#// on the pages with the juiciest stuff | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rotworld · 2 years ago

Text

27: Strictly Business

what do hitmen get up to when they aren't on the job? you know. you wish you didn't.

->explicit. contains noncon, organized crime, gore, implied murder, graphic descriptions of corpses, workplace harassment, emotional sadism.

“BODY IN SUITCASE IDENTIFIED AS POLICE INFORMANT,” screams the biggest, boldest font on the Tuesday front page spread. The photo is quietly unnerving, an artsy still life shot of waterlogged, conspicuously stained softside luggage sitting on a pier, sunset sparkling on the metal zippers. Hazel’s fingers are blocking the juiciest bit of the story as she ignores it entirely to scoff at the opinion column, her gray hair twisted into a bun and her flour-dusted apron crumpled on her lap. You drift by with a washrag to tidy up the crumb and spilled pop remnants of an eight year old’s birthday party. The evening news plays at an inaudible level above the bar.

“It’s nothing to worry about, hon,” she says. She’s been watching you scrub at the same spotless corner of the table for a minute straight. There’s a reporter on TV gesturing at a dock blocked off with yellow tape, and a blue-striped police boat cruising through the harbor.

“That’s close to here,” you say.

“Anything worth talking about happens close to here. The Waterfront District’s a busy place.”

“Busy,” you scoff. Busy is standstill traffic and half-hour restaurant waits, not corpses that have to be fished out of a lake or blood and brain matter on public restroom mirrors. You wipe down the bar counter in front of her, glancing at the newspaper with a tight frown. “I don’t know how that stuff doesn’t scare you.”

“If I got scared by every old thing, I would’ve died of heart failure by now,” she says. She folds the paper so you stop looking at it, fishing another candy-wrapped wad of gum from her pocket. She’s trying to quit smoking, gradually replacing the ashy tobacco scent of her clothes with Dubble Bubble. “You a narc?”

“What? No,” you sputter.

“Then don’t worry so much.”

Easy for her to say. She grew up here. Her face is smiling in the faded photographs along the back wall with the original waitstaff from the 70s. You just got here a couple years ago for school and it feels like somebody’s getting killed in new, gruesome ways every time you look up. Things go in cycles. It’ll be uneventful for months at a time and then it’s like the city gets restless, churning out half a dozen bodies in just a few days. Last month, your biggest concern was finals, and now four bodies have turned up in the Waterfront District in a little under a week.

“It’s business, I’ll bet,” Hazel says absently, glancing at the TV. “That’s why it always picks up around the same time of year. Their version of downsizing or something.” Her response isn’t all that unusual. Most people are either completely numb to it or relishing in it like the shock jocks on the local radio shows. A few weeks ago, it turned out that some abandoned shack on the north side had been converted into a torture chamber, complete with drawerfuls of surgical equipment, chains and shackles affixed to the walls, and something so unspeakably bad in the bathroom that even the crime scene photodumps that ended up online came pre-censored.

You came into work a little jumpy and sleep-deprived Hazel had been sitting at the bar with her pile of empty gum wrappers, glancing over the story in the paper with no more perturbation than someone who’d smelled something mildly unpleasant.

“Customers,” Hazel tells you. She calls it five whole seconds before the bells over the door jingle.

You smooth out your apron and march to the front with your best customer service smile, happy to have a distraction. “Welcome to the Goldilocks Tavern! Are we dining in toni—?” Your voice catches behind a lump in your throat that refuses to budge.

The man is a regular. He looks absurd standing in a family restaurant wearing a tailored designer suit that belongs in a board meeting, slipping off his sunglasses and glancing at the TV in the corner. Mid-length wavy hair tickles the base of his neck, slightly tousled from the wind outside. He smiles at you and that blinding enthusiasm, the cheerful little wink, makes your stomach twist. “Evening,” he says. “Table for three, please.”

It’s Valerio fucking Burke and he brought friends.

“Mr. Burke! Where’ve you been lately?” Hazel calls. She sees you floundering and swoops in to the rescue, ambling over to make conversation as you collect yourself. You collect three menus with numb, shaking hands, completely on autopilot. You’re not ready for Valerio on a good day, let alone a day when the news cycle has been nothing but mob atrocities. The problem isn’t that he’s a bad customer, because he’s not. He’s perfect. He’s patient, he’s polite, he tips great, he’s all smiles the whole night, and it bothers the fuck out of you because you know. You know and you have to pretend you don’t.

“Oh, you know. Always a little hectic this time of year,” Valerio says mildly. “You’d be surprised how cutthroat it gets. Hard to find company loyalty these days. Lots of employee overturn, lots of new hires. I’ve been putting in a lot of overtime.”

Yeah, you fucking bet he has.

Hazel keeps him talking while you fumble for the silverware and napkin sets, and you sneak a few glances. You’ve never seen the other two before. The guy on his left is massive, taller, wider, eyeing the tavern with a nasty scowl like the place owes him money, dark hair tied in a low ponytail. The guy on his right is shorter and the only one dressed remotely appropriately in sneakers and a striped jacket and pants from mismatched tracksuits. Sandy bangs hang in his face and there are freckles on his cheek and across the bridge of his nose. He’s got a round, boyish face, admiring the kitschy tavern decor with a small smile.

You’re completely unprepared for his gaze to flick to yours with magnetic speed, like he knew you were staring all along. He stares blankly for a minute, sizing you up. His eyes move down and back up again, a smirk slowly creeping across his face.

Hazel’s stalled as long as she can and she’s jabbing her elbow into your side as subtly as possible. “Right this way,” you tell the men. Valerio smiles. The big guy looks at you with something you can’t quite call a glare, but it’s intense and uncomfortable and makes you feel threatened. The other one flashes you a grin. The same instinct that would warn you not to turn your back on a snarling wolf kicks in hard but you make yourself walk, leading them to a quiet table in the back. You’d love to get through this as quickly as possible without a lot of chit chat, but when you get to the table, Valerio’s got that look that tells you it’s not going to work that way.

“I don’t think you’ve met my coworkers,” he says as he slides into his seat. He’s graceful like a trained dancer, dextrous fingers quickly unrolling the napkin and arranging his silverware in a few blurred movements. “This is Ezra Doroshenko. We’ve been in the same department for—has it been a decade now?”

“A long, long decade,” Ezra mutters. He’s still almost-glaring as he studies the menu. He cracks his neck so loud that it makes you flinch. He lets out an amused huff while skimming the specials. “Could never get Miguel in here. He’d have an aneurysm over the pizza.”

“Miguel can suck a dick, they’ve got Neapolitan on every fucking corner around here,” the other guy snaps. He flashes a smile that is, admittedly, disarmingly cute and rests his chin against the back of his hand. “Nice to meet you,” he says, his eyes flicking down to your nametag. He purrs your name in a way that makes your face feel as hot as the sun. “Val’s been holding out on us. I woulda been here months ago if I knew the waiters were cute.”

“Brooks Macbride,” Valerio introduces him with fond exasperation. “He’s new. Apologies in advance, he’s mouthy.”

“Shut the fuck up, I am not.”

You inch away from the table just slightly and freeze like a deer in headlights when all three of them pin you in place with their eyes. “How’ve you been?” Valerio asks smoothly. “How’s school? You’re almost done now, aren’t you?”

“Oh, uh.” You glance from him to Ezra, who seems to be making an active effort to ignore you, and Brooks, who’s way too interested and watching your every move. You’d rather they know as little about you as possible. “Um…well, it’s going alright…”

“Hazel, can you turn it up?” Ezra calls across the restaurant. You’re surprised to see her at the bar still. Normally, she’d be in the kitchen already, but she’s fussing with the counter that you just cleaned, watching you with muted worry. Your heart skips a beat. You’re not in danger, are you? Valerio’s never done anything particularly threatening, but you don’t know the other two from a hole in the wall. Hazel nods and grabs the remote from under the bar, cranking up the TV volume until you can hear the matter-of-fact tone of the newsroom anchors.

“…statement this afternoon said that while this is unquestionably a homicide investigation, they believe that the murder is ‘unlikely’ to be connected to organized crime. This is the second body to be recovered from Lake Michigan and the fifth found in the Waterfront District…”

“Unlikely,” Ezra snorts.

“Well, Chief Davis said there’d be fewer mob murders on his watch,” Valerio muses. “Wouldn’t look great if that wasn’t the case, now would it?”

Brooks groans. “You guys need fucking hobbies. Can we not talk shop over dinner?”

They’re distracted. You try to make your escape as casually as possible, but you’re speedwalking by the time you get to the bar. “They’re talking about it,” you tell Hazel in a hissed whisper, “right in front of me!”

She pours three glasses of water and pushes them across the counter. “Ignore it,” she says.

