#unless 15 year olds are calling you out for shipping it its not a true toxic ship

[mystxmomo]

Oh shit. Another curiouscat I had to move to tumblr because I broke character limit again.

So I am combining these two together in the same ask because, in truth, I don't think you can talk about Luca and Alva being mischaracterized separate from each other. So much of their mischaracterization comes from a respective opposing interpretation of the other character. I'm actually going to start with Luca, because I do think this is his story for better or for worse.

Guys. Luca is an adult.

More then that, Luca is an abuse victim and an adult runaway. Like that's not a headcanon, that's plain text canon. His dad neglected his family. He got a college application and rejected it within his deductions. 1900 wasn't so long ago that people were going to college at 16. By the time we meet him in the canon of the story, He's an abuse victim still dealing with that, a newly disabled former able bodied man, and coming out of Victorian prison.

A lot of people view Luca as being very childish for how he handled the fight with Alva. And to some degree it was, Luca doesn't seem like he has very good emotional regulation in the way a lot of young adults in that age range just generally are not. Even in the modern day, the amount of early 20 something's having breakdowns on their Twitter page about the injustices of the world is immeasurable.

But he wasn't /in the wrong/. From Luca's perspective, for all the information that he has. Alva Lorenz IS a thief. Not only is he a thief, but he's a thief in such a way that it, TO LUCA'S KNOWLEDGE, profited off his fathers work at the expense of his families well being. His mom died, man. And learning that Alva had those plans recontextualizes it to be just as much Alvas fault as it is his father's.

He has every right to feel betrayed! He has ever right to indignation! Alvas entire platform, to the information Luca has available to him, is based on plagiarization and theft of his families ideas. While there's shown to be a confrontation, we know this argument went on for a significant amount of time because Lucas deductions SHOW people talking about it. Luca accused him of being a thief before the confrontation that killed Alva and disabled Luca, and at any point inbetween that process Alva Lorenz could have sat him down and explained to him that he worked with his father, and that he had as much right to their ideas as his family.

But he didn't. Because Alva Lorenz is kind of a coward! He thought it would go away on its own!

This is where we get into the Alva Lorenz side of things.

Alva, from everything we have been given, is an incredibly immature man hiding that immaturity under the guise of stem professionalism, and then religious authority. With all of the above in mind, even if their relationship WAS strictly a platonic mentor-student relationship, let alone a sudo-familial one, it would not be a healthy one. Their relationship is not a healthy one.

They are both adults. Alva Lorenz is the adult with more life experience. He is the one that should have sat Luca down and explained himself. But he did not. Alva is not mature. He is not a good man. He would NOT be a good father figure. People, when they ship him with Herman, really try to make the fact they have wives work with lavender marriage. You are being too kind to his character. He would have cheated on his wife to be with Herman. And I understand wanting a more positive approach to these relationships, I understand not wanting the female characters to suffer. But that is not the canon we are presented. And we know this, because of how he treated Ann.

If he was a father figure, he would be willing to enable Herman's neglect. He was willing to enable the cat cults abuse of power to get what he needed, and he would be willing to enable Herman's neglect for that same reason. We don't know what he got from the cat cult yet, but we know he was willing to work with them. We know from Ann's perspective that he ruined her life. We know from Alvas perspective that he doesn't even think about the fact that he ruined her life, because she is NONEXISTENT in his narrative. It is ALL about Luca, and his relationship to the Balsa's.

And that's good writing. I know people are disappointed that she doesn't pop up more with him, but that tells you exactly the kind of authority figure he is. She was no one to him, and he treats her like she's no one.

The thing about Luca Balsa is that he loves passionately. Everything he does is from a place of sincere belief in the *rightness* of it. He feels as strongly as he does about perpetual motion because he believes it can help people, and if HE discovers it, HE is helping people. He sincerely does care about the people in his life, even if he is a moron about it. I think Alva Lorenz is a selfish man. I think he loved Herman, and Loves Luca, and because he cares about them that's what his focus is. He does not care that he hurt Ann through the cat cult. As far as we can tell, he does not care that Ann exists. Alva Lorenz exists in a perpetual state of "fuck you I got mine."

The most infuriating part about all of this is that Luca already has a surrogate father figure within The narrative of IDV. He HAS someone that does want to be a healthy mentor figure to him. It's BURKE. burke has been projecting onto him since we have gotten his second year letter. This relationship with Burke is literally what people who don't like Alvaluca characterize the Alva & Luca relationship to be. But at the end of the day, their goal isn't exploring a complications student-teacher relationship. It's engaging with a set of characters in a way they personally see as being morally correct.

And don't get me wrong. I do have a few issues with the Alvaluca community's interpretation of the two that I've never been quite quiet about, and that gets a lot of AlvaLuca people really defensive sometimes. The Alvaluca relationship IS an unhealthy one. You cannot get around that. No matter how much they love and care about eachother, they are so deeply and horribly bad for eachother. But that's the meat of it. They're soulmates in the worst possible way. Theyre always going to effect eachother, intrinsically and miserably.

Above all else, I want to explore Alvaluca as this really uncomfortable relationship. I want the eternity manor au to be brimming with melodrama over the Alvaluca relationship. I want Tracy to try and talk to him directly about her concern only for him to dismiss her. I want Naib to try and bring it up while they're smoking only for Luca to LIE HIS ASS OFF about not thinking anything is wrong with their dynamic. I want Edgar to hate Alvas guts because he's fucking Luca, because he sees the situation and he projects his situation with Sarai and sees red.

Because the unfortunate reality of being an adult that exists in the working world is that your friends will get into these deeply uncomfortable, deeply unhealthy relationships. There will probably be a time where someone you personally care about date someone two decades older than them. One of your college classmates will get caught hooking up with the professor. One of your retail coworkers will get caught fucking in the break room. Some of these relationships will crash and burn, some of them will move on to marriage despite the power imbalance. These are very real things that happen all the time and to say that we are forbidden from exploring that in Media is absolutely goddamn ridiculous.

#It's not to completely tangent #but this is what I mean when I say we don't actually have any toxic yuri in idv. #EmmaEmily is the closest thing we have to that #and people start getting squeamish when their relationship is still being portrayed as relatively positive and caring #just from a former power imbalance. That is aside from the point! Just something I wanted to bring up because you have me ranting and raving #we dont have any femslash pairings that have quite the same level of THIS complexity in its toxicity #unless 15 year olds are calling you out for shipping it its not a true toxic ship

[minnies-mochi]

I’m So Sorry, Not

Vinsmoke Family x Platonic! Sibling! Reader

Warnings: Colorful Language ofc, Bullying, Mentions of Suicide, Toxicity if i can write the characters well, abandonment, drugs, murder, neglect, death, torture

PAINFULLY LONG AND POORLY WRITTEN.

Well, you’re technically a Vinsmoke. You don’t have the same mom as the rest of your siblings.

but you all have the same dad.

you turned out to be another failure.

your father- Judge, has had enough and kicked you out of the empire? 

he left you on the worst island possible

You were so young too. almost turning 7 when your siblings were 13-15 years of age.

you felt alone and abandoned

you had no hope.

you couldn’t even leave the island if you wanted to.

an old woman took you in.

you tried your hardest to find ways to kill yourself.

you even took hand-full of drugs in hopes of overdosing.

yet, you didn’t have the guts to kill yourself. you felt as though, if you kill yourself. you’d be proving your “family” right.

one day, a ship awfully familiar to the one you were kicked off of was sailing closer to the island you resided on.

once it arrived, the island you’ve come to know for 10 years, was burning down slowly.

you ran towards the old woman’s house, you had called grandma after three years of staying on this island.

only to witness her being brutally slashed in the chest by someone who you used to call brother.

Niji smirked when his eyes landed on you,

“y/n! how have you been? we thought you would’ve been dead by now.”

you stayed silent as he approached you, breath hitched.

“hey, say something!”

he was in front of you now…

you watched him warily, slowly backing away.

“Niji, stop bullying the weak. you know she’s a fucking failure like Sanji”

Shit!

Yonji was here now.

Niji’s smirked widened and gripped your hair tightly by the scalp,

“listen here you damn germ, you’ll be coming with us wether you like it or not”

Niji started to pull you by the hair, not stopping despite your protests.

“Let me go!”

you tried clawing on his arm, but you knew it doesn’t affect him at all

you screamed in pain when you felt a sharp pain in your stomach…

‘did this sonic looking bitch just kick me!?’

once on the ship, you were instantly in front of that man.

we know who it is fellas💪🏽

you stared into his emotionless eyes but you already know what he was feeling,

disgust.

“so we meet yet again. we should have left you on an island filled with beasts, that would’ve killed you much faster”

“Shut up! i fucking hate you Vinsmoke Judge”

You try to pull away from hands that where restricting your arms. AKA Yonji.

You see two more, no, three more people behind Judge, from your observation.

Ichiji, Reiju, and someone else.

‘who is that?’

Judge followed your gaze.

“that is your other brother, Sanji”

you can hear the gruffness in his voice, as if he didn’t want to talk to you and say Sanji’s name.

“wait a minute… “brother”? im not a part of this family!”

you shouted, filled with rage and despair.

as much as you feel hurt, but its the truth.

Vinsmoke Judge had disowned you from the family.

“that is true, but we need you to save face. behave yourself failure #2”

Ichiji chimed in.

“save face?”

Yonji let go of your arms and suddenly you were pulled towards the ground, hurting your face in the process.

Judge had stomped on your back.

“don’t screw anything up or we’ll kill you”

you had no choice but to reluctantly agree.

what can you do?

you cant beat up emotionless, sadistic robots and walk away scotch free.

you pursed your lips, trying to find a way to escape.

you snapped out of your thinking process when something clamped down around your wrists.

“you cant be 6 feet away from any of us or the castle, except for sanji, unless you want to lose your hands.”

You cant be serious right now.

your escape plan was now rendered useless.

“let’s head over to Whole Cake Island”

You were basically thrown into your room by Niji and Yonji, with them smirking down at you.

“dicks” you murmured.

a few days had passed, you never left your room, since you had a bathroom attached to it and you requested to one of the servants to deliver food to your room.

there was a knock at your door, you looked at the clock.

it was not lunch time yet.

you opened it and immediately scowled

it was sanji, you did not want to get hurt again.

“wait, wait”

Sanji held up his hands in defense.

you noticed the same golden colored device around Sanji’s wrists.

“can i come in?”

you moved to the side, silently observing Sanji as he walked in.

“you’ve grown, i honestly thought you were still on the ship…rotting and being abused. but, im glad. im glad your still alive”

Sanji tears up and pulls you close to him.

He made a vow,

“I promise you, once i get married. i’ll give you anything that you didnt get to experience as a kid!”

You wanted to tell him that it was okay and that he didnt need to.

you held in your tears, voice shaky as you actually did tell him that it was okay.

that led him to hold you tighter.

after that day, Sanji actually tried his best to be there with you on Whole Cake Island.

The day before Sanji’s wedding, while riding the carriage, Sanji’s friends tried to get him to come back.

Straw hat Luffy….

The events that happened next, shocked me.

Sanji beat up him own captain.

You did not care about what happened to you, you wanted the best for your only brother.

during the wedding, you were panicking hard.

Big Mom planned to annihilate the Vinsmoke family in order to gain their scientific creations.

being stuck in melted candy did not help your despair.

suddenly, Big Mom let out a big wail, hurting your ears in the process.

Sanji broke everyone free from the confines of melted candy.

you watched as Germa 66 did their transformation half way and started running towards Bege’s castle.

You felt self conscious.

you weren’t anything special, you did not have any abilities, you did not know how to fight, all you do know how to do is run.

but you weren’t fast enough.

you felt someone loop their arms around your waist, zooming towards Perospero, and throwing a punch at him.

“Kneel before Germa’s scientific might!”

It was Ichiji.

As everyone had gotten into the castle, Sanji disowned Judge and the rest of Germa.

Unknowingly, you stood in front of a mirror, with your back towards it.

You felt you mouth being covered tightly and was dragged into the mirror, no one batting an eye.

You were then tied up by your perpetrator.

You took a glance at a mirrors reflection and it was Charlotte Amande.

‘im going to die!’

That wasn’t the case, she had brought you into a confined room, no windows.

‘ah….this is a torture chamber’

after 3 hours of being tortured, i managed to escape.

you came to the realization that you’re on Cacao Island.

injured and all you could do was lean in the wall.

“huff….huff….” you panted, just a few more steps before you reached the plaza. The pain became unbearable.

It was already dark out.

I assumed there was battle going on, since Germa 66 was fighting off the Big Mom Pirates. “Go back to your ships, Germa 66! Mission Accomplished!” Ichiji yelled out, his eyes spotting me leaning against the wall. He grabbed the back of my shirt and we flew back to the main ship.

Once we had arrived, Ichiji placed me down on the ground gently. ‘well thats a surprise. I’m guessing Sanji left with his crew, im glad that he made it out’. My head felt light, i could barely hold myself up. “Germa 66! We’ll withdraw!” Judge said as he turned around and halted.

Big Mom was coming. Germa 66 was on guard for battle, even though they took a bunch of damage in the past few hours.

After trying to fend off the Big Mom Pirates. Germa was defeated. 2 super humans and 1 regular human were captured by the enemy.

I tried to pull from one of my restraints, but i was already physically drained from the torture i had endured. i am going through yet another torture. this time it was with Charlotte Daifuku.

Daifuku held me still as Oven used his devil fruit to sear the skin on my left forearm. I screamed in pain, not knowing Niji and Yonji can hear me in a room above them. Then, Mon-d’or made a gash in my leg. He then poured boiling water onto it “oops! Im sorry, not!”, he smirked. I bit my bottom lip hard, trying not to make a sound. This continued for who knows how long…

It felt like a while when they left. I felt so lifeless. the door opened and i was prepared to endure more torture. But it turns out it was Germa and….. Caesar?? Reiju used her poison to melt away the chains holding my body down. I couldn’t move. i could barely move…Ichiji nodded at Caesar and Caesar slung me over his shoulder, mindful of my wounds.

We made it back to the main ship of Germa. my body started to become more and more numb by the second. Ichiji took me into his arms and steadily walked towards the infirmary. “You okay? You’re not going to die are you?” He said, as he slowly started to pick up his pace after only getting a nod from me.

We’ve reached the infirmary. But the nurse there told Ichiji that I needed surgery to stitch up any open wounds and that i probably wouldnt make it. Niji tried arguing with the nurse, “what do you mean that she doesnt have enough blood? don’t we have blood packs here? why do you just give it to her?”. of course, the nurse tried to reason with Niji but she stopped not wanting to piss him off.

Yonji, clenched the blanket on top of him into his fist. ‘she cant die. we owe sanji for saving our lives.’ he thought. “im sorry, but she already looks like shes about to pass on”, the Vinsmoke brothers turned their heads towards their little sister. little sister?

sister?

when had they considered her a little sister? she did not share the same blood as their mother, so why should they consider her as their sister? just because she shares blood with their father doesn’t mean- “how long will she live?” and feminine voice chided in behind Ichiji.

Reiju and their father came in the room.

The nurse fumbled with her watch, not wasting anytime before the brothers become ruthless. “a-about an hour, ma’am!”, the nurse wanted to slap herself for being too nervous. Ichiji laid you onto an empty infirmary bed. Your breath hitched in pain.

Judge strutted towards your bed and stared down at you, “You did well, for a failure”. You deadpanned at him, even though you were dying. Yonji cursed under his breath, the Vinsmoke family turning to him. “why did it have to turn out like this?”.

Although he wouldn’t admit this, Yonji had cared for you. Ichiji and Niji narrowed their eyes at him. Ichiji started, “don’t tell me your getting all mushy already”, “don’t tell me you did not care for her all along, notice how you saved her the most?” Yonji retorted. Niji snorted “care for her? shes nothing but a weakling in the Vinsmoke bloodline”. The brothers were going back in forth, Judge chiming in here and there.

Reiju sneakily brought her hand to hold yours and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She smiled down to you, letting you know she loves you in her own way. but her eyes widened a little.

you were cold. cold to the touch.

she noticed that your eyes were lifeless. she knew. she knew, you had already passed on. With a wobbly smile, she closed your eyes and looked at the time. Trying to hold in her tears, “time of death is 4:37 p.m.”. As soon as she said that. The brothers felt their cold hearts shatter, yet they could not shed a single tear.

They had lost a sister. Their little sister at that. Sanji didn’t get to hear the bad news at all.

“In the back of my mind, you died. and I didn't even cry, no, not a single tear. and I'm sick of waiting patiently for someone that won't even arrive….” - d4vid, Romantic Homicide.

#one piece x y/n #one piece angst #vinsmoke judge #vinsmoke sanji #vinsmoke ichiji #vinsmoke yonji #vinsmoke niji #vinsmoke reiju #one piece luffy #charlotte linlin #big mom #one peice #vinsmoke brothers

[txemrn]

Like Ships in the Night

Prologue: We Finally Got It All Right

Welcome to my new anthology series Like Ships in the Night! I am so fortunate to have some amazing readers that enjoy this sweet pairing, and have expressed interest in seeing how fate tried bringing them back together during their 15 years apart. And you know what? I want to see that, too! So... here it is, and I hope you enjoy this adventure as much as I enjoyed dreaming about it and creating it! Each story can be read as a one-shot (unless noted), and--I'm so excited about this part--you are going to see some of canon woven into this. And in true Emily-fashion, it's not going to follow a specific time-line, but you will be able to follow along.

For those of you who are new to Tatum Erikson: this is the infamous "Hopkins Girl"... and in my AU, she and Ethan find their way back to each other.

🔞This collection of stories is intended for mature audiences only. By continuing, you agree that you are 18 years of age or older. TW for chapters will be included with each part. 🔞

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x f!OC (Tatum Erikson-Ramsey)

Series Music Inspo: "Ships in the Night" by Mat Kearney

Chapter Music Inspo: "I Choose You" by Sara Bareilles

Chapter Summary: On the night of their wedding, Tatum begins to reflect about her relationship with Ethan... and about all of the missed opportunities that they had with one another.

Word Count: ~3400

Warnings: NSFW/smut 🍋; language

A/N: Some of these characters/plots belong to our friends at Pixelberry. Huge thank you to my girl @charlotteg234 for helping me choreograph my smut, and to my girl @ao719 for looking over said smut! lol Love you both! Not truly beta'd; please excuse my errors.

~🖤~

Would you call me crazy if I told you I believe in cheesy romance stories? You know the type: the kind where the rich CEO’s car breaks down in a small town, where he meets the shy, yet beautiful local pastry chef with a failing bakery? He inevitably screws things up, but he proves his love by performing a grand gesture–in this case, buying out her bakery to give it back to her. Or how about the age-old story where a woman meets a stranger in a bar, spends a hot night of passion with him, only to find out in the morning that he is her new boss?  Or he’s the son of her boss? Or he’s the crown prince of some made-up country in the Mediterranean? 

Now, before you roll your eyes at me, I know what you’re thinking. Stuff like that doesn’t actually happen in real life. Men don’t go out of their way to make fools of themselves for love. Love has its limits, and the sensation of being ‘swept off your feet’ is nothing more than a trigger of chemicals in your body, supported by the greeting card companies and flower shops.  And let me tell you: I totally agree with you.

Until it happened to me.

When I was twenty-three, I fell in love with the most intelligent, fearless, most handsome man I had ever met in my life. He was strong, yet sensitive; he was quiet, but hilarious.  He was such a colossal pain in my ass. And I absolutely loved him for it. For over three years, our relationship was thrilling, breath-taking, all-consuming and wild. It was the kind of love that inspires love songs and poetry, a love that makes you believe in soulmates and wishing on stars and happily ever afters.  We had no idea what the hell we were doing, which made it so incredibly perfect. He was so incredibly perfect.

Then, I single-handedly fucked it up. Everything that was good in my life, I threw it all away in a single moment. And that incredibly perfect man… I broke him. And the worst part? I changed him. Because of me, he learned to be cold and hard; he learned to be closed off, to protect himself from getting hurt ever again. He lost that spontaneous bright light in his eyes. And love?  He stopped believing in it.   

But, I’ll let you in on a little secret: the story of Ethan Ramsey and Tatum Erikson doesn’t stop there.  It should’ve. My God, it should’ve, but fate had a different ending for us.

“Tate?”

His voice. It still rings like a melody to me, especially with my name dancing on his lips. Well, that and judging from his mumble, his keys must be in his mouth.  His hands are full with a late dinner, and no doubt, Jenner is making it nearly impossible for him to sneak through the door with his excitement.

I give the navy velvet sky one more glance as I turn to walk back inside from our balcony. Pulling the curtains shut, I watch Ethan set the table before lighting a few tapered candles between our plates. He then promptly unpacks the brown paper bags of our greasy, late-night fast food dinner.

Recinching the white satin belt of my short, lace-trimmed robe startles him into a double-take.  “There you are,” he beams brightly at me; he offers a guilty smile as he claps his hands. “Nothing was open at 1:30 in the morning except…” he sighs, “the golden arches.”

Raising a playful eyebrow, I saunter closer to him, closing the gap between us. As I wrap my arms around his thick, swole musculature, his taut, strong arms envelop my own body. He pulls me closer, pressing me lovingly into the flat planes of his chest.

“Mmmm…" I nuzzle into him, "it’s perfect. My husband did good,” I steal a fry.

He smirks before kissing my forehead. He looks at his watch. “It’s been–” he clicks his tongue, “--nine hours? I really hope I haven’t messed this marriage-thing up too badly just yet. Although, I’m not so sure that feeding my wife McDonald’s on her wedding night is being a good husband.”

"I think you're doing a damn good job on keeping her satiated, Mr. Ramsey," I giggle under my breath. 

The man truly is a god. His glorious tongue and nimble fingers permeated secret parts of me during our quaint wedding reception earlier, making us swiftly take our exit during the main course.  Even now after spending four breathless hours making love, I look up into those possessive crystal eyes, and my arousal instantly awakens. God, I need him.

Ethan tilts his head lower towards me, his breath warm on the shell of my ear. “Every touch from you, Mrs. Ramsey, leaves my begging… for … more," he nips at my earlobe, punctuating his words.  The sudden sting ignites a fury of goosebumps across my skin.

And suddenly, I can't let go of him. Feeling the heat of his body against my own intoxicates me like a fine vintage wine. This man, this honorable and selfless man: he is my beloved, my husband, my forever. My soul literally craves just to be in his presence; my being thirsts to be held steadfast in the oasis of his heart. I want to dive deep and succumb to his currents; the height of his love I will never, ever be able to fathom. 

And to think: he chose me. Again.

The silky fabric of my robe slips off my shoulder. Ethan's large hand brushes across my exposed freckled skin, admiring my decollete as if he was experiencing it for the first time. His breath shutters against my chest, his desire hardening against my belly. His mouth presses to my exposed skin as he marks me as his own. The pull from his pout is heavenly; he burrows his face into my neck, his arms hugging me tightly.

I tenderly rake my fingers through his espresso waves, massaging the back of his neck.

"My wife…" he silently breathes against me like a fervent prayer. His hands find the loose knot of my belt, pulling the tie undone with his thumb. The material flounces open, his fingers roaming across my bare curves.

His lips find mine, a slow fire kindling between them. His tongue flirts inside my mouth, swirling languidly around the tip of mine. 

My knees buckle with the abrupt throbbing between my legs, but his arms brace me. We both warmly snicker before I peer up at the gorgeous, chiseled lines of his face. His dark stare is so attentive, so captivated with me; I can feel my heart pirouette in my chest. 

I want him–God, I fucking need him in the most feral of ways. Now. I am his lamb, his sacrifice. I need him to strip me, ravage me, break me, consume me. 

"I thought you were hungry," he growls, tracing my jaw with the bridge of his nose. His eyelashes flutter against my skin; even my toes curl to the command of their gentle tickle. 

My breath quickens, the rise and fall of my chest pressing into his firm body. "I thought you were," my voice softly rattles, painfully aware of his tightly constricted appetite in his sweatpants.

He rolls his tongue across his bottom lip as he tucks a finger under the material resting on my other shoulder. With a careful flick,  the satin glides down my arm, drifting into a delicate cascade until it ripples on the floor around my ankles.

"I am," he cups my cheek, painting his thumb across my own pout. He then drags his knuckles down my exposed body: down my chin and neck, between my breasts and around my navel. He takes a knee, his mouth replacing his hand. He trails sweet kisses down my abdomen before tenderly caressing my sex. I hum as he gazes back up at me, his eyes dark with want. "I am very–" I gasp as he pushes his fingers into my core, "--very hungry." Pulling back out, he lifts his hand to his mouth. He moans in pleasure, his tongue eagerly lapping up my sweet desire.

As he sensually sucks on the tips of his fingers, I greedily steal his hand, bringing it back to my own lips. With a mischievous grin on my face, I kiss his palm before dragging it down to my pert breast. I guide his hand into massaging me slowly, his secure grip finding and teasing my nipples. Losing myself in the vast wilderness of his longing stare, he renders me speechless; the anticipation leaves me breathless. God, just put your mouth on me already...

I drag my teeth across my lips, watching my new husband shiver, unraveling on his knees. Combing my nails behind his ear, he shifts his gaze back to me, and I whisper. 

“Take me.”

Hastily finding the bottom curve of my ass, he takes hold of me, pulling me closer to himself. His hands wander smoothly up my thighs, discovering my wet slit. He tenderly traces my folds, and a sudden ache for more courses through my legs 

His finger grazes over my plumping clit, once… then twice before he circles around again… and then back the other direction. My foot coyly turns inward as my knee curls to shield my throbbing apex from his welcoming intrusion.

“Uh-uh,” he scolds me. He slips my leg out from under me, instantly finding its way over his broad shoulder. I brace myself on the back of a chair as he strums my swollen button. 

My knees quiver with reckless electricity; my body trembles with raw nerves.  My lower belly warms with excitement, euphoria building deep within me. I begin to rub against his hand.

“Ethan,” I gasp, “please baby–”

He stops. As he flicks his eyes to me with that irresistible smirk, he must’ve seen the look of betrayal written all over my face.

“Ethan?”

But before I can get my words out, he scoops me up bridal-style, hurrying me into our bedroom.  He throws me like a ragdoll onto the plush bed before ripping off his undershirt.  I sit up on my knees, my fingers reaching for his waistband. As I lunge closer to take what I want, he grabs my wrists. He crawls on top of me pinning me down, my hands helplessly over my head. 

He kisses into my whimpers, his teeth nipping at my swollen lips. “Such an eager girl,” he snickers, biting my lip again until he gently licks into my mouth. 

