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[ramblingthoughtsofayoungadult]

Unpredictable, Part 2-Limoreau x black!fem!reader fic

A/N: Thanks for all the love on the first part! I decided to use feminine and masculine pronouns to refer to Jordan when they are in those respective forms but they/them when referring to them as a person (it'll make sense when you read it). Also, I accidentally made it a slow burn.

Warnings: Drug and alcohol use, swearing, and sensuality.

Word count: 6.6k

Series Masterlist

Getting ready to go out could be stressful but it was meditative for me. The extra care in the shower, paying more attention to how I applied lotion and other skincare to my skin, and taking my time with my makeup was like a mini therapy session. Twice’s “Moonlight Sunrise” filled my room as I carefully sprayed braid spray on sections of my scalp. When I was halfway done with my edges, my phone started buzzing.

E: Are u busy?

I quickly typed back, Kind of but what’s up?

E: Can you come by my dorm ASAP? M needs help getting ready 2 go out.

I nearly messed up my edges over her words despite my previous premonition. While the premonition did not have to come true or mean anything, the buzzing underneath my skin would not stop. Though I tried seven times, I could not get anything else about what would happen tonight.

If only you were stronger, a voice hissed in the back of my head.

It was irritating not being able to see what I wanted when I wanted but, that was a large reason I applied to Godolkin in the first place. This was the place where supes perfected their abilities, whether they got into the Seven or not.  So, with years of practice under my belt, I shoved all the thoughts deep down into my subconscious and texted Emma that I would be there in about twenty minutes.

As I was heading downstairs, Alina, and Sasha, the third and fourth most important sorority members, were laughing and talking in the foyer. They both wore white crop tops and dark jeans with wedges.

Alina spotted me first and smiled. “Y/N, looking as amazing as usual.” Her dark brown hair was flat-ironed to frame her sculpted face.

“Oh my gosh, is that a Blumarine dress?” Sasha gushed, green eyes boring into the pink ruffle halter dress I wore.

“Yes, I’m so glad that I found it when I did,” I replied.

When I finally got to face them, I somehow felt as though they were looking down on me even though I was a couple of inches taller than all of them. Their bright veneers could fool anyone and did so on a regular basis.

“Where are you off to? A date?” Alina asked.

 It was always easier to lie to them.

 “Yes, he’s taking me to that sushi place off campus I’ve been dying to try,” I affirmed.

 “Is it Andre? That would make so much sense, you’d be such a cute couple!” Alina cheered.

 Sasha stepped towards me and placed her French-manicured hand on my shoulder. “Remember, Y/N, it’s important to have fun but you are a representative of Si Chi and you must uphold everything that means no matter the setting.”

Despite the smile and warmth in her eyes, I knew that there was a viper ready to strike at any second.  

I smiled. “I would not dream of doing anything else.”

“Great. Besides, you have to use your connections wisely.” She turned and waltzed back towards her friends, the scent of her Juicy perfume fresh in my nose.

“Do you two have plans tonight?” I asked.

Alina nodded. “We’re going to meet a few of the Phi Beta Pi girls and go to a kegger at Alpha Tau.”

Sounds horrible.

“Be safe and don’t forget that you’re representatives of the house,” I called over my shoulder as I made my way out of the house.

Seconds after Emma opened the door, her face fell.

“Of course, you’re also going out with the Top Five,” she joked while letting me in.

“I can text Cate and see if it’s cool if you come,” I offered.

Emma shook her head. “No, I’ll be okay.”

I narrowed my eyes at her too-wide smile and overeager eyes. As good as she was at comedic acting, she was a horrible liar. It would have been nice if she could have come along too.

“Next time, okay?”

“Sure, if I’m not busy.” Emma flipped her blonde bob and I laughed.

Then, I turned to Marie, who was standing on the other side of the room, looking at herself in the mirror. She was wearing a pair of flared blue pants with platform boots and a gold jacket. It was something I was positive Emma wore to one of the many graduation parties she insisted on attending.

“You look good,” I complimented.

Marie jumped and turned to me, raising her eyebrows at me. “Thanks, and you look…wow, um, really good.”

My stomach flipped at her words, and I mentally shook my head as I accepted her compliment. “You look ready to me so why did you summon me, Emma?”

“Because I’m bad at makeup,” Emma deadpanned as she flopped onto her desk chair. “But, you’re good at the whole looks-like-skincare-but-glam thing.”

I turned to Marie. “You don’t need makeup, though.”

“Neither do you but, I thought I would put in a little effort,” she admitted.

“Ooh, are you trying to impress someone? Luke’s ass really is that spectacular,” Emma sang while wiggling her eyebrows.

“Shut up!” Marie yelped, eyes widening.

 I laughed at her response and she glanced at me, looking sheepish. “If you insist, come lie down.” I gestured to her bed.

Marie followed my lead and I forced myself to exhale as normal as possible as I straddled her waist. I set my makeup bag within a reachable distance and started rifling for products.

“Do you have anything on your face now?” I asked.

“Uh, soap and lotion?” Marie replied.

I almost dropped my Fenty highlighter and stared at her. “You don’t have a skincare routine?”

Marie shook her head. “Is that bad?”

“Kind of, and it’s unfair since your skin is good.” I slowly set the items I wanted on the bed and turned back to her. “What kind of look are you going for?”

“Can you make her look like Rihanna?” Emma asked.

 “I can only do so much with makeup,” I called back.

“Something like what you have would be okay. Nothing too much,” Marie requested.

“Fine, just know I can’t do the exact same thing since we have different undertones and coloring. Just relax.”

Marie nodded and closed her eyes. I zoned out a bit as I carefully applied primer and concealer to her face and dusted highlighter on her cheeks.

“So, who invited you out?” I asked as I applied a light layer of gold eyeshadow to Marie’s eyelids.

“Oh, Andre. I ran into him earlier tonight and we kind of stopped a crazy guy together,” she recounted.

“Wait, what?” I sat up and Marie opened her eyes.

“Yeah, there was this guy running around talking about not going back to the woods,” Marie explained.

“Someone was off their meds, I mean that as sensitively as possible,” Emma commented.

 “And Andre and I stopped him from hurting himself or anyone else,” Marie concluded.

 Knowing Andre, he was definitely going to brag about it for most of the night. We got along fine but his pride got the better of him sometimes.

“Well, it looks like you’re already proving you should be in crim with me,” I asserted.

 Marie smiled slowly and I urged her to lay back down so that I could finish her makeup. She nearly head-butted me when I started spraying the setting spray, but my reflexes were too quick.

 “Chill, it’s setting spray,” Emma joked.

 “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting that,” Marie muttered.

 “I’ll warn you next time. But you are officially ready to go.” I slipped off her bed and pulled my strappy heels back on. “I’ll pick up my makeup bag later.”

 “Sounds good.” Emma jumped out of her chair and grabbed Marie’s hands. “Please remember to have fun because you’re not just doing this for you.”

  Marie laughed. “Okay, I’ll remember that.”

  I pulled their door open with one hand and grabbed Marie’s hand with the other. “And I’ll remember to make sure that you don’t do everything Emma would do.”

 Emma quirked a brow. “So, there’s a chance?”

 I rolled my eyes at my friend and tugged Marie into the hallway. As we walked, we passed some rooms with loud bass heavy music, and some making noises that I did not think were humanly possible. One made it hard for me to contain my laughter and I let out a snort.

 “Wow,” Marie commented.

  I apologized quickly.

  “There’s nothing to apologize for; I just didn’t think you were capable of making a noise like that.”

  As I moved to playfully nudge her, I realized that our hands were still clasped together. How long had it been, twenty or thirty seconds? That was longer than I held hands with anybody. I carefully let go of her hand.

  “My bad,” I apologized.

  “No, it’s fine,” she insisted.

   Nights like these were nice since the campus was mostly empty, save for the handful of students boldly wandering around campus inebriated. There was the occasional excited scream or cheer during our walk to the parking lot. At one point, Marie and I had to high-five some drunk guys as they rushed past.

   “Do you ever get used to it?” Marie asked.

  “The drunk kids? It’s kind of required,” I answered.

  “I mean all this stuff.” Marie gestured to the campus. “Keeping up with everything must be exhausting.”

 “I guess you’re forced to if you want to be successful here.”

  A cool breeze whipped past us, and a chill ran from the base of my spine to the rest of my body. I folded my arms over my chest in a feeble attempt to keep warm.

“You sure you don’t want to go back for a jacket?” Marie asked.

“I’ll be fine, it’s what liquor jackets are for anyway,” I replied.

 “So, what should I expect for tonight?”

“Have you ever seen a Pitbull music video?”

 “Maybe once.”

 “So that mixed with molly, coke, and whatever they have on hand.” I turned to her and noticed the frown between her eyebrows. “Hey, you’ll be great tonight, everyone’s gonna love you.”

 “Not if Jordan’s a part of it,” Marie scoffed.

 Of course, Andre did not tell her about who was coming on this night out.

 “Try not to worry about them. This could be a chance for you two to get to know each other better,” I tried.

  Marie stopped and looked at me. “They’re coming tonight?”

 “Yeah, they are number two.”

  Marie groaned. “They better not ruin my night.”

 “It’s okay, Andre already likes you, Cate and Luke will like you too, and you have me,” I said, extending an arm.

  Marie glanced at it for a moment before looping her arm through mine and we continued our walk. It was a nice, peaceful silence between us and I did not know whether I wanted to break it or relish it. At home, there was no such thing as peaceful silence; just the calm before all the cursing.