“How?!”

There’s no time to strategize. Valerio’s waving you back over with a sickly sweet, “Excuse me!” and Hazel frowns tightly but sends you back to their table with the water. “You’ve got to try Hazel’s onion rings,” he’s telling the others when you get there. “Could we get a large to split, please?” You scramble for your notepad and pen. “Are you alright? You seem a bit frazzled.”

“Yeah!” you say quickly. “Yeah, I’m good. Right, onions rings. Anything else to get you started?”

Say no, you plead silently.

The news has shifted to an interview with a terse police detective begrudgingly giving up a few details on the recent murders, and all you can hear is an unentused murmur of, “…broken bones, partial flaying, trauma to the groin area, and we know the victim was alive for the majority of the time…”

Valerio lets out a long, thoughtful hum, perusing the menu way too long for someone who has it memorized front to back, and finally, finally says, “That’s all for now, thank you.”

You give Hazel the order and hide in the bathroom. You just need a minute. You take deep breaths until your pulse is back to normal and slump against the sinks. He’s toying with you, he has to be. There’s no way he can’t tell how uncomfortable you are. In all your time at the Goldilocks Tavern, Valerio’s never threatened you, pushed you around or even made thinly-veiled threats. But he loves seeing you squirm. He pushes for conversation more on nights where you’re already stressed and run ragged, and you’d assume he was trying to make you feel better if you hadn’t dealt with him so many times. He knows he isn’t helping. He doesn’t care.

“You okay, cutie?”

You nearly jump out of your skin. You didn’t hear anybody come in, but Brooks is standing right behind you, impish smile reflected in the mirror. You lunge for the bathroom door but he’s faster, yanking you back by the wrist. If Valerio’s a dancer, Brooks is a fucking assassin. He has you shoved up against the sink, the hard counter digging into your back, and a pocket knife right up against your throat faster than you can scream. He presses his index finger to his lips and you take that as your one and only warning to keep your mouth shut.

“Pants off,” he orders. You swallow hard. His smile is absolutely frigid as he moves the knife right under your jaw. Trembling, you do as he says, holding his smoldering gaze as you lift one leg out, and then the other. The fabric puddles around your ankles. Brooks turns you around, shirt and apron still on, and bends you over the sink. You let out a whimper when you hear a zipper descending and the knife comes back against the side of your neck.

“Valerio gets off on it, y’know,” he murmurs. “When you look all scared and shit, he fucking loves that. But he’s not gonna touch you. He’s gotta keep up his reputation or whatever.” Brooks chuckles, grabbing your ass and squeezing so hard you’re sure it’ll bruise. “I sure as fuck don’t, though.”

He blankets himself against your back and knocks your legs apart, grunting as he wraps his fist around his soft cock. You can’t do anything but sit there and listen to him pant and moan as he strokes himself, the knife hovering dangerously close to your flesh. You try to keep your gaze down—on the sink, on nothing, but Brooks stops jacking off just to grab your hair with his precum-slicked fingers and force you to look in the mirror.

“Uh-uh. You’ve gotta watch,” he says, laughing at the tears pricking the corners of your eyes. He likes that, you can tell, because he starts fucking your thighs with his half-hard cock from the sight alone. “You and your big fuckin’ doe eyes. You can’t go around looking like a prime cut of meat like that! Somebody’s gonna come along and take a bite.” Inevitably, he ends up grinding against your sex and you’re hyperaware of the twitching veins along his length, how they feel rubbing on your sensitive flesh. A miserable noise that’s almost a moan slips out and you hear a cackle before he sets the knife down on the counter.

“Yeah?” he coos. “You like that? You want it in you?” He grabs your hips with both hands and you start squirming when he lines himself up. That earns you another harsh, scalp-burning tug on your hair. “I’m going easy on you,” he says. He strokes the knife handle with his index finger. “Okay? So calm down. If I did what I really wanted to do, you wouldn’t be walking out of here. But I’m gonna be nice, because Val said I have to be. I think he liiiiiikes you.”

He sees the desperation flicker across your eyes in your reflection and the knife is in his hand again before a cry for help can slip out. You don’t doubt that he’ll stab you and leave you here to bleed out, no matter what Valerio said. Brooks seems satisfied by your soft, stifled sobs, tears gathering on the counter under your cheeks. He doesn’t prepare you. He holds you at knifepoint while he shoves his cock into your clenched entrance, forcing past your resistance with hard, violent thrusts. The slap of skin echoes in the bathroom and your nails scrape over the counter, desperate for something to hold onto and get you through the pain.

“Fuuuuuck, you feel good,” Brooks moans. He brings his free hand down across your ass, the slap as sharp and startling as the sudden, stinging pain. It’s humiliating to see your tear-streaked face in the mirror, gasping and flinching in time with Brooks’ punishing thrusts. He’s utterly shameless, a crooked smile on his face as he pumps his hips and squeezes your ass, digging his nails into your flesh. “When Val finally works up the balls to fuck you, be sure and tell him I broke you in first. Goddamn you’re tight.”

His pace is breakneck and absolutely merciless, no buildup, no slow easing, and he keeps changing it up without warning. Just as you start getting used to the constant pounding, he suddenly surges forward and keeps you pinned and still against the counter, his thrusts slow and deep. You can’t hold your voice back anymore but he doesn’t seem to care. The knife is just part of the experience, prodding and scraping dangerously against your throat. He stops and you’re shivering, gasping, trying to catch your breath, as he runs his hand down your back in a mock-soothing gesture.

“Fuck yourself on my cock,” he murmurs. You don’t want to. You lie there shivering, crying silently against the counter. Brooks drapes himself against your back again, his lips hovering beside your ear. “Wasn’t me, y’know,” he says. He thrusts shallowly, making you whine. “The suitcase? Not my gig. See, ‘cuz I’m not—how the fuck does Val say it? I’m not in their department.” He snickers.

His hand slithers between your legs and he touches you for the first time. He’s mean about it, too hard, too rough to really feel good, but a jolt of pleasure shoots up your spine all the same. You see yourself, your watery, miserable eyes, and Brooks hovering right beside you, smirking. “I work the warehouse,” he says, and your blood runs cold. He watches the expression you make through the mirror, his smirk widening. “Yeah. You get what I’m saying. So when I tell you to do something, I think you should suck it up and fucking do it. You don’t want something bad to happen to you, do you?”

You shake your head frantically. Brooks coos and kisses your cheek.

“You’re so fucking sexy when you’re scared,” he says huskily. “So…fuck yourself on my cock. Don’t make me ask again.”

It’s a struggle. Your body is timid, unwilling to go further than light, fleeting passes that just barely kiss his tip. Brooks makes an unimpressed sound in his throat and taps your cheek with the knife.

“Like you mean it,” he says. Your hopes that he’s just bluffing, that he won’t risk leaving a mark, are dashed when the blade digs into your skin and blood bubbles to the surface, dribbling in thick beads down your chin. “C’mon, cutie. You’re not gonna make me do something messy, are you?”

So you do it, burning with humiliation. You move your hips and take his cock the best you can, clumsy, shaking, spearing yourself on his length. Brooks is finally satisfied and you’re rewarded with a sensual caress up and down your side before he’s touching your sex again. This time is better. He’s actually trying to make it good and you’re ashamed that he’s succeeding, working you with his fingers in time with your movements. You’re not going to cum, but he is, and that’s all that matters. You just want it to be over.

Brooks takes over when you start losing pace, your exhausted body drooping against the counter. “Guess I picked on you enough today,” he says. He drops the knife and suddenly he’s gripping both of your arms, tugging them behind your back. You’re dragged upright and straight into his unforgiving, jackhammering pace. You hear your bodies meeting, the rhythmic slap of his hips against you filling the bathroom. You look like a wreck and Brooks is utterly blissed out, eyes half-lidded as he bites his bottom lip to stifle a moan. He pounds you into the counter and you know there’ll be bruises all over your thighs and stomach when this is over, maybe even your ass with how hard he’s thrusting into you.

You don’t get much of a warning when he cums. His thrusts get uneven and then he’s groaning, yanking you back against him hard and holding you there, squirming and gasping, while he fills you. You end up with your face against the counter, shoved forward with such hard, punishing movements that you’re driven onto your toes. He doesn’t stop until he’s spent everything he has, and then he staggers back, softening cock slipping out of you with a trickling ooze of cum.

You can’t move. You can’t really think, either, except that it’s over. It’s over, and the counter is smooth and cool against your sweaty skin, and you lived through that somehow. Brooks snatches his knife and you don’t look at him, don’t want to know what the fuck he’s doing. He zips his pants up, washes his hands, and then leans against the counter. He doesn’t leave.

“Soooooo,” he says, hands in his pockets. “What nights do you work?”

