#Go make another account that's someone who wants to “expose” you. That was real subtle

[sirmantamoon]

Hi to the person sending me anon messages about an ex friend of mine. I know it's you dude, I'm not gonna harass you so you can throw a pity party for yourself. Stop being weird as hell. No one else in the world types like that and you aren't fooling anyone. No one thinks about you outside of when you do weird shit like this, okay? You aren't as important as you think you are.

[larryisinlove]

I completely agree with this post by @apparentlybychance and what I write below is from my perspective. My understanding comes from the perspective of someone who studied marketing since 2019, is a community manager and currently works in a marketing agency. 

You are not compelled to take everything I say as the real and only way to look at it, this is my opinion and I respect others as well.

It's clear that Louis needs a new marketing team, as the current one doesn't seem to be doing its job properly or, worse, doesn't even seem to understand what they're doing. Their attempts to divert attention to topics such as his "fatherhood" or sexuality are way too obvious, while his music is poorly promoted. Many fans try to fill that gap by promoting his music organically, but it doesn't have much impact as we are not an enormous fandom and it's not our responsibility either. Moreover, the fan base shrinks with every failed "strategy", which generates disinterest, anger and abandonment of the fandom. This is also reflected in the organisation and promotion of their shows and music releases. 

The worrying thing is that this mismanagement is not new; it has been going on since the beginning of his solo career. Some justify this by saying that Louis prefers to be an underground/indie artist and be left alone with the usual fans, but that makes no sense, that's just a justification for the bad actions of his team. No artist seeks to stagnate or limit his growth. To advocate without questioning every decision of an artist's background doesn't mean being a "bad fan", and it is important to understand that questioning the strategy is not attacking the artist. 

It is frustrating to see that many fans believe that Louis doesn't really want to grow as an artist, which, again, makes no sense. The problem is the lack of planning and analysis on the part of his team, who act without foreseeing the long-term consequences. I don't understand this image they want to give him, because as a fan for years, this is not the Louis I grew up with. Maybe he's trying to distance himself from One Direction and avoid the mainstream stuff, which is admirable, but this kinda rude and distant image doesn't seem to align with his original (and real) essence. 

Those of us who work in marketing and communication have a different, more analytical and technical vision, which allows us to detect patterns and strategies (or the lack of them). This is not a justification to invalidate other opinions in any way, but to offer an informed perspective. With Louis, it is clear that there is no clear strategy. His team seems to improvise, as if every decision is made without a long-term plan, simply reacting in the moment.

The resurgence of the babygate stuff a few days ago is another example of this lack of planning. From the outset it seems to have been an idea launched without considering the consequences and, now that it has grown out of control, they don't know how to handle it or shut it down for good. This only creates more chaos as the years go by. The exposure of the child has been contradictory from the beginning: How can you justify wanting to protect his privacy when he was initially exposed so much by his whole family, from pregnancy onwards, and then included in the documentary "All of These Voices"? Nothing has any coherence if you analyse it at all.

As for the blocking on Twitter, it is hard to believe that Louis has blocked so many accounts without it being known beforehand. It's an absurd and ineffective tactic to manage the narrative of his public image. I agree with the post that "Louis and his team are no different. They like to use subtle tactics like blocking, following, unfollowing or general interactions on their social accounts (mainly X) to manage the narrative of their public image" as this is part of a strategy that has been carried over from One Direction, like when he tweeted "I am in fact straight" or "Larry is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever heard".

Or Another example we can name is this 2012 interaction with Rebecca Ferguson, where she expresses the overexploitation she was receiving and "Louis" replies "Success is impossible without proper hard work". That contradictory image does not fit with the Louis that many of us fans have known and followed for years. Why would an artist seek to lose fans and, therefore, limit his growth?

Over time, all this has made their actions feel fake and automated. As a fan, one ends up questioning and analysing every action from another perspective, as nothing seems genuine or truthful. His "Hope everyone is doing alright" tweets seem scripted and even programmed, lacking that closeness that used to exist. While we know that artists' social media accounts are controlled, the fan/artist connection remains crucial to maintaining public support and loyalty. When repetitive patterns and bad strategies accumulate, the authenticity of the artist is lost, turning him into a kind of "robot" with no control over his actions, which can end up damaging his image and damaging the relationship with his fans, often without him being fully aware of it. 