  “Hey, Y/N,” Marie started.

   I hummed in response.

  “What’s your deal with Jordan?”

  “We’re…friends, I think. Last year, I didn’t want to go near them for the longest time, but Cate invited me to train with all of them once. After that, they were nicer to me.”

   Marie nodded. “You seemed really comfortable with them.”

   “It’s really fun to mess with them.”

   Marie looked at me as if I was crazy and I grinned in response. Jordan was always wound up and they could not always rely on drugs to decompress. I could not pinpoint when I started being more playful with them since it sort of started out of nowhere. At least they were receptive.

   “Your heartbeat’s picking up,” Marie shared.

   I exhaled, “I always get anxious before social stuff, even if I know everyone who will be there.”

  “That sucks. How do you deal with it?”

   “Alcohol, when it’s available, and dancing. My mom thought dance lessons would help me build more confidence than therapy. Plus, it’s basically guaranteed to be acceptable in any setting.”

   After a few more minutes, we finally reached the parking lot and I ignored the chill on my back as we approached Luke, Cate, Andre, and Jordan. They were all standing around Luke’s car, but Jordan and Cate were passing a joint while Luke and Andre were laughing. Andre was the first to notice us and grinned.

  “Hey, you made it,” Andre greeted.

  “Yeah, Y/N is a great guide,” Marie complimented.

  Cate smiled and handed the joint back to Jordan before walking over and hugging me. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen you. You look all grown up now.”

 “It’s been three months, Cate,” I laughed as I slowly pulled away from her. “I love the corset.”

 “Thanks, nice earrings,” she replied.

  “Y/N, are you trying to steal my girlfriend?” Luke teased as he approached us.

  I shook my head and couldn’t help the stupid grin that worked its way on my face. “I would never think about it.”

  His hug was a lot stronger than Cate’s, which made sense considering his ability. Despite his status, Luke was always nice to everyone, including Cate’s little mentee.

  Andre made quick work of introducing Marie to everyone and I stiffened when he got to Jordan. “Have you met Jordan?”

  Jordan narrowed his eyes at Marie. “Yeah, we’ve met.”

  “Are you going to reject me from this outing too?” she shot back.

  “Love too.”

  I wandered over to Jordan and put my hand on his shoulder. “Please play nice.”

 “I can’t promise anything,” he muttered.

 “Well, I like both of you and hope you can get along for a couple of hours.” I turned to Marie, mustering the best puppy eyes I could, and she smiled softly.

  “Fine with me.”

  Jordan rolled his eyes, agreed, and took another hit from the joint. He smirked as he extended it towards me. “What do you say, freshie?”

  “I am a year younger than you!” I griped.

  “And you’ll always be my little freshman,” he teased.

   “Anyway, a Si Chi girl would never be caught smoking or vaping.”

 “And you’re a good little Si Chi girl.”

 “I’m the secretary!”

 “As much as I hate to interrupt this,” Andre interjected, “I’d like to get the night started.”

 “How are we all gonna fit?” Marie asked as we made our way to the car.

 “We’ll make it work,” Luke replied as he slid into the front seat.

  Obviously, Cate took the front passenger seat, leaving Jordan, Andre, Marie, and me in the back. Jordan climbed in first, I followed him, Marie followed me, and Andre squeezed in last. I glanced at Marie and began pushing myself to sit on her lap when a strong arm wrapped around my waist and pulled me in the other direction. Seconds later, I glanced down at Jordan who eyed me expectantly.

 “Why do you look so surprised?” he teased.

 “I just thought it’d be easier if Marie and I were together,” I stated as Luke pulled out of the parking lot.

  Jordan took his time rolling down the window. Then, he took a hit and exhaled the smoke out of it. “Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

 Another shiver ran up my spine and I turned away from Jordan in time for Cate to hand me her phone, which was connected to the aux cord. As soon as I saw “Get Ur Freak On”, I hit play and handed the phone back to her.

 “Nice choice,” Andre complimented before taking a swig from his flask and handing it to me.

 I accepted the flask. “Thank you.”

 The familiar burn down my throat was almost comforting but that also could have been due to the top-shelf whiskey in the flask. When I sat up, I noticed Marie eyeing the flask in my hand curiously.

  “Want some?” I asked.

  “No, thank you,” Marie kindly rejected.

  “Did you just fail to corrupt a freshman?” Jordan rasped in my ear.  

  Reflexively, I swatted Jordan’s shoulder and assured Marie she did not have to do anything she didn’t want to. Fortunately, Andre’s whiskey helped dissolve the tension between the two, or maybe it was just my perception.

   Before I knew it, Cate wiped the host at an exclusive club downtown to give us a booth and as much champagne as we wanted. The place was as crowded as it was in my mind, filled with people, the strobe lights catching the occasional sequin or shiny suit. The music was so loud that it was hard to recognize the songs but I felt like my brain was swimming either way. When we got to our booth, Cate, Andre, and Luke sat on one side while I sat in between Marie and Jordan on the other.

   Seconds after we sat, a hostess in a tiny bandage dress set bottles of champagne and crystal flutes on our table.

  “I love your eyeliner,” I complimented as she began to walk away.

  She thanked me before disappearing into the crowd and Luke laughed.

  “How are you already drunk?” Luke asked.

  “I’m not, I’m just nice.” My argument probably would have been better if I didn’t trip over the “c”.

  “You did drink half of my flask, Y/N,” Andre pointed out.

  I opened my mouth in shock. “Well, it’s not my fault that these two,” I gestured to Cate and Jordan, “didn’t contribute.”

 Luke and Andre busted out laughing while Cate slowly rolled her eyes.

 “Leave her alone, Y/N needs to let loose,” Cate interrupted.

 “Thank you.”

  Luke must have gotten over his earlier comment since he poured three flutes of champagne and handed me one. Immediately I started sipping and giggled as the bubbles burst in my mouth. There must have been something in the air but I felt so light, like I would float away at any second.

   “Is that coke?” Marie’s voice dragged me back to the group.

   In that second, I noticed Cate hand a baggie of powder to Jordan and saw her eyes were slightly red.

    Jordan shook his head. “We did all the coke. This is molly.”

   Marie’s eyes widened and she glanced at me.

  “I can’t do uppers, messes with my powers,” I explained.

  “And we do not want a repeat of New Year’s,” Cate added.

  I bristled at the foggy memory.

  Luke leaned towards Marie. “I don’t really do hard drugs but I microdose shrooms.” He flicked the baggie for emphasis.

   Marie shook her head and smiled. “No, thanks.”

  “Aw, she’s so polite,” Jordan mocked.

  I finished my drink and pushed the flute towards Luke. “Leave her alone, she doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to.”

  The last thing I wanted was for Marie to feel pressured into doing anything with them and me by extension. However, she was comfortable enough to drink and even showed off her powers a little bit. We were all in awe when Marie made a droplet of blood from a pinprick on her finger float into a tiny ball before disappearing back into her finger.

  “That’s badass,” Andre declared with a nod as he sipped some champagne.

  “Not bad, Moreau,” Luke added.

   Cate nodded her approval before doing some more molly while Jordan stared at Marie.

   “Come on, you can say it,” I fake encouraged.

   “Fine, she’s decent,” Jordan admitted.

   I leaned my head towards him. “See, that wasn’t so hard.”

   Jordan gently swatted me away and I laughed as I finished off my glass of champagne. Things were already going better than I expected. The night got even better when “American Boy” blared through the speakers.

   Immediately, I yelped as I jumped to my feet, Cate quickly joining with a mischievous smile on her face.  

   “We’ll be out there,” Cate said, gesturing to the dance floor.

    Luke quickly pecked her lips. “Have fun.”

   As I passed Marie, I grabbed her hand. “Come on.”

  She looked a little apprehensive but grinned as she followed me onto the dancefloor. It was warm and there were so many people to push past but it didn’t matter. The beat was infectious as I began to spin, arms above my head. My braids flowed around me as I tossed my head from side to side. In the middle of a spin, I felt a gloved hand grab one of my arms and pull me towards someone.

  When I opened my eyes, Cate’s big blue ones were staring back at me. Red rimmed her irises and her hands moved to my hips. We moved in time together and I couldn’t stop laughing as we did.

  “You’re welcome for saving you from that creep dancing behind you,” she yelled over the music.

  “You will always be my hero,” I gushed.

  She spun me and I giggled as I faced Marie. Marie was swaying to the music, eyes closed, but she looked blissful. My hands found hers and I pulled her to dance with me. She was not a bad dancer at all but I took the lead, swiveling my hips and bobbing my head. At one point, I wrapped my arms around her neck and hugged her.  Slowly, her arms wrapped around my waist, and I hummed at the warmth.

  Cate leaned over me. “Sorry, she’s an affectionate drunk.”

  I gasped but did not move. “I am not drunk!”

  “It’s okay,” Marie laughed.

  “Seriously, I’m not even tipsy,” I added. “I can move if you want, though.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  The pit of my stomach suddenly felt warm and fuzzy as I danced with my two friends. I closed my eyes and giggled as the champagne bubbles carried my thoughts away. Was this what it was like not to think all the time?

  “Jordan can’t take his eyes off you.” Cate’s whisper jolted me out of my reverie and I pulled away from Marie.

  “What?” I uttered.

