#‘I’d do anything for my friends’ taken WAY too literally/pos

[cupophrogs]

@8um8le when a bestie needs a hand, by god is D4 gonna be there/j

[shurisneakers]

harmless (ii)

Summary: Bucky volunteers to go stop a small time villain, but nothing can prepare him for what exactly he has to deal with. (Bucky x villain!reader, drabble series)

Warnings: cursing, stealing cultural landmarks, frustrated bucky

Word count: 1.6k

A/N: made a header 4 this fic but i couldn’t take it seriously enough <3 

if you have any ideas for future inventions/evil plans, lemme know! it’s always fun to hear from y’all. 

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Previous Part || Series Masterlist

It’s roughly a week before he sees you next.

Right on time too, according to the briefings he had received. Once a week you’d come up with your next batshit crazy idea and someone would be sent to make sure you didn’t execute it.

It was more of a babysitting gig than anything. Most people would do one, maybe two assignments before asking to not be sent again. 

He was not most people. He volunteers to go again. His afternoon is relatively free and he’s bored. 

Also, and more importantly, he needs to get out of the house before Sam finds out what he did.

“You’ll find her near the Statue of Liberty.”

“How do we know?”

“Oh, she tells us.”

“...she tells us where to find her?”

“Most times, yes. She says it’s time efficient.”

Absurd. He thinks you’re absurd.

Bucky finds you in line to board the ferry. You’re dressed to the nines like an obnoxious tourist, even though you were a local, topped with binoculars and a bucket hat. 

On an unrelated note, he thinks that maybe the mission today is to kill you for daring to wear sandals with socks like a suburban dad. A shudder runs through his body when he sees it.  

He’s wearing all black and a baseball cap. Somehow he’s standing out more than you are.

He boards the ferry behind you, keeping a close eye on all your movements. You take your place near the railing, a seat near the front of the boat. 

His phone rings. He answers it, expecting Sam to screech at him for painting Redwing neon pink again. He should have known it was coming after he shoved Bucky off the quinjet before he had time to strap his parachute on properly. 

“I thought I told you to bring a cape.” 

He quickly looks up at you but you’re not facing him. You have your phone held up to your ear, however.

“How did you get this number?” he asks icily.

“I knew you’d show up again.” Your head tilts to look at the statue in the distance. “Also, thanks for the door money, but I’m not sure I appreciate how you think the least creepy way to give someone money is to drop it off anonymously at their doorstep.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” He swiftly gets up, stalking over to where you’re sitting. He was advised not to do anything aggressive. Advised was a flexible word. 

“Because I wasn’t going to answer it.” You look up at his figure looming over you. “Oh, hey.”

The phone is still pressed to the side of your face even though he’s right beside you. He cuts the call, shoving it back into his pocket.

“Allow me to introduce my pl-”

“What are you doing here?” He cuts to the chase. 

You send him a glare. “I was going to say it before you told me to. And sit down before everyone thinks you��re going to kill me.”

“Why are you going there?” He doesn’t have time for this, he thinks. He has important things to do. Like watching the reruns of Masterchef Junior. 

He sits in the seat beside you.

“Look at us.” You grin at him. “Me with the evilest outfit I could think of, you with your... Addams Family cosplay. We’re like, two peas in a po-”

“Start explaining,” he interjects. 

You roll your eyes. “I’m going to shrink the Statue of Liberty and use it as a keychain.”

“What?” It’s probably the most benign plan he’s ever heard in his life.

“I’m kidding.” Oh, good. “I’m not using it as a keychain, I’m taking it to class.” Nevermind. 

“What?” He finds himself repeating his previous question.

“I’m shrinking all the statues I can find. I want to use it in my classroom to teach the kids.”

“You’re... a teacher?” He blinks.

“You got a problem with that?” You look offended, to say the least. 

“No.” It’s not what he would peg your occupation as. He didn’t think you had one at all. “How are you planning on shrinking it?”

You rummage through the ugliest fanny pack he has ever had the misfortune of seeing. You pull out a small ring box, complete with a bow tied neatly on top. 

“I was saving this for our third anniversary, but-” you offer him a nervous laugh.

His stony expression doesn’t change, not even a blink. 

“Fine, Jesus, you’re no fun,” you huff, dropping the emotional act when he doesn’t look amused. 

You flip open the lid. Inside there are a few small disks. It looks familiar, he realises.

“Your friend Ant-Boy didn’t file a patent, so I just took his whole shtick.” He wants to defend Scott’s honour; it’s Ant-Man not boy. He doesn’t. He’s too transfixed on what you have in your hand.

“Pym particles.”

“The diet version.” You pick up one of them carefully. “A ripoff, but effective. Just gotta attach it to the thing I want to shrink and give it a few minutes.”

“You’re going to steal the Statue of Liberty,” he says, frankly a little taken aback that you were serious.

“Would you relax? I’ll put it back.”

“That’s not the point,” he damn near exclaims. “You can’t take away the Statue of Liberty just because you feel like it.”

“I literally can.” You point to the chips in your hand. “That’s the point of this, keep up.”

He feels exasperated. He didn’t sign up for this when he became an Avenger.

“Give me the box.” He makes a grab for it but you yank it away from his reach.

“What do you think you’re doing?” 

“I don’t have time for this.” His reruns would begin in an hour.

“That’s my problem, because...” you trail off. 

He rolls his eyes, makes a grab at the box again. His tactic is different this time. He stealthily pins one of your arms down so that you’re basically incapacitated.

“Hey! Stop that.” You fumble against his reach, shoving him with your elbow.

“Just give me the thing and we can all go home for the day,” he huffs, unfazed by your squirming.

“No! Over my dead bod-” 

He doesn’t immediately notice what goes wrong in the scuffle. 

Until you look at the ground near your feet. A disk lay there, undisturbed.

“Is that-” All of a sudden, either he’s getting taller or the ceiling of the boat is getting lower.

“Oops,” you say, not remorseful in the slightest. 

“Are we going to-”

“I’d give it five minutes max.” 

Great. He was stuck on a boat that was beginning to shrink. The other passengers were either oblivious or ignorant to seats that were starting to become too small for them, but Bucky’s heightened senses and extreme reflexes made it hard to skip.

He nudges the piece of tech with his foot. Maybe he can kick it off the boat.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” you warn solemnly. He wants to disagree but doesn’t know enough about the device to dispute you. 

“Fix this,” he hisses, panic slightly rising. His fingers find their way to his phone to send out an emergency text requesting backup and mass evacuation. 

“I think it’s a rather lovely day for a swim, don’t you?” You stare dreamily at the waves that were inching closer up the boat. 

Or you were inching closer to the water. Technicalities were frivolous. 

“There are other people on this boat.”

“River’s big enough for all of us, I reckon.”

“Fix it.” 

“Or what?” There’s a wicked gleam in your eye. “We both know I have the upper hand here.”

“Or I call the entirety of the Avengers here and haul your ass to prison.”

“Will they bring snacks?”

You’re insufferable. You know it. But you also are the fastest way to get out of this situation and right now, he didn’t want to be responsible for a shipwreck simulation. 

“Fine. Tell me what you want.”

“I like soy chips.”

“Soy chi-” He nearly throws his hands up in frustration. “You know what I’m talking about.” 

“I want one historical artifact so I can impress the kids. They think I’m the cool teacher and I want to keep that reputation alive.”

“What makes you think I can arrange for that?”

“You’ve been alive since goddamn dinosaurs roamed this earth, I’m sure you have some connections.” You pause to assess his face. “You know, you don’t look a day over 29. Dermatologists must hate yo-”

“I’ll get you an artifact, now fix the fuckin’ boat.”

“You promise?” You grin brightly. 

He stares at you. You are unyielding. 

The boat’s uncomfortably small and people are beginning to take notice. Worried murmurs fill the air behind him.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” You shrug simply.

You kneel over, picking up the chip from the ground. You do nothing else for two minutes, instead turning away from him to look at the Statue of Liberty that was coming closer.

It takes him a while to realise that half his body isn’t hanging off his chair anymore. The ceiling is moving further and further away from the top of his head. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He wants to strangle you. 

Why did he listen to you when all of this would have been over the minute he kicked it off the ship. 

“You can drop it off at my lair on Monday and pick it up on Friday.” You gather your belongings, leaving him steaming behind you. “Nice talkin’ to ya, Sergeant.” 

You step over him, flashing him a quick smile before walking off the boat with the rest of the tourists as if nothing had just taken place. When he looks down, the stupid ring box is on his lap.

He sits there, unmoving, eyes fixed on the container.

The ferry conductor asks if he’s going to get off the boat. 

He simply shakes his head.

Next part

[shadowfae]

We’re all pretty aware that the tumblr otherkin community is at a huge decline; I was wondering if you have any theories as to why that is?

American Protestantism, the decline of queer oppression in North America and the AIDS crisis, helicopter parenting, web 3.0, morality politics, and  Tumblr’s porn ban; roughly in that order and rolled up into one bombshell that was a few years in the coming but nobody really saw it and understood it until it was far too late.

That was a mouthful and probably only made sense if you follow current cyberpolitical theory. For some of you reading this, as with every other hot take I have this has a chance of being passed around, that alone is enough. But for others who had no idea what I just said and need the ELI5 version, let me explain that. Buckle up, this’ll be a long one, and will go into fandom history a bit as well because it is actually relevant.

As we know, tumblr is a very American-centric platform. Twitter is also this way, but less so, but tumblr has it bad. Now, I’m ‘lucky’ in the fact that I’m Canadian and a twenty minute drive from the American border, so that puts me in the ‘privileged’ majority. (I say privileged because I’m not really sure what else to call it. Most of the information going around about politics either directly affects me or indirectly affects me approximately one or two links of contact away. Someone who’s only influenced by American politics because it makes their sister��s online friends sad is not going to be privileged in that way.)

This means that American politics and their social climate overwhelmingly affects tumblr’s social climate. This also bleeds through into other fandom spaces, on twitter, instagram, and Pixiv to name a few places; but here’s where I spend the majority of my time so here’s what I’ve witnessed.

America’s main religion, as far as I understand (from the raised agnostic and currently neopagan view I have), is some weirdass capitalistic-Protestantism that is so many miles from what the actual Bible says that if I were a betting man and knew more about cults than I did, I’d say it’s some weird fucking cult and never set foot in the country again for any reason that isn’t gaming free shipping through a PO box. If you have no idea what I just said but are at least vaguely familiar with Christianity, this graphic explains it pretty well. So we can see there’s some glaring issues with that ideal.

The decline of queer oppression and the rise of queer rights in North America, which is to tenderly include my own country but we all know when people say ‘in NA’ they mean ‘America, and Canada where it applies because the right-wing Republicans are really good in the propaganda department to convince everyone that Mexico is a drug-lords-and-anarchy wasteland to the point where even I don’t actually know what’s down there other than bad drivers and heat’; means two things. One, it’s a good thing by a long shot and do not mistake this as me thinking queer oppression being lessened is a bad thing. But two, it means that thanks to the AIDS crisis, queer folks lost a lot of first-person sources as history.

The queer elders in NA who survived are typically either a) bitter anarchists who are often POC, probably still dirt poor and do recreational drugs or b) university-tenured TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists). Category A are the people who Republicans have deemed worthless in every way, because racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other ways to be wrong and different and Evil that they can’t handle, because Jeezus would never want them to actually learn to love someone who wasn’t just like them, and they don’t have the compassion to do better. Category B are the people who want to be different in just a teensie little bit, typically with TERFs they want to be lesbians, but they don’t want to challenge the status quo. They’re fine with the way things work, they just want to be on top oppressing others over ripping the whole damn thing down and building a more forgiving system.

Now, due to all those ‘isms and the cheerfully malicious aid of the Republicans, pun not intended but drives home the cruelty of it all, we also see the rise of helicopter parenting. The invention of the internet did not really help this. Basically what you’ve got is a whole bunch of parents who saw the civil rights movement, just got access to the internet and things going viral, know the world is changing, and like all parents, they’re scared for their children. Now instead of parents knowing one or two people in their classes who just went missing one day and everyone assumed they ran away, they hear about eight homicides in the city of kids going to parks at night and dying. The Satanic Panic was another event around this time that contributed to that, but I’ll let you research that one.

This means that all of these parents, instead of doing what their parents typically did and let their kids wander off for the day so long as they’re back by sundown, they can’t let their children out of their sight. There might be a freak accident where their child is decapitated on the playground swing! Their baby might get murdered by an evil Satanist walking home from school! Their dearest darling might go online and tell their address to someone who’s got a 100% chance of being a pedophile who will show up and kidnap them in the night!

…You get the idea. 

Combine those three things I just established, what we’ve got is a lot of queer kids who have a lot of internalized shame for being different and wrong, because they’re queer, and they can’t find spaces offline to be themselves, because all of the elders who would do that are dead and/or inaccessible and their parents won’t let them go to any clubs that aren’t school-related, which they’ll never find a GSA or queer club because Republicans, ‘isms, propaganda, and the war on Category A queer adults have all done their best to ensure that those spaces don’t exist.

So you have a generation of kids who I am the youngest of. The first generation on the internet. The late Web 1.0 (usenets and Geocities) and early Web 2.0 (livejournal was the big one, ff.net too, also 4chan but fuck those guys) generation. What we were taught was: trust nobody on the internet with your real info no matter how much you like them, this is a wilderness and any crimes that happen won’t be punished or seen so don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to be the victim of one, and everything you put online is never getting taken down so don’t put anything up that you’re not willing to have on the front page of your local newspaper.

This worked out pretty well, actually! You had kids who knew that if they got in trouble, there was no backup coming to save them. Because the form that backup might take - parents and police - wasn’t going to help. Best case, they’d be banned from their friends and online support groups for being queer. Worst case, they’d be jailed and put in juvie and conversion therapy and turn to drugs and become evil Satanists just like everyone says they secretly are already. So they learned very quickly to take care of themselves. Nobody was going to save them, so they learned to not need saving.

And then, well, Web 2.0 shifted to Web 3.0. Livejournal died because parents - the Warriors for Innocence was the big name - went “gasp how horrible my children are being exposed to the evil pedos and homosexuals they’re going to do drugs and die of AIDS!”. Which is uh. It’s filled with a lot of bigotry, and I’m not excusing them - absolutely I am not - but you can kind of see where they’re coming from, if you tilt your head and squint.

Either way, LJ died, tumblr took its place, Facebook was fast taking off, and the fandom folks who had seen mailing lists go inactive, web admins take their fanfic sites down due to copyright, entire fandoms burnt to the ground in flame wars, said ‘fuck that we’re making our own place’ and that’s how AO3 got made.

