing. Just empty space that her free fingers clawed for, eyes locked on their descent and hoping to god that Clarke was far enough away not to be pulled into it. Her palm was flaring in pain where it held Mira’s arm, the girl’s cries loud in her ears over the rushing of blood and adrenaline. 

But she still heard him as they fell, Clark’s scream of fear and horror as more stone collapsed over where they once stood.

“No…! Yomi! Mira…!”

Neither could response. All Yomi could do was cling to the other girl, heart pounding in her ears and a choked cry of terror lodged in her throat as the air rushed past.

As they plummeted into the nothingness.

Read on AO3

Like what you see? Consider buying me a coffee

#gasoline and matches #original story #original context #original character #oc #yomi #astyanax #zytavian #mira #magic #dragons #sorcery

[ancientbooshartifacts]

Richmond Buys a Shirt, Or, More Specifically...

Author: thennen

Year: 2008

Rating: NC-17

Pairing: Vince/Richmond

It's not surprising, really, that they meet in Top Shop.

To be more specific, they meet in Top Men, because women's dress shirts are always fitted, and according to Cheekbone magazine, the glam goth look is coming back in.

So to be even more specific, Vince meets Richmond as they both reach for the same slightly billowy white dress shirt that Vince knows would go just perfectly with a thin ribbon tie, drainpipes, and red boots, and he's so busy thinking about how trendy that'll be that he doesn't really notice Richmond until their hands meet on the hanger and the warmth of their skin is so similar to each others' that he can only feel the pressure.

'Excuse me,' says Richmond. 'Do you mind if I try this on?' Vince already has three shirts already which are probably identical to the one their both still holding, but this one is new .

'Oh,' he stammers. 'I want to try it on, too.' He's still looking at the shirt. It's almost piratey, and Vince has never tried dressing down the pirate look into goth before. He tightens his grip on the hanger, and then, for the first time, he looks at Richmond.

Vince's grip tightens further -- he'd just out-crimped his copycat, for Pete's sake, and now here's another.

Richmond, however, drops the hanger in shock, and then Vince can see what he's wearing. More specifically, Vince sees that he's not really copying his look at all.

Vince is actually somewhat interested in copying his.

Richmond is not exactly glam goth, but he's halfway there. The loose shirt over drainpipes that he's wearing Vince personally would have tucked in, because it's overshadowing his frame, but Richmond's hair is very straight and black and glam (No doubt Nicky Clark straightners), and his eyeliner is a lot heavier than Vince would normally wear, but it looks good. It brings out the blue in his eyes really nicely, and Vince supposes that their eyes are actually quite similar colours. Their faces are very similar, too, but Vince's skin has more of a healthy pallor behind it; Richmond's is so pale Vince would be surprised if he'd seen natural light in the last few years.

In an odd twinge of fashion-compassion, Vince pushes the shirt into Richmond's hands. His almost-identical shirts, he thinks, have at least got a little value as being somewhat retro.

'Are you sure?' asks Richmond, with such a look of appreciation Vince is able to ignore his instinct to take it back. He nods quickly, instead, not sure he's able to form the words. 'Thank you so much. I'm Richmond, by the way.' 'Vince,' he chokes out, and Richmond squeezes his hands, which are still on the hanger.

* * *

They get coffee.

Richmond, it turns out, is somewhat of a caffeine addict, and drinks three espressos with milk in the time it takes Vince to finish his hot chocolate (with marshmallows, that he tears into little pieces and melts into the frothed milk).

They read Cheekbone together and talk about Cradle of Filth and then time slips away into half a dozen more coffees and Richmond's hand tracing the inside seam of Vince's jeans. Vince splutters a little when Richmond places his hand purposefully on Vince's knee, because to be honest, Vince hadn't really thought about that. To be really honest, Vince was still thinking about whether pirate boots would work better than his red cowboys. After, though, Vince looks up at Richmond, and Richmond looks back. To be more specific, Richmond stares at Vince and simultaneously draws his lower lip into his mouth and curls his hand around Vince's knee and edges it slightly up Vince's thigh.

After that, Vince just thinks about the jolt that courses down his spine and hovers expectantly below Richmond's hands. They sit in silence for a few minutes, while Richmond hums something under his breath and drags, slowly and lazily and erratically, long fingers up towards where Vince is half hard in his jeans.

When Richmond's hand finally cups him, Vince chokes back a gasp and leans forward onto the table, hair falling over his face and skimming the pyramid Richmond had built of coffee cups. His hair parts over the sharp line of his spine, exposing the bumps of vertebrae and Richmond moves to bite gently at the lean thread of muscle behind Vince's ear. Vince swears quietly and Richmond moves to whisper in his ear,

'How far is your place from here?' His tongue traces the shell of his ear and Vince can feel the heat of his breath course through him.

'Twenty minutes with the tube.'

'Good.'

* * *

They get back to Naboo's apartment.

Vince keeps a hand in the back pocket of Richmond's jeans and escorts him past Howard, who calls something after him about how he's meant to be working in the shop, but by the time Howard has finished his sentence Vince has shut the door to the apartment and Richmond has pushed him against it. He slides a leg between Vince's and they kiss awkwardly against the door, both forcing a dominance that turns the kiss messy and almomst painful. But it's still good, even if Vince does lose when Richmond holds his hips against the door and grinds against him so perfectly that a moan escapes his throat. Richmond laughs at that, and then Vince tears at the buttons of his shirt and pushes it off his shoulders.

Vince guides Richmond backwards into his bedroom and pushes him against the bed, climbing atop him almost predatorily and scraping his nails down Richmond's ribs as his teeth pull gently at his nipples. Richmond arches his spine at that and groans until he hears Vince's quiet giggle of triumph. And then Richmond undresses, and Vince doesn't try to stop that.

To be more specific, Richmond sits up and undoes his jeans, standing up to shuck them off along with his boxers and Vince does the same. They stand opposite each other, naked and slightly out of breath. They really do look remarkably similar, except Richmond's skin is paler and he has a birthmark that stretches across the ridge of his hip bone and Vince's scar stands out red and distinct in the midday light that slides through half drawn curtains.

Richmond's fingers trace the line of it where his skin is raised and slightly numb, and Vince holds his breath. Richmond is touching him far too lightly for him to be able to feel it but he knows exactly where Richmond's hand could end up when he reaches the end and the thought of those fingers curling around his erection pulls the air from his lungs.

His hands don't end up there, of course, instead they trace up the other side, so Vince walks forward until their bodies press together. His hands cup Richmond's face and he presses their lips forcefully together. Richmond grips his hips and guides him so their erections touch, hot and damp and almost identical. His head drops onto Vince's shoulder and their hands meet as they curl around Vince's cock.

'How do you want to do this?' Richmond asks, and his breath is hot and damp against Vince's collarbone. Vince slides a hand into Richmond's hair at the back of his neck, pulling at it as he breathes in.

'Don't care. Just do it.'

Richmond does.

* * *

To be more specific, he pushes his palm against Vince's lips and murmurs,

'Spit.'

Vince does.

His hand then wraps around both of their cocks; Vince's eyes flutter closed. Their skin is such a similar temperature that Richmond's hand could be his hand, but there's another dick hot and hard against his and the friction is harsh and burning and amazing and Richmond's technique is different. He pumps them both quickly, harshly, then his fingers trace the hot wet slit at the top of their cocks and drags the precome around the circle of their head, rubbing in small circles at the tight red skin where the head joins the underside of the shaft. There's enough balance to have Vince bucking against him but the shock and spontaneity of Richmond's dick bucking back keeps him on edge. He keeps his head thrown back, the muscles in his back already sore from the tension and as he feels his body reach the brink of orgasm Richmond seems to sense it, too, and raises his head from Vince's shoulder to lick the line of the tendon in his neck.

Richmond keeps his hand moving the whole time he trembles against him and it takes a minute or two for Vince to realise through the cloudy post-orgasmic haze that Richmond isn't finished. He moves his hand to push Richmond's head off his shoulder and then drops to his knees and takes the head of his cock into his mouth. Vince hasn't done this in a while, and it's hard to concentrate when it feels like his brain has just melted, but apparently he's doing okay, because Richmond starts moaning and thrusting further into Vince's mouth so he has to hold his hips still so he can still breathe. The head of his cock is smooth and damp and as his tongue licks along the edge of Richmond's cock he can taste his own come. He moans at the taste of it, and Richmond lets out a groan and tightens his hands in Vince's hair. Vince smiles at that, then pulls his lips over his teeth and takes as much of Richmond in as he can. He can hear Richmond's erratic breathing and as his cock touches the back of his throat, Vince begins to hum.

He keeps humming as Richmond comes and then collapses backwards onto Vince's bed, and it's only by the time Vince has curled up next to him, the temperature of their naked skin so similar that all he can feel is the pressure of it against him that he recognises it as Absinthe with Faust.

Richmond threads a hand through Vince's hair as they face each other, one of Vince's legs through his and an arm draped over his waist and murmurs,

'I think you deserve the shirt for that.'

* * *

Vince calls after Richmond as he's halfway through the door. He turns.

'If you ever need to borrow the shirt,' he says, a smirk spreading across a face so perfectly similar to Richmond's. 'Just drop by.'

Finis.

#the mighty boosh #mighty boosh #boosh #the it crowd #it crowd #vince noir #richmond avenal #vince noir/richmond avenal #vince/richmond

[sofiahahaaa]

Demigod Delinquents | Pt. 9 | OOh thEy’rE iN tRoUBle

| MASTERLIST |

Summary: Man, this mr. Richardon is a real douche. Hate him tbh. But i like this crew dynamic.

Rating: Keaton gets jealous, but nothing else. 

