#<- has not yet read edward said's orientalism

[arosnowflake]

The most annoying thing about the Gerudo in BOTW is the orientalism, racism and misogyny. The second most annoying thing about the Gerudo in BOTW is the way the orientalism, racism and misogyny directly tank their worldbuilding.

I'm not gonna talk about why the Gerudo are orientalist, people smarter and more informed than me have already done so extensively and I don't have anything to add to that discussion. I'm here to bitch about how it affects the worldbuilding to the extent where Gerudo society, as portrayed in BOTW, does not make much of any sense in-universe.

Let's be clear here: the worldbuilding would be trash even if it made complete in-universe sense because it's orientalist and misogynist. But it doesn't even make sense in-universe and it's pretty much entirely because of the orientalism and misogyny.

Two things are true about the Gerudo at once: 1) they do not allow men into Gerudo Town, and 2) they are absolutely obsessed with finding husbands. I don't want to guess at percentages, but a truly ridiculous portion of the dialogue the Gerudo get is somehow related to finding husbands, being in love with men, etc. It is baked into their culture, most obviously exemplified in the love lessons that occur in Gerudo Town. But, more important than lessons or whatever, is the fact that leaving Gerudo Town to find a husband is considered a coming of age rite of passage for young women. It is an integral part of Gerudo culture to leave on a journey to find a husband.

And let's be clear: the goal here is absolutely, unambiguously long-term marriage. Many Gerudo you meet lament the shallow nature of the men who try to pursue them, we see Gerudo who reference husbands they currently have, and just generally the way the Gerudo talk indicates that they are not looking for a one-night stand or a summer romance: they are looking for something permanent. They are looking for marriage, and a good portion of them succeed.

So. Uh. Where do their husbands live?

The only time see any Gerudo who permanently lives outside of Gerudo Town is in Tarrey Town, and you're the one who brought her there. All the other Gerudo you meet outside of Gerudo Town or Kara Kara Bazaar are travelling. There are no Gerudo residents in Kakariko, Hateno, or Lurelin, or mixed Gerudo children.

This is very, very weird when you consider that married Gerudo would not be able to live with their husbands in Gerudo Town. The 'no men allowed' rule has no exceptions, so if a newly wed couple wanted to live together - and they almost certainly would - they would have to do so outside of Gerudo Town. And yet, we do not see them, despite demonstrable evidence that married Gerudo do exist.

There is another option, of course: that Gerudo culture normalizes long distance relationships even for married couples, and that the husbands live outside of Gerudo Town whereas the wives live within it. This is theoretically possible, except we never get any real in-game hints indicating it. It's still the option that makes the most sense, but it's a fanmade band-aid solution, not a real element of the worldbuilding.

Either which way, the inherent conflict between 'men are not allowed in Gerudo Town' and 'a big part of the Gerudo Town culture is to get married to men' should logically be causing tension. While the guards take the rule very seriously, most of the people you meet inside Gerudo Town don't really care that you're a man, and we know there's a thriving black market supplying men's clothes. This indicates that, already, in canon, most Gerudo play fast and loose with this rule to begin with, and don't have much special attachment to it.

Which makes it even more glaring that nobody seems to be arguing against it. Logically, there should be conflict between the Gerudo who value the tradition of an all-women Gerudo Town, and the Gerudo who want to be able to live with their husbands in their hometown. With how incredibly centered the Gerudo's culture is on these two things, this should be a major political problem that's going to singlehandedly turn Riju grey before she even comes of age. There should be discontent and unrest from newlyweds and long devoted wives who don't want to leave their home behind to be with their husbands, and don't want to leave their husbands behind to be home. Who would want to, at the very least, be able to show their husbands their childhood home.

But even if there wasn't, there should be a larger Gerudo presence outside of Gerudo Town. Either Kara Kara Bazaar should be a lot larger and more populated than it currently is, or there should be one or more smaller towns around Gerudo Town where the married Gerudo live with their husbands, or where the husbands of the Gerudo who live in Gerudo Town reside. You cannot tell me every single Gerudo would be okay with abandoning their culture and moving in with their husbands; even if they could not bring their husbands back to Gerudo town, they would frequently like to live somewhere close by. And if we take the long-distance approach, there would be plenty of couples who wouldn't want to be separated too far, and therefore there'd be husbands moving closer to their wives, even if they could not live in the same town.

But say, for the sake of the argument, that this also didn't happen: then, at the very least, we ought to see Gerudo in other Hylian settlements. We ought to see Gerudo who live in Hateno, Kakariko, Lurelin, and maybe even at the stables. We ought to find populations of diaspora and mixed race Gerudo who have grown up outside of Gerudo Town, and have maybe even never visited it. We have circled back around to the first point of argument.

If the Gerudo are getting married, we should see evidence of their husbands, somehow, beyond dialogue references and quest objectives.

The reason we don't, of course, is obvious: orientalism. The Gerudo are an orientalist idea of a harem, exotic women out of reach yet practically begging to be conquered by Western men. They want to be with men, are searching for men, yet are very rarely shown to find one because doing so would pop the fantasy being sold to male players: that they could be the one to get them.

So to successfully sell this orientalist, misogynist fantasy, the worldbuilding becomes completely and utterly nonsensical.

[HAS NOT PLAYED TEARS OF THE KINGDOM DISCLAIMER]

[trans-kafka]

If you're in a hegemonic group and someone in an out group tries to explain their experience and you feel the need to reframe or re-explain it in a completely different way in order to "help" other people in the hegemonic group "understand" it, don't. Simply do not do that.

White people discarding Black people's words in favor of a more white-friendly discussion of the same phenomenon, culturally Christian gentiles in majority-Christian countries reframing Jews' explanations of how antisemitism affect us or the cultural peculiarities that make antizionism particularly thorny, people from the countries benefiting most from colonialism rewriting the words of the colonized when they talk about decolonization, etc... Don't do it. Simply do not. Try instead to engage with what has been shared with you on its own terms.

If you don't understand, ask questions or better yet, look up other sources to understand the context. If you find something else written by, say Frantz Fanon or Edward Said or whoever is a relevant voice from within that group in that field and it helps you understand, or a scholar's commentary on it that gives more context, then sure, add your further reading links to it.

But don't wholesale rewrite an entire unrelated situation as a metaphor or stand-in for what people are telling you just because you find some other issue with the actual marginalized people and their reality removed from it to be more comfortable to digest. This urge to interpret others through the filter of the privileged group identity and experiences is something I first really understood as wrong when I was reading Orientalism by Edward Said. I hope you can understand from this description, why it is not a good thing to do.

Btw If you are still confused (or even if you aren't) I recommend reading Orientalism. Here it is as an audiobook:

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

non-fic to-do list

hello, gamers! I'm trying uuuh something similar to my to-read public shaming, but with a slightly nicer name and a tiny bit more incentive than normal.

here's the short version: Judith Butler has a new book out! it's called Who's Afraid of Gender? and I'm very excited to read it! however I also know how Judith Butler writes, and how I digest their work, and I'm definitely going to have an easier time if I have a copy of the book that I can highlight and take notes in.

but first: despite my general objections to acquiring more books than I can read, I have managed to acquire QUITE A FEW nonfiction books that I have not yet managed to read. some I've purchased, some were gifted or loaned to me, one I downloaded for free and printed in its entirety.

and now they all have to go, by which I mean get read, and only once I've read them all am I allowed to buy Butler's new book. if this takes long enough it might even be out in paperback and slightly cheaper, although I'm not holding out too much hope for that.

so, without further ado, here's a reading list that is absolutely all over the place:

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (Caitlin Doughty)

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Caroline Fraser)

Superfreaks: Kink, Pleasure, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Arielle Greenberg)

Necropolitics (Achille Mbembe)

How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life (Mandy Naglich)

Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (C.J. Pascoe)

Orientalism (Edward W. Said)

Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians (Richard Sugg)

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture (Glen Weldon)

Orientalism is already in progress, and Doughty and Weldon's books will both be rereads, if that's interesting to anybody. anyone have any suggestions about where to start?

[infiniteglitterfall]

I'm so fucking done right now

I have a friend. We're going to call her "AAAAAAA!!!!"

AAAAAAA!!!! and I have been friends for more than twenty years. LONG before I started converting to Judaism.

She grew up in an area Jewish enough to get the high holy days off. She has as many Jewish friends as I do. She is more knowledgeable about Jewish stuff than anyone else I know who isn't Jewish. To the point that I've sometimes thought about asking her why she doesn't convert.

Sure, she's a staunch atheist. So nu?

I don't think we'd ever had occasion to talk about I/P politics before a couple of years ago. We immediately discovered we had uhhhhh. Very opposing views. We both backed off of what was clearly going to be a charged and messy discussion.

I didn't know enough yet to try anyway. All I knew, mainly, was that (1) Jews are the indigenous people of Israel and (2) both Israel and Palestine have Done Bad Shit!

That's a very, very, very inadequate understanding. But I did feel pretty confident that point #1 contradicted her apparent stance, which was more "Israel is the one that has Done Bad Shit."

We backed off for a couple of years. She would occasionally mention how much she wished I would read Edward Said, so we could talk about him.

She is, to her credit, totally against Hamas's attack. But we conflict on most other issues. And they're so charged for her that we can't really talk about any of them.

It turns out that the reason they're so charged is that her niece got yelled at and called out for "being an antisemite" for supporting BDS in college, and it was traumatizing for her.

In other words, she and her family stopped at "I had really really big feelings of shame and fear about this," and chose not to see "and I tried to find out why this marginalized group was saying that" as an option.

And also, AAAAAAA!!!!'s sister, a local elementary school principal, went through a stressful time recently for similar reasons: Jewish families were accusing her and/or her school of being antisemitic, and one (1) family left.

AAAAAAAA!!!! set the boundary, with me, that we should not talk about the definition of antisemitism, or antisemitism related to the protest movement, after I posted a list of things on Facebook that the ADL is charging the Berkeley Unified School District with.

Including that K-12 students have been saying and/or writing, "Kill the Jews," "Jews are stupid," "Of course it was the Jews," and telling Jewish peers, "I don't like your people."

My friend is angrily convinced that "such accusations are a flood of SEWAGE smeared on protesters, professors, etc. I am not saying there is no antisemitism, though Berkeley is a very weird place for it to crop up in the from-zero-to-a-thousand way it is described. Of course there can be a) isolated incidents that hit fucking hard in these circumstances, and b) deliberate elisions between, again, being against what Israel is doing, and having that portrayed as being antisemitic."

/looks at the camera/

All of this is just context for what I came here to say 😅

I WAS TONIGHT YEARS OLD WHEN I FOUND OUT WHAT EDWARD SAID WROTE, AND WHAT THE ENTIRE FUCK. FUCK THAT DUDE TWICE.

Constantine Zurayk's fiction that the “Arab nation” suffered the Nakba didn’t survive for long. [By 1967,] the meaning of the Nakba had already changed as Palestinian activists and historians began depicting the events of 1948 exclusively as a tragedy for their own people.

...The most influential of those [new books that framed it that way,] particularly for audiences in the West, was Edward W. Said’s The Question of Palestine, published in 1979.

Said, a popular Columbia University English professor [OH HELLO] and a member of the Palestinian National Council, was something of an icon in liberal intellectual circles because of his earlier book, Orientalism. In that work, Said framed the history of colonialism in the Arab and Islamic world within a system of Western racialist thought.

I'm just gonna guess that he didn't go back farther than 50 years. Because before that point, you get 1,300 years or so of Arab and Islamic colonialism, and I don't know how it would make sense to frame that within a system of Western racialist thought.

In The Question of Palestine, the author argued that the game was stacked against the native Palestinians in favor of the white Zionists, because of the same dominant racist ideologies.

THAT'S HIM, OFFICER. THAT'S THE GUY.

That's what my friend has been trying to get me to read for three years? An ahistoric mess that pretends Jews were actually white supremacists at the time that white supremacy was actively trying to wipe us out?

I'M SO TIRED, YOU GUYS.

Said denounced “the entrenched cultural attitude toward Palestinians deriving from age-old Western prejudices about Islam, the Arabs, and the Orient. This attitude, from which in its turn Zionism drew for its view of the Palestinians, dehumanized us, reduced us to the barely tolerated status of a nuisance.”

Yeah, THAT'S what happened.

“Certainly, so far as the West is concerned,” Said continues, “Palestine has been a place where a relatively advanced (because European) incoming population of Jews has performed miracles of construction and civilizing and has fought brilliantly successful technical wars against what was always portrayed as a dumb, essentially repellent population of uncivilized Arab natives.”

This was a harsh and distorted view of the Zionist movement.

I said I was so fucking done, and what I MEANT was that I was so fucking angry, and NOW I'M TEXTING HER SUPPORTIVELY ABOUT OTHER STUFF WHILE I WRITE THIS.

I just.

Please drag Edward Said for me or otherwise Go Off. Thank you

[belle-keys]

Daisies on your nightstand: On Cordelia Carstairs (Meta)

Voilà, I've finally reached the last part of my character breakdowns for the The Last Hours trilogy. I've done Matthew, James, and Grace, and now I'll be wrapping it up with Cordelia before I revamp some older pieces on setting and themes. I'll probably put all of these in a Google Doc for funsies.

Ah yes, Cordelia "Daisy" Herondale. I have mostly good things to say about her until I don't. There is an argument to be made that Cordelia is a careful combination between Tessa, Emma, and Clary, which is why she mostly works but also doesn't always work. She has the best qualities of all of them and was particularly great until after the Paris escapade, in my opinion. I think she's actually an improvement on certain aspects of each of those aforementioned women (yes, even Tessa) which is why her lackluster-slash-unfinished ending grates on me so badly because we could have had it all, rolling in the deep. That being said, Cordelia is still my bestie, I love her, and now let's get into it.

NB. I won’t be dealing with anything concerning the supposed sexualization of Cordelia or the question of Orientalism, because I don’t believe Cordelia is unfairly sexualized or depicted in an Orientalist way. I have a piece on this from 2021 if you like. Please read some actual Edward Said before you start using words you don’t know or victimizing a mixed-race half-Brown character because her love interest thinks she’s very hot.

Cortana Ex Machina

So we've reached the section of the meta where I start complaining about Cordelia and/or James in their capacity as main characters. My problem with Cordelia, as well as James and Lucie, is that nothing they did ever had any repercussions besides making them temporarily suffer or giving the reader fuel to sympathize with them. Nothing was ever their fault and they were always the victims of circumstances and otherworldly events, especially by the start of Chain of Thorns. There were no transactions in Chain of Thorns, no tit for that, just a sweet payoff from the narrative and plot that conveniently got our main characters out of the red when they most needed it. And I think that speaks to a wasted opportunity considering that Cordelia literally swore herself as paladin to the Mother of Demons. It wasn't Cordelia's fault, absolutely not, but it was a situation she provoked by her own volition. Which is such a delicious dilemma to put a character through. But, alas, a bad thing can't be Cordelia's fault in The Last Hours. It's for this same reason that Lucie bringing Jesse back from the dead also had no consequences in the story for either of them.

You might be thinking: It was an accident, a mistake, a trick, an error that was naively made, and it wasn't our character's fault. And to that, I say... bestie, so was it with Matthew. Matthew made a mistake, an innocent mistake made when he was fourteen because he chose to believe lies and rumors because he was a child that didn't know how to see himself in the world. None of us blame Matthew for the potion debacle, and yet the narrative and the plot ensured that he had to suffer the consequences of that mistake and feel the repercussions of it. The potion was the nucleus of Matthew's strained relationship with James, of Matthew's alcoholism, of Matthew's suffering and sadness that he has to actively work to heal from and undo in the trilogy. And so, why, I ask, did Cordelia swearing herself as a paladin to Lilith of all people not have any long-term consequences in the story for Cordelia as a warrior? The solution to all of Cordelia's problems lies in the fact that Cortana can do literally anything the story needs it to do and Lilith being in a church at the right time. Lilith duped Cordelia and used her core insecurity and her central character conflict (see next section) against her. Lilith preyed on Cordelia's warrior heart and her sense of chivalrous honor more than once, and yet there was no resolution to the conflict, no playing around with Cordelia's "fatal flaw".

O' self-liberation, where art thou?

So as I had mentioned in a meta piece after Chain of Iron had come out, I’m in defense of the Fairstairs interlude. Not because I ship Matthew and Cordelia as an endgame (never did), but because Cordelia’s story is a reactionary one of blossoming and the Fairstairs interlude allowed for Cordelia’s evolution. Cordelia starts off Chain of Gold essentially forcing herself to follow the Shadowhunter Edwardian model of a respectable woman and putting aside her desires and ambitions to secure her family’s reputation and place in society. Instead of pursuing her own dreams of being a warrior, she decides to search for an eligible husband to restore her family’s reputation and then later settles for a semi-unwanted marriage with a man who she thought was always in love with another woman. We see Cordelia repressing her desires and her goals intensely throughout the first half of the trilogy – only really in pockets of fiery passion with James and her adventurous trip to meet “Wayland the Smith” do we see Cordelia temporarily break her self-imposed shackles in the first two books. Cordelia is strongest when she's running off ambition and chivalrous adrenaline (see: James likening her to Boudicea more than once). But she reaches a breaking point when she thinks, at the end of Chain of Iron, that James is continuing an “affair” with Grace and runs off to Paris with Matthew, wanting to forget her pain and freely give herself to adventure and pleasure. Key word being free; it's the release she's after. She throws caution and societal restriction to the wind, aided of course by Sona’s urging to not supress her dreams and desires as a young woman. We have a recurring theme here now. It’s that classic repression-to-self-liberation emotional pipeline women often go through so much 19th-century literature written by female writers.