  Cate gave me a weird look and nodded her head towards the table. My eyes wandered in that direction and Jordan was staring back at me. Andre was the only one besides him at the table and he was busy flirting with the hostess but Jordan did not look at them. His eyes were like a hawk’s and I felt like a little mouse.

  “They’re watching us dance, it’s fine!” I shouted over the music.

  Cate shook her head. “He’s not looking at all of us.”

   As much as I enjoyed dancing to the next five songs, I could not get Cate’s words out of my head. This was supposed to be my night not to think about anything, but I could feel the rumination looming.

  But there’s nothing to think about. We’re just friends if we’re anything at all and Cate’s been on this since I joined the group, I thought, squashing any others.

  Once “Like That” ended, I let Marie and Cate know I was going to take a break before making my way back to the booth and plopping down next to Jordan.

  “Having fun?” I panted.

  “Yeah, but not as much as you,” he replied.

  “You should join us next time.” I huffed as I flipped my braids over one shoulder and sat up. “Where’re the others?”

  “Luke went off somewhere and Andre is making some girls suffer through his coin trick.”  

  “And you don’t have anyone you like?”

  I thought Jordan paused but he shook his head. “No, but you’ve been entertaining me.”

  Something jolted in my chest like I’d been shocked. I had another sip of champagne to get rid of the feeling and Jordan’s silver rings caught my eyes. Slowly, my fingers slipped over the ones on his middle and right ring fingers.

  “These are pretty,” I mused.

  “Thanks.”

  As my fingers continued slipping over the rings, he moved so that we were holding hands and a chuckle escaped me.

  Jordan’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “You have man hands,” I chortled.

 “Seriously, freshie?” Jordan sighed.

 “It’s true!”

  I couldn’t stop laughing at how his hand engulfed mine, but it was comforting in a way too. It took me a minute to calm down and when I did, my eyes found Marie and Cate on the dancefloor.

  “I’m glad she came tonight,” I said.

  “Yeah, she’s really nice,” he agreed.

  “See, not all strangers are horrible.”  

  “Okay, you were right.”

  I gasped and put my free hand on my chest. “I must be really drunk because you just admitted I was right about something.”

  “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” Jordan groaned.

  “I should’ve been recording because no one will ever believe that Jordan Li admitted they were wrong about something,” I cheered.

  Jordan shook his head. “Don’t let it get to your head.”

  “It’s already there.”

  I didn’t know how long I sat there, laughing and watching Marie and Cate dance. There was something fascinating about seeing Marie in the element and getting along with everyone. She seemed so…free but it was so genuine. How did she manage that?

  “Do you like her?” Jordan asked.

  I blinked and looked back at him. “Huh?”

 “Don’t play dumb. You’ve been flirting with her all night.”  “I have not! I’m being welcoming.”

  “Really, because I’ve never seen you look at anyone like you do with her.”

  “Are you jealous that I’m getting along with someone else?”

  “Why would I be jealous? You’re not going anywhere.”

  Something was off about his tone but I couldn’t put a finger on it. Why would Jordan say that? Marie was my friend and I’ve been treating her like a friend. Why would they care how I acted anyway?

  “I’m thirsty,” I declared.

 “You want me to get you water?”

 I shook my head. “I need Casamigos.”

 Jordan smiled widely. “You sure?”

 “Mmhmm.”

 Jordan stood, pulled me to my feet, and started leading me to the bar. Halfway there, they shifted into their feminine form, becoming even more adept at navigating the crowds. Once we got to the bar, she got the attention of the bartender and ordered the shots. At some point, I started bouncing on my heels as we waited.

 “Hi, Barbie,” a gruff voice sounded behind me.

 I jumped, nearly running into the bar. The man was tall and his mustard yellow suit washed out his pale skin and blonde hair. His smile was all wrong and made my stomach churn.

 “Um, hi, Planters Guy?”

 Jordan burst out laughing next to me, making the man glare at her for a second. She waved her hand in apology and turned towards the bar.

 “It’s Michael, actually, can I get your name?” he stepped closer to me.

 I opened my mouth to respond but Jordan answered.

 “She’s with me.” Her hand slowly slid to the small of my back and pulled me into her side.

 “What if I bought you a drink?” Michael offered.

 I glanced at Jordan. “Well, I guess that’s alright.”

 Jordan rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

The bartender set two trays of shots in front of us and Jordan and I each grabbed one and turned to Michael.

“Thanks for the drinks!”

 Once we got far away enough for him to hear, I burst out laughing and tried not to spill anything.

 “Works every time,” Jordan stated.

 “What am I gonna do when you graduate next year?” I mused.

 “Aw, are you gonna miss me?”

 “I’ll miss how easy it is to get free drinks with you.”

 My face warmed and I ignored the warmth in my stomach. Andre was waiting for us back at the table.

  “Jordan, why’d you change?” Andre asked curiously.

 “Makes it easier to get free drinks,” she answered.

 I plucked a shot from a tray and leaned on Jordan’s shoulder. “I appreciate them in both forms.”

 Jordan seemed to tense under the contact, and I leaned back up, wondering if I’d done something wrong. If I had, she did not act like it as she grabbed a shot and made Andre grab one.

 “Cheers to another year?” Andre suggested.

 “The year Y/N breaks into the Top Fifteen?” Jordan joked, raising an eyebrow.

 I grinned. “Who knows, maybe this is the year I take your spot.”

 “Ooh, bold, Y/N, I like it,” Andre cheered.

 “I’d be more scared if your punches didn’t feel like a kitten pawing at me.”

 “Just cheers!”

  She laughed as the three of us clinked glasses and did the shots. The tequila was smooth as it ran down my throat and I was practically buzzing as I went for the second one.

  “Whoa, are you sure you don’t want to slow down?” Jordan asked.

  “It’s fine, I ate before we went out, I’m not even tipsy,” I insisted.

  Around the third shot, Andre disappeared and by the fifth, everything was blurry, like one of my visions. I think I pouted at the thought.

  Then, the starting chords of “Standing Next to You” filled my ears and my body moved on its own, jumping to my feet.

  “Oh my gosh, they’re playing Jungkook, we have to dance!” I yelled.

 “Okay, calm down,” she said, setting down her glass and letting me pull her onto the dancefloor.

  My body kept moving on its own, body rolling and feet shimmying. The song was entrancing and I was lost in it, singing as well as I could. Jordan spun me a couple of times before pulling me closer and I laughed as I wrapped my arms around her neck.

   I couldn’t remember the last time I was this close to Jordan. She had such pretty features but her eyes were amazing, like molten pools of dark chocolate.

  “Thanks.”

  I gasped and clamped my hand over my mouth. “Oh my gosh.”

  “It’s cute, you like my eyes?”

  “Stoooop,” I whined.

  “Oh no, I’m never letting this go,” she teased.

  In that moment, I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole, but I did not get what I wanted. Instead, Jordan’s hands pulled me flush against them, fingers tapping against my hips.

  “Come on, you were so bold a second ago,” she whispered.

  “That was different,” I muttered.

  “But I want to know what else my little freshman likes about me.”

   Their mocking tone made my body heat rise and I did not know how to stop it. Even in their feminine form, Jordan was stronger than me and it would take a lot of effort to get out of their grip.

 “I’m not a freshman.”

 Suddenly, we stopped moving while everyone else around us was making out or dancing. Somehow, no one bumped into us and I wondered if there was some sort of invisible field blocking it from happening. My eyes wandered away from Jordan, glancing at the colorful lights and feathers on someone’s dress. That did not last long as I felt her soft fingers move a braid away from my face.

    I could hear my heartbeat in my ears as I turned back to her. Jordan seemed so soft as her hand trailed behind my ear before finally resting on my shoulder. Any words I could have said dried up on my tongue and I couldn’t think as our faces got closer to each other.

   Her woodsy cologne filled my senses, and I wondered what she could sense. Just as I closed my eyes, a terrifying scream broke through the crowd. When I opened my eyes, everything was a blur. At one moment, Jordan was in their masculine form and tugging me through the crowd. In the next, Andre was pushing me back into Luke’s car.

  Jordan, Andre, and Luke were yelling or talking but I couldn’t understand any of it. Cate seemed panicked in the front, but I had no idea what she was saying.

  “Where’s Marie?” I asked.

  Darkness overtook everything before anyone answered my question.

 The throbbing in my temples the next morning made me want to strangle George Clooney. My head weighed a thousand pounds, and it took even more effort to push myself up in bed. Thankfully, the curtains were drawn on my windows and only some rays of sunlight peaked through.

  When I was finally able to open my eyes, I noticed the bottle of Vought Water on my dresser and two aspirin. It was too early to ask any questions and I took the medicine and almost cried at the relief. Then, I did my best to walk to the bathroom without aggravating my spinning head.

  As soon as I turned on the light, I noticed the red and black jacket around my shoulders and gasped.

  This was Jordan’s.

  If they brought me home how messed up was I? I groaned at the thought and carefully hung the jacket on the hook on my door.

  My morning routine was plagued by all the possibilities from last night and what I’d said. I remembered vaguely gushing over Jordan’s eyes and dancing with Marie and Cate and…

   Almost kissing Jordan.

  How was I going to live that down? What had even come over me? It had to be the tequila and champagne. Thanks to that combination, Jordan was going to have material to tease me for at least a few months.