A/N: for real you guys, I’ve been feeling so motivated to have these out. cherish this while it lasts. as always, i love you guys and i hope you like this bit because i worked on thi s s o mu c h

~~~

Leo’s POV –

As we stumbled into the Dean’s office, I wondered if I should saunter in and say: You called? #458 in the house! 

But then I reconsidered. 

The dean sat at her desk, a stern look plastered on her face.

“Well, well. The delinquents finally get here.” She clicked her tongue– a sound I despised, for some reason. “The director has been waiting.” She turned to Mera and Keaton, not saying anything– but her look said it all. You guys are dead. Keaton looked at his lap, but Mera glared back.

Eventually, the dean gave up. “I’m calling in. He might be on a phone call, so bear with me.” She buzzed the intercom, and we waited. I scratched my leg with my foot, then tried shifting my posture to see if it made me look cooler. No such luck. I tapped the armrest agitatedly, looking at the others every 2 seconds. I didn’t want to say anything, because the tension in the air was making me uncomfortable. And besides, the dean was there. She would not approve. So I sat and waited, tapping my foot to keep my calm.

Finally, when it seemed an eternity had passed, the dean looked up from her computer. “You may go.” We started to stand up. “Stay out of trouble, next time.” Ari rolled their eyes, but the dean didn’t see them, apparently. We walked into the other room single file.

The director was a pudgy man, busting through his suit. His form was oddly shaped, which made me wonder, but I tried not to look at him in general. His face was worse. It was rosy and mud-colored. I felt a memory tugging at me– but I let it slide. We already had a pretty good idea that this guy was a monster.

There were only two chairs available. The man in front of us looked like he could take up several, but he sat in an upholstered leather chair similar to a throne. The other two chairs, opposite him and separated by his grandiose wooden desk, were fold out.

“Well? Take a seat!” He demanded. There was an awkward struggle as we figured who got to sit and who didn’t. Then, he waved his hand impatiently and ordered us instead: “Just– the blonde one and prisoner 120. Sit down, I need to talk to you two first.” Jason looked at Keaton, realizing that ‘the blond one’ was him, despite Keaton’s hair color. Jason, who was not one to get in trouble, sat down awkwardly in the rickety chair. Mera clambered into hers, looking upset. 

“Sir?” Jason asked quietly. The director went red in the face.

“You do not speak unless I tell you to!” Spit frothed from his mouth, and he dabbed at it with his shirt sleeve. “Pardon. I know you are new here, and you may not be accustomed to our requirements. Please do be considerate.” Jason looked annoyed, but I focused on the glint in Mr. Richardson's eyes.

“Of course, sir. I meant you no disrespect.” He responded in a monotone voice.

“What did I just say?” Mr. Richardson crossed his arms on the table. “Oh, forget it. You children are so stubborn. Never learn.” His voice was gruff and coarse, like sandpaper. “You two have been a cause of some trouble.” He glared pointedly at Jason. “Especially you, I hear.” I almost snickered at the thought that Jason could be more of a troublemaker than me, but remembered what the dean had said. I kept my mouth shut. 

He drummed his fingers on the desk, then reached down into his drawer to take out a file. “Well… here it says you slapped another inmate unconscious– we do not, in any circumstances, tolerate physical abuse. Do you understand?”

“I punched him, actually– I mean, yes, sir.”

“Once again, I did not ask you to talk.” Jason opened his mouth, then closed it. “I am disappointed with you, newcomer. You have been given the privilege of a fresh start here at our establishment, and you have already ruined your presence with the board. I would like you to lay low, or be extracted from our system and our penitentiary.” Jason nodded slowly, meeting his eyes. “You may speak.” Jason’s eyes traveled around the room– a sure sign he was coming up with an excuse.

“It was not my intent to knock him unconscious, sir.”

“Well–” Mr. Richardson started.

Jason interrupted before he could spew more nonsense. “He was abusing other inmates, as well. And it seemed like the best solution at the time. I do acknowledge that it was a rash decision, but the past is the past.” Jason stopped to take a breath. “And I also can agree that two wrongs do not make a right, but I have opted out for this special scenario.” 

Mr. Richardson looked taken-aback– or as much as he could with his triple chin. Jason started up again. “Sir, I apologize,” he turned to Mera. “For acting out. I assure you it will not happen in the future.” He cleared his throat. 

Mr. Richardson straightened his tie, his arms making a weird smushy sound when they moved.

“Mera!” He boomed. “Too many times I have had to call you to this office!” He banged his fist against the table. “Oh… too many.” He clasped his hands together and eyed her hungrily. “If you will, children– I will deal with Ms. Taylor alone.” Mera’s eyes widened. Her eyes went to Percy, and Percy met hers reassuringly. 

I wondered what had gone down between them. I knew it wasn’t just about cake. Well, sort of. I guessed it wasn’t just about cake. 

Percy raised his hand timidly. “Yes?” Mr. Richardson scowled.

“Do you mind if I remind her of something we must do after this, sir?” Percy said with a shaky voice.

“What?” He demanded, getting impatient.

“We have this guard… she needs something. But it’s quite embarrassing actually, and I don’t think she would appreciate us telling you.” Percy raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, alright.” Mr. Richardson was one to be a skeptic, but so far, Percy hadn’t done anything too bad. He had just hung out with Jason. Percy leaned forward to whisper into her ear. His words were not audible from where I was, but his face showed urgency in what he was telling her. Then, with one last showy gesture, he handed Mera a pen. Riptide. “What is the pen, 456?” Percy rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

“My good luck charm.” He coughed into his fist.

“Ugh. Just get out of here.” We filed out of the doorway. When the door was closed, we sat down in the Dean’s room. Old Stern wasn’t there.

“What was that, Jackson?” Percy’s eyes warned me.

Keaton seemed to study Percy a little more carefully now. Like he was… jealous? “What was it, Jackson?” Percy touched his pocket out of habit. Then he snapped to look at me, a look of accusation spreading through his face.

“It’s not my good luck charm.” He laughed. “That should’ve been obvious. Man, that Richardson is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“Then what was it?” Keaton asked again, this time looking upset.

“Like those pen weapons. Except… better.” Keaton looked a little offended, to say the least, but he was intrigued. “You’ll know what I told her when she gets out.” So we sat in silence as the clock ticked, waiting for Mera to be released. I heard a scuffle, then the door creaked open. “Did you…?” Percy asked her, looking at the pen in her hand. Mera shook her head.

“He, like, looked at me, then his face contorted a bit and he changed the look, and then he had to take off. No idea why.” She handed Percy the golden pen. “Thanks, anyways.” I dusted my hands off on my lap.

“Well, we can go now, then.” Keaton nodded. His eyes bobbed from Mera to Percy, trying to decipher what was going on between them. He looked at his lap, defeated.

“Okay.” And we clamored down the halls, eager to be gone from the horrid room.

A/N: I know this chapter is soooo short but the next chapter is going to be out in a quick moment so no problemo i promise

#pjo #hoo #pjo hoo #pjo and hoo #pjo fanfiction #hoo fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfiction oc #pjo fanfiction oc #hoo fanfiction oc #oc #percy jackson fanfiction #percy jackson oc #percy jackson fanfiction oc #percy jackson #jason grace #leo valdez #jercy #prcabeth #caleo #jiper #percy jason and leo #let's be deluded

[earwaxinggibbous]

10 Worst Hits of 2018!

I hate the 2018 hit list.

I hate all the artists we brought back. I hate all the new ones we got. I hate the fact that Lil Peep kicked the bucket without getting on the hot 100 but XXXfuckassaton got three hits. I hate that nothing off of Kamikaze reached the year end hot 100 despite it being one of the only good hip-hop albums that dropped this year. I hate that we’re all alive and that Tumblr has banned porn. But life goes on.

Bad hit songs. Bing bang boom.

Fair warning, I’m gonna be hitting a lot of trigger topics including abuse, pedophilia and rape.

10. Lucid Dreams - Juice WRLD

Before I say anything, can I just point out that ‘Juice WRLD’ is one of the absolute worst rap names I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

Anyway, Lucid Dreams.

I feel like rap music has been having a lot of sad pathetic break-up songs lately. And this won’t be the last one, absolutely not. Pretty much everything about Lucid Dreams, much like a seizing, dying epileptic old man, is wriggling and frothing uselessly in a puddle of its own filth. With nothing to do but choke out on a mouthful of blood it can only try to scream weakly through a pool of foamy spit that’s settling towards the back of its throat. It’s sad in the same way that ASPCA commercials are sad, as opposed to how a good break-up song feels.

As Juice WRLD brokely copies the beat of Lil Uzi Vert’s smash hit XO Tour Llif3 from last year, and also randomly samples a song by Sting, he stumbles weakly through lyric after insipid lyric that sounds like it was written by a 13-year-old. I tried to find an example of specific bad lyrics but holy shit, I’d honestly be better off just putting the lyric genius page here, complete with verified translations of this lyrical xanax binge from our boy Juice WRLD himself.

It’s a break-up song, but it’s as whiny as one can get. With Juice WRLD claiming “evil girls have the prettiest face” (gag) and insisting the girl in this song “wants him dead”. His whimpery vocals don’t help any part of this droning septic tank that I can only describe as the closest similarity we’ll ever get between a song and the pokemon Muk.

Even the music video is just a shittier version of XO Tour Llif3, and while it’s honestly more interesting than the other 75% of rap videos, what does it really add? I can only imagine that whoever was directing it realized this song has literally nothing going for it other than the possibility that stoners and pill-poppers will mistake it for XO Tour Llif3 if they’re high enough and threw in some surrealist imagery with the excuse being that, well, it’s titled Lucid Dreams. 

Really the most egregious thing about this song is that, in the lyric genius page, Juice WRLD goes on some tangent about how popping pills isn’t cool and he was popping pills “before it was cool” and now kids are doing it. Hey Hi-C, you know these kids look up to people like you, right? Why not actually make a song about how doing drugs is bad instead of just offhandedly mentioning how you used to pop pills to, quote, “feel a-okay”? Not that I’m assuming you ever thought of that when you were writing this, most likely dosed up on a gallon of cough syrup.

Then again, I dunno if I wanna be preached to by the man who wrote a song titled All Girls Are The Same.

A lot of songs this year were underwritten and boring. Lucid Dreams isn’t the worst offender, but it’s definitely the saddest. And I don’t think it was sad the way ol’ Juicy Juice was intending. Personally, I’d rather just drink the kool-aid.

Blurgh... Muk cannot change you... Muk must replace you...

9. Meant to Be - Bebe Rexha ft. Florida Georgia Line

Is it bad that I honestly wasn’t sure who was the feature and who was the headline of this song?

Anyway, here we have Florida Georgia Line returning for another year of meathead bro-country crap and Bebe Rexha returning for another year of having literally no personality whatsoever with a song that has so little substance it may as well just be air.

I’ve never really extrapolated my thoughts on Bebe, mostly because she’s a complete and utter non-presence in every track she appears on. I honestly didn’t even realize she had a music career of her own, I felt like she just existed to feature on everyone else’s shitty music. What the hell is she gonna sing about besides the damn factory she was built in?

I’ve also never extrapolated my thoughts on Florida Georgia Line.

Here’s what I’m imagining their brains look like:

Yeah. So a combination between two walking cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a literal sex robot. What can go wrong? Well. Everything.

With a title like Meant to Be, you’d think it’s about running screaming into a relationship because you know it’s gonna work. Not so, as it’s actually about staying relaxed in a relationship. We got time, right? At least that’s what like, 75% of it is about that.

Bebe seems more than ready to rush in and get sloppy, but you think Florida Georgia Line are 100% ready to enter a steady relationship with a dead person? I wouldn’t be.

The production is just a piano and some sad trap drums, so basically every other Florida Georgia Line song. It has nothing going for it other than maybe masturbating to the music video and Bebe’s sweet, sweet inflatable titties trying desperately to crawl their way out of her country girl flannel.

And that’s really it.

You tried.

(Or did you?)

8. Friends - Marshmello ft. Anne-Marie

Aww! They’re so cute.

Marshmello is kind of a cryptid to me. I never really understood the whole trend of producers and DJs wearing these weird things on their head. And part of me, well, all of me feels like Marshmello rides purely on quirkiness alone.

Look at him! He’s so wacky!

The production on this isn’t bad per se, other than this high-pitched squeal they drop into the final chorus, but it’s definitely not great and kinda has me wondering why Marshmello is basically producer of the year despite not doing anything much more interesting than all the other producers. At best he has a little bit more energy behind him.

Anne-Marie has apparently, allegedly existed before this year, but I have literally no recollection of any song by her. But if this song is anything to go by, she’s annoying and sucks.

Friends touts itself as “the friendzone anthem” and tries to be relatable to teenage girls who’ve had to friendzone a boy, and if I had to guess this is sort of in response to all the friendzone songs from 2016 like Treat You Better. This would be fine except 1. you’re two years late, 2. nobody wants to hear a friendzone anthem and 3. this song is the highest level of cuntiness anyone can comprehend.

Here’s the thing about the concept of the friendzone. Nobody sits around wanting to friendzone people. Nobody is chilling in their bedroom with their friends wishing they could have a friend who has a crush on them and then that friend is like “I like you” so they can be like “uhh we’re just friends”.

Which is why we don’t really need an anthem for it.

The friendzone sucks. It’s not even a real problem, dudes just make it a problem because apparently being friends isn’t good enough for them. Nobody wants to have a friend who’s crushing on them, nobody’s happy about that. And the catty Mean Girls tone that Anne-Marie takes to it makes it seem like she’s a strong independent woman trouncing on the hearts of men like some kind of TERF horse when really nobody feels that way when having to “friendzone” a person.

Plus judging by the lyrics, this guy is showing up at 2 AM in the rain. At some point you need to stop being friends when he starts obsessively stalking you, maybe a few words to consider would be R-E-S-T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G O-R-D-E-R.

Women have the right to see their male friends as just that. But nobody is proud of having to do it. It’s not a point of pride, it’s just a choice people make, like what shirt they wanna wear in the morning. Trying to sell it as some kind of bootleg female empowerment anthem is pathetic.

Also I swear to god she spells friends as “F-R-I-N-D-S” in the chorus.

“We’re just frinds, Deadmau5.”

7. Yes Indeed - Lil Baby and Drake

Who the good god damn is Lil Baby? I’d never actually heard of him until someone in my music history class gave us a presentation on Lil Baby and how cool he is. I’d literally never heard of the guy before, because I never really listen to any of these hits until the end of the year.

Turns out Lil Baby is just another mumble-rapper, this time jacking his style from Young Thug. Color me surprised, I guess. How come none of the mumble rappers I actually like came back this year? No Desiigner, no Lil Uzi Vert, no Lil Xan? No. Fuck you. You get Juice WRLD and Lil Baby, two of the worst rap names on the planet.

He’s on the list of rappers made famous by Drake, and Drake had a monster year this year. Even with me living in a hole I knew the impact God’s Plan had, but apparently all 25 of his crummy songs charted at some point. That is 25 monotonous Drake songs circulating through the radio stations, 25 Drake songs constantly weighing on the shoulders of the collective public, and 25 Drake songs even his detractors probably knew all the words to just through exposure. Even I’m sick of the guy, and I have Hotline Bling on my Google Play Music library.

Yes Indeed is honestly void of things to say about it. Drake is boring, Lil Baby has one of the worst voices in recent history I can think of, the beat is nothing, it’s just a nothing song. The only noteworthy thing about it is that Lil Baby references Pikachu, a big mistake, as Young Thug also referenced Pikachu on one of his first hits. Though I’ll admit a yellow car has more similarities to the electric mouse pokemon than diamonds do.

What bothers me about this song is less the song itself, as the song is a non-presence, but moreso that in a world where streaming has finally seeped its way into the Hot 100, we have come to the conclusion that this is what people want to hear. They wanna hear Yes Indeed. And I just don’t get it.

Also, “waah waah waah, bitch I’m a baby”. High art.

6. Te Bote - A whole shitload of people

I feel like Spanish reggaeton has been an on-and-off interest of the American public. But it really reached a head recently thanks to Despacito, which all Alexa memes aside, is a great fucking song. But the fruits of its labor have been less than impressive, from last year’s goat-screeching jam Mi Gente to whatever the hell this is.

It’s nice knowing that foreigners write music as shitty as we do.

The title, Te Bote, roughly translates to “I dump you”. But it can be read much harsher in Spanish as bote is often the verb people use to describe tossing out garbage. And boy, is this song... uh... you know.

I don’t like to barf out the word “misogyny” constantly just because, well, anything can be misogynistic if you look deep enough. There’s a point where even I, the ratty little feminist I am, just don’t care. But Jesus, referring to your woman as garbage in the most backhanded way is... wow.

But I’ll be honest, being an English speaking moron, I don’t care about the lyrics. My problems run much deeper than blatant misogyny and pettiness.

Namely that this song sounds like ass.

Te Bote has six artists on it. Six artists, and not a single one sounds good. Most of them are squealy. I don’t actually know who’s who except Ozuna and Bad Bunny. Ozuna is considered one of the worst Spanish artists of today, and I can see why, because he just straight-up sounds like the lovechild of Akon and Lloyd.

As for Bad Bunny, I was slightly more drawn in by him because he looks like a cross between Blackbear and Pitbull, and I dunno if he’s dropped any other better singles, but on this he straight-up sounds like Barney the Dinosaur. Not as much as Lil Yachty, but still. Most of the others sound like autotuned mice, but there’s one guy who tries some kind of low-voiced speed-rapping and it sounds weird and wrong. The production is nothing notable, and uses the bum, bum-bum drumline of literally every reggaeton and Spanish pop song including Despacito.

And I could forgive all of that.

But let’s look at this for a moment. Each artist has their own verse. That’s six verses. Six verses plus five choruses, one pre-chorus, an intro and an outro. And how much does that add up to?

Nearly seven minutes.

Seven minutes of the same beat. Seven minutes of basically the same kinds of singers. Seven minutes of misogynistic lyrics. Seven minutes of garbage, garbage, garbage. Imagine listening to this whole thing. There are people on this earth who have actually sat through this whole garbage song multiple times and thought, “yeah. I like this.” 

I mean of course Te Bote barely got any radio play, it’s nearly 7 minutes long with no breaks. So obviously some massive group of people had to be streaming it and listening to it by choice.

5. Taste - Tyga ft. Offset

Remember Tyga? He was one of the Young Money rappers that didn’t completely fall off after the 2000′s, along with Nikki Minaj and Drake. But after he put out $timulated, a song about how he fucked a 17-year-old Kylie Jenner but, in the words of Slim Shady, “look at her bush: do it got hair?”

we all dropped him, because that’s fucking gross. Kylie Jenner dumped him and is now dating someone else, I forget who because I don’t care. And with us having to deal with 6ix9ine I was comfortable leaving Tyga in the wastelands. 

Honestly? The only reason this song is even here is because it’s a return Tyga single. I’m not even mad about Freaky Friday, because like, whatever, it made me laugh like a stupid idiot, but this? We asked for this. A Tyga single in 2018, about nothing, with a nothing beat, and Offset still bragging that he’s the best member of Migos when that’s like being the twinkiest member of One Direction. And once again, people actively wanted to hear this song about nothing in a year full of songs about nothing that, at the very least aren’t by pedophiles.

I don’t even wanna talk about this anymore.

4. I’m Upset - Drake

Me fucking too.

Like I said, Drake dropped 25 songs on his new album Scorpion, and all of them became hits. The worst of which, in my opinion, being I’m Upset. Just look at that title. That’s how your father talks to you when you slam a window open with a baseball and he walks through the glass shards. 

This one has backstory, my favorite, longtime rival Pusha-T stated in some song that Drake actually had a secret child with a porn star and was planning on using that kid for like, an Adidas sponsorship or something. Which is fucked up. And at least part of that has been confirmed on Drake’s end, he did have a secret son with a porn star.

And then Scorpion and I’m Upset dropped. And it sucked. All of it.

The chorus of I’m Upset is weirdly catchy, but the beat is like every other Drake beat, Drake himself sounds about as upset as he can convey, which is very little, and it’s all just really really boring soundwise. When Drake goes on for long enough he begins to just sound like a bunch of bees. Bees, bees, bees, nothing but bees. And I’m tired of Drake bees! I’m sick of it! I don’t want anymore!

Anyway, lyrically the gist of I’m Upset is about how Drake doesn’t like paying alimony, and NO.

BAD DRAKE! BAD! BAD RAPPER! GO TO YOUR ROOM!