Lilith serves as an apt symbol for Cordelia’s own romantic and personal situation at that time. Lilith, semi-biblically, left a man who could not love her the way she wanted to be loved and instead chose to pursue a more dangerous infernal lover outside the confines of the godly union of marriage. This is loosely mirrored by Cordelia leaving James, our Adam figure perhaps, who she thinks will never truly love her or respect their marriage at that specific time, for a wilder, freer creature like Matthew (who, I don’t actually think has anything thematically in common with Sammael besides being the Side Man in the trio but let’s roll with it). Lilith is a figure that was absolutely demonized for over two thousand years, the boogeyman of Puritan culture. She symbolized demonic femininity and ungodly rebellion, even though an argument can also be made that her story is about the repossession female agency, but let’s not deep it, because Lilith is Categorically Bad in the context of TSC. Nonetheless, with Cordelia (unwillingly) serving the Biblical Demoness of Female Rebellion, while simultaneously in the act of rebelling against her own unhappy marriage and the gendered constraints of Shadowhunter society by going to Paris with Matthew, I feel as if we never get to see Cordelia have her “kick society in the face moment”. She’s serving as a paladin to the mythical figure that represents female sexuality and agency, one who actively weaponizes Cordelia’s feelings of inadequacy and repression in the book, and yet we never see Cordelia ball those dark, restrained feelings up and unleash them back to the world. Chain of Thorns leaves you asking for more, feeling like Cassie turned the stove off when the pot was just beginning to bubble over. But moreover, I find that Cordelia serving as Lilith's paladin could also have been expanded upon as a plot point instead of having Lilith's "death" being because she was standing in a church at the wrong time. In the novel, Cordelia didn't really defeat Lilith (or symbolically defeat what Lilith perhaps represented as pertains to her own life and sense of self).

I think the whole self-liberation storyline fizzles out midway through Chain of Thorns. I’m not saying I wanted Cordelia to do something scandalous and risqué in Paris (I mean, if we’ve ever talked in the DMs, you know I did, but this ain’t about me). But I feel as if Cordelia didn’t get a dramatic moment to subvert her own character or destiny. Cordelia ends up the happy wife of the man she was often very frustrated with and does so in the confines of a regular idyllic marriage. I do not have a problem with that. I think it makes sense. Jordelia is my ship. Don’t twist my words. My criticism, or what bugs me personally about it from a narrative perspective, is that it feels circular and unfinished as a character arc. Cordelia spent so much of the trilogy stretching the rubber band, but it never burst, did it? Her dissatisfaction with her life at the start of the trilogy ends with an inevitable contentment with her life when I, perhaps erroneously, thought it would end with a semblance of revolt or subversion. That’s not a bad thing at all; it’s very safe. Cordelia had the opportunity to burn the ribbons of Shadowhunter respectability, but she put out the lighter in Chain of Thorns, instead becoming its paragon.

Concluding Thoughts

Having some perspective now, I think Cordelia is probably my second favorite Shadowhuner female protagonist after Tessa (yes, she's surpassed Emma, because Emma's arc after Lady Midnight was not what God had in mind and I'll stand by that). But, yunno, there's always room for improvement and I'll always be here to be a little annoying about it when it comes to the Historical Shadowhunters. It felt like Cordelia lost a bit of her, I don't know, corporeality? in Chain of Thorns. Her personality, her poise and vibe, and her romance with James are lovely. I wouldn't have Jordelia be any other way and I stand by that. But I maintain her ongoing emotional conflicts and intermittent identity crises were dealt with in a "Netflix fantasy series" way. Let me know your thoughts on Cordelia and how you're feeling about The Wicked Powers and Sword Catcher!

[janeindamembrane]

Race and Representation Music Video Analysis

For my panel discussion I will be analyzing Christina Aguilera’s “Can’t Hold Us Down” music video which ignores the power of the images within its video and the power that Aguilera has in relation to the cultures she is adopting and representing. I will also be analyzing Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby”, which I believe attempts to provide an alternate look at stereotypes, not through a commitment to “actuality” or “positive images”, but through the experimental heightening of contrasting stereotypes about the black gay man that reveal their contradictory and arbitrary nature.

Christina Aguilera’s “Can’t Hold Us Down” music video was produced as part of her Stripped album, which was centered around a more provocative image. The song is focused on feminism with the echoing lyrics of “this is for my girls all around the world”, yet by focusing just on feminism, it markets the experiences of all women as the same, when race and other factors affect experiences. Christina Aguilera, a white passing Latina woman, fails to acknowledge the difference in her experience as a women from all the “girls around the world” while the representation within her music video, particularly her own image which is constructed from ghetto stereotypes of black or Latino womanhood.

(from Left to Right) at 00:20 establishing shot shows men in front of mural mentioning crack. Grocery cart filled with trashbags (implied homelessness or poverty) are in foreground. The foreground and background of this shot simplifies and established the nature of these characters- ecliped by their identity of poverty with the possibility of illegal activity always hanging over them.

At 00:06, Christina Aguilera is introduced on the steps of the dirty curb (objects are literally being thrown down) while surrounded by Latina and Black women. Aguilera is passing herself off as one of the community, but as the star of the video and a pop star she holds all the power in the following representation of these women.

The music video starts out with establishing scenes of the urban setting filled with graffiti, dilapidated buildings, and people lounging/playing around ever corner. The assumption the audience is supposed to reach plays upon stereotypes and ideas already implemented by hegemonic culture [1]. This is a portrayal of the ghetto or the gritty and unkempt. This setting allows the later behavior we see, particularly that of the men, which is supposed to represent a particular uninhibited nature, that one may not expect to see as unmasked in a suburban (read white) area.

Aguilera is using these stereotypes, of the unruly and over sexualized black man in the ghetto, and her own hyper-sexualized image of herself residing in the ghetto to give herself and the overall music video a sense of grittiness or provocativeness. Its supposed to come as a jarring departure from her previous work, as if stepping closer to Black pop-culture allows her to claim an edge which she can (and did) leave behind when the image is no longer as monetarily valuable.

Compared to her earlier works, one can see that she adopts the stereotypes and culture of Black and Latina women to appease a certain "spectatorial fascination" audiences may have [2]. There is- as seen in many films, TV shows, and also the attitudes of certain people online- a fascination with the ghetto- a place that is the intersection between minority races and lower class (as in economic) status. There is a power in watching the ghetto while allowing the distant image of the ghetto to be relegated to perversion and unseemliness.

The way that pop culture portrays the ghetto can be compared to Edward Said's example of the studies and portrayals of the Orient or Ella Shohat's and Robert Stam's many elaborations on films about the Third World. The assumptions about the ghetto have eclipsed the social reality of it, and it is paradoxically admonished and then revered (out of fascination for what has been admonished). Stuart Hall defines this as the "modernist construction of primitivism, the fetishistic recognition and the disavowal of the primitive difference" [3]. There is the fascination with a supposed primitive or simpler nature, but the underlying admission that it is inferior or unpractical. Aguilera's power in terms of identity politics places her in a position that allows her to benefit from fascination from the scene she is portraying while always letting the audience know that this isn't who she is; she never faces the admonishment. Meanwhile, opinions of the other background characters in the video may be generalized and due to the weight that minority representations have, contribute further to negative images of certain groups.

Question:

While it is clear that Aguilera's urban setting is a selective appropriation of culture and stereotypes, it can't be denied that it is somewhat connected to a social reality, one that is steeped in imposed social, political, and economic difference. If "positive images" potentially ignore realities and obstacles to the black experience, how is meaningful representation created? In your opinion, how much meaning is their in 'truthful' representation and to what extent is that possible?

One of the groups that suffers immensely from this video is that of Black men. The video is centered around feminism and the sexual harassment that women face. It is, however, hard to separate this message from the identity politics and racial power that Aguilera has over nearly everyone in the video. The person who gropes her in the beginning is a black man, thus perpetuating unseemly stereotypes that come from the caricature of the sexually and racially intimidating "buck" [4]. It is the unruly and extremely sexualized Black man who assaults the white women and who must be admonished.

The particular choice of who is the assaulter and the assaulted plays into already created social schemas due to the (American) audience living in the inescapable context of the dominant cultural hegemony- which continues to refract itself. Through the groping it is suggested that the man is dominating the woman, but through the larger meta lense of this video, Aguilera is dominating the representation of the Black man.

Question:

What is the responsibility of Aguilera and the creators of this music video when acknowledging the harmful stereotypes it perpetrates from Black men? How could the intersectionality of identity politics have been better addressed while still maintaining its message about the sexualized or inferior role imposed upon women?

In regards to the Latina and Black women that Aguilera is supposedly upholding, they are for the most part relegated to the background. There is a power balance that is communicated through this [5]. Through this diminishing of their importance and the centrality of Aguilera (who is then hyped up by other women), Aguilera becomes this mediating presence who is meant as a stand-in (immediate representation) for the audience but also as the confronter of the power dynamic the men have over the (other) women [6].

At 1:50: When other women are put in the foreground, facial expressions or seeming characteristics (sassiness, sexuality, or being a good dancer) are highlighted. This plays into racialized stereotypes of the sassy hyper sexualized Black women (something that Aguilera is trying to portray herself as) or the passionate Latina dancer [7].

There is the particularly troubling scene with Lil Kim (who I noticed is not credited in the video title as featuring unlike the video in the queue that credits Redman). While Aguilera is adopting blackness and the characterized sexiness, tanned skin, and style of it, Lil' Kim. After being front and center, Aguilera essentially gives up some space to Lil' Kim- a sign of reverence. Lil' Kim's outfit stands out as more sexualized than the rest with more skin showing. She is portrayed as the epitome of stereotyped ghetto blackness- sexually confident (perhaps aggressive) in skimpy clothing. Unlike Aguilera, who is protected by her whiteness so that the audience distinguishes her character in the video from reality, Lil' Kim's representation becomes not only who she is, but who all urban Black woman are.

In the scenes where Christina uses the hose on the men, it is a symbolic power move where the hose plays the role of the penis. It should be noted, however, that Aguilera continues to be the one to take action against the men, as afforded by her stardom but also her role within the racial hierarchy. Someone else gets the hose only when she finally steps away. The video is ending and she gets to leave the ghetto, but the representations of Latino/a and Black women/men does not get to leave.

In contrast, Lil Nas X's "INDUSTRY BABY" provides an opportunity to focus less on images than that of discourse. Simply by Lil Nas X existing and making this video there is the relaying of a unique voice and perspective that is typically sidelined. Additionally, Lil Nas X's intersection of identity is never forgotten since it is intrinsically tied together that he is black and gay.

What makes this important representation (not a 'positive image') isn't that what is displays is some kind of authenticity, but rather the prompting of discourse it provides [8]. It fights stereotypes through subversion or even nodding to them, causing the audience to reckon with the naturalization of the original stereotypes. This can be seen by setting the video in prison. Clearly, what is shown in the video is not the reality of prison (such as the costumes), but it takes what is the reality combined with assumption to create subversion.

Lil Nas X takes what is expected to be a very masculine place and is able to portray it as a queer place of joy and camadarie. Usually, when there is queerness in prison it is assumed to be an act of violence that enforces heteronormativity. The isolation of the prison as well as the criminality of prisoners supposedly drives them to homosexuality. Meanwhile, there is also the obvious visual fact that Lil Nas X and many of his companions in the video are Black. The violence (particularly sexual) that is characteristic of Black caricatures comes to forefront in the prison. If the Black men were bad in the ghetto they will be terrible in prison.

There is the complex intersectionality of multiple caricatures- the violent man in prison who resorts to homosexuality, the violent black man in prison who resorts to homosexuality, and the gay black man- who is supposedly feminine and meant (in a prison setting like this) to be dominated.

Stuart Hall talks about the potential trap of black pop culture, which often packages commodified stereotypes as "the arena where [they] find who [they] really are" since "it is only through the way in which [they] represent and imagine [themselves] that [they] come to know how they are constituted and who [they] are" [9]. It is difficult for a black man to overcome pop culture's image of him by over-attributing lived experience as a homogenous representation [10].

Yet Lil Nas X has always had to face his own personal rupture of the masculine identity of the black man because of the feminine identity of the gay man. It is this rupture that makes him a unique voice to listen to as he is not as trapped by the constraints of the dominant hegemonic view because of how it particularly carved out the identity (and exclusion) of the black gay man. He does not have to be made aware of the positionalities because he has always resided within a precarious intersection.

The prison can be seen as a metaphor for the very masculine world of hip hop that Lil Nas X inhibits- which matches the lyrics of his song which condemn those who sun him or believe that he can't make it in the industry because of his identity (adding the queerness on top of the hip-hop accepted blackness).

From 0:36; This scene takes a particular setting that refers to the sexual violence of prison and turns it into a performative stage of dance, a use of the body which Hall says is "the only cultural capital we had".

While many of the background dancers in scenes are black, they are not put into the background because of Lil Nas X's own identity as a black queer man. There is no inherent power dynamic besides that of Lil Nas X being the singer. The racial positionally and dominance of Aguilera's video is not present here [11].

There is perhaps the question of the misrepresentation of women because of the lack of women except for one scene where Jack Harlow seduces a warden. Shohat and Stam mention how Do the Right Thing runs into a similar representational issue with its absence of a feminist voice [12]. Hall notes the importance of diverse voice because of the impossibility of the homogenity or universality to any discourse. Since the video is such a analysis of masculinity, women have no place except to establish Jack Harlow's (assumed) powerful positon of a white heterosexual male. This is then subverted when it is Lil Nas X who electrocutes Harlow on the chair, as, in reality, the amount of black men sentenced to death is larger than others.

Question:

What does the video say about performative gender? Is there an intersection between performative gender and performative racial stereotypes? Or is there more of a social economic basis for the latter?

At 1:52; The sequence where a security guard is watching Lil Nas X's "Montero" video (which he is sent to this jail in this video for) right before Lil Nas X knocks him out plays with the idea of media consumption and commodification of the black rapper. It is very important this guard is white, because his dominant positon (as a white male and as the prison guard) allows him to look down upon Lil Nas X while also using him for enjoyment. To this guard (and to many audiences) the black (gay) man is a source of entertainment or a threat.

Overall, the "INDUSTRY BABY" does a better job with representation, not because it conforms to positive images that are palatable to mainstream moral conscious, but because of Lil Nas X's identity and how the video stays true to the intersection of his identity rather than trying to commodify certain stereotypes (especially ones that aren't true to him).

QUESTION:

What is the responsibility creators from dominant cultural positions of power have when promoting or working with people within marginalized groups?

Citations

[1] Edward Said, "Knowing the Oriental", in Orientalism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 34.

[2] Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, "Stereotype, Realism and the Struggle Over Representation", in Unthinking Eurocentrism (London: Routledge, 1994), 188.

[3] Stuart Hall, "What is this 'black' in black popular culture?", in Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1996), 470.

[4] Shohat and Stam, 195.

[5] Shohat and Stam, 208.

[6] Shohat and Stam, 189.

[7] Shohat and Stam, 196.

[8] Shohat and Stam, 214, 215.

[9] Hall, 476, 477.

[10] ibid.

[11] Hall, 471.

[12] Shohat and Stam, 214.

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

Love’s Wrecks (An Our Flag Means Death Series)

BEFORE YOU READ THE SERIES: 

Author’s declaration towards altering the cannon:

With all honesty and adoration, Our Flag Means Death is an amazing, colorful series full of an amazing cast that has soul and heart. Everything from performances to soundtrack, set design, and the story is thought through and somewhat historically accurate, give or take a few things. Most importantly, what this show does, is give us a canonically confirmed queer couple - more than one in this regard. Olu and Jim (a non-binary character), Lucius and Pete (they somewhat open and queer relationship), and of course, Edward and Stede by the end of the series. The journeys all the couples go through are realistic and heartwarming.

In this series, I am using a female reader as an outlet that perceives the story. I don’t want to use a male reader since I have no experience writing this format and I don’t wanna come across as rude and disrespectful towards the audience.   Historically, Blackbeard was rumored to have many relationships with women, however flawed and troublesome these relationships were just as he was rumored to be inclined to have Stede around for most of his short-lived career as a pirate. For as long as I remember, the show doesn’t inform the audience that Edward Teach (born on a beach) is specifically labeled under one sexual orientation (if I am wrong, please correct me) - the show informed the audience, very explicitly and clearly, that he is, indeed, a canonically queer character.

For said reasons, I chose to go with the fem!reader perspective and perceive Ed as a bisexual.

I want to apologize to all readers that might be upset with me altering the cannon in their eyes, I don’t want to bring any heteronormativity into such a pure, queer show. Also, I plan on talking and focusing on the relationship between Stede and Edward pretty thoroughly in the first part of the story. I wanna respect it as much as I possibly can.

I also won’t be focusing on Ed only; I’d like to kind of play and toy around with the group dynamic the crew has, I would like to give them their time and space to shine, to be witty and funny, to be friends as well. I wanna connect to the dynamic David, Taika, Rhys, the cast and everyone working on the show had established before.

I hope you, as a reader, will accept this reasoning and enjoy the series for what it is.