He’s out of his goddamned mind if he thinks you’re going to tell him that. You might fucking quit.

“Fiiiiiine, whatever,” he sighs, like you’re the one being an unreasonable brat. He unlocks the bathroom door and you hear him mutter, “Bet Val knows,” as he leaves.

You’re dressed and vaguely presentable in seconds, rushing back to the table to catch him before Valerio says a fucking words. But you’re too late. You know it just by looking. Ezra looks vaguely amused while Brooks and Valerio are bickering, louder and more aggressively than you’ve ever heard either of them speak. Brooks catches your gaze and winks. Valerio turns and you expect—you don’t know, maybe his usual cool, calm demeanor, a little self-satisfied smirk, maybe feigned concern.

You don’t see any of that. His lips are parted. His pupils are blown. He looks hungry. It takes him a second to collect himself and smooth his expression over with something more approachable, but there’s a sharp edge to his smile that wasn’t there before.

“I think we know what we’d like for dinner,” he says, his voice noticeably lower than earlier.

#rotpeach writes #goretober #original #paging evil twink anon i was thinking of you today lol

59 notes · View notes

feederandfeedee · 2 years ago

Note

I've sort of a similar question but in reverse to the recent ask that wanted to know how to open up about feedism to her boyfriend; I am a man who is very interested in bigger women, simply put. I suppose there are two questions at hand, really;

1) Tips on opening up on being into the feedism from the feeder perspective to someone who doesn't know about it? Taking it slow, like all kink, is a given.

2) Tips on, shall we say, seducing someone into feedism? Essentially, how do you hit a feedee up without looking like a creep? I'm assuming that the person seems compatible enough in other ways for the relationship to be more than just a wankfest.

Okaayyyy let’s address this one.

1) It really doesn’t matter whether you’re a feeder or a feedee- my advice on “coming out” as a feedist remains the same. Show them a copy of the jar of kinks and be prepared to defend feedism if they have misconceptions.

2) I think you could really use help with this. One word. RESPECT. Categorizing your potential dates as either “wankfest” or “more than just a wankfest” gave me major creep vibes so you’ve definitely got some work to do. Also I’m confused? Are you seducing someone into feedism or are you approaching a feedee cause those seem like two entirely different situations. Or do you need tips on seducing someone that’s into feedism? I’m gonna make a judgement call and say that the latter of those options was what you meant. In that case let’s get into it. One thing to remember is that there’s a looootttt of men attempting to go after any given female feedee (I’m using male vs female because the asker is specified as male seeking advice for pursuing females). (Be respectful obviously) but you’ve also got to stand out a little bit. If I were in the game, only after setting up a detailed profile with pictures and interesting facts about myself and what I’m looking for (that focus less on feedism/fetishy stuff), I’d maybe draft up a message that I feel really confident about sending as an opener to someone I’m interested in. Then when you find someone you’re interested in, take that message template and jazz it up and personalize it enough to send out to that specific girl. Example:

Hey “name” [insert compliment here (don’t make this a sexualized compliment)], I think it’s so cool you’re into [mention something from her bio or a recent post she made (because you definitely did some digging on her page and looked at more than just her pics before sending this message)]. You know I [relate to that interest you just mentioned]! So it’s so cool too see someone else into that thing too! Oh btw wanted to ask [a question that you think she won’t be able to resist answering]. Anyways, yeah! I think you’re cool (or something like that) gonna go (say something cool here dork) and hope you message me back :)

Ok not the best but I literally came up with that in like 2 seconds. Notice how I mentioned the part about asking her a question that you think she won’t be able to resist answering. If you’ve read this far then you’re gonna get the juiciest tip in the world right now. I don’t reply to messages sent to me privately. Not ever. Unless someone mentions something that I just can’t resist putting my 2 cents in on. And I can assure you, everyone’s got something. If you happen to guess the right subject, then you’re guaranteed a reply.

Also, keep in mind that my advice is not fool proof. Just because you put the effort in doesn’t mean that the person you’re messaging owes you a response. Get comfortable with rejection. And listen, if you do what I say, and put a lot of effort into approaching a woman and she doesn’t reply, don’t immediately take that as a loss. Why would you want a reply from someone who doesn’t appreciate all the effort you put forth or see the value in that? The answer is you don’t, move on! You’ll find someone that does.

#askfeed

23 notes · View notes

metronn · 3 years ago

Text

sometimes i wish i could really sink my neurodivergent teeth into band hyperfixations. like i kinda wish i knew stuff about mr. john mountain goats darnielle, or mr. tobias forge of ghost, or even billy joel or lebanon hanover or. whatever. but i never get hyperfixated on them aside from listening to that one band on repeat, maybe occasionally reading a wikipedia page or something.

instead my, uh, juiciest hyperfixations have been, like. 20th century occultism. and edward snowden.

#i think it's actually because a lot of people who have huperfixations on musicians / actors / athletes etc #use a lot more social media than i do and thus have access to much more information about them than i do #and it (stupidly) makes me feel kind of inadequate because i don't know any of that stuff #but like. that's dumb on so many levels. i know this #.txt #on the other hand obviously knowing actual stuff about actual people is a double edged sword #im not saying i want to be obsessed with them - no thank you.#i just feel like i miss things a lot. anyway. ugh.

8 notes · View notes

thekitschdiet · 4 years ago

Text

my take on the literary masterpiece, the chic diet

Firstly, I am no one. It’s part of my charm. My fifteen minutes of fame was years ago, when I had an instagram niche meme page. I didn’t even take any brand deals! And my posts averaged six thousand likes! Anyhow. I am hardly literate and well hydrated and carry a small sephora-CVS-hybrid worth in my mini tote bag. Here is my guide on how to live like me, the intermediate kitsch-rat, aspiring influencer. But like, in an apathetic, somewhat dissonant, ironic way. I like saying I live by dogmatic principles. But a lot of it, um, is just eating disorder rituals. But that’s not really important. You’re as hot as you say you are, and as much an authority on what you write so long as you say it with, you know, conviction. It’s kind of venerable how fucking delusional I am, actually. Giving any sort of advice like I’m anywhere close to the ritzy ideal of the amphetamine-areyouami label-american. New York, ideally. West Village, preferably. But I guess the kind of guide I can write is better suited to someone living in a suburb, in a house with the twelve-paned windows. I always thought those were so chic. SO quaint, in a somewhat luxe way. Like, Connecticut vibes. My parents used to drive me up there as a child to buy books and ice cream. Nowadays I’d opt for a matcha latte with novelty ice cubes, but I guess at the time it was pretty sweet.

Because I popped a Vyvanse at like, 10pm, this next little bit could go one of two ways. I will write the most articulate, brilliant piece of literature of my life. Magnum opus, if there was a skinnier word for it. Or, I will get wrapped up doing something like folding all my last-season knits (which is part of my look, okay! I don’t have a job!) and fixating on a paragraph on how a girl’s collarbones are almost as identifying as a fingerprint, or a signature. I’m not a graphologist, but if you write your A’s with the little tail on top (like on a computer), you’re probably a snake. Nothing personal, just an observation. Also, I do have a biology final to study for. Not that I’m super anal, or even particularly committed to academia, but even in my precariously manicured (read that as separate terms; I did a good job on my nail polish, okay? But I happen to also be teetering on the brink of an epiphany or a collapse. Hence the use of the word precarious.) state, I know it’s important enough I can let one of my countless side-quests sit idle for a couple more days.

The first section seems only natural to be about hydration. And the whole idea of drinking things, really. There was a section in The Chic Diet about Adderall dry-mouth, which deeply resonated with me. Once I bit off a chunk of a Nivea Strawberry Shine (my favorite lip balm, more on that later) and swished it around my mouth. Didn’t help. Really, really didn’t. Anyway, I suppose that even if it served no purpose for combatting my prevacatingly ingenious cottonmouth solution, I was able to milk a sentence or two out of the experience. “Do it for the Vine”, all grown up! And wearing bananapapaya resin hoops too. Side note, that Etsy shop is a parasocial enemy of mine. It stems from jealousy, which sucks, but hating from inside a club I’m adjacent to is much healthier than being a hateful individual towards people I would, you know, interact with. Daily. Or something. I stopped going to therapy because I felt stupid about going and I don’t live in the right kind of town to warrant vacuous $300 hours. Bitching about my well-adjusted parents and how desperately I wished my anxiety would just “go away” was plainly gross, and a waste. Like, pretty sure almost every problem I have could be solved by a couple painful conversations taking place during a hurricane. Such a shame it doesn’t rain much here. Anyhow, I digress.