  After pulling on a baby blue short-sleeved fuzzy crop top and matching linen shorts, I slipped on my white Stan Smiths and went downstairs for breakfast. Per usual, it was buffet style with an option of fresh fruits, turkey bacon, steel-cut oatmeal, or toast. Sydney, Alina, and Sasha were the only ones in the dining room, all wearing matching Alo Yoga sets.

  I took the seat next to Sasha and forced myself to eat the oatmeal. “Good morning, everyone.”

 “Good morning, Y/N,” they all replied.

  “How was your night?” I asked Alina.

  “Fun,” she replied.

  “But not nearly as fun as yours,” Sasha commented.

  I stiffened and tried to cover it up with a sip of coffee. “What makes you say that?”

 “For one thing, you’re not ready to join us for Ashtanga yoga. Second, Jordan Li had to walk you to your room.” Sasha emphasized Jordan’s name with the biggest Cheshire cat grin on her face.

  “I’m glad you have such a good friend,” Sydney expressed, flicking a curly strawberry blonde hair out of her green eyes. “You always need those when Si Chi sisters can’t attend the same events.”

  “Thanks, I’m glad they’re my friend too.” I smiled as kindly as I could without side eyeing Sasha.

  Fifteen seconds passed before Alina broke the silence.

 “Did you hear what happened with that freshman last night?” she asked.

 Sasha groaned. “It’s been all over my timeline.”

 I frowned. “What happened?”

 “This freshman got caught off campus at a club,” Alina said as though it was the greatest gossip known to man.

  “Didn’t she save someone’s life, though? They had some kind of accident?” Sydney added as she popped a grape in her mouth.

  In that moment, the caffeine must have hit my brain because I almost yelped at the realization. We’d left Marie at the club last night, I had abandoned her. I grabbed my phone from my bag and started texting Emma.

 Y/N: Hey, did Marie make it back last night? Lost track of her.

 Emma responded back pretty quickly.

E: Yeah. She got a weird email from school. Ohw to Lamplighter.

My stomach churned and I willed myself to settle it. For a second, I closed my eyes and focused on Marie, but I couldn’t get a clear image of her.

 “Shit,” I muttered.

 Alina, Sasha, and Sydney turned to me, microbladed brows raised.

 “I’m sorry, I just realized that I forgot to read a chapter for a class today.”

   The girls may have said something as I quickly finished my breakfast and left the dining room, but I couldn’t hear them over my racing thoughts. Twenty minutes later, I was walking into the Crimefighting building with two iced coffees from Jitterbean in my hands and Jordan’s jacket slung over one of my arms.

  There were only a couple of people milling about the people, professors making final touches on lectures, and students cramming. I paid none of them any mind as I came across a sulking Jordan. They were in their feminine form and if they were hungover, they did not look like it.

  “Hi,” I greeted once we got close.

  “Hey,” she replied.

  “Um, I brought you coffee and your jacket as a thank you for last night. I heard you had to take me home and I’m sorry about that.”

  I handed her both items and she nodded. “It’s fine but you do owe me.”

  Her tone wasn’t as light as usual. Even when they were hungover, Jordan never missed an opportunity to go back and forth. This had to be about that almost kiss. As much as I wanted to avoid it, I had no choice.

  “About that, uh, kiss,” I whispered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jordan affirmed.

  “Are you sure? Because----”

  “Seriously, it’s fine, we were drunk, well, you were wasted but it’s okay.”

 They did not sound nor look “okay” and they spoke as if they wanted me to drop it as soon as possible. Earlier, I wanted to erase it from my memory but their response made me want to shrink into a corner. Why did I even care? It’s one issue resolved.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “Anyway, have you seen Marie today? I can’t get in touch with her.”

  “No, I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Telling me not to worry doesn’t make it go away. I feel bad about leaving her last night.”

  Jordan glanced around us before pulling me off to the side. “You should’ve told her the risks before having her join us. You know none of us can get caught breaking the rules,” she hissed.

  “I didn’t think abandoning her would be a possibility,” I muttered.

  “She’ll be fine. You should know to look out for yourself by now, freshie.”

  For a moment, I narrowed my eyes at Jordan, who was suddenly more focused than they’d been since we started talking. They had a point, they and the rest of the Top Five always covered themselves but that typically never meant someone got hurt.

  “Would you have done the same thing if it were me instead of Marie?” I asked.

   Jordan flinched and her silence was all the answer I needed. Tears threatened to burn in the corner of my eyes, but I turned before she could see them. I thought I heard her say something and I mumbled about seeing her in class later. Just as I was about to make my way out of the building, Marie flew in, eyes flaring.

   “Did you know about this?” she questioned.

   “About what?” I asked.

   “They’re expelling me to cover up for you.” She looked behind me. “And you.”

   “Wait, what?” Jordan replied.

   “That doesn’t make any sense. You didn’t do anything wrong,” I gently argued.

   “Well, I guess I did because I thought you were different from them.”

   Her cold words felt worse than the time a girl with ice powers caught me in the shoulder during a training session. For a second, I couldn’t speak, and I thought I heard buzzing in my ears. Nothing was going the way I thought or envisioned it would. What was the point of having these powers if I couldn’t help my friends or figure out who were fake friends?  

   “Marie,” I started.

    She pushed past me and Jordan, storming towards Brink’s office. As I turned around to go back to my room and lick my wounds, a vision flashed in my head.

   Bright yellow flames covered Luke’s body and he had a murderous look in his eye as he approached someone. The perspective switched to a frightened Marie stumbling out of Brink’s office with Luke trailing behind her, his flames growing larger and more sporadic. Then, Jordan appeared.

   As soon as it appeared, it left and I had a sinking feeling in my chest as I whirled around.

   “MARIE, DON’T!”

[presiding]

How you'd rewrite Dishonored death of the outsider if it was fully fledged game with 10 missions? (like Dishonored or Dishonored 2)

Oooh!! Enrichment in my enclosure - thank you for asking! Thinking about a total rewrite was a great exercise. Fair disclaimer: I haven’t read the books & their canon-status can’t hurt me. To me, the Dishonored games stand out due to their immsim design philosophy, and thinking about some of the industry reasons for DotO’s departure from that, if I could make a standalone game with ~ten levels I would, but with the same budget I’d also happily make two DLCs made slowly over a longer timeframe with greater attention to detail.

Game structure

Finding Daud // Billie’s past

The fate of the Outsider // Billie’s future

Game story

Setting & Characters

Billie: What has Billie been doing since she’s returned to Serkonos? Knowing the Dreadful Wale will sink, she’s sold it for scrap & has set up an agency in Lower Aventa. She’s something of a detective/odd-jobs man (& assassin when it suits her). Business is booming, life is good. I think a long-running implication that she's becoming Daud in some ways would make for an interesting subplot.

Karnaca: a city that unfolds. In the first levels, Billie feels like a forgotten woman, a ghost slipped through the cracks, but as levels progress there are hints & references to how her past actions have affected others & shaped the city

Alignments: Witches, gangs, religion, industry; missions for clients who can’t necessarily pay their way. Missions that allow the player to explore/understand Karnaca in a deeper way.

Daud: Billie is unsure if Daud again will bring her any closure. She’s been thinking of him since her time with Emily, and his name keeps popping up.

Deirdre: the charm is a more functional heart, similar to Jessamine, as well as her own character design. Perhaps she doesn’t see Deirdre until she chooses the powers, or until she’s in the void (see next point)

First arc: Finding Daud // Billie’s past

Powers: the Outsider offers Billie powers even though her life is finally, actually good, so she’s pissed off. A choice - she can take them, or play no powers mode.

Breanna Ashworth is this arc’s villain - she wants Delilah back, and knows that Daud has banished her before, wants to know how he did it. Grief & desperation has changed her, and she no longer has her high society veneer. The remnants of the Karnaca coven, now powerless, have stolen from the Overseers to arm themselves to the teeth, and to neutralise Daud’s powers, in addition to black bonecharms.

Billie’s in a race against time against Breanna to find Daud, but by the last level it becomes clear that Breanna *has* found Daud, and has been torturing him for information about the void. Her dynamic with Billie is complicated by their past.

I think betrayal would be an interesting theme, so maybe one of the levels gives you the option to ally yourself with Breanna under false pretences.

Second arc: choosing the fate of the Outsider // Billie’s future

Delilah is the core villain, but she’s obsessed with killing the Outsider so she can take his place, having been violently ripped from her perfect world in her own painting by Breanna (who meant well), & knowing the Empire doesn’t hold her interest... but a perfectly mouldable void & infinite power does take her fancy.

As remorseful Daud is obsessing about preventing Delilah from taking power, Billie’s doing some detective work and learns more about the Outsider (he’s not showing up and monologuing - she’s finding this out herself. A level idea could be a raid on a ‘haunted’ houses where the void is thin)

Delilah succeeds in taking the Outsider's place, leaving the Outsider dead or mortal depending on if you are able to save him. Delilah has split her soul from herself before and she’s very much clever enough to learn the Outsider’s name to render him mortal.

Daud knows he’s dying, though, and it might be an ultimate sacrifice to save both Billie’s life, and the Outsider’s.

So during the final battle, there’s an option to make Daud the Outsider, because Daud wants Billie and the Outsider to have a shot at a normal life, and his life was forfeit in his own mind…

… or, reluctantly accepting the Outsider’s help, Billie finds a way to cut the void’s access to the world, rendering Delilah an all powerful god over a dead & silent world.

Because of the past/present focus of this you could even have levels set in the past - missions with Billie & Daud. Perhaps Billie as POV character, and Daud dropping by the way that Billie did in Knife of Dunwall. That’d be neat.