The declaration:

I wow to respect most of the cannon’s rules except these ones: - Lucius is “dead”, as Edward claimed. His survival is explained in the first chapter. - The crew is left behind on an isolated island. Also explained in the first chapter; I think it’s kind of logical that a ship of the size of the Revenge needs more men than what Edward kept onboard - and a skilled captain, he realized that. He kicked them off, sure, but he came back after a day or two.

Description: Heartbreak is one hell of a bitch. And one Edward Teach could tell you all about it. Yet thanks to Fate being a little trickster, there’s a person who enters his life to remind him of how nice it is of having someone he can confide in, someone he can care about, and someone he can trust. To remind him, what it means to have a friend for better or worse.

Tagging: @missdictatorme, @soliyra-the-sunbringer​

Pairing: Edward Teach x fem!reader | Playlist for the series:   h e r e

Read here: 

Part One: Fate’s Games 

Part Two: A Member of the Crew

Part Three: The Tea Brewer

Part Four: The Man Behind the Myth

Part Five:  One Step at a Time

Part Six: My Jolly Sailor Bold 

Part Seven: Basking in the Moonlight 

Part Eight: The Criminal Mastermind, Part 1. 

Part Nine: The Criminal Mastermind, Part 2.

[keshetchai]

What's interesting is they're largely deleting a keystone trait of "westerners" in world history — the very same trait which otherized Jews living in Europe.

Because "Westerner" largely means Christian, and then also mostly white and mostly European in origin. The east/west divide pretty explicitly comes as a division between Christianity and Islam, with the "South East" being Hinduism, and "Far East" being like, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism, Daoism, and so on.

No one says "Western religion" when they're referring to native american religious beliefs, because indigenous people were not included as full members in "The Western World," or even considered as founding groups of "The West." Because it has absolutely nothing to do with geography. So Christian Europeans treated native Americans as being in the dominion of "The West" and therefore "theirs" to subjugate, rule, and convert. But they never allowed native western peoples to define "Western."

Ironically (or amusingly?) enough it's like....maybe read famous Palestinian author, Edward Said's book called Orientalism?

Because his book elaborates on this quite a bit (there's even a moment where, quoting someone else, he discusses the notion that Arabs are ultimately "Jews on horseback.") the external, Christian view of Jew vs Arab-Muslim is explored extensively. And both Jew and Arab-Muslim are, in Said's words, Oriental, which is forcibly frozen in time. It's precisely that being a Zionist gets treated as "modern" and not "uncivilized" that people call Israelis westerners and Israel "the west," despite the fact that Jews themselves remain "Oriental."

[Edward William] Lane's ability to deal with the Egyptians as present beings and as validations of sui generis labels was a function both of Orientalist discipline and of generally held views about the Near Oriental Muslim or Semite. In no people more than in the Oriental Semites was it possible to see the present and the origin together. The Jews and the Muslims, as subjects of Orientalist study, were readily understandable in view of their primitive origins: this was (and to a certain extent still is) the cornerstone of modern Orientalism.

Renan had called the Semites an instance of arrested development, and functionally speaking this came to mean that for the Orientalist no modern Semite, however much he may have believed himself to be modern, could ever outdistance the organizing claims on him of his origins. This functional rule worked on the temporal and spatial levels together. No Semite advanced in time beyond the development of a "classical" period; no Semite could ever shake loose the pastoral, desert environment of his tent and tribe. Every manifestation of actual "Semitic" life could be, and ought to be, referred back to the primitive explanatory category of "the Semitic."

I'd also suggest his coverage of Israeli-Zionist vs Jewish person illuminates a way more complicated view of whether or not Jews are westerners or "Oriental". He paints a picture of caricaturized images, stereotypes which cast upon Jews and Arabs have harmed both (by way of outside occidental views shaping and changing interior perceptions, and leveraging antisemitism as a wedge, and trying to create a westernized Israel, while continuing to cast Jews as inherently oriental):

Yet after the 1973 war the Arab appeared everywhere as something more menacing. Cartoons depicting an Arab sheik standing behind a gasoline pump turned up consistently. These Arabs, however, were clearly "Semitic": their sharply hooked noses, the evil mustachioed leer on their faces, were obvious reminders (to a largely non-Semitic population) that "Semites" were at the bottom of all "our" troubles, which in this case was principally a gasoline shortage. The transference of a popular anti-Semitic animus from a Jewish to an Arab target was made smoothly, since the figure was essentially the same.

Thus if the Arab occupies space enough for attention, it is as a negative value. He is seen as the disrupter of Israel's and the West's existence, or in another view of the same thing, as a surmountable obstacle to Israel's creation in 1948. Insofar as this Arab has any history, it is part of the history given him (or taken from him: the difference is slight) by the Orientallst tradition, and later, the Zionist tradition. Palestine was seen-by Lamartine and the early Zionists -as an empty desert waiting to burst into bloom; such inhabitants as it had were supposed to be inconsequential nomads possessing no real claim on the land and therefore no cultural or national reality. Thus the Arab is conceived of now as a shadow that dogs the Jew.

In that shadow — because Arabs and Jews are Oriental — Semites can be placed whatever traditional, latent mistrust a Westerner feels towards the Oriental. For the Jew of pre-Nazi Europe has bifurcated: what we have now is a Jewish hero, constructed out of a reconstructed cult of the adventurer-pioneer-Orientalist (Burlon, Lane, Renan), and his creeping, mysteriously fearsome shadow, the Arab Oriental.

While he supposes Zionists may take on orientalist ideologies towards Arabs, he also indicates this remains a hierarchy within the occident. Jews, even the orientalizing ones, are still ultimately Oriental in the eyes of western Christians. At best, they're serving western interests or treated as being "under western domain", and temporarily a countermeasure to the "other" orientals, but because they're Oriental, they are still not Westerners.

The division he is discussing is still a constructed view from the occident — that is, western Christians.

Now I don't think I fully agree that "The Jew" (archetypal, orientalist) split after WWII into "orientalist-zionist-adventurer" and "The Arab shadow" completely, and I think this misplaces the timeline, some of the ideologies, etc, but like...at every turn, Said is saying that The Jew and The Arab are both Semites, that is, conceived of as Orientals and not Westerners.

If Zionism is also casting orientalist conceptions (and thus shaped by occidental ideology) towards other semites, that's an internalized issue resulting from the influence of western orientalism, but not guaranteed membership to the occident. (Similar: if someone is a POC, and colorist to someone darker skinned and the same race as them, that doesn't make them white. It makes them colorist. Merely adopting or internalizing negative ideologies wielded against you doesn't actually grant unquestioning belonging to the groups who first used it to subjugate you, and who will use it again if you don't serve their purpose.)

israelis are absolutely not westerners lol this is just rootless cosmopolitan rhetoric taken right from stalin. are you proud yet?

[therealvinelle]

Hi, your metas are super interesting, and even if I really enjoy fanon twilight, it's really cool to read opinions based only on canon too!

So my question is about the sexual orientation of the Cullens, do you think they all straight?

For example i saw someone saying that Edward maybe was demisexual and it left me thinking, so i just wanted to know your opinions about it :)

In short, no.

In alphabetical order:

Alice is with a man, but without getting into the mess that is Alice/Jasper here, I don’t think theirs is a particularly physical relationship. I mean, if Alice wanted to get laid, she could just decide to fuck Jasper, enjoy the vision, and bam. Itch scratched. Thanks, Jazz. Alright, I’ll be serious. Alice and Jasper are with each other because the other represents salvation, not so much because of a personal or physical attraction but because of mysticism. So to me that doesn’t really say much about Alice’s preference. All the same I can’t see Alice having a particular preference, she’s too... Alice. Although it is easier to picture her with women. She is also the second half of the Alice/Bella homoerotic extravaganza, which makes heterosexual Alice even more farfetched to me. So, bisexual or lesbian Alice.

Bella shows clear attraction to women as well as men. She’s attracted to Rosalie, Alice, Edward, and Carlisle. I’ll just give you guys quotes: Of the three boys, one was big — muscled like a serious weight lifter, with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers here rather than students. The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike, thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was a deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction. (Twilight, page 9) This is the Cullens’ introduction. I won’t spend much time on it, just notice the difference between Rosalie and the others. Rosalie is highlighted in a way Alice is not, and Edward is at first glance only the boyish one of the guys. Rosalie was the Cullen whose beauty immediately stood out to Bella. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful — maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy. (sic.) Bella has realized by now that Edward’s a grade A hottie, but she’s still torn between him and Rosalie. Bella then gets to know Alice, and they become friends who take showers together(!). Rosalie may be the most attractive Cullen woman, but Alice is the one Bella gets emotionally close to. We get this in New Moon:  UNNATURALLY STILL AND WHITE, WITH LARGE BLACK EYES intent on my face, my visitor waited perfectly motionless in the center of the halt, beautiful beyond imagining.  (...) I locked my arms around her, gasping to inhale as much of the scent of her skin as possible. It wasn't like anything else—not floral or spice, citrus or musk. No perfume in the world could compare. My memory hadn't done it justice. (New Moon, page 191) Bella never thought she’d never see any of the Cullens again, so for her to be hysterical and ecstatic upon seeing her second favorite is not by itself damning. I’m sure she’d be ecstatic to see Emmett too. It’s that fact that she’d missed Alice’s scent that’s interesting. The scent of her skin was something Bella was aware of before they parted. And while it may be tempting to say “it’s because they’re vampires, Bella’s admiring them like she would a work of art!”, Bella never dwells on Esme, Jasper, or Emmett in this way. Jasper and Emmett especially are not admired beyond the introduction of their characters. We never hear about what any of them smell like, nor does Bella remark upon their beauty after waking up a vampire. Carlisle and Edward, by comparison, are men she keeps noticing. Bella finds Carlisle blindingly beautiful when she first sees him as a vampire, and there’s this from New Moon: Though it erased the sting, it reminded me of the gash, and I watched Carlisle's face carefully to distract me from what his hands were doing. His hair gleamed gold in the bright light as he bent over my arm. (New Moon, page 18) There’s thinking someone is pretty, and then there’s gazing lovingly upon their face instead of pain killers. Bella is bisexual.

Carlisle moved in with a very gay man, had a close relationship with him, lived with him for the sake of his company for decades, and only left because of dietary differences. We don’t know for sure whether they actually had an affair or not, but the fact remains that of all the Cullens, Carlisle is the one who is implied to have had a homosexual relationship in canon. He loses his straight card based on that alone. Also gonna link this clip, because I’m Mac listening to Edward talk about how young Carlisle lived with this sexy Mycenaean Greek for a few decades when he was young. Aro is all the santas. Carlisle is bisexual.

Edward... oh boy. His brain is supposedly seventeen, and yet this very interesting thing happens in his relationship with Bella where he never notices her body. Not ever. By body I mean curves. Edward notices Bella’s skin, her frailty, her humanity. He praises her blushes, her doe-like eyes, her warmth, her softness, her swan-like neck, her delicious scent. The feminine aesthetic. He does not once notice her tits. The only tits he is on record noticing belong to Siobhan, and it’s because she has an impossible to ignore rack: She was profoundly female in shape—aggressively, forcefully female. (Midnight Sun, chapter Probability) It’s one thing for him to be old-fashioned and too quintessentially Edward to even think the word “boob”, but in 700+ pages of Midnight Sun there’s just this absence of this seventeen-year-old noticing her curves. More damningly, when seeing Alice’s vision of vampire!Bella, Edward is horrified at the sight of his love cold and hard. He doesn’t describe vampire!Bella by any of the positives, like “flawless”. Edward is attracted to the human, not the woman. What that means for his sexuality... well, I’m going to go ahead and point out that he is very weird about Carlisle, and it’s damning that the personality he projects onto Bella is so similar to Carlisle. I hesitate to apply a label here, but in my own, personal, headcanon we’re veering towards homosexual. Deeeeeeply closeted homosexual.

Emmett is straight. Straightest guy ever to straight.

Esme is pretty clearly taken with Carlisle. Though if she were to feel attracted towards another woman, I imagine she’d have no idea what to make of that, if she even recognized it for what it was. She’s from a very different time and still living in that time, and she continues to be very sheltered. Still, as per my personal headcanon, I see her as straight.

Jasper, who knows. Though if he’s into guys, he has probably gone for it in the past. I suppose I should write a meta on vampires and sexual norms in general, but in short I don’t think they all live monogamously like the Cullens. STDs and pregnancies are unheard of, as is social ostracizing. Vampires are hedonistic, Twilight vampires more so than any other. Which in turn means I don’t think Maria and Jasper were monogamous. A couple, sure, but I don’t think Maria would say “oh noes, I can’t, I’m with Jasper!” if someone she was attracted to made an overture, and same goes for Jasper. So, if Jasper was into guys, then sure. I can see Jasper/Peter happening, or even Charlotte/Jasper/Peter. Jasper is certainly into women, with the possibility of guys as well. And if so, then it’s probably happened.

Rosalie I’m shocked is with a guy in the first place, everything about her screams lesbian. However, she’s clearly into Emmett, so apparently she’s bisexual.

(I’m not including Renesmée in this, since she’s three months old by the time the series conclude.)

This all being said, several of these people are from very different times and wouldn’t have the same concepts of sexuality internalized as we do, so how they’d identify is a very different matter.

[superspookywombat]

Treetops {j.h}

Request:  “(Can you make it super angsty and fluffy please 🥰)

But can you make one where I’m walking around and get attacked by a vampire. Edward gets there just as I’m about to die and I beg for him to change me so I wouldn’t have to leave Jasper (he’s my mate) and he’s so sad for me because he feels like I’m a sister to him so he changes me just as my eyes close. He freaks out and takes me to the house where Carlisle is and Carlisle eases his mind that he had done it just in time(like with Bella in the end of the last one of breaking dawn part 1) . Then he when Jasper can’t find me he goes home all sad and worried and as he walks in Edward sits him down and tells him. He feels really bad and sits down by my side holding my hand just waiting as Alice and rose changes me into a cute summer dress. When I wake up it kinda like when Bella dose and Jasper is not there when I do so I end up going to look for him. In the end we just cuddle just happy to be together and read my favorite books.” from @faithie-brock-gillespie01​

Warnings: one use of a derogatory term (not a slur or anything), mentions of scars and nakedness but not too graphic in either

A/n: sorry i’ve been away for forever. yes, i’m still active and i see everything people send me (dm wise or in ask-form) anyway, i really really love this and i hope you do too

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

You know it’s a bad idea. Growing up, everyone always told you not to walk alone at night. But, being the independent person you are, you took self defense classes and never went far without your pocket knife. But over the past year, being surrounded by your boyfriend Jasper all the time made you loosen the reigns a bit. Soon, the countless hours you spent in your basement practicing Hammer and Heel Palm strikes were faded lessons that sat collecting dust in the back of your mind. You didn’t have to worry about defending yourself when Jasper was always around to do it for you, and after graduating college, you would be almost indestructible like him anyway. So, yes, you know better than to be walking through the forest, in the dark nonetheless, but anger has clouded your common sense and that’s the excuse you were currently using to make yourself feel better.

The tall trees on either side of you make you feel claustrophobic. You take deep, shuddering breaths as you fight back tears. So maybe you’re sensitive, you’ve been told once or twice, but the thought of someone you thought to be one of your closest friends gossiping and spreading hurtful stuff about you would make anyone's throat tighten. Your roommate had approached you earlier in the week, she was planning a huge birthday party for your best friend back home in Forks. Of course you’d come, you said. You came home every weekend anyway, courtesy of your super generous boyfriend and his very illegal speeding. He even dropped you off at the party, which is what led to you running through the woods.

You had shown up to the party, a bottle of your best friend’s alcohol of choice in hand, and a black dress that stopped just before your knee tight on your body. The loud, booming music hurt your ears, but you soldiered through and greeted your friend with a hug.

“Happy birthday!” You said, a large smile stretching across your face. She laughed pulling you into her arms. 

“I wasn’t sure you were coming.” Your roommate that stood next to her said. You gave her a confused look, pulling back from the hug.

“What do you mean? Of course I’d come.” You said laughing it off. Holding up the alcohol, you asked where to put it.

“Over on that table.” Your best friend said. You smile and walk off, placing the hefty bottle on the colorfully covered table. You went to grab a solo cup, a glittery 22 printed neatly on the plastic. Filling it with your alcohol of choice, you brought it to your lips to take a sip.

“Should you really be doing that? While you’re.. You know.” A voice came from your right, and you glanced over to see a friend of your best friend.  

“While I’m what?” You asked, raising an eyebrow. Waiting for his response, you took a sip of the bitter drink.

“Pregnant.” He said. You choked on the alcohol, coughing as it dribbled down your chin. 

“Excuse me?” You asked, grabbing a napkin to wipe the drink before it reached your dress. 

“I just- I don’t- everyone’s been saying that you’re pregnant.” He sputtered, a pink tinge on his cheeks evident even through the flashing lights of the party.

“Well I’m not,” You chuckled nervously, somewhat amused. You leaned closer to him, lowering your voice. “Where did you hear that?”

His eyebrows furrowed. He leaned in close, mimicking what you had just done. When he murmured your best friend’s name, a cold sweat washed over your body. Your hands shook as you placed the drink back down on the table. Leaving him behind, you walked over to your best friend and grasped her arm, pulling her away and upstairs into a spare bedroom. 

“Tell me it isn’t true.” You demanded, fury igniting flames in your heart. She shut the door behind her, setting her drink down on the dresser.

She laughed dryly, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning on one leg. “Of course it’s true.”

“Why would you say something like that? You know I’m not.. Pregnant!” You yelled, stepping closer to her. 