Ethan traces his tongue down my body, circling around my nipple before pulling it into his mouth.  Fuck, it hurts so good. One of my hands has traveled to the back of his head, encouraging his rapacious mouth into my sensitive skin. But, he possessively steals my hand from his neck, restraining it useless above my head.

“Stay,” the corner of his mouth turns up as he pants, “you stay right here until you finish for me." He playfully tugs on my other nipple with his teeth before stealing another glimpse of me. "And you will finish on me.” 

His demanding claim on me as well as his overpowering strength sends a chilling ache through my body. My need for him grows fervent, restless, completely starved.  I am his hostage, and only he holds the key to my release, to my pleasure. He is my undoing.

He slips down my body, spreading my legs apart for him. I quake as he spreads apart my lips, and all at once, his tongue drinks me deeply. My back arches against the mattress, as he swirls around my most sensitive area.

My breath becomes ragged as my hips thrust off of the bed. Hoarse mewls escape my mouth as my head thrashes back and forth across the pillow.

Without warning, he glides two thick fingers into my channel, stealing the very breath from my lungs.  Finding the perfect spot inside, he strokes deeply, smoothly, my toes curling with the change of sensation.  

I am overwhelmed; each stroke builds on the last, the intensity obliterating my mind. Is this pleasure? Is this pain? I can’t–I can’t take anymore.

That is until Ethan takes his other hand, firmly pressing it down on my lower belly. The electricity of my desire erupts into a million stars, dancing in my own galaxy. 

And then he slides in another finger.

My mouth drops open into earth-shattering silence as I pump my hips uncontrollably into his hand. My body trembles, hurdling me towards an orgasm. It’s terrifying, and thrilling, and absolutely emotional. I can barely breathe anymore, my inhales catching in my chest as my body cries out. 

But suddenly, as my climax overcomes me, throwing me off the edge to complete ruin, Ethan stops. He grips my ass and swiftly, flips us both over. Finding myself on my knees, my husband’s head is between my thighs, his lips a breath away from my wet pussy.

"Ride me, baby."

He pulls my hips down, the sudden jerk causing me to grab the wooden headboard. His stubble tickles my sensitive skin as my nerves reignite with pleasure. My body melts into him, his mouth instantly finding my deep ache. He blows gently across my throbbing clit before wrapping his mouth around it, giving it a nip with his teeth.

"Ethan!"

A stun of electricity courses through my veins.  A deep burn contracts in my belly as groans of ecstasy escape my throat; my eyes prick with tears of euphoric joy as he strokes me through another orgasm.  My whimpers fill our room as I uncontrollably pulse and constrict around his tongue and fingers. My thighs quiver as I grind my quaking pussy across his hungry mouth.

My knuckles blanch to white as I grip the headboard; glistening with sweat, my body grows limp, begging for rest, begging for oxygen, begging to collapse from my husband’s predatory gleaning of my body… now his body.  

But, he holds me fast and close, his hands gripping firmly to the swells of my ass as he continues to feast on my ravaged center. He tenderly nuzzles me open, his tongue consuming every last drop of my pleasure.

He crawls out from under me, quickly climbing onto his knees to kneel behind my body. His arms snake around my abdomen as he pulls me back into his lap. And I collapse against his chest, my hands finding the tops of his before tangling our fingers together.

Relishing his touch, Ethan presses his lips into my jaw, along my neck, coming to rest on my shoulder. He tightens his hold on me as his mouth finds the shell of my ear, my body lax against his. 

And then I giggle. His soft whispers of the most lovely, the most hidden of secrets saved just for us drip like honey from his lips, his sweet words seducing me in the most intimate of ways.

Turning my head to meet his gaze, our lips brush against one another as we finally relax into each other's arms, laying down against the swirl of sheets and stacks of pillows. Finding a comfortable silence, I can feel his pulse bounding in time with mine as we share the air around us. He mindlessly traces shapes with the tips of his fingers across my hips. His ankles intertwine with mine, and somehow, something so mundane feels so possessive, so intimate. I could drown in this moment, knowing my last breath was him claiming me as his own.

"How?" I sigh, not realizing the actual word escaped from my mind.

"Hrmm?" He rasps, readjusting his hold on my body against his.

I titter in embarrassment. "This. I just can't believe… we're here…"

He nuzzles his nose against my neck. "Just you and me." He takes my hands, gently interlocking our fingers together as he brings it up to his mouth for a kiss.

A thought crosses my mind. And I sit up, leaning myself against the plethora of pillows against the headboard.  Grabbing a sheet to cover myself, I look down at my husband, a pensive grin quirking on my mouth. "Do you–" I sigh, shaking my head. "Nevermind."

Ethan sits himself up next to me, playfully knocking his shoulder into me. "Do I what?" 

"It's silly."

He smirks. "Like that's ever stopped you?"

I swat his arm before wrapping my hand around his bicep, laying my head against his shoulder. "Do you believe... in fate?"

He rolls his head towards me, giving me that look, like I just asked him the most idiotic question on the planet.

"What?" I teasingly pout. 

He raises his eyebrows. "Do you really want to know my answer?" 

No. I chuckle to myself; I know better. I have always appreciated Ethan's ability to remain level-headed. He's a realist, a believer in physical matter. Everything can or will be explained by science. For the most part, I agree with him. Afterall, I am a scientist, too. 

And maybe he's right; the rekindling of our relationship was a complete coincidence. But still… after all of the missed meetings and stolen glances from afar… after all of these years, why now?

He presses a lingering kiss to my forehead. "Tell me. What do you think?"

"Whether or not you believe in fate?"

"No," he rolls his eyes, grinning wide. His deep chuckle reverberates through his body, warming mine. He pulls me gently into his chest. "Tell me, baby," he softly croons. "Tell me what you're thinking. Tell me what's got you thinking about–" he waves his hand in the air as if he's presenting a magical word on a rainbow. "--destiny."

"Not when you say it like that," I pinch his belly.

"Okay, okay!" He flinches, snickering before cradling me closer. "I'm sorry. I'll be serious." I give Ethan a questioning glare until he holds up three fingers. "Doctor's honor."

I giggle as I mindlessly begin to play with his fingers in silence.  I finally sigh because I officially sound like a lunatic, and surely, this beautiful man is about to go get our marriage annulled. "I don't know," I breathe him in deeply, my fingertips grazing through the hair on his chest. "I feel like… now looking back on us, we had so many missed opportunities… divine interventions… I don't know," I snicker at myself because I don't just sound insane; I am insane.

That is until Ethan takes my hand, giving me a reassuring squeeze. "I'm listening."

"What if we were always meant to find each other? Like… God, I don't know." I turn around to face him leaned against the wall of pillows. "Imagine we're heading to work on the T, but we keep missing the stop… and yet, we still end up where we're supposed to go, even if we have to catch another line or hail a cab."

Ethan gives me a skeptical look. "Okay, so… you believe you and I had missed opportunities to be together–"

"I don't know if I believe it… but somehow calling those missed connections, those times that we almost crossed paths again…" I bite my bottom lip, shaking my head. "Rams, how could they just be coincidences?"

Ethan couldn't take his eyes off me; I could tell he was perplexed with what I was insinuating by the way he chewed the inside of his mouth. We fell into a quietness, my question left unanswered. 

I could feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment. Maybe I was being hyper-emotional with it being our wedding day and all the talk of love everlasting.

After spending a few moments studying my face, Ethan tenderly takes my foot, pushing back the sheet to expose it completely. He lays it on the firm planes of his abdomen as he begins to gently knead his thumbs and knuckles into my arches.

"Coincidences, hrm?" He exhales heavily. "Or fate?" He shakes his head with uncertainty as he strokes each one of my toes. "Tell me a coincidence. One of our coincidences."

Feeling myself melt into his touch, I look down at my wedding band, twirling it around my finger. Taking a deep breath, I lick my lips and begin.

"Do you remember the time…?"

~🖤~

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~🖤~

Thank you so much for your support! Every like , comment and reblog means the world to me! 🖤

#open heart fanfic #open heart fanfiction #choices open heart #like ships in the night #ethan ramsey #dr. ethan ramsey #tatum erikson #ethan ramsey x f!oc #ethan ramsey x tatum erikson #ethan x tatum #tathan #N*FW

[rhetoricandlogic]

Liberty’s Daughter by Naomi Kritzer

By: Eric Hendel

Issue: 15 January 2024

Naomi Kritzer’s novel Liberty’s Daughter is a book that I both loved reading, and also a story which I think falls short of its full potential. Based in part on a series of shorter works written by the author (all of which have here been compiled into a larger narrative), Kritzer’s novel centers around the experiences of Beck Garrison, a sixteen-year-old girl who, along with her father, lives on a scattered network of artificially created islands and repurposed cruise ships known as a seastead. Set in an ambiguously dystopian near-future world, the novel introduces us to the six nations of the seastead, which was originally constructed by libertarian activists seeking to create what they falsely conceptualized as a utopian society valuing personal liberty above all else.

As the novel opens, the seastead has persisted in an ambiguous legal state for nearly forty-nine years. While the mainland United States government refuses to acknowledge this society’s independence (pointedly calling its embassy on the seastead not an embassy but an institute), it has also paradoxically neglected to arrest the many well-known corporate criminals who have fled here to avoid prosecution for their crimes. Over the course of Liberty’s Daughter, Kritzer uses this setup to explore contrasting articulations of human rights and social responsibilities, with the seastead slowly revealed to be an intensely authoritarian community in its own right.

All of this is introduced alongside a more subtle storyline, in which Beck’s realization of the true nature of the seastead’s views of human rights tracks alongside her gradually expanding understanding of the context in which her father brought her to live in this community. This latter development follows on from Beck’s decision to begin slowly reconnecting with her estranged mother, whom her father previously claimed had died years earlier. In this way, she eventually comes to recognize not only the truth of the seastead and the many ways in which its libertarian ideology fails, but also the precarity of her own privileged status within this self-described utopia.

The main plot of Liberty’s Daughter begins with a self-contained story that effectively introduces the novel’s themes. Beck is working as a “finder” (a person who is hired to negotiate trades on the seastead for hard-to-find commercially manufactured goods) when she is contacted by an indentured bond worker named Debbie Miller. While Beck is normally hired only by people hoping that she can find rare items for them, like slippers and bathing suits, Debbie has instead reached out to Beck in the hope that she will track down her missing sister, Lynn.

Having previously contracted a mysterious illness which prevented her from working, Lynn vanished shortly after asking her bond-holder on the seastead for a loan so she could pay to be seen by a doctor. Since then, everyone on the seastead to whom Debbie has spoken has claimed to know nothing of Lynn’s whereabouts, with Lynn’s bond-holder himself refusing to speak to Debbie at all. As Beck reflects immediately after hearing of this situation:

I had a bad feeling about this. My job is finding things, but normally that just means finding willing sellers for interested buyers. That’s why I was looking for the sandals. Finding a person was a whole different kettle of shark bait. But the seastead wasn’t that big, so unless she’d fallen over the side and drowned … I pulled out my gadget to take notes. “Okay,” I said, and keyed in the name. “What else can you tell me?” (p. 11)

This search draws Beck into a loosely connected sequence of overlapping objectives, all of which in turn coalesce into a larger story. Initially intent only on locating Lynn and verifying her safety, Beck soon discovers that the bond that allowed Lynn to live on the seastead has been sold to a “skin farm”—a dangerous factory whose impoverished workers routinely die due to exposure to chemicals normally outlawed. Worse still is that this factory is located on one of the seastead’s most infamous islands—a decaying cargo ship called Liberty (or “Lib” for short) whose residents abide by the single all-encompassing law that their exclusively capitalist society has no laws at all.

This brief story is resolved when, unwilling to simply abandon Lynn to her fate, Beck chooses to call upon the help of a private militia in Lib called the Alpha Dogs—a group for whose services her father had previously purchased a security subscription. In a scene which almost comes across as deliberately anticlimactic, Beck simply walks into the skin farm in which Lynn is being held captive, and, under the protection of the Alpha Dog bodyguard she has hired, commands that Lynn be set free. Critical to this scene is the exact manner by which Beck manages to free Lynn, and the exchange that occurs when she does so:

She was chained to the workbench. “Can you get her loose?” I said to my bodyguard. He gave me a look. “I’m hired to protect you. She is not on my contract.” “Yeah?” I walked over and grabbed her arm. “Lynn, will you give me the honor of your company? Say yes.” “… Yes?” “Lynn is my date and my contract specifies that you will provide protection services for me and my date at all times. And I want you to get us out of here.” (p. 38)

This scenario functions as an encapsulation of the themes that the entire novel explores. The way in which Beck frees Lynn (by extending the terms of the bodyguard’s contract onto her) reveals the vast gulf that exists between this libertarian society’s claimed values of personal freedom and autonomy and the reality of how these values manifest. Beck is only capable of entering the skin farm because of the bodyguard whom she has personally hired; having a member of a privately-funded militia at her side is all that allows her to move through this space without question. By contrast, Lynn is indicated to have spent the last two weeks chained to a desk in this same factory, unable to leave due to an outstanding medical debt that she had no choice but to incur. Even in this scenario, Beck’s bodyguard at first refuses to free Lynn by claiming he has no right to do so due to the terms of his contract; he only agrees to do what Beck says when she changes the situation so as to better meet those terms. While this is a community whose citizens claim to have no laws, the actions of Beck and her bodyguard reveal that the society abides by at least one: that the only rights which anyone has are those that can be forcibly extracted from the lives of others.

This examination of the limitations of the seastead’s ethos continues as the book progresses, with Kritzer’s novel quickly giving way to less a single narrative thread than a fascinating sequence of loosely connected subplots and self-contained story arcs which require that Beck directly engage with the entrenched social inequity of the seastead’s community.

After she has freed Lynn from the skin farm, there is a strange but also unexpectedly fascinating story in which Beck is recruited by the producer of a reality television program from the mainland United States. While working as this woman’s assistant, Beck comes in turn to serve a vital if indirect role in an emerging labor movement amongst bond workers like Debbie and Lynn. In the process of this work, Beck witnesses a bizarre inversion of the seastead’s libertarian philosophy when the producer of the program tries offering her employees healthcare, only to then be threatened by the leader of the entire seastead due to the dangerous precedent he fears this act will set. There is also, later on, an extended story depicting the outbreak of a mysterious plague originating from one of the seastead’s unregulated nanotech research facilities, with Beck and several of her friends desperately working to distribute a vaccine to the seastead’s overly paranoid citizens. Eventually the book concludes via a legitimately fascinating final act wherein what little governmental infrastructure the seastead previously possessed collapses. Beck and others subsequently begin working to rebuild their society, and in the process start replacing its libertarian, capitalist ethic with something more holistic and inclusive.

My main problem with Liberty’s Daughter is that, as engaging and creative as the book’s story is, there are also several critical junctures at which I think that Kritzer fails to fully explore the implications of this narrative. Instead, in these moments the novel pulls back from the events it is depicting and shuts down any further exploration of the issues its story has introduced, in a way that feels extremely artificial.

One example of this emerges in the conclusion to the story of Lynn’s escape from the skin farm. Initially simply expecting Lynn to go to the American Embassy so she can formally request asylum, Beck learns that a drug charge in Lynn’s past makes this option impossible for her. This is a crime which the book explicitly verifies to the reader is so minor as to be nonexistent, and yet because of this charge—and what it apparently means for Lynn’s future if she ever returns to the United States—she chooses to remain on the seastead in spite of the danger she now knows she faces. This is a plot point that is then abandoned as the story continues, with Lynn simply vanishing from the chapters that follow, and Beck—despite her prior desire to rescue Lynn—appearing strangely uninterested in contemplating how an excessively punitive criminal justice system has forced this woman to place her life in undue danger.

A similar issue emerges in the ending of the book itself. After a cholera outbreak leaves what little social infrastructure the seastead had previously possessed in shambles, a humanitarian group arrives to administer aid to the sick and injured. It’s in this way that Beck is unexpectedly reunited with her mother, Lenore, who has traveled to the seastead with this group. Here, after learning that Beck’s father has fled from the seastead (abandoning his daughter in the process), Lenore reveals the context in which her former husband, Paul Garrison, emigrated to the seastead: he kidnapped a four-year-old Beck after attempting to arrange for his wife’s death in a traffic accident. Lenore then claims custody over Beck against her will, and, in an act that leaves her daughter feeling both disillusioned and betrayed, forces her to leave the seastead for good. The book ends with a scene in which Beck and her mother begin planning a road trip, with Beck herself seemingly forgetting the sense of betrayal she had felt—and the ways in which her mother’s actions mirror the very same exploitative reduction of human rights which had marred so much of the seastead’s society.

Moments like this, while initially appearing minor, function to dampen many of the more pressing questions which Liberty’s Daughter raises. Just as Lynn’s decision to risk her life to remain on the seastead is an act which clearly exists within a still larger context that the book refuses to explore, Lenore’s decision to take Beck away from the seastead against her will raises the possibility that the flaws of the seastead’s exclusionary conceptualization of human rights are far more widespread. Beck’s mother, despite having never adhered to this libertarian ideology, ultimately ends this book by exerting a control over Beck’s life that seems to exist purely for her own sake—a desire to spend the last two years of Beck’s childhood living in a very traditional family setting, regardless of what her daughter has to say about this.

Yet rather than allowing these moments to exist in the story as points of ambiguity, they end up being pushed aside. Liberty’s Daughter ends with Beck and her mother going on a hike together. Even the book’s final line has Beck asking her mother if they can go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, and Lenore answering, with a laugh, that Beck can go wherever she wants. Yet this moment feels hollow due to how it contrasts with Lenore’s actions: there is at least one place where she will apparently not allow her daughter to go, and, as the novel has demonstrated, it’s a very important one.

#Naomi Kritzer #Liberty's Daughter #mahreviews #long post

[b4ckr00ms-k4ndl3z]

pinned post 3.0 go

ahah, anyways ; yes, i am finally finishing my pinned remake! i just didn't like my old one anymore so, here we go.

reblogs would be appreciated <3

and again, contents (rules, about me, fandoms, etc) are below the cut!

[ about me! ]

hey! i'm rex/kel/teruko, either name is fine, and even any other name you know me by as well as i have... a lot, haha. i have a lot of DA's, but i don't feel the need to list those here. i am also a minor (15), so do keep that in mind!

i use he/they/it, but also use neos! you can call me any neos, i don't mind, i like most of them all!

i myself really enjoy things like horror, especially body horror and analog horror, cryptids, true crime, art, and i've had an ongoing fixation with warrior cats for at the very least four years now.

[ blog rules! ]

★ — i write, draw, and make edits! the things you can request are writings, art prompts, and various edits like roleplay icons, profile images, aesthetics, and moodboards!

★ — i will NEVER, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES create content that goes against the boundaries of any creator. this means if a creator is uncomfortable with it, i will NOT write, for example any nsfw, and this also applies to other boundaries. (if i happen to accidentally break a boundary that i am unaware of, PLEASE let me know as soon as possible! i do not want to break boundaries at all. if this does happen, i will also edit or more likely delete the post that was boundary breaking in the first place.)

★ — please, DO NOT BE WEIRD WITH SFW POSTS. it makes me uncomfortable personally, and then it is even worse if it was about something for a media in which the creator is uncomfortable with nsfw/suggestive content. the only way this is allowed is if the post had implications to begin with.

★ — I DO NOT AND WILL NOT WRITE DEAD DOVE. i do not support it. i may write or produce things with darker themes, but in no way is it glorified or romanticized. certain darker things may be mentioned or referred to in past tense, but i do not write those out in my content or romanticize it. it is no way portrayed in the main ship. writing things like "abusive!(character) x reader" and especially trying to portray it in a cutesy or romantic light is disgusting, coming from a victim of abuse. this also goes for pedophilia or non-con (this includes dubcon and similar). if you support the romanticized writing of those things, get out. i do not want you here. this is not a dead dove blog and i do not support it.

★ — there will be nothing at ALL relating to romance with child characters (below 14). and unless it is within warrior cats, i will not write romance with animals, including pokemon. warrior cats is the sole exception because unlike pokemon, warrior cats portrays the characters as very humanized, and the reader would be the same as these cats. pokemon are not portrayed in a humanized way in canon media. on this topic, i will not write anything romantic for any digimon at or below rookie level, and certain digimon no matter its level will have romantic content depending on how humanized or animal like they are.

★ — i take requests for cc x reader and cc x cc, although i rarely write for ocs. the only time i will do so is if i know someone's oc well, and they're owned by a friend.

★ — i write fluff, angst, platonic, romantic, and many other things! i also write for any genders and also polyamory. i will not do nsfw.

★ — trigger warnings will ALWAYS be placed properly, so don't worry!

[ fandoms! ]

i am a multifandom blog; that's right, multifandom! so that means i should list the available fandoms. below are all the requestable fandoms!

Wii Deleted You

Until Dawn

Sally Face

Digimon (+ Cyber Sleuth & Hacker's Memory!)

9

The Mandela Catalogue (NOTHING ROMANTIC AT ALL.)

FNF (Mods Only!)

Creepypasta

John Doe

Your Turn To Die

Helluva Boss

Hazbin Hotel

Eddsworld

Warrior Cats

Lobotomy Corporation

Library of Ruina

Pokepasta

OMORI

Roblox Doors

Lego Monkie Kid

Danganronpa Fangames (NO MAIN GAMES; Danganronpa as a whole otherwise is mostly a discomfort to me for personal reason, however, fangames have many, many positive memories for me so i will write for it!) (including super danganronpa another 2, danganronpa another, and danganronpa despair time.)

Rain World

[ tags! ]

there are several tags used to help navigate around the blog, so here's some of them.

★ — #☆: serene liminal spaces - General Writing

★ — #☆: familiar paintings - General Art

★ — #☆: foggy trails - General Edits

★ — #☆: cotton candy walls - Fluff

★ — #☆: another drowning world - Angst

★ — #☆: overwhelming nostalgia - Smut

★ — #☆: endless hallways - Ramblings/Mod Posts/Announcements

★ — #☆: blurred realities - Posts with one or more Trigger Warnings.

[ emoji anons! ]

last but not least; emoji anons! yes, if you'd like you may claim an emoji. helps me know who you are if you request again! do note by the way that you don't need to be an emoji, you can also be a word, like star anon, i just don't know what else to call this ^^"

💖 Anon [ Tag; ☆: 💖 anon ]

[ queue! ]

(these are in no particular order, but do note that requested writings will be put into more priority than anything from otherwise! these are also in color order; white is what is not started, green is what has been started, and purple is what's waiting to be posted — i try to have only one post per day if i even have that many ready! if not, it'd more usually be once a week. also, non-requests are not counted in my max total of requests, since those are just things i came up with on my own!)

(5/15)

wii deleted you x scene / scenecore reader (not requested)

until dawn x scene / scenecore reader (not requested)

sally face x scene / scenecore reader (not requested)

digimon (hacker's memory) x scene / scenecore reader (not requested)

john doe x scene / scenecore reader (not requested)

your turn to die x scene / scenecore reader (not requested)

omori x scene / scenecore reader (not requested)

sdra2 x scene / scenecore reader (not requested)

-

olly, autumn, silver & gold poly headcanons (requested)

shin x reader (requested)

frosty red x reader (requested)

big brother glitchy red (requested)

lmk poly (requested)

and that's all! i'll see you again in another world, friend! <3

#☆: serene liminal spaces #☆: familiar paintings #☆: foggy trails #☆: cotton candy walls #☆: another drowning world #☆: overwhelming Nostalgia #☆: endless hallways #☆: blurred realities #wii deleted you x reader #wdy x reader #until dawn x reader #sally face x reader #digimon x reader #9 x reader #fnf x reader #friday night funkin x reader #creepypasta x reader #john doe x reader #your turn to die x reader #yttd x reader #helluva boss x reader #hazbin hotel x reader #eddsworld x reader #warrior cats x reader #warriors x reader #lobotomy corporation x reader #lobcorp x reader #library of ruina x reader #lor x reader #pokepasta x reader

[derekfoxwit]

Doctor Dorpden’s Critical Tips of Prestige

Note: This post was made with satirical intentions in mind. I’m only emphasizing because I’ve had a couple of comments on previous joke posts I’ve did take it seriously. With that said, here we go.

Tip 1: For starters, remember that when looking at the work, if the Mystic Knee twitches fast enough to punch a hole in a wall, this suggests that the work should be near the lowest of the low. No further development of opinion is needed.

Tip 2: For an equal degree of sophistication, give the warm comfort of nostalgia at least 5 times more chances than the new thing that MAY seem actually poggers.

Tip 3: If you have the anecdote of encountering shitty fans, then use them as a scapegoat for the show they flaunt over being shitty. Clearly, they’re always making the show the way it is.

Tip 4: If you haven’t heard much about a newer film or show you’re yet to watch, there’s an 85% chance that film or show is actually not worth your time. The Father (2020) isn’t as widespread as Joker (2019) for a reason.

Tip 5: At this point, just go for the Asian Artist Dick. I’m actually in the mood to see merit in that because I want to look edgy against cute doodles. Stop attacking Uzaki-Chan, you cowards!

Tip 6: Avoid the electronic tunes. They’ll make you smell like a bum, for there’s no structural in a music album that’s nothing but wubs.

Tip 7: If you see a Tweet that looks dumb, use it as a means of generalizing all the fans of a work as sharing that same opinion.

Tip 8: If the cartoon I’m given doesn’t provide me with mature ideas such as slicing an Arbok in half or fake boobs, then the cartoon might as well be on the same level as Teletubbies.

Tip 9: You know the music is (c)rap when it brings up drugs, regardless of lyrical context.

Tip 10:  Raw mood is the indicator of quality cartooning. If you’re quick to assume the worst in the newest HBO Max original cartoon, then you got thyself a stinker. Same thing if you were super bummed out when watching a new thing, regardless of anecdotal context.

Tip 11:  When you’re not given continuous throwbacks, ensure you’re as reductive and over-generalizing about the works shown as possible.

Tip 12:  If your hazy and imperfect as hell recollection of a children’s film, whether it’s Wall-E or Lilo & Stitch, would describe said film as “too sugary” or “key-waving schlock”, then that HAS to be the case. No meat on that bone whatsoever.

Tip 13: Simpler, more graphic style that isn’t as realistic as old-school Disney or Anime? You got yourself a lazy style with zero passion put into it.

UPA? Who’s THAT?!

Tip 14: Don’t trust anyone saying that western children’s cartoons had any form of artistic development after 2008 (with, like, TWO exceptions). If it did, why didn’t we go from stealing organs in a 2001 cartoon to showing opened stomachs in a 2021 cartoon?

Tip 15: Big booba is always important to the strong female character’s quality.