A heap of ideas here, hope there was something you liked :)

[le-trash-prince]

4 Minutes ep 4 thoughts

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that Tonkla’s name is Anuwat based on Win’s reaction. Also based on the fact that we literally saw Tonkla bash someone’s head in with a rock, so

Great: Let’s get you to the hospital. But maybe a different hospital than the one where the guy who knifed you works.

Great trying to jump and see in the OR killed me 😭

I’m digging the black touches on Great’s outfit.

Oh a funeral. Sure would be nice if they could show us Tonkla’s brother’s funeral photo

“I think the person who killed your brother is probably the heir to a powerful family” maybe like Title hmm hmm?

Murder boy has this cop wrapped around his finger, you love to see it

Okay so Korn has an injury in the same timeline where Tonkla’s brother is dead. Have we considered that the different timelines may not be wholly separate? If Great is making all these changes in order to avoid his death, but his death clock still keeps moving closer, time may be in flux and still correcting itself, right?

I say that also bc I’m still wondering if Dome would have memories of dying

Korn… I want you dead

Korn has this veneer of civility (“Don’t hurt her”) that is consistently being stripped away. A man who can treat his lover like that doesn’t know the meaning of a moral boundary that can’t be crossed

Oh the black cat that Tonkla hallucinated :(

He has a bruised lip in this memory :(

“Don’t hurt her” and yet all he does is turn his back mhmm

Thank you Great for deleting that text (fyi for non-LINE users, deleting a message only deletes it off the senders device, you have to unsend it in order to remove it from the recepient’s device)

Oh my god did he go to the warehouse alone. RESPECT REDACTED!!! The universe took one look at Great and said “yeah this one’s gonna need the gift of foresight to make it anywhere in life”

He’s dressed in fucking white clothes too oh my god I’m so stressed shfnf THEY DON’T EVEN NEED A FLASHLIGHT TO SEE YOU MAN

I love that we get a different effect every time there’s a timejump. 

Lightning storm on the bridge @oldsargasso

Tyme if you understood how bad Great was at driving you would not question him pulling over during an adrenaline rush

This tent scene is cute

Oh I fucking love being right. Congrats to all of us who knew

so the timelines are not separate at all. GOD SO WHAT IF DOME REALLY DOES HAVE MEMORIES OF TITLE KILLING HIM???

banger of an episode yet again

[copperhawkthoughts]

Dressed to the Neins 2 - Percy

Ah No Mercival Percival, my beloved…

Rambly design details below the cut!

As I said in the video, the design elements that drew me to this pattern for Percy were threefold:

1. The central four-pointed star motif just really looks like jewellery - something off of a crown or out of the vault of some kind of European royalty. In fact if anybody here reads Girl Genius, it reminds me strongly of the family emblems Gil, Tarvek and Agatha wear at their throats.

2. Paired with point 1, the fact that there is this thin, meandering row peeking out from behind the central motif was too good to pass up - it’s so easy to read that as curse smoke leaking out from collar and cuffs, from behind Percy’s veneer of embarrassed nobility.

3. The last big one is these “trees”, which I took to stand for Whitestone, and symbolize its ruin and recovery.

When it came to picking the colours, this palette was pretty straightforward. The sapphire blue was first - that’s Percy blue. I knew I also wanted to represent Vex in this square, so that’s the peacock teal.

After that we had to have black for Orthax (fun fact - the only other characters to get the true black in their squares are Vax, obviously, and through him Kiki and Vex), silver for wealth and nobility but also the polished gleam of a gun barrel, and white for Percy’s hair and also the sorts of things white usually represents in (western) art.

Last we have brown, for the dying Sun Tree and the ruin of Whitestone, and then that particular shade of green, which represents both the fresh hope of newly budding leaves and is also a little radioactive-looking, representing the residuum whose production and export eventually restore the wealth and power of Whitestone as a seat of innovation and industry.

When choosing the colour placement, I put Percy’s blue + white at the core to represent past & future Percy - the young lordling with the bright future and the fully-fledged Lord of Whitestone, recovered. Also, the alternating rings of colour look like a target :D

Silver borders that, both because it reinforces the visual of a piece of jewellery and also because that way it sort of looks like looking down the barrel of a gun, if that gun was a…four shooter? Look I know that’s not a thing and it’s a stretch but my brain made the association and now I can’t shake it.

The sneaky row is black, of course, and the row after that, which actually obscures a lot of the black stitches by design, is Vex “take off the mask, darling” ‘ahlia’s teal blue. The last two rows of the centre section are silver and Perce blue for the man himself, and the way he builds himself back up, wraps himself in his coat and his dignity and keeps going.

I said enough already on the brown and green rows, so the last two are black (can’t ever truly shake that darkness, Freddie) and white - for healing, for peace, for hair that’d have gone white by now anyway.

If you read all that, wow, thank you. Same bat time, same bat channel next week for Keyleth!

[enbycrip]

ID: a black and white photo and caption from a newspaper showing a young white trans man with light hair wearing a tweed jacket and high collar smiling at a young white woman in a pale dress as he brushes her mid-length dark hair. She is smiling at him from the slightly complex angle as he brushes her hair. The photo is faded and not great quality but their faces are clear.

The headline over the photo is “Here’s How I Used To Do It!”

The caption below reads “An expert at women's coiffures although not a hairdresser, Zdenek Koubek proves himself as he combs the locks of Cinda Glenn, New York night club beauty. Koubek knows all about coiffures from experience, since they were of concern to him when he was the foremost girl athlete of Czechoslovakia, prior to a sex-change.”

Zdenek Koubek was born in Paskov, Czechoslovakia (at the time) in December 1913, one of eight siblings, and competed as an athlete. With minimal formal training, he began running at age 17, decided to pursue it formally aged 19, and broke two world records at the 1934 world olympics.

Because queer and gender-diverse history is complex, I’m genuinely unsure if Zdenek was intersex. He seems to have been pretty gender-nonconforming when read as a woman in his early life and seems to have retired from athletics because he was harassed by people wanting him to undergo invasive “gender checks” after his gold medals at the 1934 Olympics.

Apparently the current obsession with “defining gender in sport” has roots back to the 1930s. Athletes competing in female athletics have been forced to undergo a variety of examinations for the purpose of declaring them “female enough”. They seem to have never been pleasant, appropriate, or anything other than invasive and dehumanising, and they seem to have always focused on a) defining gender by physicality b) defined that physicality in fairly arbitrary ways that are actually incredibly difficult to relate to anything objective, despite a veneer of scientific objectivity.

I can entirely see why the threat of such harassment would have caused Zdenek to decide an athletic or adjacent career wasn’t worth undergoing it, whether he personally believed himself to be intersex or whether we would recognise him as such today. The term “intersex” has many definitions, and is often challenged by medical professionals if it could potentially cover too many people - e.g. medical professionals have repeatedly challenged the term when used by AFAB people with PCOS, which can cause fertility issues, hirstutism etc, purely on the grounds of “that would make around 10% of women intersex”. Zdenek simply publicly stated “I was wrongly assigned as female at birth” without giving any other details - as he had *every* right to. Some historians have characterised him as intersex based on this, and others simply as trans; he appears, very reasonably, to have preferred to preserve his privacy on the details.

Zdenek went on a lecture tour of the US talking about his life and transitioned in 1936. At the time of this photo, he was pursuing a career in cabaret in the US. He seems to have been reasonably successful but never settled there, returning home and marrying a cis woman with whom he lived happily for the rest of his life, dying in Prague aged 72 in 1986.

He joined a local rugby team along with his brother Jaroslov after WWII and seems to have been an enthusiastic amateur player. I hope he got a lot of joy out of it, which he does seem to have.

Like so many queer and trans histories, Zdenek’s is somewhat obscured because so much of what has been written about him is always skewed by the writer’s own perspectives about gender and transness. Including the drive to impose a false binary on trans experience - which I as a nonbinary person know is certainly not universally present.

There are, of course, *absolutely* trans people who always have a strong feeling of gender equating to “knowing they are a boy/girl from an early age”, and I in no way wish to erase them or their experiences, but it must also be noted and acknowledged there are plenty of us with different experiences. There are people like me who feel “wrong” in our assigned gender from pretty early in life, all the way down to having quite strong dysphoria in puberty and afterwards, but don’t strongly ID as the “opposite” binary gender either. There are people who rub along fine in their assigned gender, or who have many issues with it but don’t know what they equate to, until they have some experience presenting otherwise and suddenly experience strong gender euphoria for the first time in their lives. There are people who never feel anything much at all about gender and only ever do any identifying purely as a matter of convenience because a very binary society requires it.

Cis people seem to find the “always knew/born in the wrong body” narrative the easiest to relate to, and I can only assume that is because it is the narrative that allows them to challenge our society’s gender-essentialist, binarist worldview the *least*. It is considerably easier, and requires much less thought and critical attention, to say “I guess sometimes the occasional person is just mistakenly assigned to the wrong category” than to question those categories, why they exist, what they actually are, how they are imposed, and whether they actually mean anything at all in an objective sense.

I have no idea where Zdenek fell on any of this, or if his experience was very different in another way.