“Don’t act like you’re so innocent. With all the unprotected sex you brag about having, you might as well be!” She said, matching your voice level. 

“It was one time! And he can’t get me pregnant anyway, I already told you that!” You replied, fighting back tears that tried to escape. 

“So? Who’s to say that you aren’t sleeping around with other people? Play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.” She said, rolling her eyes. 

“I’m sorry, I’m really really sorry. I didn’t want to, Professor Michaels-” You started to say, but she slapped you before you could finish what you were saying. 

“I would never! Why would you do this? I thought we were friends?” You asked, hurt laced in your voice. She moved closer to you, the smell of alcohol creating waves off of her breath.

“I told you not to enter the contest. You knew how much it meant to me and you still entered. And you won. My parents won’t even make eye contact! They’ve taken away my weekly allowance!” She said, tears spilling over the heavily lined lower lid of her eyes. She poked a finger to your chest, causing nerves to fire up in pain.

“Professor Michaels this, Professor Michaels that; You’re probably sleeping with him too, you slut!” She screamed, clenching her fists at her sides. You take the full cup from the dresser, and splash her in her face. You both stood in silence for a moment, before you turned on your heel and briskly walked out of the room, slamming the door so loud that you could hear it over the music. People watched as you came down the stairs, but you avoided their gaze and ran out the back door into the cool night sky. You had almost brought Jasper to the party, schedules had finally lined up to introduce him to your friends since freshman orientation. Now you were glad you hadn’t. You hadn’t even thought about calling him for a ride, you were too blind with rage. But you’d soon come to regret letting emotions cloud your judgment. 

The smell of wet earth comforts you as you double over, hands on your knees and taking large gasps of air. As much as you would love to lean against a tree, you just bought this dress and you’re not ready to ruin it quite yet. You shiver, standing up straight and hugging yourself, trying to retain some warmth. As you look around, you notice that the only light in sight was the moon. The house is nowhere to be seen, and you pull your phone out of your pocket to see that you don’t have cell reception. Suddenly you aren’t cold anymore, your face flushing with anxiety as your newly calmed breathing speeds up again. But then you hear something that causes a false sense of security; footsteps. 

“Oh thank God.” You say, turning around. Before you can make out who’s there, you’re knocked to the ground. A sharp pain tears into the inside of your elbow, and you scream out in pain. Tears fall down your cheeks as you take a sharp intake of breath. 

“Jasper!” You scream at the top of your lungs. You know it’s a stretch, but the Cullen’s house is only a few miles away and there is a chance they could hear. “Please! Someone hel-”

A cool hand clamps over your mouth, snuffing any chance of words to escape. You sob as your blood drains, your body starting to shut down. As black starts flooding your eyesight, your attacker is flung off of you and crashes into a nearby tree. You gasp, fumbling to put pressure on the gushing wound. You curl into a fetus position, the sharp earth pressing into the skin of your face nothing compared to the gash in your arm. You can’t see well, but you can make out the garbled voices of Jasper’s brothers, Emmett and Edward. You think you hear Rosalie too. 

“Take care of y/n, we got ‘em.” Emmett says, referring to you. You feel cool hands lift your limp body, and you groan.

“Jasper..” You say. Tears stiffen your cheeks as you grow tired. Your eyes flutter closed and hands grasp your numbing arm. 

“It’s torn to shreds, there’s no chance of survival.” Edward says. You aren’t sure if he’s talking to you or himself.

“Please,” You muster the strength to say two more words. You just need to say two more words. “T-Turn.. Me.” 

“I can’t.” He says. You want to respond, but your body finally goes fully limp in his arms, and he makes a split-second decision. He buries his head in your neck and sinks his teeth in. You don’t feel it immediately, but soon, fire roars through your entire body. You groan in pain, not strong enough to make anything louder. Before you drift off, you feel wind whipping past your hair as you’re carried through the forest.

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“Carlisle!” Edward calls out, carrying your unresponsive body in his arms. He practically flies up the stairs into Carlisle’s office, and Emmett opens the door before he can kick it down. The doctor strides over, eyebrows pulled together in worry.

“What happened?” He asks. Edward’s at a loss for words, his mouth agape. “Edward, what happened?” 

“We- I- There was screaming.. And then we found a newborn on top of her. Her arm is torn to shreds, there’s no way she would survive it.” Edward says, his gaze avoiding your body. Carlisle senses his uncomfort, and motions for him to set you down on an exam table. You lay on the vinyl, looking almost peaceful if it wasn’t for the blood slathered over your neck and upper torso. 

“Tell me I did the right thing..” Edward pleads. Carlisle glances up at him while examining your arm.

“She would have been turned regardless. You just sped up the process.” He reassures. Edward, obviously, can tell that Carlisle is being sincere. You had literally asked for it, of course, but still he felt guilty. The taste of blood on his tongue became too much, and he turned around, stalking out of the room. Though the door shut behind him, it was reopened by Esme, peeking her head in. She brings her hand to her mouth, clearly shocked. 

She walks over, yet still keeping her distance. “Someone needs to find Jasper.” She murmurs through her palm.

“Bring me water and a sponge, please.” He asks softly, pain straining his voice. Esme nods and leaves. Carlisle sighs, placing his hands on the table and looking down at you. When he first met you, he was worried. He knew that you were intelligent and was scared that you’d figure out their secret prematurely. But soon after, you weaseled your way into their hearts. It was only a few months in when you found out, and it shocked everyone with how nonchalant you were about it. Then about a month after that, you discussed your future with Jasper and decided that after graduation you’d join them and their undeadness. That was the plan.

Downstairs, Edward’s phone rings. The caller ID says his brother’s name, though he’s not sure how to answer. 

“Hello?” Edward answers. ‘Hello’ seems too relaxed, he thinks. 

“Alice called me. She said she can’t see Y/n anymore. Something happened at the party and she’s not answering her phone.” Jasper says, sounding as out of breath as a vampire can. Edward glances at Rosalie, whose face is neutral, though she seems to find comfort in Emmett’s arm around her.

“You need to come home.” Edward says, then closes the flip phone and drops it onto the couch. It rings again, but the room remains still until Esme brushes past with a tub of water and a sponge.

“He’s going to need your support.” Esme says. Rosalie looks up and crosses her arms, shrugging from Emmett’s embrace.

“He should have known better than to get attached to a human.” She says, though halfheartedly. 

“I’ll ground you.” Esme warns as she ascends the stairs. She knocks on Carlisle’s office door, then enters. Placing the bowl down next to him, she hugs him from behind and wraps her arms around his stiff torso. Pressing her head between his shoulder blades, he relaxes in her hold. “He did the right thing, right?” 

“I.. I believe so, yes. Jasper would be ruined without her.” Carlisle says, not sure if he’s reassuring himself, or her. “You can leave, I need to get the blood gone before he gets here.” 

“He’ll be here soon. Edward hung up in him.” She responds. Carlisle sighs, and grabs the sponge, dipping it in the water. He drags it over your exposed skin as Esme exits, red, watery streaks running down and pooling in your collarbone area. He leaves the areas covered by clothes for Alice or Esme to clean, not that he expects there to be much there anyway. Once you appear to be blood-free, he takes a large bandage and covers your arm, but is soon interrupted by a door slamming and glass shattering on the lower level. 

“Carlisle’s up there, y/n’s in good hands.” Edward says, placing a tentative hand on Jasper’s shoulder. He shakes off his brother’s touch, striding up the stairs three at a time. He enters the room and rushes over to you, his eyes examining every inch of your ghostly silhouette. He hesitates, but then takes your hand and presses it to his lips. He closes his eyes, feeling as close to crying as he’s ever felt before. A chair scraping the floor takes him by surprise, which is something that doesn’t happen much to vampires. 

“What happened?” He murmurs, lips tickling the soft skin on the back of your hand. He sits in the chair Carlisle offered, but doesn’t take his eyes off of you.

“Newborn attack. Edward, Emmett, and Rose found her.” Carlisle says. Jasper stares blankly at your paler-than-normal face. 

“She was supposed to call me when she was ready to leave. Why was she in the woods?” He asks. 

“I can’t answer that.” 

“Will she.. Is she going to wake up? Will she turn?” He asks. Carlisle folds his arms and leans against his desk. 

“I think so, yes.” He answers. Jasper looks at his father for a moment, then returns his gaze back to you. “All we can do now is wait.” 

After a few days, you started to show signs of improvement. You had slimmed out in some places, filled out in others. The warm hues of your skin color had completely drained, and there was a raised scar on your neck from Edward’s venom. He tried very hard not to think about it, but whenever he saw it he felt a twinge of jealousy in his belly. If Edward had heard him think it, he was generous enough not to mention it. Turning someone is intimate, for most vampires at least, and he had been looking forward to a special night. He’d give you a few more ‘human experiences’ (wink wink) and then bite you before returning to the Cullen house. But now his brother had laid claim on you, whether it was intentional or not.

Alice bounds through the door, Rosalie in tow. Rose holds a dress folded over the crook of her arm, a flash of what Jasper recognizes as your favorite color all over it. Alice flips you onto your side, rather roughly, and Jasper jumps to his feet.

“What are you doing?” He asks. Rosalie unzips the back of your black dress and starts to pull it off of your shoulders.

“Getting your girlfriend naked.” She says, fighting back a smug smile. Jasper holds his hand up, shielding your body from his view.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before, Jas.” Alice says with a chuckle.

 “Not while she’s unconscious.” Jasper takes one last look at your unobstructed face, then leaves the room. 

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Turn me. Your words echo in your mind, and you jolt into a sitting position. You blink a few times before your eyes come into focus. You glance down, your hands turned palms up. You can see every fine detail of your fingerprints, the undersides of your fingernails darkened from clawing at the earth, but the tops freshly painted over. Your hair flutters down over your eyes, and the sun shines through the strand, creating a glowing effect that you’ve never noticed so intensely before. You swallow, your throat feeling like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together. You run your fingers over your neck, lips parting when you feel the puckered skin that.. Edward? No way. You slide off of the vinyl exam table and your bare feet touch the floor. You skate across to the other side of the room to a floor length mirror, and you gasp when you see your reflection.

It doesn’t much look like you, but it mimics your movement and expressions so well that it must be. Your hair has grown at least half an inch, and your body is sleek and toned. You run your palms down your torso and the thin, silky fabric of a fit & flared summer dress makes your insides smile. You twirl, feeling light on your feet, and the fabric flows around like a graceful tornado. You laugh, a melodic, bubbly sound bouncing off of the walls. The noise comes to a halt in your throat as you catch a glimpse of your arm out of your peripheral vision, however. You pull your arm into your full vision, and feel almost lightheaded when you see a large area of the skin patched together and covered in a thick bramble of scars. There’s a knock in the doorway, and you let your arm go limp before taking a hesitant step towards your boyfriend. 

“You’re awake.” He says. You nod. “Are you thirsty?” You nod again. He takes a step forward, and in a moment, you meet in the middle and he sweeps you into his arms. You inhale his scent, stronger than you’ve ever smelled it before, as you rest your head into the crook of his neck. 

“I’m sorry.” You say, and though it doesn’t really sound like you, the words come from your heart. He inhales your scent too, nuzzling his nose into your hair. 

“For what?” He asks, but the strain in his voice lets you know that he knows. You turn your head, your cheek on his shoulder, and close your eyes.

“We had a plan.” You say. 

“It’s okay.” He reassures. You can feel the calmness radiating off of him in waves of serenity, and since the night in the woods, you’ve craved this more than anything.

“I love you.” You say, and even though it wasn’t the first time exchanging those three words, it was the first time they held such an impact. 

Two months have gone by, and vampirism suits you well. You moved out of your dorm, and now you’re finishing your degree virtually. You cut off ties with your college peers, and found a new community back home. Jasper almost never left your side (save for book club every other Tuesday) and you both decided to get married the next spring. 

“Shh, I’m trying to read.” You lightheartedly complain, gently pushing Jasper and causing him to almost fall off of the tree you both are lying in. The branch dips slightly as he redistributes his weight to support you resting against his chest. His arms hold you close as you try to focus on the book in your lap, but between the view of the water from the treetop and his persistent need for attention, you fail. He snatches the book from your lap and softly grasps your chin, turning your head to bring his lips to yours. 

[twilitty]

Waiting- twilight fic

“Waiting”

by: @twilitty​

Rosalie and Emmett are babysitting Nessie for Edward. The rest of the Cullens are predisposed and seem to have branched off into their own lives. Rose and Emmett were given one-way plane tickets from Alice and told to meet her in South America. 

word count: 1.6k

Part 1/?

WAITING

Edward is late, again. Rosalie is standing in the foyer of the Cullens main home, the windows tinted with the dark guise of twilight and eerily dry. It seems to be the one day of the year it hasn’t rained. She’s dressed in an outfit curated by her fashion-oriented sister. All designer, of course. Yet, her jeans have creases around the knees and upper thighs, her sweater sleeves rolled up past her elbows in a way that would make her sister cringe. Her hair had started out in a casual ponytail but is now laying around her shoulders in frizzy waves. It’s the carefree disarray of a new moms wardrobe.

Then, like the angel of messes, Nessie sits in her arms snoring lightly. Her cheek, soft and warm, is against Rose’s collarbone and has been for the last twenty minutes. Rose had happily agreed to watch Nessie while her father went off to feed. Bella was at a business meeting in Port Angeles, a monthly occurrence that the family seemed to consciously not discuss. Edward was supposed to be back forty minutes ago, which was coincidentally also the exact time that the little angel was throwing a tantrum and pulling Roses hair. 

But, Rosalie doesn’t mind watching her. She enjoys the thick teardrops that roll down her puffy cheeks when she gets mad and the melted ice cream that coats the front of Nessie’s shirt after a snack. And as soon as she starts to get fussy it seems that Rose is the only one who can truly calm her down. It’s strange, being so involved in this child when she barely has any rights to her. 

Emmett is upstairs, packing the last of their suitcases and making sure the room is in order. This is why Rosalie is frustrated with Edwards' lateness, he was going to make them miss their flight. It also just happened to be her luck that the rest of the family is happily distracted when she needs them. 

Alice and Jasper had left days ago for somewhere in South America, Alice claiming that she just had to be there and not giving a date for return. She had, instead, also bought Rose and Emmett a one way ticket to a small airport an hour outside of Brazil. The travelling was not uncommon of the couple, Alice moving as she pleases and Jasper following without question. Maybe it was his devotion to her, or maybe it was the uncomfortable silence that always followed him throughout the house. In a group of vampires it’s difficult to find a point of discussion that isn’t based in the past, and the family is not one to tolerate Jasper's discussion of the past. 

That leaves two people left to watch Nessie as Rose and Emmett catch their flight: Esme and Carlisle. Carlisle picked up a job in Seattle, working overnight at a care clinic for the elderly. He never said it, but Rose just knew that it was because he had similar interests to the seniors he cared for. She had overheard him telling Esme one night that he almost wishes he aged into his forties so that he could hold a conversation and base it on his experience, not say his grandfather told him stories. Esme was with Carlisle in Seattle, she funded a series of group homes for at-risk youth and occasionally would go and meet with the kids. If only she was here to watch her grandchild. 

“Rose,” it was Emmett at the top of the stairs. He was whispering, thankfully. He had probably heard Nessie snoring and knew not to wake her. He saw her temper tantrum the last time someone woke her up from a nap and was not looking to face it any time soon. “I have the things packed.” Rose looked over her shoulder at the staircase just in time to see him appear at the bottom, two suitcases at his feet and a neck pillow cradling his head. 

All it took was a raise of her eyebrows for him to fall into a defensive position. Palms facing her, he approached quietly. “I wanna look the part,” he explained. 

“Your neck doesn’t cramp,” she retorted with a smirk. She wouldn’t be able to talk him out of the dumb pillow, the same way she wasn’t able to talk him out of sunscreen the last time they went to Bora Bora. 

“But tourists' necks cramp, why else would they sell these things?” He went up to the main door, opening it and looking outside. “It’s not like the pillow industry is trying to scam vampires.” Rosalie doesn’t have to ask him what he’s looking for, the tenseness in his shoulders tells her enough. He doesn't want to miss their plane and wants Edward to get here already. Out of all the Cullens, Emmett is the most frugal. He hates wasting money. 

He closes the door softly and turns to his wife and their niece, taking off the dumb pillow and tossing it onto the suitcases. A smile cracks open across his face. “Can I?” She nods and his knuckles brush against her chest as he gingerly brings the toddler up to cradle her. His large arms seem brutal next to Nessie, her tiny frame nearly disappears as he hugs her to his chest. Her head lolls onto his shoulder, snores breaking for a moment as she sighs in content. His eyes dance in the light, looking down at her as she sleeps peacefully in his arms. 

Rosalie has always loved Emmett, but the first time she saw him holding their niece, the way he carefully smiled with his mouth closed and crouched to seem smaller, that was when she knew they would have a family. Emmett was initially afraid of scaring the baby, afraid he would seem too big compared to the rest of the family. Like a giant. He would talk quietly around her, always making sure to hide his teeth when he smiled and sit on the floor when she played. 

A movement pulls Rose from her thoughts. So quickly that a human would have missed it, the door opens and closes, the child blinks awake at the noise. Edward stands beside Rosalie, his shoulders slouched forward and his mouth pulled up into a painful smile. “Rose,” he nods to her, “Emmett,” he nods to his brother. 