Staying hydrated. It is essential to my character, my persona, if you will; to never be without either an elegant metal bottle (I’m loyal to the smooth enamelled S’well ones, printed to look like marble or a semi holographic solid) or a little 16oz tumbler with a metal straw. Hydroflasks were some of the worst things to happen to society. I want to preface this claim with the fact that I wanted one in the same way a teenage girl wants a new iPhone so she can keep up appearances with her dermatologist-dad friends who still have the XR, by the way. But I ended up spending the money on like, a minidress at Brandy Melville before it fled my city. Or maybe a Fresh Sugar tinted lipbalm. For the better, even though the dress has a busted zipper now and the lipbalm tube has inevitably gotten dinged and dented by the other contents of my mini-totebag. Unlike a car, though, a couple scuffs on your laptop or your luxury lipbalm tube looks kind of cool. Like, you’re not someone who values the pristine, unused quality of an item that was ambiguously intended to be used versus displayed on Instagram. Now, I’m wondering why this paragraph about hydration is so fucking impossible to stay on track for. I literally drink several litres of water a day, and more tea on top of that. And sometimes an almond milk latte if I can budget it in. Not that I’m so anorexic I can’t afford a 45cal latte. They’re just not that important to me. Anyhow. Drinking lukewarm (on the cool side) water is better than ice-cold. Partially because I just get it out of the tap of my ensuite and I can’t be bothered to wait for it to run cold enough every time, and it just seems wasteful. Plus, there is something so.. skinny about drinking water at an “obscure” temperature. Trust me, I want to know why my thought process is like this too. My favorite tea is blueberry tea foraged in a side aisle at my local supermarket. I love a good commercial, high-end steep or fruit infusion as much as the next girl. Maybe more. My pantry is filled with tins labelled with things like “emerald jade organic” and “magic potion”, which is really just currants and butterfly pea flowers. But there is a necessary glamor about drinking dirt-cheap tea on the daily. Seriously, a box of 25 sachets is like, $3. At a higher point with my, um, Adderall problem, I spent like several times that on pills. I didn’t really need to include that, and could have linked the price point to the cost of a drugstore lipbalm, but I wrote it in. And I’m married to it, stubbornly, as all amateur writers should be when they wittle in a somewhat indecorous little joke. This tea is sooo good because it has a strong fruit-reminiscent taste (not as sweet as a fresh blueberry, but who wants that anyway?), it’s zero-calorie, it’s the most GORGEOUS color ever. The latte, the third drink in my little trifecta, is nothing special. But necessary. The trick is to use a milk frother to whip up sugar free syrup with instant coffee and a little bit of hot water in a glass. It’ll make the most luscious foam.. Top it off with almond milk. My dad is a coffee purist, owning both an upstairs keurig AND a downstairs one (among other more analogue methods, but I can’t name-drop, so what’s the point?), so he hates this drink. Now, calling oneself a plebian is so unglamorous and teetering on self-deprecating territory, dangerously close to insecurity. But I can use it here because I am at least posh enough to have a different pair of earrings for every outfit I could possibly come up with, and I only wear Patagonia if I am in a situation where I just have to wear fleece. Like I was saying. It’s such a simple drink, certainly not a delicacy, and… I had a joke about the word plebian but I keep getting up to refill my water and I fear I have forgotten about it.

Next section; the importance of a good tinted balm

In the intro I alluded to how a girl’s collarbones function essentially as an identifier, the way a signature or fingerprint does. This is a lie, or at least an exaggeration. But one’s ultimate tinted lipbalm is actually extremely indicative about who you are, as a person, as a member of society, even…

If you are loyal to Dior Lipglow, I have a couple questions. One; did you shoplift one tube, once, and refill it with cheaper stuff afterwards? I did that. I consider it one of my better-kept secrets, but now you know. Might as well explain the catalyst for my parent’s first separation now, and the horrifying experience that was meeting my dad’s Manhattan sugar baby (?) at the age of thirteen, wearing an overalls dress from, like, Topshop or something else equally embarrassing. .. Kidding. I digress. It’s such a fancy lipbalm, and good too! It smells like thin mints! But I could just never justify cell phone monthly installation payment money on something I will inevitably talk off. I do own three, but two I stole (before I lost the nerve, somewhat unfortunately) and one, a boy(not)friend bought for me. This is not something I feel any remorse about, because his house was easily four thousand square feet and his sisters had a dedicated all-glass room for their shared peloton. Oil money. Ugh!

My personal favorite lip balm, and I have tried a frightening amount, has got to be the Nivea Fruit Shine collection. The frosted one is shit-ugly. Hideous. But the strawberry one is the love of my life. It’s such a pleasant red, looking healthy and rejuvenated and really completes any look. Only downside is it will always, hopefully not always, remind me of Charles. Kissing Charles, specifically. And him asking me what lipbalm it was, because he knew I was somewhat frivolous and definitive and would have a very long answer. But for whatever reason, I simply stated it was from “out of town”. Not really sure why I said that, but it plagues me (minorly) to this day. Of all the things to make up.. .. The peach one is a perfectly demure spring classic shade. Cherry exists too, but the only tube I have ever had the fortune of owning was purchased in Costa Rica and lost somewhere on the way home. Honestly tragic, it was the juiciest shade. Blackberry is perfect too, but I have to layer it with either peach or untinted lipbalm to avoid what I imagine TooPoor would choose if she believed in tinted lipbalm. I don’t mean this hatefully, I think she’s a queen, but super dark, smudgy makeup suits the eyes better in my opinion. Or something. Or something.

Afraid to bore the reader, I have to move on now. Maybe at a later date I will release an addendum on my ultimate lipbalm buying guide. But also, that is so deeply personal (and everyone needs the excuse of “hunting for the perfect staple shade!!”), so it is really not my place to have any authority on something so intimate and subjective. Etcetera.

Moving on; Decorating your room

Here is a section I lifted out of my memoir document. It fits, because as enigmatic as I hope I am, I am also quite unchanging.

I just pushed three hangers and two tiny strappy tops with the tags still on, off my bed. Most nights, all, these days, actually; I spend in my large but cluttered bedroom. I have a little ensuite with a jetted tub I’ve never used because I just never get around to it. There’s a plush grey rug, spanning the expanse of the room (covering an ugly cherry wood that doesn’t match the rest of the house; no clue why. I never asked, and the previous owners were eager to sell so they could finally ditch this town and retire in Montreal for the bagels, or Hawaii for the monk seals. Point is, I’ll never know) with loose beads and loose pills and little shards of glass from plier-crushed beads. I vacuum every day. The whole room tells you exactly the kind of person I am; the clutter I possess, the encapsulation of the projects I start, start, start and the hours I don’t sleep for and the clothes I tried on (these to sell, these to cut up with kitchen scissors; thrifted lululemon and aritzia and heaps of knits and plaid fabric..) I would not say the room is a mess. Lived in, maybe. Chopsticks and mugs and gum wrappers. Single dangle earrings. I just finished the last of my Creme Brulee eos lipbalm; disguised as a relic of 2015, I was gifted it Christmas of ‘20. I think my next waxy conquest will be a tinted Burt’s one I palmed a while back, before I lost the nerve. Peering around the room you will see shopping bags strewn about the mouth of my walk-in closet. Every surface has something shiny or colorful stacked up on it. Cluttered, busy, but intentional. Except for the walls, which are bare. Bare and gray and miles-tall when I lie flat on my back, high out of my mind, willing things to change but knowing I’m responsible for a first step I will always be too scared for. Bare, pristine, no gumtack. Empty, Like they’re waiting. I wait around a lot. It makes sense. That was an awful lot of words about my stupid blank walls when truly it does not bother me that much; I really just don’t get around to it. I have other things on the ground to tend to, like post-email nausea, addressing envelopes, marrying wire and bead. Writing a document I care about because I am determined and I am alive, alive, alive, goddammit.