That’s important. A lot of folks move to AO3, because well, the rules let them. The rules say ‘you can throw literally anything up here so long as it’s fan content and is not literally illegal, so we don’t get taken down’. It’s a swing for the first generation internet users, those kids who know this place is a wilderness and are carving out our own sanctuary.

But. The children under us. The children for whom AIDS is a nightmarish fairy tale, for whom the ghost stories are conversion therapy, for whom know they can’t really talk to their parents about being queer but can trust they probably won’t get kicked out over it. The children who haven’t spent ten seconds without supervision except online, and their reaction isn’t ‘oh thank god I’m finally free to express myself’ but ‘if I get in trouble, who will protect me?’.

And there’s nobody there. Because we went in knowing there was no backup. And that was fine. But now, the actual adults have figured out that hey uh, maybe we should make cyber laws? Maybe we should make revenge porn and grooming children over the internet crimes? And they grew up with that. They grew up learning that no, even if your parents are suffocating and controlling, they’re always be there for you! Some adult will always be there to protect you!

That isn’t the case. It’s not. But they expect it, because it’s always been done for them. They don’t really want to change the status quo, because that means doing it themselves. They can’t do that, because they don’t know how, they’ve been controlled for every single part of their lives thanks to helicopter parenting and without that control, they don’t know how to keep their lives together, and they demand someone come and control it for them, without restraining them.

Effectively, they want someone to ensure they never face the consequences of their actions. Helicopter parents will rescue you from whatever you did, because you’re their precious baby and it doesn’t matter if you punched a kid, you can do no wrong and the other kid clearly started it.

But being queer is doing wrong. Being queer is something Jeezus doesn’t approve of. So they want to make it something he could approve of! But if it’s too off what they consider to be okay, if it’s too different and weird and wrong and evil, that can’t do, that’s still bad, and they’re precious angels, and children, and minors, why are we the adults not protecting them and letting them see it? Why aren’t we being just like their parents  but queer-friendly, why aren’t we protecting the children?

The adults who taught us were the children of those who died as a result of AIDS. The eldest of my generation knew some of them personally. My therapist’s younger brother died at 20 of AIDS, and she told me what it was like. But they don’t have that. These kids of web 3.0, they don’t have that. What they have is over-controlling parents, and the expectation that someone will always be there to protect them but hopefully in ways that don’t hurt them this time, no real understanding of why Category A queer elders are the way they are, and so much internalized shame that they have to do some pretty fancy logic-leaping to keep them from collapsing entirely.

They can’t turn into Category A queer youngsters, because they don’t know how to unravel the system around them, because they’ve never had to actually make choices in their lives and live with the consequences, because they don’t have the example of how to do it. They can’t unravel their internalized shame because again, that’s hard and they don’t have their parents to take away the consequences and pain. It doesn’t come easy to them, so it may as well not come at all.

But, you ask, if Category A queer elders aren’t around to teach the kids, then how are they learning anything positive at all? Well, Category B, our university-tenured TERFs, who don’t want to change the status quo but want to just be at the top of it instead.

For a lot of kids who don’t know how to make hard choices but want to be queer, this is an extremely attractive option. But when they go online to queer spaces, a lot of them say fuck terfs, we don’t support your hate, and they go ‘yeah okay that makes sense’. They can say fuck terfs without ever actually questioning why terfs are bad. They’re Bad and Evil, just like drug addicts, just like fairytale nazis, just like the evil homophobes.

And we saw them say ‘yeah fuck terfs’ and we were like, ‘aight you got it’ and we never questioned if they actually understood us. They didn’t. They didn’t, and we didn’t do enough to fix it, because not enough of us realized the problem. So terfs got a little sneaky. They hid behind dogwhistles and easy little comments, hiding their rhetoric in queer theory that you’ll absolutely miss if you just memorize it and never actually question it and understand why that point is being made.

This goes back to America sucking, because their school system is far more focused on rote memorization over actual logic and understanding of the text. They’re engaging with queer theory the way they’ve been taught, which is memorize and don’t think, don’t question. Besides, questioning and understanding is hard. Being shown different points of view and asked what they think is not only hard but requires them to go against all of the conditioning that says to just listen and agree and never question it, which goes back to tearing the system and internalized shame down, and we’ve established they can’t do that so naturally they don’t do that.

This begets, then, the rise of exclusionary politics. They’re turning into Category B queer youngsters, because we told them ‘hey that’s a terf talking point what are you doing’ and they never questioned why. They learned you can do all sorts of things, just don’t say X, Y, or Z, because they never thought deeply about it.

The children who have grown on Web 3.0 do not want to do any heavy lifting to make things easier for themselves long-run. They want to do as little as possible and have things get better for them. There isn’t enough of us left in Category A, because Category B terfs are very good at recruiting young folks and Cat. A is overwhelming poor, dead, and easily dismissed in the system as evil and bad, so we can’t exactly convince the young folks to listen. If all of the young kids could agree to tear down the system, a lot more older folks might listen. Change always starts with the young, and there’s a reason for that.

But Republicans have figured out, if you get people fighting, they never put together a force that can actually stop you. TERFs, who want the exact same thing as Republicans but with themselves on top, are doing this to queer youth, and Cat. A elders can’t fight back because there isn’t enough of them and the odds are against them, and the young folk like me who follow their lead.

People can kinda handle gay people. It’s not so far from the acceptable normal that it’s impassable. But you want them to handle kinky people? Gay people of colour? Kinky gay people of colour? Trans people? Those are bridges too far to step across. The original idea was to get the foot in the door with marriage equality and inch our way through with racial equality, sex positivity, dismantling ableism and perisexism (forgive me if that isn’t the word for anti-intersex ‘ism), and see if we can’t patch up the system instead of inciting a civil war over this and have to tear down the system entirely.

Well, we might’ve managed that if not for AIDS being the perfect ‘Jeezus is killing all the evil gay people for being sinners’ propaganda machine. As it stands now, not a chance in hell. So long as Republicans and terfs keep everyone fighting, nobody has the power to dismantle their empire, and they stay in power.

So then, you ask me, “Lu what the fuck does that have to do with the decline of otherkinity on tumblr???” and now that you’ve got all that background knowledge, here is your answer.

Those children who want their experiences curated for them and the evil icky content they don’t like to be gone because it disgusts them and anything that disgusts them is clearly sinful problematic and should be destroyed, are what we call ‘antishippers’, or anti for short.

They like being progressive. Sort of. They learned what Republicans and terfs have honed to a fine talent: keep people fighting, hold them to a bar they have to constantly make or risk being ostracized, and harass the people who don’t play along into getting out of your sight forever. Sound familiar?

They learned of otherkinity, and particularly fictionkind, because web 3.0 means if something goes viral on one site, it doesn’t just go viral on that site, it makes it to worldwide newspapers and twitter and nobody ever, ever fucking forgets it. They realized the following: “Hey wait, if I’m this character for realsies, not only does it help me deal with the internalized shame I’ve done nothing to actually fix because that takes work, I can also tell these people who draw gross content I don’t like they’re hurting me personally, and that actually sounds credible, and I can shame them into stopping”.

If this is your first time here and that sounds sickening, it damn well should, and I am so, so sorry that any of us had to witness this, and I am more sorry I and everyone else who personally witnessed this didn’t realize what was going on and put a stop to it. I answer asks and browse the tags and clear up misinformation and it isn’t just a genuine desire to help. It’s damage control, and my own way of trying to deal with the guilt of not stopping this. I’m well aware I couldn’t have seen it coming, I was a teenager myself still learning and no one person has that much power. I still feel like I should have done more, and I’ll do what I can to fix what’s within my power to fix.

So back to the story. This all culminates around 2016 or so. Trump wins the election, and every queer person ever knows they’re fucked, and the younger generation’s only ever heard horror stories, never seen actual oppression that this could bring. We’re all scared. We all don’t know what to do. Nobody has any answers or any control over the situation.

So they lash out. They attack others for drawing things they don’t like, for challenging them in literally any way, for asking them to reconsider the vile shit they just said, for so much as defending themselves from the harassment they just got. And when challenged, they yell “But I’m a minor! A literal child! How dare you attack me, clearly you get off on this, you evil pedophile!” and they sling around every insult in the book until one sticks. Pedophile is a pretty good one, so is abuser, and sometimes zoophile works out too. Freak is great, everyone gets right pissed off about it.

The fact that Category A queer elders were called pedophiles and freaks is not a fact they know or care about. The fact that they are quickly making every fandom community super toxic is also not a fact they care about. The fact that the ‘kin community has words and terminology and they actually mean shit, and the fact that they’re spreading misinformation faster than we can keep up with, are not facts they care about.

So they come in, take our terms, make it impossible for us to find new folks. They realize our anger is easily a power trip, because we’re already made fun of, so they get off on the little power they can find and make fun of us too, and then when we get rightfully annoyed and pissed off, they can hide behind being minors.

Then tumblr implements their porn ban, because nobody’s stopping them, because it isn’t profitable to have porn on here. Considering most of the otherkin community, and most fandom communities, are full of adults who do occasionally talk about NSFW things, and the fact that they’re just banning everyone who so much as breathes wrong, this begins the start of a mass exodus, scattering already fragile communities to twitter, pillowfort, dreamwidth, and a few other places. Largely, twitter, where you can’t make a post longer than a snappy comeback and where the algorithm is literally designed to piss you off as much as possible.

So community elders have largely left, because they can’t stand the drama and the pain of what’s happened, and that’s if they didn’t get banned for being kinky furries who do talk about how their kintypes merge with their sexuality. Most community members have also left or stopped talking about being ‘kin, because they get associated with antishippers and toxicity and it’s just not worth it. Those of us who are left get drowned out by misinformation and trolls and wishkin and antishippers who appropriate our terminology because it supports them getting a power trip, and whenever we argue, we get called pedophiles and freaks and worse.

And now there isn’t much left. I hope we get to find a better place. Othercon was a good place to talk about it, I did a whole panel (it’s on Youtube!) about what we want to do about it. But I don’t really have any answers. 

But to sum it all up... America’s political climate ultimately culminated in destroying queer spaces, and we survived, and then people who wanted to destroy smaller communities to get on top showed up and we were all but defenseless against something we had never, ever dealt with before on this scale.

One of my twitter mutuals mentioned how kinning and otherkin are now completely separate communities. It’s really the best I can do to keep hoping that continues, until nobody realizes the words are at all connected to each other. It’s the best anyone can hope for, now. I hate it. I hate every part of this. But maybe we can salvage what’s left.

[imaginariumrpc]

okay so the lovely @imbicilite​ / @whitrph​ and i were talking and it gave me the idea and we thought it was a great idea to spread it around so here’s how it goes: when talking with someone about pretty much anything tbh, but especially for something that could potentially be triggering, communicate with color codes based on city traffic lights ! GREEN means it’s good to talk about these things and you’re not feeling triggered by the topic, YELLOW means to slow down or stop talking about the topic at for now while RED means to stop the conversation about the topic immediately until green again where the conversation can divert into another topic or they feel safe to talk about it again !! this is EXTREMELY important, because it’s a way to alert others that you’re going to be talking about something that could possibly upset someone because of the subject matter, especially for those who may get triggered by a certain topic - even without you realizing it because squicks and triggers can honestly be anything, it could be different words or phrases or certain topics - and can cause severe anxiety in those affected, even panic attacks or flashbacks, and because we want to be considerate and respectful towards one another, it’s important that we use these to help our friends and fellow rpers know that we’re going to be posting or talking about something they might not want to see or talk about, and it’s of utmost importance to make them feel safe, it’s best to use this to be a more supportive friend and a member of the rpc!!

on a sidenote, i’m also here to tell you about tone indicators !! keep in mind that i didn’t come up with nor invent the concept of tone tags itself, but it was being spread around for a while now and i’d figured i’d talk about it !! essentially, tone indicators are used to indicate if the person is joking, being serious, etc., neurodivergent people often have trouble conveying and understanding emotion and tone through written text, using tone indicators is really helpful for neurodivergent people to make it easier for them to read/convey, it is also very helpful for people with anxiety. i encourage anyone who reads this to also type the meaning of the tone tag ( i.e: i love you !! /p for platonic ), so it is more accessible for neurodivergent and disabled people, like those who use screen readers.

“why should we use tone tags?” one might ask, but as an autistic, disabled and otherwise neurodivergent person myself, sometimes i don’t always get my friends and fellow mutual’s tones by their message but when they use tone indicators, it helps me understand and, not to mention that it can be really helpful and avoid misunderstandings. i would also like to note that NOT ALL neurodivergent people want you to use tone indicators on them, so if they don’t want you to use tone tags on them, please respect their wishes.

“i don’t like tone tags!” one might add, well, okay... but don’t make fun of the people that use them, it’s not a big deal, and if you’re a neurotypical who insists on not using tone tags when a neurodivergent person clearly asked you to, get your head out of your ass.