Emmett ducks down quickly towards the little girl, pressing his lips to the back of her head as she looks over at her father. “Nessie has a lot to show you,” he says with a laugh. His heart isn’t in it. Edward must read it in his mind and politely disregards it, because he strides up to his daughter and lifts her out of her uncle's arms. 

Nessie plants a hand on her fathers cheek, his smile widening as he watches a play by play of her afternoon. 

Regretting her earlier wishes of Edward coming home, Rosalie speaks to break the moment. “We’re leaving. We were supposed to have left forty minutes ago but somebody must have never developed an interest in punctuality.” She receives a glare from Edward, his jaw rolling forward in what must be residue annoyance from some other event. 

Emmett notices this, “Bella spoken to you?” 

“Yes.” He jostles his daughter, raising her so that she can play with his shirt collar. He doesn’t say anything else. 

“Well, Rose and I are heading out so we’ll see you later,” Emmett says jovially, waving a hand at his favourite- and only- niece. She waves back with vigor, a toothy smile spread across her dimpled cheeks. Her father only watches with mild disinterest, his thoughts clearly occupied by some other matter.

They grab their suitcases quickly, Rose planting a sweet kiss on the little girls cheek as they pass by towards the door. 

Against Emmetts pleading, they’re taking Rosalie's car. She had a difficult time understanding why taking his giant Jeep, suited for off-roading, would be ideal for travelling to the airport. 

“Are you okay?” She asks him, turning the key in the ignition and driving out of the garage into the night. He hadn’t said anything as he loaded the suitcases into the trunk, and when she turned on talk radio he didn’t complain or try to change the station. All abnormal.

“I’m gonna miss her,” he pauses, his adam's apple bobbing, “I hope she doesn’t change while we are gone.” 

“I know, me too.” Rosalie doesn’t try to alleviate his anxiety, she knows it would be a lie to tell him Nessie would look the same when they get back. She’ll probably be a little longer, her teeth larger, maybe she’ll have new interests. Every change they miss will hurt them both.

“But we’ve got to go.” His voice is hard, finality ringing through it as if he’s trying to convince himself.

“We’ve got to.” She agrees softly. 

They pull into a parking spot near the front entrance of the airport just in time to make their plane. Her phone rings after take off, the face of her sister smiling up at her from the screen. “Alice?”

“Rose, tell me you’re on your way.” The girl says hurriedly, excitement layering her words. 

“Emmett and I are on the plane now,” she responds. Emmett looks over at her curiously, neck pillow adorned. 

“Jasper and I have a lead.” She then goes to rattle off the details of their current location and where they will be tomorrow night. The phone hangs up. 

Emmetts face is reserved, but the corners of his lips are twitching with barely contained happiness. “A baby?” Rosalie’s pale hand comes up to cradle his cheek, her pink lips turning up at the corners. “Yes, a baby.”

[taexual]

i’d love you to stay but that’s simply insane // JJK (4)

     jungkook is an uncontrollable lead vocalist of the campus band, and you’re a goal-oriented top student that’s known his rich and complicated family since childhood. you don’t want anything to do with each other, until each other is exactly what you want to do.

pairing: jeon jungkook x reader

genre: college au

warnings: this is mostly jk showing off what a shy tease he is, but with some angst at the end

words: 4.8k

       chapter four

Somehow, Jungkook had managed to keep his wits about him and completed the week without a single party – and without a single drop of alcohol! – so, naturally, by the time it was Friday, everyone was talking. Most people assumed that there was something wrong with him but a surprisingly large percentage of the students on campus seemed to understand his reasons – causing a car crash while under the influence was bound to make a person reconsider some of their life choices.

When your last class of the week, Macroeconomics, wrapped up on Friday afternoon, you were surprised to find Jungkook lingering by the door of the building. You weren’t sure if you were at that point in your friendship where you could just approach him and simply ask what was up or if you two still weren’t close enough for that but Jungkook noticed you and relieved you from making that difficult decision.

“Hey!” he walked over to you as soon as he saw you. “Wasn’t your class supposed to end fifteen minutes ago?”

You looked down at the clock on your phone. “Uh, yeah. The professor is—well, I’ve concluded that she can’t tell time.”

“Clearly,” he said. “I stayed back, thinking we could head home together.”

“Oh,” you said and then looked down, automatically mapping out the campus until you came to a conclusion that you and Jungkook could definitely walk in the same direction without it being weird, so, really, there was no reason for you to get excited about this. And yet your heart disagreed as it cheerfully tossed itself across your chest. “Sorry I made you wait, then. But you could have given me a heads-up. My Fridays don’t start until—”

“See you tonight, bro!” a guy walking past interrupted you as he punched Jungkook on the shoulder so unexpectedly that he nearly toppled over. Jungkook didn’t mind, though, and when you lifted your eyes, you saw a friendly smile on his face.

“Definitely!” he replied to the guy before redirecting his attention to you. “Sorry about that. You were saying?”

“Nothing,” you dismissed that as you two slowly walked out of the building and made your way home. “So, what’s tonight?”

You didn’t mean to pry but, after not hearing about any Parental Advisory parties from Inna, you had suspected that the band was going to take it easy this weekend – perhaps even give the not-so-legendary Brock a chance to host a second party, since his first one only seemed to do moderately well after Jungkook didn’t show up – but, clearly, you’d been wrong to assume that.

“Ah, there’s a party at our place,” Jungkook said and he seemed very uncomfortable admitting this so he tried to find a way to justify it, “it’s tradition, you know? We’re not performing this weekend because we didn’t get to practice as much – my bad, I suppose – but the party’s still on.”

“I see,” you said, not realizing how judgmental that sounded to him.

“Yeah, and it’s not like I can just not go because I live there,” he continued to explain himself, “it’d be weird if I stayed in my room the entire time and, now that I think about it, I probably couldn’t stay in my room anyway. The music would be too loud for me to do anything, so I’d have to—”

“Jungkook,” you turned to look at him and he finally stopped the nervous chatter, “you don’t have to swear off parties altogether. That wouldn’t be you.”

“Yeah, no, I know,” he scratched his neck, “it’s just—I don’t know. I get that most of my friendships on campus are superficial. Really, I do. But it’s—I mean, these people aren’t that bad to hang out with. I just don’t want to make it seem like I’m back on my old bullshit, you know?”

You didn’t know because you weren’t sure what his “old bullshit” involved but you nodded because he looked like he needed reassurance right now.

“Sure,” you said, “but you’re in college. You can still go out and have fun with your friends… or whoever those people are to you. Just be responsible.”

“Right,” he swallowed and both of you turned quiet.

Realizing that he had a limited amount of time to talk to you before you’d reach your dormitory, Jungkook was the one who spoke up again a minute later.

“I talked to my parents last night,” he said. “I called them like you said. They acted like it was the first time I’d ever called them. I’m pretty sure mom thought I only called because I needed to get bailed out of jail.”

You raised your eyebrows in surprise. “I didn’t realize you’d drifted off so much.”

He exhaled slowly. “Yeah, we did.”

“You’re working on it, though,” you said, noticing that your observation seemed to bring him down. Out of fear of having discouraged him, you added quickly, “that’s a good sign, isn’t it? You are actually trying to bring back what you once had.”

“Hmm, that might be a stretch. I don’t think we were ever a perfect family,” he scrunched up his nose as he said this and, for a moment, you were completely breathless because he looked so sweet and homely – it was an insane contrast to the wild, long-haired alternative singer that most of the people on campus knew him as.

“Yeah, well, uh,” you blinked, looking away from him and focusing on the pavement instead, “every family has its flaws. But not all of them are willing to work on them.”

“I feel like that’s a line from a Tolstoy book,” Jungkook said and you snorted. He noticed the disbelief on your face right away. “What? I only act like I’m empty-headed sometimes, but I do read.”

“No, it’s not that,” you said, shaking your head, “I just never pegged you for someone who’d read Tolstoy, of all things.”

“Why? Who did you peg me as?”

You gave him a side-glance, your eyes guarded by your eyelashes as you still wouldn’t meet his gaze – which was good because his heart had already stopped when you looked at him like that – and hummed thoughtfully.

“You always struck me as more of a Stephanie Meyer guy,” you said.

He gasped and pfftched for the next few steps before finding his voice, “Stephanie Meyer? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with her but what is it about me that screams I-enjoy-hot-vampire-drama?”

You shrugged. “You tell me. I remember seeing the book in your bedroom when we were in sixth grade.”

“I am not going to defend my twelve-year-old self,” he declared with mock-dignity and you couldn’t help but smile at the banter. “That must have been the year when the book was the most hyped. I got curious.”

“Hey, I’m not judging,” you said and then bit playfully, “different strokes for different folks, right?”

“I’d rather not have Edward Cullen stroke me, thank you very much.”

You laughed. “Fair enough.”

Jungkook smiled as he watched you but he didn’t get to enjoy the happy wrinkles by your eyes for too long because you two reached your dormitory and it was about to become awkward. Due to the fact that Jungkook lived a little further away, it was starting to feel like he’d just walked you home, which he technically did, but it wasn’t the typical Walking-Home that happened when two people were dating, and now you didn’t know how to act.

“Alright, well, thank you for waiting for me after class,” you said in an attempt to ease the awkwardness.

It didn’t really help because, all throughout the walk over here, Jungkook kept trying to find a way to ask you something and he was still having a hard time choosing his words.

“Yeah, uh, anytime,” he said and then, with a very dramatic stretch of his hands above his head – he wasn’t trying to show off his muscles or anything, he just needed to feel a little more in control of his body – he finally dared to say, “hey, so… do you think you’ll make it to the party tonight? I mean, I assume your roommate’s coming, so—”

“Oh, I don’t know if she is,” you admitted, completely oblivious about how long it took him to gather the courage to ask you to come. “Inna didn’t mention going.”

“She said she was thinking of going when I talked to her,” he said, recalling the time he’d cornered your roommate for your phone number.

“I guess your parties are more her thing,” you said, not wanting to turn him down but also not feeling up for another night with his drunk groupies, “they’re not really for me.”

“Alright, that’s cool,” Jungkook said, focusing all of his attention on a loose pebble on the pavement that he kicked softly with his foot. “I’ll see you on Monday then, yeah?”

He didn’t make it obvious but you could still hear the glints of disappointment in his voice and you’d have been fooling yourself if you said it didn’t make your heart beat faster – he wanted you to come! – which was still something that you weren’t used to.

When you were younger, Jungkook had never made you feel like you were going to die if he didn’t smile at you. Until, one day, that was precisely how he made you feel.

It happened in the final years of your friendship so you’ve had seven years to digest the butterflies and finish wallowing in self-pity. You thought you were fine now.

“Yeah,” you said struggling to swallow because, clearly, the only creatures that were fine, were the damn butterflies that had successfully reincarnated. “I’ll see you Monday.”

But the two of you stayed still for a few more minutes, both stealing quick glances at each other and then looking away when your eyes met. You couldn’t bring yourself to turn around and enter the dormitory because in doing so, you’d begin two and a half days of not seeing Jungkook, and you didn’t feel ready for that yet.

Funny how you’d survived seven years without talking to him but one weekend suddenly seemed too long.

“I should go,” Jungkook said after a while because it was true, he really should have gone. But he didn’t want to leave. “They’re probably going to send me on a booze run.”

“Is that your punishment for last weekend?” you asked.

“Yeah. But also, maybe it’s not? They always order me around,” he explained. “I’m the youngest. Sometimes, I swear, I can’t wait until they graduate and then I won’t have to go on beer runs at six in the morning when they’re too drunk to move.”

You’ve heard about the dynamics of the relationship between the Parental Advisory members from Inna but it sounded different – somehow more real – when Jungkook was the one telling you about that. You felt yourself smile as he spoke of the other members.

“You don’t mean that,” you said. “You guys seem really close.”

“We live together,” Jungkook said with a nonchalant shrug but you could see how much their friendship meant to him in his eyes. “We’ve seen each other go through all kinds of shit. They’re… they’re cool guys. The only ones I’m actually genuinely close to. You’d like them.”

You didn’t doubt that for one second even though, just days prior, you thought his whole band was overrated.

It’s been a long week, that much was clear, and you’d learned that you were a lot more prejudiced than you’d have liked to admit.

“I’m sure they’re nice,” you didn’t disagree, “I hope they’ll take care of you tonight.”

That sounded far too familiar and just plain affectionate when said out loud, and you felt yourself flush as you looked for something else to say to control the damage. But Jungkook didn’t seem to mind your worry in the slightest – in fact, he knew he was going to replay your words in his mind all the way to his house – as he smiled and gave you a reassuring nod.

“I’ll be fine tonight,” he promised and the grateful glitter of his eyes let you know that there were going to be no life-threatening accidents tonight.

Inna did end up going to the party. She felt like she’d already come so far by attending last week, so she couldn’t just stop going now – which made no sense to you whatsoever, but maintaining the perfect attendance clearly meant a lot to her, so you gave her your blessing and patiently endured her nagging as she tried to get you to come with her.

“I can’t bring myself to go,” you said as you settled on your bed with your laptop. “I went through this whole week looking forward to Friday so I could have an American Horror Story marathon until I dreamt of latex-clad monsters. I just can’t postpone that any longer and especially not for something as ridiculous as—well, you know.”

She used to think you were kidding when you first started to live together, but after knowing you for three years, she realized just how much these seemingly little things meant to you: like catching a new superhero movie or re-watching your favorite TV shows. And it wasn’t that you hated social interactions or parties in general, not at all. You just needed them to come in smaller doses than most people.

“I get it,” she said. “But are you sure? I mean, Jungkook is going to be there.”

“I know,” you said and, boy, did you. Him being there was basically the only thing you kept thinking about ever since you got home. “You can tell him hi if you see him. He knows who you are.”

Inna scoffed. “Yeah. As if I can just approach a member of Parental Advisory and start a casual conversation.”

You gave her a look. “You can. It’s the mindset that these people are better than you that’s stopping you. It’s also what keeps them thriving.”

“I know,” she said, “but still. I’m arriving to the party alone this time, and I’m not really a member of their group yet. I need to know my place.”

“Inna—”

“Yeah, alright, I heard how that sounded,” she stopped you before you could lecture her again. “But you know what I mean.”

“Are you trying to get me to come with you out of pity?”

She smiled despite herself. “Well, it worked before.”

You shook your head, smiling at her sneaky attempt. “Get out of here. And have fun!”

“I will,” she promised, spraying some perfume on her wrists before she left. “I’ll keep you updated on what Jungkook is doing.”

“Please don’t stalk him on my behalf,” you cringed, which was, clearly, her intention as she laughed.

“Everything I do,” Inna sang in her best Bryan Adams voice as she exited the room dramatically, “I do it for you.”

You wished her good luck one more time before she closed the door of the dorm and hurried down the hall. 

You didn’t often get to have your dorm room all to yourself so, as soon as she left, you exhaled in content and sprawled across your bed, your laptop resting on your hips, the first season of American Horror Story starting on the screen.

You got through the first few episodes before you had to pause the show and go find yourself a snack. Never having too much actual food in the house, you and Inna always made sure to stock up on snacks, and you returned to the bedroom with a box of Oreo's and a pack of Maltesers. Very content with the current state of things in your life, you continued to watch the show while you unwrapped the box of cookies.

Sometime in the middle of Episode 4, you thought you heard your phone vibrate but, by that time, you were already dozing off and assumed that it had to be a figment of your imagination. Still, just to be sure, you patted the bed with your hand, searching for your phone, and then gave up a minute later when you couldn’t find it without getting up.

Another few moments later, the buzzing sound returned and this time, you were sure of it – someone was calling you. Groaning, you lifted your head off the head rest and cursed yourself when you saw your phone on the furthest corner of the bed. Pausing the show, you set your laptop aside and reached for the vibrating device with a painful strain of your muscles that were aching to sleep now.

They woke up almost immediately after you noticed the caller’s ID, however.

Clearing your throat with wide, surprised eyes, you picked up the call. “Hello?”

“Hi!” Jungkook’s voice was so high-pitched that you didn’t recognize it at first and were about to double-check if it was really him calling you when he continued, “I’ve tried calling you but you weren’t picking up.”

“Oh. Yeah, sorry, I—I didn’t hear,” you explained lamely. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s perfect!” he replied. He couldn’t have made his drunken state more obvious if he’d tried. “Wait, no. No, it’s not. You didn’t come.”

Every emotion he was trying to portray with his words was exaggerated as he spoke in a purposefully whiny tone. It tugged at your heart strings and you had to pull the phone away from your face so you could clear your throat again.

“No, I…” you said but the ball of excitement was still stuck tightly in your throat. “I told you I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah but I thought you’d change your mind,” he said and then loud shuffling followed, “oh—whoa—!”

You blinked. “W-what happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m—yes! I slipped,” he laughed breathily and you nearly suffocated from the sound, “I’m really drunk.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” you said, standing up from your bed in hopes that walking would help you calm your beating heart down. “What happened to being responsible?”

“I am being responsible,” Jungkook countered.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” you replied just humorously enough so he’d know you weren’t actually angry or disappointed in him.

But he wasn’t in the mood to over-analyze your words as he seemed to bring his phone closer to his lips to say quietly, “hmm, you should have come then, so you could keep an eye on me.”

The accidental – or purposeful, for all you knew – ASMR had you gripping the windowsill for support.

“I didn’t realize you needed a babysitter,” you tried to play it cool.