Excerpt over. The memoir is coming out when I get famous, or something earth shattering happens. Like I become the world’s least remarkable entrepreneur, and I get retweeted by Colorpop. I don’t want to be the next Elizabeth Wurtzel. I read two of her memoirs one restless night, absorbing it to make up for the nutrients I didn’t that day (you can laugh. I think that is pretty clever), heart breaking a little bit. She writes about her struggles so intrinsically, you either get it, or you don’t. Anyway. She had the books and the fame from it, and she wrote more memoirs than I think a single person should. That is admirable. Aspirational, even. But I do not want to be like her. Where was I? Oh. Yes. Decorating/adorning/filling your room. Your room should serve as the kind of place to watch a movie (if you believe in film. I don’t) and put on ridiculous glittery eye makeup, or smoke an ~artistic cigarette~ or stay up all night on the phone, which is different from staying up all night simply on your phone. Chatting with someone you are tepidly in love with is much more exciting. Not chic as the whole affair is so juvenile, but fun regardless. It’s somewhere to keep your worldly possessions, too. I know I have a lot! Also, it is kind of thrilling to hide things in your room in little crevices only you know about. Now, unfortunately, everyone reading this will know too. But, like, I trust you not to really.. do anything about it. I keep my extra juul pods in the sliding box my apple pencil came in. That box is almost more useful than the pencil itself. I’m somewhat morally opposed to the iPad. Whole culture is so embarrassing! I have a tea tin with an ounce of golden teacher shrums in it. This is tossed in my closet among tins filled with other things, like lace trim and buttons. Which makes it actually a pretty terrible hiding spot, I see now… Anyhow. Keeping benign little secrets like that is so fun. You can tell I don’t have siblings. I sort of wish I did, but it is easier to believe there is something aristocratic about being an only child. Not sure if older-sister me would be egalitarian enough to share things. But that’s prophesying, which is kind of a waste of time. I live in the now, in a room positively cluttered with meaningless things that mean the world to me, chewing on my lip because my mouth is just so dry and 5gum is just not an after-8 indulgence. To live truly kitschly, you have to have somewhat hideous decor. Now, do not confuse dissonant, or incoherent, with what I mean by “hideous decor”. The kitsch room has as many surfaces to look at as possible, while also shying away from too many shelving units. Then you risk your room looking like a storage unit or something. When my mom renovated (re: paid someone to do it) our New York house so we could sell it, all our stuff was stacked up in a Cubesmart self storage. It was sort of horrifying, seeing my childhood home reduced to plastic storage tubs piled what felt like thirty feet high. Anyway. It’s just not an inviting way to store things; I imagine it makes your room look like your stuff is all trapped in gelatin. The more fussy, tiny things you have out in the open, the better. Nail polish. Earring trees. Bowls full of rings and lighters and water color pans perched on your windowsill. A rack with the tackiest assortment of knits and bucket hats and baguette bags. And so forth.. Quickly surveying someone’s room is so telling. Bonus points if all your books are spine-in, except for your favorite ones, because you don’t want people to get the wrong idea. (that you read).

91 notes · View notes

quatregats · 3 years ago

Note

Thots on The Brick (Les miserables aka my favourite book).....

Oooof okay....there are many......

Caveat that I read this over the summer and my memory for books is either I read them 20 times and have them memorized line for line or I just Don't Remember Shit, and unfortunately I'm not at the first stage with this book yet ://

The themes of the book were just <33333 aaaaaaa i love them perfect <33333 No that's not a real sentence but !!!!!! it was all about human dignity and second chances and generosity and idk what I was expecting but I vibed with it SO much. I was definitely very confused reading the first section about the bishop because I was like 50 pages in and none of the characters I'd heard of had appeared yet, but once I got further and started to understand what my pal Victor was going for with the narrative arc I have to admit that was one of my favorite parts of the book??? or like not because not much happens but it definitely was like there are good people in the world and doing good deeds sets off webs of interaction of goodness that perpetuate and I am a firm believer in this philosophy — that people really WANT to do good actions and be good to each other and it makes us feel good and happy, and this never ever gets emphasized as much as "humans are ultimately evil and bad and we only do good because some deity is watching our behavior >:0" so thank you Mr. Hugo for acknowledging that that's not true <33 Also redemption and second chances and acknowledging that a lot of what makes people bad is actually just Other People Treating Them Badly, oh no don't expose capitalism like that :0

Actually I liked the infodumping??? This is my Extremely Weird Take™ on the book but in case people haven't noticed (in which case you are very lucky to have escaped) I have been Extremely into worldbuilding over the past year, so I've been reading a lot of books to see how their authors do that and looking at things through that lens. How does this relate to Les Mis? Simple. I think that Victor Hugo was hands-down the best model for worldbuilding that I have seen this year, including Tolkien. The reason is because I feel like worldbuilding at its finest throws a bunch of stuff at you about the world, which the author completely understand and writes as though it's directed at people who are also In On It. And then as you go you start seeing how all of these things work and putting the pieces together and connecting the dots. I read this book knowing the bare minimum about French society and history: there was a revolution and also guillotines and a king that got deposed and someone named Robespierre and then there was Napoleon who got defeated at Waterloo. That was IT, I LITERALLY did not know anything else. Needless to say, pretty much none of this happens during the book, so I went in completely blind. And Mr. Hugo was just name-dropping people and events left and right like I was supposed to know them, and if I had tried to read it like a French person in the late 19th century, I would have probably just been taken out within the first 100 pages. But when I pretended like I was reading about a fantasy world which I wasn't SUPPOSED to know anything about, it suddenly felt like the juiciest worldbuilding ever, and it was SO GOOD. I learned SO MUCH about French history and France in general, and I literally would not have exchanged the infodumping for anything in the world. Now, is this a terrible bar to set for worldbuilding? Yes. Am I going to set it anyways because I'm dumb? Also yes. Anyways this is a very weird and cursed Fantasy Nerd™ take that nobody who actually cares about literature should pay any mind to, but it was an important part of me reading the book so yeah.

Also this kind of ties in with point one but when he waxes poetic about philosophy and humanity (like in those sections where he comes at you with his Thoughts™)....Unparalleled. I wanted to hang quotes on my wall so I could look at them every morning and Understand. Literally some of the most beautiful writing ever <33

I can't think of other things but there definitely were other things, it was absolutely a page turner in the parts with plot, I loved the characters, I loved how everything tied together across such a long book and how every little vignette of something that you were like what's the point of this Victor actually turned out to set off chains of events that perpetuated forward, basically it was a Very Enjoyable Read and I loved all of its heady philosophical ideals and its minutiae about French history and its VERY long plot and basically everything about it, 11/10 would read again

#sorry to go off on the worldbuilding tangent it makes zero sense but that was where my brain was when reading it #i think the Human Goodness part of the plot caught me unawares and that's why i liked it so much <3 #i hate reading books with depressing and pessimistic views of humanity like get over yourself #but victor hugo was NOT that and now i see why people like this book so so much #anyways hope that answered your question <33 #asks

2 notes · View notes

readforchangeproject · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 7: My Dinner Goes up in Smoke 07/04/21

Feel free to join in with our read along of The Lightning Thief - here's all the info

oh okay so Percy and Annabeth are just continuing on with their tour? they're not gonna.... wait for Annabeth to have a shower to wash off the toilet water stench or anything??

I mean I guess they're 12 i'm not that surprised

There is no way I would ever get on that climbing wall. No way. Not happening. Catch me hanging out in the arts and crafts room instead

I'd be a terrible demigod

"I had become one with the plumbing" is the funniest sentence I've read in a long time

Percy really said "half human, half what" like he wasn't told the greek gods were real a whole 2 chapters ago

"Who's your mum then?" "Cabin six" "Meaning?" lmao Percy is me when y'all have your cabin numbers in your bios

Catch me not remembering a single thing about Luke having a quest lol

Am I sure I've read this book before?

Okay I know I said cabin 3 was the biggest vibe but I'm also really digging cabin 8

It starts to glow silver in the dark?? incredible. inspired. we love to see it.

Also Artemis has always been my girl so I've got a soft spot for cabin 8

See this sacrifice bit is really interesting. Because we're told that they're offering the best bits of their food to the gods "the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest most buttery roll"

Buuuut in Theogony, there's this bit where Prometheus tricks Zeus (again) by offering him the choice of what part of the meal he would like to receive and which part would be left for the humans

So Prometheus offered up two dishes. One was the bones of the animal and the other had the meat BUT Prometheus did the old switcheroo

And he covered the bones with a nice bit of meat, and he covered the rest of the meat so it looked like a pile of bones

So Zeus obviously picks the one that looks like meat but is actually all the shitty inedible stuff

and that's why the ancient greeks burnt the bones etc in offering to the gods and kept the meat to eat for themselves

Sorry I know none of this is relevant. It's just an interesting adaptation and I wonder if the change itself is supposed to tell us anything about how the gods have changed throughout history, or whether we're just supposed to take away that the gods are kind of selfish, making humans burn the best part of their meal when the gods don't even eat the sacrifices

The Apollo cabin is leading a sing-a-long?? did it go a lil something like.....

"my mum's Athena she's smart and she's wise, she's sworn of gluten and she's sworn off guys, if she came to camp it'd be a surprise oh noooooo"

"oh noooooo"

We're raising money for Save the Children so please head to our justgiving page if you would like to donate- any contribution is appreciated including spreading the word

#readforchange #tlt #tlt 7 #the lightning thief #percy jackson #rick riordan #annabeth chase

11 notes · View notes

semper-legens · 4 years ago

Text

92. The Warning, by K A Applegate

Owned: Yes Page count: 146 My summary: Jake has found something encouraging - evidence that other humans know about the Yeerks, from a chat room he’s stumbled across. But are all of the posts genuine? Finding out will bring the Animorphs into the path of a deadly foe... My rating: 3/5 My commentary:

Back into Animorphs, and we’re definitely in the ‘I don’t remember this’ zone. From the summary of this book I was braced for cringe, given that this book primarily features online interactions and was published in 1998, but to my surprise that aspect of it was over quickly and not too distracting. There were enough other things going on here that I felt as though I could brush past that part of the book to get to the meat of it, which is pretty good as far as this kind of literature is involved.