You do not get to be a world-famous rapper with fuckillions of dollars to your name and get to whine and bitch about paying alimony to your baby mama. You don’t get to roll on the floor whimpering about how your evil harpy whore of a porn star one-night-stand is (legally) receiving money from you to take care of the son that YOU ditched. 

You had 25 hits this year. 25. And you’re getting pissy because you have to pay and I quote fifty to a hundred thousand dollars child support. For you that should be nothing. You are practically drowning in money, and if you really don’t wanna pay child support you could, I dunno, raise your goddamn son instead of leaving him in the hands of someone who probably barely makes a fraction in a year of what you make in a month?

Look, say what you want about Eminem. At least he was a good father on record, and if he isn’t a good one in real life I’ll be very very shocked.

I’m upset too, Drake.

3. Roll in Peace - Kodak Black ft. XXXTENTACION

I fUCKING HATE KODAK BLACK

Might wanna consider writing stuff down, Kodes.

May I call you Kodes?

Anyway, Roll In Peace is the only song on this list that isn’t ACTUALLY in the Year End Hot 100, but I couldn’t just let it slide. Not when it’s a collab beween Kodak Black and XXX. Not when it sounds like ass and feels like being shot.

If Drake sounds like bees then Kodak sounds like mosquitos, right in your ear, in the deepest parts that can only be reached by one of those earwax slurping tools. The beat has that flute again, probably because it’s half of what made Tunnel Vision famous. (The other half being controversy of course.) X’s verse has like, two lines to do with the actual plot of this song. And what is the plot?

Oh, poor pitiful Kodak can’t roll in peace. Poor Kodak Black can’t have any time to himself! The media is just all over him and X for no reason whatsoever! He’s never done anything wrong, other than, oh I don’t know, the rape allegations? The abuse? Armed robbery? Assault? That one time X nearly killed a gay dude in prison for no reason other than the gay part?

Yeah, fuck you.

You can’t “roll in peace” because you don’t have the right to anymore. You are a bad person. And X, when he was alive, was a bad person too. Sure maybe he was claiming to be working on self-improvement, but the only way I’d believe it is if I saw it, and it’s too late for that now.

As long as you refuse to apologize, you will not “roll in peace”. As long as you don’t see that you have done something wrong and continue to blame it on systemic racism which is a very real thing that you continue to trivialize again and again so you can avoid your rape allegations, you aren’t allowed to have any peace in your goddamn fucking life.

You can’t try to deflect it on Lil Uzi who posts Satanic imagery on his Instagram despite wearing a Jesus piece. You don’t get to deflect. You get nothing, and you deserve to go broke and fuck off.

There’s a joke I can make, but it’s too soon.

2. Gummo - 6ix9ine

Oh, okay, I can do this.

Uh, Gummo is this really good movie directed by Harmony Korine about some kids in this town that was totally wrecked by a tornado. And after that everything’s in shambles, so these kids can just do whatever they wa...

Oh. Oh dammit.

GOD IS DEAD GOD IS DEAD GOD IS DEAD.

So imagine you’re me looking at the Hot 100 for one of the very first times about a year ago, and you see a song titled after one of your favorite flicks of all time. And sure, it’s being sung by a guy who looks like a Lisa Frank condom, but god you just love that movie so much. And sure, Nicole Dollanganger has already made songs referencing that movie, but you want MORE.

Then you play it and it has literally nothing to do with it.

It’s loud and obnoxious and stupid and has a very clearly hispanic dude dropping the n-word like he fucking owns it. He’s just screaming these nonsense lyrics about nothing. And it’s not like I just don’t get songs with screaming. I have the entirety of Carcass’ Reek of Putrefaction on my phone. But this? This sucks. It sucks! The beat doesn’t fit at all and no matter how I look at it it wouldn’t fit anywhere else, and 6ix9ine’s flow is the death of all art. The only thing he can do, much like a child in a well, is scream and scream and scream and it’s horrible.

And trust me.

This was far before I knew of 6ix9ine’s baggage.

In case you don’t know somehow, this Rainbow Brite little fucker was actually convicted of filming a sex tape of a 13-year-old. While I don’t think he actually had sex with her, he was at some level sexually involved with her.

How did we respond? We gave the ugly fucker a hit. And his hit was this. Where he directly references his sexual involvement with this 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL.

He doesn’t give a shit. And he knows his fans don’t either. He continues to release low-effort garbage music, and in an interview about FEFE he even openly stated that he doesn’t put any effort into writing lyrics. He doesn’t try, he’s a bad person, and his blind fanbase continues to shower him in money like he deserves it. 

We’re idiots.

An awful song made by an awful person. The only way to hold a candle to it would be, well, an even worse song made by an awful person.

Anyway, dishonorable mentions.

FEFE - 6ix9ine ft. Nikki Minaj

This song sucks too. And Nikki Minaj should be ashamed for working with this fuckhead.

God’s Plan - Drake

I’m almost definitely a minority in absolutely loathing this song, but I can’t stand it. It’s not structured, there’s no flow to it, it just feels like a whole lot of nothing with no point. And while I will give it to Drake that throwing money at homeless people is a really good thing regardless of why he did it, it was still a super obvious publicity stunt.

Plug Walk - Rich The Kid

Boring.

Girls Like You - Maroon 5 ft. Cardi B

Also boring. My tolerance for Maroon 5 has lasted way longer than anyone else’s, but I think it’s about time we let them go.

I Like Me Better - Lauv

I’ll be honest, the only part of this song I really hate is the weird synth interludes. The singing is fine, the content is fine, it’s all the perfect level of mediocre without that violin fart synth. 

No Brainer - The ‘I’m The One’ crew, but we replaced Wayne with an actual baby

Really just an even less interesting version of I’m The One, but without Li’l Wayne. Also Justin Bieber kind of looks like a trucker now, and I hate to say it, but that’s the most attractive he’s ever been in my opinion.

Freaky Friday - Li’l Dicky ft. Chris Brown

I’ll be honest, I actually love this song. It’s funny to me, I mean, maybe I’m a simple-minded man, but a good dick joke can send me off the rails. But I’m still at least a little miffed that we’re letting Chris Brown have money, so it gets a mention.

Gucci Gang - Li’l Pump

It would be here if it wasn’t also a hit last year. Consider this a placeholder for any crossover hits I didn’t like, like Mi Gente, Perfect, Believer, and Sorry Not Sorry.

Let’s do number one. And if you know me, you know what this is. If you don’t, don’t just immediately get pissed with me when you read it. Okay? We’re good here? Alright.

1. SAD! - XXXTENTACION

So here’s a fun little sobstory for you. Less than a year ago, my boyfriend introduced me to this great artist. They were in a really oversaturated genre but doing something completely different with it, and I fell in love immediately with their dark topics, interesting production, cool music videos, and general aesthetic. And their name was not XXXTENTACION, it was Melanie Martinez.

Late last year she was pressed with a rape allegation, and one that couldn’t be proved either way. Desperately I scraped through the bowels of the internet in search of something that could disprove it and came back largely empty-handed and wounded. Because Melanie’s music meant a lot to me, and I do mean that. I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t sure what to do knowing that a person I’d based my own aesthetic, my own writing, my art, and my music on would do something like that. I tried to force myself not to listen to her music, but it just wasn’t possible. 

Over time the wound scabbed up and closed and I finally gave up and decided to split the art from the artist, feeling like at the very least I wasn’t directly giving her any money by downloading her music on Google Play. But I’ll still never be able to get back the way she used to make me feel.

So what I’m saying is, I get it.

I’ve actually gone and listened to a few of X’s songs on my own before doing this. And I put myself in the mind of me a year ago discovering a new artist without those preconceptions. And I felt it. I don’t know how, but I did. I felt it. I listened to Look At Me, and I felt like if I’d heard it before I knew what X had done, I’d probably love it. Sure the production is a fucking disaster but the lyrics are just the kind of shock rap that entertains me. The production on Moonlight is really interesting and while I didn’t think Changes was very good and kind of guilt trippy, I could definitely understand it.

But then I circled back around to SAD!

And I lost it.

Something about this song just kills all the good will I might have ever had for this kid or his fans. And really it’s all because of one line, and everyone probably knows what that line is already.

So according to lyric genius this line might not actually mean what I think it means and could potentially be referring to X’s friend Jocelyn Flores, who took her own life tragically. And though on X’s song about her and every time he addresses her he seems to make it all about himself, he really did seem wounded by it. He seemed like a wounded, mentally fucked-up person who needed help.

Except that this song is about Geneva.

The girlfriend he allegedly abused.

The girlfriend who was pregnant, who he abused, and judging by this line, who he is now performing the age-old manipulation tactic of threatening suicide if she ever leaves on. 

When I remove this song from context, there’s no way of excusing that line. The rest of it I can understand, and he really does seem emotional in the verses, and I know we’ve all been in a place at some point of being somehow spurned by a lover and still missing them in spite of it. But to threaten suicide if they try to leave is inexcusable.

His voice sounds fine, and the beat is once again stolen from XO Tour Llif3, but there’s a point where I can’t really care about it. Because children do listen to this kind of music. And along with Melanie Martinez, this song brings me back to when I was young and one of my favorite songs was What The Hell by Avril Lavigne. A song about cheating on your S/O and not seeing a problem with it. My sister and I would sing and dance to that song all the time, so much that I never really realized what it was about, or that there was anything wrong with it. Not until I was an adult and I looked back on it. And wouldn’t you know it, children can sing along to SAD! too.

I know X is dead. And I know it’s not my business to dictate how people should feel about things. Geneva deserves the right to be sad about X’s death, and she forgives him, even though I really don’t. But the way people have treated her especially after X died is inexcusable, and it’s in part because he wrote songs like this. He didn’t just manipulate her. He manipulated everyone. Every single one of his fans probably really did think he would kill himself if his girlfriend left her. And yes, X is on record having thoughts of suicide, I would never take that from someone.

I used to have a close friend who would feign a panic attack every time someone criticized him. It felt like he was threatening suicide once a week. And I always supported him because I cared about him. It was exhausting. I ostracized people because they knew he was a bad person. I shut people, good people, out of my life because they wanted to help, and I said bad things to them. Eventually we fell out and I was left cold and alone with nobody left to take me back, and I slugged through mud for a year just to pick myself back up.

I can imagine that’s kind of what being an XXXTENTACION fan is like.

And like me, with any luck, they’ll regret saying the things they did too.

That’s all for this year. I’ll get to the best when I have more energy, but now I just can’t.

#panda posts #top 10 #worst hits of 2018 #top 10 worst hits of 2018 #pop song review #negative review

[justalosersdiaryofmisery-blog]

A Necessarily Sober Night’s Ramblings

    I’m sitting here in my bed, writing on a shitty, hundred dollar netbook that rests on a book thicker than my fist to prevent overheating. The floor of my room is covered in a disgusting salad of dirty laundry, trash, and books, all sprinkled with a frustrating amount of cat litter from the box a few feet to my right. A space heater with more personal space than anything else in the place keeps me warm in the mornings and nights, and the fan that’s blowing my hair at  the moment keeps me cool during the afternoon and whenever else I’ve been drinking.

    I’ve got Altered Carbon playing beside my word processor; just started watching it. It’s impossible for me to focus on any one thing, so its there just to keep the excess ‘brain energy’ or what have you busy while I try and write this all out. All this nonsense. The lamp resting on my nightstand, which is currently sitting in the midst of the chaotic disaster that is my floor rather than being pressed up against a wall, is annoying but helps keep the anxiety down a bit.

    The anxiety is still drumming my heart and shaking my hands, but it would be worse in the dark. I enjoy knowing what’s surrounding me. If I turn off the light, I can only assume what rests in the darkness. I don’t think there’s any monsters hiding beneath my bed amidst the beer cans and paper plates, I’m not a child. But there’s knowing, and then there’s knowing. When the light is gone, the whole world becomes Schrodinger's fun house.

    Plus, if I turn out the lights, the odds I step on a sharp piece of aluminum on my way to the bathroom magnify ten fold. Foot lacerations are the fucking worst. Slicing your palm isn’t that bad because you don’t always have to have your dick in your hand. Plus, for the most part, your always aware of the palms of your hands. You forget the bottoms of your feet, and the trail of blood you leave behind is a bitch and a half to clean up.

    Not that I’d clean it from my own carpeted floor, but there’s certain expectations for the world outside the stained and battered walls of my bedroom. Smiles required, pleasantries demanded; it’s a whole other ball game out there. That’s not some dramatic piece of speculation either. When I was a child my parents threatened to beat the frowns from my face and decried my silent coming and goings as disrespectful disobedience. Now that I am a man in age and burden if not status however, I am free to move more freely. The habits have already taken root though.

    Despite my already volcanic anxieties simmering and sizzling beneath my flesh, I’m having another energy drink, my third of the day. I went to the store earlier for something fizzy and calorie free to drink, and despite knowing I must be wary of caffeine, I was swayed by a little sticker promising ‘3 for $5!’. It’s a rare moment that I’m without thirst, but unless I have sweat through my clothes in exhaustion (an even rarer moment) or am exceptionally hung over, drinking water gives me heartburn.

    It’s a touch allegorical, really. Water, that most basic material of life, burns the ever living shit out of my throat.

    People don’t take caffeine seriously enough. It’s just like any other drug, if a bit milder. At first it puts a bounce in my step, then in a few minutes my mind will be racing with dark thoughts and fears, and if I go without it for too long my head feels like someone is taking an ice pick to the top of my skull. Sometimes the initial jauntiness is worth it though. That ‘sometimes’ keeps me coming back.

    There it is. Reading this back, you won’t remember the pauses between sentences, the distraction filled minutes as Altered Carbon takes priority over writing between paragraphs. I say that so it won’t feel quite so jarring when I say that anxiety is carving a butcher’s knife through my gut and up my sternum after just mentioning the jauntiness caffeine can bring.

    Anxiety and just a hint of anger are filling me. Thinking on it now, and exploring this idea for the first time (though I’ve brushed against it like a virgin schoolboy ‘accidentally’ bumping into a pretty girl before), I’m realizing there’s always anger somewhere in this stack of flesh. Anger I was bred into, that was taught to me, beat into me. It’s always there. Just, I keep it buried away and hidden. Once, I did that so that I wouldn’t get in trouble, so that I would be safe. Now I do it so that the people around me will be happier.

    The only people I’ve ever intentionally physically hurt are my male family members. My younger brother, in adolescent rage reminiscent of my father’s, has been strangled, punched, thrown, and kicked. It was never unprovoked, but always unearned given the severity. I never bruised or truly damaged him, but still. Trauma is trauma. The words I spewed at him were instinctively and specifically chosen to hurt him, to damage him. It’s left me with a quandary similar to that of the chicken and the egg. Did his little man complex come from my infrequent but scarring abuse, or were the assaults unleashed by his constant needling and provocations?

    Then there’s my father. Him I tried to kill once. He was drunk, and violent. He was roaring and screeching with anger at my mother, worse than normal. I went to figure out what the fuck was going on, he put his hands on me, and I snapped. I threw him to the ground, and amidst his punches and slaps and scratches I began to choke him. Tears and spit pouring from my face I bared my fangs and produced more animalistic sounds than actual speech.

    My mother was futilely trying to pull me off, begging me to stop. I didn’t care. I was beyond reason at that point, my id was in full control. Like a flare in a moonless night however, a thought brought me to a stop. I had my second day of work at a new job the next day, and couldn’t afford to spend at least the night and next day in jail for murder. That lone, paragonal thought amidst a sea of frothing rage was all that saved my father’s life.

    Other than those two examples however, I’ve never allowed myself to be a violent person. Or rather, I’ve never had the courage for it. I get the fight or flight shakes just from passing a slow moving vehicle, let alone a face to face confrontation. I wonder if that’s who I am, or who I was made to be.

    My first girlfriend, who could technically be called my ex-fiancee if you don’t dismiss a six month, hormone-fueled, teenage puppy love engagement, was victim to some verbal abuse throughout the two or so years we spent together. She was a piece of work herself though, and although I cringe to think back on my words and feelings back then, I don’t think less of the man I am today for them. I see it as character growth. She cheated on me, lied to me, and was certifiably crazy herself. She and I have both come a long way since then though, and I’ve learned to be a better man based on the awful example I set for myself.

    I say we’ve both come a long way, but in reality, she’s got a college degree and is dating a successful musician while working for a governor. I’ve got a GED, am entirely alone, and as of the end of March jobless. There was a brief spike in my life a little over a year ago. I only weighed one-hundred and sixty pounds, I was on the second rung of the company I worked for’s ladder, I had a girlfriend, I was happy. That’s all long gone now though.

    See, even though I hunt for zero calorie sodas and energy drinks, I still eat too much food. I drink too much alcohol. I lay around in bed like a fucking pile of ooze. I was going to call myself a slug, but even those invertebrates get more exercise than I do. I probably weigh Two-ten by now. Two-fifteen maybe. I’m sure if I were sitting on a scale right now it’d read in the two-twenties, between my clothes, belly full of spaghetti sauce-drenched pizza, and general fat ass.

    As of today I’m twenty-two years old, five-eight in the morning and in shoes, with short brunette hair and just the one tattoo, a coyote on my left arm. My upper right arm and my left ‘tit’ are covered in scars. I have a handful spread over the rest of my skin; faded ones all across my legs, one across my stomach, one on my right ‘tit’, three partially faded bands on my right forearm. All self-inflicted, obviously. I have a small patch of fur all across my chin that struggles to reach the center of my lower lip, stubble spreading back from it towards my throat, and a curled moustache above my mouth.

    I fucking hate when television shows have non-English parts. It prevents me from being able to just spend the extra ‘brain energy’ on them, and instead I have to divert more of my direct attention to follow along.

    Sometimes I want to carve out my own eye. Even though my left eye is (diagnosedly so) the weaker of the two, whenever I envision it, it’s always the right one I slice out like an avocado pit. The cut would start close to the center of my forehead and run all the way down to my jaw, stopping just a hair over the line and onto my throat.

    I don’t think that comes from any weird sort of mutilationist fetish, or one of those weird (Ha, who am I to judge?) mental illnesses where a part of your body feels alien. I think its just a desire for attention? If that’s the right way to phrase it. I want to be special, look special. All those bad-ass pirates and fantasy characters have facial scars, typically over their eyes, and I want to be like them. I want to be special.

I want to be special. I want to be important. I want to feel like I actually matter. No amount of self reaffirmation has ever been enough for me. I’ve always needed ‘affirmation’ from others, and I’ve rarely ever received it. And it can’t be just anyone who gives it to me, it has to be someone special, someone whom I respect. The words of those I subconsciously deem as ‘below’ me mean absolutely nothing, no matter how reverential or supporting.

As for who I respect, which isn’t the right word at all, I’m not really sure. Beautiful women. Impressive men. Members of authority. People with experience in fields that I respect (this time it is the right word). I’ve had coworkers who practically begged me to hang out, less than attractive women who nearly molested me in their flirtations. All it ever did was annoy and nearly disgust me.

It’s a strange dichotomy, my ego and self-loathing. On one hand, I’m disgusted by myself. I look in the mirror and see a hideous, fat, disgusting, waste of human existence who could die tomorrow without the world so much as blinking. On the other hand, I recognize my intellect, sense of humor, virtues, and what few skills I have as being exceptional.

I hate myself, but somehow still place myself above others.

It’s funny how little self control I have compared to what little drive I have. I crave love, yet haven’t been able to muster the willpower to eat healthy and exercise. I crave fortune, yet haven’t been able to finish writing (Really writing, with editing and everything) a book. I crave attention, yet stay hidden away in my room and when out in public avoid standing out at all. When I crave a McChicken, I’ll drive to the McDonalds across town at 3 AM for it.