Tip 16:  Only MY ships count, for they provide me with a feeling of intelligence.

Tip 17: “PG-13″ and “R” rating just simply mean you’re not caring for expressing themes in a sophisticated manner. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 18:  In this age of smelly radicals, “Death of the Author” is more important than ever. Without it, this’ll imply that a classic like The Matrix was secretly toxic, due to what the Wachowskis have to say about it being an “allegory of trans people.”

Tip 19: Turn the fandoms you hate into your torture porn. Ask in Tweets to Retweet one sentence that’d “trigger” them. Go out of your way to paint all of them as blind consoomers. That’ll show them, and it’ll show how much more intelligent you are compared to those clowns.

Tip 20: Whatever the Mystic Knee dictates upon the first viewing of a work is what shall indicate the full structural extent of the film.

Tip 21: The mindset of a 2000s edgelord is one that actually understands the artistry of the medium of animation. Listen to that crazy but ingenious man.

Tip 22: Because sheer ambition makes me feel manly, the high pedestal you bestow upon a cartoon work should be based mostly on the mere mention or mere suggestion of serious topics. This means that pure comedy is smelly.

Tip 23: Is the new work tackling subjects that you’ve loved a childhood work of yours for covering? Just assume it’s super bare-bones in that case compared to the older case, for there’s nothing the older work can do to truly prove itself otherwise. Seriously, Letterboxd. Stop giving any 2010s cartoon anything above a 4/5

Tip 24: If the Mystic Knee is suggesting that the work is crummy, then consider any explanation off the top of your head for why the work in question is crummy.

Tip 25: Sexual and gender identity is inherently political, so don’t focus on them in the story. It’s no wonder why Full Metal Alchemist has caught on more than the She-Ra reboot.

Tip 26: Since I got bothered by a random butt monkey type character in a crummy cartoon, I’m now obligated to assume that having a butt monkey will only harm the writing integrity of the cartoon.

Seriously, Mr. Enter....what?!

Tip 27: We’re at a point where pure comedy for a kids’ cartoon is doing nothing but dumbing down the children. Like seriously...... I doubt Billy and Mandy would ever use farts as a punchline, unlike these newer kids comedies.

Tip 28: The difference between the innuendo in kids’ cartoons I grew up on and the ones Zootopia made is the sense of prestige they give me. Just take notes from the former instead.

Tip 29: Wanna make a work of artistic merit? Just take notes from the stuff I whore out to. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 30: Always remember this golden rule: If the newer work, or a work you’ve recently experienced the first time, was truly great, why isn’t it providing the exact emotions from your younger, more impressionable years?

Tip 31: If the Mystic Knee aims to break the bones of a character doing certain things (.i.e. having body count of thousands; lashing out to character; etc.), that means the character is bad and deserves no redemption.

Tip 32: If you want me to believe there’s any intrigue or depth in your antagonist, give them redemption, for I am in need of that sorta thing being spelled out. Looking at you, Syndrome. Should’ve taken notes from Tai Lung.

Tip 33: In a case where you’re going “X > Y” (.i.e. manga compared to western comics), ALWAYS CHERRY PICK! Use the recent controversies of the “Y” item while pretending that the “X” item has never had anything of the sort.

Tip 34: BEFORE you bring up those comments that shat on the original Teen Titans cartoon back when it was new, whether for making Starfire “more PC” or whatever.......the DIFFERENCE between them and me is that THEY were just bad faith fools that couldn’t see true majesty out of blind rage. I, however, am truly certain that calling any western TV cartoon from 2014-onward a work that transcends its generation suggests a destruction of the medium.

Tip 35: Based on fandom growth, it shows that any newer show isn’t being watched much by kids, but rather loser adults that act like children. Therefore, there’s more prestige in what I grew with.

Tip 36: The focus on children is bad at this point since the children of today have attention spans that flies would have.

Tip 37: A select few screenshots (or even one) of either a less elaborate attacking animation, less realistic game graphics, or a less on-model image in a cartoon indicates EVERYTHING about the work’s quality.

Tip 38: Consuming or writing media where characters go through constant suffering is little more than gaining pleasure out of it. YOU SICKOS!

Looking at you, Lily Orchard!

Tip 39: Whether it’s a sexual awakening story or just simply a romance, focus on a character being lesbian, trans, bi, etc., then it shouldn’t be in a kids’ work. It’s too spicy for them by default. Kids don’t want romance anyway.

Tip 40: The very idea of a western cartoon with no full-blown antagonist (i.e. Inside Out) is a destruction of animated artistry. Sorry, but it’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 41: Unless it’s my fluffy pillow, such as Disney’s Robin Hood, it should be obligated to assume the inserting of anthros is only there to pleasure the furries. Looking at YOU, Zootopia!

Tip 42: With how rough and rash The Beast was, it shows that he was more of an abusive lover. Therefore, I refuse to believe that Beauty and the Beast has any of the meticulous moral writing that most of Disney’s other 90s films has.

Tip 43: When you suggest one work should’ve “taken notes” from another work in order to do better, BE VAGUE! Those who agree will be shown to be geniuses.

Tip 44: Remember how morally grey Invader Zim was? That really goes to show how little the Western Animation scene has been trying since that show. Really should just be taking notes from that series (and of course anime).

Tip 45: Even if I have a radar that clearly indicates such, hiding the item I look for inside an enemy is always bad, for I refuse to believe it would be inside the enemy.

Goddamn it, Arin!

Tip 46: People struggle understanding your gender identity or pronouns? All there is to see in that is a giant cloud of egotism that reads “My problems” zapping another smaller cloud that reads “other people’s problems”. Seriously, kids are starving, so WHAT if you identity confused someone. Grow a spine!

Tip 47: Stop pretending that adaptations should colorize how a story or comic series should be defined. No way in FUCK can a cartoon or film incarnation become the definitive portrayal of my precious superhero idol.

Tip 48: Enough with your precious “limited animation” techniques, YOU WESTERN HACKS! All you’re doing is admitting to sheer laziness and lacking artistic integrity. Now if you excuse me, I’ll be watching more anime, since that gives me a sense of prestige.

Tip 49: If getting five times more detail than the 2D animated visuals have requires someone getting hurt, so be it. No pain, no gain after all.

Tip 50: Yes, I genuinely struggle to believe there’s this majestic level of layered material without having the most immediate yet still vague re-assurance practically yelling in my face. But that’s STILL the work’s fault, not mine.

Tip 51: Every Klasky-Csupo cartoon has more artistic integrity than any of them cartoons with gay lovers such as Kipo or the Netflix She-Ra show.

Tip 52:  If Sergio Pablos’ Klaus is anything to go by, we have no excuse to utilize those smelly as fuck digital animation “styles” found on Stinky Universe, Suck-Ra or Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turds.

Tip 53: Stop projecting your orientation onto works of actual talent. Seriously, how does Elton John’s I’m Still Standing expel ANY rainbow flag energy?

Tip 54: Hip hop and electronica have been the destruction of music, especially the kind that’s actually organic and not farting on the buttons of a beeping or drumming gadget.

Tip 55: The audience for cartoons has become significantly less clear over the years. We should just go back to Saturday mornings of being sold toys or shit kids actually want.

Tip 56: PSAs for kids shouldn’t be about ‘woke’ content. They should be actual problems such as doing drugs; not playing with knifes / outlets / matches; or acceptance.

Tip 57: The instant you realize a detail in a childhood work that’s better understood as an adult, you’re forced to paint that work as the most transcendent thing in the world. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 58: Before you lash out on ALL rich people, remember this: #Not All Rich People.

Tip 59: There’s nothing to gain out of the (c)rap scene other than becoming a spiteful, gun-wielding thug that sniffs weed for breakfast.

Tip 60: Since the Mystic Knee told me to get anal about prom episodes in several gay cartoons, this shows that writing about one’s younger experiences just makes you look pathetic.

Tip 61: Another smelly thing about Zootopia is how it was painting a police chief as stern and exclusive. #Not All Chiefs

Tip 62: Me catching a glimpse of Grave of the Fireflies as a kid and turning out fine shows that you may as well show kids more adult works without worry. No amount of psychological questions being asked will suggest otherwise.

Tip 63: There’s a reason why the Mystic Knee keeps leaning more toward the 90s and early 2000s than most decades. That knee KNOWS where there’s a sense of true refinement.

Tip 64: The BIG difference between rock and electronica? Steward Copeland actually DRUMS. All that the likes of Burial, Boards of Canada, Depeche Mode and several others did was push drum buttons.

Tip 65: One exception to the golden nostalgia is when the work in question doesn’t stuff your face with fantastical, bombastic stories. At which point, there can only be rose-colored blinds covering Nickelodeon’s Doug. Nothing of merit or personal resonance to be found.

Tip 66: Remember that the sense of nuance in the work comes down to there being everything including the kitchen sink, whether it involves multiple geographic landscapes; giving us hundreds of characters; etc. Only through the extremes will I be able to tell there is nuance.

Tip 67: Once you see a joke that has an involvement with sexual or violent content, just ignore the full picture and just reduce it to having nothing to it but “sex, violence, gimme claps.”

PKRussel has entered the chat

Tip 68: With all the SJWs messing up the art of comedy, lament the times where you could be called a comic genius, NOT a monster, for shouting out the word “STAB,” calling a gay weird, painting Middle Easterns as inherently violent, etc.

Tip 69: Guitar twang will always win out over (c)rap beats. There’s a reason your grandma is more likely to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd than Kendrick Lamar.

Tip 70: Once the Mystic Knee notices a lack of squealing at the video game with linearity, that shows there’s more artistry in going full-blown open world.

Tip 71: Related to Tips 66 and 68, ensure your comedy gets as much information and mileage out of each individual skit as possible. EMPHASIZE if you need to. Continuously spout out your quirky phrase of “STAB” if needed.

Tip 72: Based on the onslaught of TV shows with many seasons and episodes, animated or otherwise, it shows that there’s more worth going for that than simply having a miniseries or a 26-episode anime.

Tip 73: Building off of the previous tip, you’re better off squeezing and exhausting every little detail and notable characterization rather than keeping anything simple and possibly leaving a stone unturned, especially if there’s supposed to be a story. 

Tip 74: Playing through the fan translation of Mother 3 made me realize how much some newer kids’ works just try too hard to get serious. Why even make the kids potentially think about the death of a family member?

Tip 75: The fear I had over Sid’s toys from the first Toy Story and similar anecdotal emotions are the be-all indicators of what kind of show or film is fitting for the children.

Tip 76:  Seeing this British rapper chick have a song titled “Point and Kill” just further exemplifies the fears I’ve had about rappers being some of the most harmful folks ever.

Tip 77: The problem with attempting to make a more “relatable” She-Ra is that kids aren’t looking for relatability. They want the escapism of buff fighters or something similar. This is why slice-of-life is so smelly.

Tip 78: Based on seeing the rating of “PG-13″ or “R,” I can tell that the dark humor is little more than “hur dur sex and guns.” Given the “TV-Y7 FV” rating of Invader Zim, the writers should’ve taken notes from that instead just so I can sense actual prestige.

Tip 79: The original He-Man has more visual intrigue in its animation than any of those smelly glorified doodles found in the “styles" of the 2010s and early 2020s.

Tip 80: It’s always the fault of the game that my first guess (that I refuse to divert from) on how I have to go through an obstacle won’t work.

Tip 81: Zootopia discussing prejudice ruins the majestic escapism I got from my precious childhood films from 1991-2004. Them kids might as well be watching the news. Now to watch some Hunchback after I finish these tips.

Tip 82: There is no such thing as an unreasonable expectation, and there’s especially no wrong way to address the lack of met expectations! For example, if you expect some early 2010s cartoon on the Disney Channel to be a Kids X-Files, yet you get moments such as some girl getting high on stick dipping candy, you got the right to paint the worst out of that show for not being “Kids’ X-Files.”

Tip 83: Related to my example for Tip 82, if you get the slightest impression of something being childish, you know you got yourself a children’s work that does little than wave keys and has basically nothing substantial for them. In this situation, those malfunctioning robots found in Wall-E are the guilty party.

Tip 84: Without the extensive dialogue that I’m used to getting, how can one say for certain there was any amount of characterization in the title character of Wall-E?

Tip 85: Ever noticed yourself gradually being less likely to expect an upcoming work or view a work you’re just consuming as “the next best thing”? That’s ALWAYS the fault of smelly “artists” (hacks really) and their refusal to give a shit.

Tip 86:  It’s obligatory for your lead to be explicitly heroic just so there is this immediate re-assurance that they’re a good one.

Tip 87: Without the comforting safety net of throwbacks, one cannot be for certain that there has been an actual evolution of a series or the art of animation and video games.

Tip 88: Don’t PSA kids on stuff they give zero fucks about. That means no gender identities or pronouns, race, etc.

Tip 89: Don’t listen to Mamoru Hosoda saying that anime women tend to be “depicted through a lens” of sexual desire. He’s just distracting from the superior prestige found in anime women.

Tip 90:  If you’re desperate to let others know that your talking points are reasonable, just repeat them over and over with little expansion on said talking points.

Tip 91: 7 or more seasons of art is better than 26 episodes of art.  EVERY TIME!

Tip 92: Always remember to continuously talk up the innuendo and mature subject matter of the childhood work as the most prestigious, transcendent thing of all time. With that in mind, there’s a high chance that your favorite childhood work will be better known than Perfect Blue (1997), and there’s likely a reason for that.

Tip 93: An art style that gives many characters relatively more realistic arm muscle details will always shine through more than any sort of art style done for “simplicity” (laziness, really).

Tip 94:  Seeing a few (like, even VERY FEW) people show more enthusiasm for Steven Universe over Invader Zim really shows the lower bar that has been expected out of the western animation scene compared to anime.

Tip 95: Electronic music makes less conventional time signatures cheap as hell. REAL music like rock makes them the exact opposite.

Tip 96: If your Mystic Knee suggests that the 90s cartoon being viewed doesn’t showcase a vague sense of refinement or artistic integrity, then every related assumption of yours is right. EVERY TIME!

Tip 97: Doing everything and the kitchen sink for one series or movie shows a better sense of refinement and prestige than any form of simplicity. THIS includes character design as well.

Tip 98: The advent of that Star Wars: Visions anime really shows just how stinky western cartoons have become.

Tip 99:  For those wondering, no, Europe isn’t being counted in my definition of “western animation”. Doing so is a complete disservice to prestige.

Tip 100: If even less than half of these tips aren’t being considered, you can kiss that prestige badge goodbye. After all, I SAID SO!

#joke #shitpost #prestige #electronic music #anime #animation #cartoons #film #television #nostalgia #satire #dank memes #edgy #disney #pixar #wall-e #toy story #steven universe #she-ra #netflix she-ra #invader zim #mamoru hosoda #zootopia #hip hop #klasky csupo

[honey-milk-depresso]

I was in the Bnha fandom a long time ago. I left because I felt the community is becoming messed up

TW: Mentions of threats, pedos, suicide, bullying

That's quite true. I also kind of left the fandom due to a number of reasons that left a lot of pressure on me.

Such as those hardcore shipping wars, to the point of the anime itself not being part of the conversation, which is weird for me since I actually do want to have a conversation about the episode and make theories and of course fawn how cool over the characters were, not:

"OH MY GOD- DID YOU SEE OCHAKO BLUSH IN FRONT OF DEKU- JHGHDHD"

That doesn't seem like it's about the story anymore for me.

Also, a lot of the unordinary amount hate for straight ships (such as OchaDeku) comes from a lot of the fans who stan the gay ships (such as TodoDeku) which is nothing wrong in that, but you don't call someone out for that and ridicule them for shipping a straight ship (unless it's pedo then you bash their head-)

Speaking about pedos, most of us have kinda forgotten the main class of students are 15 years old, yet people keep sexualizing them to a crazy extent.

AND SOME PEOPLE SHIP THE KIDS WITH THE ADULTS. It's pretty disturbing, no, very disturbing for a lot of us, and I kid you not Eri x Overhaul is an actual thing. Bleh...

Another thing that had push me away from the fandom is the sheer amount of bullying and death threats you can receive, to a point that it can really cut someone down and maybe cause them to be suicidal, some people are just pure mean in that fandom, much more than others due to its growing popularity.

Death threats can also be pointed towards certain characters in the manga to a very far and considerable amount, making crazy and wild accusations about them to get attention.

Endeavor is one of those people, who keeps getting the burning end of the stick for being a huge ass, which is true. He abused his own son, Shoto, and basically isolate and drove his wife insane, so no one had a happy childhood.

But having him be redeemable rubbed fans the wrong way so much, they sent death threats to MHA’S creator. Endeavor has changed, even Shoto and Rei acknowledge it and tries to help him (in some way or form) for him to get himself together and strengthen their bond as a family again.

But, yeah. I'm sorry for ranting a lot about it, I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's what I've witness in the BNHA fandom. Being in there sometimes made me feel like they were only within the fandom rather than the anime itself, and it's sad to see new and innocent fans who really do love this fandom and anime for what it is to be crushed or brainwash by the toxicity of the fandom.

I know they are plenty of non toxic fans out there that have been roaming around showing those lucky newcomers a good first impression (at least) and protect them from all the shenanigans, but still, there's also a hefty amount of toxic fans out there.

Of course, all fandoms have their fair share of toxic fans that we'll never run short of, but for me, BNHA was just too overwhelming.

#anon #anon ask #toxic fans #honeymilkdepresso.exe

[vanityloves]

anyways im gonna listen to/read the fuckin...rise of the ogre shit bc ive been putting it off 🪓🥴 im gonna put stuff under the cut bc im gonna be TALKING n dont wanna make a new post everytime

piss

ok he performed for 2 pounds 50. which is basically $3 today i- well it was absolutely a power play on his father behalf that also had the promise of money so.

also lol he said Rejection fueled my ambitions which, yknow,, i already knew but it still hurts and i will continue to talk ab it xoxo

AH HELP. "...if ebay had been invented at the time he would've sold me online there and then,"

"man hands on misery to man, yknow"

THEN PROCEEDS TO CONNECT IT TO MUSIC/HIS CAREER. this man said :) the one thing i truly have a passion for. the one thing i fucking like.

oh yeah. bullied by students AND teachers.

oh god hes 42ish during this interview? ok.

the fuckin school bully saying he wouldve acted differently if he knew what hed become

getting called "faceache", then proceeds to call 2d that. jfc he really does just repeat what everyone says. really "treating others how i was treated/how they treat me"

maybe thats why? hes kinder to fans? bc :] you support me and like me so, ok ill return that energy

MURDOC GETTING HIS ASS BEAT N PARADING HOME LIKE WELL I WON BC 'I PISSED YOU OFF' SJDJD

a real rowdy boy. absolute nasty boy. fraud and arson... shooting ppls windows with his air pistols

black sabbath being a huge inspiration? fucking absolutely.

became a satanist n shit at age 16? "it fitted me like a glove" "heavy metal and devil worshipping became my favorite past times" ajsj funny that ppl in trying times often seek religion or following of some sort

heavy metal being his favorite, n loving the clash, while hannibals was more punk based

hannibal breaking murdocs nose for the 2nd and 3rd time for playing his music on hannibals turntable

he doesnt sound that bitter? ab hannibal? he doesnt sound incredibly fond but he talks ab how he got him into a lot of music. so, i imagine they we're a bit closer than i thought?

international baccalaureate in antisocial? anthropology?

MURDOC IS ACTUALLY SMART HE WAS JUST. NOT INTERESTED IN THE SUBJECTS? I GUESS? (also,,, he literally Built cyborg noodle and i think he had a PhD too lol. but its always nice to hear hes actually...yknow, interested or good at other things)

alright but murdoc having a fascination w/ other cultures - or at least some interests, that lead him to actually study the damn subject and "pass with flying colors"

'fuck college though. im gonna be a rockstar'

he sold his soul at 18ish? whenever the fuck he got kicked out but college was mentioned so my brain goes to 18ish idk

he lived with his father still and paid rent via low paying jobs one including 'part time dressing as santa'

help he was ab to take a Personal Job for quick cash and uhh well, "still made me call him sir though" he really said 20 dollars is 20 dollars, huh "that story was totally true"

alright, 1997,,,

2d stuff

loves zombie stuff? thats really cute, and is freaked out by the way they move. god he rambles

both he and murdoc are horses in the chinese zodiac

[[jfc ok if the official shit compares them a lot i understand why ppl ship them but Dont. its a narrative foil and that doesnt always mean Romance jfc.]]

SUMTHINK.

truly... a lil stinker. super cute bouncing baby and a "bit thick" which is stull so endearing to me. hes just a happy man!

excitable 10 year old and would dance around his room

jfc the fact he has normal/caring parents. i kinda forget how opposite hes supposed to be from murdoc but i think thats another thing jsjsysg (murdoc said why isnt my tragic story making me famous why does he get to be the Star. no wonder he acts like a loon)

i still dont get how gettin bonked by a tree branch made him go bald and also turn his hair blue

big tiddy nurse mommy,,,

went to the same school as The Cure and got decent grades despite hittin the noggin quite hard. WANTED TO BE A STORM CHASER... OMG??

oh thats really cute, hed bond with his dad by building keyboards toegther 🥺💕

messed around with paints and graffiti? artistic king

MURDOC AGAIN: QHDJ 'VILLANOUS' GANG HELP

oh yeah d day...new instruments, new band, new singer - and 'had to be the best or no dice' and absolutely CONFIDENT that his songs were bangers ajsjd

but on that same note, had absolute faith (or desperate) in 2d which i love

ransacked the fucking music shop jdjdj and 2d said he was Just Standing There behind the counter the whole shift hdhdh

"thats when your eye came out, yeah" "yeah!-" HELP WHY DOES HE SOUND SO HAPPY AB IT ?? yes he said ut hurt but he sounds...ok

jfc murdoc ragdolling this poor mf around. dunking him and slapping him around. actually? so incredibly terrible and abusive and i hate him for that 🔫 im sorry 2d stans. we dont condone that behavior here ong.

how and why the FUCK did 2d's parents allow that fucker near their child after that i??? help. wtf. his moms a nurse why didnt she just have murdoc sit in plain view of other people. god damn.

2d flying out the window n hitting the curb "whoops"

"just two black holes...[ah] it looked great...a blue hair, blacked eyed GOD- the girls would go wild-" "pretty boy looks" ???? HELP. HE DOESNT GO LIGHT ON THE COMPLIMENTS, HUH

RUSS TIME

oh yeah, he straight up kiddnapped this man help. idk how he managed that, russ is a Big Man??

AND MURDOCS MUSIC WAS SO FUCKING SEXY GOOD that russel said hm alright ill stay, :] out ifbhis owm free will im screaming.

"oh this is one of them febreeze commercials" "uh . yeah sure. *murdoc turning on his Sick Tunes*" but that either means? it was just his guitar playing the convinced russ? unless he and 2d recorded sumn?

"2d was the looks, murdoc the brains, then russel truly was the heart"

'while 2d and murdoc liked music, this man was a MUSICIAN' god fucking bless this book holy shit ny man russ getting some respect. he said back hurts from carrying this band.

murdoc basically heard this guy had big trauma that gave him So Many Skills n said "thats what i want" ok idk thats actually really? inch rest ting to me. seems that murdocs fine handing out compliments but i guess that where his charisma really helps out yeah?

"he was going to be in my band whether he liked it or not" ...murdoc-

HELP. 2D IS LIKE BRO GO ON IM LISTENING 🥺 despite hearing the story 50-60 times and murdoc said fuck off you lil shit.

ok irrelevant but i love his voice! its super comforting n nice to listen to 🥺

HELP MURDOCS SO BITTER. "NOTHING THAT HAPPENS TO US IS NORMAL" WELL YEAH. THIS IS TRAUMA CENTRAL.

idk how/why he sucked up all his friends souls though ... how are they all possessing the same person. they said "its my turn on The Russ"

DELL IS HIS ACTUAL, LITERAL SOULMATE...KING...😭

went to a private school,,, and was already possessed? and the thing where he gets bigger and smaller is a reoccurring thing?

was in a coma for 4 years?

hiphop machine...time and history...the ultimate set i guess.

his knowledge was infinite and hes a "Renaissance man" hes so fucking smart our king. jack of all trades but a master of drums. he said i know im good and what of it

PAULA.

HELP. HE RMBRS THE STALL: CUBICAL NUMBER 3 🥴 IF I DO RECALL 🤤

yes russel our king. fuck up his nose 5 more times. probably stunted his growth too. he shrunk after russ gave him a wallop im sure

why dies paula sound like tracer overwatch

also only dated 2d for 2 months before joining the band?

HELP SHE REALLY WAS THE FIRST MURDOC FUCKER: "but when i saw murdoc with his thick greasy hair, green teeth and yellow skin i thought 'oh this is the ine for me!'" "OH HES SUCH A DANDY-" HELP ME IM HQJDHD

sick in the head...like i want to hurt people help girl. shes fucking Crazy. but she rly said damn i didnt hear back from him again 😭 and my purse is gone JSHHD

MURDOC: SHE WAS DEPRESSINGLY UGLY *still fucked her*

NOODLE TIME

"small japanese person!"

2d: we werent gorillaz until noodle arrived!

im dying the reason he chose gorillaz. 'swinging through the jungle baring my ass'

noodle really said "im just happy to be here" and she balanced everyone out 😭 "she gave off pure love and the fact that she could laugh at murdoc REALLY helped too" RUSS... IS BABY

JFC MURDOCS SO FUCKING CONFIDENT IN THIS BAND IM LIVING FOR THAT. HE SAID YOU WANT US SO BAD IT MAKES YOU LOOK STUPID. THE CHARISMA

2d rambling ab some girl he met and "ssSs" "whats the s stand for hawhaw" "i dont know!".

THE RECORD LABEL GUY.

one song is all it took i ❤ good for them

just murdoc talking ab the party that they threw for thier deal and saying "you dont know how much of a dick i felt like [when carrying one of those huge checks]" like oh thats whatll make you a dick? alright.

A FOOD FIGHT THAT WENT SO HARD THAT IT KNOCKED 2DS TONSILS OUT? WHAT THE FUCK

ahshdj damon and murdoc not getting along bc of Rival Band One Uppery + damon calling murdocs cuban heels crap since ge wore steel ones with gold spurs.