“I don’t. I just need you,” he said automatically and your whole body lit up like an artificial Christmas tree. Jungkook reacted first, however, as he tried to back up, “uh, here, I mean. At the party”

“I got it,” you lied. The only thing you got was that Jungkook was just as capable of putting you in a trance over the phone as he was in real life. “I, um… I don’t really do parties.”

He shuffled – probably switching the phone to his other ear – before asking, “what do you do?”

“I like to stay in,” you answered, pacing around your room. “Watch a movie, maybe.”

“Okay,” he said, no longer as bold. “Maybe next weekend we can do something you do together, then?”

It felt like you’d swallowed your own heart and it was now beating all over you until your whole body was buzzing. “Uh—”

Thankfully, an unexpected overjoyed screeching sounded in the background of the call, distracting you both and providing you with the perfect opportunity to get out of the grip his question had put you in.

“S-shouldn’t you go check that out?” you asked with a nervous chuckle. “Sounded important.”

“Yeah, I’m—I’ll go check it out,” he agreed hesitantly, concluding – drunkenly and, most likely, incorrectly – that he’d stepped over the line. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

Struggling to speak, you only hummed in approval, “mmhhm.”

“Okay.”

But just like before, outside of your dormitory, neither of you wanted the conversation to end. Despite you making it awkward by not answering his proposal – he shouldn’t have thrown it at you so unexpectedly – you did enjoy the fact that he’d called – when he had so many other people around him to talk to – and didn’t want to hang up just yet.

You two allowed the silence to settle on the line as neither of you seemed to find a way to break it. You kept thinking about his question, kept replaying it over and over in your mind, and the more you thought about it, the more frightened you became. You’d already given your all to him once before, but he decided he didn’t want you to do that anymore. He didn’t need you anymore.

You didn’t want to spend the few upcoming years exploring the boundaries of your friendship with him, only for him to decide -- once again -- that he didn’t really want to be with you anymore.

And yet, even though your heart was on the line here, you still refused to hang up the call.

“Jungkook?” you said quietly.

“Yeah?” he answered right away as if he was waiting for you to say something – and he was, really.

“Oh,” you exhaled. “I thought you went to check what happened.”

“No. I’m here,” he said and you heard him swallow. “It’s probably nothing interesting.”

There was no way it wasn’t interesting – you could still hear the sounds of excitement in the background of the call – but Jungkook found himself much more intrigued by the sound of your breathing as you tried to find what to say.

“Okay,” you said and then prepared yourself for another round of silence – only it didn’t come.

“So, uh, hey, tell me about these movies you like to watch,” Jungkook changed the topic in a slightly more upbeat voice and you chuckled in relief.

“You already know all about it,” you said. “I used to force you to watch them with me.”

“I wouldn’t call it forcing,” he disagreed. “It’s not like I did it against my will.”

“You sure made it seem so,” you reminded him.

“Well, you can’t expect me to go down without a fight,” he said. “If I remember correctly, you always wanted to watch horror movies. It’s not good for my dignity when you don’t flinch during the jump-scares and I’m the only one actually getting scared.”

He did remember correctly – so his mind did function semi-properly even when he was intoxicated – and you couldn’t stop smiling. You must have looked like a lunatic. You felt like a lunatic.

“Yeah, you were always a scaredy cat,” you teased.

“Bold of you to say so when you had me climb through your bedroom window to get rid of the spider that was blocking your door,” he said and you gasped, having had him swear that he’d never mention the incident again.

“I was ten!” you protested. “That’s also how many legs that monstrosity had.”

“Spiders have eight legs,” Jungkook said matter-of-factly and then mocked your previous teasing voice, “you were always one to exaggerate.”

You rolled your eyes but the grin did not fade from your lips.

“Thank you, though,” you said before you could change your mind. “I don’t remember saying that after you got rid of it.”

Jungkook was smiling, too. “No. I only remember you sprinting downstairs as soon as you could open the door.”

“That’s because you chased me around the room with the thing,” you pointed out, Jungkook’s teasing ‘come on, just look at it!’ still fresh in your memory. “Actually, that might be why I never said thank you.”

This got him to laugh. “Yeah, that’s probably why. In my defense, I was just trying to help you deal with your arachan—arach—ah, for fuck’s sake. With the fear of spiders.”

“Is it the alcohol getting to you?” you asked, giggling as he stumbled on the word.

“It must be,” he admitted, “but, really, I feel fine. Responsible drinking! Like I told you.”

“And you’re still having fun?”

Clutching his phone closer to his ear, Jungkook nodded to himself.

“Yeah,” he said slowly, “I definitely am.”

“So, in conclusion, blackout drinking is overrated,” you said knowingly.

“It’s—” he started but then stopped abruptly. You could hear his name being called in the background.

“You should go back,” you said then, feeling like, if you weren’t going to hang up, he wouldn’t either.

“Yeah, it’s starting to look like they won’t give me any other choice,” Jungkook said. “I’ll see you soon, though, okay?”

“Yeah,” you said as if that was obvious, “see you.”

“Give me a call if there’s a spider that needs my attention,” he bit one last time and then hung up as soon as you finished laughing – he couldn’t hang up before, it was simply impossible for him to pull away from the speaker of his phone when you were laughing.

You stared at your phone for at least a few minutes after the call ended, still beaming. There was a juxtaposition of feelings brewing inside of you: you were excited about receiving his call – even if it was a drunken one – while still holding yourself back from (re)developing any sort of connection with him out of fear of it all ending as abruptly as it had before.

But, as you put your phone down and returned to your previous spot on the bed – no longer tired enough to fall asleep – you figured that you were really more excited than you were afraid. Because, all things considered, you and Jungkook were no longer in the ninth grade. And maybe it’d prove to be difficult for you to fully open your heart again, but you couldn’t dismiss the possibility that, eventually, you could have Jungkook in your life again.

Three more episodes of American Horror Story later, you were positively dozing off. You did want to finish the first season – and you came so close – but your eyes were already closed for half of the last episode you’d watched, so you decided it’d be best to go to sleep. However, as soon as you turned the laptop off and got up to brush your teeth, you heard the door of the dorm open.

Poking your head into the hallway, you yawned just as Inna stumbled inside – and flinched, grasping at her chest, as soon as she saw you – dropping her keys onto the floor.

“Jesus, don’t stand there in the dark,” she hiccuped, leaning down to pick her keys up while you turned the light of the hallway on. She lost her balance on her way back up and had to lean against the wall to stand.

“Wow, you’re properly drunk,” you said, feeling another yawn coming but resisting it because it was starting to look as though you wouldn’t get to go to sleep just yet.

“Nooo,” she whined. “I didn’t drink that much. Just—just a little. A small little drink.”

You smiled at her description and took her keys from her. “Let me get those. You get yourself to bed.”

“Oh,” Inna sighed wistfully as she leaned against the wall of the hallway instead of doing what you’d told her. “You should have really come with me. It was fun.”

“Yeah, I bet it was,” you replied. “Come on, off to bed now—”

“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.

“Inna—”

“I have Yoongi’s phone number,” she giggled drunkenly.

“Alright, good for you. Now, let’s—”

“Can I tell you another secret?” she said again and her expression turned grave. “But, shhh, shhh, you can’t tell this one to my roommate.”

Confused how to proceed from there, you hesitated and then ended up choosing not to encourage her to keep going. You’d eavesdropped enough in the past week so the maximum number of secrets that you knew but weren’t supposed to know was reached.

“That’s okay,” you told her, gently wrapping an arm around her shoulders to help her return to the bedroom. “You can tell me tomorrow.”

“No, no, listen,” she disagreed, allowing you to guide her towards the bedroom – and then nearly falling face-down on the floor after she trusted you blindly and ended up stumbling over the threshold of the door because of it. “I saw Jungkook.”

She started to giggle like a madwoman then and you thought that was the whole secret but as soon as you helped her sit down, and squatted in front of her to remove her shoes, she kept going.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, her hand coming to rest on the top of your head as she brushed your hair affectionately.

“Sorry about seeing Jungkook?” you asked absentmindedly, too focused on the removal of her heels to pay attention.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “He was coming over here.”

You managed to pull one of her shoes off and dropped it in surprise.

“What?” you asked. “He was coming here?”

She nodded and you stood up, giving the room a once-over. If Inna was serious, and Jungkook was coming over here, there was no way you were going to let him into your room – it looked very much like a cozy pigsty at the moment.

“With a girl,” Inna added then, “she probably lives here.”

Blinking as you tried to digest this new bit of information that she had dramatically withheld for a whole minute, you felt your stomach sink with heavy disappointment.

“He’s, uh—he’s going over to some girl’s place?” you asked, returning to your previous job of removing Inna’s shoes.

“I think so,” she nodded and, judging by her voice, she was already falling asleep, but she still didn’t forget to mention, “but don’t tell my roommate. She’s just starting to be friends with him again.”

Your hurting heart would have disagreed with her – a friend wouldn’t have cared whom her friends were sleeping with – but you kept your eyes on the floor as you took her heels off and picked them up to carry them into the hallway.

“Don’t worry,” you said. “I won’t tell.”

keep reading | masterlist

[passionate-reply]

Great Albums is back for a third time! This week, we discuss Dazzle Ships, the avant-garde masterpiece that was so infamously weird, it almost “sank” the pop career of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Or did it? As usual, you can find a full transcript of the video under the break, if you’d like to read it instead.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. Today, I’ll be talking about an album that many would consider OMD’s best, and many would consider the last great album they ever made: 1983’s Dazzle Ships, their fourth studio LP. It has a reputation that precedes it, as a strange, experimental, and avant-garde album. And I can’t argue with that too much, when it has tracks that sound like "ABC Auto-Industry."

The most obvious thing one can say about Dazzle Ships is that it’s dense and rich with samples. You’ll hear found sounds ranging from a “Speak and Spell” toy to a radio broadcast from Czechoslovakia. It’s a magpie’s nest constructed of garbage and baubles, collage-like and conscientiously artificial. And OMD’s Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey managed to make it before sampling became easier and hence more widespread later in the 1980s, thanks to advancements in digital technology. In its own day, it was, famously, a huge flop, baffling even the critics, which makes it tempting to argue that the world simply wasn’t ready for it. Popular legend says that Humphreys and McCluskey were essentially forced to make increasingly soft, pop-oriented music for years afterward, usually at the hands of their label’s higher-ups.

Is that story really true? Well, I don’t know, and I’m not sure if anybody really does. But I think it’s important that we entertain some doubt. Regardless of its actual veracity, this legend is offering us a simplistic narrative of art and capital butting heads, and one that we see repeated all too often in music journalism. It’s a story that expects us to believe that experimental music is good by default, and the natural goal of music and all the people who make it--and, conversely, that accessible music is bad, and anyone who writes a song you can dance to is always after profit, never craft.

Ultimately, though, the most important reason why I’m asking you to leave this question at the gate is that it’s simply a less interesting way to think about art. What I think is truly ingenious about OMD is their ability to combine a pop sensibility with that bleeding-edge experimentation, and vice versa. I don’t think of Dazzle Ships as just an inscrutable, esoteric musical ready-made, but rather something capable of animating and enriching a bunch of otherwise mundane sounds. A word I might use for it is "challenging," because it isn't simply off-putting--it has a certain charm that invites you to stick around and work through it, and you don't feel like it's a waste of your time. I think the underlying pop DNA offered by Dazzle Ships is a big part of that.

In “Genetic Engineering,” the samples from that Speak & Spell are contrasted with a more traditional chorus, which rises above the chaos, stirring and anthemic. It’s a song full of friction, not only between these musical ideas, but in ideas about technology and our future. Like many great works of electronic music, especially earlier in its history, Dazzle Ships is deeply concerned with science and technology, and the ways they’ve structured our world. These guys wrote “Enola Gay” a few years earlier, sure, but there’s much more than Luddite, dystopian thinking here! Dazzle Ships walks a tightrope between romantic adoration of the promise of a better tomorrow, and the tempered uncertainty we’re forced to develop, when we witness the devastation our most horrifying inventions have wrought already. Something that helps sell the former is the motif of childhood: in addition to the Speak & Spell, “Genetic Engineering” also features a children’s toy piano, and prominently references “children” in its lyrics. And “Telegraph,” the album’s other single, sees fit to reference “Daddy.”

Touches like these, and the centering of not-so-new technologies like telegraphy and radio, carry us backward in time. Dazzle Ships has a sense of nostalgia for the technological explosion of the Midcentury, when household technologies were improving in ways that saved time and labour, and faith in “better living through science” was high. It’s not a wistful or introspective nostalgia, but rather one that taps into the bustling excitement of living through that era. That retro styling helps us situate ourselves in a childlike mindset: optimistic, but somewhat naive. Children are highly imaginative, and become enthralled with possibility, but don’t always understand every implication their actions have.

But, as I said, “Telegraph” and “Genetic Engineering” were the album’s singles; the typical track on *Dazzle Ships* sounds more like “ABC Auto-Industry.” The track listing is structured such that these more conventional songs are surrounded by briefer, and more abrasive, intrusions. They become signals in the noise, as though we’re listening to them on the radio--or ships, rising above some stormy seas. Several tracks, such as “International,” also feature a more dissonant intro, on top of that, crowding their main melodies inward.

Over the years, many critics have been quick to contrast Dazzle Ships with OMD’s other albums, but I actually think it has a lot in common with their preceding LP, 1981’s Architecture & Morality, and seems to me to flow naturally from the direction the band had already been going in. Architecture & Morality is a lively mix, with moody instrumentals like “Sealand,” guitar-driven numbers like “The New Stone Age,” and catchy, intuitive pop songs like “Souvenir.” Architecture and Morality proved to be their most successful album, when its title track sounds like this. I fail to see how it’s tremendously different than the title track of Dazzle Ships, which leads us on a harrowing sea chase, with radar pings quickly closing in.

That nautical theme is a great segue to discuss the album’s visual motif. Like all of OMD's first five albums, its sleeve was designed by Peter Saville, most famous for his stunning work for New Order. The cover and title were inspired by a painting Saville had seen, Edward Wadsworth’s *Dazzle Ships in Drydock at Liverpool,* which portrays WWI warships painted in striking, zebra-like geometric patterns. These sharply contrasting “razzle dazzle” designs weren’t “camouflage,” but rather served to confuse enemy forces’ attempts to track them, and predict their motions. Dazzle ships were killing machines that fought dirty...and they were also beautiful. It’s a potent, complex symbol, and it’s a natural fit for an album that’s also capricious, perplexing, and captivating in its uniquely modern terror. Saville’s sleeve design features both a die-cut design as well as a gatefold; peeking through the cover’s “portholes” reveals the interior, where we find a map of the world, divided by time zones. It’s yet another reminder of how technology has reshaped the planet, connecting the human race while also creating divisions.

Earlier, I argued that Dazzle Ships isn’t that different from OMD’s preceding LP, and I’d also suggest that their follow-ups to it aren’t all that different, either. It’s easy to see the influence of Dazzle Ships on their most recent work, made after reforming the group in the late 00s, and informed by the critical re-evaluation and cult acclaim of their alleged masterpiece. But even in the 80s, they basically continued the pattern of layering easy to love, “obvious single choice” tracks alongside more experimental, sample-heavy ones. Compare the title track of their sixth LP, 1985's *Crush.*

Even the greatest of pop hitmakers can't maintain a streak in the charts forever--it's not the nature of mainstream pop charts. Not even in the 1980s, when you could get away with quite a lot of electronic weirdness...at least for a while. Looking back and listening to "Maid of Orleans," it's almost hard to believe it was one of OMD's biggest hits. Is it really less weird than something like "Telegraph"? Perhaps they had simply reached the end of their imperial phase...whether they really had that stern talking-to or not.

It's not so much that Dazzle Ships isn't weird, so much as it is foreseeable that a nerdy, left-of-center band like OMD would have come up with it. Dazzle Ships IS excellent--it’s a Great Album! But it's good enough that I think it deserves to be heard and valued on its own terms. The album is too goddamn good--too compelling, too spell-binding--to be reduced to "that one album the plebs were too dumb to really get." I'm not clearing the air because I think this album is overrated, but because I think it deserves better, deeper discourse than it gets. A truly great album is great whether it sells or it doesn't, right? My advice is to never let art intimidate you, no matter how obtuse people say it is. Send your ship on that plunge into the dark waters of the unknown--you might find something beautiful.

That said...my favourite track overall is “Radio Waves,” an irresistibly fun cut that could easily have become a third single. Since “Genetic Engineering” and “Telegraph” live on side one of the record, “Radio Waves” is really the only “reprieve” we get on side two, smack in its middle. It really stands out, in context--almost like the opposite of how a more conventional album might have one out-there track that catches you off guard. Aside from all of that, though, the song also stands perfectly well alone. I have a real soft spot for music about music, how it’s made and transmitted, and “Radio Waves” is simply one hell of a ride.

Thanks for reading!

[clean-bands-dirty-stories]

Excuse me? - J.M.

A/n: Alyssa, Nicole, and Lilith ot3 AU is what I LIVE FOR as of now. Side note: “Nervous” by Shawn Mendes for this? I think so.

Request: “...do you think you could do a jack Morton x male barista reader. Where he keeps coming just to see him and he would bring the pack or one of his friends and then one day he comes in ready to ask him out he sees Vera and finds out it’s her son and she realizes that jack was the guy her son was talking about and maybe the son doesn’t know about wolfs or magic and is confused how they know each other...” by anon

Word Count: 1700+

MASTERLIST

"Okay," Jack groaned as he stood to his feet, rubbing his eyes. "We've been looking for this spell for hours. The sun has come out an we're supposed to be going to class in twenty minutes. Anyone down for coffee?" Randall snorted and Jack rose an eyebrow. "What?"