I guess I’m just short sighted. Back when I still played chess, I could never think more than a single move ahead. When a problem has a single-step solution, I can find it near instantly, no matter how obscure or obfuscated it is. Throw in just one more step, however, and suddenly I’m lost as an orphan looking for his mother in a department store.

That applies to long term goals too, even when the answer is spelled out for me step by fucking step. Step one, cut the calories down to less than two-thousand. Step two, take the dog(s) for a walk everyday. Step three, repeat steps one and two for the next six months. Just like that, I go from fat lard-face to looking like a young Leonardo DiCaprio.

But I just don’t do it. The one time I succeeded with a diet, it was based on routine. Every morning on my way to work, I’d get two McDonalds burritos with mild sauce and a large diet coke, no ice. Every night after work, same thing. Right now, jobless and hopeless, there is no routine in my life. That’s just an excuse though, I know that. Doesn’t mean I fucking do anything about it.

It also helped that back then I spent every night with a woman I was in love with. Kira. Black haired, thin as a skeleton, cheek bones like daggers. Her nails were more like claws, and she’s never without her eyeliner that stretch out like wings from her beautiful brown eyes.

When we met, she hated me, so of course I sought her approval. She hated me just because I sat in her spot one time. She, never to my face, called me an inbred hobbit. After several random encounters at work (which is where I met her), we also bumped into each other at the vape store. A casual, friendly conversation lead to her messaging me at work the next day, and a friendship quickly formed.

After that, it didn’t take long for love to form. One sided love. I asked her out, she rejected me. My love diminished but quickly re-blossomed. I confessed full-blown honest to god love to her. Again, she rejected me, with a full (and requested) letter explaining why. That letter tore me to pieces. Not because it destroyed my hopes for ever having her, but because every reason she listed was (to my eyes) nonsense.

She said I wasn’t artistic, I consider myself to be a great story crafter and a half-decent writer. She said she thought I’d be controlling and possessive, when I am nothing of the sort. She said I wasn’t ‘edgy’ enough, in so many words, even as I carved my flesh into ribbons. Even to this day, when she describes her perfect partner’s personality, she describes me to a T, or at least to a lower-case t.

I treat our bond as though we are siblings, and I believe that’s how she sees me, though I feel a much stronger love than that for her whilst single, and she feels nothing for me. She treats me like garbage. One time I begged her for company, knowing that if left alone I’d make an attempt on my life, and she said no. No one else came either, but I thought she of all people would understand and care. But she didn’t. And despite the handle of vodka, bottle of nyquil, assortment of pills, and sheer amount of blood loss I endured that night, I lived to suffer the pain of her betrayal.

With her it’s always apologies and broken promises. She’s sorry she abandoned me for the millionth time to be with her new abusive boyfriend, she promises it won’t happen again. She’s sorry she disappeared without a word of warning, and promises she’ll warn me in the future. She’s sorry that she broke her promises, she promises it won’t happen again.

And yet I love her. I’ve given her thousands of dollars. I’ve bought her over a hundred meals. I take care of her when everyone else abandoned her. I helped her get her shit together when agoraphobia had grabbed hold of her. I’ve given her everything I could possibly give, sacrificed everything she’s ever asked for or needed that I had.

But its never enough for her. It never will be. She will never care about me and my needs. I don’t need her romantic love, as much as I would enjoy it. But never once has she sacrificed for me. Never once has she gone out of her way to make me happy. She gave me a stack of ‘coupons’, to be redeemed for things such as ‘a guaranteed hang out session’ or ‘You can pick the music all day’. The one time I tried to redeem one, the first one I mentioned, she blew me off.

But of course, she moved to a whole other state for her drug addicted, physically and verbally abusive boyfriend. Then when she came back I took her back following a promise that she was completely done with him. I’m sure she will, or already has, broken that promise.

Despite all that, she is the most important person in my life. The thought of her killing herself makes me genuinely want to die too. Without her, there’d be absolutely no one in my life that I truly love. She is a fire amidst a barren tundra without which I’d freeze to death, even if she flickers in and out of existence that I’ve wished to  die in her absence.

My only other friend is Whitney. The strangest person I’ve ever known, and one of the most genuinely wholesome and good people you could ever have the pleasure of meeting. She’s sweet, kind, caring, generous, intelligent, and fun. She’s also asexual, so there’s no hope for romance there either. She lives a busy life, between college and work, so it’s rare I ever get to see her.

    Everyone else in my life is temporary, fleeting. They either abandon me purposely or drift away like clouds.

    My last girlfriend, the only other serious one I’ve had besides my ‘ex-fiancee’, abandoned me out of the blue. One moment, she was saying that she loved me and that I was her perfect man. The next, she provided a list of issues she had with me and said that they were irreconcilable. She left me with trust issues that have plagued every attempt at romance I’ve had since. I lost my virginity to that girl.

    And when we broke up, you know what happened? Her shit head best friend went and spread all of my personal information to our mutual friends, in a horrific way that painted me to be a violent and hurtful man who was ruining her life. And they believed him. Even though he was known to be an over-dramatic, hyper-aggressive piece of shit, they believed him. In spite of all the good things I’d done for them and absolutely no personal experience with me to back his words up, they took it as gospel. I had non-romantic commitment issues before then, but damned if they weren’t magnified ten fold after that.

    Every other romantic trist I had after her has had its issues. One time, whilst I was seeing a shrink and given pills that amplified my anxieties to levels beyond my control, I went full blown crazy with a girl. Demanded to know where she was, why she was ignoring me, sent over thirty texts in as many minutes. I quit that medicine the moment I ‘came down’.

    Another I ‘broke up’ with after we agreed that she couldn’t handle just hanging out in my car, and I can’t handle going to clubs. Another couple ghosted me. Another was even flakier than Kira, and far more blatant about it. Another just wasn’t that into me, even if he (an FtM transgender person) wouldn’t admit it.

    Right now, the biggest source of my anxiety is the fact that Kira has yet again disappeared. I’m used to that, but this time she explicitly said she would text me ‘soon’ when we hung out three days ago. The girl is a fucking suicidal drug addict, and doesn’t care about the pain it causes me when she disappears like this. The fears and anxieties that fill me hurt so bad you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve told her this countless times. She just, doesn’t, care.

    I want to punch something, tear my room apart. Its a disgusting mess now, but the mess is settled at least. A path to the door amidst the refuse, big piles pushed against the walls. It could be much, much worse. I feel like I’m about to explode, all these feelings bursting out of my fucking rib cage. But she doesn’t care about that. All she cares about is herself.

    There’s only two people in the entire world I’ve truly cared for, like really, wholly, undeniably loved and felt empathy for. My ‘ex-fiancee’, and Kira. But even for those I didn’t feel that way for, Whitney or my ex-girlfriend, I treat them right. Better than right. I buy them gifts, I look after them, I tell them I love them, I do my best to be the best friend or boyfriend I can be.

    I’m a heartless monster, but at least I have the manners to act better than that.

    You know something, I legitimately can’t remember the last time I cried. Probably when Kira and I first started becoming friends, she demanded I open up and tell her everything if I wanted her to do the same. So I did, and I broke down. Since then, not a drop. I just don’t have it in me. I’m tired. I’m tired of being alive, but outside of drunken and seemingly random spikes of suicidal ideations, I’m too scared of death to try and kill myself tonight.

    The thought of death, of everything just disappearing, terrifies me. It has since I was a little kid, we’re talking four or five years old. I don’t want to die, I never want to die. I want to live forever, or at least to know that there is reincarnation or an afterlife. I fear the ocean too, specifically being in the middle of the water with no land in sight and seeing a silhouette approaching me. But that’s not what my fear of death is. That’s a shock, a jump in my seat when I watch a video on youtube.

    My fear of death is primal, unadulterated terror. It keeps me up at night, it forces me to keep a light on when I want to sleep, it gave me a love for twilight hours as they brought an end to the darkness when I was a child. It brought me peace.

    Kira finally texted me back, simply saying ‘’I love you’. It could be her last words, it could be an apology for going back to her shit head ex, it’s definitely a lie to either herself or to me. It brought some measure of peace, though left a trail of underlying fears in its wake.

    I just wish I could be happy, but for that I need at least one of the three B’s. Booze, blood, or betrothal. The last B is hyperbolic, I don’t need that much of a commitment, just some sort of romantic connection with someone. Gotta keep the pattern going though. When I’m drunk, my troubles fade away. When I’m cutting, the pain distracts me. When I have a girlfriend, I feel accepted.

    Right now I have none of those things. I might cut my arm here in a bit, but I doubt I’ll be getting a girlfriend sometime tonight; and its too risky to be drinking on a night like this. So, I’ve just got to wallow in my own misery.

    I meant to write chapter two of a new book I’m working on tonight. It’s a dark, nautical comedy set in a fantasy-ish world about a dull yet narcissistic pirate captain and his misadventure to regain his fortune. I started writing it to keep myself busy while I wait to distance myself from the first book I wrote, a more serious piece. That one’s about a man and his new apprentice facing a rebellion of monsters who are supposed to coexist with humans, but are sick of their treatment as second class citizens.

    I need to distance myself from it because every time I look at it I want to delete the whole thing. It all feels too fresh, too personal. I can remember every keystroke that I put down, and since I was the one who typed it all, it must be trash. That’s how my mind sees it. I need to forget.

    I’ve just started episode five of Altered Carbon, haven’t paused it once, haven’t stopped writing except when they speak in another language or I don’t know what to wrtie next or when Kira texted me. I’m starving. By starving I mean I’m hungry, just enough that my stomach hurts. I’ll probably go grab more food like the fat ass, no-self-control shitstain that I am.

    I hate when people tell me I’m not fat, or when people say it shouldn’t matter. I am fat, and it matters to me. I don’t find fat people attractive. Never have, never will. I remember once, back when I was dieting and nearly at one-sixty, a (fat) girl said to me “Why are you still dieting? You look great.” I responded by lifting my shirt up (I didn’t have the scar on my stomach at the time) and jiggling it, which immediately elicited an ‘Ew!’ from her. I said, “That’s why.”

    It’s not a crime to be fat, nor do I treat fat people any worse than their skinny counterparts. I just think its extremely unattractive, just like me. I don’t want to be fat. I just don’t have the willpower to put a stop to it. And I hate myself for it. Maybe if/when I get a new job I’ll be able to get back into my routine. It’d be a lot easier if I lived on my own, and could choose the pantry and fridge’s contents myself.

    But for now I’m stuck living in my parents’ house. I thought once I bought a new car, I’d be able to save up and move out. Then I met Kira, and spent thousands on her. Then I allowed myself to be talked into going to therapy, a waste of time that I put a stop to after being told that I’d never be happy and to keep on cutting, that put me in debt to pay for. Then my car broke down, and I’ve had to open a new credit card for over nine-hundred dollars and spent another four-hundred up front, and her check engine light is already back on.

    Oh, and I don’t have a job anymore after getting fired for spending too much time helping coworkers, so its not like I can get a place with the two-hundred and twelve dollars I get a week with unemployment. I’ve dreamed about living on my own since before I was even a teenager. I’ve always hated my parents. Every time I think everything’s about to turn around fiscally, life comes around and shits down my fucking throat and cuts a hole through my trachea so it can fuck my feces-stained esophagus. Every, single, fucking, time.

    God that therapy was fucking worthless. I did what the guy said in regards to cutting. I tried rubber band snapping, icing, writing out my feelings. None of it had the same sense of distraction and gravitas. So, he told me if it helps and I’m being safe, keep doing it. So I have. I wanted to stop though, not for my own sake, but because the people who say they care about me (in other words, Whit) don’t like it and I can understand why. Again though, no will power.

    When it came to my moods, I told him about as much as I’ve told anyone in my life about myself. At first it felt good, he looked at me like some sort of specimen. By our last session though, it felt more like I was a chore to him, a frustrating waste of time. Although I didn’t bother to remember the words verbatim, he more or less told me that sometimes there just isn’t anything you can do to stop being miserable, and you’re just stuck that way. So, since that was the case, I stopped going.

    There was another professional I saw there, a woman who was there to actually prescribe medicines. After the first one ruined a budding and potentially great relationship, I was hesitant to try another. Given the fact that it was also expensive as fuck and I was constantly broke, with or without hesitation I couldn’t try another kind. She refused to prescribe me medicine for my ADD either, even though she did diagnose it. Said we needed to get the depression under control first. Maybe I’d be less fucking miserable if I could concentrate on one thing at a time instead of constantly having my attention diverted between two to three things every waking moment of my life.

    It’s funny, when I finished my first book, I thought I’d be happy. Filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment that would spur me forward in life. So I rushed it. The last couple chapters were far below my typical word count. Whitney pointed out that fact, and the fact that a lot of the earlier chapters were subpar comparatively, so I went back and finished it ‘for real’. I rewrote most of the earlier chapters, filled in the later chapters, got a real, proper first draft done. And still nothing.

    Now I’m telling myself that once I can edit it properly instead of just grimacing through the prologue I’ll feel it, but I don’t believe it. Maybe if an agent wants it, I’ll feel it, but I don’t believe that. If it were miraculously published, then, then I might feel a hint of genuine joy, but I don’t believe that. I keep pushing the goal posts of finding happiness further and further back to excuse my failure to do so.

    Fuck, I don’t even know why I wrote all this. I don’t feel any better. I feel like an overdramatic, self-important, delusional cunt. Same old same old I suppose.

[verysharpteeth]

Sharp Teeth Watches NXT, or the Timeline God Abandoned

1. We’re now operating on the NXT hellscape of Tommaso Ciampa as NXT Champion. We’re paying a heavy price for our collective sins. We’re paying a heavy price because SOMEONE named JOHNNY can’t GET HIS LIFE TOGETHER.

2. I’m gonna say this every time I see Shane Thorne. I don’t like children. But I would have that man’s babies. Do they just raise large handsome blondes on a farm somewhere down in Australia? Is this an export crop they’re looking into? Because I think there’s a market. The Mighty are assholes, but I’m not a fan of War Machine Lite in Heavy Machinery, so I’d rather have my asshole Australians. They lose after Street Profits interrupt the match. Also when did Nick Miller start looking so much like Alex Shelley?

3. Mustache Mountain still needs pads on their naked, sinful knees. 

4. Are EC3 and Kona Reeves fighting over a gimmick here? Because they seem oddly similar. Between the two we’ve got gold chains and bedazzled crap everywhere. There’s even more extra when Velveteen Dream interrupts the match. I’m still not sold on him. His gimmick feels like he’s aiming for Dalton Castle but isn’t quite as naturally wonderfully odd. EC3 beats Kona, which leaves a bizarre three way battle for the most extra.

5. I’m not a fan of Candice LeRae being used as cannon fodder to make Shayna Baszler look better. Considering the match Kairi, Candice and Nikki put on, I’d much rather watch them all work each other forever.

6. I’ve never seen so many small children chant “asshole” at a person. Good job, Ciampa. He also mixes it up with an old lady which is amazing.

7. Johnny bolts past Aleister to mess with Ciampa AGAIN. Because we don’t learn from our mistakes. He is frothing at the mouth and bellows that Ciampa is only NXT champion because of him. Which is true. Horrifyingly true. Aleister agrees because he punches Johnny’s lights out, which might be the best thing for Johnny right now. 

Let me take a moment to comment about AMAZING heel work and AMAZING face work and AMAZING anti-face work. All three guys involved in the NXT championship feud right now are completely different. But each knows exactly what character they are and all the characters compliment each other. Ciampa is a heel on the level of vileness I can’t even really compare. Every atom of him reeks of villainy. He is THE big bad of NXT. Johnny is the face of faces. Small in statue, nothing but heart and a passion that is getting him in trouble right now. As angry as you are at him over costing Aleister the title and ALLOWING Ciampa to become champion with his actions, every fiber of you feels for him. He OWNS that he screwed up. He owns that he has made a hash of his interactions with Ciampa. He has come out on the losing end every time, but is so righteously angry you just want to hug him and tell him to get his life together and then go murder Ciampa. He’s furious and scary and still so out of control that when Aleister punches him you’re happy SOMEONE stopped him. And Aleister doesn’t have a dog in the Gargano/Ciampa fight, but he’s sure fire PISSED now that Gargano cost him his title. So you don’t blame Aleister for swinging at everyone. 

This is great character work. Everyone take notes. 

#nxt #wwe #johnny gargano #and that coward tommaso ciampa

[tinypeckers]

Stepboyfriends

Pairing(s): Dan x Jordan (KootraNewz) James x Aleks (NovaHD) Seamus x Eddie (SlyPKC)

Words: 3,342

AO3

Summary: Parties are for booze, awkward dancing and intimacy with people you’ll forget about in the morning. Aleks thought he’d finally done the latter but it’s hard to forget the person you kissed last night when they waltz into your house and introduce themselves as your new brother.

Co-written with @forensicbec

Authors note: So this has been a long time coming, huh? Long story short my laptop killed itself during essay season and I’ve only just replaced it. Enjoy a long ass chapter to make up for my absence!

CH1 CH2 CH3 CH4 CH5 CH6 CH7 CH8

When they had gone, Dan sat down at the table across from Aleks. He placed a mug down and pushed it towards him. Aleks peered into the cup and snorted.

“Don’t like hot chocolate.”

“Everyone likes hot chocolate,” Dan squirted whipped cream into the mug.

“Prefer black coffee.”

“Personally, I find that quite bitter.” Dan dusted the top with chocolate flakes.

Aleks had never known their house to have chocolate flakes. He held back a smile at the thought of his dad grumbling to Dan about the calories and how unhealthy it was for you. Aleks schooled his face quite quickly.

“Yeah, well, my dad makes it for me.”

“Your dad makes a lot of stuff,” Dan muttered.

Aleks looked up then. Dan had nudged the mug toward him. He’d stuck half a kit kat inside. The other half was nestled between his teeth. It bobbed up and down like a cigarette in a cartoon. Aleks sighed.

“How many did he make this time?”

Dan’s eyebrow raised. Aleks nodded to the birdhouse mounted on the wall. He’d explained to his dad several times that there was no point in it being there but Jordan had insisted it looked nice. Dan shook his head.

“No birdhouses, only furniture. Did you not notice your new bedside table?”

Aleks chewed his lower lip and gently shook his head. His room felt like a train station to him now, it had become simply something that he passed through. Aleks grabbed the hot chocolate. He took a big, deep gulp. The whipped cream frothed on his nose. Dan smiled.

“Better than a black coffee?”

“It’s different,” Aleks admitted.

“But not bad?”

Aleks licked at the cream on his nose. His tongue kept poking at one bit on the very tip. He paused.

“It’s too much at once,” Aleks pushed the mug back toward Dan. His tongue poked at the froth once more. With a defeated huff, he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Dan took the mug and poured the hot chocolate down the sink. He rinsed it out and gave it a quick scrub.

When he returned to the table and sat across from Aleks, Dan offered him a mug of black coffee instead. Aleks smiled. He blew on the coffee and took a sip. Aleks’ face scrunched up.

“Do you want any sugar?” Dan pointed to the cup with a spoon. Jordan insisted everything was in a little pot, the ones bought from the shops mothers flocked to when they had spare cash. Dan had never knew he needed a butter tray until now. Aleks shook his head. Dan offered him the spoon again. “But it is better when it’s a little sweeter, isn’t it?”

Aleks rolled his eyes. He pushed the mug toward Dan and let him chuck some sugar into it. When he sipped at the coffee this time, Aleks’ face remained neutral.

“It can be a bit bitter, yeah, but that’s just how coffee is.”

“True but coffee can be sweet if you just work on finding the perfect blend,” Dan pointed at him with the spoon.