From a music marketing perspective, there are several key aspects that Louis' team seems to ignore. An effective marketing team should focus on  research and investigation of the audience, clearly identifying the artist's target audience, considering factors such as age, interests and content consumption platforms. The lack of consistent branding is evident, as Louis' public image doesn't appear to align with his musical and personal essence, leading to confusion.

A well-planned release strategy should include a pre-launch campaign with teasers, interviews and strategic collaborations, something that seems to be absent in most of his projects. In addition, multi-channel promotion is essential, using social media, interviews, streaming playlists and specialised press, without relying exclusively on fandom. A competent team should also focus on authentic storytelling, creating an emotional and genuine narrative to connect with the audience, rather than resorting to polemical tactics that distort his image.

Fan growth and retention is another key aspect. Good marketing seeks to expand the fan base while maintaining the interest of the current, as opposed to what appears to be happening. Finally, long-term planning is essential, with measurable goals and clear direction, rather than reactive and inconsistent decisions.

In conclusion, Louis' team is not managing his career professionally or effectively. Successful marketing requires planning, analysis and authenticity. His fans deserve a clear and respectful narrative, and he deserves a team that will really promote his music and his career. I hope that for LT3 we have a good promotion, that his team starts to get things right because I don't want his career to continue to suffer consequences from this, besides from his image to be ruined by the mismanagement of those working with him.

[loveatfirstwriteblog]

A Complete Analysis of Harry Potter

Like a lot of kids, we probably grew up on Harry potter. We were obsessed and rightly so. The universe created in the world of Harry Potter was, and is, a hugely successful one because of the fact it gave kids a world where magic exists! It seemed to be a great world to live in and it made even better with the fact that it included elements of empowerment, Whether it be showing girls can be just as successful if not more in various pursuits(Hermione), or the fact that even if you have a history of bad events, you can have a good heart(Hagrid), Harry Potter teaches us a lot.

JKR has written a mind-blowing plot in a world of magic, wizards, witches, wands, potions, friendship, love. Our inner-five-year olds--and actually most of our young adult selves too--jumps around excitedly at the beautifully penned words that creates an exit out of this world and into one where magic does exist. 

As you get older, though, you begin to think of Harry Potter in a more critical fashion. The thought of “oh my god, it’s magic” no longer completely overrides my mind, but more of “but what are the laws regarding this? Can people just do this whenever they want? Are there no ethics?” 

No matter how much we’re going to expose the flaws and plot holes in HP now, we’ll always love the books--we grew up on them! But some things just niggle you as you get older, and that’s what we’re going to be focusing on in this post.

Something I adore about the HP books is that everyone, including the “good guys”, has flaws. Harry has a “save the world alone, do first, think later” complex, a driving force that makes him go save Sirius, Ron is very, very insecure to a point where he ditches Harry twice, probably when Harry needed him the most, Hermione is a judgemental, narrow-minded nag (her thoughts on Luna, divination, Trelawney, basically anything that doesn’t fit her black and white world), Molly Weasley is misogynistic and blatantly favourites her children—probably being one of the main factors behind Ron’s insecurities, Arthur is condescending towards Muggles and makes several comments you cringe at while reading the books as a young adult/adult, Sirius, Snape, and Lupin still haven’t let go of their childhood grudges and hatred, etc etc etc. 

These flaws are what make these characters so three-dimensional, so layered, so human. But the problem was, most of these flaws are never intentionally acknowledged. And honestly, that could have been such a good character arc, because the main characters are mostly students. No student is the same through their teenage years—they change, they evolve, they get over their flaws, they try to better themselves. I would have loved to see Ron becoming his own person, Hermione opening her mind up a little, etc. 

Neville is not one of my favourites, but I love his growth and development, from someone who was scared of his potions professor to a man who faced down Lord Voldemort. Ginny Weasley could have had character development, from the trauma she went through in second year, but that was never written in.  She went through this terrifying ordeal when she was only twelve years old, and jump to a year or two later and she’s absolutely fine, with no transition from her trauma whatsoever.

Some of JKR’s characters are brilliantly written and fleshed out, but some of her others lack the structure and complexity that usually comes with being vital to the plot—Ginny Weasley for one. Her internalised misogyny also plays a huge part in the way her female characters are written. We see this again in the case of how she wrote the character of Ginny. 