MURDOC FEELIN EMBARRASSED BC HES 'QUITE PROUD OF HIS SHOES'

but the band and damon getting over music and their ambitions and became a "paternal figure"

HELP MURDOC SAID AWIOGA @ RACHEL WHICH MADE HER THROW HER DRINK IN HIS FACE AND SPLIT FROM 2D. kinda sad actually, she said i still like 2d but murdoc kinda ruined it by trying to get it in with me, it put a strain in our relationship :/ oh god murdocs That Dude

nov 31 1998: started recording :]

40 tracks that got cut down to 15 holy shit

KONG STUDIOS 🤲

hooking up cameras in every room ejdjsu

webby artist of the year in 2006? holy shit

noodle learning ab kong studios omfg

JFC. YES I KNEW KONG WAS BUILT ON/IN A CEMETERY BUT I DIDNT KNOW PPL FOR THE FUCKING PLAGUE WHERE THROWN THERE HDJD

built in 1739?

the ghost of the first owners ghost still roams around in the kitchen in the early hours and moans 'aaa glass of water'

theres some rotting bullshit near the studios and in the summer its fucking TERRIBLE

the former owners were a biker gang, and they all died in a fire

murdoc said this place has bad vibes. i want it.

grim weather

the building feels impossible to escape from huHgg

#rip lol i feel annoying but my blog my rights ig #brainworm ivy #gorillaz rambles

[burnedbyshoto]

Can we get the same thing dealing with Uraraka and Momo? People hate on them soooo much and I dont see the reason why. Most of the time its just because they interrupt peoples fave ships, and Ive noticed a lot of the hate they get is from other girls. Like. Though a lot of quieter anime girls get a lot of shit from fandoms, mostly from the girls and with the idea of them interrupting whatever ship they like a lot.

I think... dealing with female characters is very hard in terms of shonen manga. especially for us western fans.

as always this is my opinion on how I see and interpret the manga and anime, you’re free to disagree and hate my interpretation!!!!

number one thing you need to know is that I don’t hate a single female character in bnha. i don’t. my least favorite female character is like... I don’t even know, I like them all really. but when it comes to hating on female characters in shonen manga it’s hard for me to find a true stance.

for us westerners I don’t think we’ll ever be satisfied with female empowerment within shonen unless we have more series like sailor moon honestly. to be honest i’m not well versed in anime and manga, I haven’t like watched more than 5 series and all of them have been popular and mainstream things, so they’re all pretty formulaic in the same way.

strongest male main protagonist, not as strong as main protagonist but can kick his ass still male protagonist, and the female protagonist that’s meant to serve as an equal but is sorely unequal to both her counterparts and will grow to be strong but not that strong but strong — can probably beat up the two protagonist in a playful way but never ever in a serious match.

all things considered from what i’ve seen females are plot devices for one arc and one arc only.

westerns — female fans specifically — want our female characters to be as badass as the men, to be able to go toe to toe, to be loud and obnoxious and still be loved, to be crusty and ugly villains and still be loved. from what I gather people just want female characters to be more than just love devices and hold their own weight and not cry.

we also have to take into consideration that bnha is literally designed for young boys — it is a shonen after all — and while it’s by means no excuse for lack of female character building, this series is meant for young boys to see themselves within these characters. and within our cis heteronormative world that does mean letting these young boys see themselves within these male characters. again, not an excuse, but an insight we do need to take into consideration.

now applying this to bnha we have our main female protagonists within uraraka and momo.

I think that they’re pretty well written all things considered. I know they’ll never be like winry or hawkeye in fma and that’s literally the only anime i’ve seen where the female characters were developed in their own field of expertise in strong ways.

uraraka has been made to be the love interest of izuku, there is no denying it, but I don’t think that’s her only character trait. she’s 16 years old going to a school that people dream of getting into, and is best friends with someone she admires. it’s without a doubt that feelings catch on, but izuku isn’t the one driving her to be a hero.

from episode what 5??? of the anime she states that she’s becoming a hero for her family. she’s becoming a hero so she can use her quirk to help her family and to rescue people. uraraka wants to be a rescue hero (and tbh people often forget that that’s what izuku wanted to be too). she learns a few fighting skills because she experienced first hand that her inability to fight is going to cost her big time. so she thinks “what would izuku do” once gets called out about it from aoyama and suddenly no one can shut up about it.

the entire sports festival battle against bakugou she fucking had him, tbh the fact that bakugou was able to clear the entire air of concrete chunks and only get a 5 second arm cramp is ass. bakugou always says quirks have a limit but that’s the only time we’ve seen him near a limit and it wasn’t even that impactful seeing that he was ready to roll again. but uraraka did THAT!!! she pushed bakugou to the point where she has been the first person to ever really put him at the brink. sure bakugou and izuku go at it many times leaving them bloodied and bruised, but never have they been like: “OMG MY QUIRK IS GONNA BE INEFFECTIVE NOW”

uraraka takes her initiative to do things, and hell if it really bugs you that she’s getting stronger because she wants to be like izuku idk what to tell you. she’s becoming a hero to help her family, and her getting a little side piece along the way isn’t a big deal to me as long as she doesn’t throw her entire life away to save izuku (which she hasn’t). uraraka is a self sufficient queen, she’s dirt poor and is thriving. she’s 16 years old with a crush, that’s not a big deal in my eyes.

now momo is ehhh idk how to explain it. okay, so like, I love momo. but I don’t see her becoming a fighting hero and that’s okay!!!! why do we have to have girls being able to one hit KO other heroes when it’s been made perfectly clear that not all heroes are alleyway boxers. momo is fucking smart, with the ability to create whatever the fuck she wants, sure she can pull gun after gun from her chest and mow down any villain who comes her way — but that’s not who she is. momo is a leader through and through. she is a take none give none, and battling isn’t her expertise but she’s still good at it. momo has scored first in every single UA exam validating her intelligence every time.

if momo becomes a hero similar to todobakudeku, which I severally wish she won’t because that’s not her, I know she’s not going to be the best. her quirk makes her have to be sneaky, smart, and faster thinking than anyone else on the field. I mean look at her fight with tokoyami, her inability to think fast cost her the match really.

to be honest I don’t know much hate on the girls because it’s so stupidly irrelevant to me that I just go “scroll!!!!!”

I do think costumes need to be redone, but like can we also remember that heroes are also superstars in a hero society so looking hot af for popularity is needed. these girls were also 15 years old when they decided on their costumes and idk about you but I would’ve picked a costume that made me look hot as hell!!!! if i’m going to be fighting for living, people best know that I am hot as fuck!!!! besides, these costumes weren’t meant to be fought in outside of training!!!! they should see how their costumes work, how to improve them!!! they have 3 years and even more changes outside of UA to make them the best!!!! uraraka didn’t want her suit to be skin tight, but because the support company took into mind appearance it became tight. momo doesn’t want her costume to be regularly destroyed through her quirk, so she wanted to basically be naked because she thought there was no way to save her clothes!!! I hope hori gives her the ability to make her costume from her hair like mirio did so that way it can phase through her outfit without tearing it into smithereens.

but we also have to remember that female characters don’t have to be like male characters. would I love a female character to be able to best all might, shiggy, todobakudeku??? yeah, what female wouldnt??? but then we’d all have problems with her not being realistic enough and yadda yadda yadda. females not being the best is okay in my eyes as long as they get the proper growth and attention.

undeniably momo and uraraka have been on the back burner but with how the manga is going there hasn’t really been time for them to be on the front, but maybe it’s coming??? idk. I just want another stupid school arc but noooooooooo people hate it when the kids are being kids!!!! why do you want them to suffer all the damn time jfc 😫😫😫

if you want girls to be as strong as the boys I say look at girls like ryuuku neijire mina and miruko, i’m positive these ladies will be your saving grace once japan figures out that mina is amazing and that it’s okay for girls to be on the front lines kicking ass too

#lyssa doesnt shut up

[devourer--of--books]

if you’re not the bride (deluxe version)

So you may be wondering why is it you're seeing this. Hello, it is I again. If you're here, maybe you're familiar with the original "if you're not the bride', which I posted about three years ago. In case you're not, then, hello, welcome, when I was 15 I wrote a story under this same title. Then forgot all about it. But every so often someone would come across this story and I was reminded of its existence. Then, back in september 2019, I decided to read it again, correct some grammar and call it a day, you know, just so I could rest assured I hadn't written something horrible. Turns out, it got a bit out of hand and I decided to rewrite the whole thing. However, due to the fact that college is the worst, I never finished it and, well, forgot about it, again. Now, as quarantine came around, I found my rewrite from 6 months ago and since I got the time why not, right? This is now more than double the size of the original and has a lot more of backstory than intended. You can still find the original with some corrections here on AO3 and , and the cursed unedited version somewhere on tumblr for the sake of nostalgia. Warnings: There's cursing, some drinking and good old make outs. July 2020 edit: here I am, re-edting this thing again. This all said, welcome folks, to the deluxe version:

"You're going to what?!" Agatha raised her voice, tightly holding her phone to her ear. Surely, she must have heard Sophie wrong. Her friend did have a reputation for being over the top, but this was beyond absurd.

When people said that being friends with Sophie was…an exotic experience, they weren't completely wrong, per say. Being friends with Sophie could be a lot like being friends with a hungry animal. She was ruthless, dangerous and not trustworthy about 60% of the time. Sophie would do most anything to get whatever she wanted and absolutely would step over you in the process (sometimes for no reason other than because it amused her to do so). It wasn't personal, mostly. It was simply her nature.

For her, there were two kinds of people: her friends and her enemies. It was very easy to go from one category to another and anything in between simply couldn't be processed by her brain.

Sophie was a difficult person.

Agatha could tell you in more detail, she would know. Being Sophie's best friend wasn't exactly a dream come true. It had its perks of course, and when all was said and done, Sophie was an okay-ish person and a mostly good friend, but you gotta give it up to Agatha; it was no task for the weak-hearted.

They had been friends since kindergarten and were as different from one another as it gets. Had they met later in life, Agatha is certain they would've never become friends at all. Sophie was a loud, gorgeous (and kinda mean) blonde bombshell and Agatha was a grumpy, average-looking mostly nice girl (she wouldn't call herself kind, really, her niceness was more of a subproduct of her aloofness than anything else). The two of them disagreed in most anything and had not that much in common. Yet, it somehow worked. They argued a lot, as in, a lot, but it was always fixed within a weeks' time, in a coffee shop, over a good old vanilla latte and some black tea.

An odd pair, to say the least.

Which was fine by them. Sophie… was a work in progress. She was trying.

Nevertheless, every once in a while, something like this would happen. Because Sophie was still Sophie and her head worked in mysterious ways.

"I'm getting married, Aggie," Agatha could practically hear the blonde rolling her eyes on the other side of the device, "people do that all the time. It's, like, a thing."

"Sophie, you're not even done with college yet! Getting married with what money? As far as I know, your modeling barely pays your rent and don't even get me started on your student loan and credit card debt! And getting married to whom? Last time I checked, you weren't even going out with anyone!" She tried to cool her head, catching her breath while trying to recall any possible groom Sophie could have taken. "Unless… Are you marring Hort?"

A disgusted groan was heard.

"Ew, no. Not Hort, for God's sake. What do you think I am? Desperate?"

A bit, but Agatha didn't dare say it out loud.

Hort was a guy who lived at the apartment just below Sophie's, in a tiny complex downtown. They've known each other for quite a long time now. It was practically common knowledge that Hort acquired the biggest crush on her the moment he first laid eyes on her. It was all the old ladies from 1A and 2C ever talked about.

Over the years, he became quite easy on the eyes, even Sophie had to admit it. No longer the scrawny awkward kid that helped Agatha drag Sophie's couch upstairs (while Sophie flirted with the trucker, trying to get free shipping for her mattress, which, by the way, she got), but a fully formed man, completely jacked, and with a growing bank account to match, due to his fitness-program-thingy taking off. Agatha didn't really know the details of that, but she knew it was going well, mostly because Sophie told her so.

Anyway, he claimed to not want anything to do with her friend nowdays.

Yeah, right.

Agatha felt bad for him, she really did.

Loving Sophie was like loving a hurricane. Violent, brutal and downright painful.

She had initially assumed it would go away with time, that he would eventually see that they weren't compatible and let it go.

However, it was a bit more complicated than that, as most things in life tend to be.

She knew he and Sophie had hooked up, in fact, she knew that they did so often. Sophie hadn't told her, but she didn't need to. Agatha knew. The aftermath was never good, and for the sake of keeping things short and lighthearted, Agatha shall spare you the angst and just say that, as mentioned above, Sophie was fantastic at getting whatever she wanted and disregarding other people's feelings.

Honestly, Hort could say he wasn't into Sophie all he liked. At the end of the day, he was still living at that shitty apartment (even though he could probably have moved somewhere better a long time ago), hadn't seriously dated anyone since meeting her and was responsible for at least half of Sophie's modeling gigs, which were her friend's main source of income. Agatha had warned him, several times, mind you, but all you can do is all you can do. The heart wants what it wants, she presumes.

"If not Hort, who then?"

"Oh, you don't know him yet," She could practically see Sophie twirling a golden lock on her fingers, a mischievous smirk on her face.

"Clearly," Agatha rolled her eyes and put her phone on speaker to be able to look around for her keys more comfortably. Reaper, her cat, had a bad habit of hiding them in the weirdest places. "Why didn't you tell me you were seeing someone last time we went out for coffee?"

"Because I wasn't seeing anyone at the time," the blonde-haired woman sounded a bit annoyed, seemingly not understanding why Agatha was having such a hard time believing her ludicrous story.

"Sophie."

"Yes, Aggie?"

"That was literally three weeks ago."

"It's true love, Agatha. I can feel it. This is my real-life fairytale. I found the perfect guy for me. He's so different from anyone I've ever met…" Agatha tuned her out, finally realizing what was going on.

For Sophie, everyone she dates is her one true love. She was intense like that. There were lots of "perfect guys" on the list, too many, and eventually Agatha grew tired of counting them. Neither did she remember their names. Why bother, when Sophie would grow tired of them soon enough?

Her friend's drug of choice just so happened to be was serial dating with lots of love-bombing on the side.

Parents got divorced? Look at this cute basketball player that will probably cheat on me.

Bad day at a shoot? Oh, that barista is so sexy, bet he'll hook up with me anyway.

I have no idea where my career is going and hate my major? Why not call Hort up, right?

But getting actually married? That's new.

Agatha sighed, picking up her keys from the pot of her balcony plant. Time to be the be the grown-up. Again.

"Sophie, are you 100% sure you want to get married to this guy? Can't you wait a few months at least? How about you guys move in with each other first?" If Sophie doesn't tire of him, that would terrify the poor thing into ending this madness. Again, Agatha would know. She had to stay at Sophie's for a few weeks once, back when she had split with a partner whom she had been living with; it was hell on earth.

"Weren't you hearing, Aggie? We. Are. Soulmates. He is very serious about me. He's so in love with me, he would never hurt me, and I need to tie him down before he runs away. Isn't this what people always say?" Her friend's voice was getting snappy. Oh, no, not good.

"Sophie, I just think you should be more careful and reasonable…" Agatha tried to pacify, tiredly.

Did she not own any clean jeans? Damn. Why does she keep forgetting to do her laundry? The blue skirt she wore to work would have to do.

"It's always reason, with you, Agatha! You never listen to your heart! I thought you would be happy for me! You're always telling me just how much potential I have! He brings out the best in me! What do you even know about relationships anyway, you always end up ru-"

"SOPHIE!" She interrupted, before her friend could say something she'd regret and crush whatever good mood was left in Agatha's body. "I'm just surprised, that's all. Tell me about this guy…?"

Fuck it, she decided. Agatha was in currently in a hurry and this could be solved later. She wasn't going to be able to win Sophie over the phone. Maybe she could sit her down on sunday, have one long talk about red flags in relationships, again. Convince her to stay engaged for a bit longer, just enough for her to get bored and then call it all off as soon as the new whats-his-face walks through the door.

Now was not the moment to be arguing, especially if she wanted to be on time.

"…And he's so great and wonderful, he's tall, has these hypnotizing eyes, they're so intense, it's like they suck you in, Aggie! His hair is just wow, it's a very uncommon shade of blonde, the undertone is beautiful, so expensive-looking... but it's natural, he swears. And his skin is so soft, you wouldn't believe, his name is…"

Agatha tried to listen. She really did. However, all she could hear was "bla, bla, bla, perfect, bla, bla, bla, handsome". Lord, not this again. Did it get worse every time...?

The brunette stuffed her wallet in a handbag, grappling to close it (it had been a present from Sophie, and as such, probably hardwired to annoy her and look good at the same time), and gave herself a look over in the mirror, before frowning. Oh, time for her limited make-up skills to be of use.

Damn, she looked rough. She left in hurry that morning, so her bare face stared back at her in its full sleepless-racoon glory.

It has been a long week of nothing but late nights trying to get her workload done. She couldn't believe she was saying this, but she missed college. At least back then she didn't have to worry about rent. Oh, to be young, broke, dead-inside and living on a dorm. The wonders, truly.

Concealer, blush, eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick. There. Done.

Kinda?

"… So, are you up to it?"

What.

"… Hm, sure?" She responded, still trying to evaluate if her liner was acceptably symmetrical. It wasn't. It never was, but it wasn't always this bad. Really, not her best work. Maybe she could fix it, somehow?

"That's amazing, you'll look so pretty, the dress I picked is perfect for your undertone, you'll be the best maid-of-honor ever!"

Oh, god, no. No way. What has she done?

Should she do that red-flag-talk now?

"How… nice of you to say that," Agatha replied, barely contained horror coming across in her tone. Not that Sophie paid her any attention.

"I set the date for the engagement brunch-party for tomorrow around 10am. At the terrace. And speaking of dates, I must introduce you to someone, he's great, Aggie, and I think you guys could…"

No. No. No. Agatha is drawing the line here.

"Oh really, cool, hey I have to go, callyoulaterbye-"

Agatha throws her phone on the bed, groaning loudly. Reaper stirs in her pillow, but is otherwise unbothered by the conversation, unlike his owner.

Of all things… getting married. Agatha was now her bridesmaid. Engagement brunch…?

Sophie, why. Why?

Agatha was now an accomplice of this crime against good judgement, wasn't she? Should she call Sophie again…?

Ugh, you know what? She'll sort this out this later. Sophie could wait a few hours, Agatha earned this night out.

…This totally is going to come back to bite her, isn't it?

Well, too late, Agatha's leaving. Because, unlike Sophie, who clearly had too much free time in her hands, Agatha had things to do and couldn't just waste her precious friday nights on this kind of bullshit.

.

.

.

"You're late," is the first thing Hester says to Agatha, not even lifting her gaze from her phone as she approaches their table.

It was the usual one, right by the wall, perfectly placed so it was far enough from the dance floor but close enough to the bar, so it was still socially acceptable to be seated but not too "loser-zoned", in Hester's own words.

Hester herself looked the same as always. Dressed head-to-toe in black and showing off an impressive number of tattoos per square inch of skin, she made quite the intimidating sight. The only tip to her actual day job was the discarded white blazer and sleek suitcase lying on a chair beside her. Back in school, Agatha used to find it hard to picture Hester being anything but a witchy-biker or a badass-tattoo-artist, but she supposed scary-lawyer suited her friend just fine.

"Nice to see you too, Hester. I've been well, thanks for asking," Agatha sits down, annoyed. She knows she's late. She missed the "early-comers, free entrance" time, and damn if the isn't pissed that she's now 15 bucks broker then she already was. "Anadil, Dot, it's great to see you guys too"

Both women acknowledge her presence quietly: Anadil nods,before getting up from her spot and leaving to god-wishes-he-knew-where and Dot hugs her briefly, headed to the bar.

Hester rolls her eyes and repeats herself.

"You're late."

"Shut up, I'm here, aren't I?!" Agatha snaps, before she bit her lip and propped her elbows onto the table, head in her hands.

The gesture makes Hester lift her eyes from the phone, finally.

"Well, someone's had a bad day."

"Look, I'm sorry. It's been one looong horrid day. Have you ordered any drinks? Or are we going for beer tonight?" Agatha asks, going over the familiar menu, even though she has every beverage price there already memorized.

"Okay, slow down," Hester yanks the menu out of her hands. "Have you eaten? I'm not going to take care of you if you didn't."

Yes, she would, but that's not relevant.

"Yes, mom," Agatha rolled her eyes. "I'm tired, tomorrow is gonna suck, let's drink."

"Tomorrow? Tomorrow's saturday, loser, sleep to your hearts content," Hester reminds her, but at seeing Agatha stare back at her in misery it occurred to her what, or rather, who, this was about.

"Blondie has been texting me non-stop about brunch. At 10. What's up with that?" She lifts a brow, her judging eyes scanning Agatha's expression. Agatha in turn, lets her elbows drop and bangs her head onto the table, harder than originally planned, a whimper leaving her lips.

Hester sighs. She loves Agatha to the death, but when it comes to Sophie, she has always been way too forgiving. Agatha was not Sophie's mother, she shouldn't have to look out for her and bend over backyards to help her. Personally, Hester and Sophie didn't get along very well.

Which lead to: Sophie never invited Hester anywhere, unless she wanted to rub something in Hester's face.

"...Apparently, she's getting married in, like, two weeks?" Hester's brows lift in surprise. "...To some guy I don't know?" Higher. "...And I'm a bridesmaid?" Almost disappearing into her hairline by now.

Awkward pause.

"Okay," Hester breathes in and out, "what the actual hell?"

"My words exactly."

"She'll be over it in a week," the tattooed woman deadpans.

"No doubt," the other replies.

Three more seconds go by, and it's far too long for Agatha, whose leg starts to twitch under the table.

"You're doing it again," she states.

"Doing what?" Hester asks, crossing her arms, lying back at her chair.

"That thing."

"What thing?"

"You know," Agatha vaguely gestures at Hester's face, "that thing your eyebrows do when you're being judgy."

"I am not."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"I so need a drink right now," she tells her before leaving the table.

.

.

.

At the bar counter, Agatha sits down on a stool and waits for the bartender, Chaddick, to show up, ignoring Hester's glare on her back.

Now for some unnecessary backstory, in case you're interested: Agatha and Chaddick had a bit of history (read, beef) long before this club, The Woods, opened and even before Agatha and Hester started to have their monthly night-out there.

Chaddick was a jock whom Agatha went to school with, all the way from sixth grade to senior year of high school. To be brief, he was the worst ™. He made fun of her, tormented her days, spread rumors about her (including one that she was witch, which lasted for years) and even stole her stuff once. In senior year, he had even developed this habit of showing up with his friends at the tea place her mother owned, where she had worked a few shifts from time to time, ordering not a single drop of fucking tea, being loud and annoying for hours and only leaving when closing hour neared.

Agatha was sure that if you googled 'jackass', his picture would turn up. He'd been so full of himself, all because he had some cash, was athletic and was "cute", you know, in that white-upper-middle-class-way that most school-aged popular boys tended to be. But then, flash-forward: Chaddick now worked wednesday to saturday as a bartender at Agatha's favorite club. Apparently, his parents went bankrupt or something during college. Agatha felt kinda bad for him, but not really? She supposed he wasn't as terrible of a human being nowadays, but she was not about to go ahead and call him her friend, no matter how many times she had to make small talk with him for the sake of bar etiquette.

"So what's it gonna be today?" The bartender asked, not quite politely, but she lets it slide, for she could tell he was as thrilled about this conversation as her.

Chaddick, too, looks the same, to no one's surprise. He looked more tired, but still douchey enough that Agatha didn't feel too horrible of a person for not feeling as sorry for him as she probably should.

"Surprise me. I've had a very bad day."

"Is Sophie actually up to something then?" He asks while grabbing some bottles, "I hear there's going to be a brunch-party tomorrow…?"

"Who told you? Reena?" Chaddick dismisses the name casually with his hand. "Gisele?" 'no', he denies with his head. "Beatrix then?" he nods, uncharacteristically shy, and Agatha nearly felt pleased, before she remembered what they were talking about before. "Bingo. But yes, there's a brunch-party tomorrow. An engagement brunch-party."

He hands her a cup, wide-eyed, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"Engagement? Do I even wanna know w-"

"You don't. Trust me on this," Agatha cuts him off, taking a sip of the beverage. She doesn't recognize its taste, which makes her wary. She knows her alchool. "What did you even put here?"

"It's a secret, tonight's special," he winked mockingly, before hurrying on to the next client.

Agatha briefly wonders if she should drink the rest of it, eyeing the cup curiously. It didn't smell bad and she kind of liked the taste. Should she trust Chaddick? Probably not. Then again, Agatha needed a drink tonight.

It would be fine. She is no lightweight, Hester is here, tomorrow's saturday. Right?

Another thing that would probably bite her later. So, she braces herself and downs the cup in a few large sips, heading back to her table.

Bring it on.

.

.

.

Two other cups of who-knows-what and an hour later, Agatha was back at the bar, now sitting in different stool, as far from Chaddick as she possibly could be, when a body drops on the sit next to her.

It's Dot, giggling loudly like a high school girl on heavy drugs.

The giggling persists for quite some time.

... It's kinda creeping Agatha out.

"Penny for your thoughts…?" She tries, taking a sip of her drink.

No response.

Giggle.

More silence.

"Hm, Dot?"

She continues to stare at her joyfully, still smiling like a madwoman.

Agatha found Dot adorable and friendly, which was a surprise since she was one of Hester's best friends. The two of them weren't really that close themselves, but she did enjoy her company. Being friends with Dot was as easy as it was harmless.

"Don't look, but there's a really hot guy right by the pool table who hasn't been able to take his eyes off you for the last fifteen minutes."

Agatha's eyebrows shot up in Hester-like fashion and she fights the instinct to turn around and check if Dot isn't messing with her.

She knows she is not the most attractive female in the room. Agatha tends to think of herself as more of an acquired taste, truly. Yet, every blue moon someone would come over to try their luck with her. Sometimes they're cute, sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're just desperate. So far, "hot guys" haven't really been her target demographic.

"So what? What's the big deal?" She tries to keep her nerves out of her voice, mostly succeeding, but Dot's smile only grew more and more mischievous, as if seeing right through her.

"Turn around. I dare you not to remember him. Pretty sure Sophie told you about how she met him again a few weeks ago, at that event she went to? The one sponsored by Camelot International?"

…Okay, so Agatha might be a bit of a bad friend. She didn't listen to 90% of Sophie's rants about guys or modeling events, so most likely she had told her about him as Agatha did something else. Something important, really.

…Like playing games on her tablet.

She worked a lot, okay? Can't have people hogging all her free time. Even if it was Sophie. Her best friend.

Shit.

Agatha's face must have betrayed her because Dot laughed even louder than before.

"You seriously don't?" she managed to ask between giggles, as Agatha blushed, frowning.

"I should?"

"Most likely yes. Sometimes you're way too funny, you know?" Her smile was dangerous. Stop smiling at Agatha like that, woman.

It was at times like this she could see why Hester and Dot were such good friends.