“using /j at the end of a joke ruins it!!” one might bitch, and okay but... it might be ruined for you, but it still makes me laugh, personally, so please try and get used to it, and not to mention, what’s more important: making sure you’re clear with your tone so that there’s no misunderstandings or throwing a fit just because the joke’s ruined for you?

additionally, some other things to keep in mind !! please do not mock the use of tone tags, you may not need them but some people do, not everyone can tell when something is a joke, when someone’s either being platonic, romantic or sexual in intentions, etc.,, especially when there’s no visual cues or tones of voice to help us, just be nice about it, it’s... really not hard, man. if you don’t use a tone tag and someone reads the tone of your statement incorrectly, do not get upset with them or laugh at them for not getting it - that is perpetuating ableism and/or sanism, whether you intentionally intend it or not. just kindly clarify and next time, keep in mind that tone tags are very helpful for neurodivergent, disabled and people with anxiety disorders. using a tone tag isn’t an excuse to be mean either, you can’t just say something mean or not cool and then put /j ( “joking” ) after it to get away with it, don’t be an ass. if you’re saying something that could be anxiety inducing for others, i would highly recommend putting the tone tags at not only the end but also the beginning of that post. do not intentionally use tone tags incorrectly “as a joke”, to confuse people, etc., the entire point of tone tags is to clarify, not confuse people, if you intentionally use them incorrectly, you’re an ass. keep in mind that no one has to use all the tone tags, use what you’d like, respect others who use what they would like, use them however feels rights to you. for me personally, sometimes i use multiple, sometimes only one, or sometimes none at all, just do what feels right, depending on who i’m talking to and how long i’ve known this person or group of people i’m speaking to, it’ll be fine, and if someone asks for clarification on what you mean, that’s okay, kindly clarify for them. additionally, please be patient if people don’t know what tone tags are, someone might not even be aware of what they are and that’s not their fault, just patiently explain it to them or link them to a source !! education always helps !! please don’t use “/srs or serious” as a joke, some neurodivergent and/or disabled people don’t need you to use three tone tags, and in my case, i’m presuming you’re neurotypical if you’re doing that when conversing with me, but what i’m trying to say is it looks like you’re babying us neurodivergents / disabled folx, so try to use only two tags ( that is, if that person is okay with it !! ), because some people don’t need you to use three tags.

please note that the following aren’t every single example out there and there are different terminologies in different languages, but they are important, a few examples of these are: 

“/j = joking / used when saying something in a joking manner, “so im pretty much the president of oreos /j”, 

“/hj = half joking / used when saying something that’s kind of a joke but kind of serious / “well,,,,, im usually right /hj” / 

“/s or /sarc / refers to the opposite of what you really want to say / “i just [clenches fists] love...... being sad..... /s”, 

“/srs / used when saying something you really mean / “i really appreciate you /srs””, 

“/nsrs = not serious / used when saying something not too seriously / “you’re the worst /nsrs”, 

“/lh = lighthearted = used when something’s said lightheartedly / “hEY LEAVE ME OUT OF THIS /lh” / i’d say something like this when me and my friends would get into a silly argument and they’re trying to ask my opinion on a topic”, 

“/ij = referring to something that’s only understood by people with special knowledge about something, typically only a small group of friends or a group of people would be aware of, those outside of the group would most likely be confused by it or not find it funny in the same way people within in the group would / “aAAAAAAAAA MY NUGGIES!!!!! /ij””, 

“/ref = a reference to media, usually movies, tv, music, etc., “yOU SHALL NOT PAAAAAAAASSSSSSS /ref”, 

“/t = teasing, use when teasing someone or provoking someone, often playfully, “aiight sure mx idk wtf im doin /t”, 

“nm = not mad, to indicate you’re not actually mad or upset about something / “ow... i felt that /nm”, 

“lu = a little upset / used when about about something or someone, but not too upset / “oh... that sucks /lu”, 

“/nbh = “nobody here” = often used when talking about something vague to ensure your friends it’s not indirectly to or about them / “sometimes i just wanna..... tell someone to shut the fuck up /nbh”, 

“/nay = not at you / used when saying something but not meaning it at the person you’re responding to / “god i can’t stand lame people /nay”, 

“/ay = “at you”, make the person aware you’re addressing them”, 

“/g or /gen = used when saying or asking something for real / “i’m proud of you /g” or “have you watched the news?? /gen”, 

“/th = threat, used when giving a genuine threat / “if you don’t stop, i’ll block you /th”, 

“/p = platonic, a friendship type of love, used when saying something with platonic intentions / “i love you /p”, 

“/r = romantic intentions, typically of partners when saying something with romantic intentions / “i love you /r””, 

“/a = alterous, an attraction best described as wanting emotional closeness without necessarily being at all or entirely platonic and/or romantic, used when saying with alterous intentions / “i love you /a””

“/m = metaphor / used when saying something metaphorically / “god you’re a shining star /m””

“/li = literal / used when saying something literally / “i hate pears /li””

“/rh = rhetorical / a question asked in order to create a dramatic effect or to make a point rather than to get an answer / used when saying or asking something rhetorically / “who cares? /rh””

“/hyp = hyperbole, exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally ; “i have a million things to do today”

“/sx = sexual intent, used when meaning something in a sexual way”, 

“/nsx = nonsexual intent, used when meaning something in a not sexual way”, 

“/pos = positive / used when saying something and meaning it in a positive way / “omg im gonna cry /pos”, implied they’re crying for a happy reason”, 

“/neg = negative / used when saying something and meaning it in a negative way / “omg im gonna cry /neg”, implied they’re crying for an upsetting reason”, and 

“/neu = neutral / used to show that what you’re saying is neutral or that you feel indifferent about it / “yeah i don’t care man do what you want /neu”, you don’t care about something but not in a mean or a negative way, you’re just indifferent”.

on a final note, HERE is a list of tone tags both in english and in other languages ( namely italian, spanish, portuguese, french, polish, german, lithuanian, serbian, dutch, indonesian, romanian, bulgarian, russian, hebrew, japanese, mandarin and korean !! ) and HERE are the list of sources about the content of tone tags !! i wish everyone reading this a lovely day !!

[princess--catherine]

Maybe y’all will hate me for this, I’m all for women’s rights and the Me Too movement but has it maybe taken a turn it shouldn’t have? I can already feel the hatred

Just in the past couple weeks I’ve seen at least 3 “predators/rapists exposed”, and after looking into it I saw no predatory behavior to expose that was given. And people are losing their shit over this “cancelation?” The evidence for this one? “Had a minor backstage”...you think that didn’t and doesn’t currently happen with idk, every Disney star EVER and boy band on the radio? I’m sure a portion of Billie Eilish fans who’s parents buy backstage passes are REAL young, is she cancelled too? Since when does having a minor in your presence = any type of sexual behavior? This allegation causally mentions “backstage minor” and quickly moves to “predator” with no cohesion there. Since when does an adult simply being around a minor automatically make you guilty of doing sick shit? The “evidence” shown was pretty pathetic: cropped and blocked out texts with no name as to who it’s from, no name but said star predator, no time stamp or date, no pics, no voice memos, no emails, no proof of any kind that there was any truth to the claims, no detail, no real allegation actually even made from what I saw. Unless the “so and so did this” part was in invisible ink. I could literally google the date of a ‘insert famous person here’ concert or general tour dates, and do the same with a texting app or with someone else’s phone. This is an Accusation on someone of a serious sex crime on the sole basis maybe 5 texts, some of which are hidden, and ALL of which are anonymous, detail no criminal activity, are never worth ending or attempting to make sure someone’s career over.

Another one I saw was an explanation that another social media person made a somewhat crude comment/gusture towards a woman he knew but wasn’t super familiar with. One time, no actual touching. He was later told by a friend “not cool, other lady friend did not like”, he did as he should have and apologized, and it didn’t happen again- admittedly on both sides. The two girls told him everything was cool and okay, no harm no foul, don’t worry about it. It didn’t happen again and the friendship continued. Days later, “evidence” comes out from one of them citing him as a sexual predator for this situation. This incident. Yeah, it’s not cool to get in peoples space or compliment them in certain ways if your friendship is not on that level and it hasn’t been established. That I agree with, that it simply wasn’t very polite, but a) no one was actually touched physically in anyway and b) the “crude” comment from my understanding was about an outfit fitting her well or being firm fitting. Yeah, that might make ya feel a lil icky, but there was no sexual suggestion or threat. There’s a huge difference between unwanted attention and sexual harassment. Someone else later gets involved but says she’s “not comfortable/willing to discuss” but still insists he’s a predator but doesn’t show a single shred of any involvement or information. If I was these people being falsely accused, getting death treats and doxxed, and ultimately, “cancelled”/therefore loss of income possibly long term , with basically no evidence or someone saying shit like “yes, that’s a predator. Nobody gets to know why I’m saying that though. I don’t want to relive it, my bad. You horrible people need to stop supporting this sex offender!” I’d be sueing the shit out of someone and everyone for slander. Like this is unreal to me. It really blows my mind.

Before you message me hateful shit, hear me out. I’m not saying these guys are stand up, amazing, perfectly well behaved dudes. I’m not saying they’ve never done anything predatory or wrong before in their lives or careers. Lord knows narcissistic and higher than thou types run entertainment. I’m sure they all got their attitude and behavioral problems. I’m just saying the info I just read and described is almost nothing being real generous, no rational person sees that and labels someone a sex offender. You’re accusing someone of a very serious crime, in a lot of cases a fat ole felony, being a RSO list sometimes for a lifetime. Bill Cosby? Deserve it. Weinstien? Deserve it. Epstein? Deserved to be under the jail. I understand there’s not always physical evidence, or maybe there’s not enough to build a case/a case is unwanted by victim. Some say they want people to know and be warned. If that’s what you truly want, you truly truly are trying to protect others, go in 150%. Everything you got. But when this person publicly and openly calling someone out by name for being a “rapist/sexual predator”, absolutely dragging them thru the mud, and the reasoning, the justification for this is that he was dating other women? nah sis. That’s not how this works, getting played, while scummy, is NOT RAPE/SEXUAL ASSAULT/etc. (*this is excluding things that don’t apply to this particular story like recanting consent or knowingly passing on an STI) So sure, he’s a probably a POS, clearly unloyal, he’s maybe learned the art of sweet talkin his way into this one way monogamous relationship, and I frankly wouldnt feel bad if one of those girls who got played popped 3 of his tires, bought a fuck ton of spiders and sneak them into his bedroom or something. But not jail or prison. What he did (unless other info comes out) isn’t something to be uplifted or encouraged, it’s poor, unfair behavior. But what he did is not CRIMINAL. It’s just shitty and inconsiderate. And I know y’all are reading this thinkin “fuck this bitch”, making assumptions before you read a fraction of what I’m saying.

So let me explain a situation I was accidentally involved in a few years ago with someone who was “famous” around those parts and had lots of fans and groupies. Let’s call him “Lee”. Long story short, a friend and I were with him and different other people basically from like 8-9 pm to around 4 am. He was alone (out of my sight) only 3 times: once to use the bathroom at my friends before leaving, once in the men’s bathroom at a club, and for maybe 5 minutes when I had to change at my friends place before going back over. They lived in the same complex and stuff so it was basically throwing on some sweats and taking an elevator down. We hangout, drink, smoke, talk. Lowkey, chill.

I wake up the next day, someone texted me this link about “Lee” raping a girl. I’m thinking “holy shit, that’s scary and insane, we were just with him last night drinking and shit.” Keep reading...it says it was the night before. Same date we were with him. And the time the assault supposedly took place was when we had come back to his place, where other people were already there, we were sitting there forever talking/whatever, this girl who pointed the finger was not even in the room and left before we did. She poked her head in once and asked where Lee’s roommate was. He told her cookout, it’s late so it’ll be a minute. Asked her if she wanted to hang out with us. She declined. So I figured maybe this info was wrong somehow and at the time I wasn’t making the connection between that girl and this story. I was like, no way a girl would lie about that of all things and especially knowing it’d likely get picked up by the local media, or at least local gossip. Her life here would be over. My friend and I decided to go talk to the police even though I avoid the damn police at all costs. The first thing I asked this officer was: “are you POSITIVE this is the date, place, and time, and are you POSITIVE “Lee” is who she is accusing?” And I asked that mostly because I was not about to defend or vouch for someone about a situation I wasn’t present for. Also, I wasn’t the biggest fan of “Lee”, so I sure as shit I wasn’t getting myself involved and going to bat for him without knowing it’s right. The Officer was very adamant that all that info was correct, victim was very sure. I explained to him everything I explained above, but I’m sure in better detail and included texts, pics, videos all with times, plus receipts showing how this isn’t adding up. He wasn’t alone the entire night and early morning. Officer ask me if she (the victim) was visiting a roommate of Lee’s, if they were sleeping together during her visit, I told him the truth which was that I didn’t really know for sure but it was a possibility. He told me somebody else had claimed she was no longer welcome for unknown reasons and believed this to be be related. I explain to the officer that I won’t speak on her time with the roommate because I saw her only long enough for her to ask a question and respond to another. Before she peeped out the door, I had no clue anyone was in there. I said I think she told me her name but I’m awful with names even sober so. He started getting kinda hostile and cutting me short. I repeated exactly what I told him the first time: I’m only speaking on what I witnessed and what I know to be true. So, if you and she are correctly reciting the time, place, person being accused, this accusation is untrue. He first makes a bitchy threat like “you know these girls who lie for these athlete boys can really get in trouble? They all end up broke after the NFL anyway if they even make it. Lying for a friend is illegal, that’s breaking the law and will get YOU in jail.” I lost all my fear of speaking to a police officer at this point because they KNOW this man did not just call me a liar to my face despite my 1:2 of the evidence already fucking up this accusation. I told him that I honestly wasn’t a fan either professionally or personally of “Lee” and I would lie for no one regardless of friendship or status about this, I’d turn in my own flesh and bloood brother and sing like a bird if I caught him doing any sex offender shit. So again, I told this slow man with 2 braincelle this was the reason I asked about how sure he was and he believed the victim was, on the time, place, person, etc. Officer says something along the lines of “well, something happened to this girl and this boy’s gonna be hurtin for it. Someone’s getting charged here.” Which I dunno bout y’all, maybe I’m reading it wrong. But What I gathered from that is: “I’ve decided to be judge and jury in this situation and moreorless declare this young man guilty despite evidence in front of my own eyeballs that shows that there is a good chance the accused is innocent.

I have no idea why this happened. But after we spoke to that dickhead cop it was dropped relatively quickly. I don’t remember now if she pulled the charges herself or the state denied to prosecute. And even still, this followed him. The internet is forever. When his great grandkids google his college career, that will show up. Please keep in mind this was a black athlete, playing ball for a big college in the south, with a white girl accuser, all the cops I saw at that station were white in the short time I was there and at least the one I spoke to had his mind made up. He was loud and clear about that. He said basically the same to my friend who was interviewed separately, that he was determined to convict him, he was “the one”. This city I’m speaking of has been sued for police brutality against BPOC and I’ve heard my friends/classmates getting called the N word (hard ER) in the broad, open day light. So yeah add that info in with the rest and come to your own conclusion.

Before anyone comes for my throat again: idk exactly what DID happen but I know what DID NOT. Which to be clear, is pretty specifically: this rape with this person, did not happen here and at this time. So I’m not saying something didn’t happen but under different circumstances. I know trauma can mess with memories and if something did happen under different circumstances, I am so sorry that happened to her, I wouldn’t wish sexual assault on my worst enemy. I’m also not saying she necessarily had ill intentions or knew it would proceed and go viral as it did. The point is I just don’t know, no clue. Not throwing any blame or shade her way, all blame and shade on that cop though. ACABs, no excuse for his ass.

Anyway, y’all don’t gotta believe this since it’s been a few years and I highly doubt that stuff is anywhere in my phone like 4 iPhones and two laptops later. No reason to front, I don’t gain anything by lying but a guilty conscience. But this scenario that I btw, very much did not wish to be a part of, showed me another side of things. Can we agree to yes of course, trust and support women but also trust evidence and testimony? While, yes, stats show few women lie about this, can we at the same time understand questioning and thoroughly investigating such a heinous crime? Can we also recognize the system is literally built to “serve & protect” some by severely and systematically oppressing others? There are people, too many damn people, who have lost absolutely everything, served major time in big boy maximum security 23-1s, and have been put to death, based on biases and little to no evidence.