Ginny Weasley is not a favourite of ours (if you don’t know that by now). She feels a lot like a convenient male daydream—when she waits for Harry to notice her by dating other guys, gets annoyed by Hermione “not knowing quidditch”, etc etc—and fits the “not like other girls” archetype too much, almost like she was made for it (hint hint). She’s portrayed to be strong-willed, spunky, and independent, and I love the idea, but I really don’t see it. To me, she’s a very shallow character, the least fleshed out one. 

Just like James Potter wasn’t necessarily redeemed just because JKR said he was, and Ginny isn’t interesting just because JKR writes that she is. 

Hermione also fits the archetype, but she’s JKR’s self-insert, so we really can’t say much about that. 

To make things worse, Ginny and Hermione are pitted against each other in a very subtle way. Ginny is the sporty, pretty, flirty girl who’s never single from book 4. Hermione is the not-conventionally-attractive, nerdy girl who’s had a few dates here and there but never a relationship. They’re very different characters (the only thing they have in common is the archetype) but they’re against each other in the defence of Harry. 

Another place where JKR’s misogyny shows up is the way other girls are written. Lavender Brown is shown as vapid and immature, just because she likes clothes and boys and didn’t know how to handle her first relationship. Cho Chang is perceived as shallow because she’s emotional. Pansy Parkinson is seen to be throwing herself at Draco Malfoy. The Weasleys hated Fleur because she was beautiful and sexy and French, and that was ever really resolved in the end (Molly accepted her, but we never got Ginny’s and Hermione’s opinions again). You see where we’re getting at? The typical “girly girls” are portrayed as insipid, shallow, emotional, and boring, while girls like Hermione and Ginny are seen to be fun and multilayered. 

The problems with Harry Potter don’t just stop with non-fleshed out characters. There are plot devices that go unacknowledged, issues like blood purity—which is the basis of Voldemort’s tyranny—are never really resolved, huge Chekhov’s guns that aren’t fired. 

A common misconception, which if cleared up could probably expose a load of problems in wizarding society by itself, is that the wizarding world is racist. It’s not racist. Muggles and Muggleborns are not a different race, they’re a different class, at least according to pureblood wizards. Mudblood is a classist insult (a direct reference to nobility blueblood and aristocracy).

Another factor that wasn’t talked about but made the HP world so complex and realistic is the inherent classism in every single pureblooded wizard, including the Weasleys.

 The “Light” wizards all operate on the notion “at least I don’t kill or torture Muggles”. The Weasleys refuse to talk about Molly’s squib cousin who’s an accountant, the Longbottoms were so desperate for Neville to not be a squib they nearly killed him trying to force magic out of him, Ron makes fun of Filch for being a squib, thinks house-elves are beneath him, and confounds his driving instructor in his mid-thirties, the ministry workers kept obliviating that muggle at the quidditch World Cup, etc. 

This could have been a metaphor for how small prejudices and microaggressions (kind of the wizarding equivalent of white privilege) enable discrimination and murder, if JKR had actually acknowledged it. 

The parallel to Nazi Germany is very twisted and definitely shouldn’t be taken too far, but the Nazi ideology grew on the basis of everyday antisemitism, “that’s not that bad” little things. Voldemort’s circle and army grew because the wizard superiority complex festered and blew up in some people, egged on by a deeply classist society. 

Ultimately, Harry Potter has very, very shoddy worldbuilding, the kind of worldbuilding that’s obsessed with answering the “what” of the wizarding world, rather than the “how” or the “why”, which is strange, considering that fantasy or dystopian-era novels’ driving plots and conflicts are usually answering the questions the worldbuilding raises--The Hunger Games and The Shadowhunter Chronicles are two of the best examples of brilliantly written YA fantasy and dystopian novels. 

In HP, however, the main plot just avoids the questions the worldbuilding brings up like the bubonic plague. 

Voldemort’s agenda is built on prejudice towards Muggles and Muggleborns, but the plot just validates the negative perception of them—at the end of the day, being a wizard is what’s special. The Statute of Secrecy is the foundation of the main concept—blood supremacists believe wizards shouldn’t be hidden away—but only vague, barely-there answers are given to why it exists (a Chekhov’s gun that was never fired). 

There are love potions that function like date rape drugs (even Harry was given one by a girl who wanted him to ask her out), potions that force people to tell the truth, potions that literally let you disguise yourself as another person, but the ethics are never talked about, and the laws are so lax that three twelve-year-olds broke them and were never caught. 