Aleks looked away from Dan. He chewed upon his lower lip and shrugged.

~

Aleks slumped on the couch. His thumbs lazily skimmed over the controller. He scoffed as he shot Dan’s character yet again. Dan squeaked as he went down and the noise quickly trickled into a laugh. Aleks rolled his eyes. He collected more ammo and pushed his character into a sprint. Dan’s character popped out in front of him and shot. Aleks stopped moving. His character took barely any damage. With one flick of the trigger, Dan’s character was dead. Dan howled with laughter then.

“How are you this bad?” Aleks groaned.

Dan shrugged. He wiped the tears from his eyes and dropped his controller onto his lap. The screen revealed their points. Dan had scored an impressive zero. Aleks tossed his own controller onto the floor.

“You don’t want to play another game then?”

Aleks shook his head. Out of the five games they had played already, Dan had won none of them. On the third he’d managed to kill Aleks. Once. Only once. While murdering his character had been therapeutic at first, especially since he had logged in on James’ profile, Aleks was quite over the appeal of slaughtering a pixel.

Dan turned the console off. He shifted on the couch so that he could look at Aleks. Aleks looked anywhere but Dan. Dan cleared his throat. Aleks let his head roll to face him.

“Do you want to go out somewhere for dinner?” Dan cocked his head to the side. Aleks shook his own head so violently his long fringe became a blur. “It will blow over, Aleks.”

“You’re defending him,” Aleks snapped.

“No, what James did was wrong,” Dan took a deep breath. “But he wanted to help your father.”

“Why? He’s not his dad.”

Dan sighed. Aleks shrugged him off. He reached into his jeans’ pocket and pulled out his phone. Dan watched as he opened the just eat app.

Dan glanced around the room. His eyes strayed to the DVD cabinet. Jordan had organised them all alphabetically and by genre. There were quite a few Batman films, courtesy of Dan himself, a couple of romance films, quite a few marvel films and tucked right into the very corner of the case only one horror film. Dan’s lip twitched at the sight of it. He got up and passed in front of Aleks to go to the case. He slid the DVD out, opening it to see if it actually had the disk inside. He smiled. Aleks didn’t bother to look up as Dan sat back down next to him. He offered him the phone. Dan took it but, before Aleks could snatch his hand back, he replaced it with the DVD. Aleks’ eyebrow rose. He glanced to the new object and smirked a little.

“Dad said I wasn’t allowed to watch this until I was eighteen, remember?”

“Yeah but he’s not here right now, is he?”

Aleks looked up. Dan was giving him that same look he had a year ago. He had raised one eyebrow and the right side of his lip was pulled up slightly. It was an olive branch, an attempt to connect and to understand Aleks. Aleks rolled his eyes. He threw the DVD case onto Dan’s lap. Dan’s smile faltered a little until Aleks pointed to the TV.

“Go on then, put it on.”

Halfway through the movie, Aleks turned the TV off. Dan turned towards him. Aleks pulled his noodles from his mouth and dropped them onto his plate. His face was pale, paler than usual that is, and he swallowed several times to keep down bile.

“Not the kind of movie to watch over dinner then?” Dan asked.

Aleks looked up at Dan. Dan had to stifle a laugh when he saw that his eyes were watering too. Aleks shook his head slowly. He cast his plate aside and pulled his knees up onto his chest. Dan forked some more noodles into his mouth. Aleks looked away then, his lips curled up and bile still swimming around his throat. Dan snatched the remote and put on the TV for some background noise while he finished his dinner.

“I should record this, it’s James’ favourite show. He’d hate to miss it,” Dan murmured.

“Don’t bother, he should miss it.”

Aleks physically turned away from Dan then. Dan lowered the remote and sighed.

“What did he do?”

Aleks whipped around and glared at Dan. “He took pictures of my-“

“Before that,” Dan crossed his arms over his chest. “Why did you go so far out of your way to avoid him?”

Aleks’ shoulders slumped. He pulled his legs back up to his chest and chewed upon his lip. What didn’t James do? He treated everything like a joke – acted as if what they were going through was no big deal. He felt Dan’s eyes on him. He guessed now was just as appropriate as ever to mention it.

“Something happened at a party the weekend…”

“God I told him not to drink so much, what did he do?”

Aleks frowned at Dan. He turned toward him.

“What do you mean, you told him not to drink so much?”

“When Jordan suggested he go to that party and meet you before we moved in, I made him promise not to drink more than a beer or two. I told him, ‘go and find Aleks and get acquainted’ and when he came back with a big dopey smile I knew he’d got with someone. Was it one of your friends?”

Aleks’ hands crept into his hair. He tugged at his scalp and grit his teeth. Dan muttered to himself.

“He came to the party to look for me?” Aleks launched himself off of the couch. Dan nodded.

“Did he find you?”

Yes, Aleks wanted to scream. Yes he found him and he kissed him and they had a moment and then he showed up on the doorstep the next morning as his new brother. Then he wouldn’t stop reminding Aleks of that moment. He just kept grating and grating on him – joking and being nice and caring and – Aleks screamed. Out loud. So loud Dan had to cover his ears. He slowly lowered his hands and stared at Aleks. His look was unreadable. Aleks shook his head.

“No, no he didn’t find me.”

Dan wanted to ask him more but Aleks turned away from him. The boy shook. Dan had asked James a similar question when he’d stumbled home that night but he’d just mumbled an answer and Dan had let it be. Now he was wondering whether he should have pushed him further.

“So what did he do?”

Aleks turned back to Dan. He couldn’t tell him the truth now, couldn’t say that he was so angry because James had kissed him and then became his step brother.

“He just – after you two moved in, he clung to me like a koala. It was suffocating. He wouldn’t leave me alone and he kept winding me up and he didn’t respect my space and… and… he was just always there.” Aleks started to pace.

“I’m sorry he came on so strong it’s just… that’s James. He likes new people and he was just so happy that I’d found someone that he was probably trying extra hard to impress you.”

“Why would anyone be happy that their parent found someone new?”

Aleks had never known anyone but Jordan but he was sure if he had, he’d have hated Dan more for barging in and ruining it all. He was sure that James had to have a mother.

Dan rubbed at his scalp. He swallowed. He opened his mouth to say something and then he closed it again. Aleks raised his eyebrow.

“I haven’t dated anyone since… since his mother and that was five years ago. There was a time when I wouldn’t even talk to my friends, let alone go on a date. It was easy for me to move away, to move here with your dad because there’s no-one left. Not after I pushed them away,” Dan admitted.

Aleks sat down on the couch beside Dan. He wasn’t sure what to do after that – he’d never been on this end of the interaction before. So he just leaned against Dan and rest his cheek on his shoulder. Dan went on:

“He just wanted it to work, I guess. He tried so hard to keep me afloat back then and I wouldn’t wish it on him again. If I ever lost your dad… I don’t think I could help myself.”

Aleks wrapped his arm around Dan’s. He sighed against him. He felt Dan shift as he wiped his eyes. Dan laughed at himself. Aleks smiled with him. Dan pressed his head against Aleks’. He pat the teenager on the leg.

“Right, enough of this,” Dan said. “Let’s have a fun James-free weekend.”

Aleks huffed as he threw down his last card. It was the fourth time he’d won Uno in the past fifteen minutes – Dan really was not a challenge at all. Dan started to reshuffle the pack but Aleks placed a hand over his to stop him. He slumped against the couch and kicked Dan’s legs underneath the coffee table. They’d opted to sit on the floor to not strain their backs. Aleks had started to think that that might be more fun. They had already exhausted every other board game in their library. Aleks never thought he’d hear himself say it but, before he could stop himself, he turned to Dan and said:

“God, I can’t wait until Dad and James get home.”

#kootranewz #novahd #slypkc #ragehappy #fanfic #series #stepboyfriends

[poly-carbon-based-lifeform]

Inspiration Chapter Two: “The Traveler”

The New Sun Fair occurred in Lacerta every year on the summer solstice.  The tradition had begun nearly two hundred years ago by royal decree as a way of giving thanks to the Old Sun King for creating humanity.  Since the Old God no longer lived, the people could not thank him directly, so instead they gave thanks by living their lives to the fullest, accentuated by the Fair.

Nicolle pressed west in the direction he’d last seen the old traveler walking, but in the crowd it was easy to lose someone, especially when one is distracted by beer,  miniature ships swinging from thick ropes, axe-throwing contests, and turkey legs that vendors are trying to sell for seven moons or more.  Just charge a sun and let it be that simple, Nicolle thought, and even though the turkey legs were vastly overpriced, crowds of people still lined up to buy them.

Nicolle rolled his eyes, and he thanked Canopus he did because they landed directly on the traveler, who seemed to be on a lightly trodden path out of the fair and towards a small copse of trees bordering the village of Beconnue.  Nicolle tried to run over to reach him, but the traveler ventured beyond the trees before he could get there.

Nicolle’s run slowed to a jog, then a walk, then a stop just beyond the boundary of the woods.  He glanced over his shoulder at the festivities, then back at the trees.  The small forest couldn’t be more than a mile in diameter.  Did that count as a forest?  Nicolle tried to distract himself by thinking about the definition of a forest and whether this qualified, but everytime he thought the word “forest” his mind would refocus on the trees before him and his nerves would frazzle again.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, pressing a hand against his diaphragm and feeling it expand and shrink again as he breathed.  He attempted to steel himself; it had been over a decade since he’d entered any forest, but this one was certainly safe.  He opened his eyes, and started cautiously walking into the woods, muttering to himself, “She stood on the balcony… inexplicably mimicking him hiccuping… and amicably welcoming him in…”

He walked through the broadly spaced trees until he saw a different wooden barrier: a circular structure, walled with logs pointed at the top.  There was one opening, at which a pair of men with swords- not official city guards like at the fair- stopped a small line of men from entering.  These thugs searched each individual, patting them down before letting them inside.  Nicolle didn’t see the traveler.

He looked around.  Whatever was going on here, the guards didn’t know about it, and that’s probably how the people here liked it.  He ducked behind a tree to analyze the situation.  He’d seen a dirty old man who didn’t like his show, a traveler, wander into the woods where there was some illicit business going on.  The fair is a quarter mile back, and this place is concealed by woods, ergo the only people here were people who knew what was going on already.  Except Nicolle, who’d followed someone else here.  So, the traveler knew what was going on here… Nicolle still didn’t have enough information to go on.  It probably wasn’t gambling or prostitution, they probably wouldn’t let a dirty old man ruin the aesthetic.  So something less… refined?  There was lots of shouting coming from inside.  An illegal boxing match, or something like that?  Were sport fights illegal in Lacerta?  Nicolle couldn’t remember.

Nicolle needed to get inside.  But also, he needed the sword on his back to be ready, in case something really bad was going on.  In order to do that, he needed to work a little magic.  

Hoping the managers of the establishment didn’t have some kind of headcount system or a really good eye for faces, Nicolle took a deep breath, still paranoid of his surroundings.  In a way, he felt it might feel more relaxing to be surrounded by whatever disgusting, dirty men were inside those walls than out here in the open woods.  “By the light of the New Moon, let me pass unseen,” he whispered, letting his heart feel his breath with magic as he let the air escape his lungs.  He looked down: nothing.  Perfect.  He was invisible.

Nicolle slipped past the thugs at the entrance.  He found there was only a few feet of grassy hallway before a rudimentary wooden ramp started to angle upwards.  As he walked carefully up the creaking ramp, he found the source of the shouting.  Dozens of men had crowded around a second, shorter circular wall of logs that rose to about waist-height beyond the raised floor that surrounded it.

Why are we so high up for an arena that’s still on ground floor?  Nicolle wondered, taking special care not to bump into anyone and give away his position.  There was no safe place to resume visibility, so he hoped that whatever happened would happen before the spell wore off.  Is it just for a better vantage point?

Nicolle peered over the edge.  The arena seemed to have its floor covered with sand, and there were small sections of it where blood had splattered.  A single wide door was on the other side, under a red tapestry.  He started to have a very bad feeling, just as a man spoke up on the other side of the arena, standing over the tapestry.

“Alright, you motherfuckers!” the bald man with the goatee and no shirt shouted into a conical tube that amplified his voice just enough for the crowd to pay attention.  He was frighteningly strong.  Could lift an ox, Nicolle thought.  “You’ve waited long enough, and I think just about everybody who’s gonna show up already showed up!”

Nicolle suddenly realized he’d forgotten to look for the traveler.  He scanned the crowd, but though the floor space between the walls was only about five feet wide, he didn’t see his old man anywhere.

“Let’s get this shit started!”  The crowd cheered, and the door opened.  A wooden cart with wide wheels was pushed through the door out into the center of the arena by six strong men.  It was a flat platform, on top of which sat an iron cage where a black bear was held captive.  Nicolle’s heart sank.  He immediately knew where this was going.

The bear had a metal collar attached to its neck, and that collar was attached to a long, thick chain that hung out of the front of the cage between the gate and bars of one side.  A man grabbed the chain while another man grabbed an iron spike and a large hammer, and they carried it all to the wall underneath the tapestry.  One man placed the end of the chain against the wall while the other man held up the spike and nailed the chain in place with the hammer.  They and three other men left the arena while one last man pulled out a key and placed it in the lock of the cage.  He nodded up at the announcer, unlocked the cage, and then ran out the door which was closed behind him as the bear crept out into the sand.

“You know the drill, one of you lucky sons of bitches is gonna get to tame this beast or die trying!  Spear, sword, or mace, your choice!  And you get a fight a veritable monster of the Old Forest!”

The crowd cheered the prospect of bloody combat and jeered at the bear, shouting offensive names at it in a ridiculous attempt to insult an animal with no concept of what these Etullian words meant.  Nevertheless, the bear was angry.

“And this hour’s competitor is…” it appeared that someone passed him a note with a name on it.  “Mathieu du Becconue!  A fucking rhyming native!”

Nicolle and many others watched through the cheering crowd as a man seemed to jump for joy.  He was balding, a shining head ringing by the bare minimum amount of hair to avoid being flat out “bald,” with a much less flattering figure than the announcer’s, and he pushed through the crowd to head for the exit.

“While we wait for Matty to get all prepared- hey, you!”

The crowd’s attention was pulled back to the arena, and Nicolle’s eyes invisibly widened when he saw the dirty traveler standing in the sand opposite the bear.  He had lost most of his gear except for the sack slung over his left shoulder and the walking stick in his right hand.  Nicolle couldn’t see his face from here.

“Someone get that guy out of the arena!” the announcer shouted before placing his bullhorn back to his lips.  “Hey, bearfucker!  You can wait your god-damned turn like everybody else!”

The traveler slumped his sack off of his shoulder and onto the sand.  He knelt and began rummaging through it.  He pulled out a small tuft of brown fur and a sprig of some berry plant.  Holly, maybe?  He pressed them together and seemed to pray over them.  The noise of the crowd was lost on this man- the audience, the announcer’s anger, the half-full bottles of beer being thrown from the balcony.  They all meant nothing to this man.  Nicolle watched in bemusement as this man simply ignored the audience perspective and proceeded with some unfathomable task.  

He set the mismatched objects back into the sack and stood up, raising the walking stick off of the ground and letting it go slack by his side as he walked towards the bear.

“Seriously you unwashed mass of shit!” the announcer frothed at the mouth.  “We have rules!  You will follow the rules, or you can die right here!”

That caught the traveler’s attention, who raised his head slightly to give an irritated glance at the announcer, but never once stopped walking towards the bear.  Soon he was just out of range of the animal’s chain, made clear by its lunge at him, barely restrained by the radius as a claw narrowly missed the man’s nose, at which point he stopped moving.  Nicolle couldn’t see the man’s face, but he made slight gesticulations similar to those made during conversations.  He was… talking to the bear?

Suddenly, four men barged through the doorway, two of which were the thugs from the entrance, each holding a metal club.  Nicolle’s hand instinctively moved to the short sword sheathed on his back.  His eyes and mind darted in various directions.  The door was closed when the thugs entered.

The four men moved to encircle the traveler, keeping a wide berth between them at first, and then closing in slowly.  Before they got very close, the traveler moved closer to the bear.  The four men flinched, raising their weapons to ready themselves for a fight.  Perhaps they thought the bear might become agitated, but instead it remained calm.  Complacent.  Even as the traveler grabbed onto its left side and pulled himself up.  The man was now riding the bear.

Nicolle didn’t understand what was going on.  It seemed that neither did the brutes who had come to beat down the traveler.  One of them didn’t care; a man on the far left stepped forward and raised his club to swing at the bear’s face.

The traveler raised his walking stick into the sky.

The shouts were as immediate as the assault.  All around Nicolle, sprouting from the wood that had been used to construct this arena, massive roots grew and branched like trees.  Roots also burst from under the sand in the arena itself, each root grabbing or slamming into a nearby thug or patron.  Nicolle didn’t have time to watch what was happening in the arena as he was now busy trying to dodge the thicket of roots and vines strangling and piercing the flesh of the people around him as he tried to push back towards the exit.  A body thudded on the floor in front of him, a wooden vine wrapped around his throat, his eyes blank and horrified and dead.

Nicolle started hyperventilating as he ran, and he could just barely see his transparent hands by the time he was out.  He was losing focus, his vision blurring, his magic fading.  

He became totally visible when he heard a SNAP! Of wood breaking, and he turned to see that the roots had wrapped around the outside of the arena as well, breaking down the very structure they’d been grown from.  A log had broken in half and was starting to fall towards Nicolle, who barely had time to jump out of the way and roll off to the side.

The forest was quiet.  Nicolle rolled onto his back, trying to catch his breath, until out of the corner of his eye he saw a man casually riding away on the back of a black bear.

#midas #inspiration #book #novel #my writing #story #nicolle #lacerta #the traveler #chapter 2

[laurelsofhighever]

Arguing With Mabari

An older fic - the story of Alistair and Rosslyn’s first kiss - on AO3 Chapter 1, Chapter 2

An old Fereldan saying suggests mabari are clever enough to speak, but wise enough not to. Now his feelings for his fellow warden are deepening beyond mere friendship, Alistair is beginning to see how very true that is, though the proverb leaves out that - at least in the case of one particular mabari - they also get very, very jealous.

The dog was doing it on purpose. Alistair was sure of it. Every evening in camp, Cuno snuffled about his business making sure everyone was still aware of his presence so he could demand his accustomed scratch on the rump. And then, as soon as Alistair made any sort of motion towards Rosslyn, whether to hand her a dish of stew or ask her for the sewing kit she kept in her pack, the dog would get up, and – glaring pointedly all the while – plonk himself in a very deliberate way between his mistress and the man who was trying to talk to her.

At first, Alistair shrugged off this behaviour as a simple expression of dislike. Mabari were known to be particular about their people, after all, and Rosslyn had been through enough to make Cuno more protective than a normal dog. As time went on, however, and Alistair found himself more and more preoccupied with thoughts of his fellow Grey Warden and the increasing number of casual touches and lingering glances shared between them, a different suspicion took hold in his mind: maybe the dog was jealous.

And if Cuno was jealous of the attention Rosslyn gave him, might that mean she…?

Alistair’s stomach curled into knots as he stared at the dark oilskin walls of his tent. The thought made his heart beat all the faster because it was tied up with his feelings for Rosslyn, who only had to smile at him these days for his lungs to suddenly forget how they worked. If Cuno was trying to keep them separated, then it implied she could have similar feelings for him. Even if he could never see someone as graceful as Rosslyn forgetting to breathe just because somebody smiled at her.

In his defence, she had a very pretty smile.

Armed with this theory, over the following days Alistair studied Cuno, and after much thought decided to use what was known in alchemical circles as the scientific method. First, he approached Cuno with a nice, juicy hunk of venison to establish a baseline, and since Rosslyn had taught him to accept food from any member of their party, it was a good way to establish the dog’s true feelings. Of course, having grown up around dogs, Alistair knew that offers of a free meal were often enough to distract even mabari from their grudges, so later the same day he offered to play tug-o’-war with a tattered piece of hide. The game ended after twenty minutes with Cuno’s tongue lolling in pleasure as Alistair petted him in all the places big dogs loved, their relationship clearly an amicable one.