Next time you see an accusation, regardless of what it is, please do a little research. Make your own conclusion. Put yourself in their shoes, would you want to be “convicted” (either legally or through SM bullshit) on a snip it of convo with almost no information/context? Called a rapist cause you led someone on? No. You wouldn’t. Actually for any crime for that matter. You would reasonably ask and expect for it to be fair, two sided, and with as much evidence or info as possible. So let’s treat musicians, athletes, influencers, celebs the same way. Let’s not condemn before gathering as much information as possible. If not, I am so afraid we will drive an innocent person to suicide. We would all feel so guilty if someone was driven to suicide over false or misleading statements. Let’s avoid this, please.

[garavant-temple]

TBB: Chapter 1 (again)

Jake was woken by the sound of intermittent sirens and the distant grumblings of a disgruntled neighbour. He lurched out of bed and pressed his face against his window; The early-morning cold  bit into his cheek.

Down the street stood Mr Faulkner, adorned in a dishevelled dressing gown and mismatched slippers, talking with crossed arms and police officers. The police were stood taking notes as the fair-aged man wildly gesticulated the mornings events to them.  Mr Faulkner was a man Jake great care in avoiding, as he often did with confrontation. This would be the second such time in as many weeks Jake had seen this scene on the street. Nothing of note ever happened in this sleepy neighbourhood with its sleepy residents, but Mr Faulkner somehow managed to muster up enough of a disturbance to warrant police attention. If anything, the biggest disturbance often came from Mr Faulkner himself.

Jake unpeeled from the window. He figured if anything had happened he would here about it later from his mother, for she was tuned to the vibrations of gossip within a five mile radius. She would be out by now. Karen, Jake's single suburban mother, packed her day into the earlier hours, taking well-paid cleaning shifts and yoga classes. Afternoons were spent leisurely sipping coffee and doing whatever she felt like - except for Tuesdays and Thursdays, when she tutored kids from the affluent part of town.

Jake began his morning like most others, by dragging himself to bathroom to rinse away the dregs of a sleepless night. He let the hot water pour over him. Jake hung over the plughole, watching the water spiral down. Like most mornings, he visualised sending his nightmares down with it; a trick he was taught some time ago in a draughty counsellors office. It never seemed to work though, each night they would always claw themselves back out.

It was when Jake had spent a moment too long in the shower that his morning became not like most other mornings.

A commotion came from downstairs; the opening and closing of cupboards and confused mutterings. Jake lingered a moment more, reluctant to leave the warmth and safety of the shower. There was a smash. Jake sighed. This wasn't something he could wish away down the drain. He hastily slung a towel around his waist and dripped his way downstairs. By the time Jake made it to his kitchen door, the urgency had left him and now his hand hovered hesitantly over the handle. To his surprise, the door slowly swung open on its own.

Stood in his kitchen, surrounded by a mess of cereal and ceramics, was a girl.

She laughed when she saw him.”Don't worry, I'll clean it up.” And with a simple gesture, the bowl was back in her hands. Not a single drop of milk was left on the floor. “You might want to pick that up yourself though.”

Jake looked down to see that the towel, and his dignity, had dropped round his ankles. For a moment he marvelled at the person floating rather clumsily around his kitchen. There was something about her that demanded attention. Wine red hair cascaded down to her waist, lazily tied with a ribbon as to not become unmanageable. Her features were unsettling, if pondered over for more than a moment. If Jake had taken the time, he would have noticed her teeth were a little too sharp, her eyes were a little too bright. The ears however, were unmissable. Long and sleek and pointed. It was at this point Jake began to consider if he was still dreaming.

The mysterious visitor pulled a chair from the dining table and sat herself down with two bowls. “Sit,” She commanded. The second chair shifted of its own accord.

Since he had come to the conclusion that this was all just a very lucid dream, Jake sat. He grabbed the second bowl of cereal and began shovelling it into his mouth. The cheerios certainly tasted real enough.

“I know what you're thinking. This isn't a dream, so you can get that thought out of your head.”

Jake shrugged. “Of course it is. There is no other explanation why I'd be eating breakfast with an elf – ow! What'd you do that for?” Jake rubbed the spot the spoon had hit him.

“See, not a dream. And I'm not an elf!” She threw another spoon in anger. It hurt just as much.

Jake paused, the information settling in his brain. She was right. Everyone knows you can't feel pain in dreams, that's the whole point of pinching people. He was then faced with the reality that this was indeed reality. That or he was hallucinating from lack of sleep. But again, pain.

“No.” He said, after great consideration.

“No?”

“No. No no no no no. Whatever's going on, I want no part of it. The police are outside and you've kinda broken into my house, so if its okay with you, I'm just gonna go and get them.” Jake rose from his seat with a tight grip on his towel.

“Look, I didn't break into three houses this morning to find you just so you could freak out and run away before we'd even finished breakfast.” She talked to Jake as if they were close friends casually catching up over brunch. There was a familiarity about her that left Jake lingering in the doorway once more. “Please, let me talk and eat my cereal, and after we're finished, you can go to your police people.”

Jake pinched the bridge of his nose. Part of him knew where this was leading, he'd read enough young adult novels. He found himself once more sat across from the intruder with a mouthful of cereal. He ate the bowl in silence, glaring across at the red haired mystery. “So, why'd you break into my house?” He said when he'd finished.

“I needed to talk to you, I thought I'd explained this.” She sat swirling the cereal with her spoon. “I got it wrong a few times of course, certainly gave that old man a fright. Was he the one that beckoned the brightly festooned po-lees-es.” She had an exaggerated and highly expressive way of speaking. Her face betrayed every emotion behind each word and her hands flapped along.

Jake slumped into his chair. “Okay, but why me in particular? Couldn't you have just found my number in the yellow pages? You know, like a normal not-illegal way of contacting someone?”

“Oh, you know. Some things are just better done face to face.”

“Still. But again, why me? Why did you need to speak to me?”

“Do you really not know?” She leaned forwards and stared inquisitively at him.

“No, I don't, you literally have not explained anything.” Jake slammed his fist down. He could tell she was never going to properly answer any questions. Not because she didn't have the answers, she was just used to never having to explain herself. “Could you at least give me a name?”

“I can't give you a name, you already have one. Several, actually.” She poured the bowl of cereal onto the floor and Jake watched as it sprung back up again.

“I mean, what can I call you, you know, for the police report.”

“Oh, you can call me Celestia.” She beamed.

“That's not a real name.”

“It is, I picked it myself. I think the phrase you're looking for is 'unusual'. It's an unusual name.” Celestia stood and took Jakes bowl from him, and placed it in the sink. “Speaking of police though, you might want to adorn yourself with something less... risqué. They'll be here any moment.”

Before Jake could ask what she meant, there was a knock at the door. Neon yellow glowed through the frosted window. They knocked again. Dread welled up inside Jake as he came to the realisation that he would have to answer the door in nought but a towel. He gingerly made his way to the hallway. With one hand firmly gripping the towel and the other on the handle, Jake reassessed every possible action in his life that could have lead to this exact moment. He opened the door just enough to poke his head in the gap. “Good morning officers.”

“Morning. We have received several reports of break-ins in this area. We are just knocking on doors to gather any information anyone might have. You haven't noticed anything or anyone out of the ordinary this morning, or even over the last couple of days?”

Jake shook his head, painfully aware that the culprit was hovering a few feet behind him. “No, 'fraid not, I've only just got out of the shower myself.”

“Nothing at all comes to mind?” - “Okay, well, here's our number and if you do see or hear anything, be sure to give us a call.”

The officers were about to turn away when Celestia appeared over Jake's shoulder. “Oh hello, po-lees-es.”

“Good morning... ma'am. You wouldn't know anything about a series of break-ins around this area would you?” They seemed just as off-put by Celestia's appearance as Jake was.

“Oh of course. You see, that was pretty much my fault, there was bit of a mix up and I went into a few wrong houses. You'll find I did put everything back as it's meant to be, so no harm has been committed.” She spoke with the ease of someone who has talked their way out of even death. The absolute confidence in her voice that she believed she had done no wrong caught the officers off guard.

Jake tugged her ear down. “You do know that it's still a crime to break into someone's house, even if everything is put back.”

“Oh,” She mustered over it for a moment. “I suppose that's that then.”

“Ma'am, you're going to have to come down to the station with us. You are hereby under arrest for breaking and entering multiple properties.” The officers laid out the rights Celestia had to silence. She was cooperative enough that handcuffs were not deemed necessary. She was taken down the street and forced, red-hair and all, into the back of their car.

The other officer turned to Jake. Jake held his breath; he was surely going to be locked up. He was an accomplice to the crime, he had cereal with the perpetrator. “We'll be getting in touch with you if we need any more information from you.”

The first officer returned. “You'll be coming with us now actually, she says you were with her during the break-ins.”

Jake stared into Celestia's wild eyes from where he stood, shivering, in the doorway. She flashed a fang filled smile. There was no way he could get away from this now. He had to comply. “Can I at least get dressed first?”

[soap-brain]

99 + mckirk!!!

( @sixclawsdragon )

henlo i hear you’re wondering whether this was gonna be done and the answer is now!

i’m sorry for the delay but i’m a pos and there’s nothing to be done about that. however, you get some joanna mccoy! isn’t that great!

under the cut:

The Best Birthday Present And It’s Not Even His Birthday

Pairing: McKirk, but focus on Leo & Joanna

Rating: Gen

Wordcount: 2037

     “Jim, literally everything about this is illegal,” Leo hisses, hurrying after Jim. “Not only did you hack into a school network and put yourself in as a substitute teacher, but you’re going to take them to that Questland, and you’ve dragged me into this as well. If anyone finds out about this, we are dead. We’re gonna lose our jobs, you’re gonna lose the Enterprise, you’ll probably get everyone demoted, and we’re gonna end up in prison for the rest of our lives.”

Jim rolls his eyes. “So you’ve said. Trust me, Bones, it’s gonna be great. Just trust me. You got your bag, yeah?”

    “Oh, right, you also made me lug around whatever this is.”

    “Don’t look. And trust me.”

    “We are breaking into a school. If this blows up -”

    “You’ll never talk to me again and I’d deserve it. I know, Leo. But trust me, okay?” Jim fixes him with a surprisingly earnest look. “It’s gonna be great.”

And then he turns and throws open the door to a classroom and Leo wants to be anywhere else.

The class quiets down, more or less, fixing Jim and Leo with questioning stares from some thirty teenage pairs of eyes.

    “‘Sup everyone, name’s Pine, call me Jim, I’m filling in for - pretty much everyone you’ve got today, they’re all sick or whatever.” Jim slams his bag down on the teacher’s desk. It’s absolutely quiet. “This is my colleague, Urban. Now if you could all, dunno, sit down so I can check attendance.”

    “They can’t all be sick!” a kid from the last row calls out, clearly earning some brownie points from his peers for that.

    “Hey, I said sit the fuck down, not ask stupid questions,” Jim snaps. It’s clearly an act - well, to Leo it’s clearly an act, but the kids seem properly terrified. Or just weirded out.

    “Right.” Jim takes out a PADD and opens a chart. “Leonie Adoral?”

    “Here,” a blonde girl says in a tiny voice.

    “John Aberhams?”

    “Here.”

And so forth. Leo watches dispassionately as Jim calls up every kid. Of course it’s not that unusual for Jim to pull weird stunts, even barely legal stunts. The Bajoran Moonshine Jim got him for Christmas could not possibly have been approved by any institution. But this - this is so out of character and so, so dangerous, and for what? And what on Earth is he making Leo carry?

He checks the bag and almost, almost wants to punch Jim into the nearest wall. It’s the birthday present he sent to Joanna, almost two weeks ago, so it would definitely be there on her birthday. He never gets a message or - anything, really, in return, but he still spends several weeks agonizing over what to give his little girl for her birthday and Christmas every year.

Jim has a fuckton of explaining to do. He sent that gift. It should already have arrived. How did Jim get it back from the post? Why did he get it back?

    “Joanna McCoy?” Jim calls out.

Leo whips his head around so fast he almost gets whiplash. She’s got glossy brown hair, incredibly long, a yellow sundress with a pretty little necklace and a beautiful smile. Leo’s heart suddenly aches with fondness. The last time he saw her she had just turned six, all childish charmé and giggles and still a bit of baby fat. Now she’s a teenager, just starting to grow into an adult. There’s so much Leo missed. So much taken away from him. And his daughter is so, so beautiful. He wants to hug her so badly.

He doesn’t even care anymore why and how and for what purpose Jim hacked them into this. He’d never thought he’d see his little baby girl again, and there she is, paying close attention even after Jim is already calling up the next kid, and Leo loves her so, so much.

It’s her birthday. Jim made sure Leo could see her on her birthday.

    “Right!” Jim shoves the PADD back inside his bag. “So you’re all here, which is great, you can all have a fantastic grade for attendance, but to be honest I couldn’t be bothered to prepare anything or whatever, so I thought we could just all go to the Questland they opened? I’m buying, so. Questions?”

The first girl Jim called on raises her hand, trembling slightly. “Mr Pine, what about the language essays? We were supposed to get our grades today.”

    “The lan- oh, the language essays, yeah. Your, uh, teacher didn’t give me the exact grades, but you all did marvelously, everyone passed. There’s one of you, uh, let’s see…” Jim gets out the PADD again and scrolls through it. “Yeah. Uh, Joanna McCoy? Yeah, about that essay, uh, Mr Urban has to talk with you about that. Nothing bad, I think, so you just do that now, and the rest of us already head to the park, yeah?”

Poor Jo looks legitimately shocked, and the class is buzzing with chatter, everyone getting up and packing their things.

Jim comes over to Leo, and Leo doesn’t have any words.

    “C’mon, go talk to her. You find the way to that park yourself?”

    “Yeah. Yeah, Jim, I-”

Jim shushes him. “Don’t worry about it. Hey, you can blow me as thanks later if you absolutely want to.”

The room empties and then Leo is face to face with his girl. She looks slightly scared, probably worried about her grade and what should he even say?

    “Mr Urban, I was pretty sure I turned the essay in on time. I’ve got the console receipt that -”

    “This isn’t about the essay, Joanna.” He can’t help but say her name. He missed saying it. “Can I call you Joanna?”

    “Sure.”

    “Joanna, I’m not actually a teacher.” It already sounds bad, and she’s already looking wary. “My name’s Leonard McCoy.” Maybe she’ll remember.