But at the same time, the worldbuilding is so authentic, because it transforms the wizarding world into straight-up fridge horror. The everyday horrors are just accepted and rolled with. A corrupt government, constant obliviation of Muggles, slavery that isn’t even talked about. These things aren’t obvious to us as readers, or to the wizards as characters, because they match up to the real world, which is filled with things that are horrifying if you dig deeper. The multiple, normalised forms of abuse, police brutality, the violence in prisons that nothing is done about, the glaringly obvious cultural problems we have with consent, etc. 

The abusive authoritative figures in HP, like Rufus Scrimgeour, Cornelius Fudge, Dumbledore, Umbridge, etc, are so authentic because real-life politicians and people in high places of power behave that way, and their abuse is excused. 

The wizarding world is just like the real world. Corrupt, prejudiced, messed up, but if you’re privileged, or at least have certain privileges, you’re probably not going to notice. The ultimate problem is that the plot doesn’t acknowledge a lot of fridge horror things are messed up either, which is why it miserably fails. 

[shannygoatgruff]

Only Fan(s) - A Thriller

Genre: Thriller

Pairing: Modern Ivar/OC

Warning: Language, sex, stalking, obsession, kidnapping, sexual assault

Rating: MA+18

Summary: Sometimes OnlyFans subscribers want a little more than internet pictures. Sometimes they want to be your ONLY fan…

Header by: @flowers-in-your-hayr

Thanks to @xbellaxcarolinax for being my beta.

Disclaimer: This story will deal with some topics that might be a little uncomfortable for some people. As always, I’ll try to tackle the hard stuff as tactfully as possible.

a/n: I know it’s been a minute. I’m always thinking about these stories because I want to finish them, just can’t seem to focus on writing at the moment.  Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Part iv - Date with Destiny

Finding Ivar Lothbrok should have been easy. Between the two of them, he was the stable one. He was the one with the iron-clad schedule that consisted of drinking, smoking, and partying. Torren’s schedule was a bit more... fluid. She tended to go wherever the wind, or whatever car she acquired, would take her. Naturally, Ivar had the occasional meet-and-greet, red carpet, and/or Comic-con engagement that he had to attend, still, he was pretty easy to keep tabs on. All one had to do was look at (stalk) his social media accounts, and his whereabouts were posted for everyone to see.

Knowing where he’d be and finding out where he lived were a different story. Torren had done her due diligence when it came to locating the town in which Little Kattegat was located. It only took about two days and a few Google image searches of the background of a few of the photos and she had it narrowed down to a general area in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

From what she could tell, the closest town to where he lived was pretty small, and there were only a few large estates hidden in the woods. How hard could it be to find? She was willing to drive to every single house and knock on the door to find him if she had to. But it would just be easier if there was loud music and a bunch of cars in the driveway. That way she could tag along inside with the rest of the guests to get to her man. 

Her shirt landed in the pile of dirty clothes in the center of the bed, as she reached around to unhook her bra. “I really need to tell Baby Boo to stop putting all of his business out in these streets,” her brows furrowed as she shook her head, “What if some crazy, psycho bitch started stalking him, or some shit? Then I’d have to kill a bitch.” Torren’s head whipped around and she narrowed her eyes at his picture, still stuck on her wall, “Is that what you want? Huh? You want me to cut a bitch to prove to you how much I love you? I will, Bae! You know I would do anything for you. I’m your Ride or Die...” 

And being his Ride or Die meant that she needed to keep better tabs on him if she was going to protect him from someone crazier than her, God forbid.  She was only able to do so much on this prepaid phone, and going to the library to get online was becoming a pain in the ass. 

She’d considered stealing a laptop or iPad from the library but was still on the fence about the idea. Of course, the alternative meant going to stupid ass libraries and threatening little kids to get off the fucking computers, and that completely sucked ass. 

She always felt rushed when she logged onto her Bae’s Only Fans page from the public library. Without fail one of those little bastard kids would get the library Nazis to kick her off the computer, or bar her from the library altogether for watching porn. 

Ivar’s page wasn’t porn! It was art. It was sexy. It was love...his love for her. Stupid bitches. 

She had encountered far worse things than getting kicked out of the library, but some of these small towns usually only had one or two within their county limits. If she got banned, how was she supposed to check up on Ivar? In the time it took to log in until she got kicked out, she'd be lucky if she could check 2 of his accounts. What if he had some important information on another platform that she hadn’t checked yet? What was she supposed to do then?