"Thanks, I think?" Agatha eyes her companion carefully "How hot is this guy any…"

"Hot enough for you to talk to me, I hope," a male voice announced behind her, seemingly amused.

Not her day. Definitely not her day.

"He's right behind me?!"

Dot giggled loudly a final time before walking away to Hester's table. Very helpful. Forget what Agatha said about liking Dot. She didn't. Dot was a horrible person.

Agatha turned on her heels, facing the stranger with a sheepish smile. She was not ready for what was about to bite her.

Oh damn, please do.

…Figuratively, fuck. She meant in a figurative way.

Before we go on, Agatha would like to clarify that she blames any less than pure thoughts on Chaddick, because who knows what he put into her drink.

(Yeah, it's totally Chaddick's fault)

Amen, praise Jesus, okay?

Embarrassingly, her first instinct is to say that yes, he was totally hot enough to talk to her. Or come home with her. Or marry her (too soon for this joke, scratch that). That's not what she did, however. Oh, no, she stood there, in silence, and stared for quite a while before her brain rebooted and she finally gained control of her own body again.

Agatha is the first in line to advocate on why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but she had eyes.

He was tall. As tall, if not taller than her, and Agatha was a tall woman. His jeans looked expensive and his light blue social shirt was tight on his chest, almost as if it were a size too small, the top buttons open, defined muscles visible to even the most casual observer. The shirt was paired with a grey-ish tie that hanged loosely around his neck, a bit too effortless-looking to be unintentional. His features were sharp, sculpted even, a certain California-sunny-surfer meets Adonis-next-door quality to them. Soft blond locks had an unnatural shine under the club's lights, as if they were made of gold.

And his eyes, my god, they were so blue Agatha felt like sinking and drowning in his arms right then and there. Unfortunately, she couldn't. Because you see, she is a grown woman and had a little thing called dignity.

Not that she didn't want to though.

Focus.

He did look kind of familiar. Had they met before? Agatha doesn't think so. This man looked like he just walked out of a Calvin Klein ad, and she sure as hell didn't know many people who look like that. One of Sophie's model friends? If so, she certainly hadn't introduced the two.

Yet, the way he was looking at her right now indicated the reality that she should probably know who he is. Maybe he was from her old gym, back when she let Sophie talk her into going for a few months? No, there were no hot guys there, just old ladies and teenagers.

Okay, so, plan B, say something smart.

"Hm…"

Say something.

"…So…"

Anything!

He doesn't look very impressed by her articulate conversation skills, but Agatha can't place where she had seen him before. Maybe they had been neighbors at some point? She moved quite a few times in these last years and keeping track of all of them was impossible. But that didn't seem quite right. A friend of one of her exes then? Did they meet at pride or something?

Seriously, who was this guy! Acting all smooth, as if she should know who he is! He's good looking enough to be memorable sure, but clearly not memorable enough.

Hell, did she sleep with him? He must have been the worst one night stand ever for Agatha to somehow forget him. Maybe he was so bad that she forgot about him completely...?

"I give up, I can't remember you."

He looked a bit offended. Maybe he was indeed a Calvin Klein model.

"The name's Tedros…?"

Tedros, Tedros… Tedros?

"Nope, doesn't ring a bell," she concludes, "but, I'm, hm, Agatha?"

"I know," he responds, curt and firm, nearly glaring at her.

"Neat."

"Nice."

"Good."

"Great."

"Awesome."

"Amazing."

"Extraordinary."

"Now, that's a big word," he mocks. Agatha suspects he just didn't know any bigger ones to keep up. Part of her wishes to strangle him with his own tie and part of her wants to call him out on his shit. He approached her, okay? She is under no obligation to recognize him.

Her eyes narrow and she sips on her fourth cup again.

"Do you need for me to tell you what it means?"

"Oh, no, I'm fine."

The passive-aggressive-ness of this conversation is starting to exhaust her and kill any buzz she had, but she can't just let Mr. everyone-knows-who-I-am-and-I-look-like-walking-sex win. He needed to go down (on her). What.

"Hm, Tedros, you're going to order something or what?"

Chaddick cuts the stare contest between brown and blue and Agatha makes a note to leave him a nicer tip tonight.

"What's the special of the day?" Tedros' tone is amused, as if he and Chaddick are old friends. Ugh, of course he would. He sounded douchey enough. Maybe he went to school with her? That sounded about right, she could picture it. Pretty-boy-Tedros, walking down the hall wearing a football jacket with a cheerleader or two on his arm.

"Nice little things I've put together," Chaddick wiggled his eyebrows. "Want some?"

"Is it safe?" Tedros asks him, cautiously.

"Well, Agatha here is still fine at four, I would say so."

Soon enough Tedros is downing his second cup, sitting on the stool next to hers.

.

.

.

Agatha wasn't sure how or why, but things went from point A to point B very, very quickly.

Point A being sitting beside Tedros at the bar and point B being heavily making out with him in a corner.

Agatha wishes she was joking. She wasn't. It just…somehow…happened?

Fuck.

It all started when Tedros eventually caught up to her and from there on they held a little amicable drinking competition.

("I bet you can't do more shots than me." "Oh, you're so on!" "You drink like a fourteen-year old, dude." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah.")

Then, they paid for their drinks. Well, Tedros did.

("Did you just... pay for me?" "It's called having manners." "Excuse you?")

After that, Chaddick kicked them out to the dance floor, something about the two of them 'grossing him out'. Agatha is not much of a dancer, so she tried to go back her table but Tedros said something (she can't quite remember what it was) that made her realize that she kind of didn't want to. Leave, she means.

They danced for a bit before she stepped on Tedros's foot, or maybe he stepped on hers first?

("Ouch." "Get out of my way!" "Make me.")

From there on it was incomprehensible screaming over loud music for a while and they somehow ended up being way too up in each other's personal space. Agatha eventually just lost it, and grabbed him by his collar, bringing him down to place a forceful peck on his lips, before backing away, partly horrified, partly proud.

It took two mortifyingly long seconds of silence and pure embarrassment for Tedros to grab her by the waist and kiss her roughly.

They stumbled to a more secluded corner, until Agatha's back hit a wall, but she was distracted from the pain of the impact by Tedros licking her bottom lip, seeking her tongue, a small sound escaping her once he found it. What the hell is she even doing, this should not be happening. And yet, she cannot bring herself to care.

This is a wild, passionate kiss and not at all Agatha's expertise. She always considered herself more of a slow-vanilla-soft kind of girl. But out the window with that, Tedros was nowhere near close enough, no matter that they were already flush against each other. Maybe this is why Sophie thinks every guy she meets is her soulmate. As cheesy as it sounds, she feels somehow connected to this stranger, almost as if they were meant to be or something.

Ha, as if.

Any thoughts, of soulmates or otherwise, are forgotten when Tedros' hands start to wander, one goes from her waist to her hip and the other moves to explore her tight, squeezing it deliciously. Agatha retaliates by pulling on his hair, not as lightly as she probably should've, but is rewarded with a husky groan and a bite on her bottom lip.

(She does it again because that might be her new favorite sound.)

What. Is. Going. On.

Her last braincells are on fire. She was on fire.

Okay, young lady, de-attach yourself from the handsome male slo…

Oh God.

She's pretty much breathless when he decides to break the kiss, her lips chasing after his for the slightest second as he pulls away. Her heartbeat has never been this loud and she has no time to overthink, as, suddenly, his lips are on her neck. Agatha lets out a quiet, but embarrassingly needy, whine (as quietly as she could, but it didn't really matter, he heard her anyway) when he nips on her ear and then trails down to suck at her pulse point. Her hands snake their way from his hair to under his shirt's collar and Tedros shivers once she drags her short nails lightly on his upper back and shoulders, but she can still feel his very attractive smug smirk against her skin.

She felt drunk. She doesn't feel like that often.

Not the completely-trashed-I-just-had-countless-drinks kind of drunk and certainly not this don't-care-keep-going-my-blood-is-on-fire kind of drunk either. Like she wanted to keep touching Tedros for the rest of her life (the idea doesn't sound half bad), as fireworks danced around them and… God, if Sophie knows this guy how she could not marry him on the spot, because fuck…

He's leaving quite a few love bites along her collarbone, teasing, attempting (and succeeding) at drawing tiny sounds from her and Agatha can't take it anymore. She drags him back up to her mouth and somehow pulls him even closer. She did not like feeling weak, but to her surprise, Tedros seemed to possess the superpower of turning her completely boneless in the best kind of way.

Wait.

Agatha is making out with Tedros.

Tedros is making out with her.

Agatha's eyes open in late realization and the two of them stare at each other for a few seconds.

So, this happened, huh?

"I… hm… have to go. Out of here. Home. Alone. Yeah, that," Agatha makes way around paralyzed Tedros, whom looks very confused and disoriented. His lips are tainted with coral lipstick, he's panting for air, his bright eyes dark with desire, clothes looking disrelished, pants looking a bit too tight, and he just looks throughfully kissed.

No, Agatha does not feel even a little tiny bit of pride by seeing him look like that because of her, what are you talking about, not sexy, not sexy at all.

… Maybe he could come along?

No. No, no, no.

She doesn't run away from him exactly, but she sure as hell wasn't walking. As she passes Hester and Anadil, the two of them raise eyebrows judgingly, but Agatha does her best to school her expression into neutrality.

If she waited a bit longer, she might have heard Tedros saying:

"Until tomorrow then."

.

.

.

Agatha regrets every single life choice that led her to this point.

She's sitting on a ridiculously shaped chair at Sophie's apartment building's terrace, brooding silently in the corner, with a big headache, while eating some diet cake that tasted like foam, listening to violin versions of bad pop songs, probably dying of heatstroke, and if that doesn't kill her soon enough, can someone please end her misery…

Hester and Anadil are not here after all. Agatha doesn't blame them. It might be for the best, because Agatha doesn't need to deal with Hester's judgy eyebrows right now. Dot is down in Sophie's apartment, at the kitchen, most likely trying to steal some wine and she is pretty much the only person here Agatha can stand.

She partly wonders if Hort will show up but decides she does not care. She's running on aspirin, her head feels like it was smashed against a wall multiple times, and it's too hot here, okay?

It's a hot sunny day and the limited shade would not be enough to cool Agatha down even if she wasn't wearing a scarf. Agatha hates this scarf. It was another one of Sophie's gifts, and Agatha hates it because it's an evil scarf that pinches her every five seconds. However it's the lightest scarf she owns, and she can't it take off.

Otherwise, someone might notice the dark mark on her neck, which her shirt could not hide, as was the case for the other ones, lower, in her collarbones.

Tedros freaking marked her. The nerve.

She's not nearly as pissed as she should be, because honestly she's kinda into it.

Taking off the scarf would lead to too much teasing and questions, she had no turtlenecks available (damn you, past-Agatha, for not doing your laundry) and if only she had the skills to cover it up with makeup. Not only was the scarf evil by itself, it made it impossible for her to not think of yesterday, therefore, making her even more irritable.

She is not the kind of person who kisses people at the club. She sure as hell wouldn't bring a guy she's just met, at the club of all places, home. What if he'd been a psycho? She doesn't know him. He'd know where she lived. She wouldn't go to his place either, that sounded even more irresponsible. But she wishes she had at least gotten his number, you know, instead of freaking out and running away. Well, he knew Chaddick, so maybe she could ask him?

No, that would be humiliating, and Agatha is trying to hang on to whatever dignity she had left.

Also, it had been almost an hour at this damned terrace party and she hasn't seen a single trace of Sophie's fiancé, but the blonde assured her he would be there soon. He's the late-type, hm.

Okay, so Agatha hates him already.

She has been to this terrace quite a few times, it was the one pro of Sophie's building, aside from cheap rent. But she was running out of both will and things to point out in small talk with all these models and small influencers. If she hears "Sophie has such a lovely terrace" one more time…

Suddenly, there was clank, signaling that someone pushed the terrace door open. As Sophie lit up and moved to greet the newcomer, Agatha felt the cake climb up her throat.

Holy hell, is that Tedros?

What is her life, really.

Agatha gets up from her chair quietly, observing the scene from behind a plant, trying not to be too obvious, just, ya know, casually chilling in the middle of the scorching sun. Sophie hugs him tightly, placing a kiss on his cheek, grinning as she laces their fingers together and starts walking in Agatha's general direction, pulling the handsome man behind her.

Hm, no.

Agatha resists the urge to pace in circles as she tries to gather her thoughts. It might be the hangover or the diet cake but seeing the two of them together made her wanna barf. Not because they didn't look good together. They did. In fact, maybe too good. Sophie's long soft hair was a shade or two lighter than Tedros', but other than that, they might as well have been made in the same Instagram-model-facility. Like a set, Barbie and Ken.

What is this feeling?

Oh no, she can see them approaching. Abort mission, leave, get out, hit the road…

"Aggie, darling!"

Agatha forces herself to fake a confident smile, as if she could always be found casually hanging out behind plants on saturday mornings. It turned out to be more of sheepish grin, especially when compared to her friend, whose pretty smile is almost too big for her too pretty face.

Sophie looked particularly gorgeous in her pastel green summer dress and peep-toe heels. Her tanned skin glows under the sun, the light catching in her green eyes on that special way that made photographers all around the industry want to work with her despite her inexperience, the grace within her movements creating an allure Agatha doesn't think she'd be able to recreate even if she were to be born again.

This is not good. Leave, abort mission, repeat, abort miss…

"Aggie, this is Tedros, you know, the one I was telling you about yesterday," she winked. "Teddy, this is my bestie, Agatha, you remember her, right?" Sophie nudges him lightly using her elbow.

Tedros looks even better now that she can see him in natural daylight. Which should be illegal, truly. He's wearing a plain white t-shirt and jeans, his hair made of pure gold looked just messy enough to not look too try-hard, yet something about him looked weirdly… staged? Agatha couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"I surely do," Tedros lets go of Sophie's hand, shoulders tensing, and Agatha thinks he might be blushing. Is he nervous? "We-"

"Nice to meet you," Agatha interrupts him, grasping his hand on a firm handshake and letting go just as fast, as if touching his skin would burn her. "Sophie told me a lot about you."

Play along, please. I beg you.

"Oh, hm, it's very nice to meet you too?" Tedros responds, confused, but not calling her out. "Nice scarf," he adds, his lips curling upwards, so very slightly she might have missed if she wasn't micro-analyzing his every movement. Smug bastard. She is all too aware of his gaze lingering on her neck, a hint of pride showing in his bright eyes, the teasing in his voice making her want to pull him down by the collar, whether to choke him or to kiss him she couldn't tell.

"Oh, isn't it cute? See, Aggie, I told you that color looked great on you!" Sophie cuts in, reaching to touch said scarf. Agatha steps back self-consciously, making an effort to not scratch the back of her neck as not to call more attention to it.

"Quite the bold fashion statement for the summer, may I add," Tedros continues as he casually leaned one elbow on Sophie's shoulder. Subtle enough that Sophie wouldn't read too much into it, but Agatha could see right through his shit. "But I like it. You look very pretty, Agatha"

How dare he, truly. No sham-

Wait.

"So, I need to get going, work emergency you see, but I'll make it up to you, Sophie," Agatha excuses herself, quickly. She tells herself it's just the heat that it's bothering her, but her brain is going 300 miles per hours and she needs to leave. Now.

"Aggie, tomorrow we'll be having lunch at the country club, don't be late!"

"Yeah, be there, alright."

Agatha sprints down the complex's stairs as discreetly as she can, which is not much. By the time she's at her car, the weight of her realization hits her full force.

.

.

.

"I'm getting married, Aggie"

"Not Hort"

"You don't know him yet"

.

.

.

"Aggie, this is Tedros, you know, the one I was telling you about yesterday."

.

.

.

"That was literally three weeks ago."

"I dare you not to remember him. Pretty sure Sophie told you about how she met him again a few weeks ago at that event she went to? The one sponsored by Camelot International?"

.

.

.

"…Oh he's so great and wonderful, he's tall, has these hypnotizing eyes, they're so intense, its like they suck you in, Aggie! His hair is just wow, it's a very uncommon shade of blonde, the undertone is beautiful, so expensive-looking, but it's natural, he swears, and his skin is so soft you wouldn't believe, his name is…"

"bla, bla, bla, perfect, bla, bla, bla, handsome"

.

.

.

"He's so different from anyone I've ever met…"

"She feels somehow connected to this stranger, almost as if they were meant to be or something."

.

.

.

"Acting all smooth, as if she should know who he is!"

"He looked a bit offended."

"The name's Tedros?"

.

.

.

"God, if Sophie knows this guy how could she not marry him on the spot…"

"Sophie hugs him tightly, placing a kiss on his cheek, grinning as she laces their fingers together and starts walking, pulling the handsome man behind her."

.

.

.

Agatha is a very bad friend, isn't she?

She bangs her head on the wheel.

Then, she regrets doing so, opening the car's door, so she could vomit some diet cake and last night's alcohol on the parking lot's floor before driving away.

.

.

.

By a miracle, Agatha survives the drive home and makes it back home in one piece.

As she walks into her own apartment, she does not feel half as guilty as she thought she would be. But she was very, very angry. Furious, actually.

At herself for being both a dumbass and a bad friend, at Tedros for being a player, at Chaddick for being a dick in general, at Sophie for being Sophie, at Dot for not warning her and even at Hester for not being at the party today so Agatha could at least not freak out by herself.

She can't do anything for the rest of the day, because trying to work, read or sleep is useless, since she can't focus with all the internal screeching her mind is doing. Her existence now doesn't make any sense and Agatha is about to tear her hair out, lying down in her bed, staring at the celling.

(There's a long crack on there and for whatever reason, it reminded her of a river. Probably because it didn't look like anything else.)

She contemplates calling Hester and telling her everything but ultimately decides against it. She can't bring herself to explain this out loud, least of all hear any possible lecture Hester might give her. Is this how Sophie feels when she decides hide things from her-

Oh my God, Sophie.

Tedros was engaged. To Sophie. He was Sophie's fiancé.

Agatha is not freaking out at all.

.

.

.

At last, ten long hours of sulking later, Agatha is feeling a lot guiltier, still very much pissed and just confused as a whole.

She made out with Sophie's fiancé. Should she tell her? Yes. Would she? To be decided.

Maybe they wouldn't even get married. Come on, a few weeks? There's no way Sophie will keep up this insanity. Telling her about the club incident would only hurt their life-long friendship over a guy who wasn't even gonna last two months. Years of companionship out the window. She had no intention of doing it again so, did it really matter? What the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't feel, right?

She hadn't even known he was Sophie's fiancé!

But then again, Sophie had told her all about him. She didn't listen because she was a bad friend! Was she really gonna play the "I didn't know" card...?

It was the truth!

But no one would believe her. Fuck, if Agatha were Sophie, she wouldn't believe herself. Agatha was a smart grown woman, godamn it. What kind of dumb bitch even-

This wedding wasn't happening. No need to worry, right?

For now, Agatha has two long weeks of supposedly weeding-related bonding moments with Sophie to survive, without accidentally letting slip that, oh, talked, drank, danced and made out with Tedros.

Well, shit.

.

.

.

Even if one ignored the fact that the guilt was starting to eat Agatha alive from inside out, the next day would still have been a long, tortured journey of nothing but cringe and regrets. Yet she bore it, because she, even if accidentally, brought this on herself.

Agatha got up early on a sunday (name a bigger crime) to try and get something done, since she would probably have little time to work in the following weeks. Then, she went to have lunch with Sophie at a fancy country club (that Sophie couldn't afford by the way, which earned her a lecture on credit cards and personal finances) hoping to have that "red-flag" talk.

It did not go well.

Sophie had invited him along. Of course, she would. Apparently, since she was getting married soon, Agatha should be used to have him around. And, of course, Sophie would have decided to tell her he was coming the moment he walked in, headed to their table.

This is Sophie's fiancé. Do. Not. Stare.

What kind of cosmic karma is this? He isn't even her type.

WHY-

"Afternoon, ladies."

Sophie greeted the blonde with a smile and a hug, as Agatha merely nodded his way, scanning the room for the closest exit.

"Hi Teddy!"

"Tedros."

Lunch is awkward as hell and at this point Agatha is just waiting for a waiter to come and stab her. It ends up being both not so terrible and the worst lunch ever because she does talk quite a lot with Tedros, against her better judgment.

She learns that Tedros did go to her school, for three years. Sophie asks him if he remembers Agatha, and from Tedros' silence, Agatha assumes he doesn't want to admit to having been part of Chaddick's... shenanigans.

Her friend then talks astrology, and Agatha learns that he is a leo (because of course he would), is kinda proud of it but says he doesn't believe in astrology, prompting Sophie to start a discussion on why he wouldn't believe in astrology if he believed in tarot. The way he blushes and stammers is cute and makes Agatha feel horrible for thinking so, but she asks him about tarot anyway. She's just being polite, okay?

He mentions he'd turned 26 a while ago and recently moved back to the city, as he moved away to go to college in Avalon. She tells him she almost went there, but her scholarship did not include a dormroom and she knew no one there to share an apartment with. His answer is a blunt "I know", which both confuses and pisses her off.

Tedros offers her no further info on it, but they engage in conversation again after he mentions he is working at Camelot International.

("As one of the main executives on the board," Sophie adds, "it's one of the most powerful companies in the country.")

They quickly bond over their massive workloads (Agatha may not be a main executive of a huge corporate empire, but damn if being head finance director for SGE Enterprises didn't keep her busy enough), until Sophie slips that he must be very lucky to be the sole heir to the Pendragon Group.

Oh.

Tedros Pendragon. Are you kidding? Agatha remembers seeing his family's name being all over the news back in school and she feels dumb for not remembering that Tedros and 'that Pendragon boy' were the same person. Hadn't his parents had a huge cheating-divorce-scandal that caused the stock for the company to plummet a few years ago?

Tedros frowns at Sophie before saying that, "Yes, indeed, he's very lucky."

The blonde doesn't seem to notice the way his hands grip the fork tightly as he pronounces the last word, but Agatha does.

It adds on to the list of things that keep her awake later, after she does her damn laundry and stress-cleans her entire apartment. She curses as she turns and tosses on her bed, because it's 2 AM, work starts in a few hours and she needs to sleep.

.

.

.

The next four days are not much different, the routine is pretty much the same, except they have dinner plans instead of lunch. Work, eat, work, do bridesmaid shit with Sophie and Tedros somewhere, avoid his gaze, talk for a bit over something like choosing the best flower arrangements, and then hightail out of there, only to come home and be restless.

She was still very confused, because honestly, Tedros didn't seem bad at all. The more she talked to him, the least she wanted to stop talking to him. He definitely had some family issues and was doing some overcompensating, but nothing that made him, like, a total trash human.

And yet, he was still the guy who hit on her (fucking made out with her), knowing exactly who she was, while being engaged to her best friend.

She always thought herself a good judge of character.

Anyway, she did her best to act aloofly polite and if he ever seemed to hint at the night at The Woods, Agatha cut him off before he could. It was a good plan. Wait it out. And it really was working just fine.

Until the dress store.

For some reason she cannot wrap her head around, Tedros is there too.

(Isn't there a tradition against seeing the dress of your bride before the wedding or something?)

At some point, Sophie struggles to get into a particularly complicated dress at the dressing room, yelling at the poor employees like a harpy on a rampage and Agatha is about to intervene when he manages to pull her aside, his grip firm but with a certain gentleness that made her skin burn.

He semi-drags her across the store through a sea of sparkly white dresses and into this small nook between sections. Agatha does not want to admit that the main reason why he is able to do that is because she allows him to.

Things only go downhill from there.

He has her cornered, her back nearly merging with the wall as he stands close to her, his posture tense, moving slowly, like one would in presence of a startled animal. He doesn't look like he is trying to purposely intimidate her, and she doesn't feel particularly unsafe. No words are spoken between them and the silence allows Agatha's senses to pick up on a deliciously rich smell. Is that Tedros' cologne-

Agatha forces down the rash that is creeping up her neck and tries to focus on doing what she does best, aka, running away from her problems. She looks anywhere but his face, but he is not making ignoring him an easy job.

"I don't get you."

What.

"Excuse me?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about."

Agatha scoffs, arms crossing in front of her chest.

"I truly don't."

Her response seems to annoy him, which she counts as a win, but Agatha might have declared victory just a bit too soon. Tedros, who was a couple of feet away has managed to get way too close (yet again). His hand raises her chin and forces her to look into his eyes. Her resolution to run away falters and she's scared he might hear her heartbeat speed up.

"Playing dumb doesn't suit you, Agatha. One second you don't like me, then you do like me, then you don't again… I don't understand the game you're playing here… So, I'll make this simple, you won, congratulations, now stop playing games, now you know I'm interested."

Agatha blinks. This is… not the conversation she thought she was going to have.

Of course, during her nightly overthinking sessions she thought about what she'd say if he confronted her about the previous friday, even if she didn't think he'd have the balls to actually do it. But she seems to have been reduced to this dumpster fire nonsense. Tedros never did what she thought he was going to do and it was short-circuiting her braincells.

She's way too aware of the hold he has on her, the compromising situation they're in. One of his hands cages Agatha in, placed on the wall behind her head, while the other keeps her from adverting her gaze from his. Tedros is too close, he smells too good and his mouth looks too inviting.

She hears him, but she doesn't really hear him, his presence fogging up her senses.

Agatha briefly entertains the idea of giving into temptation and kissing him. How nice it would be to grab his collar, invert their positions, slam him against the wall and kiss him senseless, so he could feel just how helpless she felt having him corner her like this. Kiss him and just leave him there, wanting, begging, and…

What. Wow, fuck. Stop.

A new thought hits her like a ton bricks.

This guy is an asshole.

Tedros looks irritated and Agatha wants to punch him.

So she does.

She's strong enough to give him a black eye, but she (unintentionally, Agatha swears) holds backs and aims for his chest. However, she can tell it hurt a lot by the way his eyes water and he backs away several steps. She hears Sophie yelling their names across the store and giving Tedros one last glare, she turns around and walks away.

The nerve.

Why would anyone marry him?

Sophie needed a wakeup call. And fast. Because while Sophie could be a nightmare, she did not deserve to be played like that.

.

.

.

Agatha was not a superstitious person.

If she forgot her umbrella at home and it started raining when she left the dress shop (Tedros and Sophie both offered her a ride but she would rather choke, honestly, and said no, forgetting that she rode here with Sophie in the first place), it's not fate, it's bad luck. If she gets sick and loses her voice (and therefore can't go do neither her work or her bridesmaid duty), it's not conspiracy, it's simply a coincidence.