I posted this to, as ever, note that we are not a new phenomenon. Trans people are part of human history. We have always existed. We have always contributed. The way the society we lived in perceived us *and* how the societies our stories have passed through perceived us affect how our stories are told today, and those things can make it complex to uncover the lived experience of the trans person behind all of that. Queer and trans history must always be about acknowledging those facts and uncertainties while doing our best to find out as much as possible about the actual lived experiences of our siblings in the past.

[mightyflamethrower]

After last Thursday’s debate, Biden himself laid to rest the Democratic lie that he was robust and in control of his faculties. In truth, he demonstrated to the nation that he is a sad, failing octogenarian who could not perform any job in America other than apparently the easy task of President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief in charge of our nuclear codes.

In 2019, Democratic primary candidates often hit rival Joe Biden for his apparent senior moments and incoherence. During the 2020 campaign, Biden often became in bizarre fashion animated and nasty (“you ain’t black”/“fat”/“lying dog-faced pony soldier”/“junkie”).

His “corn pop” stories were grotesque and had a senile accentuation of his earlier “super-predator” and “clean” black riffs. As president, his mental decline progressed geometrically, in the sense that every three months, Biden became far, far worse than during the prior 90 days. His handlers long ago had determined that masking his feebleness at the expense of the security and safety of the nation was a small price to pay to retain power.

What followed was the most comprehensive deceit in presidential history, analogous to insisting that frail and dying FDR in 1944 was just fine as the November election approached or that Woodrow Wilson was expertly running the country as he lay bedridden and near comatose.

Any who questioned the vigorous Biden narrative was trashed as “ageist.” Special counsel Robert Hur was dubbed a “hack” for accurately describing Biden as so amnesiac he would win nullification acquittal from a sympathetic jury.

An array of court sycophants periodically gave interviews, insisting that the robust Biden was smarter and wiser than ever. His press secretary, Karin Jean-Pierre, helped coin a new slur, “cheap fake,” for any who collated video and audio clips demonstrating that Biden was obviously non compos mentis. Would she say the same today after the about-face CNN panelists reviewed Biden’s serial debate lapses to support their now-opportune advocacy that he not run for reelection? Would she wish to be a passenger in a car driven by Biden?

In sum, the “dynamic Biden” farce was finally laid to rest by a debate, but not before it had served the original leftist Faustian bargain. Under the guise of COVID, an enfeebled and stationary Biden outsourced his entire 2020 campaign to toady journalists and surrogate politicians.

His task was to pose from his basement as the uniter, ‘good ol’ Joe from Scranton,’ serving as the pseudo-moderate veneer for the most far left agenda in recent history. In the bargain, Joe and Jill enjoyed the privileges of power and status, while they farmed out the presidency to an array of former Obama subordinates and the hard left of what is left of the old Democratic Party.

The useful lie continued throughout his presidency, escalating in direct proportion to Joe’s mounting stumbles, brain freezes, rambling, and incomprehensible speech. When our president said something either outrageous or unfathomable, the public was to assume that it was intemperate to attribute his failures to senility.

So, the nation became acculturated to deciphering about 60 percent of what he said and writing off the rest to his never-to-be-spoken-of disability. It was the cognitive bookend to the ruse that FDR was able to stand and walk—although far worse because being wheel-chair bound is not a limitation for a president, whereas cognitive incapacity of Biden’s magnitude most certainly is.

The Biden lie was the crown jewel of a number of other left-wing/media fabrications. The more they spread, the more they seemed absurd, and the more they were refuted—so all the more others took their place and the more their promulgators never apologized but simply moved on to their next one. The common denominator was that all the lies, during their existence, were useful to the progressive project.

The Russian collusion hoax helped lose Trump the 2016 popular vote. Its resumption during his presidency ate up 22 months of his administration during the Special Counsel Robert Mueller farce.

The October surprise laptop disinformation lie may have cost Trump the 2020 election. But it was concocted so that Joe Biden could stare at the debate camera and swear to the American people that Trump was a liar, citing “51 intelligence authorities” who insisted Hunter Biden’s laptop was a likely hallmark of Russian disinformation.

We were asked to believe that clever Russian disinformationists fabricated all the sick photos and selfies of poor Hunter, knew the Biden family’s intimate tensions and fault lines as evidenced in the computer’s texts and emails, and were able to package and deposit the computer to either a Russian operative masquerading as a computer repairment or have it delivered to the supposedly useful idiot. The truth was, the FBI had the laptop during the debate and had long verified its authenticity—and thus kept mum as its brethren intelligence apparatchiks lied to the nation.

What the untruth did not fully reveal was that Biden’s campaign foreign policy guru, Antony Blinken (the current Secretary of State), cooked up the entire ruse. He enlisted former CIA grandee Mike Morell, who then rounded up on spec the confessed lying duo of John Brennan and James Clapper, who in turn drafted still more deceivers, among them the once esteemed Leon Panetta.

And the lie worked perfectly as envisioned, far better than even Russian “collusion.” The nation was deceived into believing that the “asset” Trump was reduced once again to colluding with Putin to enlist his former KGB soldiers to smear the upright Biden family and thus warp yet another election.

Note that all these lies were never retracted. No one ever apologizes. No one is ever punished, even when the lie is given under oath. No one ever has any regrets. And no one ever has any hesitation to lie again, given the utility of the prior untruth.

We were told by the deceitful Alejandro Mayorkas that the border was “secure” as he deliberately destroyed it and welcomed in over 10 million illegal aliens. That lie survived even the absurdity of years of nightly news clips (“cheap fakes?”) of thousands swarming an open border. And it died only when the 2024 election approached and the Biden administration read polls showing that a vast majority wanted the border closed and illegal entrants deported. Then suddenly, the lie that the border was secure transmogrified into the back-up lie that “Republicans would not help us close the now-insecure border.” Translated into Orwellian terms, the border that was crossed by 10 million was always secure but could have been made even more secure had Republicans joined Democrats to secure what was already “secure.”

We live in an era of lies. Sometimes they are purely political, like the Charlottesville “both sides” yarn. And sometimes they change history, like the fabrications that bats and pangolins, not the communist Chinese Wuhan virology lab, birthed the COVID-19 virus, or the Anthony Fauci contortion that his offices did not fund and help out, stealthily and in circumvention of U.S. law, deadly gain-of-function virology research in communist China.

Yet another lie was institutionalized: the January 6 riot was a full-fledged, carefully planned armed insurrection to overthrow the government. In contrast, the four months in 2020 of killing, assault, arson, and looting that saw over 35 dead, 1,500 injured law enforcement officers, $2 billion in damage, and a federal courthouse, a police precinct and a historic church torched were “cries of the heart” from the oppressed and victimized.

Those untruths ensured that hundreds of mostly naïve protestors who showed up in the capitol soon became convicted felons serving long sentences, while the 14,000 arrested for the 2020 mayhem were mostly released as overzealous but otherwise sympathetic activists.

These lies changed the course of the nation. They are birthed by the incestuous marriage of a Washington-New York political culture and a corrupt media.

The purveyors are Juvenal’s “who will police the police.” They are the administrative overseers in the FBI, CIA, DOJ, and the various cabinets and agencies. They feel they are exempt from any consequences for the damage they do, given that in their day jobs they operate as judges, jury and executioners.

Finally, while all governments lie, the left is far more adroit at it because, in their any-means-necessary/the-ends-justify-the-means credo, they spread supposedly good “lies” that stop the Hitlerian Trump, neuter the creepy deplorables/irredeemables/chumps/clingers or save the good people from the MAGA anti-vaxers and assorted yahoos.

Will the lies continue?

Indeed, they will thrive until the people slash the administrative state of its unaccountable and unelected “experts”; until they indict those in the future like Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, John Brennan and their brethren who lie under oath or to federal investigators; until they ostracize and utterly discredit those like Mayorkas, Fauci, and the Bidens whose deceptions took hostage an entire nation; and until they tune out a bankrupt media, the power cord of the entire Pravda enterprise.

[jessaerys]

if i'm being totally honest part of the reason why m-ttm-llo gets on my nerves (well it gets on my nerves in a fun angry dopamine hit kind of way. i love getting mad about it the stakes are SO low and a girl’s gotta get their hatearade somewhere) is because i AM a void-cigarettes-sex-drugs-cars-violence girlie. it's my hardboiled inner monologue i have a phd in griminess i love to write characters smoking seventeen cigarettes in the rain and shoving guns inside mouths phallically. so it's not like i don't GET the appeal because i do. it's incredibly easy to write, it’s universally sexy, it is flexible and forgiving — grittiness comes pre-packaged with a veneer of depth because (well we don’t have time to get into the history of american media). unfortunately underneath all of the fanon heavy lifting it is all aesthetic dust bunnies without substance when half the ship is an original character (matt is whatever you want him to be and the usual characterization of ‘just some guy’ appeals to the quintessential teenage boy next door who’s a bit witty trope to counterbalance mello's, well, everything) and the other half of the ship is more often than not wildly mischaracterized because if we know one thing from canon is that mello’s life revolves around beating near. our blessed understanding of mello's place in the narrative vs their barbarous creative liberties. like! what about black vs white what about being two halves of the same thing what about together we can surpass him. what about my brother broke my rib one morning and gave me half his orange in the evening. what about the machiavellian seedy underworld disgraced heir in all of his grimy fucked up fallen-from-grace streetsmart glory lifting his eyes up to a cold sterile skyscraper that fades into the clouds and the pristine boyking held prisoner within it wanting nothing but to stain the throne his entire world revolves around with his ugly fierce humanity; to break into the prince's tower and grind his face in the dirt, to free him, defile him. what about having known a boy only to be blinded years later by the knifeedge divine wrath of a naturalborn godkiller instead, pointing a gun at him anyway. look at me, why won’t you look at me. what about i don’t know where you end and i begin. what about then i guess i’m going to have to do it, what about the point where mello becomes aware of his place in the narrative and runs towards it to the bitter end. what about the relentless adversary turned unholy disciple by the festering devotion he could not excise. turned dirty-handed enforcer paving the way for the godtouched oracle to accomplish what neither of them ever could on their own and in that way finding release and grace. the softness and despair of adding up to a greater whole and yet both dying for it, one in body, the other in spirit. what about cain and abel. stick figure violence what! about! cain! and! abel! where was i going with this post it got wildly out of hand. oh yeah stream i'm your man by mitski on itunes

[raajrajasharma]

https://frikly.com/category/veneer/dyed/

[agentrouka-blog]

Today my mind blow up at the little fact that Perfect Lady Sansa Stark was only One Step to commit kingslaying.