Her relationship with Ivar was hanging in the balance, and she'd be damned if some snot-nosed kid or fucking uptight librarian would fuck that up. She needed a computer. But, on the flip side, when she finally got her man back, she wouldn't need one anymore. She could ask him directly what their plans were.

There was a lot to consider and that took time; time that she didn't have right now.

The thick layer of Nair shaving cream she had applied to her already hairless crotch, was just starting to tingle, signaling she had about 5 minutes left before the sweat-inducing, burning sensation would kick in alerting her to wash the cream off. Until then, she had time to consider an outfit for the night.

She knew Ivar well enough to know that he would want her to be sexy for him, but not so much to distract him from work. She could have gone for something slutty, like those skanky bitches he partied with. She could have gone for more demur, but then she would remind him too much of his bitch ex-wife and completely turn him off. The last thing she wanted on their first night back together was for him to be thinking about that bitch. She could have gone for a simple pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but Torren never did simple. 

No, Ivar would want her to be herself. That's what he loved about her. That's what attracted him to her in the first place. She would be sexy without being skanky; she would be demure without being a prude.

Fuck! It was already 7:33 p.m. How in the hell did she miss the beginning of his Live? Now she was running late.

She was supposed to be dressed and ready by the time his Live came on that way she could be out the door as soon as he finished. If she was going to make it to be on his Only Fans live stream tonight, she needed to get to his house before he got too distracted. Now, she’d have to watch his Live, while her cooch burst into flames before she had a chance to take a shower and finish picking out her outfit.

If there was one thing Torren was, it was punctual. It was bad enough that she was about 40 minutes outside of his town, but it could take her up to 2 or more hours to find his house. She only hoped that he didn’t plan on starting any real freaky shit on his Only Fans page until around midnight, cause it looked like she wouldn’t be getting there before then, anyway.  

With the smile still plastered on her face, Torren turned on the hot water for a shower, forgetting that the water didn’t get hot. She didn't mind, much, especially since the cold water gave her a break from the heat in her room. 

Phone in hand, she watched him, as she planted herself on the dirty bathtub floor, cross-legged, and started to get herself ready. Starting with her toes, she shaved each one, just below the knuckle, followed by her fingers, arms, pits, and each leg, from groin to ankle, three times. When the burning from her nether regions was so intense that she couldn’t tell her tears from the shower water dripping on her face, she quickly washed off the cream. 

All she could do was hope that she hadn’t broken the skin this time. The last time she had let that damn Nair stay on, just past burning, the skin broke and she bled. She was not having a bloody hoo-ha tonight. 

With that taken care of, she gently used the razor to remove any other pubes closer to the inside that needed to be removed. Then shaved her backside. When she had more time, she was going to get the internal hairs bleached, but she needed to find out what Ivar preferred. 

Shaving ate up so much of her time that she only had a few seconds to rub some body-wash that she had stolen from a drug store over her body and hoped it got rid of the smell of the summer heat. Her hair? Fuck it...she’d wash it another day, for now, this cold water would have to be enough. She’d spritz some perfume and hair spray in it and it would smell fine. 

Torren finished her shower, and walked out of the bathroom dripping wet, only using a towel to wrap around her hair. She was glad it was so hot in her room that her hair would air-dry quickly. She finger-combed her damp tresses to complete that ‘just got out of bed, but it's styled’ appearance. She knew how much he loved when her hair looked like that. It would remind him of freshly fucked hair. 

She spent extra time applying her makeup, even using an extra dark, thick application of eyeliner. She usually went for more subtle warm colors. They matched her tan skin tone better. But, tonight, she had bold, dark makeup, complete with varying shades of purple and blue eye shadows, and dark purple lipstick.

Torren was glad that she decided to match Ivar’s clothes this evening. The swim trunks and smoking jacket he wore would compliment her beautifully. She wanted everyone to know that they dressed alike, the way real couples do. If he was going for less is more, so would she.

She settled on black leather chaps that tied up on the sides, and tight blue boy shorts that left the bottom half of her ass cheeks exposed. The blue shorts brought out the blue swirls in his trunks; she knew he'd appreciate that touch. Her top was a blue bandanna that she wore as a halter with a short black leather jacket with tassels on the sleeves. 

They screamed “couple” in her eyes.