"Is it Wednesday already?" Was all Randall said.

Jack's face contorted in confusion. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Randall looked away from his book, shooting an expression which gave Jack the sensation that Randall knew something he wasn't supposed to know. Like the answers to a test Jack had written or something. "Do you really want the coffee Jack?"

"Or do you want the barista who makes it?" Hamish continued without having to look up from the the book he was currently scanning.

Suddenly Jack felt self conscious. "I have no idea what either of you guys are talking about."

Randall laughed out loud at that. "So uh, the fact that you only ever want coffee when Y/n is on shift has no correlation at all?"

Jack scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest. "I-"

But before he could come up with anything, Hamish intervened. "Or the fact that you stare at him without blinking from the second he's within your line of sight until he's left it."

"And how you smile when he says your name, a little wider every time," Randall jumped back again.

"Okay I get it!" Jack hissed, stepping away from his two friends who were grinning. "I just think he's cute it's not that big of a deal." He rolled his eyes. "Do you guys want coffee or not I need a change of view."

Randall snorted but didn't make a joke when Jack glared at him. Hamish did though. "The view of the skyline or the view of Y/n's jawline."

"Fine, no coffee for you guys then," Jack huffed, dropping his arms in favor of turning around and leaving- mostly so the other two wouldn't see his blush.

"You know our orders!" Randall called after him, giggling.

"Fuck you!" Jack called back. His only response was the loud laughter of both boys busting up as he left.

He would be lying if he tried to claim they were full of shit though. He WAS going to get coffee because he could use it, but if he didn’t know Y/n would be on shift he probably wouldn’t have been motivated enough to get out of his seat. He definitely wouldn’t have had the energy to go to his room and touch up after pulling an all nighter the previous night so he didn’t look like a total wreck.

He’d been going to see Y/n in this way for a while now. It had almost become a ritual for Y/n to be ready to start his day off by seeing Jack at pretty close to the beginning of each shift. Today was no exception. When the bell over the door went off, Y/n’s eyes immediately tore across to the room to search the boy he hoped had come in. And he wasn’t disappointed. Y/n brightened visibly, standing straighter and smiling wider, his eyes filling with light as his excitement light a fire inside of him.

“Hey Jack!” He greeted more brightly than he ever greeted another guest.

“Hey, Y/n!” Jack replied, eyes falling past the brunette that was on the other side of the counter as Y/n. Or, almost passing her.

“Jack Morton.” His gaze was brought back to the one and only Vera Stone. Jack felt his shoulders drop. Why was SHE here? As if reading his thoughts, she echoed them aloud. “And what do I owe the pleasure?” She wasn’t as bitter toward Jack as she used to be, but they weren’t exactly friends either. It was a sort of polite tension, but a tension nonetheless.

“This is the boy I was talking to you about,” Y/n rushed to answer before Jack could. He blushed, seeming to realize he’d spoken a little too loudly. “Er, being my usual Wednesday customer. I- I knew he would be coming in soon so that’s why I was trying to make your coffee quickly.”

Jack noticed then the cup in Vera’s hand. What stood out more was the look on her face. “Excuse me?” She demanded of the younger boy working on the other side of the counter.

Y/n seemed to physically stutter. “I... what’s wrong, mom?”

“MOM?” Jack would have choked, excepted he had nothing to choke on. His whole body froze though and when he spoke again, his voice was a little hoarse. “She’s your mom?”

Y/n shuffled awkwardly. “Uh... yeah? I know she’s the dean, but I promise she’s actually not as scary as she pretends.” It was a tease, an attempt to ease the tension.

Unfortunately, Vera was staring daggers at Jack and he was stiff with that scariness Y/n had been talking about. How could be ever call such a woman as her soft? She was terror incarnate! Jack knew better than he probably should why she had that pain. Why she was angry at him now. Why she would have been angry at anyone Y/n liked, but why she was especially angry because it was Jack Morton of all people. He could see her panic play out in his own chest. After her daughter, how could she ever put her son in danger? Vera wasn’t even known to have a son until today. Did he even know?

Jack only had one question now: would Vera refuse to let Jack ask Y/n out? He was a little nervous about doing so to begin with, considering the whole wolf thing, but they still had Midnight’s fur. Maybe Y/n could be a wolf. If nothing else, Jack thought that the boy would love the world of magic as much as Randall did, and with his smarts they might actually function better than just moment to moment luck checking. He had thoughts and plans for a future with Y/n. Was that all gone now? Did he have his chances taken away before he could even take them?

“Do you guys... know each other?” Parent and student looked at Y/n then, both tormented by the same fear of different flavors. Y/n took a step back, surprised by the looks they each gave him. “What the hell is going on?”

Vera was the first to move. “We’ll be back.” She turned to Jack. “You, with me.” Jack tore his eyes away from Y/n and fled after Vera with his metaphorical tail between his legs. Y/n hesitated before beginning to make Jack’s usual order, slowly, as an attempt to distract himself as he waited.

Outside of the coffee shop, Vera waited only until they were outside of Y/n’s line of sight before she whirled on Jack. “You can’t be here, with him. This isn’t acceptable.”

Jack sighed, blinking his eyes a few times to orient his thoughts. “It’s 2020.”

Vera rolled her eyes. “You know that’s not what I meant. He doesn’t know you being a wolf, Jack. He can’t know. You can’t drag him into this-“

Jack looked her in the eye and she cut off. His look was so piercing it sent a shock through her. “You’re the Grand Magus of the Order, where you’re in need of all the hands you can get, and you’re not including your own son? He could be just as skilled as you were before Alyssa took your magic.”

Shaking her head, Vera was already rejecting the words before he was done saying them. “I have a lot of powerful enemies. Especially if we BOTH care about him, you don’t think they’ll use him against us?”

Jack sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “He’s already included in all of this, Vera. Shouldn’t he know of the dangers out there? Be prepared and well armed?” Vera seemed to consider that. “Look, I really like him. And you know me- when I like someone, I’m serious about it.” He cringed as memories of Alyssa came back to him. He’d almost got himself killed several times trying to win her over before she finally rejected him rather brutally. Then she’d dated Lilith and Jack had taken the message. As much as it had sucked, he’d been happy to see how in love they were and stuff. Of course, the wolves had all had their memories wiped for several months, causing Lilith to fall in love with Nicole, and now Lilith was in the demon realm and missing altogether, but back then they’d both been really happy together.

The experience had taught everyone one thing though: Jack Morton didn’t joke around about his feelings. Between her and Edward, when he had his mind set on something it was practically impossible to break him from it.

If he liked Y/n, he would honor that.

Vera sighed. If she was being honest, there wasn’t anyone she trusted to date her son except Jack Morton. Only now she was realizing it, but it was no less true. “Just... you can’t tell him yet okay?”

Jack stares at her for a second. “What do I tell him if you die?”

That seemed to right her. “Fine.” The word was tired and labored. “But I get to tell him.”

“Fine,” Jack agreed. “I’m asking him out after that, because I refuse to start a relationship with any lies. So let me know when you do that.” He’d called Vera’s bluff. She slouched more and he smiled, turning and going back inside before she could continue arguing. Vera watched the two boys interact, Y/n seeming worried but it quickly being wiped away by Jack’s easy going attitude. Jack cheered Y/n up in a way not even Vera could.

She turned away. She really was going to have to do this. “Goddamnit, I need a drink.” And then she pulled out her phone to text a certain wolf she had been keeping the company of recently. She could talk to Y/n later, and she would. For all of their sakes.

-

Male Reader Taglist: @sheepfather

[chloeshq]

[ perrie edwards, cisfemale, she/her ] have you seen CHLOE FOSTER lately ? yeah, i heard they’re TWENTY FOUR years old and a MUSICIAN now in charleston city. i mean, i don’t know if it’s their GEMINI vibes or that they’re -RESOLUTE and -ENIGMATIC but also +PERCEPTIVE and +EFFERVESCENT but they remind me of FEEL SOMETHING by JOSHUA BASSETT. here’s to hoping they don’t cause too much trouble around here.

hi! i’m sam [ she/they] & i’m coming 2 u ~live and in stereo~ from mountain time/gmt -6 (i think, i’m bad at math). i haven’t rp’d in a hot minute and i literally have no idea what the state of this cursed blue website is anymore, so please bare with me as i try to figure it out yikes! 

anywhomst, enough abt me, let’s get to the good shit and the reason we’re all here -- my angel child chloe foster ! she’s a bit of an amalgamation of a bunch of old muses and i’m v v v excited to see where she takes me! pls smash that like button if u wanna plot & i’ll send u my discord : ,)

FULL NAME: chloe josephine foster NICKNAME(S): chlo, cj, foster PRONOUNS: she / her ORIENTATION: pansexual / panromantic HOMETOWN: malibu, ca MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic neutral POSITIVE TRAITS: perceptive, effervescent NEGATIVE TRAITS: resolute, enigmatic

BACKGROUND

born & raised in southern california to ~industry~ parents (behind the scenes industry)

spent a ton of time on movie/tv/music video sets and very quickly became enamored with music

catch a gal singing made up songs about absolutely nothing to absolutely no one but herself

anywho, she had a very ~average~ upper-middle-class life, i suppose. not to say she hasn’t had tr*uma or anything (partly bc i am physically incapable of writing a mentally stable/neurotypical character, but mostly bc i haven’t figured out what it is yet), she just like, loves her parents and like doesn’t dwell much on the past

did 2.5 years of undergrad at ucla before “taking a gap year” to be on broadway except she didn’t land the role, but moved to nyc anyway and lived there for two years doin the theatre/musician/nanny hustle

eventually met the owner of a record label in charleston and moved here 2 years ago and has absolutely no plans on leaving any time soon

she loves her lil beachside town and her lil indie record label and her one day a week barista gig

PERSONALITY

she’s! an! empath! sometimes too aggressively but she’s dealing

reads people really well and adapts based on her company

people tend to think she’s two-faced or fake because she’s a gemini and she’s so adaptable

a bubbly lil ray of sunshine! she loves meeting new people and making friends with strangers in the grocery line. truly will strike up a convo with a plant

super passionate abt human/civil/equal rights and works hard to be educated and informed and use her privilege as best she can

loves herself. loves her reflection and looking good and over dressing for no reason! will absolutely leave the house without makeup and dressed hella casual but like still is obsessed with checking herself out on any reflective surface

v passionate! it might be a flaw, tbh! she absolutely has adhd and gets very wrapped up in a new passion project and then just ! simply forgets about it ! but also has a tendency to hyperfixate on things (like music) for long periods of time

chaotic homosexual, tbh. she’s anti labeling her sexuality and truly doesn’t actually have a preference when it comes to peoples’ gender identity – if ya vibe, ya vibe. that being said, she’s a sap and a hopeless romantic and is desperate to be touched, her love language is very apparently physical touch

will fight to protect her family – blood or chosen, doesn’t matter. loves fiercely and is potentially loyal to a fault

[cocastyle]

Change - Ch. 2 | T W O

Pairing - Bill Denbrough x reader

Word Count - 5,383

A/N - another chapter because I felt really inspired to write! it’s finally time for the reunion and ahh the feels 🥺 also, please let me know what you all think so far and what your thoughts are about Greyson. I honestly love him and his character throughout this half of the series is just so cute in my opinion. this chapter will have tons of feels with the reunion, but fair warning that the next chapter is going to pull at the heart strings even more and I think you all know why.

if you would like to be added to the tag list for this series let me know!

C H A N G E

Change Series Masterlist

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T W O - Jade of the Orient

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Y/N was silent as she stared up at the restaurant before her, her fingers drumming against the wheel of her car nervously as her eyes flickered over the letters that spelled out Jade of the Orient.

She wasn't sure what to expect when she walked inside, but the thought of seeing her friends after all of this time was enough to make her feel clammy. She hadn't been this nervous since Greyson was six years old and broke his arm falling off of a trampoline.

"Mom," Greyson's soft voice spoke out, snapping the woman's attention away from the restaurant and to her son who was still sitting in his seat with a confused look on his face. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Y/N replied a little too quickly, her voice coming out rushed and making herself wince. "I'm fine. I've never been more fine in my life."

Greyson raised an eyebrow and Y/N sighed before leaning her head against the wheel in defeat. "Okay, so I'm a little nervous," Y/N admitted, her shoulders slouching slightly as she tried to collect her thoughts.

A look of amusement appeared on Greyson's face and he couldn't help but chuckle, the sound making Y/N look to her son before looking away with a groan. "Fuck you. You don't laugh at your mother's nervousness," Y/N jokingly scolded while Greyson sent her one of his smiles that Y/N liked to say could solve all of her problems.

Greyson was always able to do that, make her relax with just a smile. He had been doing it ever since the day he was born and Stan had told her on numerous occasions that he got his smile from her, but Y/N didn't see it. Her son's smile was unlike any other and she adored him for it.

Greyson and Y/N had the strongest mother/son bond than anyone had ever seen. They were comfortable enough around each other to make fun of each other and curse as if they had been best friends for years now. They understood each other better than anyone and were the person they leaned on when times got tough. Although Y/N made sure to keep most of her problems to herself in order to keep Greyson happy, but she knew that he knew more than he let up.

Y/N knew some people might scold her for the relationship that she had with her son, but he was her best friend along with Stan of course. Her and Greyson had been by each other's side for sixteen years now and Greyson didn't seem to have a problem with being close friends with his mother so who was she to stop him?

"You're telling me that we've been sitting in this car for twenty minutes now because you're fucking nervous?" Greyson questioned, a hand going to his mouth as he tried to muffle his laughter.

Y/N sat back up and gave her son a small glare before leaning back with a huff. Greyson's laughter quieted down as he watched his mother before he smiled softly and reached out to place a hand on her arm.

"There's nothing to be nervous about," Greyson assured her. "I mean from what you've told me these people used to be your best friends. That bond can't be easily forgotten."

Y/N wanted to correct him and tell him how she actually had forgotten about them and that alone was enough to make her nervous, but she held that information back. After all, she would have to go into each of the friendships she had with her friends in order to explain to Greyson why she was so nervous and she wasn't quite ready for that yet, especially Bill who she had yet to mention to her son.

"It'll be just like the old days," Greyson smiled as he shook her arm gently. "Besides, you said Uncle Stan should be coming as well, right? I'm sure he'll be here soon and everything will be just fine."

Y/N knew her son was right, but for some reason she still couldn't shake off her nerves. "You're right," she sighed, thinking momentarily about how once Stan got here everything would be okay. "I just need to walk right in there and-"

The woman fell short and before Greyson could even comprehend what was happening Y/N was quickly turning off her car and getting out, throwing open the door as her eyes locked on a man who she would've recognized anywhere. Although the last time she had seen him he was thirteen years old with a cast on his arm and a fanny pack around his waist.

"Holy shit!" Y/N exclaimed, her voice so loud that it made the man who was walking across the parking lot jump in surprise before looking around. It took only a moment for his eyes to lock on her and the biggest grin broke out on his face as he recognized who she was. "Edward Kaspbrak, is that you?"

"Fucking hell," Eddie laughed as he broke out into a small jog over to the car. Y/N slammed her car door shut behind her and was running over to the man in seconds and the moment she fell into the warm embrace of the boy who used to be like a brother to her, all of her nerves were gone. "There's no way you're Y/N Uris. There's no fucking way!"

Y/N chuckled and pulled away momentarily to look at the man that stood before her, a grin on her face that reminded Eddie of the ones she used to send his direction when they were younger. "You best believe it, Eddie. Look at you! You've grown up on me, Eds," Y/N said, her voice going soft as she looked at the boy.

A flicker of sadness flashed through both of their eyes and Eddie gave her a small smile of understanding before he put his hands on her arms and gave them a small squeeze. "Me? Look at yourself. Just as beautiful as ever," Eddie said before he was pulling the girl in for another welcoming hug, this one lasting longer than the first as the two got caught up in the feeling of having one of their best friends back by their side.

Someone clearing their throat was what had the two pulling away, the two friends turning their heads in the direction of the sound to where Greyson was currently leaning against the car with the beginnings of a smile on his face. He couldn't help but let his eyes flicker between his mother and the man, taking notice that his mother had never greeted someone like that in his whole life nor looked so happy.

Eddie inhaled sharply, his eyes wide as a hand reached out to grab Y/N's arm in surprise and he whispered, "Is he-?"

Y/N smiled softly and glanced at Eddie before walking over to wrap an arm around Greyson. "Eddie, this is my son Greyson. Greyson, this is Eddie Kaspbrak," Y/N said as she gently guided her son over to the man who was staring at the teen in disbelief.

"Hi, Mr. Kaspbrak," Greyson greeted, a smile appearing on his face that made Eddie inhale sharply once again for it was like he was seeing a younger version of Y/N smiling up at him.

"Please, call me Eddie," he insisted before putting a hand to his mouth and bringing it down his chin as he continued to stare at Greyson. He finally let out a small laugh of disbelief before looking to Y/N. "Holy shit. He's like a boy version of you. He even has the same smile."

Y/N smiled at that and Eddie watched as Greyson looked to his mother in what had to be adoration and pride before his gaze fell back on Eddie. "You used to be friends with my mother when she was younger, right?" Greyson questioned, his grin widening when Eddie nodded his head. "What's the craziest thing she's ever done? Mom won't tell me shit about her past and I'm guessing it's because there's some deep dark secret she wants to hide."