I have no frame of reference for how tech-savvy this book’s intended audience would have been - in 1998 I was in fact two years old and did not know what a computer was - so I’m not going to criticise it explaining things like the internet or search engines. I am, however, going to commend it for its pretty realistic depiction of what a chat room looks like; though the chaotic, disjointed lines made it hard to parse at times, it was somewhat realistic for an IRC chat back in the day, so that’s a positive. Coulda done without the joke about Marco getting catfished, though.

The juiciest part of this book is Jake, the POV, reflecting on his status as leader of the Animorphs. Jake’s come a long way in the last 16 books - over the course of the series, we’ve seen his leadership and tactical abilities evolve to the point where he is able to successfully command missions and think on his feet and come up with plans. The issue is that Jake, a teenage boy above all else, doesn’t really want to be a leader of a militia. He wants to be a regular kid. This is a repeated theme throughout the books - these kids are in way over their heads and ultimately shouldn’t be doing this stuff, but they’re the only ones at the moment who can stop the Yeerks. Jake gets this harder than the rest, however, because he’s the one making choices. His calls are the line between life and death, and that’s a lot to put on the shoulders of a kid.

And Jake almost dies in this one! He gets swatted in fly morph, feels himself dying, and tries to demorph while dying, to be saved in the nick of time by his friends surrounding him. He tries to brush it off, but he experiences realistic trauma around morphing fly again, to the point where Cassie tries to bail him out of it. It’s a harrowing sequence, made the more upsetting for how random and senseless it is. This isn’t a fight, it’s not combat. It’s a random happenstance that nevertheless nearly gets one of these kids killed.

The other upsetting thing in this one is the villain, Visser Three’s twin, who hates Yeerks and is running the website. He’s figured out how to survive by cannibalising Yeerks, and he doesn’t always leave the host alive when he does it. There’s a horrible moment where the kids, talking to him, recognise that cannibalising Yeerks is awful, but agree tacitly to let him carry on because hey, fewer Yeerks to fight. It’s only when they learn about the hosts that they decide he needs to go down. Morality is complex in this series, at least for the target audience, and this moment stands out to me in that vein as being particularly interesting regarding the lengths the Animorphs will go to continue their fight.

That’s all I have to say on this one - join me tomorrow for oatmeal.

#Animorphs #KA Applegate #bookblr #book blog #book blogger #3

5 notes · View notes

giogio-gucci-gangstar · 5 years ago

Text

Oranges Have Feelings Too

Thank you @hoetaro-kujo for entering my little writing raffle! Hopefully you like this!!!

Summary: You and Mista enter a prank war against Fugo and Narancia.

CW: Nicholas Cage

“Babe?” Mista called from the other room. You shifted in your seat. Your head was still dangling off the edge of the couch as you bookmarked the page of your latest mystery thriller, eventually sitting up.

The world spun a bit as he blood rushed out of your head before you replied. “Yes?” You were a bit hesitant. You weren’t sure if this was going to be one of his sweet and sassy moods, or if he was already scheming for some fun. Either worked for you, even though you were on the shyer side, Mista and the gang made you feel comfortable to be yourself. It also helped that you loved Mista and everything he did.

As you walked to the kitchen to meet him, you tried to smooth down the wrinkles in your hoodie.

“So,” Mista threw a nut into his mouth, “remember THE INCIDENT?” By the way he said it, Mista was definitely hinting at something specific. But with him, there were too many incidents to count.

“When No. 5 got scared and tried to crawl up your-“ Mista cut you off quickly.

“GOD NO!” While that event had been traumatizing, for both of you, it was not the incident he was referring to. Given how he nervously bit his lip, it would seem the incident he was talking about rattled him more emotionally…

“Ya know…” he managed to spit out. He made a few incomprehensible hand gestures and continued, “the one with Narancia and Fugo?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively, hinting that you should definitely remember what had happened with them… Simultaneously refusing to give you any more details.

“Oh come on Mista stop being so cheeky and just tell me!” You were getting a little frustrated at this game of his.

But he just batted his eyes at you from across the kitchen, “I thought you liked my butt cheeks…”

“Oh shut up!” you were a little flustered so it took a moment to carefully choose your next guess. “Was it when we walked in on Fugo and Narancia kissing?” You offered.

“Noooo! How many times do I have to tell you, they weren’t kissing! They were just trying to bandage the cuts from where they had stabbed each other! At most it was a brotherly hug.” He was getting frustrated now. Apparently the incident he was talking about was too difficult to physically talk about.

“Ohhhh was it when they, ya know, wrote,” Mista’s eyes bulged terrified that you would say the cursed word, “a certain scary number, all over your clothes?” Mista was shaking from the memory.

It had been a terrifying day for him. He nearly pulled his hair out because he couldn’t find a single article of clothing without a number 4 written all over it in black ink. You had never seen him so stressed, clothes were being thrown all over his room, and lights broke, but his high pitched screams pierced all other noises.

“Yes yes that one!!” Mista was flailing his arms around, so excited that you had guessed correct.

“So now that I’ve won your little game of charades, will you tell me why we’re playing?” You couldn’t help but tease him back. The boy was so outrageous your sarcasm just dripped when he was around.

“Well,” ah there was that glint in his eye. He was already incredibly handsome, but when he was feeling mischievous his eyes were almost radiant. He puffed out his chest a bit and he folded his arms with a certain swagger.

“I have found a way to get revenge.”

“Oh really?” You leaned over the kitchen island looking at him. “And what might that be?” Sure it was probably a little immature to scheme against your teammates, who hopefully weren't eavesdropping from their rooms down the hall. But a little prank war was necessary for morale, no matter how many times Buccellati and Abbacchio insisted it wasn't.

Mista’s face lit up in a maniacal grin, “I’m going to convince Narancia that some fake facts are true!” He was so excited he was practically vibrating.

“Remember how angry Fugo was when Narancia told him the earth was flat? It's like two birds with one stone! Tricking Narancia and pissing off Fugo!” Mista was very proud of his plan. He was practically patting himself on his back.

“I think the next one will be that vaccines don't work! Or that birds are government surveillance drones!” Mista kept prattling on about nonsense conspiracy theories, that Narancia would be very easily convinced were true.

Of course you were very proud of him, and obviously that would be hilarious to watch. But you remembered how terrified he was by their last prank… He needed to do something even worse back to them. Funny for you two to watch of course, but also just a little scarring for the boys.

“That would be hilarious, but maybe you want to do something a little more permanent? Like really screw with their heads and stuff?” Mista scrunched up his eyebrows and looked at you in confusion.

“Just because their last joke was a little… cruel? I think we should be a little edgier with our retaliation strike.” You were a little worried he would think you were taking it a step too far, but after a few more seconds of pondering, his face lit up again.

“Lets do it!” You met his grin with a warm smile. This was going to be a very exciting day.

“So. What do you have in mind?” Mista asked, but the gears were already spinning in your mind.

“Who does Fugo hate most in the world?”

“Always himself, sometimes Narancia…” He stopped to think for a little, “Oh and always Nicholas Cage.”

“Brilliant! Now, what is Narancia’s favorite food?” This was the real clincher. Yes, Narancia was baby, but he was also a baby who carried a switch blade and was super excited to use it.

“Uhhh maybe strawberry cake? Oranges? Chocolates? Really I don't think he would turn down anything sweet.”

“Perfect.” It was all coming together.

~~~~~~~

“I don't think i ever need to see Nicholas Cage’s face again.” Mista complained as he slid down the closed door of Fugo’s room.

“Too bad you’re looking at him right now,” you snickered as you held up a print of him in front of your face. You were pretty proud of your handiwork. There was not an inch of Fugo’s room that was not covered in Nicholas Cage’s face. Mista had even wrapped his pencils and books with the wrapping paper you had custom printed. You were down about 50 Euros, but it was a small price to pay when you saw Fugo’s reaction to this masterpiece.

The clock struck 12 and you heard the ridge door open in the kitchen. Aaaaand here he was. Right on time.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” His scream was muffled by the door, but evidently he had seen Nicholas Cage’s face duct taped on his sandwich too. You quickly pulled Mista into Fugo’s closet so you could have prime seats of the impending meltdown.

Fugo’s footsteps were heavy as he pounded his way down to his room. You had to cover Mista’s mouth to keep him from snickering and giving away your position. Then there it was, the fateful turn of the doorknob.

You peered through a crack in the door and saw a look of pure terror spread across Fugo’s face as he saw even his bed covered in Nicholas Cage’s face. He took a shaky breath and tore back the comforter to see that Nicholas Cage was IN his bed too. His breath was coming in fast bursts as he spun around the room. He spun again. And then again, before releasing an unearthly howl.

“MISTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

Mista couldn't contain his laughter anymore and cackled his ass off as he sprinted out of the closet and down the hall before Fugo could catch him.