She stares and then realization dawns on her face. “You’re my dad.”

Oh, that feels good, being called dad again.

    “Yeah.”

And that’s how he gets an armful of Joanna. Her shampoo smells fruity and she’s warm, arms wrapped around Leo’s waist, cheek squished against his chest. His little girl.

He hides a sob in her hair, eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

    “God, never thought I’d ever see you again, sweetheart. How are you?”

She just nods, and there are tears sparkling in her eyes as well.

    “I’m good, I just - I never thought - I thought it was about the essay, not -” She gesticulates a bit wildly, and then the tears are spilling over and Leo hugs her again.

    “I wouldn’t’ve thought in a million years that Jim would pull something like this,” he admits.

    “Your friend? His name’s actually Jim?”

    “Yeah. Yeah, he’s, uh, Jim Kirk.” Then, realizing she probably doesn’t know the name, he adds: “‘Fleet captain of the Enterprise, I’m his CMO.”

    “The Enterprise… You’re in Starfleet?” she exclaims, pulling away again, eyes wide.

    “Yeah. I, uh, needed a change after, well, after breaking up with your mom.”

    “What’s it like?”

    “What, you wanna go to space too?”

    “Why wouldn’t I wanna go to space! It’s so cool and so pretty and all the science is so interesting. And the ships are so pretty! I’m thinking of becoming a pilot, it would be so, so great.” Leo has seen the fire that’s in her eyes before. In the eyes of first-year cadets, in the eyes of ensigns on their first mission, in Jim’s eyes.

    “Space is dangerous,” he says with a smile.

    “Yeah, and it’s really cool!” She gets a sly look all of a sudden. “I don’t s’pose you could show me the Enterprise?”

He thinks about showing her around the white halls, engineering with its endless pipes and interfaces, his sickbay, the bridge with a view of the stars, and the restraining order Jocelyn had filed against him. He had been badly alcoholic, and she’d probably feared he’d try to hurt them, try to kidnap Jo. He can’t necessarily blame her.

    “Well, if you’d come to visit me in San Fran, ‘s long as we’re there.” Probably not what he should’ve said, but Jo lights up like a Christmas tree.

    “How long are you staying? Because mom and Carl are gonna be gone for the weekend, and I could take the SPIRIT to San Francisco. Please? Please? ‘Cause it’s my birthday today, and - please? Just from the outside. I’d stay behind the fence.”

He chuckles. “Behind the fence? Sweetheart, she’s docked in space. Also, uh, birthday presents, yeah.” He reaches out to push a strand of hair out of her face. “Don’t you have to be really good in school to warrant two presents? Isn’t that what parents normally do?”

Her eyes grow huge.

     “Happy birthday, darling.” He gets out the present that Jim somehow, inexplicably got back from the post, and hands it over to her.

     “Thank you! May I?”

     “Sure thing.” Leo’s a bit nervous now. He’s never heard back from any of the other gifts he sent, so … what if she always hated them?

     “Oh,” she breathes and the wrapping paper falls to the floor unheeded. “It’s a galaxy globe!” She almost drops the card with the Basalia giftcard in her eagerness to strip the globe of its packaging. It switches on almost instantly, casting the classroom in the faintest bits of nebula since the sunlight is too strong.

    “Oh wow, look at this!” She turns around, watching the nebula flitter about.

So she likes it. That’s good.

    “I, uh, took the liberty to reprogram it with some of the nebulas and constellations and stuff that we charted on our last cruise,” Leo says, stupidly fond.

    “It’s amazing.” She’s beaming and jumps to hug him again.

They end up pretty much strolling Questland together. Leo doesn’t know where Jim and the other kids are anyways, and Leo’s incredibly thankful he gets to spend this morning with his daughter. She drags him on almost every ride and he buys her pretty much everything she wants (though he puts his foot down when she wants a copy of the pictures of them at the Terror Twister roller coaster because he doesn’t want there to be anything commemorating the absolute primal terror he felt while on that thing).

    “So, how’d you break into the system?” she asks eventually, watching the vendor build what would be the most outrageous cup of ice cream if Leo weren’t getting the same with whipped cream.

Leo laughs. “Don’t ask me. Jim’s a little genius who also somehow managed to get your birthday present back out from the post.”

    “You were planning to send it to me?”

    “Yeah, like every year. One for your birthday and one for Christmas. That’s not gonna change just because you’re fifteen now.”

    “You’ve been sending me presents every year?”

    “Er, yeah? You -” Then it dawns on him. “You didn’t get any of them.”

She shakes her head.

    “Oh. Well, uh.” So Jocelyn got them and threw them out. Lovely. “At least you got one now.”

Their time together is drawing to an end, and Leo’s getting more than a little desperate to savour every last second they have together. They meet up with Jim and the rest of the class at the entrance and the kids start leaving. School’s over, they’ve got to go home.

    “Can I get your comm number? So I can call you when I’m in San Francisco?” She asks almost timidly.

    “You were serious about that?”

   “Yeah! I’d really love to see the Enterprise … but I also want to see you again, if that’s okay.”

She could ask him for the world and he’d give it to her without a second thought. She probably shouldn’t leave the city without telling her mom (and something tells Leo she won’t), and he should say something about that, should be an adult and, you know, a father, but he doesn’t.

Jim leans into him on the ride home. He probably booked the entire compartment on the SPIRIT so they could have some alone time.

    “Thank you,” Leo whispers in the golden hair. “Thank you so much, Jim.” If his voice breaks a little bit, who’s to tell? Leo saw his little girl today, and she’s beautiful.

(in case that wasn’t clear the questland is like one of those amusement park thingies. idk what they’re called, but … you know. (idk what they’re called cause i’ve never even been in one klsdjflsdfj) ) (also yeah i hope i did the whole thing with the post right? like …  i was talking about the post company, idk whether that was clear?)

everything tag list: @bottomkirk, @gumballgladiator, @logicheartsoul, @sixclawsdragon, @kagenightray, @jimothyandspocko, @logicallythyla, @needles-and-ink, @headcanonsilove, @i-am-a-real-human-being, @fallenpiestiel, @skyeries, @alanna342, @shamanship, @startrektrash, @lesbiantasha

everything aos mccoy: @urban-trek-thru-middle-earth

(just realized my mckirk tag list is sadly empty?? :( )

yeah anyways i finally finished this prompt! and i’m still open for more :3

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - Fall 2018

This season dragged on me a lot, and I attribute that mostly to the fact that I moved right at the end and it put me way behind schedule, but also because a number of shows looked like they were going to really go the distance and wound up with one big disappointment or another.

That’s not to say that there weren’t gems - in fact there were a few - but this was yet another season where my “Hall of Fame” looked woefully light. That being said, I’d really like to get this over with since I have other shows to finish and three more lists to make for the year, so as usual, let’s start with the stuff I skipped entirely:

* Tokyo Ghoul re: Second Season & Gurazeni Season 2 because I didn’t watch either of their previous seasons.

* Senran Kagura Shinovi Master because Senran Kagura as a property is built entirely on half-naked girls with big boobs and that’s not going to jive with me.

Wow, that’s really it? Fall was the beginning of a lot of shows that won’t be finished until sometime in 2019, so the other shows I skipped will appear next year on the Multi-Cour list. So, moving right along, from bottom to top...

DROPPED

* WORST OF THE SEASON: TIE

UZAMAID!, My Sister My Writer (1/10)

We did have multiple entries into the Hall of Shame this season, with not one but two shows being offensive enough that they landed a 1/10 score from me, for an easily identifiable and familiar reason: actively glorifying pedophilia! That was pretty much UZAMAID!’s biggest problem, but My Sister My Writer aged up the target character in exchange for recycling the plots of OreImo and Eromanga Sensei, with all of the bullshit and none of the production values. Happy Sugar Life has even further convinced me that there is absolutely no excuse for this garbage anymore.

* Conception (2/10)

A video game adaptation that strips away the actual gameplay elements and focuses entirely on the main character figuratively fucking a lot of fantasy women to make world-saving babies, and it doesn’t even have the courtesy to look like it cost more than $5 to make.

* Ulysses: Jeanne D’arc and the Alchemist Knight (3/10)

I didn’t get far enough into this one to get to the real garbage (I’ve heard it’s another show I should probably throw in with the worst of the season) but the very first episode bored me to tears with its rote anime nonsense. I’m pretty well convinced that the only way I could ever find a Joan of Arc anime interesting is if it were an adaptation of the Level 5 PSP game.

* Between the Sky and Sea (3/10)

I can’t deconstruct this any better than Mother’s Basement did but it is just the most asinine thing I was subjected to for the whole season. Cute girls don’t fix a terminally stupid concept like “all the fish have moved into space and so now we train teenage girls to be astronaut fishers”.

* Bakumatsu (3/10)

I dropped this one an entire point from when I first reviewed it simply because I had entirely forgotten it even existed and cannot remember a single thing about it except that it was generic.

* As Miss Beelzebub Likes It (4/10)

I found this one’s first episode to be cute but entirely devoid of substance. Also, the poster still hurts my eyes to look at.

* DAKAICHI -I’m being harassed by the sexiest man of the year- (4/10) & Bloom Into You (4/10)

Proof that actual gay people just cannot have nice things, the most explicitly LGBT shows to be made in a while both suffer from the same problem: a supposedly sympathetic character having no ability to take “no” for an answer. True fact: not all gay relationships start with rape, and this is the kind of entertainment that fosters young people into not knowing how consent works.

* ReRideD: Derrida Who Leaps Through Time (4/10)

I guess everybody else saw this one coming before I did? It was the first post-premiere show I dropped because I thought the first episode showed an interesting setup, and the following episodes just completely abandoned the apocalyptic setting very quickly to show that society was pretty much fine, there were just robots roaming the earth like random D&D encounters. Man, sci-fi cannot catch a break these days.

* Ms. vampire who lives in my neighborhood. (5/10)

I can see why this might appeal to some but it’s basically just a low-rent Miss Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon and I wasn’t feeling especially charitable towards it.

* Double Decker! Doug & Kirill (5/10)

I really thought this one could get to be more interesting, but it failed to really commit to being either anime’s Brooklyn 99 (which, for the record, we have, it’s Blood Blockade Battlefront season 2) or being a serious tale about the dangers of Tide Po-I mean, drug usage, and wound up just being an uninteresting thud.

* The Girl in the Twilight (5/10)

This one really could have made it if only it had taken things a little more seriously and not made me wonder why the cast are even friends as they seem to have nothing in common. I can’t believe that the creator of this project was the guy who wrote the script for Punch Line, one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen.

* Tsurune (6/10)

I literally just finished my write-up for this, but I do not understand why the same company would make both this and a continuation of Free! airing in back-to-back seasons, it just makes this one look like a copycat even if it’s not a bad show.

UNSCORED

* Gakuen Basara: Samurai High School because I’m not familiar with the source material and that seems to be the barrier for enjoyment here.

SPECIAL

* Anima Yell! (6/10)

If you need a reminder, I dropped Anima Yell after the first episode because even though I enjoyed it, I found it too similar to Comic Girls and didn’t particularly want to go through the effort of finishing a show I was already pretty ready to score, even if it was going to be a positive one. I simply didn’t have time.

FINISHED (Note that Tumblr has completely broken and I’ve had to re-edit this portion a dozen times because it keeps randomly bolding paragraphs and losing GIFs, so if anything got lost here, I’m very sorry but there’s nothing I can do about it.)

* Boarding School Juliet (7/10)

A pleasant little romantic comedy that wasn’t what I was expecting from the first episode but was charming nevertheless. Would have been better without the involvement of attempted rape on school grounds in the premiere though. * Release the Spyce (7/10)

A thrilling and surprisingly brutal little spy show that wound up being overshadowed by better shows with similar concepts but was a fun watch nonetheless, even if it dragged in the middle.

* Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai (8/10)

I stand by what I said before - this one would have easily scored higher with a better ending, but Bunny Girl Senpai is certainly the most approachable show of its genre and its strengths as a romance are not to be understated. 

* Zombieland Saga (8/10)

Another Very Good show that could have been better with one simple change - it’s hilarious and very well-written, but those performance sequences are just awful to look at and the heavier focus on them towards the end did not help.

* Iroduku: The World in Colors (8/10)

A stunning treasure that needed a little more character work for the writing to really impress me, but with a very satisfying ending and a ton of visual creativity.

* Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san (9/10)

A fucking hysterical show scientifically grown in a lab to appeal to me, Honda-san could have been the new INFERNO COP, SAVIOR OF ANIME if more people had given it a chance.

* BEST OF THE SEASON: SSSS.Gridman (9/10)

I don’t know what else to say other than that this is easily the most criminally underappreciated show of the year. A lot of people seemed to be turned off by giant robots fighting kaiju, and those people are dumb.

And that was Fall! I’ve got a few Netflix shows left and I have to finish Classicaloid 2, and then I’ll be all done with 2018, so get ready, I’ve got a few more lists on the way!

[storylocke]

Connections 12

[Devin did a lot of mental planning as he made his way up the long and winding path. Mostly just wondering what he was going to say to Guzma when he finally reached the dang place. He had to keep himself together when they met and not get into a fit like he did with his friends. Team Skull would probably take advantage of the panic if they had they the chance. And why should he be scared? He’d never lost to these creeps before! Yeah… Just keep confident. Passed the beach, passed the last declared Pokemon Center on that side of the island, passed the rich fields of red where the Oricorio sang. But there was no music to be found on Route 17. Even before he crossed the bridges over the meadow, he could hear the thunder, could see the clouds. A man told him at the Center how it always rained over Po Town, but even after all he’d learned at the ruins of Tapu Village, it was still hard to believe the whole area could be so cursed.

Whether it was the rain or the number of grunts in sight, Devin finds himself uneasy again. The way they stood along the path felt like they were waiting for him.]

Devin:

[softly as he looks around]  There’s gotta be a way to get around them… Aha~! [Off to the side seems to be a small cliff rising from the hard terrain. At least it could get him a better view of the path.]

[Getting up was easy enough. Only one guard that was quickly taken down despite claiming not to have lost all day. Unfortunately, Devin’s prize as king of the hill didn’t get him much. Grimsley was right to say the place was a fortress! The high, concrete walls blocked any attempt to see how many more waited inside. A massive door showed it wouldn’t be simple to get in even if he could dodge all of the members outside. It was time to buckle down then, and get ready for a long fight.]