Y/N rolled her eyes playfully at her son while Eddie chuckled softly and stuffed his hands into his pocket. "Actually, your mother was a total badass. She once chucked a rock at the school bully's face and made him bleed because he was picking on a friend of ours," Eddie instantly said, his eyes widening in surprise slightly at the memory that fell from his lips. He hadn't even thought he remembered that.

"Woah, really?" Greyson asked before looking up at his mother who had a hand to her face in embarrassment. Greyson only smiled and nudged his mother playfully before looking back at Eddie.

"Really," Eddie nodded as he sent a teasing smile in Y/N's direction. "I can tell you more later, but we should probably be heading inside. Will your husband be joining us?”

Y/N stilled at that and Eddie couldn't help but notice Greyson's face hardening almost instantly, anger and hatred obviously written in his demeanor. Y/N seemed to notice as well and gently placed a loving hand on her son's shoulder before giving Eddie a forced smile.

"No. It's just the two of us," she explained and Eddie's smile faltered.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he began to say, but Y/N waved him off.

"It's no big deal. He left the picture years ago. It's just me and Grey," Y/N admitted as she looked down at her son, the boy instantly relaxing under her loving gaze and smiling up at her.

"That's all we need," Greyson nodded his head in agreement before they looked back at Eddie with small smiles on their faces. "Let's head on in, shall we?"

Eddie and Y/N locked eyes for but a second and both were able to read the nervousness that was still hidden in their eyes. Greyson began to walk on ahead to open the door for the two adults and Y/N took that moment to go to Eddie's side, gently grabbing ahold of his arm with both hands as they walked forward and rubbing it soothingly in an attempt to calm both of their nerves.

For a moment the two each had a flashback to when they were younger and how Y/N would always calm Eddie down when he was nervous or panicked. It seemed each other's presence was still able to do that for the two were able to walk into the restaurant without another beat of hesitation as long as they were by each other's side.

Y/N only let go of Eddie's arm once Greyson had returned to her side and Eddie watched as she looked to her son with a smile before brushing some hair from his face. Greyson sent her a small smile in return before the three were then shown to the room that Mike had apparently reserved for them.

It wasn't long before Eddie began listing off to the waitress all of his allergies and concerns and Y/N couldn't help but chuckle softly as she watched the man who was just like the thirteen year old boy she remembered. Greyson raised an eyebrow as he looked to his mother and all Y/N could do was shrug with a smile on her face that was so contagious Greyson ended up smiling as well.

"And I'm allergic to soy and anything that has egg in it. Uh. . .gluten and if I eat a cashew I could. . ." Eddie fell short and Y/N furrowed her eyebrows before following his gaze and noticing that they had reached the room. "-realistically die."

Y/N's mouth fell open in shock and she was sure both her and Eddie had the same expression of surprise on their face as they looked at the two people who stood in the room already.

However nothing could beat the dumbfounded look on Greyson's face once he noticed that his favorite author was standing in front of him.

"Holy shit," Eddie and Y/N both whispered out, their eyes locking with the gazes of Mike Hanlon and Bill Denbrough before all four of them began to smile.

Eddie and Y/N both moved forward to greet the two, but the woman was quickly stopped by someone grabbing onto her wrist. Y/N turned only to find Greyson staring at her with wide eyes as he squeaked out, "That-That's Bill Denbrough. You. . .you know Bill Denbrough?"

"Yes?" Y/N whispered as she gave the boy a nervous smile. "I'm sorry. I know I should've told you, but I didn't know how."

"You're kidding me. I was-" Greyson glanced over at the three adults who were currently hugging each other and laughing before he looked back at his mother. "I was not prepared for this. Fuck! What if I mess up? What if I make a fool of myself? Mom!"

Y/N couldn't help but chuckle softly at her son's nervous state and was quick to place her hands in his arms in an attempt to call him down. "Woah, kiddo. Just breath, okay? Everything's going to be just fine. Just be yourself and you'll be okay," she assured him.

"Just be myself," Greyson muttered softly as he looked back over at the author who had yet to look their way. He nodded his head and looked back at his mother with a much calmer look on his face. "I can do that."

Y/N smiled and squeezed the boy's arms once before gesturing towards the men behind her. "Great. Now let me introduce you to my friends," she said before she turned and began to walk away. Greyson was behind her in almost an instance and walked practically on her heels until they reached the men who had just finished hugging Eddie.

Mike Hanlon was the first one to turn and the smile he gave Y/N was one that made her heart ache with guilt for having not spoken to him in so long. Mike didn't seem to think anything of it and let out a cheerful laugh as he embraced the girl.

"Y/N!" Mike exclaimed happily as he held onto her tight, the girl doing the same. "I knew you'd come. I just knew it."

"Mike," Y/N greeted as the two pulled away to look at each other. "Of course I came. You know I'll always be there when you need me."

A flicker of emotion flashed through Mike's eyes, but his smile didn't falter as he just smiled at her as if he couldn't believe she was standing there in front of him. But then a voice was filling the air and Y/N swore her heart stopped at the sound.

"Y/N?"

Mike took a small step back and Y/N moved her head to see Bill Denbrough standing there, a look of disbelief on his face as he shamelessly let his eyes flicker over her. Y/N couldn't say anything since she was doing the same to him.

"Bill," Y/N whispered and the name had barely even left her mouth before the two were in each other's arms, neither of them remembering having crossed the room to reach each other but both of them remembering almost instantly what it felt like to be held by the other.

Y/N felt the urge to cry in relief as she held onto Bill, but she held it back as she merely gripped onto his shirt and hugged him so close that her nose was practically resting atop of his shoulder. Bill held onto her just as tight and she could hear him let out a shaky breath as he leaned his head against her own, relishing in the feeling of getting to hold the girl once again while also trying to calm his rapidly beating heart.

The two could've stood there hugging each other forever, but Eddie cleared his throat and gave the two a look that told them they should probably stop hugging before it got too weird. Y/N and Bill both pulled away with a blush, but kept their close distance as they looked at each other.

For a moment Bill felt like he was back in the summer to 1989 when he had first seen Y/N come out of the Uris house. The beating of his heart was the same and his breath was once again knocked from his lungs. And boy when she gave him that Y/N Uris smile that he hadn't seen for years, he knew he was a goner.

He hadn't seen her in years and she still gave him that giddy feeling that not even Audra had been able to make him feel. And for a moment he found himself hoping that was single. He didn't know what he would do if she was married.

"H-H-Hi," Bill finally managed to whisper out and he winced slightly at his stuttering which he knew was merely because of how nervous the girl seemed to be making him. Both of them suddenly got flashbacks to the first time they had met and to when they had reunited that one summer she had spent at Stan's.

"Hi," Y/N replied softly, tilting her head ever so slightly as she looked at the man before her in disbelief and awe. She couldn't believe it was him and her frantically beating heart was only proof of that.

Both of them were shamelessly admiring the other and the fact was enough to make them both blush and look down bashfully as awkward laughs left their lips.

"You look good," Y/N finally said and Bill swore his cheeks grew even more red. He was an adult now and she still somehow made him feel like his thirteen year old self who became a blushing mess whenever Y/N so much as looked in his direction.

"I could say the same for you," Bill smiled, his eyes flickering back up to lock with Y/N's, the girl blushing slightly as neither seemed to remember just where they were or who was in the room.

"Uh, Y/N?" Mike's voice rang out causing the two to look away from each other and over to Mike who was warily staring at Greyson who was standing where his mother had left him like a deer caught in headlights.

It was then that Y/N seemed to remember that she wasn't still a thirteen year old with a crush but a forty year old who had a son and her eyes widened before she quickly made her way across the room and back to Greyson's side. Her arm wrapped around the boy's shoulders almost instantly and she began to walk the nervous boy forward as she smiled to her friends.

"Guys, this is Greyson. He's my son," Y/N smiled proudly. Eddie and Mike were already grinning at her, but she couldn't help but notice Bill's smile falter ever so slightly before he acted as if nothing had happened. "Grey, this is Mike Hanlon and Bill Denbrough."

Greyson stared at the two men for a moment before finally letting his gaze stay on Bill. "Hi," he managed to squeak out, his cheeks growing red out of embarrassment.

Y/N chuckled softly and rubbed her son's arm reassuringly before looking to Bill. "He's a kind of a fan of yours, so he's a tad bit nervous," she explained, her words making Bill soften as he looked to the young teen who was staring at him with a star struck expression.

"He looks just like you," Mike commented as he looked to Y/N with a warm smile. Bill couldn't help but agree with Mike on that one, but his heart still felt as if it were going to shatter right there and he wasn't sure why.

Greyson would've stood there frozen for the rest of the night if it weren't for Y/N nudging the boy forward so that he was now standing in front of Bill with his mother right behind him. Greyson's eyes widened a little more and he gulped before shakily holding out a hand.

"Uh. . .Mr. Denbrough, I-I'm a huge fan, sir. Your work is-is amazing and I just. . .wow, I can't believe I'm standing in the same room as you to be completely honest," Greyson admitted and he couldn't help but let out a small noise of surprise when Bill reached out to shake his hand.

"Please, call me Bill. It's lovely to meet you, Greyson. You look a lot like your mother," Bill said and Greyson couldn't help but smile at that as he glanced back at his mother before looking to Bill once again.

"I've been told," Greyson said with a hint of admiration in his tone. "I think it's because of the smile."

Greyson sure wasn't wrong. He had definitely inherited the Y/N Uris smile. However, his smile in no way had the same effect on Bill as Y/N's did which was definitely a good thing.

Greyson had relaxed by now and Bill smiled softly at the young boy before biting his lip nervously. "Will your-" Bill hesitated and his eyes momentarily flickered to Y/N before he looked back at Greyson, "-father be joining us tonight?"

Bill noticed Eddie wince from beside him and wondered why, but then he noticed Y/N's hurt filled eyes and the way Greyson instantly hardened. "No," she said as she sent the man a small smile. "There's no father in the picture."

"I'm so sorry," Bill muttered despite the relieved expression on his face. After all, he wouldn't lie and say he wasn't absolutely thrilled to hear the news.

"He was a son of a bitch anyways," Greyson admitted and that was enough to have everyone looking to the boy in surprise. However, he was too busy staring between Y/N and Bill with an almost calculating expression to notice.

Greyson's eyes then widened and he sent a look in his mother's direction that made her blush slightly before she quickly looked away from her son. "So where are the others?" Y/N asked, hoping to change the subject before her son could say anything to embarrass her.

The only answer she got was the sound of someone hitting the gong behind them, the noise being enough to startle the whole group who quickly turned to see Richie Tozier standing near the gong with Beverly Marsh and Ben Hanscom behind him.

"This meeting of the Losers' Club has officially begun," Richie announced and Y/N couldn't help but chuckle as she looked at the man all while Greyson watched the newcomers warily.

"Look at these guys," Eddie said before letting out an awkward laugh that was followed by an awkward silence. Richie locked eyes with Y/N and he pointed at Ben from behind before mouthing the boy's name and moving his arms out to pretend like he had a big stomach. Y/N rolled her eyes at the man who gave her a small smile in return before tilting his head as he looked at her, obviously trying to picture how the woman standing on the other side of the room was the same Y/N Uris he knew.

The silence drug on for longer than any of them expected. It was obvious no one quite knew what to say especially since they hadn't seen each other in so long. However, it was no surprise when Y/N broke the silence to move across the room, her arms already out as a big grin dawned her face.

Beverly practically shoved Ben and Richie out of the way to hug the girl, earning glares from the boys which she ignored. "Y/N Uris," Beverly breathed out in disbelief as she hugged the woman tightly.

"Beverly Marsh," Y/N greeted as she pulled away to look at the red head in front of her. "Look at you! You've turned into a real stunner."

"Me? Look at yourself!" Beverly exclaimed before a hand was placed on her shoulder.

The two girls looked to see Ben gently pushing Beverly back as he gave her a small grin. "Okay, Bev, my turn," Ben said before he turned to the woman standing before him. He grinned and Y/N quickly returned it as he swooped her up in his arms to give her a bear hug. "It's been far too long, Y/N."

"It has," Y/N agreed as Ben set her back down. She took a step back to look at the man and shook her head in disbelief before smacking his chest playfully. "Holy shit, Ben. You're like a whole new person."

Ben chuckled at that, his cheeks turning a bit pink while Beverly nudged Ben's arm and said, "If anything, he's the stunner. You're making me feel self conscious, Ben."

Ben's face reddened even more at that and he glanced at Beverly with a small shake of his head. "You look beautiful, Beverly. Don't sell yourself short," he said instantly making the red head's face almost as red as her hair.

Y/N raised an eyebrow at the two and was about to say something when two arms suddenly wrapped around her from behind before picking her up and spinning her around. "Richie!" Y/N yelled out in between laughter, already knowing who had grabbed ahold of her.

There was a loud laugh from behind her before her feet touched the ground and she was quick to turn to the culprit who was giving her a sheepish grin. "Wow," Richie said as he looked at the girl in front of him and slung an arm around her shoulders. "You look amazing, sweetheart. What the fuck happened to me?"

Y/N rolled her eyes at the man's flirtatious attitude and shoved his arm off before playfully pushing him away. "Shut the fuck up, Tozier. You've grown into your looks and you know it," she teased while Richie just laughed.

While Y/N had been reuniting with the other Losers she had failed to notice that Bill, Eddie, and Mike were doing the same. Before long Richie had left her to go hug the others and Y/N couldn't help but watch as Eddie and Richie stared at each other before smiling and pulling the other in for a hug that lasted almost as long as Y/N and Bill's had.

As if realizing this, Richie pulled away from Eddie with a smile and patted his shoulder before turning to the last person in the line he had been going down. However he instantly froze as he looked down at the young face of what looked to be like a male version of Y/N.

Richie scrunched up his nose and let his arms fall back down to his side as he gave the teen a perplexed look, "Who the fuck are you?"

Greyson narrowed his eyes slightly and was quick to stand up straighter as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Who the fuck are you?" Greyson questioned in return making Richie blink in surprise.

Richie and Greyson stared at each other for a moment before a small grin broke out on Richie's face as he pointed at the teen. "I like you," he said before looking back at the Losers. "Which one of you fuckers does this one belong to?"

The group all paused in their conversations to turn and look at Richie who had a hand on Greyson's shoulder and was looking between the adults with his eyebrows raised.

"This one is mine," Y/N laughed as she walked across the room to stand by her son's side. She looked to Richie in amusement before saying, "So guess I'm the fucker you're referring to."

Greyson turned his head to look at Richie who let out a shaky breath as he looked between Greyson and Y/N who had the same expression on their faces. "Well, shit," Richie muttered as he chuckled. "Y/N Uris had a son? What's your name, kid?"

"Greyson," the young boy replied, his eyes flickering over Richie's face hesitantly. "And you are?"

"Grey, this is Richie Tozier," Y/N introduced, the man giving Greyson a short nod in response. She then gestured towards Beverly and Ben who were looking between the boy and Y/N in disbelief much like the others had done. "And this is Beverly Marsh and Ben Hanscom."

Ben gave the boy a small wave while Beverly smiled softly and Y/N couldn't help but notice that Greyson had taken a small step closer to her. She knew this was a sign that he was becoming a bit overwhelmed and a tad nervous, so she gently gave his shoulder a small squeeze to tell him that it was okay and she was there.

Greyson relaxed a little and put a small smile on his face as he waved at the adults. "Uh. . .hi," he greeted softly as he leaned into his mother's touch.

"Oh my gosh, Y/N. He looks so much like you," Beverly whispered, a smile on her face as she looked to the girl who used to be her best friend. For a moment she felt a sense of guilt wash over her. After all, she hadn't even known Y/N had a son and by the looks of it, he had to have been alive for sixteen or so years now.

"It's nice to meet you, Greyson. If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?" Ben asked curiously, a small smile creeping onto his face as he looked at Greyson in fascination. To think that one of his childhood friends is a mother was mind blowing to him. Then again, if anyone were to be the best at parenting it would be Y/N.

"Sixteen," Greyson replied before looking down at his shoes, obviously not used to having this much attention.

Y/N noticed and opened her mouth to say something when Bill spoke up. "Come on, guys. Don't pester the kid. Drinks on me, okay?" Bill said and that was enough to pull the Losers' attention away from Greyson and back to the fact that they were all reuniting.

Greyson instantly relaxed once the eyes were off of him and Y/N momentarily locked eyes with Bill before mouthing, "Thank you." Bill just gave her a small smile in response and then the group began to take their seat.

Greyson surprisingly was quick to go and sit beside Bill, the action making Bill blink in surprise before looking over at Y/N who smiled softly and sat on the other side of her son. Bill felt his heart deflate a little at the fact that he wasn't getting to sit next to the girl, but he couldn't complain because something about her son choosing to sit next to him made his heart swell with joy.

Eddie sat down on the other side of Y/N with a small smile in her direction and before long the whole table was full except for one chair. It was in that moment that Y/N found herself pausing, her gaze flickering over to the empty chair beside Eddie while the soft sound of Greyson's voice echoed in her ear as he rambled to Bill about how he was inspired to be a writer because of him.

She knew who the seat was for and a small frown began to take over her features. Y/N went to reach for her phone in her pocket only to be reminded once again that she had left her phone at home. Sighing, the girl looked away from the chair and began to talk with her friends, but the reunion was still not enough to keep her distracted from the nagging feeling in her stomach that told her something was wrong and the one question that kept circling through her head.

Where was Stan?

* * *

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