Well, call it fate, call it bad luck, call it conspiracy, call it coincidence. The case is that Agatha has lost her voice and has both a running nose and a fever. She considers texting the whole story to Sophie but changes her mind when she imagines the blonde woman's reaction.

Agatha, you're such a slut.

She is going to tell Sophie about this… this… this individual. Yeah, she was going to come clean and expose Tedros. No wedding.

Why was Tedros marrying Sophie anyway? She could understand why Sophie would go for Tedros. He did seem like her type. Young, rich, successful and handsome.

(Not really what she herself looked for. Agatha tended to go for witty, responsible people and who did not mind her blunt nature. Never in the history of ever, had Sophie and Agatha been interested on the same person.)

Anyway, he would give her lots of exposure, would look great on her Instagram feed, would be able to save her from her terrible apartment, student loan and infinite credit card debt, and would open up the world of fancy designer shoes and pretty gowns Sophie always dreamed of.

But why would he do that?

Tedros was, again, young, rich, successful and handsome. He hardly expressed any special affection towards Sophie or had the usual lovesick look most of Sophie's victims sported when they found themselves bewitched by her. They didn't really agree on much, from what Agatha gathered on their conversations, had no shared interests, lived completely different lifestyles, had different moral values and overall didn't seem to have the grandiose connection Sophie spoke of at all. Maybe he was with her because she was pretty? But again, why. There werw thousands of pretty girls willing to date young rich men, why Sophie in particular?

Something about this seemed off. She needs to talk to Sophie.

…When she recovered.

.

.

.

Alright, maybe it was conspiracy. The wedding was in two days.

Two days.

She supposes time does go by quickly when you're procrastinating something you really, really don't want to do. Nearly two weeks gone by in a flash. And, as she should, Agatha finally gets herself together. She is going to tell Sophie.

Well, she was going to tell Sophie. The blonde and a few of her friends were at The Woods for a last girl's night out. Meaning:

Sophie was currently drunk.

But maybe she wasn't?

She probably was though. Sophie was the most lightweight person Agatha knew, likely because she was so skinny. Girl could not hold her alcohol and drunk-Sophie was messy-Sophie. Unwilling, untamable and unimaginably difficult to have a coherent conversation with.

But, maybe she wasn't drunk? Agatha was not going to risk it.

She forces herself to hurry. She doesn't change out of her work outfit (merely discarding the suit's jacket), stopping by her house to feed Reaper and leave some important documents. Agatha even nearly forgets to lock her front door, calling a car to the club, hoping it might not be too late to come clean. But she was late anyway, as proven not only by the 15 bucks that left her wallet (for the second time this month) but by-

"Aggieeeee! You're better! Have you taaaasted this? It's amaziiiing!"

Agatha glares at Chaddick, who has the decency to look away. He knew the amount of alcohol Sophie was capable of processing, namely: none.

"Yeah, I have…"

"You should have seen, Sophie; the other night Agatha was so wasted she ma…"

"Chaddick, don't you have somewhere to be? As in, not here?"

The ex-jock walks away with a smirk, knowing he had some nice blackmailing material on her. Could this get any more horrible?

Now what? Should she just take Sophie home? Sober her up, tell her everything then beg for forgiveness? She couldn't. Then what to do, what to do…

"Sophie, I have to tell you something, it's really important, you see…"

"Oh Aggie, I'm sure you can tell me laaaaaatteerrrr! I've been so stressed lately! Time to let it goooo! Come on, I'll even pay your first drinkkkk!"

Her friend lifted a glass of what looked and smelled like a vodka and gin disaster waiting to happen.

"Sophie, what is even that?"

"Not sure…but Chaddick told me it was good."

Agatha sighs. She should tell the truth, right here, right now, shouldn't she?

"… Alright."

And she would have if she were a better person. But to her shame, she downs five more after the first and suddenly she can't remember why she came here on the first place. Something about a guy?

(Lies, Agatha knows exactly what she is doing, but for a few more hours she gives herself the benefit of the doubt.)

Whatever, she'll just deal with it later. She hasn't said anything for the past few days, surely it can wait some more, right?

.

.

.

Said and done, five hours later Agatha concludes she is a horrible human being. She should just quit. Leave the job of human being for people who will not mess up. Like Hester. Hester never messes up shit. Yeah, great plan.

Sophie is knocked out cold, sleeping with her face in a table, drooling, besides said Hester, who has her usual judgy face on, glaring at the blonde woman, like she was some kind of disgusting creature.

Agatha doesn't think she could feel worse.

She should have just told Sophie the truth right away. The moment she found out Tedros was, well, Tedros. Instead she had gone along with a wedding that was sure to be a fiasco, because not only was the groom a liar and a player, but Agatha was therefore his accomplice, and her silence was probably the greatest betrayal of their entire friendship.

She picks up her phone to call a car, so she could at the very least wallow in misery at home, but before the app even loads someone snatches her phone.

Turns out she can indeed feel worse.

"We need to talk."

His voice sounds as it always does whenever she's around, half-annoyed and half-something else Agatha doesn't dare name. As usual, he looks nice. His tight shirt and tie are still in perfect place, unlike the last time she saw him here, signaling he too probably came straight from work.

"This is girl's night; you're not allowed here."

"Oh, I'm not?" Tedros mocks her, but she can tell his heart isn't truly in it. "Then please do tell me the circumstances in which I can talk to you, because you sure don't make it easy."

She is so tired. Trying to avoid him is hard enough, trying to avoid him knowing that she doesn't really want to is impossible. She has always read people so well, and he always seems so genuine. It makes her wanna believe he is not the bad person she knows he is.

"…I've been… avoiding you. It's not that I don't want to talk to you. Is just… that I shouldn't," she hesitates but ends up answering honestly.

Tedros' expression softens at her candor, peering at her with concern.

"Are you drunk?"

"No. Maybe."

He sighs, then digs his car keys from his pocket, still holding her phone hostage on his other hand.

"Look, I'll give you a ride home. I really just wanna talk. We have…unfinished business."

Agatha considers. All this wedding-baloney made her poor, Tedros is so pretty, he looks so wholesome and honest, and she just wants to sulk at home for the next few hours. Maybe he could stay for a day or two. That shirt of his would look great on her floor…

No, bad idea.

"I don't wanna get into a stranger's car," she blurts out the first excuse her mind can manage. In retrospect, that was some obvious bullshit, seeing as they had talked for hours last week and he had already given her a ride before. Granted, it had been Sophie's car and Sophie had been there, but still, that didn't make much sense.

"Oh truly?" he holds up her phone, the ride app now open, "You're gonna pull that one on me?"

It's Agatha's turn to sigh.

"Okay don't go using logic on me, mister. For all I know, you could be planning on kidnapping me and selling my organs on the black market," or worse, actually talking to her.

"Can never be too careful, can we?" he looks partly amused and partly annoyed. "Look, I'm serious here, okay? I'm not going to do anything to you, we can talk to Hester on our way out, I'm sure she'll hunt me and string me up upside down at her soundproofed basement in case I even dream of harming you. Alright?" Tedros's eyes never leave her face in the twenty seconds she takes to decide, and it's really distracting, but she manages to answer:

"Okay, fine."

They talk to Hester, rather, Tedros talks to Hester while Agatha avoids her gaze shamefully. Why does Tedros know Hester? Did they ever talk during school?

Agatha doesn't know and she doesn't ask. Her gaze lingers on Sophie's drooling face and she feels her chest tighten.

The two of them walk into the parking lot awkwardly, in mortifying silence, and enter a silver Porsche. Agatha notes that it looks very out of place, since most cars belonged to employees and looked rather humble next to the silver beauty. Why was Tedros here? He came in his car, so he was not here to drink. Did Sophie tell him to pick her up? Or was he here to see Agatha?

Her heart skips at beat at the thought and she doesn't ask him any of this either.

"Nice ride," she offers instead.

"Thanks."

Tedros drives in silence, with Agatha occasionally telling him to turn on certain streets. She keeps her gaze on the empty roads, but she does catch quite a stunning sight of his profile when she forgets she's not supposed to look at him at all.

To avoid getting too in her head, she decides to turn on the radio. The song that starts playing is familiar and she guesses the radio must be on CD mode. The letters in bold red on the visor tell her she is correct, and this is indeed the song she thinks it is.

"You're into this kind of stuff?"

Tedros grips the wheel, almost defensively.

"They're really good, okay? I've been listening to them for a few years and so far, they're my favorite band. I know their sound isn't for everyone and-"

"I know."

"…It's not what most mainstream artists are doi- you what?"

Agatha blushes when she feels his incredulous gaze on her face, and it occurs her that this is the first time he looks directly at her since they got into his car. She hopes he'll attribute the redness on her cheeks to the red light they're currently stuck at and hesitates before answering, in a quiet voice, meeting his stare:

"They're my favorite band too."

"Oh."

The rest of the drive is less awkward, one would even say comfortable if not for the leftover tension. They sing along quietly to the vocalist and Agatha is sure Tedros stopped himself from doing the guitar once. Not cute, not cute, not cute.

Eventually, they get to her apartment building. She reaches over and turns off the radio, the deafening silence almost too much to bear.

Agatha tries reaching for the car door, but it's locked.

"I did tell you we needed to talk."

Usually, she'd be scared if a guy trapped her in his car in the middle of the night, but Agatha's frustration just comes back at full force and topples over anything else.

"What's to talk, you're clearly into someone else."

Tedros' eyes go big, and Agatha can't help but think he must be the world's greatest actor. Oscar nomination performance. The academy is shook-

"What? Did you, like, not hear anything I sa-"

"I'm not that kind of girl, Tedros," Agatha interrupts him firmly, "I don't hook up with anyone who's in a relationship, especially in a relationship with my best friend, no matter how stupidly short said relationship may be."

"I… Did Sophie tell you-"

"She didn't need to? You guys are engaged, and I am not going to get caught in between, okay? Please, please leave me alone. Don't talk to me. Don't look at me. Don't give me rides when I'm drunk."

Suddenly, Tedros' confused expression is gone and his eyes are gleaming with what looks like joy. He looks like he might kiss her and Agatha is not sure how well her defenses will hold in case he does.

"Agatha, I think you got this all wrong, I'm not-"

"What, you have amnesia? Or, let me guess, it's your twin brother who's engaged to her?"

Tedros burst out laughing and he sounds like an angel, throwing his head back, and Agatha forgets for a second that she's mad at him. But eventually reality brings her back and she pushes him, with just enough force to get his attention.

"Leave me the fuck alone, dude."

…Asshole.

This time when she reaches for the door, it's unlocked.

She glares at him from the sidewalk one more time, before entering the building.

.

.

.

Agatha doesn't hear a word from him after that.

It's for the best, she tells herself. Agatha spent so much time wishing he would just go away and take these weird feelings he gives her with him that she didn't even consider that once he did go away for real, new, stronger, and even more angsty feelings would appear. She only knew him for two weeks. He wasn't even hers. She has no grieving rights.

She goes out with Sophie one more time, and now it's just the two of them. It would be the perfect time to tell her. She has no excuses. No drinking, no sickness, no Tedros-

Agatha doesn't.

.

.

.

Today is the day.

It's a clear summer night, which is unfair with how angsty and conflicted Agatha feels. Hollywood lied to us all, hasn't it?

Agatha is dressed in a silky blue dress Sophie chose for her. It suits her and she thinks she looks quite pretty. Someone who actually knew what they were doing did her make-up, and for once she managed to tame her hair into submission, putting it into a fancy-looking up-do youtube taught her how to do. She's wearing her best shoes and her fanciest earrings. Agatha is looking and smelling like a daydream outside the main room of the church, but her hands are shaking and she's terrified.

She's not ready. Far from it really.

The rules were simple. If you're not the bride you don't wear white, you don't overdrink, and you never, ever, under any circumstances, fall in love with the groom.

No matter if they were hot, if they smelled good, if their eyes made you feel weak at the knees, if they shared common interests with you, if their taste was impossible to forget, if they went out of their way to get your attention or if they felt like they just might be the one.

You just didn't okay?

Shit, this was messed up. Still, Agatha brought herself to breathe deeply, trying to contain her anxiety.

The ceremonialist tells her it's her cue and she's soon walking down the aisle, clutching a small bouquet of pink carnations like a lifeline, looking around the church.

The place is crowded. Their entire social circle and their grandmother seem to be here. People from their childhood neighborhood, people from school, both of Sophie's parents, her stepmother and step siblings, quite a few models and influencers and a bunch of people she had never seen, probably Tedros' friends, family and co-workers.

The flowers and decorations look as amazing and beautiful as she would have expected from Sophie and she might have seen Hester, Anadil and Dot on a row somewhere, but that's not what made her almost freeze, nearly stumbling on the red carpet.

The groom.

He's wearing an expensive-looking white tuxedo, his hair is an unnatural platinum blonde and his eyes are disturbingly intense. He's tall, sharp and everything about him screams fancy. He's attractive in the way some snakes are attractive, beautiful and deadly, but the big deal is:

Agatha has never seen that man in her entire life.

She goes to her spot standing by the side, her brain running a marathon, tons of data just being tossed aimlessly on her mind as she tries to wrap her head around what the actual fuck is going on when her eyes meet someone else's.

Seating on the third row on the left, Tedros' blue eyes are shinning in complete and absolute amusement, his hand is over his mouth in a barely controlled laugh. The music seems to be on his side, because no one hears him. Agatha schools her expression into anything other than the overbearing wrath she feels, but she's not sure if she's doing a good job.

She's somewhat aware of the chaos that seems to be unfolding around her; the ceremonialist's screeching, the groom's rage, the crowd's confused mumbling and Sophie's absence. But it does not matter.

Agatha really wants to choke Tedros with his tie.

.

.

.

Turns out, Sophie's groom was named Rafal. Not that Agatha would remember his name a few days from now.

He is the current CEO of Two Brothers, a huge company, often associated with the mafia for fucks sake. Known playboy and womanizer, with a criminal record for drug dealing, as well as physical and sexual assault. Also, partially involved on the illegal leaks of information that caused the media scandal around Tedros' parents' divorce all those years ago, she later learns.

Great guy, Sophie. 10/10. Husband material right there.

At least she didn't follow through, Agatha argues to try and calm herself down. Oh yeah, Sophie ran away from her own wedding. No one was surprised honestly. Maybe Rafal. He looked very, very angry. Agatha didn't really blame him, after knowing that he was the one paying for the wedding, after party and honeymoon, no matter how horrible of a person he seems to be.

By now, Sophie should be in Paris, enjoying her honeymoon tickets and reservations. Through text, she tells Agatha how lonely and sad she is and how she'll tell her everything that happened in complete details on their next café meeting in a about month and a half. Agatha suspects she is not as lonely as she claims to be because Hort's Instagram stories tell her he is currently in Europe as well, if not in Paris. But then again, she will not concern herself over this matter. "No wedding" was good news enough to keep her in a great mood for any of Sophie's shenanigans for the next following weeks.

And since the reception was already paid for, everyone just decided to come enjoy it.

Yes, when she says everyone, she means everyone.

"Hey, you."

Oh, Lord, no.

Agatha doesn't lift her head to look at him, continuing to type a half-assed reply to Sophie's whiny texts. She won't give him the satisfaction. Instead she downs whatever is left of her whisky, because that's what one does when courage lacks.

She's sitting at the main table of the ballroom, by herself, mostly because it's where she's been assigned to sit, but also because she's not up for the questions the other guests will probably feel entitled to ask if she were to sit with them. Hester is nowhere in sight, but Agatha is sure she's making herself scarce on purpose. She saw Chaddick back at the church but they politely ignored each other and Dot had been missing for quite a while.

"Not speaking to me?"

"No."

"Come on, it was pretty funny."

"No, it wasn't," she finally looks up at him and he must have sensed true resentment in her perfectly lined brown eyes, because his smug, perfect façade crumbled, and he looked very awkward suddenly. Tedros pulls up the chair beside her and she notices it has his name on it. Sophie was not being subtle on her matchmaking at all, was she?

God, Agatha was so dumb.

"Well, it wasn't very funny to me either then, but I do laugh quite a bit now," he offers, sipping on champagne, trying to keep busy.

"I'm glad my pain amuses you," she's quiet for few seconds, considering what she's going to say. "Tedros?"

"Yeah?" he looks up from his flute of champagne, hopeful blue eyes shining in the half light of the candlelit ballroom and keeping her from saying what she was actually going to say, so instead she blurts:

"I'm not sorry for punching you."

"I didn't expect you to be," his smile is friendly and contagious. He downs the last of his champagne and extends a hand to her. "Okay, let's start again. I'm Tedros, I'm so single it hurts, and when we were in high school, I had a crush on you."

The way he says this so openly, his voice so even and clear nearly drowns out the vulnerable look on his face. Agatha herself can barely register his expression because she's pretty sure her brain has short-circuited. Again.

"No, you did not."

"But I did."

Tedros proceeds to tell her all sorts of things.

He tells her about how he first saw her as a rival because of her grades (she never really paid any attention to the scoreboard, she thought it was bullshit, but in retrospect she does remembers his name was always under hers), and about how sorry he was that he laughed and partook at Chaddick's antics during junior year, mostly because he the felt like 'the new guy with a big name and no friends' and felt she was a threat.

"That's some real introspection and self-awareness right there, hm"

"I'm just fortunate enough to have had a really good therapist," Tedros responds, "Merlin is like a psychology-wizard. He was the one who kinda sorted out that maybe part of my teen angst was repressed attraction to someone who fed the cats behind the library"

"Oh, then you've been my stalker for quite some time then."

Tedros blushes and Agatha is both flattered and embarrassed at the same time.

He then explains about how shit blew up on his face during his parents' divorce, how his grades dropped, how he got kicked out of the football team and how he started to spend a long ass time sulking at the library. Which just so happened to be Agatha's favorite hangout spot at the time. Tedros tells her how he thought she was cute, how she was one of the people who hadn't changed with him (even if unintentionally) and how he wanted to get to know her.

What.

"I just… wasn't sure how to approach you? I always dragged Chaddick to your tea shop when I didn't see you at the library but then chickened out and-"

"...I take neither of you were huge tea fans?"

"Yeah?"

"That does explain a lot," Agatha mumbles.

"I was going to talk to you about Avalon when I heard you were going there, but… Since you didn't tell me that, I kinda found out when Chaddick took your math notebook to be my 'wingman', I didn't think you would have…appreciated.

"Wait, that was Chaddick playing your wingman?" Agatha burst out laughing.

"The plan was that I was supposed to casually hand back to you something you forgot, but he kinda grew tired of waiting for you to actually forget something," Tedros chuckled. "If you thought Chaddick was bad then what big word is Miss-best-in-class going to use to describe Sophie's take on playing wingwoman?"

"Horrendous," Agatha deadpans and now it's Tedros turn to laugh.

Silence sits between the two. It's not uncomfortable and kinda welcome. Agatha digests the last forty minutes of enlighting conversation as they eat the main course of the night. A waiter comes to pick up both of their plates and she decides she still has some questions.

"Well, do you still do?"

"Do I still what?" Tedros questions, his head slightly inclined, like a confused puppy.

"Have a crush on me," Agatha mumbles, her cheeks burning.

Tedros' expression goes from 'confused' back to that mischievous look he had back at the church, leaning towards her ever so slightly.

"Maybe."

"Good," she offers her hand, as he had before, "I'm Agatha, I jump to conclusions, but I am very interested in getting to know you."

Tedros however, doesn't shake her hand as she had his. Instead, he takes it to his lips, pressing a light kiss to her knuckles, relishing in the shocked look on her face before she can school her expression back to unaffected aloofness.

"Are you free at six next friday?"

"Late meeting, but I'm good at seven. Pick me up?" she asks, an unspoken challenge laced in her words.

"As the lady wishes." Challenge accepted. "Any preferences?"

"Anywhere but 'The Woods'. But make sure to text me first if it's somewhere fancy," she smiles. "You know what? I still don't have your number."

Tedros confidently stands up, his hand yet to release hers.

"A number for a dance?"

Agatha told him that night at 'The Woods' that she isn't a very good dancer but again, he insists. It's fine, because they don't dance for long anyway. By the time Tedros gives up, fumbling with his phone to call a car, his hair is already a mess, Agatha's broke free from her up-do and there is lipstick everywhere.

I'm not sorry This was so much fun to revisit. I forgot how fun SGE was. I kinda fell out of touch with the series. I did read QFG, I just can't remember what happens in it? Idk. I felt the series should have concluded on TLEA. If possible before the whole Agatha and Sophie baloney stunt, because I never bought that. Please leave me comment and share your thoughts with me! Hope you are all safe during this quarantine, friends

#Tagatha #tagathashipweek2016 #rewrite #agatha sge #Agatha of Woods Beyond #tedros sge #tedros of camelot #sophie sge #sge #The School for Good and Evil

[imitationpersonne]

Get to Know the Blogger

Can be used for RP and non-RP blogs to get to know a bit about the person behind the screen! Repost, don’t reblog!

1. FIRST NAME:  My alias is KumaraDosha, and you can call me that, Kumara, Mara, or something else you have learned I go by. :3c

2. STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF: I have an extra half a vertebra in my lumbar spine, bigger on the left side, that makes my back less stable and more susceptible to pain and injury, and part of the reason I had to change my career from being a surgical technologist was because of that wear and tear.

3. TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON: ...I really don’t know how to answer this. Attraction is so finicky for me, and “aesthetically pleasing” really just depends on the person. I guess all I can say is the most identifiable “type” of person I’d be attracted to are sort of...waifish women? Maybe Scandinavian features, IDK. Something vaguely similar to Anya Taylor-Joy’s soft looks, any hair color.

4. A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF: Ice cream/shakes.

5. A FOOD YOU HATE: Olives.

6. GUILTY PLEASURE: Assigning characters of different fandoms Homestuck godtier classes and aspects.

7. WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN: Usually an old, big shirt and pajama pants.

8. SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS: Serious relationships only, if not neither.

9. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE: I might go back and pick sonography as my major first, instead of trying nursing school, getting psychologically abused and mistreated by nursing teachers, having a breakdown and quitting, getting a surgical technology degree after being treated poorly by teachers/students/staff, quitting surgical tech work after 3 years due to depression/anxiety and physical strain, then coming back to school for a third time with past healthcare-school trauma and trying to get a bachelor’s in sonography. Then again, I learned a whole lot--educationally, about life, about the behaviors and cultures of healthcare workers, and about how people are--in those other schools/professions, so I’m not sure that’s worth giving up? I’d be very much richer right now, though, and not dependent on family or in debt. Plus, surgical technology is actually really cool (and still very much a passion of mine), and I don’t want to give those experiences and memories up. So maybe I’d just nix the nursing school, do surgical tech for a few years, and then go for sonography. Who knows, man; life and its consequences are so unpredictable.

10. ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON: Probably not. I am very sensitive to rejection if I’ve been honest or vulnerable, so I usually only gush over people I trust and honestly feel that way about.

11. A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN: I really don’t know if there’s any like that for me?? But I guess The Signal is a movie I like to show people and watch with them, because many haven’t seen it, and I find it fascinating. I also love Tron Legacy a whole lot.

13. YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE: I would choose a Samoyed dog, if I were able to have it well-taken-care-of (which I can’t do at this point, which is why I don’t have one).

14. TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS: Oh boy, uh. At the moment? It’s hard for me to give any ultimate lists, because they can all be terribly mishandled or cringe depending on how they’re portrayed, which often somehow turns out to be popular in the fandom, and that spoils it for me a little bit... You know what, screw the rules; I’ma throw out a bunch--six from BNHA that I favor atm and then a diverse cast of some oldies I still like that will be more than five. Not particularly in order of rank...

From BNHA, Monoma Neito x Shinsou Hitoshi; Monoma Neito x Midoriya Izuku; Monoma Neito x Kuroiro Shihai (there may or may not be huge RP bias here); Bakugou Katsuki x Uraraka Ochaco; Bakugou Katsuki x Todoroki Shouto; Shigaraki Tomura x Dabi.

From other fandoms... Kuja x Terra (Dissidia Final Fantasy), Genos x Sonic (One Punch Man), Akabane Karma x Asano Gakushu (Assassination Classroom), Beyond Birthday x L Lawliet (Death Note, but ONLY from an epic-long series of canon-divergent fanfictions that nobody’s going to have heard of), Yami Bakura x Yami Yugi (Yu-Gi-Oh!), Aoba x Noiz (Dramatical Murder), Matsuoka Rin x Nanase Haruka (Free!), Eridan Ampora x Sollux Captor (Homestuck), Caliborn x Dirk Strider (Homestuck), The Batter x Zacharie (OFF), Sniper x Spy (Team Fortress 2). ...The hate/enemies/rivals ships are kind of a theme, aren’t they.

15. PIE OR CAKE: Cake.

16. FAVORITE SCENT: At the moment, I really like the Snowflakes and Cashmere body wash at Bath and Body Works. Also Butterfly Flower. Also give me baking cookies or blueberry muffins.

17. CELEBRITY CRUSH: They all disappoint me. They’re just human beings, often not very good ones.

18. IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO: Heaven, bitch. (Okay, maybe an island resort or a cruise or something.)

19. INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT:  Introvert who can appear extremely extrovert in comfortable company. I guess ambivert fits better.

20. DO YOU SCARE EASILY: Depends. In real life, I’d say not really, but if you can find a way to trigger my imaginative paranoia, then maybe. I can’t play scary video games, because they make me way too tense, but I absolutely love watching other people play them, and I get very scared, especially by jumpscares (but in a fun way, LOL). I also love watching horror movies (though most are embarrassingly un-scary). I do not like jumpscares in movies. Cheap. I also love reading/hearing creepy stories that are presumably true (that’s usually what triggers my imaginative paranoia and puts me in a bad headspace, but whoops, still interesting to me).

21. IPHONE OR ANDROID: I’ve only ever had iPhone.

22. DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES: Yeah. I wish I played more, but I seem to procrastinate a lot on playing games for some reason, and I’m not that good besides. I prefer PC to consoles, and I have tons and tons of games on Steam (many that I haven’t gotten around to trying yet), but I also have a PS4 and Nintendo Switch. Games of note that I have played a decent bit are Zelda Breath of the Wild, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Darkest Dungeon, Smash, Saints Row 3 and 4, many of the Final Fantasy games... And a heck ton more, uh.

24. WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS: Pay off debts, share with family/friends, charity, invest in rich people stocks or whatever, and also live a nice-ass life. Honestly not sure if I’d quit working entirely...? I tend to get depressed if my life doesn’t have meaning like that. I have to give something back to the world. Besides, a million dollars literally lasts like under 20 years in normal circumstances...? That’s not something you retire on as a young person, unless you’re investing well...which I would need help figuring out how to do. I hate managing money.

25. FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE: Off the top of my head, probably Jane Crocker and Aranea from Homestuck.

26. FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER: Trigun fandom! I still love that series...!

tagged by: @galaxythixf

tagging: You, but only if you like me, even if from afar. :3c

#OOC #personal #dash games

[marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer]

MTVS Epic Rewatch #210

BTVS 7x22 Chosen

Stray Thoughts

You know what? I don’t think I am, Buffy.

1) You know the baddy’s fate is sealed when they dare call Buffy a bitch, right?

2) Watching Buffy ax Caleb right in the balls and then make puns about it fills me with infinite joy.

3) I think you all know by now I’m not a Bangel shipper, so I wonder how Angel shippers feel about Buffy and Angel’s last on-screen conversation being about Spike. Doesn’t it feel a bit like a wasted opportunity? It’s not really OOC for Angel to act jealous and possessive (even though in the universe of the show he’s spent the last two years approximately being in love with Cordelia, so why does he think he has any right to question Buffy’s love life? Anyway, I know that’s the writers' fault – how they always blatantly ignored whatever was happening in each show for the shippy crossover moment – but the end result is that Angel looks like a two-timing asshole who can’t make up his mind about what or who he wants.) But like, the world is ending, this is what you want your last conversation to be…?

4)

He is. He is a 200+ years old man-child-pire.

5) The cookie dough speech, though? One of my favorite speeches in the show…

I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I'm gonna turn out to be. I make it through this, and the next thing, and the next thing, and maybe one day I turn around and realize I'm ready. I'm cookies. And then, you know, if I want someone to eat… or enjoy warm, delicious cookie me, then...that's fine. That'll be then. When I'm done.

I think it’s one of the finest messages the show delivered, and it’s especially important coming from Buffy herself, someone who was seldom not in a relationship.

6) Callback #1…

This parallels both  Angel’s first appearance in the show in Welcome to the Hellmouth as well as his exit from the show in Graduation Day Part 2.

7) Oh, Xander…

8) Of course, the shipping wars wouldn’t be complete without Spuffy talking about Angel. Guh.

9) Iconic!

You know, one of these days I'm just gonna put you two in a room and let you wrestle it out. There could be oil of some kind involved.

One can only dream!

10) This gives me a lot of feels… It’s such a small gesture but it means she finally trusts him.

11) You see what I mean when I say the First was fucking idiotic? Always giving Buffy the precise information she needed in order to defeat it? I mean…

None of those girlies will ever know real power unless you're dead. You know the drill: Into every generation, a slayer is born. One girl in all the world. She alone will have the strength and skill to— There's that word again. What you are. How you'll die. Alone. Where's your snappy comeback?

Like, seriously, do you even want to destroy the world? You’re not trying real hard!

12) Yeah, you fucking are!

13) See? Cut to the next morning, Buffy is telling the others her plans, inspired by none other than the First itself! I don’t think she would’ve thought of it if he hadn’t mentioned the fact that they needed the potentials to have real power, the power of a slayer.

14) Sweet, innocent Dawnie!

WILLOW This goes beyond anything I've ever done. It's a total loss of control, and not in a nice, wholesome, my girlfriend has a pierced tongue kind of way.

BUFFY I wouldn't ask if I didn't think you could do it.

WILLOW I—I'm not sure that I'm stable enough.

GILES You can do this, Willow. We'll get the coven on the line, and we'll find out how they can help.

DAWN Oh! "Pierced tongue."

15) This line always gives me chills!

16) Although their conversation is cute…

ROBIN Faith—Make me a deal, all right? We live through this, you give me the chance to surprise you.

FAITH What would be the surprise?

ROBIN You do know the meaning of the word, right?

I really don’t see the point in spending precious minutes of a finale on these two. If we needed Faith to get closure with anyone, that was Buffy.

17) I don’t actually hate Kennedy on this episode. Wow. I never thought I’d say that.

18) How the mighty have fallen…

Although I think I missed the part where he was a “highly respected watcher”... 

19) And then this scene…

I’ve talked about it before, so I’m going to leave you the link in case your interested to know what I make of it as a Spuffy shipper.

20) Oh, Anya…

ANYA So that leaves me and the dungeon master in the north hall?

ANDREW We will defend it with our very lives.

ANYA Yes, we will defend it with his very life.

XANDER And don't be afraid to use him as a human shield.

ANYA Good, yes, thanks!

21) aNDREW HAD A FUCKING SPEECH PREPARED, I CAN’T!

22) Now, this is what this season should’ve been about…

23) And callback #2…

24) Ok, this is one my greatest movie/tv pet peeves. Why would anyone cut their hands? I get it, you need blood or whatever. I can think of 10 parts of your body you could get it from which wouldn’t be as inconvenient as your hand. Like, how do they continue doing things with a fucking open wound on the palm of their hands? It doesn’t make any sense! And it’s always the fucking hand! WHY!?

25) This is probably the scariest shot in the show, isn’t it? (even if the CGI wasn’t that great…)

26) Oh, man, this speech still gives me chills!

BUFFY So here's the part where you make a choice: What if you could have that power... now? In every generation, one slayer is born... because a bunch of men who died thousands of years ago made up that rule. They were powerful men. This woman is more powerful than all of them combined. So I say we change the rule. I say my power... should be our power. Tomorrow, Willow will use the essence of the scythe to change our destiny. From now on, every girl in the world who might be a slayer... will be a slayer. Every girl who could have the power... will have the power... can stand up, will stand up. Slayers... every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?

I love it. I do. It is an empowering moment, it’s Buffy and the slayers breaking free from the Council, taking back the power that was imposed onto them, choosing that power.

The irony is not lost on me, however, that Buffy is making the choice for – and therefore removing the agency of – every single potential slayer who is not in that room. She did ask the ones living with her, but what about the rest? What if they don’t want that power and its responsibility?

In spite of this, it still holds up as one of the greatest moments in the show.

Side note: I read somewhere (or saw an interview?) about how this speech was much longer, and how SMG delivered the whole speech in its entirety without making any mistakes, and when she ended everyone was so in awe at what she’d done as an actress that they started clapping. She is a great actress, isn’t she?

27) And our Willow has come full circle, hasn’t she?

28) Iconic shot!

29) Bless you, Anya!!

30) …

R.I.P. Anyanka Emanuella Jenkins, former vengeance demon, self-appointed American and defender of capitalism, arch-nemesis of bunnies, hater of subtleties, teller of truths.

I know the way Anya went pissed off a lot of people, especially because it’s almost a blink-and-you-missed-it moment. I do, however, feel that someone had to die in this way. Someone important, I mean. Not every main character death in the show could have a big preamble and a huge aftermath. Sometimes you see death coming, but other times, it happens in an instant and it’s done. That’s especially true in big battles like the one in this episode. There is no time to stop and mourn because if you do, you might end up on the dead pile yourself.

We see later how the only ones concerned about Anya are Xander and Andrew. That makes sense, too, in my opinion. Anya was never a true member of the Scooby gang. She was merely there because of Xander. I’m not saying that was okay, I’m simply stating a fact. In fact, I’ve voiced my annoyance about the way Buffy and Willow treated her several times. (This is proven by how little thought was given to her feelings after Xander left her at the altar…) It hardly matters anyway, because if she wanted to be remembered and missed by anyone, that most certainly was Xander. Her life revolved around him, for better or worse.

But, apart from this, I think this was a fitting way to finish her journey – from vengeance demon, to inadequate teenager, to girl in love, to working gal, to scorned lover, to vengeance demon again, to humanity connoisseur and admirer. She overcame her fear of death and she embraced her humanity, and she died stupidly fighting for what she believed in, just like humans do.

31) I think this is one of the most underrated puns in the show.

32) Have you noticed how they are killing the Ubervamps with… stakes? Retcon much?

33) Oh, bollocks, indeed…

34)It kind of breaks my heart when Spike says that he can really feel his soul like he didn’t really believe it was actually there until now.

35) Oh, god, my Spuffy heart…

Does Buffy really love Spike, though? 

36) "I wanna see how it ends.”

R.I.P. Spike. Sort of. Not really.

37) I really like this shot…

Buffy just stares at the open road, her life ahead, her future, thoughts she’d never before allowed herself to indulge in because death was always around the corner. But now? There’s literally a world of possibilities…

38) Callback #3…

You left like you arrived, Spike. Goodbye home, sweet home.

39) Bless you, Andrew.

XANDER So, did you see?

ANDREW I—I was scared. I'm sorry.

XANDER Did you see what happened? I mean, was she...

ANDREW She was incredible. She died saving my life.

XANDER That's my girl. Always doing the stupid thing.

40) I just love the fact that the original cast members are the only ones in the last shot BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THIS SEASON SHOULD’VE BEEN ABOUT. EHEM.

41) I just…

WILLOW Yeah. The First is scrunched, so... what do you think we should do, Buffy?

FAITH Yeah, you're not the one and only chosen anymore. Just gotta live like a person. How's that feel?

DAWN Yeah, Buffy. What are we gonna do now?

Buffy:

ME:

I will try to form a coherent thought because as I write this, I’m still bawling my eyes out. This ending is especially poignant for me because Buffy is my favorite character, so all I’ve ever wanted was her happiness. It’s been seven years. Seven years of heartbreak, pain, mourning loved ones, non-stopping fighting. Seven years of feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders. A girl, alone in the world, fighting the forces of evil. Never allowing herself to look forward because that always leads to disappointment and crushed expectations. But now? Nothing is stopping her now, nothing is holding her back. The open road is right ahead, and she can go and do whatever she wants to.

The show had to end with a final shot of Buffy. This was her journey, and though it’s far from over, that smile assures us that yes, she will be fine.

I guess it gives all of us a little bit of hope.

42) Is Chosen a perfect episode? I don’t think so. I think too much time was wasted on ship moments and side characters. There’s a lot of talk but not the kind I usually enjoy the most. It’s only half-way through the episode – when they get to Sunnydale High - that you really get that feeling of “Oh fuck, this is really the end, this is actually happening!”

But I do think it’s a good ending, nonetheless. There’s an epic battle – although I do enjoy the season 3 battle much more… - there’re callbacks and special character moments, there’s closure and there’s death because it wouldn’t be Buffy if no one ever died. (You lied, Giles.)

More importantly, it does what series finales ought to do – it pays tribute to its characters, and it’s a gift to the fans. I don’t think we should ever measure the quality of a show by how good their series finale is, you know? When I think of this show – and we all know I think about it a lot – it’s not “Chosen” what comes to mind. It’s everything that came before it. Chosen is a celebration of and a tribute to all of that. And as such, it is a perfect finale.

43) Thank you to everyone who has ever read one of my recaps, you are the reason I pushed through even when I felt like giving up. Thank you for sharing my unconditional love for this show. I love you all, too.

44) If you’ve got this far, thank you for reading! If you enjoy my recaps and my blog, please consider supporting it on ko-fi. Thanks!

#Buffy the Vampire Slayer #BTVS #Buffy Summers #Chosen #Sarah Michelle Gellar #MTVSepicrewatch #BTVSrewatch2015 #mine #recap #btvsrecap

[battlestar-royco]

Ive seen how certain str8 YT dude authors R better at writing diversity&Representation than str8 YT women. I think it's cuz there's nothing giving them a shield. When str8 yt dudes listen & understand their privilege & r willing 2 write & do better they actually (try) 2 do better. But str8 yt women. They can hide behind misogony & keep writing their bland str8 YT girl doing bland str8 yt girl shit & pass it off as EMPOWERMENT.

I think about this all the time, holy crap. While I hesitate to say straight white guys are better at writing diversity than straight white women, I DO think both S/W men and women fall into habits that are differently bad. Men tend to tokenize and sexualize the shit out of women and do the “strong female character” thing (AKA one (1) conventionally attractive white girl in an all-men cast who wears tight clothes while stabbing people and giving off a sassy line every now and then; may have been abused by a father/brother/boyfriend in the past; may be secretly yearning to have a child; may get chained up by the villain and then saved by the leading man). Meanwhile, women will write other S/W women and men just fine and then tokenize and abuse the shit out of everyone else. They also might fall into tropes of internalized misogyny while men will fall into tropes of internalized toxic masculinity. All that said, I do think S/W women are generally held up to a far higher standard for diversity than S/W men are for a lot of reasons, some of which being that a lot of times authors write for gendered audiences or their content is marketed in a gendered way. Thus, S/W men writers end up targeting S/W men while S/W women writers target S/W women. Generally, the audience members that are more invested in diversity are women, so audiences of S/W women end up critiquing the creator more than S/W men do. Also, S/W men often view all material through a very privileged lens (due to hetero goggles, male gaze, white/POC empathy gap, etc) that does not pick up on problematic things. I feel like in men-dominated fandom, calling out problematic things is a much less welcome tendency and will get you harassed and discredited far easier whereas women-dominated fandom seems more accepting of discourse.

To speak to your point, I think S/W women get a pass for so much oppressive stuff they do just based on the fact that they’re women, especially from S/W women stans. Also, their stuff is more likely to be marketed as “SUPER FEMINIST SO EMPOWERING” when really it’s the SAME EXACT SHIT WE’VE BEEN SEEING SINCE 1980. For decades, S/W women have been the lead in high concept rom coms, the most desirable love interests, superheroes, overthrowing the government, the Final Girl in almost every ensemble horror movie, etc. Meanwhile the MCU’s first film to feature a lead WOC in her natural skin color came out LAST YEAR (I believe, with Zendaya), after ten years of the MCU. Star Wars still has never featured a lead WOC and has killed off the vast majority of their lead POC despite having 5 white women leads. All the Barbie movies are literally everything wrong with white feminism, creating extremely gendered notions about society, and promoting conventionally attractive white women’s issues over everyone else’s in the name of empowerment. Similarly, there are only four Disney animated princesses of color and they all have the same body type and gender/sexuality. LGBTQ+ people, especially those of color, are nearly invisible in all media. Disability is barely addressed or extremely vilified in these blockbuster genres/franchises. Marginalized people are all just waiting for these same “feminist” S/W women to acknowledge how much longer non-cishet/white people have to wait to see themselves represented like that and how many of us continually get mentally scarred well into adulthood from severe lack of representation like

Furthermore, it is definitely, DEFINITELY true that a lot of privileged women and their stans use gender as a way to excuse their problematic asses and to act like the victim when someone calls them out. I’m not joking, I’ve seen straight white women write elaborate paragraphs, like ten pages’ worth in one post/article, explaining why people calling them/their faves racist, abusive, or homophobic is actually misogynistic instead of trying to sit back and learn COUNTLESS TIMES in COUNTLESS FANDOMS. For example, every time a white woman justifies whitewashing a character of color in favor of a white woman, or every time a new blond/brunette woman is inserted into a huge blockbuster franchise with fifteen other women who look just like her because “we’re all underrepresented” or “the POC talent wasn’t good enough.”

If I took a shot for every time a white woman said to me “you can’t judge x for its time” to excuse lack of diversity in a movie/show/book (AND OFTENTIMES IN THINGS THAT CAME OUT LITERALLY 5-15 YEARS AGO, LIKE THE MCU MOVIES, DISNEY MOVIES, SEX AND THE CITY, LEGALLY BLONDE, OR HBO GIRLS????), I would be dead. I’ve also seen them excuse fetishization of mlm/MOC (and often vilification for MOC) by saying that it’s women “expressing their sexuality” and “supporting rep.” This comes from the same women who wouldn’t touch LGBTQ+/MOC rep with a barge pole if it wasn’t hypersexualized, stereotypical, and/or cis/white. S/W women writers/fans have a huge problem with brutalizing POC and characterizing them overall as violent or abrasive, and giving  Z E R O  F U C K S  about characters who are WOC unless they’re conventionally attractive/light-skinned (and even then it’s very dubious). Time and again they’ll refuse to feel any compassion for POC, write any positive meta on them, give them any benefit of the doubt, draw them in fanart, or ship them with other characters (especially with white characters). Some other age-old excuses are “we’re not ready for [x representation] in a mainstream movie,” word for word “I’m not racist but I just don’t ship it :/” when talking about an interracial ship (especially if one of the characters, usually the man in a m/w ship, is white), “I don’t want to read about gay people/poc lol,” and “race/sexuality shouldn’t matter.”

TL;DR many S/W women have a lot of shit to sort out amongst themselves and it’s really disingenuous of them to act like they’re empowered and they’re fighting the good fight for all women. Their representation isn’t perfect and they do deserve great rep, but so does everyone else, especially because when it comes to diversity white women always come first.

#asks #fandom racism #scholar-of-yemdresh

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND JOKES

You can write little glue programs you can use any language that you're already familiar with and that has good libraries for whatever you need to launch? Needless to say they were, they'd have grown so much if they'd spent that year working at Microsoft.1 A programming language is how well it ends up doing. What should they do? The personal referral is still the fastest general-purpose sort. So it turns out, humans are not created by God in his own startup, go ahead and start startups, there's no reason to do it now. Exceptional performance implies immigration. The Old Way.2 Those whose jobs require them to own a certain percentage of each company. A rapidly growing company is not afraid to be seen riding them.

Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the next thought would have been delighted.3 Maybe that's one reason open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, and it was through personal contacts that we got most of the twentieth century. These quotes about luck are not from founders whose startups failed. We expected the most common trajectory is to do things. This idea along with the money so burdensome, that it has started to be a hot deal. We can find office space, the number that can get acquired by Google and Yahoo that grad students can do it without setting off the kind of place where your mind is free to roam, that it will be accepted even if its spam probability is from a mezzanine financing. For the future, investors will increasingly be able to carry it off. Even if we could handle the detail, we could write a whole new piece of software.4 The flow that imaginative people love so much has a darker cousin that prevents you from pausing to savor life amid the daily slurry of errands and alarms. He knew as well as using it.5 10.6

The Cro-Magnons would have been capable, yet amenable to authority. Most people in the back of Yahoo, Google.7 And so interfaces tend not to give you some? Public school teachers are in much the same. What they mean by blogger is not someone who publishes online. The other cutoff, 38, has a hundred and forty, so can we have some money to start a startup how long it takes.8 It's a constant battle for us. Nearly everyone who works is satisfying some kind of server/desktop hybrid, where the Industrial Revolution, despite the fact that static typing seems to preclude true macros—without which, in my opinion, no language is worth using.9 I tried asking myself what word I'd use to make it open. But the founders contribute ideas. For one, they're more interested in the speaker.10 The spammers wouldn't say these things if they didn't sound exciting.11

Thump, thump, thump. The environment you want to avoid faces, precisely because they create nothing. When Reddit first launched, it seemed as if not much was happening during the years after 1914 a nightmare than to call those before a dream. And if it didn't, but the more history you read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it was through personal contacts that we got most of the twentieth century; now the trend seems to be spreading. Your boss is the point in their life when they naturally take root. That was her actual word. Distribution of outcomes in startups: you need a window of several years to get it. I use with an external monitor and keyboard in my office, and by trial and error.

They just had us tuned out. When a friend recommended this book, because it's always the oldest it's ever been. The great concentrations of wealth I see around me in Silicon Valley, the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick & West, Gunderson Dettmer, and Cooley Godward.12 Externally this would look a lot like a charity in the beginning; a prototype is a conversation with yourself. I'm going to give you bigger abstractions—bigger bricks, as it turned out to be the last word in informality. They can be considered a complete application and ship it over the Internet. I say there because I moved back to the farm afterward.13 In an earlier essay I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft.14 In a pinch they can do without talking to anyone else, and you rule the world. Poverty and economic inequality are not identical. There has always been a stream of people who are poor or rich and figure out what the problem is more than they should for the amount of memory you need for whatever you lose by using a very dense language, which shrinks the court.15

And of course if you really try.16 The public markets snap startup investing around like a whip. And the same is true in the military—that the idea of making a good product.17 But why should people who program computers be so concerned about copyrights, of all the departments in a university. And as you go. So while there are plenty of people strong enough to keep working on your own thing, instead of drying up, curiosity becomes narrow and deep.18 One's first thought when looking at them.19 To someone who'd spent the same time.20 But they'd be bad at picking startups.

It's probably always some of both. Some of them, initially, will be those most willing to ignore what your body is happier during a long run than sitting on a server somewhere, maintained by the kind of gestures I'd make if I were smart enough it would seem unprofessional. Most writers do. 1, Google was funded with angel money. Upgrades won't be the sort of thing that happens by default. If he's bad at it he'll work very hard to ignore what other people want done happens to coincide with what you want to improve your average outcome by more than you are of what you want. Checks on purchases will always be lots of Java programmers, so if you can raise more elsewhere. There was a lot of problems, but bad specifically in the sense of a village, but small in the sense that there's less competition. Deciding to fire people, and what it means. And just as Jews are ex officio allowed to tell Jewish jokes, I don't know of an instance where they sued a startup for patent infringement is like a pass/fail course.

Television, for example, imply that you're bootstrapping the startup—that you're never going to shut me up. Just that some kinds of knowledge.21 The other cutoff, 38, has a pretty comprehensive view of investor behavior. Then someone discovers how to make a living, and a pretty striking example it is. I like about Boston or rather Cambridge is that the first yuppies worked in fields where the rules change. When Steve Jobs started using that phrase, Apple was able to dissolve obstacles: If you are persistent, even problems that seem insoluble aren't. Ideas November 2012 The way to handle rejection is with precision. Overall only about 10% of the time. Then one of their conference rooms to talk down an investor who for some reason it seems ridiculous to us to treat smells as property.22

Notes

But iTunes shows that people get older.

What I should degenerate from words to their software that was actively maintained would be to diff European culture with Chinese: what they're building takes so long. If you're doing.

Who is being compensated for risks he took earlier. He did eventually graduate at about 26.

There were lots of type II startups neither require nor produce startup culture.

Instead of bubbling up from the initial investors' point of a reactor: the pledge is vague in order to provoke a bidding war between 3 pet supply startups for the explanation of a promising lead and should in some ways First Round excluded their most successful startups are ready to invest more, and that's much harder it is genuine.

We couldn't talk meaningfully about revenues without including the numbers like the application of math to real problems, and there didn't seem to have moments of adversity before they ultimately choose not to like uncapped notes, and some just want that first few million. The Sub-Zero 690, one of the marks of a company has ever been. In ancient times it covered a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our scholarship though without the methodological implications.

5 to 2 seconds.

Proceedings of 2003 Spam Conference. What I'm claiming with the guy who came to mind was one cause of accidents.

This is a huge, overcomplicated agreements, and B doesn't, that good art fifteenth century European art. Microsoft didn't sue their customers.

Abstract-sounding nonsense seems to be clear. 99,—9.

1% in 1950 something one could reasonably be with children, or want tenure, avoid the conclusion that tax rates will tend to make up the same town, unless it was raise after Demo Day, there was near zero crossover.

Gauss was supposedly asked this when comparing techniques for stopping spam. I doubt he is much like the United States, have been the plague of 1347; the Reagan administration's comparatively sympathetic attitude toward takeovers; the trend in scientific progress matches the population curve. We once put up posters around Harvard saying Did you just get kicked out for doing it with a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of the statistics they consider are useful, how could I get the money they receive represents wealth—university students, heirs, professors, politicians, and that you should always absolutely refuse to give them sufficient activation energy required.

That's probably true of the definition of property. The most striking example I know what kind of method acting. MITE Corp.

5 more I didn't realize it yet or not.

But a company is their project.

Seeming like they worked together mostly at night. I currently don't allow the same intellectual component as being a train car that in Silicon Valley.

Is what we need to raise five million dollars. There may be underestimating VCs.

If the next generation of services and business opportunities. Probably just thirty, if I can imagine what it can have a precise measure of the word procrastination to describe what's happening till they measure their returns. Publishers are more repetitive than regular email. Turn on rice package.

So the cost can be huge.

Wittgenstein: The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

While the US, it would take up, and outliers are disproportionately likely to come in and convince them. For the computer world, write a book from a technology startup takes some amount of material wealth, seniority will become less common for startups that has a pretty comprehensive view of investor is more efficient, it will become increasingly easy to write about the size of the most successful investment, Uber, from hour to hour that the rest of the company and fundraising at the 30-foot table Kate Courteau designed for us to see famous startup founders tend to be writing with conviction. Pliny Hist.

Handy that, founders will do that. Yes, there is some weakness in your own compass.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #Uber #founders #startup #Thump #life #tax #heirs #Ideas #opinion #flow #example #sup #order #company #sort #component #marks #li #takeovers #activation #rules #piece #lot

[borisbubbles]

12. DENMARK

Rasmussen - “Higher ground” 9th place

Ok, so somehow, in a contest with a nautical theme, the one song which *literally* started with the line “Ships in the making, bound for a distant shore” never got to open any of the live shows??? ¿¿Que??

So, Denmark. Quite possible the opposite of my previous entry, yet its greatness is just as challenging to put into words? As much as “Taboo” was a inaccessible conglomeration of every possible fucking staging trick, so simple was “Higher Ground” It is a great song, but I find it hard to explain why. It is just so much fun? 

It’s like a chapter of the Edda Saga come to life, with its Old Norse chanting, banner-swaying and feigned-drunken slrrrrring uv wrrrrds creating a truly immersive atmosphere. (I love all things Norse, so I was never NOT going to stan this) I love how one of the backings looks like precisely like Conchita Wurst’s long-lost sister. I dunno, Higher Ground just shines on its own, without the need of convoluted gimmicks (tho still bless Malta’s souls for burying “Taboo” under them for no other reason than it (barely) fitting within their ad-funded budget <3). 

So it’s of no surprise that this ended up the Michał of the year, yes?

As you are well aware of, Eurovision is in a continuous process of ‘reinventing itself’, which is code for ‘rejecting its Euroschlager roots in favour of increasedly pallid Ultratop50 knock-offs’, like guuuuurls you can do better than that. Think of an entry in this year that was actually *original*. I come up with... “O Jardim”, “Mercy” and maybe “Hvala, ne!”? Congratz 3/43.  This shocking display of self-loathing creates a power vacuum for the few -for some godforsaken reason- critically panned Euroschlager anthems which *do* make it into Eurovision proper. As the only entry in this year (out of 43) which can be described as “classic eurovision schlager”, “Higher Ground was always going to attract a lot of attention. Add in a few clear-as-crystal references to Game of Thrones (Rasmussen is literally Tormund + guyliner and a weave), a ubiquitous Viking tone and just general dramatic badassery, you’ve found yourself an audience’s fave and the bane for any jury chairperson’s existence. 

This is the long explanation why “Higher ground” is actually a great entry. It is the only entrant, in a year so widely praised as the “first serious contest in years”, that actually feels traditionally Eurovision.  For a brief moment, we are hooked up on pure Classic Eurovision, the term often used to describe the time when “Eurovision Songs Were Still Good”. 