She may have died later (either falling along Joff, the Kingsguards who would have lost a second king not dying of old in less than a year or Cersei going just wild against her) but she would have been Sansa the Kingslayer! Imagine Robb and Cat reactions, and the North chanting over their own kingslayer... the songs, the tales...! Arya would be between impressed (sad by her deah) but a little bit jealous of her sister who stole her killing!!!

(Alsp, poor Jon, who would have lost her sweet girl)

Oh yes, she would have been made a song, maybe several. It sort of fits her vision of how her contemplated suicide would have been received (in her mind) by the public:

Her body would lie on the stones below, broken and innocent, shaming all those who had betrayed her. Sansa went so far as to cross the bedchamber and throw open the shutters … but then her courage left her, and she ran back to her bed, sobbing. (AGOT, Sansa VI)

This chapter, essentially, opens and closes in the vicinity of her suicidal ideation, first in her grief and second in her fury.

The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk was nothing, nothing but a long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet below. All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn't even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn't matter at all. (AGOT, Sansa VI)

This second contemplation is interrupted by Sandor Clegane (a kingsguard now, mind) and we don't know how she would feel about that kind of song being sung of herself, one not of pristine shaming innocence but of vengeful destruction.

I imagine, while the public would idealize her ending, both Jon and Arya would eventually, as they grew up, come to a realization much like this one:

It is not their fathers who concern me. "Did Mance ever sing of Brave Danny Flint?" "Not as I recall. Who was he?" "A girl who dressed up like a boy to take the black. Her song is sad and pretty. What happened to her wasn't." In some versions of the song, her ghost still walked the Nightfort. (ADWD, Jon XII)

No matter the glamorous veneer of kingslaying vengeance, it would still ultimately be an act of desperate grief and misery. And the death of their loved one. A hollow triumph.

That said, I am living for the subtle Jaime-parallel inherent in there. Not only did Sansa contemplate regicide here, she is also later accused of just that when Joffrey actually dies, bat wings and all. It's always the middle child with a romantic streak and a disillusionment with the idea of chivalry....

[miraemar]

Corax isn't a Daemon. He's just awesome.

Excerpt from Shadow of the Past by Gav Thorpe.

‘This is no daemon.’ Lorgar raised his rod, beckoning to the blood-stained whirlwind tearing through the last of the Dark Apostle’s warriors. ‘Come to me. Brother.’

With a last flurry of activity that turned another legionary to shards of ceramite and ribbons of flesh, the apparition coalesced into a recognisable figure. It was of equal height to the daemon primarch, clad in black battleplate with long-taloned gauntlets. A pair of wings stretched from its ornate backpack, fashioned as intricate metallic raven feathers. The face was as pale as snow, gaunt, with eyes as dark as coal, framed by shoulder-length black hair.

Kalta-Ar felt his breath dying in his lungs as he looked up at the unmistakeable features of Corvus Corax, the primarch of the Raven Guard. A flurry of questions flooded his thoughts but all remained unanswered as Corax spoke.

‘What has happened to you, brother?’ ‘I have ascended,’ said Lorgar. He indicated Corax with a twitch of his rod. ‘I might ask the same of you.’

The Ravenlord strode forwards, intent on Lorgar Aurelian. Kalta-Ar and his warriors scattered before him, grateful to be free of his wrath. Marduk and his coterie closed about their primarch but a look sent them away.

‘I am what I always have been,’ said Corax. ‘I am vengeance incarnate. I am justice delivered. This place, beyond the veil, has revealed what we all are. Underneath the veneer of humanity our father crafted for us, we are of the warp.’

[la-altair]

Okay so where’s my hallmark-Christmas themed psychological horror movie?

Successful City Business Woman comes back to her roots to help family in a wasteland rural town, only to find a total transformation. The downtown is no longer a derelict stretch of cracked, cratered asphalt, empty display windows and dusty ‘antique’ shops, but a bustling return to an American Hometown that never was. Everything is bright, gaudily decorated with Christmas lights and swags of evergreen, and somehow walkable. There are somehow apartments downtown now, above the shops. She goes home to one. It’s empty, both familiar and strange.

This change should feel like a relief, because it means her family’s dying bakery has a new lease on life, but something feels - off? More people than she’s ever seen show up for the annual Christmas Tree lighting - which declares itself a tradition stretching back to the town’s founding, but she can’t ever recall being an event. The cup she’s handed at the hot chocolate stall is empty. Looking around, everyone’s cups of hot chocolate are clearly empty, but they badly mime drinking. She doesn’t, just holds the empty paper cup, and earns some uneasy, vaguely hostile looks.

She doesn’t recognize anyone, either, and the fashion is…bizarre. It’s 70 degrees in the rural South in mid-December, but everyone is bundled in brightly colored sweaters. All teeth are veneer perfect and displayed widely, all cheeks attractively pinked as if from a chill, and somehow not sweating buckets in their overwarm attire.

Someone slams hard into her front, crumpling her empty paper cup against her black tshirt. ‘Goodness, I’m sorry, Miss,’ comes some sanitized, incorrect version of a Southern accent totally wrong for this part of the country. The accents here never sounded nice, but they’d been honest and they’d been home.

‘Oh goodness, I’ve made a mess of ya,’ comes that accent that is like some ugly flipped eyesore of a house, a modern, gray smear of inauthenticity.

‘My cup was empty,’ she says flatly, finally meeting his eyes.

‘Well, you seem to be covered in chocolate,’ he says with a guffaw of good cheer, and indeed, somehow she is. Tepid milk and chocolate wet the front of her, sprung from the crumpled paper of an empty disposable cup.

He insists he make it right, invites her to his apartment conveniently walking distance, it’s above a shop, but she declines to ask the obvious question. He provides her a knit Christmas sweater, red. A perfect offset to his own green.

The silent buzz of her cellphone interrupts A Moment, and something in her cries out in relief. Her boyfriend, a business man from back home in the Big City.

She takes the call. In camera view, behind her, Christmas Green Sweater glowers, and casts his eyes aside in shame.

[saintsenara]

the shack at the end of the lane merope gaunt & lord voldemort general | 4.2k words

before the world went black, she was looking at two women's faces, and a small creature covered in blood, and the cracked plaster ceiling of a london orphanage.

when she opened her eyes, she was looking up at a perfect sky, its celestial blue splashed with cotton-wool clouds. the sun shone warm on her skin. she felt at peace for the first time since september, when tom had stormed out of their knockturn alley bedsit, taking care to kick her in the stomach as he did.

it was an unconventional choice, on the part of the universe, to make tom riddle's victims meet his mother the moment they arrived in the afterlife.

this piece was written for week five of @ladiesofhpfest, on the theme of unconventional and unashamed [you can find the masterlist for this week's fics here].

its star is a character who has fascinated me for a long time - merope gaunt - and the question i have always wondered about: what happened to her after she died?

author's notes under the cut

because merope’s death is one of the moments of the harry potter series that i’ve always loathed - not because it happens, but because it is explained by dumbledore in half-blood prince as something which happens as the result of a lack of courage:

"In any case, as you are about to see, Merope refused to raise her wand even to save her own life." "She wouldn’t even stay alive for her son?" [...] "Yes, Merope Riddle chose death in spite of a son who needed her, but do not judge her too harshly, Harry. She was greatly weakened by long suffering and she never had your mother’s courage."

i really dislike the suggestion that - under ordinary circumstances - a witch would be able to prevent herself dying in childbirth because of her magic, not least because of the implication in this statement - which is very much not what the series thinks it’s saying - that magical and muggle women are, essentially, separate species.

as merope tells us in the shack at the end of the lane, she died "like a woman" - one of the hundreds of thousands of women throughout human history who have died in childbirth for no other reason than that childbirth is dangerous. these women were not weak, they were not hopeless, they were not cruel to their children, they will have wanted to live. they were just profoundly unlucky.

and so, crucially, the merope of this story wanted to live for her son. it just wasn’t as easy as all that.

after her death, she wakes up in a place she had hoped she’d left behind her for good: little hangleton. the self-creating afterlife of the harry potter series is simultaneously comforting and whimsical and totally horrifying if one stops to think too long about it. in particular, if one stops to think about what it would mean for people whose life experience has made it difficult for them to have an imagination or to remember things or places which are pleasant to them.