Completely satisfied with how she looked, Torren locked the door to her motel room and started down the hall. She deliberately stopped by the window and peered through the partially opened blinds of the people staying next door to her. She knocked on the window to get the attention of the young couple inside. Judging from their appearance, they were too strung out to know who she was, or that it was her music that they constantly banged on the wall about. She didn’t care. She still flipped them off before making her way to the stairs. 

Reaching her hand through the busted window of the blue Ford Taurus to unlock the door from the inside. Torren slid into the driver's seat and leaned over to find the two cords that she had pulled out from under the steering column when she stole the car. Flicking the cords together, she listened as the engine reluctantly turned over.

She put the car in reverse, looked in the rear-view mirror at her makeup, then pulled out of the spot. As she turned onto the road leading to the highway, she listened to the knocks, bumps, and hisses that her car made. There wasn't time to do much about it now; not when she was on her way to get her man. But, she made a mental note to do something about it later in the week. The only thing she could do was turn the music up louder to drown out the car noise.

Truthfully, she should have stolen a better car than the piece of shit Taurus that she found in the parking lot of the Quickie Mart while driving through Tulsa, Oklahoma. There were plenty of better cars there to choose from but no one would have wanted to take this one. It was so sad looking that she took pity on it. She had been doing the owner of this crap car a favor, by taking it off of their hands. 

The car was truly fucked. The oil light stayed on, and it drank gas like her mother drank liquor. The car had protested every inch of the ride across the three states that she traveled through in one day. She knew that it would only be a matter of time before that piece of shit breathed its last breath.

She needed to get gas again, but fuck that car. She had already refueled four times since she stole it. Gas wasn't cheap and she wasn't putting another dime in that gas guzzler. Speaking of money, she made a mental note to steal another credit card. It would only be a matter of time before the owner of the one that was tucked snugly between her left breast and strapless bra, would eventually realize that it had been lifted from the table in the diner, and canceled.

Laptop, butt bleaching, car, credit card, and more eyeliner from Walgreen's…her To-Do list was growing. She really needed to take some time off and take care of the necessities. Not tonight, though. She had other things to do. She couldn't do anything else, right now, but get to her man. Besides, once Lothbrok was by her side, he would help her remember all the things she needed to do.

As she came off of the highway exit smoke started billowing out from the engine. It backed up through the exhaust system, and came through the vents, inside the cabin. It was ironic – the air-conditioning vents in the car didn't work, but they seemed to work well enough to clog the inside of the car up with thick white smoke. She drove a few more miles before the smoke was so thick that she could no longer see. As she pulled the car over to the graveled shoulder of the road, the car knocked and shook, before it finally cut off.

Just her fucking luck.

She reached under the dash to flick the cords against each other again, trying to force the ignition to catch again, but it wouldn't. The engine had nothing left to give her. "Fuck Murphy and fuck his fucking law," she said calmly as she pulled the hood release.

She opened the car door, taking care to place both black, platform boots on the ground before lifting her backside from the seat. Placing her sunglasses on her eyes, she walked with one foot in front of the other to the front of the Taurus and placed her hand on the hood. It was hot, but not so hot that she couldn't feel under the front of the lever.

As she lifted the heavy metal hood and placed the rod in the slot to hold it in place, Torren let the smoke from the engine engulf her. It was quite a head rush breathing in the thick engine smoke through her nose, and exhaling it from her mouth. She patiently waited for the smoke to thin out before she bent, at the waist, over the engine. She didn't know what she was looking for, but she knew that someone would see her looking over the engine and stop to help her.

Now, if only someone would actually come down this dark stretch of road, she could be back on her way to Ivar.

It didn't take long before a pair of headlights rounded the bend of the road, just off to her right. Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she accentuated the leather, chaps against her hips, and lifted her ass higher in the air, to catch the driver's attention. She couldn't help but smirk when she heard the tires of a large vehicle turn onto the graveled pavement in front of where she broke down. She didn't turn to face the car or the driver. She didn't care who they were or what they looked like. She had an appointment to keep and this pit stop was fucking up her timetable.

"You need some help?" A deep voice asked as its owner approached her.

Torren took a moment to peer around the hood, noticing that there were no other cars around. "Broke down," she answered, continuing to bear her weight from one hip to the other. She placed her hands on the metal frame of the car, arched her back, and looked at the man over her shoulder. "You know something about cars?"