That, however, changed instantaneously when Rosslyn called him to the other side of their midday camp to help her consult the map. The dog bristled before trotting over to his mistress ahead of Alistair and butting insistently against her leg.

“Are you alright?” she asked when she caught sight of the odd expression on her fellow Warden’s face.

“Me? I’m just contemplating the critical nature of our cheese supplies,” he replied, hoping the brightness of his smile would deflect any suspicions she might have. “We’re running low, you see.”

“And whose fault is that, I wonder?” she teased. “Don’t worry, we’ll be coming to a village in the next day or so, so we can restock. I just need a second opinion on where we are.”

He was careful not to reach out to her as she illustrated their position with a plucked stalk of grass, keeping his fingers laced firmly behind him instead of resting against the small of her back as he sorely wanted to do. When she impatiently batted away a loose strand of hair that had fallen across her cheek he felt himself swayed by the scent of lavendis in her soap and forced himself to turn his head away and breathe.

“Am I boring you?” she enquired.

Heat surged to his cheeks. Damn that tiny lopsided smirk of hers. “Of course not! I was… merely scanning the horizon. A village the size of Southford probably has a forge, or at least a baker, so our best bet would be to follow any signs of smoke we see. Don’t you think?” he added with an uneasy gulp.

She chuckled, leaning in closer. “That might be easier if we weren’t surrounded by a lot of really tall trees.”

He didn’t miss the way her gaze flickered down to his mouth, but before he could do anything other than feel his lungs seize up again, Sten crashed her way through the moment with a grumble and the demand that they start walking again. With their privacy spoiled, Rosslyn moved, blushing, to resume her position at the head of their group, leaving Alistair to watch after her with an emotion tied up somewhere between frustration and enlightenment.

Cuno rumbled next to him, his stare baleful and his jowls quivering in the preliminaries of a snarl.

Alistair scowled back. I’m onto you, Dog.

The situation came to a head two days later in the taproom of The Cockspurs, Southford’s only tavern. The place was noisy, lit by greasy torches set in sconces along the walls and possessed of the sweet barley odour common to all inns where the soft furnishings have been doused in generations of spilt ale. Locals filled most of the space, but Southford was on enough of a thoroughfare that bands of well-armed strangers were not an uncommon sight, and so their party was scattered among the patrons, more relaxed than they would have been sleeping on the cold hard ground in the woods.

Alistair slipped his coppers over the counter and hefted his two foaming mugs of local brew with a nod to the bartender, noting as he dodged around a local drunk that Wynne was already on her third pint of the evening. Leliana had commandeered an old pouffe by the fire and was strumming tunes on her lute, playing requests and laughing with the patrons. To nobody’s surprise, Zevran was entertaining the bar maids with card tricks and feats of juggling, skills no doubt picked up on the streets of Antiva. There was no sign of either Sten or Morrigan, but then neither of them were overly fond of people, and they could take care of themselves well enough that Alistair wasn’t worried.

Finally, he spotted his target over the heads of the milling crowd. He made his way over to the corner where Rosslyn sat with Cuno snoring at her feet, frowning as she took stock of their remaining share of coin. Evidently they had spent more than they intended at the market that day, and his step faltered as he thought guiltily about the the extensive repairs to his shield that had robbed them of an extra day’s food. Then she glanced up and beamed when she noticed him, and the world fell to rights again.

“Don’t tell me, we’re poor again,” he joked as he set one of the pewter tankards on the scrubbed wooden table before her.

She reached out and dragged it closer. “Afraid so. There’s all the costs of the repairs we needed, and then there’s the food bill.” A sigh heaved from her chest. “If this is what it costs to fee two Grey Wardens, I hate to think how much of the Treasury Cailan spent at Ostagar. Sorry, that was insensitive,” she added, seeing the momentary tightening of his fingers around his drink.

“It’s alright,” he answered. “That’s actually a pretty good point. But we’ve got enough to see us to the next town, right?”

“More or less.”

He nudged her shoulder. “Hey, don’t look so down. We wouldn’t have nearly as much as this if you weren’t so weirdly good at finding things.”

“Did you just call me weird?” she challenged, smirking. She started to lean towards him but got distracted by the wide, blunt head suddenly weighting down her thigh. “Oh, woken up, have you?” she crooned at her Mabari. “Who’s a good boy?”

“Face it, dear lady, you’re worse than a magpie,” Alistair teased. He watched Cuno shove his head further into his mistress’ lap, but all the dog received was an absent rub behind the ears as Rosslyn turned her attention back to the man sitting next to her.

“Such impertinence,” she huffed, though there was no real malice behind the words. She shrugged and raised her tankard to offer him a toast. “To magpies!”

“To magpies,” he agreed, tapping his mug against hers before taking a deep swig. The amber liquid slid down his throat in welcome gulps, cool and just bitter enough to be refreshing in the overheated room. Next to him, Rosslyn sighed in contentment. He turned to ask her opinion of the ale, but stopped short.

“You’ve um…”

“What?”

“You’ve got…” He waved his hand in the vague direction of her mouth. “Foam.”

“Huh? Oh.”

She wiped the froth from her upper lip with the back of her hand and the two of them spent the next few moments in awkward silence as Alistair scrambled for a neutral topic of conversation. Cuno used the interruption to squeeze under the table and push his bulk between them, rubbing his head up Rosslyn’s leg with an insistent whine when her fingers were too slow to work into the loose skin at his neck.

“It’s nice to get a break from everything,” Alistair finally managed, eyes narrowed at the dog, who had twisted around with a triumphant expression that seemed to say, She still loves me more than you.

Rosslyn sagged against the wall and groaned. “I’m just glad I’m going to be sleeping in a bed for a change.”

“Whaaat, and miss out on all those comfortable rocks digging into your spine?”

He was grateful for her chuckle then, because it meant she had missed the flush creeping up his neck at the thought of her in a bed, her hair mussed and her eyes bleary with sleep. Did she wear nightclothes or did she sleep…?

Argh.

Such thoughts were not appropriate. Not that it stopped his treacherous imagination, or the blood that roared in his ears when she rested her head sleepily – trustingly – on his shoulder. The movement had become familiar over the past few weeks, comforting even, but the warmth of her weight still sent little jolts of electricity down to his toes.

“You get used to rocks,” she told him with a sigh. “It’s more the rain that – Ow! What is it, Cuno?” She jerked upright as one the dog’s heavy front paws landed squarely in her crotch. He had squirmed out from under the table and was trying to climb into her lap as if he weren’t the size of a small pony, pushing himself upwards so he could lick her face. But his bulk and the height of the seat provided and unforeseen obstacle, and his grumbles climbed in frustration as his back legs failed to find purchase on the edge of the bench.

“Andraste’s blood, what has gotten into you?” Rosslyn growled, struggling to push him back. “Get down!”

Immediately, Cuno stilled. His stubby ears flicked back in alarm at his mistress’ tone. His jowls quivered like the bottom lip of a child about to cry.

“I said, get down,” she repeated, less harshly this time. Around the room, the eyes of many of the patrons had turned to observe the scene, and their scrutiny made heat rise to the tips of her ears.

Cuno obeyed. He hunkered down on his haunches, head held low so he could employ the full effect of his wide, liquid-black eyes. The nub of his tail wiggled contritely under the table as he whined.

“Honestly.” Rosslyn ruffled her mabari’s ears. “What’s the matter?”

Cuno whined again and turned an accusatory look on Alistair, who sat uneasily with his hand rubbing across his collarbone.

“I might have an explanation.”

“Yes?”

Taking a deep breath, Alistair stammered out his theory. He winced as he mentioned his observations and how he had manipulated events to make sure, preferring to look at his fingers twisting in his lap rather than whatever emotions must be warring on Rosslyn’s face. That also meant he didn’t have to watch as he contorted his sentences to avoid the heart of the matter, namely his growing attraction and the question of whether or not she returned it. It felt too much like he was pressuring her, and the thought made something hot squirm beneath his ribs.

When his voice finally fizzled out, he risked a peek sideways and saw her frowning as she cradled her dog’s head in her palms. Hunched forward, every line in her shoulders bunched tight with an emotion he didn’t dare name. Chatter rose around them in a gentle hum; Leliana cascaded through the final notes of an Orlesian ballad; a bubble of cheers rose up from the corner of the bar where Zevran flirted so easily with the innkeeper’s staff.

“Rosslyn?”

Her gaze slid over to him, but skittered away again as colour bloomed across her cheeks. “I’m…” She cleared her throat. “I’m tired. I… think I’m going to go to bed.”

“Right, yes, good idea,” he babbled, watching her stand and feeling his happiness trickle away like cold sweat down the back of his neck. “See you in the morning?”

She turned back, the blush standing out red against her pale skin. A bashful smile played at the corners of her mouth and hope swelled again in his chest. “Bright and early.”

Only when she had disappeared upstairs (with the dog padding triumphantly at her heels) did Alistair feel it safe enough to drop his head back against the wall with a heavy, painful thump. He repeated the motion several times. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Clearly the only option now was to drown his embarrassment in ale and hope he became so drunk he could stumble across a well, then fall into it and drown before having to face her again.

Knowing his augmented Grey Warden tolerance for alcohol, he had a long way to go.

What felt like hours later, Alistair stumbled along the squeaking floorboards in the inn’s guest wing. He had long since lost track of the rest of his companions, not to mention the number of pints he had managed to put away thanks to his Warden appetite, and the bar had mostly been empty by the time he decided enough was enough and it was time to sleep.

He rubbed his eyes as a yawn overtook him, his balance knocked off-kilter by the foggy haze behind his eyes. Something solid lay across the width of the corridor. Of course Alistair failed to notice this until his shins knocked against it and sent him sprawling with a yelp.

Wait. The yelp didn’t belong to him. The curses and loud invocations to the Maker, certainly, but the yelp – when he twisted around to see what was the matter he discovered Cuno had been sleeping in the hall, tucked against the outside of Rosslyn’s door.

“So you’re in the kennel too, huh?” he asked the affronted dog. “Well, you did stand on her. With claws. In a very… you know what, I’m not going to finish that sentence.”

Cuno harrumphed and got up so he could rearrange himself on the most comfortable patch of floor, looking so dejected by his fall from grace that Alistair couldn’t help but be sympathetic. Ignoring the sober part of his brain that longed for the softness of the mattress in his room down the hall, he flopped down by the dog’s head, stretched his long legs out as far as the width of the corridor would allow, and waited for his head to stop spinning. Cuno eyed him balefully, unimpressed that the man had failed to notice the determined effort to ignore him.

“You know, I can understand why you’re doing it,” the Warden told the dog conversationally. “Why you want to protect her. She’s special, isn’t she?”

New alertness twitched in Cuno’s ears as he listened to the slightly slurred voice.

“I’ll tell her that, you know, when I can get the words out.” Alistair felt his hands wander to the comfort of the loose fur on the mabari’s neck. I’m talking to a dog, Zevran would have a field day. “I really, really like her, and I want you to know that. You’ve been such a good boy, keeping her going, making her happy.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. For a moment his mind wandered, trying to recall how he got the lump on the back of his skull. “What I’m trying to say is that I want to make her happy, too,” he told the dog. “She’s the only good thing in all of this, and when she smiles, it’s just…” His drunken mind fumbled for the right words, then gave up. “I’m not going to take her away from you, and I’m not going to hurt her. At least, I hope not. Anything could happen and I – I can’t promise to keep her safe. But I can try, if you’ll let me.”

The mabari cocked his head, dark eyes searching, nose quivering for any trace of a lie. Intelligent enough to speak, and wise enough not to. Very slowly, with the faintest wag of his stumpy tail, he stretched out his snout and licked the seam of Alistair’s trouser leg before shifting his weight against the new, convenient meat pillow and curling up to sleep. Something creaked behind the door Alistair leaned on, which might have been a dragon or a footstep or the building settling, but, feeling sleepy, he didn’t much care. Within a moment he forgot the noise, and his snores soon joined those of the dog who had decided to call a truce.

#dragon age #alistair theirin #warden alistair #alistair x warden #alistair x cousland #cousland #barkspawn #dragon age: origins #my writing

[grinlikecheshire-blog]

the bench

location: the streets of west hollow in the middle of the night  characters: Charlie Atwood, Jess Copeland mentions: Augustus, Jace, Josie summary: a timeless chat between two friends

jess

Normally, Jess didn't love the south side of town this time of night, it had a sharpness to its shadows that usually unnerved her. However, there was something beautifully juxtaposed with her clutching a hot cocoa next to Charlie, the two blissfully lost in their own rapport to even consider the monsters that might be leering in the darkness. According to them, nothing else mattered right now. Nothing but the fact Jess had been given one marshmallow less than Charlie at the late-night corner store and nobody was ever going to hear the end of it. "I just think it's discrimination, that's all." She ended her rant with a shrug and a sip, almost burning off her upper lip. "Anyway, before I was so wrongly done by — it was still my go and I am here to assume that you, sir, get treated special every venue you go to." She announced, swaying aimlessly as they walked.

charlie

Their nights together had quickly become something he'd grown to look forward to, even if it meant he had very little time left to feed (if at all). He was also grateful for his sessions with Josie, wherein now he felt confident enough to be with Jess this late at night should they be approached by someone undesirable. While he would rather it not come to that for several reasons, at least he knew he wasn't endangering her by keeping her out this late at night. "Actually, sexism, probably," he agreed with her, a half-grin planted on his face. "It's the marshmallow gap, unfortunately," This late into the evening, he had to be extra careful with his accent, as it tended to slip out more when he was tired. Still, he was fully prepared to play it off as fake. He laughed briefly, but couldn't exactly say that she was wrong, "True. I am endlessly charming and a joy to be around, so you better get used to me getting that extra marshmallow, Jess. You simply pale in comparison," he said, patting her on the head. "I bet you're used to talking your way out of everything, and you couldn't name one thing you weren't able to talk yourself out of,"

jess

Jess shot him a playful look, then took to raising her chin and brows like some indignant old woman might. "Is that an assumption?" She asked with a certain lilt that begged for clarification. If it wasn't, well, she was going to treat it as one. "Mostly true. Except for every time, my mother can smell a lie, which is inhumanely often, just for the record." She pointed out, taking another long sip and considering a new angle to probe him from. "Okay, so if you're as charming as you say you are, then I'm going to assume you are one with the Patrick Swayze's of the world... I bet you've made people accidentally fall in love with you more times than you're even aware of."

charlie

Matching her, he placed his hand on his chin, "Indubitably," he said, using his accent on purpose this time. Charlie made a note to avoid meeting her mother, as it was usually with parents that he had to lie more often than not. They always seemed to be interested in asking what he was doing, what his parents were doing, all things he had to know but hated saying anyways. "Have you ever gotten away with lying to her?" He asked, hands in his pockets. He wondered if his mother would've been good at picking up lies, but Charlie wouldn't ever be able to know. As a human, he almost never lied. He cringed at her assumption, knowing all too well how accurate it was. "I'll go with 'mostly true' here, too, if only not to seem so full of myself. It's accidental, there's only one girl for me," he said, before he could really catch it and stop himself from doing it. "Uh," but he had nothing to say--Charlie, who was so good at thinking on his feet, was caught off guard by his own revelation. There was only one girl for him, and she was dead.

jess

Jess had half the mind to demand Charlie talk in an accent forever, deciding it fit him like a well-tailored trench coat. "Oh sure, what pissed off teenager would I have been if I hadn't?" She grinned, fondly remembering how many weeks she'd walked around with a dumb tattoo after he'd mother had promptly said no a thousand times, getting a terrifying thrill every time the news almost made itself public. Drawn out of her rebellious nostalgia by Charlie's answer to her turn, Jess looked at him with doe-eyes and froth on her face. "You're joking." The words fell out of her mouth. "No, seriously, all this time and you just now are telling me there's a girl?" She paused, then immediately threw a hand out towards him with a nervous laugh. "Wai— wait, no, this isn't one of those movie moments where it's about to get weird, right?"

charlie

"Well, go on then. What's the biggest lie you've gotten away with? Let me guess," he looked at her, amusement twinkling in his eyes as he analyzed her head to toe.  Taking what he knew about her and the little she had said about her relationship with her mother: "You got a tattoo, or your belly button pierced?" 

He wanted to laugh along with her, to dramatically say it was her (it had always been her, or something similar), but this was far too big of a sore spot for him. Idiot, he thought. Charlie hesitated. It wasn’t fair to have to lie to Jess, not fair at all, but he’d gone and brought up Gabriele and she’d asked and now: here they were. Jess waiting for an answer and Charlie taking far too long to give her one. He had a skilled backstory, ready to be called upon whenever needed, but it felt wrong to be dishonest with someone who had quickly grown to mean a great deal to him. “Sorry,” he said, when she pressed, “it’s just, uh. She passed away,”

jess

Jess stared at him, fingers clutching her cup before she squinted at him supiciously. "If you're totally psychic and haven't told me yet this is the moment our friendship goes down the drain hole, Charlie Brown. I'm not here for perjurers." She told him, then tacked on quickly, "Learned that word the other day, been killin' to use it. Thank you for the opportunity."  Continuing to meander alongside him, Jess noticed the way their steps grew slower. Something big was coming, a doozy, something she probably shouldn't have asked and for a moment, Jess wanted to smack herself in the forehead. There she went again, saying something dumb. "Oh..." The word wafted out of her mouth before she could stop it, a lame response, and not the sensationally empathetic one he deserved. "Sorry, that's.... that sucks. That really sucks." Jess turned away, feeling embarrassed and stupid and sorry. "I mean, all things considered, she was super lucky to know you. I know I am." She looked back at him, stuffing one hand into her pocket, stretching the awkward moment out underneath the fabric. "You're the best person I've met since... well, I haven't met Tom Hanks yet but one day, it's coming, I can feel it." She joked, for lack of knowing how else to be in heavy moments like these.

charlie

He smacked on a grin as she called him psychic and waggled his fingertips in her direction, "I see a tall, handsome man coming to greet you with good news," he replied, in a borderline offensive Russian accent. 

"I'm very proud of you, that's a good one. I'm going to save it," He hated this reaction. It was why he usually avoided talking about Gabriele, though she was always somehow at the tip of his tongue, every sunset, every four-leaf clover, and on and on, reminding him of her. It was still painful, but he'd long since accepted that it would remain that way. Charlie simply hated when the other person felt uncomfortable, and he felt the need to brush it off, but how could he possibly do so when he'd already gone and said that there was only one girl for him? "Hm, yeah," he began, "well it's good to hear you've got a great head on your shoulders. I'd have been more shocked if you didn't know how lucky you were to have me," he said, letting out a scoff of a laugh more than real one. Even his voice sounded heavy, and he hated it, hated ruining their time together with stories of his past. It's all like that, he wanted to say, it's better you don't ask. 

But he didn't. Instead, she brought up Tom Hanks, and it caught him so off-guard that he genuinely laughed. "The day you meet Tom Hanks is the day I resign as your best friend. I just can't compete with that guy, I'm sorry Jess, but that's the way it has to be,"(edited)

jess

Even though the moment wasn't going anywhere, and the two of them were likely acutely aware of what Charlie had just admitted, Jess was happy to blow over it if he wanted her to. Perhaps, if she'd known him for longer and wasn't so scared she was going to ruin this friendship with a classic dumb move of her own, she would have hesitated on the mention of A Someone. She wanted to ask, naturally, she was curious. But Charlie didn't look like he wanted to tell. God knows, she'd never named dropped Jace either, given that part of her was so excited to have someone on the outside of Mystery Inc. for once... it was like she could just be anyone she wanted. Hearing him solidify their friendship with a single title though made Jess start while her arm flung out of her pocket to smack against his front and stop him in place. "Hold the phone, Post Malone, my what?" Sure, some people might have let that moment slip to save anyone the embarrassment, but not Jess. Jess wasn't about to let something like that go. "My whaaaaat?" She cooed in sing-song, lips spreading into a wry grin now as she provoked him to say it again, just for her satisfaction.