Lady Grunt:

[Pressed against the side of the cliff, as Devin hops down the empty pathway out of her line of sight. Fortunately for her, he didn't see her on the other side of their rocky divide either, and she waits for the noise of the intruder to fade away. Calls up to her partner above.] Psst! You okay up there? [Seemed safe enough, she pulls up a walkie-talkie from her belt.] Hey, Big Sis, looks like it worked after all. Target has appeared, and he’s heading towards base.

Plumeria:

Tch, well I’ll be damned. Those rats actually took the bait, huh? [Places a hand over the speaker to call to Guzma] We got ‘em this far, what's next? [She waits patiently for his word before reporting back] Stall him at the gate for me. I’ll need some time to slip out the back way.

Lady Grunt:

Will do, sis. I’ll alert the others out here.

[After slipping the device back into her carrying pouch, Plumeria stood a moment in silence before finally turning to Guzma. He takes a long drink from his current bottle, though he stops from chugging the whole thing as he realizes the look she’s giving him. The woman merely crosses her arms.]

Guzma:

… What?

Plumeria:

You know what. I don’t like this. Feels cheap, even for you.

Guzma:

Eh?! What’s that supposed to mean? [Rises from his seat to where he towers over her from the platform] The kid needs to be incapacitated to keep him out of the way, so we’re just gettin’ him out of the way.

Plumeria:

So do that then. I’d rather have us lose to the Chosen than sink to their tactics. And honestly, I don’t see how that brat is a threat to anyone. It’s not just low, Boss, this is overkill.

Guzma:

Tell that to the punk who kicked my hide last time. They’re both still Kukui’s kids after all, and you can’t go underestimating them just because they seem soft. They’re good kids. And good kids are bad news because they always hold up some restraint. Means they become unpredictable when you push them. [He tries to flash her a cheeky grin, but she’s still glaring at him.] Tch, not like we have any say in it at this point. Look, you know I’d rather have a go at puttin’ the beat down on him myself first, but we got orders from up top saying we can’t risk it. If that machine works, us and Aether will be home free.

Plumeria:

If you say so, Boss. [Starts to leave with a gentle sway to glance back at him one last time.] Don’t expect me to hang around when this bites you.

Guzma:

Eh?! [He gives a low growl of frustration as he tries to restrain himself. She wouldn’t really leave… just talk like always… The door slams nonetheless. He sits back down in his chair and turns his sights to the laptop. A new message had appeared.]

Plumeria:

[Had made it all the way around the rooftop walkway and back into the house where she could see Guzma’s door remained shut. Good, she thought at first, but it didn’t take long before she heard the sound of a bottle smash against the wall. …. Better hurry then.]

=+=

[As Devin approached the massive steel gateway, there was just one last pair of Skull members who stood in the way. They didn’t seem much like guards though as they casually chatted to each other in low voices. Even when they finally did notice him, they looked to each other in surprise.]

Grunt A:

[Brightens up almost friendly] Ehhh! What’s up, yo? You plannin’ to join Team Skull?

Devin:

No, but I think I got an appointment with your boss. Where’s Guzma?

Lady Grunt:

Nuh-uh! No can do, kid. Boss is busy with bigger fry than you right now.

Devin:

[Must have been expecting Hau, the boy grinned to himself almost cheekily to see just how angry they were to be facing him instead.] You so sure about that?

Lady Grunt:

What? You gonna act like you’re some kind of important now? We know about you cheating against Guzma, now you come out here to laugh at the rest of us losers?

Grunt A:

Ain’t like that, sis, just cool yourself. I been dealin’ with this brat since Melemele Island.

Lady Grunt:

Oh, so that’s him too? Tch, I hate strong kids like you! [pulls up a Pokeball] Come on, Grunt, I ain’t letting this kid in less he pays for it!

Grunt A:

[Just gives a shrug as he knows better than to argue with her and sends out his Hypno to join the frey.]

Devin:

Alright, I figured you were going to be like that anyway. [Sends out both Duckl and Lady Pounds to take care of them]

[Despite it playing out like any other battle he’d faced on the road so far, he realized about halfway through that something was different. The grunts looked normal, the girl was using a Gengar so it could have been messing with him, but all of a sudden one of the Voices in his head cried out very distinctly from the wave of numbers he’d grown used to. Something about the connection...The others started to panic. While everything in the area had been a dreary shade of gray; the walls, the roads, his opponents even running around in black and white; it took him a moment to realize even the battlefield was slowly being drained of it’s color.]

Devin:

Wh-what the... [He started blinking back the water running down his face as he struggled to concentrate. Devin found himself being struck by an odd, creeping sensation as the hair on his arms began to prick from some strange charge to the air. If he could have guessed, he would have thought he was about to be struck by lightning. He almost wished he had…] Guys, timeout! Something… something’s wrong!

Lady Grunt:

Calling it quits? Ha! Don’t be- ….?

[The pressure that had started to become stifling suddenly shattered and the millions of tiny shards stabbed into him. Or ripped out of him, as the case were. Every muscle in his body tensed, his breathing even comes to a stop, and the shock left him paralyzed. He could see the defeated pair was talking to him by their angry, wide gestures, but he couldn’t hear anything. Every motion the girl made left a black and pink streak, almost like an imprint on his vision as he used every fiber of his being to keep standing. The pair looked disturbed, horrified even as they started to back away. The last thing he saw was them fleeing, leaving the shadows of blue and pink as he found his legs wanting to give away. Then it went dark… If he was screaming, he couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t even hear the Voices anymore as his brain filled with an intense pulsing that kept screaming how it hurt, IT HURTS... IT HURTS!]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey!~ I finally get back to this and uh... ... ... that. This is getting pretty dark (both figuratively and literally at the moment) and I didn't want to leave this on a cliffhanger, but the chapter was getting too long. For those of you wondering, this is what happened in the actual stream, but for Devin.... ... ...

Previous chapters here

[fallingforwang]

Scenario - “Hitting A Sweet Spot While Massaging You”

Scenario: It finally seems to be getting to the point where you feel free                       and comfortable enough to ask if he can rub your body. You                       wouldn’t have really said anything, but you’re barely walking,                     he’s just sitting there and your back is screaming for some of                     that special pressure. And it gets it. And you make a noise.                     And he freaks out in more ways than one ~                   No way of escaping the weird feelings in this scenario, my                         apologies. 😂😂

Jaebum :

First Reaction : Holy-- am I doing this too hard. .? He’d immediately pull his knuckles up from the tense plank of muscle but wouldn’t stop the motions. The only sensation that would be the aftertaste of your brief ecstasy? Butterfly tickles smoothing around the pool of your hip bone as he processes the sound you’ve just sung into the air.

* Not in control of my fingers anymore but still has no shame in saying this * Second Reaction : Is there anywhere else that hurts, Y/N? I’ll be happy to                                 check it all out for my baby.... girl....

I can’t. I literally can’t. Your limbs aren’t about to fall off from what he can see and he’ll have to take that sweater off from you sometime so why not now? Why not just give your whole body a massage while its happening. Best part, it’s for free. At least until he see’s you can stand on your toes-- and now see you pinned underneath his arms.  Yeah, Daddy, why don’t you?

Jackson :

First Reaction : Make sure she’s okay you pabo. But then again..                            Maybe if I keep doing this she’ll sing for me again, uh?                            God look at her... So flawless--

Second Reaction :You shouldn’t be stressing your back out like this, what you                                     think is going to happen? You will magically drink some tea and                                get better? I am re-organizing your schedule so you will take                                naps you crazy busy lady. * Super Dramatic Eye Roll *

As much as Jackson will want to blow this one out of the waters and make your cute little whines turn into something much much more, his heart won’t let him cross over the giant tree that said, “She asked you to help her. Not to sleep with her.” No way. Maybe if you are feeling better later he will show what you did to him. But for now, Just Relax.

Yugyeom : Wah!~ Noona you really scared me!!~~~ Laughter. Really scared yet adorable laughter is what I can see from baby~ It’s the only way he will literally be able to forget what just happened. If you asked him to go back over it once more he’d still be freaking and quivering and trembling but I mean, you’re uncomfortable and he wants to fix that. Maknae or not he’ll still help you out.. It probably won’t work since he’ll return to those big belly laughs.. Where are the earplugs??? I will need ten, thank you.

BamBam : * Literally just the text in the gif *

He’s lucky your stress wasn’t the dab bit closer to your butt and more focused on the final beads in your back. The police are also lucky they can keep having their coffee break so you won’t have to call them on a sexual assault occurring.. Yet. I said yet! Bambam will be confused. But he ain’t stupid. If you liked that? Let him do that? His fingers may be slender but the pads though were a gift his Mama gave him happily.

Mark : I can do that again if you want me too.

Playboy Mark AF. Jaebum’s theme AF. He didn’t even think he was pressing that hard and he probably wasn’t. Just the muscles in your neck that were connecting to your shoulders felt as if they were disconnecting. Naturally when you’d be getting a massage your body will fall back as they curl their fingers towards them. With Mark Tuan’s massage he gets your whole spine to straighten, head to toss back, chest to rise and heart to fail in just one movement. If there’s anyway he can get this shirt off he’s quickly becoming enemies with, please let him do it. For both your sake and his own racing mind.

Jinyoung : It feels so much better than when I first started, Y/N.

No need to get inappropriate here since he will take it as a sound of thankfulness rather than something else. Unless you really threw yourself into this his touches won’t change and he’ll keep fixing his Jagiya back up until she feels well enough again. The only payment he will want out of this? Laundry done and a super long hug to fall asleep to. . Where he will be slightly less nervous that you will feel like he is perving and just enjoy the goodnight kisses he’ll be giving.

Youngjae : O-ah? Did I find where it is hiding?

I just can’t see him taking advantage in this situation as much as I try (?) You’ve helped him massage his legs countless times after straight days of practice where tears have even made an appearance. He’s ready to act like a remote, speed up, slow down, go higher and lower or even stop for a few minutes to let the work sink in. Your chest may get some special attention in this case, but remember like I said, Sunshine isn’t a devil tonight, at least he is hiding it extremely well? Very well.

Bobby :  Aye wait a minute I don’t think that was an “Oh thank you.”               That musta been a “Please, harder.”

Dude. Bobby was trained in boot-camp to pick up on this weird woman like stuff and I think the millisecond your lungs gave sound to that little moan he would already be all up in your face. “Curious” why you’ve done what you’ve done, it might encourage him to explore farther by changing up the pace or directing his fingers in the other direction. We’ll see how you feel and we’ll see where it will take you and that stressful little back of yours (?)

Hanbin : I um.. Can’t say sorry enough.. for going to do it again I don’t know who’’s going to be more embarrassed and strangly satisfied here, you or Hanbin.. This role of being all strong and manly just got chucked out the window and your Binnie Baby has taken the scene. Just like all the other guys he’d stop, probably push himself back before he does/says/wishes for something incredibly stupid, take a moment to breathe, check his heartbeat and oxygen level then start again. The same exact pressure before he heard the noise and the same-- well no, a much bigger version of the smile he’s had before as well~ Shocker?

Jinhwan : Anywhere you want me you will find me ~

I threw Bambam, Bobby and Jackson in an emotion blender and came out with a little steaming pot of Jinani~ As a way of expressing his love and concern like Jackson, if you don’t want him to be crossing a line he won’t. But you’ll need to make sure he is alive later when you ask him to massage a little more than what he thought. With Bobby, Jinhwan is going to be close and close enough to give you said opportunity to shift the situation if you really wanted to. And Bambam? The little hands. Small but mighty my friend and you’re just beginning to experience it.

Junhoe : Well alright then.

Publicly. A skin-shipped back rub won’t sail. Privately he’s your first mate and you’re the captain of this ocean. Ju-ne is big. * smacking my head into the keyboard * His hands can easily stretch over both cases of your lungs with delicious support from the heels of his palms. He would have been glad to hear how messed up and rested he’s making you if it wasn’t for Bobby tapping on his iPad. If you know these two - it’s awkward. Now that you’re involved. It’s awkard too. Junhoe will just fuss his hand slipped and Bobby will delete this whole Tumblr from his memory.

Donghyuk : Aaah~ That feels good doesn’t it?

If you were to ask him straight forward to see how awkward he felt at that moment he would have told you the truth. Not at all. Instead the word to replace it was adorable in his mind just like that hug he gave you after you had done it~ But maybe he held on for too long or this position was compromising.. Or you’re just being so dang cute.. Or all of the above. Don’t worry about it Y/N!!

Chanwoo : Whoa...

Someone pour a bucket of holy water on this boy’s head. If I could have found the picture I was looking to show you that is all I would have to say, but I couldn’t. Chanwoo’s face was lightened in a ten second flash before flaming into a golden copper like red to the degree where you were feeling concernedx10. He’ll be able to make it out of this if Hanbin Oppa turns on a light or something and watches over the room. Was.. Make out the wrong words here though (?)

Yunhyeong : You better take that sound back Y/N. I’m not afraid to tickle you

Tickles normally led to kisses which lead to yep. Its the food chain line thing that Yunhyeong wouldn’t want you to feel ignored in. He knew saying this would get you to laugh anyways and even if the motions speed up, it’ll stay just in the right zone that you wouldn’t care if he will tickle you all night long or not ~

Namjoon : W-what why now? Why this * Insert dirty face * now?

Huh? You’re apologizing? What for? All he heard / can hear is the thunder of his pulse pounding through his ears. Smooth as Rocky Road ice cream and I’m not being sarcastic. Feeling you jolt in his hands, his hands. Pleased by what he’s doing, oh god now that he thinks about it it’s all far too embarrassing. You heard chuckling behind you and the investigation led to a very apologetic yet very excited monster behind you. Milky skin is now bright strawberry, I’d say it’s worth it here to see how aegyo his is becoming.

Taehyung: I think you said something? Can you repeat it in human code?~ Mr. Noodle Fingers here, the dorkiest dork of Dorks in the land of Dork thought it would be nice just to help you loosen up a bit. Not this much though! He might have dropped off the Earth if you made that sound again! And how would he do that? Causing an earthquake with all this stupid laughters. I still think he would continue if you won’t shy away into a ball and hide in the cave of the land of Under The Couch. But beware if you choose to toughen through it and stay, noodles could be attacking places that didn’t even have to do with your pains. By this I mean your feet!~

Jungkook : Oh~ Now this complicates things~ One minute you’re thankfully grinning up at him from the corners of your eyes. Next you’re looking all possessed and spitting an alien language off your tongue like an evil version of Lelo and Stitch. I mean what the heck just happened, Y/N? He’ll poke the spot or, censor button, if you will, all radars going off that that was a very bad idea. For you. It’s a moan gone squeak mode and I hate to say it, but you’re doomed now. Or blessed (?) Since you’ve proven twice to him that something’s going on, Jungkookie will stop at nothing until you are feeling happy and beyond that too. Maybe even.. A little deal to seal it?