~~~~~~~

“Are you ready for this responsibility Number Five?” Mista held the little Sex Pistol up to his face. The poor little guy was crying tears of joy, he was never chosen for anything and now he was given one of the greatest responsibilities: to help Mista prank Narancia.

Number Five gave a small mumble of affirmation and an enthusiastic nod of his head. All amidst happy tears. Mista gave him a piece of salami before cutting a little hole in the orange for Number Five to hide in. He carefully stuck the skin back over Number Five’s little hole, and placed the bait on the kitchen counter.

You sat at the table watching and waiting for everything to go down. Sure, you were the mastermind of this operation but you weren't foolish enough to get caught. You had to preserve your spot as everyone’s friend in the gang.

“Oi Narancia!” Mista called the boy playing video games in the other room.

“Yeah?”

“I just got some oranges, do you want one?” Mista was awful at hiding his plan. He was snickering so badly he had to cover his face with his hand. But those big brown eyes always gave his mischief away.

Luckily Narancia was too preoccupied with the thought of food to notice. He promptly paused his game, and strolled into the kitchen. You knew he would pull out the biggest and juiciest orange so you just waited.

He started to peel it, then paused when he heard a small whimper coming from the orange.

“Ow!” A brief look of confusion passed over Narancia’s face. He must have figured it wasn't real.

“It hurts!” There it was that little voice again. Narancia’s eyes shot open in confusion. He held the orange farther away from his body as he turned to Mista.

“Oranges don't have feelings, right?” Narancia was hesitant in asking his question.

“Well,” Mista paused trying to sell his character, “I did see this documentary that said plants can feel pain. Especially trees when they’re being cut down.” Narancia just stared at the little orange cupped in his hands.

“Please don't peel my skin! It hurts!!” This time Narancia was sure he heard a voice. While scared that his food was talking, it was pretty damn cool that he had made a scientific discovery. Narancia was so expressive, all of his thoughts played out on his face like a little show.

He sprinted away, hopefully to find Fugo.

Once he was gone, Mista keeled over you in a fit of laughter.

“Ya know babe,” Mista pulled you against him in a tight hug, “that was pretty brilliant.” He placed a gentle kiss on your lips and held you tight. At least until the other boys figured it out.

#Mista #Mista x reader #fugo #naranica #Guido Mista #narancia ghirga #panacotta fugo #hoetaro-kujo #my nonsense

81 notes · View notes

ericdeggans · 4 years ago

Photo

How My Love for Sean Connery and Bond Led to a Serious Case of White Guy Hero Infatuation Syndrome

Like a lot of people all over the world, I have long considered myself a stone Sean Connery fan.

I often recited the juiciest dialogue bits from his Oscar-winning turn as a beat cop-turned crusader in he Untouchables (in addition to the speech everyone quotes, I loved how he told Eliot Ness he knew he was a treasury agent without seeing his badge because “who would claim to be that who was not?”) I watched the painfully clumsy 1986 B-movie Highlander mostly for his charming turn as Egyptian (!) immortal Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez.

And, of course his work as James Bond always set the ultimate example for urbane cool. Which explains why I often felt the theme song thrumming in my head whenever I wore a stylish suit or hopped off a plane in a cool city. For men from the generation before mine, he practically defined the sophisticated, stylish machismo found in the pages of Esquire and Playboy.

youtube

For these reasons and more, I have always loved the rogueish Scotsman as an actor. And yet, when news of his death at age 90 spread across the world, I couldn’t bear to pay tribute to him on my social media pages, until now.

That’s because his passing highlighted my problem with a particular malady. I call it White Guy Hero Infatuation Syndrome. And I have suffered from it for many years.

Put simply, my fan’s brain knows that Connery’s landmark performances were the stuff of film legend – especially as Bond. Cool, authoritative, suavely menacing and mostly unflappable, his take on a secret agent who knows the best suit designers nearly as well as the best pistol manufacturers set the template for escapist espionage fantasies over the next half century and beyond.

His first line as the character – “Bond. James Bond.” – has become pop culture legend.

But as a media critic, I also have to contend with James Bond’s status as a relentless sexist and a British agent who walked the world as if it was made to be ruled by wealthy, capable white men. Watch him slap the behind of a pretty blonde who was massaging him poolside in 1964’s Goldfinger when CIA agent Felix Leiter turns up for a chat. “Man talk,” he tells her dismissively, sending her out of the scene.

Or check out how he treats Quarrel, the bug-eyed Black man who acts as a “fixer” for him in Jamaica during the first Bond film, 1962’s Dr. No. Scrambling across a beach to avoid the bad guys’ goons, Bond turns to Quarrel and tells him “fetch my shoes” -- as if he were his butler, rather than a local ally helping him avoid thugs with automatic weapons.

And there’s loads of scenes where Bond forces himself on women who quickly succumb to his charms – like Honor Blackman’s character in 1964′s Goldfinger – perpetuating a dangerous myth that a man can earn a woman’s love by pushing her into being romantic with him. (Or that a dismissive, vaguely annoyed tone with women – treating them like impertinent children or misguided simpletons – is also, somehow, irresistible to them.)

When Connery played Bond, he played a character who was the embodiment of white privilege. He made it look sexy, virtuous and necessary – the natural state of things in a 1960s-era world that, outside the comfortable confines of Bond’s make-believe spy games, seemed to be coming apart at the seams. But in the America of 2020, it’s a symbol of how media can teach you to accept a limiting legend.

And this was a fantasy I bought into eagerly. As a kid, my mom and I bonded over the heroic white guys she loved on film and TV, mostly from westerns. Just this past December, as she was fighting cancer and months before she would succumb to an infection, we sat and watched Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall save the day too many times to count.

As I got older, I’d make fun of all the misogyny, racism and white centering going on in these shows – gibes which my mother, a proud Black woman who loved her people and culture, tolerated with a weary smile. “These are my guys,” she’d say playfully, swatting aside any idea that there was a deeper impact from gorging on stories which treated these virtuous white men as the noble, natural center of every story. I wish the issue were that simple; it often isn’t.

For me, it wasn’t just a problem with Connery. As a kid, I loved Eastwood’s 1970s-era Dirty Harry movies, where the taciturn cop with a Magnum pistol cut through all the nonsense to nab the bad guy. Same with Bronson’s Death Wish films, where the solution to rampant street crime wasn’t better policing, but a taciturn, middle class white guy with a gun shooting down street criminals. It’s a potent fantasy, especially if you’ve ever had to deal with the numbing bureaucracy of real-life law enforcement or the brutal violation of being a crime victim.

It wasn’t until I got older that I realized many of those bad guys Harry Callahan was hunting were young hippies and Black people – the kind of folks who, in real life when Dirty Harry was released in 1971, were trying to get America to face how it was chewing up poor, young men in an unwinnable, unnecessary war in Vietnam. It was a prime example of “copaganda” – convincing the audience that the excesses Detective Callahan committed to nail a person the audience already knew was a serial killer, was justified.

Even now, I wonder: Can I watch these movies and appreciate why they are thrilling, while rejecting the tropes that present a white male-centered world as just and appropriate? In my work on race and media, I’m often telling audiences that people who insist they are not affected by media subtexts are often the most affected by them. Couldn’t that be true for me, when it comes to heroes like Eastwood, Bronson and Connery?

(One caveat: Sitting in an arena in Tampa, watching Eastwood give his infamously strange “empty chair” speech at the Republican National Convention in 2012, broke me of my affection for his work. I have avoided watching new Clint Eastwood films since then. Click here to read my report on the empty chair speech for the Tampa Bay Times.)

In his later years, Connery denied or walked back quotes where he seemed to approve of physically hitting women in real life. His roles in films like Highlander, The Untouchables, Hunt for Red October, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen often featured him playing the older mentor to younger white guy heroes portrayed by the likes of Harrison Ford, Alec Baldwin and Kevin Costner.

And so, as the question of Connery’s legacy in show business arises, the fanboy part of me is at war with the media critic. One side of me is lost in the absolute coolness of the suave masculinity he so often symbolized, particularly as the world’s most successful secret agent.