merope is one of these people - not even able to imagine preston, one of the most ordinary towns in britain, as anything other than "formless white light", let alone paris or rome - and she therefore ends up stuck in a house which must have been a sight of extreme misery for her while she was alive. after all, the implication of canon is very much that she was or would be a victim of incestuous sexual violence at her father and brother’s hands. she is definitely a victim of physical and verbal violence. there can be no way at all that she felt happy in the gaunts’ home - and her experience is made all the more horrifying by the fact that - as i’ve noted in the notes for the snow child, another merope-centric piece - little hangleton more broadly is quite a terrifying place. the village lends itself really well to a sort of folk-horror vibe - perfect and bucolic and too quiet, with darkness lurking underneath its picturesque veneer.

but i wanted to play with this a little - and show how a place merope felt unwelcome in life becomes a home to her in death. the shack moves from being a liminal space into being a solid one: merope makes it into the space she wants, warm and colourful, and she bars morfin from it; it ceases to be a practical space - with a flower garden replacing a vegetable one - as soon as she can acknowledge that her existence is no longer purely about survival or service [for example, when she sleeps in a bed, instead of on the floor like a house elf]; the elements of folklore which were scary in the snow child become neutral here. the blackthorn trees, in particular, spend that story being symbols of ill-omen. in the shack at the end of the lane, in contrast, they should be read as having their second folkloric purpose - protection. [the magpies - one for sorrow, four for a boy - have no happier meaning.]

merope also learns to be happy more generally. the canon narrative tends to take quite a dim view of covetousness - a trait, after all, which gets her into this mess in the first place - not least in the way that it describes lord voldemort’s magpieishness. here, we see that this preference for trivial comforts is inherited, and that taking pleasure in things - such as merope’s shawl, her golden earrings, and the presents she buys for her son in the town - is neither wicked nor sad. sometimes a shawl is a shawl. sometimes it’s a burst of transformative pleasure.

and this idea of things changing ties into a wider theme in the piece - that merope proves herself to be capable of acceptance and redemption. her vicious jealousy of cecilia - tom riddle sr.’s attractive girlfriend - is a central part of the snow child, but here we see her coming to understand how that jealousy was futile, and resolving to manage with the body she has. her rape of tom sr. is a great evil - which, as we see, he’s never managed to get over - but there is a reckoning here as she realises that he was a victim of her instead of the other way round, and as she resists the urge to stroke his hair [as black as the raven’s wing, as she wishes for in the snow child] before she sends him off to a happy place where she cannot follow him. by the time albus dumbledore arrives to see her, she has accepted that tom was never really hers, and is confused when he insists on addressing her as "mrs riddle".

she also finds herself accepting - eventually - her son.

lord voldemort’s grief over merope is one of the most interesting parts of his characterisation, and one which the canon text touches on only lightly [harry notices, for example, that he is furious when hepzibah smith insults merope by implying she stole slytherin’s locket, but he then doesn’t contradict dumbledore when he says that hepzibah’s murder was motivated by gain]. merope’s absence in voldemort’s life manifests itself most clearly in the shack at the end of the lane in her encounter with bellatrix lestrange - as bellatrix tells her daughter’s grandmother that she likes the name merope, unaware that voldemort could never have suggested it to her because all of the evidence of canon is that he has no idea what his mother was called. it also features in the scene with the two dinners, in which the earth-bound tom riddle jr. has finally accepted that his father isn’t a wizard, and has begun his investigation into his maternal line - which will eventually cause him to leave the orphanage for good, sending his childhood room into the ether to await him when he dies. [my headcanon has always been that his limbo is the orphanage - so he has to have it here even though he’ll be living with his mam for eternity.]

merope takes a long time to cotton on to the fact that her son is a murderer - which i don’t think we can really blame her for; it’s quite an overwhelming concept. the dead we meet are both direct and indirect victims of his violence: the rabbit; amy benson [who died by suicide]; myrtle [my favourite]; tom sr.; hepzibah smith; a family of albanian peasants; mrs cole [worn down by dealing with tom]; regulus black; morfin [who wasted away in prison panicking about his father’s stolen ring]; james and lily potter; bertha jorkins; frank bryce [returning to the riddle house, where he was happy]; cedric diggory; barty crouch jr.; sirius black; igor karkaroff; dumbledore [who is kind enough to lie to merope, just for a bit]; colin creevey; lavender brown [in her glittery trainers]; vincent crabbe; fred weasley; severus snape; harry potter [but only temporarily]; nymphadora tonks and remus lupin; bellatrix; and - of course - voldemort himself.

and he’d been waiting a long time for that meeting.

and, look, i’m a hopeless optimist. i think everything will be alright in the end.

[roipecheur]

So what do you like about MattElektra?

I'm love them. First off:

Battle couple

Power couple

Fight their way to fucking (hot)

They work really well together and play to each other's strengths. In Netflix DD, Elektra had been gone for ten years, yet they fell back into step immediately.

She just rolls up like "hey threaten this guy and infiltrate this gala with me" and then they pull it off like clockwork

Comparing this to the last and current run:

Threatening some dude

Eheheheheh

Matt telling Elektra he doesn't trust her -- she just bought Hell's Kitchen to keep it safe, so I honestly don't think he's being fair towards her, but Matt's being kind of a dick to everyone at this point. In Netflix DD, she'd just shown up again after 10 years and the last thing she'd done was kill a guy in front of Matt and then dip, so not trusting her was kinda fair in that universe. This seemed like it was going for a similar beat but without the same history to make it make sense.

And Elektra proving he can trust her by becoming Daredevil and taking care of Hell's Kitchen while Matt is self-flagellating in prison (not to mention buying the whole neighborhood to keep it safe)

Eheheheheh part 2

And of course in the current run, they're leading the Fist together, which means they have to get ✨married✨

They're obviously drawn to and still have feelings for each other, even when Matt wants to pretend otherwise

I also like Elektra for Matt because out of his (many) canon love interests because when Matt gets back on his "I should live in a cave and have no friends" bullshit, she's one of the few motherfuckers in this city who can handle him. Matt's track record with love interests is pretty bad--if they don't storm out telling him to fuck himself, they tend to die, go insane, or in the case of Kirsten, get unceremoniously dumped after she unwillingly had the knowledge that Matt = Daredevil wiped from her mind. (And Matt could have just told her, but . . . decided not to. Yikes.) Elektra did get murdered by Bullseye (or by the Hand in Netflix DD), but she came back, and she was also subject to the psychic prism that made everyone forget that Matt = Daredevil, but dying made her remember. So, in a way, she's already made it past two big curses of dating Matt Murdock.

Imo, Matt needs someone who can fight and keep up with him as Daredevil. His only other love interests who can do that are (unless I'm missing something in his 60 years of comics, which is possible) Maya (Echo) and Natasha (Black Widow). But--I don't think either one of them could keep up with his emotional baggage like Elektra. In the 1998 run, Natasha knows that she can't talk sense into Matt and make him be Daredevil again, so she calls Elektra to do it . . . and it works.

This whole exchange is just incredible. Pretty much all Elektra does is stand there and Matt can't shut up lmao

She gets him on a level that I don't think anyone else does. Some of it's because they knew each other when they were so young, and Matt showed her parts of himself without reservation that he later learned to hide. Elektra was also the first person besides Stick that he told about his abilities--she might have known that going in (the case in Netflix DD, kinda retconned in 616 to match now), but she was still the first person Matt chose to reveal that to. Their college days in Elektra's initial introduction back in the '80s happened in a flashback, so they didn't get back together in present canon until the 2019 run, but Matt has gone to Elektra when he needed someone to ground him.

This is from the 2011 run when Matt's secret identity has basically been outed to the public and he's skating on a thin veneer of plausible deniability that's now cracking beneath him. He calls Elektra to help him figure it out, and what she said there gives him the idea for what he does next.

I also like this part at the end of the 2016 run. This is all in Matt's head because he's in a coma after getting hit by a truck, so while it's not actually happening, it does show how he feels about his relationship with Elektra. On his deathbed, he's lamenting her decision to be an assassin and kill people and imagining both being with her again and saying goodbye to her before he dies.

And then, at the very end of the 2016 run, when Matt realizes none of this is happening and that's he's dying, we get this:

At this point, Karen's been dead for awhile in 616, and I think Matt romanticized and idealized her to an extent after her death. Here, she's a perfect representation of grace and forgiveness. Elektra, meanwhile, even as a dream in Matt's head, makes him confront the messy realities of both her and himself. Karen might often be what Matt wants, but he knows he can depend on Elektra for what he needs.

(This is not to discount the important of Matt and Karen's romantic relationship in 616, which I admittedly have not read much of but I know is a much bigger deal than it was in the Netflix DD show. These are just the two of Matt's many, many past girlfriends that he thinks about / hallucinates while he's dying, so the difference between them is interesting.)

As for Elektra, Matt's the first person in her life that sees her as something other than a weapon. She was supposed to recruit him for the Chaste in Netflix DD or the Hand in 616 (going off the Woman Without Fear) series, but she fell in love with him instead. After she finds out she's the Black Sky in Netflix DD, Matt tells her that she's the only one who gets to decide who and what she is.

In the Defenders series, she seeks Matt (or in this case Matt's bed) out for comfort when she doesn't even remember who she is.

And of course they 'die' together at the end of that show (except Matt survives and I think Elektra must survive too, but we never see her again and I hope D+ fixes that :__;)

In 616, she works for the Kingpin as an assassin and is supposed to kill Foggy, but she spares him, likely because she knows he's Matt's friend.