Yoongi: Oh gosh I’m sorry, Y/N, I didn’t mean to-- Are you sure you want me to-- Make you feel this way? All mushy and strangely warm inside? It’s innocent touches though. At the beginning he’ll hear where you were hurting and check all around the area. Yet a flirty squeeze or quick pinch is going to happen just so you’re prepared for it. I think once you did make the sound he’d try to get the idea out of his head as quick as you can moan his name again. But what’s that saying? “Lost in the spirit is lost in the body?” Careful now, okay? Don’t get any more sore than what you are from him.

Hoseok : Ohh!! I’ve found the spot!! The black spot!! Hang on I can get it out!

The gigantic sweater he’d let you sink into wouldn’t even be able to hide you away from the giggling mess. You might press deeper into the couch mattress but it’s still ringing in your ears. I think once he saw you weren’t laughing it off too he’d feel bad about how ashamed you were feeling but decided to hold back his teasing and let you know it’s all A-OK. By the way, this all happens after he acts like his hand has touched the holy grail paralyzed by it’s heavenly effects.

[starla-nell]

OC Interview

I was tagged by @puppypopcornpizza on the OC Interview. I shared the idea with my friend Rosehip and she was so delighted she’s doing two. She’s not on Tumblr, so I’m posting on her behalf. Here’s the first one, for her Warden Surana. She’s posting very soon on AO3, so now’s a great time to catch up and subscribe! 

This circulated on Tumblr and amused me immensely. Here is a quiz, as Macsen would answer it, the day the Circle Mage origin story wraps up.

What is your name? Macsen Surana

No, seriously, what is your real name? I'm not sure what else you're looking for, here. I don't have a nickname, anymore.

Do you know why you were called that? Already arched eyebrows arch higher. My clan name is Surana. Presumably, my family liked the sound or the meaning of “Macsen.” I haven't seen any of them in years, though, so I can't tell you more than that. I guess “no” would have sufficed.

Are you single or taken? Takenish? I've got something going on, but I don't think we can maintain it since I'm going to war and he's not.

Do you have any abilities or powers? You're probably asking about my magic. I specialize in lightning and entropy. I'm interested in healing, but I'm not very good at it.

I'm better at working with my hands than you'd expect, as well. Whenever Gregoir gets sick of my crap, or, excuse me, (sits up very straight and deepens voice) “Feel you need to suppress your rebellious and prideful inclinations, young man,” he sets me to work repairing things or cleaning.

Stop being a Gary Stu. Are we back to the name thing, again? Do you know something about my past? I'd love to hear it.

What is your eye color? Blue.

How about your hair color? A friend insisted on calling it “brunette”, which I'm pretty sure is Orlesian for brown.

Have you any family members? I- I hope so.

I see... What about pets? We're not supposed to have those. I had a toad for a while. I wanted to keep a hare, but I knew it wouldn't go well. Can Grey Wardens have pets? If they can, I would like that.

Tell me about something you don't like. *Fidgets and glances at nearby fully armed and armored templar.* Nothing comes to mind, really.

Do you have any hobbies or activities that you enjoy doing? I probably shouldn't admit this, but I'm out of here today, so what's anyone going to do about it? I love working on repairs in the workshop. There's something about the weight of the tools in your hands and the knowledge that one small thing in the world is less broken and you did it.

Ever hurt anyone before? Not without pretty serious provocation, but yes.

Ever... killed anyone before? I'm not sure how to answer that. No, really! Not, directly, I guess? Do sentinels count?

What kind of animal are you? *Lunges to feet.* How DARE you? You want me to say “rabbit”, don't you? Well, fuck you and your stupid, round ears. I'm as much a person as you are. *Storms off.* *Comes back ten minutes later.* A friend convinced me you probably didn't mean it like that. But, look, you should watch how you talk to people of other races, all right?

Anyway, I'd love it if I could turn into an animal, like a sparrow so I could fly around without anyone noticing. Or... a halla so I could run very fast across the land and carry my friends to safer places. That would be awesome.

Name one of your worst habits. Hand me that weird writing utensil, the one with the button on the back. Clicks the retractable pen four thousand times. Oh, man, where has this thing been all my life? If fidgeting and tapping things is a habit, then there you have it. It's definitely the one that annoys other people the most.

Do you look up to anyone at all? Yes. You might not understand this if all you know of him is what you've seen of him the last day or two, but I look up to Jowan. He just doesn't handle the threat of personal destruction well, all right? He's kind and loves easily, despite the fact that his family abandoned him. Do you know how rare that is? And once you have his love, he'll do anything for you. He'll always try to do the right thing. Maybe that's not the cool answer, but I don't know what I'd have ever done without him.

Sexual orientation? I'm a little puzzled how we got from talking about my brother-in-all-but-blood to sex? I prefer men, yes. I do not look at Jowan in that way.

Do you go to school? *Sighs heavily.* Every moment of every day for the last thirteen years. School, prison. Po-tay-to po-tah-to.

Do you want to marry and have kids one day? That's a very complicated question, do you know that? The short answer is that I would love to have a family of my own, but don't think it is all that likely.

I mean, leaving aside for a minute the fact that I kissed a girl once and it went about how you think, I'm literal property. If I do manage to father a child, the Chantry owns it. Unless being a Grey Warden complicates that? Can Grey Wardens keep their own children? Or, would there be a custody dispute between the Grey Wardens and the Chantry?

Also, I'm going to war.

Anyway, yes, someday I would like to gather around me a variety of people whom I love, and I would like to not have to worry about who has the rights to any of us.

Like I said, not super likely.

What are you most afraid of? *Rubs forehead, glances at templar, again.* Not much, really.

What do you usually wear? Chantry-approved robes. What do you think? Hey, do Grey Wardens get to wear what they want? That'd be great. Because if I get a choice, I'd rather wear something more practical, like leathers, or, well, anything that doesn't drag on the ground.

Do you love someone? Yes, I think so. At least, I do if it's still love when you feel as strongly as you ever did for them, but you know you can't make this work.

What class are you? (Lower, middle, upper?) You probably think this one is easy, too, don't you? According to which culture? The Dalish are all family so we don't really have classes. On the other hand, some claim rank over other elves. (I don't, it's just a different culture, yet again.) Mages are not free, but we're educated beyond most people. In Ferelden society overall, as an elf, I'm inherently lower class, no matter what my personal values are or how much money I ever earn. I... yeah, I honestly don't know.

How many friends do you have? Living or dead? Anyone you still consider a friend, regardless of their current state. One dead, two tranquil, two living, and two living to the best of my knowledge, but elsewhere.

Thoughts on pie? Again, how did we get from my ill-fated friend circle to PIE? I've had pie so rarely, anyway, that I'm not sure I can do the question justice. I remember it being a little too sweet.

Favorite drink? Strong tea, with lemon if I can get it.

What's your favorite place? What part of “until today I was the prisoner of a religious institution” am I failing to get across? The roof, I guess? Ask me again when I've been more places.

Would you rather swim in the lake or the ocean? I will have to get back to you on that one, also.

Are you interested in anyone? I thought we covered this?

What's your dick size? *Blushes.* It's in proportion with the rest of me.

Well, what's your type? Are we still talking about my dick? Use your imagination. Uh... actually please stop using your imagination. It's creeping me out a little.

What attracts you? I love a good smile. No, really! I also notice if someone smells good. Look, everyone I know is covered from neck to feet most of the time. I only have so much information to go on, at first.

Any fetishes? <.<  I am not certain what you mean by that.

Seme or uke? Top or bottom? Dominant or submissive? Are you TRYING to get me in trouble? *Pulls sleeves down lower over barely-discernible bruises ringing his wrists.*

Camping inside or outside? OUTSIDE! Oh, my gods, I get to go outside! And we're going to be camping! Outside forever!

Are you wanting this quiz to end? Oh, are we done? Can I go outside now, then?

[suckitsurveys]

1) If you had to make a six hour cross-country journey, would you rather take the train, fly or drive? How come? That’s not cross country my friend. That’s the length of time it would take to drive from the top of my state to the bottom. I prefer road trips because I like being in control of the mode of transport, but I like flying and taking trains too, so it would all depend. But 6 hours of driving is nothing.  2) How long do your earphones tend to last before the connection goes and you have to replace them? I keep getting cheap ones from Five Below. Once corona has ended and I get back to the gym I should invest in a good pair.  3) If you could dye your hair any colour in the world, assuming it would look perfect with your colouring, what would you pick and why? I’ve been thinking more and more about going all black, or at least really dark brown.  4) Are you a fan of musicals? If you are, what ones have you seen live and which ones would you like to see? Yes. I’ve seen Rent, The Producers, Wicked, Tootsie and a handful of lesser know local ones. I’d LOVE to see Hedwig and Chicago live.  5) If money was no object, and you could go on a two-week vacation with one other person, who would you take, where would you go and what would you get upto? I’d go to Hawaii with Mark. 

6) Are you someone who needs to have time alone? Every once in a while.  7) What’s your opinion on couples who do literally everything together? Are you like that, or is that like one of your worst nightmares? You do you boo. Mark is very very very introverted so he doesn’t really come out with me when I do go out, but that doesn’t bother me because I want him to be happy and comfortable. Every couple is different.  8) Have you ever had to give up something you were addicted to? Did you actually succeed? Not really. 9) Does your favourite food vary depending on your mood or on the time of year or anything? Nope. It’s always crab legs.  10) Do you know anyone whose views/opinions are the complete opposite of yours? Do you find it hard to get on with them as a result, or can you generally ignore it and find something else to talk about? I can’t be your friend if you’re pro-life sorry buddy.  11) Have you ever had to work (or study) with someone that you really didn’t get along with? How did you deal with it (ignoring them, being nice, etc.)? Yeah my fucking brother in law worked with me for a summer and it was the worst fucking time of my whole life. Ugh. It was AWFUL. I tried to be nice to him and it was supposed to be a secret that I knew him so I treated him like anyone else and joked with him and he took everything so fucking personally and he never took responsibility for his own mistakes and dhfjdshfjdshfdshfhdskhfkjdshfdsjkhfdks. I fucking HATE him so much.   12) Have you ever had any problems with your wisdom teeth, or have they been taken out already? I got them taken out like 4 years ago now. I only had three, which was weird. 13) Which one of your senses would you miss the most if you lost it? Any of them. 14) Do you ever listen to CDs anymore? I just use Spotify. 15) What’s your favourite type of fast food? Is it something you eat a lot or do you try and limit it? Popeyes. 16) Do you find your mood changes when you’re hungry or tired? Does eating or sleeping automatically cure your of a bad mood? Oh yessssss. 17) When you see cute animals, do you just wanna pick them up and cuddle them or fuss them? Yes. 18) What’s the stupidest fight you’ve ever gotten into? Did you make up with that person or did you end up losing them over it? The one with my sister over her fucking POS husband. It was never really resolved the way I wanted it to be, but we all get along. 19) Do you find yourself using people as footrests and pillows if you’re sat next to them? Not really.  20) Have you ever gotten really bad travel sickness? Has this put you off travelling or going by certain modes of transport in case it happens again? I used to get car sick if I read in the car.  21) What’s your opinion on prostitution? Should it be legal and regulated, or is it something that needs to be gotten rid of completely? SEX WORK IS REAL WORK.  22) If it was a case of prostitution or being evicted from your home, which option would you pick (assuming you’d tried everything else to make money first)? Do you know how much sex workers make, damn.  23) What would go into your ideal sandwich? Do you eat that often or is a treat for you? I don’t know I love food I can’t choose just one sandwich.  24) In general do you prefer modern art or more traditional art? Or do you really not care? I’m more on the modern side but I can appreciate almost all kinds of art.  25) If you want (or don’t want) kids, is this something you’ve always known or have you changed your mind as you’ve grown up? I’ve gone back and forth in the past when I was younger, never thinking of how much went into having them and caring for them. When I started dating Mark, I was still a little on the fence, even when he made it clear he didn’t want any. But once my sister had her first kid, it was solidified that that was something I never ever ever wanted to do.  26) Do you believe “once a criminal, always a criminal” or do you think that people can really change and become better? It’s definitely possible. 27) Have you ever read a quote or a poem and really connected with it? Yeah, there’s numerous quotes and lyrics that I relate and connect with. 28) What’s something that really puts you off a person (bad hygiene, whatever)? Are you willing to look past that in order to get to know them properly? Ignorance. 29) Are you into piercings and tattoos? If not, do you judge people who are, and vice versa? I have piercings and tattoos and I never judge people if they have them.  30) What’s your opinion on places like Seaworld? Do you think keeping whales and dolphins in such small enclosures is cruel or a necessary evil? Fuck Seaworld and certain zoos. I have a love/hate relationship with zoos. Some of them are study/learning zoos and the zookeepers help keep the species alive by studying their behavior.