The other is painfully aware of the inequalities and oppression such portrayals enabled, and how much they may feed our real life fantasies for a powerful white male savior to set things right, even now.

Especially now.

And saying these characters were a product of their flawed times somehow doesn’t seem enough.

This is a tough column to write, and not just because there are so many fans who want to focus on the best moments of Sean Connery’s life now that he’s gone. It’s difficult because he was a personal hero of mine for a long while – and remains one of my favorite performers – even as I acknowledge the terribly male-centric and white-superior ethos he embodied in so many roles.

This may sound like disrespectful nitpicking to hardcore fans and family. It’s never easy to sit with the more uncomfortable aspects of a great artist’s legacy. And the time after his death has been filled with heartfelt tributes to Connery, a man of great talent and no-nonsense sensibilities who was respected and loved by a great many people who worked with him.

Sometimes the media critic’s job requires being a buzzkill; insisting the public pay attention to troubling aspects of a film or TV show that we would all just rather sit back and enjoy. Because part of unwinding the effect of past portrayals is acknowledging their power in the present day.

Which means, every time I watch Connery stride to a baccarat table in Goldfinger, Dr. No, or Diamonds Are Forever, archly demanding a precisely constructed alcoholic beverage, I also have to remind myself of the damage done by too many characters like that offering too constricted a vision of what a hero looks and acts like. And I suggest you do the same.

It's the only way to balance a comforting myth with the reality of how that legend can, unwittingly, teach us to cling to ideas that ultimately hold us back.

#james bond #sean connery #race #pop culture

11 notes · View notes

theworldbrewery · 5 years ago

Text

multiclass your... BLOOD HUNTER!!

As per the request by @mstheoverflow, today we’re taking a look at the Wisdom-based “original flavor” Blood Hunter class. As of right now, this class is available on DnDBeyond, but in the coming weeks, the update to an Intelligence-based version of the class is expected to supersede this existing one, so if you’re attached to this version, save the details now.

A couple key things: to multiclass out of Blood Hunter, you must have a 13 in Wisdom as well as a 13 in either Strength or Dexterity--that or is really key because it makes your multiclassing really flexible. There are also special rules for multiclassing into warlock if you are of a certain subclass, which I’ll get into later.

Let’s dig in!

Blood Hunter + Barbarian

If you chose to be a strength-centric blood hunter, this multiclass is baller. No joke. Consider: while raging, you halve all normal weapon damage (you don’t halve crimson rite damage unless you take the correct totem in the barbarian Totem Warrior subclass at third level, but that could be arranged). Furthermore, your Crimson Rite damage to yourself can be used to sustain your rage if you’re at risk of dropping it. Reckless attacks at second level increase your potential for a critical hit, which would also double damage from your Crimson Rite, and your rage will have no effect on Blood Maledict curses. Since you probably have a high CON to compensate for the damage you deal to yourself, this is also great for your Unarmored Defense barbarian feature. An excellent option for a strength-oriented blood hunter! (note: if you’re raging and transformed per Order of the Lycan, you fail your bloodlust save automatically--yikes!)

Blood Hunter + Bard

Unfortunately, a low-level bard’s best perks are the bonus-action Bardic Inspirations, which take away from your potential offhand attack, Blood Maledicts, and Crimson Rite activation. On the plus side, you can gain Jack-of-All-Trades, Song of Rest, and use the light spellcasting from bard to cast a buff or debuff. It’s not going to hamper you too much, but it’s not outstanding, either. Definitely can be made to work well, especially if you are Order of the Profane Soul and want a couple new cantrips and spell slots to enhance your casting.

Blood Hunter + Cleric

This is what bard could be if it weren’t playin’, as the kids say. Cleric relies on Wisdom, which works for your existing blood hunter abilities, and you’ll get three cantrips instead of 2 (as well as the standard 2 spell slots). Use a cleric’s buff or debuff casting while you focus on melee attacks, and you’re golden--take War domain if you want to focus on volume of hits, or take Tempest to maximize Rite of the Storm (and potentially Rite of the Roar) damage with your channel divinity and add a damaging reaction.

Blood Hunter + Druid

At first level, druid can’t offer you much, which is a shame since the wisdom ability works in your favor. But if you really want this and you go after the wild shape at second level, be prepared: whether or not you can apply Crimson Rite to your beast shape “weapons” (claws and bite attacks) is totally up to your DM, and you shouldn’t do this multiclass without consulting them first. If you get permission, this could be outstanding; if not, the druid isn’t really worth it.

Blood Hunter + Fighter

With the fighter multiclass, you stand to gain an extra fighting style and, more importantly, your Second Wind, which can be make-or-break for a blood hunter’s self-damaging oeuvre. At second level, your Action Surge can give you extra chances to hit your opponents, as well. It’s actually quite well-suited to you, if not the powerhouse that the barbarian can be under the right conditions.

Blood Hunter + Monk

Now this... this is beautiful. Your dex and wisdom are perfect for the monk skillset, and you can apply monk damage bonuses to weapons that are anointed with your Crimson Rite. You’ll also gain Unarmored Defense, which makes your AC 10+Dexterity mod+Wisdom mod. At second level you get Unarmored Movement and of course, the coveted Ki points. All this is excellent, but here’s the juiciest bit: if you’re a Lycanthrope blood hunter, your unarmed strikes also count as weapons for crimson rite while you’re transformed, further enhancing your attacks using Flurry of Blows, as well as increasing your AC and reducing damage.

Blood Hunter + Paladin

In contrast to the monk, this one is not as well-suited. Your Lay on Hands will force you to decide between taking 3 total attacks on a turn (two for your action and offhand for bonus action) and doing marginal healing. Divine Smite is great, as are the other spellcasting smites, but we must recall the paladin prereqs are Strength and Charisma, so you have just one of two of the needs met (assuming you’re using strength for blood hunter stuff). Smites are really the only perk to this multiclass at low levels.

Blood Hunter + Ranger

This is another option that perfectly blends with the blood hunter skillset. If you’re looking to go for something less combat-y and diversify your non-combat abilities, this is a great option! The fighting style and spellcasting at second level can keep you in the game for combat purposes, applying spells like Hunter’s Mark to increase damage, and you’ll gain a new skill proficiency, bonuses against your favored enemy, and bonuses on favored terrain.

Blood Hunter + Rogue

A dextrous blood hunter can have a very fun time as a rogue! You’ll gain a skill proficiency, proficiency with thieves’ tools, and expertise as far as skills go, a new language in the form of thieves’ cant, and the ever-coveted Sneak Attack--you’ll only get 1d6 to start, but extra damage is excellent (given that you must have advantage to get sneak attack and thereby double your odds of a critical hit). If you go to second level, your Cunning Actions might help your hitpoint-insecure blood hunter from taking too many hits.

Blood Hunter + Sorcerer and Wizard

I’m lumping these two together because honestly, the answer’s roughly the same. It’s nice to get spells, sure, but neither of these casters have something special to offer the blood hunter. They’re so casting-focused, you’ll struggle to integrate them with your melee attacker. They don’t share your ability score prowesses, either; altogether, the sorcerer can offer you more than the wizard (but if your intelligence is higher, take wizard).

Blood Hunter + Warlock

So first off, the warlock can be a great addition because your casting is so limited. In your case, it’s an asset: you don’t need to waste time on spell slots. either up your AC or take up a concentration spell with Hex or Witch Bolt to deal damage in a passive way as you attack, and potentially employ cantrips to enhance your attacks or attack at range in a pinch. At second level, your eldritch invocations can make you even more badass, but we won’t get into those because there’s so much flexibility.

Now, if you’re Order of the Profane Soul, the rules here are a little different. From the page: “If multiclassing Order of the Profane Soul with Warlock levels, add a third of your blood hunter levels (rounded down) to your Warlock level and consult the Warlock progression table for total Spell Slots, and Spell Slot Level. To decide your spell casting ability for your warlock spells, choose that of the class with the higher level (choose between the two if levels are equal).”

That is to say, if you’re a 9th-level blood hunter and a first-level warlock, you’re considered a 4th-level warlock for the purposes of your total spell slots and spell level. So you’ll still have 2 second-level slots for the first level, but when you level up, blood hunter 9/warlock 2, you’ll count as a 5th level warlock, and immediately increase your spell slots to 3rd level--and because you have more levels in blood hunter, you can use your Wisdom to cast them.

And that’s everything! The old version of the blood hunter is tried-and-true, and if you want to hang on to it and even consider multiclassing from it, here are precisely the tools you need to do so!

If you enjoy our work here, please consider supporting us on our Ko-Fi page!

#dnd #dungeons and dragons #blood hunter #rpgs #critical role #multiclassing

121 notes · View notes