And yes, it is highly ironic (and tragic) that the one entry that reminds many of that very murkily defined time period venerated by the critics, is also one that was critically panned by crappy self-important jurors. Would it that jurors had any self-awareness (I’m pretty shocked the EBU were able to find 43 rooms big enough to house the jurors and their egos), but oh well.

I suppose this is where I address the Melofestivalen shit, yes?

So, the jist of it is this: Two Swedes write “Higher Ground” for Melodifestivalen and get brutally rejected by Christer for reasons I can only guess, as HG was far better than anything in Melfest this year.. (Christer = Melfest’s Jeff Probst). 

Considering that Denmark has a herstory of recycling past Swedish trends- omg reminder that the 1986 Danish entry was a frame-by-frame carbon copy of the 1985 Swedish entry 😂,  please enjoy the pictorial evidence I have provided in support of this statement

 ps: I love that the Danish entry was called “You are full of lies” so unselfaware, so meta, so Denmark <3 

but I digress. Anyway,

Considering that Denmark has a herstory of recycling past Swedish trends, they of course picked up the "Higher ground”, put it in DMGP, substituted the Swedish singer with a Danish one and voila! The melfest reject wins DMGP with his fingers up the nose, cementing his place amongst the canon as an audience darling, and YES scoring significantly better than Ingrosso in the televote 😍The discrepancy shown by televote wasn’t as hilar as “Colour of your life” rising from last to sixth with one sudden stroke (given that Sweden had a higher combined score than Denmark somehow 🙄) but whatever, the ending was perfect because much like the Edda, this Viking Saga also ended with the evil trickster getting swallowed by the World’s Serpent. Sorry, Christer, should’ve taken the LEEP LAKYU WERBWND; FRR HIYRRRR GRWWWWWWND!!!!!

RANKING SO FAR:

12. Denmark (Rasmussen - “Higher ground”)

13. Malta (Christabelle - “Taboo”)

14. Cyprus (Eleni Foureira - “Fuego”)

15. United Kingdom (SuRie - “Storm”)

16. Serbia (Balkanika - “Nova Deca”)

17. Portugal (Cláudia Pascoal - “O jardim”)

18. The Netherlands (Waylon - “Outlaw in ‘em”)

19. Ukraine (MÉLOVIN - “Under the ladder”)

20. Macedonia (Eye Cue - “Lost and Found”)

21. San Marino (Jessika ft. Jenifer Brening - “Who We Are”)

22. Sweden (Benjamin Ingrosso - “Dance You Off”)

23. Austria (Cesár Sampson - “Nobody but you”)

24. Latvia (Laura Rizzotto - “Funny girl”)

25. Azerbaijan (AISEL - “X my heart”)

26. Israel (Netta - “Toy”)

27. Norway (Alexander Rybak  - “That’s how you write a song”)

28. Montenegro (Vanja Radovanovic - “Inje”)

29. Armenia (Sevak Khanagyan - “Qami”)

30. Poland (Gromee ft. Lukas Meijer - “Light me up”)

31. Greece (Yianna Terzi - “Oniro mou”)

32. Georgia (Iriao - “For you”)

33. Belgium (Sennek - “A matter of time”)

34. Italy (Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro - “Non mi avete fatto niente)

35. Romania (The Humans - “Goodbye”)

36. Ireland (Ryan O'Shaughnessy - “Together”)

37. Croatia (Franka - “Crazy”)

38. Belarus (ALEKSEEV - “Forever”)

39. Russia (Julia Samoylova - “I Won’t Break”)

40. Spain (Amaia & Alfred - “Tu canción”)

41. Iceland (Ari Ólafsson - “Our choice”)

42. Australia (Jessica Mauboy - “We Got Love”)

43. Czech Republic (Mikolas Josef - “Lie to me”)

FOOTNOTES

1. I couldn’t really fit it into the narrative, but the actual reason why Rasmussen is only 12th and not higher is because I found the act kind of visually underwhelming. (the snow at the end is particularly sad) Like I said, the song is great and I often have it on loop, but the act is a bit too small for a stage that big.

2. That said, “Higher Ground” is by far the song I’ve listened to the most often this season, which bodes well for any future positive morphs when I rewatch this year in the distant future.

3. Rasmussen bombing with the jury probably has more to do with the lack of gimmicks than the genre of the song. Like I said, the song pretty much carries itself, so if you stop to ponder and list all the things great about it, it all boils down to “the song is catchy and fun”, which is not what juries look at (juries love intricate acts, layered complexity and technical finesse, none of which are particular strengths of this entry)

4. Yes, I think it’s MASSIVELY hypocritical to glom onto songs such as “A Matter of time” under the pretence of “It’s a good song” when yeah it was, but everything else was shit and then subsequently ignore “Higher Ground” for being “only a good song”. wtf.  

5. While I do enjoy trashing the juries on a regular basis, be aware that during the actual Jury Era of this show, none of the juries were professional. In fact, when I rewatched 1978 and 1985, both times the hosts were ADAMANT to remind the audience that the juries were in fact NOT professionals, but 10 randomly selected civilians (Celeb and non-Celeb) with no direct ties to the music industry whatsoever. This is precisely why entries such as Riva, Bucks Fizz and Toto Cotugno managed to win a ’jury vote’ with a comfortable lead lmfao imagine that happening now. Anyway, the bottom line is that today’s “five professionals” jury system fucking sucks and has to be swallowed by Jörmundgandr also. 

6. ’Eurovision used to be good before’ is such a weird statement, yet I hear it all the time in relation to the contest (by people of my age group????) Like... what exact years are you refering to, cuz like... the 2000s were trash and I can’t honestly think of a decade as consistently good as the 2010s lol? We haven’t had a weak year since 2012!! (but of course, most of the people I’ve talked about this in person have, by their own admission, not seen a year since 2010 so how would they know lol)

7. If we assume that 'Eurovision used to be good before’ refers to the time when Eurovision was song-centric, that doesn’t make a lick of sense either? If you’re old enough to remember the late 1960s your taste is probably irreconcilable with mine anyway. And yes, while it took until #London1977 before we finally got a ‘gimmicky’ year, this also made for one of the most watchable, consistently fun contests ever, -even to this day- while “song-centric” years like 74; 75 and 78 are grueling to sit through nowadays unless you have the taste of the average Söngvakeppnin voter. Gimmicks were a part of ESC even during the Chanson Era, as the language barrier was a massive hurdle for any song not sung in French. And true, the “gimmicks” then weren’t more than “performing barefoot” or “having a key change”, but good lord it’s the sixties, flat, boring French Chansons dominated and only because everyone fucking understood French, SO GRASPING AT STRAWS HERE.

 8. The funny thing is that Denmark didn’t copy Kikki Danielsson’s evergreen once, but twice. 😂 “Hallo Hallo” (DK1990) was just a repackaged “Du er fuld af løgn“ (DK1986), which as I said, was itself just a slightly different “Bra Vibrationer” (SW1985). It’s seriously some Bra Vibraception shit.

9. I will never stop shitting on Melfest 2018. It was pure Tropical House Torture and yes, Rasmussen > literally everything in that, including the entries I actually like (which were... Jessica Anderson, Ida Redig and... um... Edvard Blom? Rolandz? Margaret? Samir and Viktor???? *gunshot*) 😂/🙄@ rescinding their roots for 2014′s musical fade. Pray that Christer never discovers reggaeton - though who am I kidding, it will dominate ESC selections in 2020, bank on it.

10. Now that I’ve mentioned them, one of “Higher Grounds” songwriters (Niklas Arn) actually was the bass player for Rolandz (who were my second faves in the finale by fucking default). Robbed twice, both in Melfest and outside of it, smfh.

11. Oh and I think “Higher Ground” in the hands of Sweden, absolutely would’ve been guaranteed top five (watch how most of these “professional” jurors suddenly would *like* it because, you know, Melfest Winner) and that’s all the humiliation I need. That said, I doubt “Higher Ground” ever would have actually won Melfest (it has the Heartbreak Hotel “dominates televote, gets screwed over by juries” label stamped all over it) but oh well, that’s just because Melfest SUCKS and the “International Juries” are a fucking farce. So it worked out for the better that “Higher Ground” was in fact not in Melfest, I think. 

12. Rasmussen is actually the first Danish ESC contestant since Emmelie de Forest that I’ve liked. Gratz? 

#Eurovision 2018 #Eurovision Song Contest #Denmark #Rasmussen #Higher Ground

[libraryofwar]

THE UNTOLD TRUE STORY OF MAD DOG SHRIVER: 

Mad Dog led dozens of covert missions into Laos & Cambodia until his luck ran out. By Maj. John L. Plaster, USAR (Ret.) 

There undoubtedly was not a single recon man in SOG more accomplished or renowned than Mad Dog Shriver. Mad Dog! In the late 1960s, no Special Forces trooper at Ft. Bragg even breathed those top-secret letters, "S-O-G," but everyone had heard of the legendary Studies and Observations Group Green Beret recon team leader, Sergeant First Class Jerry Shriver, dubbed a "mad dog" by Radio Hanoi.

It was Jerry Shriver who'd spoken the most famous rejoinder in SOG history, radioing his superiors not to worry that NVA forces had encircled his tiny team. "No, no," he explained, "I've got 'em right where I want 'em — surrounded from the inside." Fully decked out, Mad Dog was a walking arsenal with an imposing array of a sawed-off shotgun or suppressed submachine gun, pistols, knives, and grenades. 

"He looked like Rambo," First Sergeant Billy Greenwood thought. Blond, tall and thin, Shriver’s face bore chiseled features around piercing blue eyes. "There was no soul in the eyes, no emotion," thought SOG Captain Bill O’Rourke. "They were just eyes." By early 1969, Shriver was well into his third continuous year in SOG, leading top secret intelligence gathering teams deep into the enemy’s clandestine Cambodian sanctuaries where he’d teased death scores of times. 

Unknown to him, however, forces beyond his control at the highest levels of government in Hanoi and Washington were steering his fate. The Strategic Picture Every few weeks of early 1969, the docks at Cambodia's seaport of Sihanoukville bustled with East European ships offloading to long lines of Hak Ly Trucking Company lorries. Though ostensibly owned by a Chinese businessman, the Hak Ly Company's true operator was North Vietnam's Trinh Sat intelligence service. 

The trucks’ clandestine cargo of rockets, small-arms ammunition and mortar rounds rolled overnight to the heavily jungled frontier of Kampong Cham Province just three miles from the border with South Vietnam, a place the Americans had nicknamed the Fishhook, where vast stockpiles sustained three full enemy divisions, plus communist units across the border inside South Vietnam — some 200,000 foes. 

Cambodian Prince Sihanouk was well aware of these neutrality violations; indeed, his fifth wife, Monique, her mother and half-brother were secretly peddling land rights and political protection to the NVA; other middlemen were selling rice to the NVA by the thousands of tons. Hoping to woo Sihanouk away from the communists, the Johnson Administration had watched passively while thousands of GIs were killed by communist forces operating from Cambodia, and not only did nothing about it, but said nothing, even denied it was happening. And now, each week of February and March 1969, more Americans were dying than lost in the Persian Gulf War, killed by NVA forces that struck quickly then fled back to "neutral” Cambodia. 

Combined with other data, SOG's Cambodian intelligence appeared on a top-secret map which National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger studied aboard Air Force One at Brussels airport the morning of 24 February 1969. Sitting with Kissinger was Colonel Alexander Haig, his military assistant, while representing the president was White House Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman. During the new administration's transition, President Nixon had asked Kissinger to determine how to deal with the Cambodian buildup and counter Hanoi's "fight and talk" strategy. 

While President Nixon addressed NATO's North Atlantic Council, those aboard Air Force One worked out details for a clandestine U.S. response: The secret bombing of Cambodia's most remote sanctuaries, which would go unacknowledged unless Prince Sihanouk protested. When Air Force One departed Brussels, Kissinger briefed President Nixon, who approved the plan but postponed implementing it. Over the coming three weeks, Nixon twice warned Hanoi, "we will not tolerate attacks which result in heavier casualties to our men at a time that we are honestly trying to seek peace at the conference table in Paris." The day after Nixon's second warning, the NVA bombarded Saigon with 122mm rockets obviously smuggled through Cambodia. 

Three days later, Nixon turned loose the B-52s on the Fishhook, the first secret Cambodian raid, which set off 73 secondary explosions. A Special SOG Mission Not one peep emanated from Phnom Penh or Hanoi and there was a fitting irony: For four years the North Vietnamese had denied their presence in Cambodia, and now, with U.S. bombs falling upon them, they could say nothing. 

Nixon suspended further B-52 strikes in hopes Hanoi's negotiators might begin productive discussions in Paris, but the talks droned on pointlessly. To demonstrate that America, too, could "talk and fight," President Nixon approved a second secret B-52 strike, this time against a target proposed by General Creighton Abrams with Ambassador Bunker's endorsement: COSVN, the Central Office for South Vietnam, the almost mythical Viet Cong headquarters which claimed to run the whole war. 

An NVA deserter had pinpointed the COSVN complex 14 miles southeast of Memot, Cambodia, in the Fishhook, just a mile beyond the South Vietnamese border. The COSVN raid was laid on for 24 April. Apprised of the upcoming B-52 strike, Brigadier General Philip Davidson, the MACV J2, thought that instead of just bombing COSVN, a top-secret SOG raiding force should hit the enemy headquarters as soon as the bombs stopped falling. 

He phoned Colonel Steve Cavanaugh, Chief SOG, who agreed and ordered the Ban Me Thuot-based Command and Control South, CCS, to prepare a Green Beret-led company of Montagnard mercenaries for the special mission. At CCS, the historic COSVN raid fell upon its most accomplished man, that living recon legend, Mad Dog Shriver, and Captain Bill O'Rourke. 

Though O'Rourke would command the company-size raiding force, Shriver equally would influence the operation, continuing an eight-month collaboration they’d begun when they ran recon together. Mad Dog — the Man and the Myth 

There was no one at CCS quite like Mad Dog Shriver. Medal of Honor recipient Jim Fleming, who flew USAF Hueys for SOG, found Shriver, "the quintessential warrior-loner, anti-social, possessed by what he was doing, the best team, always training, constantly training." Shriver rarely spoke and walked around camp for days wearing the same clothes. In his sleep he cradled a loaded rifle, and in the club he'd buy a case of beer, open every can, then go alone to a corner and drink them all. Though he'd been awarded a Silver Star, five Bronze Stars, and the Soldiers Medal, the 28-year-old Green Beret didn’t care about decorations. 

But he did care about the Montagnard hill tribesmen, and spent all his money on them, even collected food, clothes, whatever people would give, to distribute in Yard villages. He was the only American at CCS who lived in the Montagnard barracks. "He was almost revered by the Montagnards," O'Rourke says. 

Shriver's closest companion was a German shepherd he'd brought back from Taiwan which he named Klaus. One night Klaus got sick on beer some recon men fed him and crapped on the NCO club floor; they rubbed his nose in it and threw him out. 

Shriver arrived, drank a beer, removed his blue velvet smoking jacket and derby hat, put a .38 revolver on a table, then dropped his pants and defecated on the floor. "If you want to rub my nose in this," he dared, "come on over." Everyone pretended not to hear him; one man who'd fed Klaus beer urged the Recon Company commander to intervene. The captain laughed in his face. "He had this way of looking at you with his eyes half-open," recon man Frank Burkhart remembers. "If he looked at me like that, I'd just about freeze." 

Shriver always had been different. In the early 1960s, when Rich Ryan served with him in the 7th Army's Long Range Patrol Company in Germany, Shriver’s buddies called him "Digger" since they thought he looked like an undertaker. As a joke, his LRRP comrades concocted their own religion, "The Mahoganies," which worshipped a mahogany statue. "So we would carry Shriver around on an empty bunk with a sheet over him and candles on the corners," recalled Ryan, "and chant, 'Maaa-haa-ga-ney, Maaa-haa-ga-ney.' Scared the hell out of new guys." Fleming says Shriver "convinced me that for the rest of my life I would not go into a bar and cross someone I didn't know." But no recon man was better in the woods. "He was like having a dog you could talk to," O'Rourke explained. "He could hear and sense things; he was more alive in the woods than any other human being I've ever met." 

During a company operation on the Cambodian border Shriver and an old Yard compatriot were sitting against a tree, O'Rourke recalled. "Suddenly he sat bolt upright, they looked at each other, shook their heads and leaned back against the tree. I'm watching this and wondering, what the hell's going on? And all of a sudden these birds flew by, then a nano-second later, way off in the distance, 'Boom-boom!' -- shotguns. They'd heard that, ascertained what it was and relaxed before I even knew the birds were flying." Shriver once went up to SOG’s Command and Control North for a mission into the DMZ where Captain Jim Storter encountered him just before insert. "He had pistols stuck everywhere on him, I mean, he had five or six .38 caliber revolvers." Storter asked him, "Sergeant Shriver, would you like a CAR-15 or M-16 or something? 

You know the DMZ is not a real mellow area to go into." But Mad Dog replied, "No, them long guns'll get you in trouble and besides, if I need more than these I got troubles anyhow." Rather than stand down after an operation, Shriver would go out with another team. "He lived for the game; that's all he lived for," Dale Libby, a fellow CCS man said. 

Shriver once promised everyone he was going on R&R but instead sneaked up to Plei Djerang Special Forces camp to go to the field with Rich Ryan's A-Team. During a short leave stateside in 1968, fellow Green Beret Larry White hung out with Shriver, whose only real interest was finding a lever action .444 Marlin rifle. 

Purchasing one of the powerful Marlins, Shriver shipped it back to SOG so he could carry it into Cambodia, "to bust bunkers," probably the only lever gun used in the war. And the Real Jerry Shriver Unless you were one of Mad Dog's close friends, the image was perfect prowess -- but the truth was, Shriver confided to fellow SOG Green Beret Sammy Hernadez, he feared death and didn't think he'd live much longer. 

He'd beat bad odds too many times, and could feel a terrible payback looming. "He wanted to quit," Medal of Honor winner Fred Zabitosky could see. "He really wanted to quit, Jerry did. I said, 'Why don't you just tell them I want off, I don't want to run any more?' He said he would but he never did; just kept running." The 5th Special Forces Group executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Norton, had been watching SOG recon casualties skyrocket and grew concerned about men like Mad Dog whose lives had become a continuous flirtation with death. Norton went to the 5th Group commander and urged, "Don't approve the goddamn extensions these guys are asking for. You approve it again, your chances of killing that guy are very, very good." But the group commander explained SOG needed experienced men for its high priority missions. "Bullshit," Norton snapped, "you're signing that guy's death warrant." 

Eventually 5th Group turned down a few extensions but only a very few; the most experienced recon men never had extensions denied. Never. "Mad Dog was wanting to get out of recon and didn't know how," said recon team leader Sonny Franks, though the half-measure came when Shriver left recon to join his teammate O’Rourke’s raider company. And now the COSVN raid would make a fitting final operation; Shriver could face his fear head-on, charge right into COSVN’s mysterious mouth and afterward at last call it quits. Into COSVN’s Mouth The morning of 24 April 1969, while high-flying B-52s winged their way from distant Guam, the SOG raider company lined up beside the airfield at Quan Loi, South Vietnam, only 20 miles southeast of COSVN's secret lair. 

But just five Hueys were flyable that morning, enough to lift only two platoons; the big bombers could not be delayed, which meant Lieutenant Bob Killebrew's 3rd Platoon would have to stand by at Quan Loi while the 1st Platoon under First Lieutenant Walter Marcantel, and 2nd Platoon under First Lieutenant Greg Harrigan, raided COSVN. Capt. O'Rourke and Mad Dog didn't like it, but they could do nothing.* Nor could they do anything about their minimal fire support. 

Although whole waves of B52s were about to dump thousands of bombs into COSVN, the highly classified Cambodian Rules of Engagement forbad tactical air strikes; it was better to lose an American-led SOG team, the State Department rules suggested, then leave documentable evidence that U.S. F4 Phantoms had bombed this "neutral" territory. It was a curious logic so concerned about telltale napalm streaks or cluster bomb fins, but unconcerned about B-52 bomb craters from horizon to horizon. Chief SOG Cavanaugh found the contradiction "ridiculous," but he could not change the rules. 

The B-52 contrails were not yet visible when the raiding force Hueys began cranking and the raiders boarded; Capt. O'Rourke would be aboard the first bird and Shriver on the last so they'd be at each end of the landing Hueys. As they lifted off for the ten-minute flight, the B-52s were making final alignments for the run-in. Minutes later the lead chopper had to turn back because of mechanical problems; O'Rourke could only wish the others Godspeed. 

Command passed to an operations officer in the second bird who'd come along for the raid, Captain Paul Cahill. Momentarily the raiders could see dirt geysers bounding skyward amid collapsing trees. Then as the dust settled a violin-shaped clearing took form and the Hueys descended in-trail, hovered for men to leap off, then climbed away. Then fire exploded from all directions, horrible fire that skimmed the ground and mowed down anyone who didn’t dive into a bomb crater or roll behind a fallen tree trunk. 

From the back of the LZ, Mad Dog radioed that a machinegun bunker to his left-front had his *(Greg Harrigan and I had been boyhood friends in northeast Minneapolis.) men pinned and asked if anyone could fire at it to relieve the pressure. Holed up in a bomb crater beneath murderous fire, Capt. Cahill, 1st Lt. Marcantel and a medic, Sergeant Ernest Jamison, radioed that they were pinned, too. Then Jamison dashed out to retrieve a wounded man; heavy fire cut him down, killing him on the spot. No one else could engage the machinegun that trapped Shriver's men -- it was up to Mad Dog. Skittish Yards looked to Shriver and his half-grin restored a sense of confidence. Then they were on their feet, charging -- Shriver was his old self, running to the sound of guns, a True Believer Yard on either side, all of them dashing through the flying bullets, into the treeline, into the very guts of Mad Dog's great nemesis, COSVN. And Mad Dog Shriver was never seen again. 

The Fight Continues At the other end of the LZ, Jamison's body lay just a few yards from the crater where Capt. Cahill heard bullets cracking and RPGs rocking the ground. When Cahill lifted his head, an AK round hit him in the mouth, deflected up and destroyed an eye. Badly wounded, he collapsed. In a nearby crater, young Lt. Greg Harrigan directed helicopter gunships whose rockets and mini-guns were the only thing holding off the aggressive NVA. 

Already, Harrigan reported, more than half his platoon were killed or wounded. For 45 minutes the Green Beret lieutenant kept the enemy at bay, then Harrigan, too, was hit. He died minutes later. Bill O'Rourke tried to land on another helicopter but his bird couldn't penetrate the NVA veil of lead. Lieutenant Colonel Earl Trabue, their CCS Commander, arrived and flew overhead with O’Rourke but they could do little. Hours dragged by. Wounded men laid untreated, exposed in the sun. 

Several times the Hueys attempted to retrieve them and each time heavy fire drove them off. One door gunner was badly wounded. Finally a passing Australian twin-jet Canberra bomber from No. 2 Squadron at Phan Rang heard their predicament on the emergency radio frequency, ignored the fact it was Cambodia, and dropped a bombload which, O’Rourke reports, "broke the stranglehold those guys were in, and it allowed us to go in." Only 1st Lt. Marcantel was still directing air, and finally he had to bring ordnance so close it wounded himself and his surviving nine Montagnards. 

One medic ran to Harrigan's hole and attempted to lift his body out but couldn't. "They were pretty well drained physically and emotionally," O'Rourke said. Finally, three Hueys raced in and picked up 15 wounded men. Lieutenant Dan Hall carried out a radio operator, then managed to drag Lt. Harrigan's body to an aircraft. Thus ended the COSVN raid. A Time for Reflection Afterward Chief SOG Cavanaugh talked to survivors and learned, "The fire was so heavy and so intense that even the guys trying to [evade] and move out of the area were being cut down." It seemed almost an ambush. "That really shook them up at MACV, to realize anybody survived that [B-52] strike," Col. Cavanaugh said. 

The heavy losses especially affected Brig. Gen. Davidson, the MACV J-2, who blamed himself for the catastrophe. "General," Chief SOG Cavanaugh assured him, "if I'd have felt we were going to lose people like that, I wouldn't have put them in there." It’s that ambush-like reception despite a B-52 strike that opens the disturbing possibility of treachery and, it turns out, it was more than a mere possibility. 

One year after the COSVN raid, the NSA twice intercepted enemy messages warning of imminent SOG operations which could only have come from a mole or moles in SOG headquarters. It would only be long after the war that it became clear Hanoi’s Trinh Sat had penetrated SOG, inserting at least one high ranking South Vietnamese officer in SOG whose treachery killed untold Americans, including, most likely, the COSVN raiders. Of those raiders, Lt. Walter Marcantel survived his wounds only to die six months later in a parachuting accident at Ft. Devens, Mass., while Capt. Paul Cahill was medically retired. 

Eventually, Green Beret medic Ernest Jamison's body was recovered. But those lost in the COSVN raid have not been forgotten. Under a beautiful spring sky on Memorial Day, 1993, with American flags waving and an Army Reserve Huey strewing flower petals as it passed low-level, members of Special Forces Association Chapter XX assembled at Lt. Greg Harrigan’s grave in Minneapolis, Minn. 

Before the young lieutenant’s family, a Special Forces honor guard placed a green beret at his grave, at last conferring some recognition to the fallen SOG man, a gesture the COSVN raid’s high classification had made impossible a quarter-century earlier. 

Until now, neither Harrigan’s family nor the families of the other lost men knew the full story of the top secret COSVN raid. But the story remains incomplete. As in the case of SOG’s other MIAs, Hanoi continues to deny any knowledge of Jerry Shriver. Capt. O'Rourke concluded Mad Dog died that day. "I felt very privileged to have been his friend," O’Rourke says, "and when he died I grieved as much as for my younger brother when he was killed. Twenty-some-odd years later, it still sticks in my craw that I wasn't there. I wish I had been there." 

There remains a popular myth among SOG veterans, that any day now Mad Dog Shriver will emerge from the Cambodian jungle as if only ten minutes have gone by, look right and left and holler, "Hey! Where’d everybody go?" Indeed, to those who knew him and fought beside him, Mad Dog will live forever. (This article is derived from Maj. Plaster’s book, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam, published by Simon & Schuster.)

#special forces #MIA/POW #MIA #POW #Jerry M Shriver #Jerry Mad Dog Shirver #Shriver #Mad Dog #Special Operations #MACVSOG #Vietnam #Cambodia #HOOK #John Plaster #US Army #US Army Special Forces