charlie

Had he been anyone else, he might've gotten embarrassed. Perhaps stammered, stuttered through some sort of half-assed explanation as to why he'd said what he did. And while Charlie often had his moments of nervousness (mainly when speaking to someone older and more powerful than him), Charlie wasn't that person. He certainly wasn't that person with Jess. Challenging her teasing, he leaned in close, looked around as if he was making sure no one was watching and spoke, emphasizing each syllable, "My best friend," he inhaled sharply as he leaned back, "Please, Jess. I've read your diary, alright? I know you write my name in it a thousand times over, talking about how much you were dying to hear me say it. I've done my research on you, contacted your references and I've decided: you're hired,"

jess

She mocked a troubled gasp, shoving him away from her a little as if offended though every part of her reading the opposite. Despite actually owning a diary, but never having written in it more than a few pages here and there in her life, she mental noted to go home tonight and write their names in a heart with a specific label beneath it that it was just a best friend heart and if Jace happened to find it, not to be worried, even though he would likely be worried anyway because he lived on Anxiety Avenue.... "You didn't." She scoffed, but her lips quickly softened into a grin once more. "Okay, fine. You caught me. At least now I can actually quit my day job." She threw her hands up in surrender before toeing at the pavement, smile sobering into one of genuine comfort and optimism. Her best friend. Her new best friend. Jess would bask in that for a while. "Your go." She prompted. "If you assume I'm your best friend though, I'm going to call cheat round because you already read my diary and might be psychic, so..."

charlie

He watched her little performance with great amusement, though all the while he acted as if he had done nothing wrong. Hands on his hips, he looked away, particularly indignant. "I did, and I'll do it again," he shook his fist at her, but then scrunched his face up in disbelief. A thin-lipped, though not unkind, smile on his face, "I feel like you're almost always looking for some excuse to leave your job," he teased. 

Charlie felt warm, though it was the dead of night in early winter, and he found he couldn't wait to tell Finley about this. There was a paranoid thought that budded that hoped she wouldn't be jealous--after all, their relationships were entirely different--but it was quickly suffocated. He knew Finley better than that. He snapped his fingers, as if that had been exactly what he was about to do, and whined (only just a little). "I was actually going to assume your life has been forever changed from this moment, but I already know that's one-hundred percent true, so there's no fun in it. But I will say that I bet you make friends like this with everyone you meet, since I can't imagine anyone not liking you. So there you go. There's not a person in this world that doesn't have fond memories with Jess," he said, nodding with finality and placing his frozen hands back in his pockets. If only being a vampire meant you had extra body heat, too. He laughed, "Look at this becoming a compliment-fest. I swear, I'm not such a sap," he totally, totally was.

jess

"You're not wrong," She threw fingers at him then in jest, hating her reception job simply for the fact that her dad had been the one to coin it for her when she'd first come back to West Hollow last year. Sure, being able to tease Nolan on the regular was debatably worth it, but as a whole, Minesweeper was only so entertaining on slow days. Keeping an easy grin on her face, she listened to his assumption of her and even if the slight squint of her eyes left showing positivity, the smile didn't. It was the kind of lingering expression she wore whenever her mom said something indirectly insulting and Jess stubbornly planned not to let her real feelings show. There was a lot she could say to that assumption, but key rules determined that she make it brisk as not to fill in all the gaps. There was something fun about a mystery in her eyes, something alluring about missing details as Jess was always the type to search for the hidden answers. But this topic was just too much to get into, so she jerked her chin away and looked ahead of them instead, trying to appear as apathetic as she could. Not Jess's strong suit. "You're enough humble for the both of us so, sure. I'll take it. I'm a fond memory maker, it's my patent design." She shrugged, wondering if that was enough. "I'm gonna assume now that you just like giving people compliments, especially people you call your best friends... in fact, I bet you just say that to all the girls." She teased.

charlie

He grabbed her fingers, looking at her dead in the eyes in the most serious way he could muster, "Then run away with me, Jess. Together, we could see the world!" But then, he abruptly let them go, dramatically turning away from her, "Ah, you'll never leave that job of yours. You're just playing with my heart, but I know you're too ambitious for the dreams I have of us," 

There were certain tells, he knew, when someone had hit a sore spot. Charlie was all too aware of them, having unintentionally studied humanity and their tics as he aged without aging. Besides, he wore his heart on his sleeve and tried to disguise it far too often--going as far as to practice in the mirror--so he knew a thing or two about topics that shouldn't be pressed any further. He'd had a sneaking suspicion, when her smile froze on her face, but it wasn't until she turned away that his beliefs were confirmed. A conversation for another time, perhaps, but some nights with Jess often had the feeling like they were walking on the edge of the world. Maybe tomorrow wouldn't happen, and it wasn't because he had no faith in their friendship, but it was because Charlie was painfully aware of how short-lived the lives of humans were. "Hmm," he mused, trying to keep it light, "that sounds like someone's cheating. That's fine, I get it," he said, his voice purposefully rising in pitch, "you just don't trust me,"

What she said was, objectively, factual. Charlie did like giving people compliments, he liked to make people happy. His favourite kinds were the blindsiding ones, ones that came out of nowhere. But as she continued on, it plainly wasn't. In fact, for decades he couldn't even say he'd had a single friend. And though Jess did qualify as a best friend, could it even be true, given the great lie he kept from her about his identity? "I do," he said, with a careless shrug and a sly grin on his face, "you're just one of many, obviously. It's not like you take up all of my nights, or anything..."

jess

Laughing at his scripted display, her fingers felt like happy, warm little twigs in his hand. Cold hands, warm heart they always said and Jess had assumed that was just something to make people with crappy circulatory systems feel better... Not Charlie, though. For him, she'd agree with the They this one time only. After all, They were just a social monarch, one of which Jess had no intention of hailing should neither of them be their own sistering government. "Hey. No hard feelings, I bet you hear this lots but, I don't trust a lot of people..." She announced in a tone then that was very clearly just as scripted, then, she broke character to add; "Except for David Attenborough, he's never given me a reason to doubt him. Pedestal guy right there." She pointed out, strolling along happily as the conversation took yet another river rapids bend of positive motion. "Oh no, sure, I get it, I'm just... I mean, you know, my own sleep deprivation is nothing to go by when it comes to us being friends or anything..." She wiggled a finger between them, with a smug grin. "It's not like, you know, I'm living in another timezone for you or anything."

charlie

"David Attenborough is actually my father, so," he tsked, "by proxy that means you have to trust me. Attenborough, Atwood, same thing really. Just had to change it a little to avoid all the nepotism, you know? I'd like to think my accomplishments were my accomplishments, and not just because of who my dad is," His hands had gotten so cold, by this point, he was ready to put them in his mouth. In fact, he did: he placed his right hand in his mouth, and when he spoke next, it was muffled. "No, not at all," but he gave up quickly, spitting his hand back out and shoving it in his pocket, "living in a different timezone is nothing. When you live on Mars for me, then maybe I'll come to consider what you're suggesting. Is it my go or yours, by the way?"

jess

Hearing his last name, Jess found herself smiling goofily. Charlie Atwood, he sounded like a famous something and she was about to tell him so until he spoke straight to her soul. I'd like to think my accomplishments were my accomplishments, and not just because of who my dad is... The words hit her in the chest like a freight train heading for nowhere, fast. She could relate in every sense of the presumably false statement, having a better idea of the inside of her dad's wallet than she wished she did. Though, in great reflection of herself, Jess couldn't say she had much to be proud of in terms of her own accomplishments. Mystery Inc? The day anyone someone who wasn't in Mystery Inc. congratulated her on the idea would be the day Catherine broke a genuine smile or Hell froze over, whichever one came first. "Mars," She made a face then and hacked a faux spitball onto the pavement. "Call me when Jupiter's free." She announced before leaning out to drop her empty cup in the public garbage, then grabbed ahold of the back railing of Their Park Bench and loped over it the monkey way instead of rounding it like a normal person. Sat on the back of it, sneakers firmly planted where her butt should be, Jess tucked herself into her windbreaker, chest to knees, a shiver radiating out of her. "It's your go, Cheater." She told him, straightening back up to peer for him.

charlie

Following suit, he shook his head in amusement as Jess crawled over the park bench. Walking around to the front, he bent his knees twice before jumping up onto the bench, shaking its foundation, and plopping down on the seat so that he had to stare at her, leaning his head to rest against the backboard of the bench. "Jupiter, really? Not Neptune," he shook his head, a look of disgust on his face, "And here I actually let myself believe you liked me," He stared up at the sky, wanting to throw a wrench in their conversation, but not sure of how to go about it, exactly. Finally, it came to him. "You are..." he began, but trailed off, realizing he needed to look her dead in the eyes this time, and when he did, there was a twinkle of mischief planted in his own, "an excellent singer, and one day--I pray it's today--you will bless me with your angelic singing voice. I will only accept Backstreet Boy's Larger Than Life, to be perfectly clear, here,"

jess

"Not Neptune." She confirmed, "Neptune is for wussies. It's also super far from the sun. Now let me tell you, as someone who is vastly experienced in space travel," She deemed, hand flapping out in a social gesture. "If any of us are gonna follow Icarus's footsteps it's yours truly," She put a hand to her chest then, "And how the heck am I supposed to do that..." She glanced upwards, counting in her head, "Eight gas-balls away from the sun, my friend? Riddle me that." She explained, before waving him off. "I mean, don't. It's rhetorical. Just admit I'm right and so we don't have to settle this mano e mano." She grinned. He got her, like a fish to sparkly bait, she was hanging onto the end of his statement for what she was exactly. Leering, craning her neck, she waiting with bated breath, interested to hear his assumption of her. When it came, however, Jess felt her face get hot, a blessing in disguise really with the weather outside but still a curse in some evidential way. Looking down at her hands, she tried not to grin, mostly at his song request and a lot because once again, he wasn't entirely wrong. "Debatable. You're charting subjective waters here," She grinned, pressing her fingers into her palm until he knuckles cracked. "So close, but not close enough, Sinbad. What'll it be next, waffles or ice cream?"

charlie

“No way, hosé. Not a chance. I’m going to fly myself into the sun first,” he stood up, pointing East, “and I’ll race you there,” a challenge rested on his face, as if he was indeed daring her to hop up and race him to the sunrise. It wasn’t that far off, at this point, and it would warm both of them up—assuming, of course, she wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. Even one as silly and childish as this. Actually, scratch that. Especially because it was as silly and childish like this. Close, though? He hadn’t expected to be close at all. Sometimes even he shocked himself with how much he could guess about a person. His interest was intensely piqued, and he had half a mind to dramatically beg her at her feet. He tilted his head down underneath hers, so that she could still see his expression, “Debatable, eh? Oh, Jess,” he moved away, “poor, misguided Jess. There is only one judge of that, and that’s me. I’m an expert listener, I listen to music all the time so I may as well have a PhD. But I’ll go with waffles, this go around,”March 7, 2018

jess

At the sudden announcement of a race, Jess felt herself start, unsure if he was being literal or not. Her feet were ready, if there was anything she was good at it was running. Usually away, but running anywhere all the same. Knees bouncing in anticipation, she stared at him, blue meeting brown with wild excitement. Listening to him waffle on about almost getting his assumption right, she smirked, eyes slimming down into mischief. "Tell you what...." She drew out the silence then for dramatic effect, "You beat me to the sun and I'll give you another hint." Her expression turned bright, before she clambered off the bench with both hands coming to pin Charlie down onto the seat, making sure she collected herself a healthy head start by weighing him down before taking off aimlessly into the park with a wild scream of excitement.March 8, 2018

charlie

Charlie let out the gasp of a laugh as she completely sabotaged his chances, shouting cheater! after her before waiting a moment longer then setting off after her. Running as a human required more effort than he'd imagined. It had been ages since he'd done so (actually, he wasn't sure if he'd ever had the need to since being turned) and he found it...honestly strenuous. Still, he managed to somewhat catch up with her, and it occurred to him that there was no set location for when they would stop. He supposed they would continue on going until one of them got tired. If that were the case, he'd definitely win. And if that meant that Jess would tell him her secret, then so be it.March 11, 2018

jess

There was something euphoric about racing through the park at this time of night, something crazily amazing about the safety she felt tearing through the shadows of darkness with Charlie somewhere nearby, something infinite about the way their laughter echoed through the night and something... that just made her feel bigger than herself hanging in the air as it whistled past her ears. Although the aim was a race, Jess spread her arms out and cackled into the thin lining of trees they threaded through like an obstacle course, Jess shoving at Charlie with her elbow and hands whenever he got close or threatened to overtake her. 

Whether he was simply fitter than her or an athlete in a past life, he didn't seem to be deteriorating at the rate that Jess was. Her lungs were starting to burn, her cheeks even more as her skin heated up but the wind was still icy cold. Her leg muscles began to wean and it was then that Jess saw the sun, burning brightly in front of her, right close enough to get a grip. So with the last burst of energy that she had she threw an arm out and reached for it, fingers brushing through golden tendrils before she was able to fasten her fist and pull hard in triumph. With such momentum behind her and her hand in Charlie's jacket, the two went down together like stones in a lake, voices travelling in the shock and thrill. 

Thumping hard into the frosty grass, Jess felt herself tumble over his legs and become a heap until she rolled off and splayed herself in the grass next to him like roadkill. Arms out, chest rising and falling as she panted, completely out of breath, she beamed up at the canopy of the trees and any stars that peaked through. She stared and she puffed and she grinned. Then, she twitched her head to the side and looked at Charlie, eyes alight. "I win," She gasped, looking at him fondly, cheeks pink. "But... just for the record... I don't sing... Not to say I can't... but I don't..." She admitted finally through heavy breaths.(edited)March 19, 2018

charlie

It had caught him off guard, though the symbolism was lost on him, and thus, sent him tumbling down as though he were a leaf and not, in actuality, a highly balanced vampire. Laughter erupted within him so strongly it felt as if his skin would split open, and out would come rolling all of his insides. It was good, still, to feel so explosive and yet not destructive. “You…” he said, breathing heavily for show, “are such a cheater!” 

He wore a shocked smile on his face, partially amused at her behaviour and partially genuinely surprised (yet, at the same time, not all that surprised once he really thought hard about it all). He gave her a playful shove, letting cold air fill and bite as his lungs as he stared through the trees and into the sky. He had half a mind to begin to describe her the skyline back when he was human, how different and magical it was at night, how he chased small towns and rural villages just to get a tiny semblance of that same feeling back. 

Guilt wreaked throughout him once more as he decided against it, knowing so much about her yet not knowing enough at all (though, would he ever?) to share something so colossal. She might never in a million years believe him, or worse, believe him and hate him for it—and though he knew it was selfish, he was content to keep this a secret for as long as he could.

A few moments of silence had passed between them. These weren’t exactly common, but they weren’t out of place, either. It was getting to be 4 in the morning, hell, it felt closer to Charlie, and Charlie had spent so many of his nights wandering—now running, too, apparently—around town with Jess that it was a wonder he hadn’t starved to death yet. “Hey, Jess…” he began, feeling uncharacteristically nervous, at least he had never before felt that way around her, “…I’m glad I met you. Really glad.”

jess

Jess tucked her forearms into her chest, letting out a cackle as Charlie shoved her playfully, despite it having little effect in their harmless horizontal position. She half rolled away from him, as if attempting to avoid the attack much after it had happened before she rolled back and thumped shoulders with him. "Yeah, well, I never said I was a neater," She exclaimed innocently, lifting hands out in front of her in mock surrender before tucking them into her armpits to keep them warm. Rolling her head to the side she looked at Charlie with a grin. "A not-cheater." She then clarified after a beat. After that, she turned her head back to the sky, peering up at the darkness that clouded up behind the thin canopy of the trees. There were still some stars refusing to stand back from the clouds, and Jess smiled at them, glad for their bright presence. For a moment, she counted it special, how many people she'd shared this exact same view with. How many friends of hers she knew she could count on to love and protect her and talk silly stories with her. 

Wanting to look at Charlie again, Jess felt a warm feeling spread through her chest as she realized she'd gained a new one. Even if somewhere in the back of her hollow shell, she knew she'd lost some choice others too.Hearing her name suddenly albeit softly, Jess turned her head to look at Charlie in question. Dark eyes running over the length of his profile, his soft cheeks, and his perfectly curved nose, she found herself smiling before he even said anything. The pause was baited with anticipation, her eyes looking at his mouth for no other reason than desperately waiting for the words to come out. A second of panic wondered if he was going to say something to ruin all of this, but then he did the opposite, and Jess felt the collection of starts from the sky that were reflected in her chest explode. She wanted to throw herself at him in an appreciative hug, she wanted to add a new and unnecessary addition to their handshake they could never remember, and in that moment, she wanted to tell him everything she appreciated about him and what he'd done for her so far.

 Instead, though, she just began to grin at him, wide and honest. "Me too," She settled lamely, not having the right words to convey everything she wanted to say. Looking back at the sky then, she hesitated, thinking about the few things they'd confessed to each other that night. Chewing on the insides of her lips a little, she was glad they had a view, it gave her the bravery she needed to talk about things she didn't know how to talk about with anyone else. "I have a someone," She began ominously, feeling the curiosity inside herself to ask about what Charlie's someone had been like, before she'd passed away. But she knew it could be a slippery slope into uncharted territory he may not have wanted her to be in, so instead, she opened herself up and let herself bleed a little. "I never really used to believe in that soulmate stuff, I thought it was really stupid because when I was growing up I always struggled with..." How did she even put it? Herself? That felt too small. Everything surrounding who she was as a personal concept? That felt like too much."I don't know, I just struggle with people... and it's not like it's their fault, it's just the way I am. I just... I don't know how to be what people want. It's like I know what they want from me and then I go ahead and do the opposite of that," She gestured up in front of her at nothing, thinking of every time she'd ever gotten uncomfortable about something and backpedaled so fast she'd given the person in return whiplash. "And I can't help it, I don't know how to not do it. It's not even like I do something monumentally wrong either, which I think is worse. At least you can blame someone for that, or for something they did." She was word vomiting now, not sure how to translate what she was thinking about. Or who. It was a cluster combination after all, of all the issues she'd had with her parents, together and apart. With Monday, with Nate. Hell, even with Penny sometimes. She'd made her mark everywhere. "I just," She exhaled, flopping her arms onto the frosty grass beside her and looking at the sky, defeated. "I feel like a failure. And I know that's like, a human being's standard response to everything but I do, I feel like he's going to wake up one day and realize I'm not this awesome thing he's always imagined." 