[tinymixtapes]

Interview: Alex Cobb

Since 2005, Alex Cobb has mined the depths of drone, noise, ambient, and modern composition on his venerable label Students of Decay. Originally begun as a means of releasing his own work (both under his name and as Taiga Remains), Cobb’s imprint has unleashed some of the best work from the likes of Natural Snow Buildings, Billy Gomberg, Anne Guthrie, En, Mark Banning, and Secret Pyramid, to name a few. Students of Decay has achieved a longevity based on following Cobb’s exceptional curatorial instinct rather than on trends. Recently, Alex’s life changed dramatically, as he and his wife celebrated the birth of their son this past year. In addition to that massive life event, Alex has been working on a new imprint, Soda Gong, which incorporates “a sense of playfulness and a sort of willful naivety” not heard on Students of Decay (which will continue running). The first Soda Gong release is, appropriately, a new solo project, dubbed Etelin. The inaugural release, Hui Terra, is slated for release November 9. In the interview below, we’re excited to premiere the track “Water the Ferns,” which highlights the record’s musique concrète-inspired tone. Over Skype and a few email follow-ups, Alex and I caught up on the origins of Soda Gong, his ethos on curating releases, and how he keeps himself motivated after nearly a decade and a half spent releasing records. --- I just want to start off and say congrats on being a dad! Tell me about this new project. Did this experience influence your approach to the new album? Thanks! Yeah, this record is certainly bound up in the experience of being a new parent. I was playing it for a friend somewhat recently, and I realized how certain pieces are almost conceptual to that end, though unintentionally and probably only discernibly so to me. One track in particular features processed samples of my son’s voice right after he was born, and as I’ve realized after sitting with it for almost a year now, it actually kind of obliquely articulates a specific nurturing experience that I remember from the first few weeks after the birth. There’s a part of me that very definitely does not want to explain the record in this way though, as a “new dad” record or whatever; I’m reticent to do that. Overall, I’d say there’s a sense of playfulness and a sort of willful naivety going on that wasn’t present in my work as a musician or curator in the past, as well as a rejuvenated excitement for discovery and true experimentation. Anyone making work that falls under the rather unfortunate umbrella of “experimental music” will understand what I mean here, I think. Essentially, just like with any creative pursuit, sediment accumulates: go-to techniques and sounds (and album art and press release verbiage…) emerge, and, generally speaking, then comes stagnation or just a reiteration of the status quo. Recently, I’ve found myself just very fatigued with sort of po-faced quasi-academic drone music. It asks so much of the listener at the level of being taken seriously, even reverently, and very often doesn’t actually articulate much in the way of ideas, new or otherwise. I just want more spontaneity and dynamics in the music I’m making and curating at present, so I’ve been steering away from monochromatic ambient stuff and finding myself drawn more towards rhythmic or at least very dynamic music — so lots of dance music, ethnographic recordings, and musique concrète. With this new imprint I just want to open things up a lot — produce a body of work culled from a wider range of genres, including a lot of work that I feel is sort of post-genre, or at the very least tough to pigeonhole. I’ve always contended that running a label is an art of putting together something cohesive first and foremost, something that has an articulate sensibility. To that end, it doesn’t make any sense to me to start putting out certain types of records on Students of Decay so many years into the label’s trajectory. So, I’m trying to afford myself the space to curate more freely, though still with an eye towards making something that has a defined identity. I want to have a catalog that’s very diverse, but comprised of releases that still feel of a piece with one another. That’s the goal for me. At the risk of over explaining everything, how did you come up with Soda Gong as the name of your new label? And at what point did you decide that Hui Terra would be the starting point of a new imprint? Soda Gong is the title of a poem by Clark Coolidge. I think it does a pretty good job of evoking the sensibilities I want to explore without being too literal or on the nose. Coolidge’s work definitely informs some of my own recent practice — his playfulness, his treatment of rhythm and repetition, his aggregation of detail and detritus into constructs that are somehow both wonky and balanced. The Etelin record makes sense to me as the first release because it also embodies a lot of these concerns: naivety, experimentation, spontaneity, etc. I guess it’s almost like a thesis statement. Running a label is often thankless work, so much so that for a little while I had lost sight of what makes me continue doing it. This feels like a way to maybe get back to where I want to be. You’ve mentioned that you’re still fleshing out the details of the new label, but when you talk about that, I’m reminded of the interview we did a few years ago. You talked about building up Students of Decay to where people can blindly buy whatever new release you have. Is that something you want to pursue with Soda Gong, or do you see it as something where more people may flock to a house record or instrumental hip-hop versus musique concrète? I think, at their best, labels are clearing houses or organizers of music, and much like other cultural productions — textiles, books, films, coffee, tea, alcohol, etc. — if you find that your taste accords with the person who’s piloting the ship, you’ll likely feel as though you’re in good hands and want to follow along on the journey. I quit drinking alcohol, but I drink a lot of tea. In the puerh market, certain vendors cultivate a sort of house profile, much like a brewery might, so you can drink across their catalog — material from different regions, of different ages and processing techniques — and feel confident about following them out on a limb, stepping out of your comfort zone. So maybe there’s someone who never listens to house music or techno or musique concrète, but they like what the label put out previously (or what SOD puts out or they have some faith in my curatorial tendencies), so they check out a record that they wouldn’t otherwise. Maybe that leads them to the realization that there are in fact a lot of similarities between dance music and drone music, in terms of detail accruing over time or how the art of it often lies in subtle or microtonal gestures. One of the main conceits that is driving this label is a desire to focus less on genre and more on feeling and sensibility. There are a couple dichotomies that I’ve been thinking about lately that also get at what I’m after: naivety vs. refinement, autodidacticism vs. formal training. I’m interested in music that, at first pass, might seem quite naive, but when you listen to it more you realize that the person or people who made it have really worked out a vernacular of their own and there is a strong degree of refinement to their ideas and techniques. I’m looking for music that is startling, that creates a mythology or world for itself. So Students of Decay has been around for 13 years now, is that right? Yeah, since 2005. I know that you read about it in other places, about the pros and cons of running a record label right now. We’ve kind of touched on how it hasn’t necessarily gotten better, but there does seem to be a renewed interest in vinyl, so I don’t know if that’s making it better for smaller labels. I don’t mean to get too deep into the logistics of vinyl pressing, but do you plan to continue Students of Decay’s vinyl only format aesthetic with this new label? Yeah, it’ll be digital and vinyl. It’s what makes the most sense right now. Regarding SOD, I think it’s because I got sort of buried in production difficulties and certain difficulties with artists, but things started really feeling like a chore to me this past year or so. Lots of frustration and tedium with little in the way of satisfaction. While that’s to be expected with your day job or whatever, it’s not what one looks for in a passion project or hobby. And while I’m happily keeping SOD going, and I have records coming out that I’m really quite excited about, I felt I needed something else — something new and in some ways less defined by time and expectation — to help me actually enjoy putting out music again. So this will be quite a bit different in how it’s executed at the levels of things like curation, visuals/design, orienting/promotional language, release schedules, and notions of what constitutes a “proper release.” Running a label is often thankless work, so much so that for a little while I had lost sight of what makes me continue doing it. This feels like a way to maybe get back to where I want to be. The label has been around for a long time. Do you ever come across any upstart labels, or does anyone hit you up for advice? Do people come to you about longevity in the music world? Yeah, for sure. People who are thinking about starting a label will email me and ask anything from “should I do this?” to “what should I expect?” or “is this stupid, what am I doing?” My attitude with respect to running a label is pretty much the same as it has been since the beginning. First and foremost, I don’t think anyone should try to rely on it for income, because I don’t think it’s viable and it prioritizes the wrong things. I really believe that art should be separate from capitalistic concerns; the notion that anyone de facto deserves compensation for wanting to play a synth or write a song is wrongheaded. If you go about it from that angle, odds are you’re going to be frustrated and probably end up with a discordant mess of a label. In a lot of ways, I feel like we’re in a very strange climate for releasing music at present. I confess I find it a bit tough to navigate sometimes. What made sense in 2005, 2010, and 2015 doesn’t make sense now. I think a lot about what the truly imperative things for a label owner to do are and lately I come up with a lot of blanks. For example, the landscape of editorial coverage has changed so much. There used to be so many great sites that people authored just because of their interest in music… you know, the “blogging era,” but that’s not really the case anymore. I actually think it’s pretty weird that with the proliferation of technology, with how welded to our phones we are and how unthinkable it is to ever be without the internet, music blogging has basically died. It probably says something about our collective priorities and diminishing interest in sustained cultural criticism… So anyway, the question of how to get yourself/your musicians heard or considered — and what that even looks like and what effect it will have if any — is kind of in flux. Put simply, my advice to people considering doing this is to try to make something that is authentic, that is distinctive, that is not derivative, that you can stand behind. Do that and have faith that people will get interested if you are persistent and committed to making beautiful/engaging/exciting things. If you’re chasing a trend, that trend will end and you’ll have to find another one to chase and your label will seem perpetually outmoded and disjointed. So don’t do that. Cover art for Etelin’s Hui Terra The Etelin record makes sense to me as the first release because it also embodies a lot of these concerns: naivety, experimentation, spontaneity, etc. I guess it’s almost like a thesis statement. Do you still make any of the music in the style of Taiga Remains or under your name? Or are you taking a break from that kind of music? I would say taking a break, though I don’t know if I’ll return to it. Making those three records under my own name, which kind of feel like a loose, heavy-hearted trilogy, strikes me as a nice way to move on from that type of very minimal, very sad ambient music. I actually sold my guitars, and in truth I’m pretty tired of guitar-based music. I bought a sampler and a digital synthesizer, basically equipment that I felt would give me a lot of versatility and force me to reevaluate my process from the bottom-up. Having run a label for so long, what continues to drive you, and to be rewarding, in running a label? Do you still see frustrations or drawbacks? I’m mostly interested in what continues to drive you in a time when it seems harder to get people to pay attention to an album. The impetus behind doing it is that I don’t know how not to do it. It would be really strange for me to not have a record in production, to not be talking to someone about working on a new project, listening to demos, etc. I’ve done it since I’ve been an adult, and I’ve done it through some crazy and destabilizing shit in my own life where it really functioned as a sort of ballast. I’ll always value it for that if nothing else. Going off of that, I wanted to bring up the Anne Guthrie record that you just put out [Brass Orchids]. I don’t want to lump her and Billy Gomberg together just because they’re married, but it’s interesting to listen to his last record [Slight at the Contact], and then her last record that you put out, and to hear this new one. They all move in this direction that, as a music journalist, is supposed to be my job to describe, and I can’t do that, but it’s a compelling sound. Anne was pregnant during the making of that record, and I think it bears marks of that major life change. It maps a sort of volatile emotional topography and mines familial history in interesting ways. There’s an argument to be made, of course, that every record has its roots in the biography of the person making it, which gets at something that I am interested in: the question of artistic honesty and the problem of how to be earnest in one’s creative work. There’s a David Foster Wallace quote in which (I’ve been reading a fair amount of alcoholism recovery literature recently) in reference to writing during his own recovery, he talks about how he’s trying to write “single entendre” sentences. I think this gets referenced a lot when people talk about the New Sincerity movement. I really like this phrasing and am attracted to the impulse to attempt to consciously reject guile and artificiality in one’s practice. This is Wallace decidedly not trying to be the smartest person in the room or to do the most interesting subversion of x, y, and z — it’s him saying “this expresses a feeling or an experience, warts and all.” So much capital L literature, arthouse film, institutionalized art, and, indeed, experimental music is so self-aware that it’s actually deeply frightened of honest, emotion-on-the-sleeve expression. This is, of course, because the work might come off as saccharine or cliche-ridden. Those are the stakes. So, anyway this all to say I guess that right now I find myself drawn to things that endeavor to strip away artifice. Yeah, I like that idea of the single entendre sentences, and not only thinking of your music, but as we’re talking I’m looking at my record shelf, and thinking about how there doesn’t need to be a meaning behind the sound you hear. You don’t necessarily have to know, and that’s interesting. In my line of work, you get lots of press sheets that try to over-explain a record, or go overboard on the narrative, like you said earlier, or trying to hold your hand while you’re listening. Yeah, it’s like the culture of RIYL or “for fans of __________,’” you know? Of course, there is a lot of very good music that is heavily dressed up and marketed. I find myself in this conflicted space of being fatigued by being hard-sold on things, by having onesheet narratives pushed on me, but also recognizing the importance of cultivated mythology and narrative crafting as they apply to being a musician and running a label. SOD just released its latest, Daughters of Time, from Blue Chemise. How did this project find its way to you and the label? Where did you first hear about Mark Gomes’ work? I reached out to Mark after really enjoying his record Influence on Dusk and a subsequent 7-inch. His work sits quite well with the SOD catalog — it’s distant, elusive, and a bit mysterious while also sort of willfully against au courant compositional/production techniques and aesthetic touchstones. He’s got a great ear and editorial sensibility, and I’m always attracted to ambient music that prioritizes concision. You mentioned that you got rid of older equipment from previous releases, and you’re working with a blank slate, so to speak. Can you tell me about how it came together and pared everything down to an album? My wife Melissa and I had our son, Casper, in September of 2017. There’s this term called “newborn haze” that I learned the meaning of firsthand. Your sleep is completely derailed. You don’t leave home for like a week at a time. You’re totally in your own world, which is now a radically altered place. It’s kind of terrifying! The notion that the world is still going on per usual seems crazy, oddly unthinkable. I remember going out to pick up food at one point and seeing people doing their everyday routines and thinking how alien all of it seemed, this outside world. I didn’t think I’d be making music during this time. In fact, I wasn’t making music at all then, I hadn’t for some months. I had however made some recordings of things during Melissa’s third trimester, just as a way of marking time, things like thunderstorms at her parent’s country house, a conversation she was having with my mom right as she went into labor — both of those recordings actually show up on the last track of the record. And then, after the birth, spending time with Casper as he was becoming ever more aware of things, I would be listening to records, naturally, and with certain albums — I recall Nuno Canavarro, Bernard Parmegiani, and Luc Ferrari specifically — I noticed him very interested, like paying close attention in a way that was distinct from how he seemed to at other times. They say that babies’ sense of hearing is the most defined at birth, after touch. He would make sounds when signals panned across the speakers, or look surprised, or even scared, if the music went to a particularly intense place. So I found myself inspired to make some music that would give him those kinds of engaged experiences, but be just ours. I started working with a Waldorf synth and some old granular computer patches and a sampler — really quite haphazardly and at all hours of the day. Pretty quickly, I’d amassed a bunch of recordings. I arranged them in ways that would result in interesting pieces for Casper to listen to with me, playing them back over studio monitors, through bluetooth speakers, in the car, etc. Pretty soon, I had an hour or so of music that I felt good about, so I started to fine tune things and make edits. I really limited myself in that regard, more than I ever have before. It’s ironic, because this album sounds more detailed and produced than my other work, but it’s actually much more spontaneous and has a lot more restraint at the level of editing than anything I’ve done before. I decided to leave things in that rubbed me the wrong way, “mistakes” as I might think of them normally. I chose to view them as giving character rather than detracting from something I’d idealized. I made a point of deleting the work sessions themselves, all the stems, as soon as I bounced the audio tracks, and I arranged big chunks of exported sound instead of having tons of tracks that I could modify, you know, tamper with or overcook. I’d say this record is defined for me by a sense of personal renewal. Obviously becoming a father is a huge life change. I also quit drinking at the beginning of 2017. I feel great, very lucid. I started to recognize that alcohol had become a problem for me and that it had a negative effect on a lot of aspects of my life, effects that I’d been trying to ignore but which had become unavoidable. I knew I was blunting my nervous system, but I didn’t know I was blunting my creativity as well. I recently read this book The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, which I highly recommend; it’s a sort of hybrid memoir/critical work dealing with alcoholism, both personal and within creative writing communities. She addresses her concern that by quitting drinking, she would cease to have a creative identity or make compelling work. This was a very real fear for me. I thought that by getting sober, I wouldn’t have anything to say anymore. But really the exact opposite is true. I feel like I am more able to collect and articulate my thoughts now, and I’m more open to experience and discovery. For me, alcohol just dulls everything, and now I want the ragged raw stuff of life, the unfiltered light. http://j.mp/2oYFu5C