It may have been volatile to mention Jace and her had grown up together then, they'd seen each other through the bad acne and the fashion phases, but she didn't. She just needed this, an unbiased vessel to talk to. She wasn't even sure she needed Charlie to reply at this point, she just needed to get this out of her. "I don't want to be dramatic and say I've spent my whole life disappointing people, but... sometimes it feels that way," She rolled her head to the side finally, looking at Charlie with the most earnest and fearful expression she may have ever given him. "I can't disappoint him too. It would kill me."

charlie

“Neater, neater, pumpkin eater?” He offered, laughing to himself. It was times like this, with something as simple as making up a word, that Charlie really felt like the two were so well-suited to each other. It was exactly the type of thing he would do, and it felt…incredibly validating that someone else existed like him. It was almost to the point where he could predict how she would react, yet at the same time, could not predict it at all. The two of them were predictable in their unpredictability. It was getting colder and colder as the night wore on, but still, he couldn’t help but feel impossibly warm. Maybe that was just the type of effect Jess had on people: the ability to make them feel warm. Was she even aware? Of how impossibly normal he felt around her, and what that meant to him? It wasn’t that Charlie was particularly low in his self-esteem, quite the opposite, but it was rather rare that he found someone who matched him step for step. Jess was special, unique. It was as if, with everyone else, Charlie held his breath in his chest. But with her, he could finally breathe. He would remember their time with the utmost fondness, should it suddenly end, and he would be eternally grateful for the feelings she elicited in him. Things she would never know—couldn’t know—because of the very nature of their friendship. Charlie was a vampire, he had been alive for nearly 200 years, give or take a few, and there were times (though he would be reluctant to admit) that he found himself grow ambivalent to all things. Jess reignited his passion for, well, humanity.

Something changed in the air once his words hit reality. There was an energy to the air, a blending of emotions, releasing between the two of them in a collection of fireworks. She didn’t have to say she agreed, Charlie already knew before the words escaped her mouth. He wanted to tell her he felt it too, strangely, all the desires she had. The need to hug the other, to scream and laugh with an abundance of joy at having found each other. It almost felt like fate that they had met, that the day Charlie decided he would try and make some new friend by sharing his ridiculous opinions, throwing it out into the world and hoping to catch something in his net, was the very same day Jess had rolled in. What a large world it was, and how deeply aware he was of that fact, and yet somehow they had managed to be in the same place at exactly the right time.It is beautiful, isn’t it? He wanted to say, How small we are. How great the world is, so much bigger than us, so much more than we could ever be. And yet, how unbelievably infinite you make me feel. It occurred to him then, in that moment, that Jess had quite literally just caused him to write a poem, albeit a small one, in his mind. How for decades his journal remained untouched but now, suddenly, he was tempted to pick up the pen again. He was so excited about this fact that he nearly missed what she’d said, catching up belatedly, turning around and leaning on his elbow, staring at her face as she stared at the stars. There was a tone to the way she spoke that told Charlie now was not the right time to tease. That she was sharing a feeling she may not have shared with anyone else before or after. His face softened as a result, removing the mask of jokes and ebullience he had grown used to wearing around her. It was difficult to give her advice that she would think to take. Charlie was monumentally older than her, by 150 years and some change, and he had the incredible benefit of hindsight in a way that Jess never could. 

“I don’t know about soulmates,” he said, agreeing with her in an honest way. There was a time when he’d thought Gabriele was his soulmate, and when he could no longer be with her, his world had ended. When the year came that he realized she’d most likely have passed on, he became the darkest version of himself.But then he had met Augustus, and for a time, it seemed like everything would change. Slowly but surely he had come to trust him, to rely on him, to…Well, that ended poorly, considering the man had disappeared without a trace, considering the man was who he was. If soulmates existed, he obviously hadn’t found his yet, but still his relationship with both Gabriele and Augustus felt awfully close to something like that. “But I know a thing or two about love,” he said this almost hesitantly, as if he was ready for Jess to remind him he was technically younger than her. “And I think…when it’s right, when it’s a soulmate or something close, you’re loved for all of who you are. Not in spite of those things, but because of them. You’re seen more than you think you are, not just understood but known, almost.” He thought about the way Gabriele seemed to see right through him, know things before he even knew them himself. If she were around today, there was not a doubt in his heart that she would accept the things he had done and love him anyway. And he had done a great deal of harm to others, in ways he was still ashamed of. Then there was Augustus, who had seen him through his days as a literal killer, and though the man was no better than he was in that respect it still managed to mean a great deal to Charlie that he’d stuck around anyway. 

Even in the 70s, when things were so awkward and strained, yet not at all, when Charlie had changed into something closer to the man he was today…Augustus still accepted it, regardless of the fact that he’d made passing comments about how he was getting soft.It hurt to hear how she viewed herself. Jess was the type of person that simply exuded confidence without being arrogant, and while he knew through experience that those people often had the most debilitating self-esteem, hearing it out loud when he cared so deeply about her almost stung him. He didn’t know how to give her advice that wasn’t simply placating, so he offered the next best thing: the truth. “I feel like a failure, too,” he said quietly, thinking of all the life-altering mistakes he had made. “I feel like I’ve done so much wrong in my life, I don’t know how I’ll ever escape it. I don’t know that I deserve to, maybe I’m meant to have these things haunt me for the rest of my life,” he said, turning around and leaning back, unable to stare at her any longer as he spoke. He didn’t mind her dramatics, really, knew exactly the feeling she was describing. It was why he tried so hard to be kind to everyone, to forgive others and give them the benefit of the doubt. Because it was what he hoped others could do for him, and maybe that was intrinsically selfish, but do onto others as you would be done onto you was a phrase for a reason, right? He took in a breath, “I once loved someone who greatly disappointed me, who ended up being nothing like I thought they were. It was crushing. But…I think the difference between you and this person is that you’re self aware, and you’re trying to change. You don’t want to be like this, you don’t want to hurt people. You’re figuring things out, hell, you’re figuring yourself out. It’s the age for it, I think. It’s the age where we decide the type of person we want to be, the type of influence we want to have on others. And I think…I think you’re good, you know?”

#a: jess #c: jess #convo: jess2 #chat: the bench

[fapangel]

And what is your take on the media finally reporting on Antifa, and the people who have gone strang my silent while comparing them to Indiana Jones or th soldiers of Notmandy

It's a perfect time to answer this question,because in the last few days, the media has begun to tentatively trydigging up Charlottesville again, such as this utterlybugfuck headline in the Atlantic, lastweek's WaPo op-ed digging it up again, and CNBC's horrifiedscreeching over Trumppointing out how his comments on Antifa were vindicated. Thusthere's no better time to stuff this narrative right back down thebastard's throats by reviewing how they went from praising anddefending violent anarcho-communist insurrectionists as freedomfighters to condemning them as thugs in the space of only two weeks -all because of Trump.

Nobody seems to have grasped the significance ofwhat happened in the last two weeks of August. It's high time thatchanged.

The Power of the Media

It all started, of course, on August 13th,when Trump's initial statement on Charlottesville pointed out thatthe IllinoisNazis weren't the only ones that came to Charlottesville looking tostart trouble. The ensuing savage attacks by Democrats and theirmedia establishment was routine and expected - as was the usualgibberingpsychopathscalling Trump a jackbooted Nazi - but then theestablishment GOP rushed to gore him in the back in a veritableRINO stampede, followed by CEOs on his “advisory councils”resigningwith grand flourishes of self-righteous back-patting. The“mainstream” media and associated attack dogs had been callingTrump Hitler from day one, andyet people that had stuck by himthrough monthsof that unrelenting slanderwere now running scared.

The biggest tellwas Trump himself - the man who'd weathered over a year of beingcalled a racist, homophobe, Islamophobe, sexist, and rapistwithoutoncebacking down, flinching or even blinking, utterlycaved after only 48 hours of constant attacks. Thethorough shredding of their own credibility and the democratizationof information has stripped the media of most of their onetime power,but their ability to tell lies of omission - to exclude entire topicsof conversation from the public sphere - was still enough to sendTrump's most loyal admirers and the majority of the establishment GOPrunning in a panic,andbring to heel a man that'd shrugged off a 13-month campaign ofnonstop hate, character assassination and viscous slander. Thisis also the power of the label “Nazi:” once the media finallymanaged to make it stick - even a little - they got exactly what theywanted; Trump standing before the nation reinforcing their narrativethat Illinois nazis, and onlyIllinoisnazis, were the problem.

Itwas a mistake, of course - the media rewarded Trump by squealing withdelirious glee, then attackinghim allover again with twicethe frothing, foaming-at-the-mouthsavagery, as anyone with a brain could've told him would happen.

Trumprealized his true error almost immediately - andsaid so in as many words on Twitter, stating the obvious: Thatthe Fake News Media were malicious bastards that would never, ever besatisfied by any capitulation he made. Thatpublic tweet was a harbinger of things to come - but not even Iexpected the sheer brass balls Trump displayed when he walked intothe next day's press conference swinging.

The Absolute Madman Actually Fights Back

On August 15th, Trump walked into aTrump Tower press conference and didsomething no careerpolitician would've had the sheer steel balls to do -he stared down the mainstream media jackals that had routed hispolitical and social allies in only 48 hours, and calledthem out as the partisan, lying bastards they were. Thetruly incredible thing was that he didn't walk in with preparedstatements - he counterattacked into the inevitable bad-faithquestions that had fuck-all to do with the point of his pressconference (infrastructure.) He started by calling out the fleeingCEOs out for being job-exporting thieves putting their personalprofits before the national interest, pointed out the partisanship ofreporters and their penchant for timeliness over accuracy, and thenhe dropped the bomb.

Hecalled out Antifa and theblack bloc.

Hechallenged their never-questioned blanket slur “alt-right,”demanding they define it, hepointed out that there was an “alt-left” at Charlottesville thatcharged into the fray swinging clubs,he called a reporter Fake News, like it was their name, (whiletelling them to shut their yap,) and nailed the media for theirdeliberate omission of truth regarding “both sides” atCharlottesville. He even got digs in at McCain and Obama withoutbreaking stride - all of it completely unscripted and in full-contactconfrontation with a hostile media gaggle.

Butby far the most important thing he did was call out the black bloc:

“Now, in the other group also, you had somefine people but you also had troublemakers and you see them come withthe black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats.You had a lot of bad people in the other group too.”

It was arguably betterthan calling them out by name - because he was describing whathe'd seen, as he said, “in the same pictures” we'd all seen. In afew minutes, Trump had blown months of willful media silence andconcealment wide open.

The media did what theyalways do, of course.

They doubled down.

Withindays, the WashingtonPost was stridently defending Antifa, painting them as heroic“anti-racist” activists, their savage violence, oppression anddomestic terrorism as self-defense, and comparing them to WWIIfreedom fighters. That boot-licking pack of lies - written by self-admitted Antifa ally and apologist Mark Bray (a Californianprofessor, of course,) was regurgitatedad nauseum by this long-winded screed as well. Then there's thisalleged “news” story painting Antifa as mostly a fantasy oflunatic right-wing media, (including those dreaded murders theNRA!) and thisopinion story striving to deny any moral equivalency between onegang of race-obsessed, club-swinging totalitarian thugs and theother. Oh, andthis opinion story which shed more whiny bitch tears thanHillary's campaign staff on Nov. 8th. And thislong-winded pile of lies again trying to label antifa thugs asinnocent “protesters,” offering as evidence a twitter video clipby “Unicorn Riot,” a packof left-wing propagandists who leaked the Denver PD's riotmanagement manual, an especially helpful bit of intel for theviolent assholes in Antifa who's black bloc tactics revolve aroundfighting, assaulting, and escaping police riot control techniques.Theyhave a complete fucking tactical manual for such things. (It'sa real scream to read, too.) Therewas also thisarticle claiming Trump was foolish to try fighting the media -this one, as they say, “didn't age well.” Andif all of that wasn'tenough, havethis stirring call from another extremist professor tellingpeople to “start throwing rocks” to stop the “ancientevil now standing unhooded.”

Andthat was the Washington Post alone.The truly insaneoutlets, like Slate, didn't mince words - outrightpraising Antifa as heroic defenders of the innocents against the eviljackbooted fascist stormtroopers, in addition to thisass-kissing, massive feature article that's little more than amouthpiece for an antifa activist to - and I quote - “explain[Antifa's] strain of left-wing militancy to a fascinated but deeplywary wider world.” Fascinated.You can hearthe drool dripping fromthis writer's slack-jawed, star-struck awe. Thenthere was oldreliable the Atlantic asserting the “no moral equivalence” lieonce again. Time magazineexemplified the standard tack for any media (i.e. most of them) lessbatshit fucking loco than the WaPo inthis article, introducing Antifa as some milquetoast, generalized“anti-fascism vibe, man,” whitewashed their violence and savagebeatings of bystanders as mere “window-breaking” vandalism (alongwith parroting their apologies, “the media's picking on US!” and“but they fight back sometimes!”) and talking about the blackbloc's black clothing without naming the actual reason for it - toevade police arrest via anonymity. (CNN'ssimilar puff piece was so savaged for its “peace through violenceheadline” that they hastily changed it.)And it didn't stop there, of course - theRINOs caved again like the craven cowards they are, Trump simplydissolvedhis business advisory councils before any more CEOs could makeself-aggrandizing shows of their resignations, and the arts committieresigned en-masse completewith grade-school theatrics in their maudlin resignation letter.But the absolute best partwas when they started comparing violent anarcho-communist thugs toAMERICAN SOLDIERS STORMING THE BEACH AT D-DAY.

Yes,really - startingwith the Editor In Chief of the Atlantic himself, butsure as hell not stoppingthere. Even CNN couldn'tresist the dank meme. They had gone all-in, lionizing theseCommunist thugs - adherents of the ideology that'd go on to murdertens of thousands of American soldiers and servicemen in Korea,Vietnam and elsewhere - as American heroes. Within a few days ofTrump's doubling down, the mainstream media was erecting Antifa onthe plinths they'd just torn Confederate statues down from, anointingthem with the blood of fallen American soldiers, and praising them asfucking heroes.

Two weeks later, it blew up in their goddamn faces.

That Didn't Age Well

On August 27th, a small “No Marxismin America” rally in Berkeley, consisting entirely of unarmed,peaceful protesters, weresavagely set upon and beaten by a much larger pack of Antifa blackbloc thugs after Berkeley riot police let the bastards into theprotest site without a fight. Since the violence waswitnessed by an AP wire reporter, even the WaPohad to mostly report the facts for a change. That AP footageshowing single conservative rallygoers being viciously beaten andkicked by five or six masked, black-clad thugs apiece proved Trumpright in dramatic and undeniable fashion - but more importantly, itproved the media absolutely, utterly, and horrifyingly wrong.

After piling thatpack of lies as high and wide as they possibly could for weeks, themedia was forced to swallow every ounce of their own shit.

Amere two weeks after churning out that disgusting pack of lies,apologies and outright praise for Antifa I partiallysampled above, the WaPo had to publish thisofficial editorial board op-ed condemning them. The Berkely PD'swillfully allowing the violence to take place must've been especiallyawkward, given the WaPo's twoseparate articlesblaming the Charlottesville PD's lackluster response for the earlierviolence.

Theshit-eating just kept going and going. Mark Bray, the aforementionedAntifa historian, apologist, and cheerleader, was himself disavowedby his own college's president forsupporting a pack of violent thugs, followed by the WaPo'slengthy review of his book which ended with the telling line“The inherent contradiction of antifa is that, if America isindeed so irredeemable and hypocritical that violence is the answer,then what exactly are you fighting to preserve?” Theyalso ran thiscolumn explicitly refuting their earlier denials of moral equivalencybetween antifa and Illinois nazis, which pointed out that theUnited States defeated Nazis andCommunists (onetime ally of the Nazis) but that only Communists areroutinelydefended by the New York Times. Even this defense of antifa bythe WaPo's own media columnist (which blames antifa's sudden bad rapon a Vast Right Wing Meme Machine) opens by admitting that antifa'snewly-tainted name was suddenly everywhere- anda week later they were running demandsfor specific Democraticpoliticians todo the ritual denouncing of The Enemy,for a change. EvenNancyPelosi herself jumpedon the condemnation bandwagon. Even the Mayor of Berkely, JesseArreguin (opensupporter of one of the most violent and cultlike of Antifagroups, By Any Means Necessary,) whowas responsible for ordering Berkeleypolice to stand down on prior occasions (resulting in violence,)went on-record to demand Antifa be classifiedas a “gang.” (The FBIopted for rather stronger labeling.) Eventhe partisan, serial liars at the Southern Poverty Law Centercondemned them, though they refused to apply the “hate” labelthey rubber-stamp almost everyone else with. Even the Chicago fuckingTribune, one of the most consistently rabid anti-Trump publicationsI've seen this side of the WaPo openly criticized Democratsfor their conspicuous silence regarding the Communistinsurrectionists among them.

Theentire debacle was a glorious comeuppance without peer - the entireDemocratic party and mainstream media smear machine caught dead torights in their ghastly, bald-faced lies and forced to choke themdown again.

Amedia smear machine powerful enough to coerce CEOs of massiveinternational corporations, powerful career politicians and even -momentarily - the most powerful man on the planet.In the waning days of August, two weeks after they bent the Leader ofthe Free World to their will, they weren'tjust humiliated and discredited - they were also forced to openlyacknowledge the violent political terrorists that had benefited sostrongly from their willful veil of silence, de-masking them forever.

Andit was all the work of Donald J. Trump.

Hope Rides Alone

Trump knew exactly what he was doing.

His tweet the night before his bombshell Aug. 15thpress conference proves his (most impressive) loins were well-girdedfor combat before he walked before the cameras in Trump Tower - hewas ready and willing to offer battle. He knewthe press (as they always, always do)would be launching questions at him completely unrelated to the topicat hand, questions calculated to do him the most damage - and hechose that as hismoment to engage, rather than working it into his speech as preparedcomments. He countedon their malice to give him the openings he needed - and in a fewminutes of unrehearsed, ad-hoc debating, gave the mainstream mediathe poke needed to set their zealots fervor ablaze. I hate the mediawith such horrific passion that I've said nicer things about anglerfish and Windows ME andeven I wasleft astounded at the media's rush to lionize club-swinging communistterrorists as freedomfighters and heroes - butTrump wasn't. Thecourage to take on the people - and the lies - that'd sent hispolitical allies running like craven cowards not 48 hours earlier isnothing short of astounding, and the kind of risk no careerpolitician would ever entertain. I could've told you that the mediawould paint themselves into a corner with their hysterical, manicscreeching, and that they'd be proven for fools (again)when Antifa inevitably committed a new act of barbaric thuggery, butTrump hadthe sheer brass balls to bankhis very fortunes on it.

And he hitthe jackpot.

Anyonewho thinks Trump isn't playing “4D chess,” or that he's “cavingto pressure” after the lastweek of August is either a boomer crewman, Amish, or a raging idiot.The metric asston(ne?) ofshit the media was forced to eat was absolutely, entirely thanks toTrump's August 15thpress conference. He took their greatest victory over him to-date andturned it into their most bitter defeat in only two weeks time. Onlya fool could doubt the man's brilliance at this point.

Thenext time you hear some Bannonite drone screaming to the high heavensabout DACA, remember the last week of August.