"Yeah," he replied, moving around to her side, looking at her, and not the smoky engine.

She gave him half a smile, as she noticed him notice her. "You a mechanic or something?" She asked standing up. She rubbed her hands together to remove some of the visible engine soot while considering the guy in front of her. He was about 6 feet tall with a moderate build. He was dressed in blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and Timberland boots. He didn't look like he was more than 25 years old. Judging from the way he was looking at her and from the ring on his left hand, he wasn't too worried about her car, or his wife, for that matter.

"Nah, not a mechanic, but I work on my own car... in my spare time." He smiled when she did. She was gorgeous, in that slutty kind of way. She wouldn't be dressed like that and leaning over the hood of a car if she wasn't looking to have some fun. "Lemme take a look at it."

Did he work on his car? Hopefully, that meant that his ran better than hers did.

Torren moved over to the side and let him take the position under the hood. "I'll be right back," he explained before walking over to the bed of his F150.

Grabbing a flashlight from the trunk, he took a second to admire the view of her, from behind. If he could get her car moving again, she would hopefully follow him to this cheap motel he knew that was just up the highway.

He leaned in close, taking a whiff of her hair, "You overheated…want to check the coolant level."

She had heard him say something else but she had stopped listening; she was too busy watching the street. "You want me to try to start it?" she asked, removing her sunglasses before making her way to the driver's door. She wasn't sure if he answered or not. She had no intention of driving the Taurus again, even if he could get it started. She just needed to get something out of the car.

She slid into the seat and reached down on the floor. She found the hard metal object on the floor of the passenger's side and gripped it tightly. As she walked back around to the front of the car, she heard him talking, presumably about the car, or maybe he was asking her out. Who the fuck knows? She was on a tight schedule and all of his chatting was holding her up. She stood by the side of the hood, looking at the angle he was leaning over the hood. Quickly, she lifted her arm, and with one powerful blow, she struck him in the head with the crowbar that she used to procure her now-defunct car.

Torren stood over his body, looking at him intensely. God, it felt good. The rush of knowing that one minute this dude was towering over her, and the next he was on the ground. She had dropped his ass. She was the one with the power.

 "Thanks," she said, digging her hand in his pocket to retrieve his cash, credit card, and the keys to his truck. She wiped the blood on the crowbar on his shirt before walking to her new mode of transportation.

Torren sat in the truck's driver's seat and turned on the engine. She had managed to cross two things off of her To-Do list without even planning to.

Thank God the truck had air conditioning. All this heat and humidity was bound to make her hair frizzy. She cranked the AC up as high as it would go and sat still for a moment enjoying the cool air. After a minute, she adjusted the seat and tilted the rearview mirror to look at herself. She was starting to sweat and her eyeliner was starting to run just a bit at the corners of her eyes. She dabbed at the black liner to even out the lines, and then pushed the mirror back to where she could see. Giving the area another once-over, she made sure that no one else had seen her interaction with that guy on the ground, before pulling out from the gravel and onto the paved street.

"Ugh!" Torren yelled. Chester Bradley, the printed name on the credit card, had shitty taste in music. She pushed the stereo button on the steering wheel to do a scan of the radio. Anything was better than country music. Once she found some trap music on the XM radio, she turned up the volume and pulled back onto the highway.

Part iii/

Tags: @ideagarden-blog1  @youbloodymadgenius @xbellaxcarolinax @a-mess-of-fandoms @didiintheblog @conaionaru @peachyboneless @flowers-in-your-hayr @heavenly1927 @zuxiezendler @waiting4inspiration @saldelys @revolution-starter​

[astralkoo]

Mr. Slim Thick | Jungkook

Pairing: Jungkook x reader

Genre: smut, fluff, high school au 

Warnings: sub!jungkook, dom!reader, language, reader has a major thigh kink oof, thigh riding, bondage, oral & fingering (m. receiving), unprotected sex, probably other stuff that I forget oops 

Summary: getting paired up with the kid with the thick thighs from your health class for a project is probably the best thing to happen to you in your high school career. 

Word Count: 7.4k 

A/N; if you’ve seen this before, its because its from my book Domination from my wattpad account Bangtanbbabies, I’ve decided to post my stories from there onto here as well just for the hell of it, enjoy my lovelies ;)

it was Monday.

and you were fucking tired.

but luckily, it was the last period of the day; health.

as usual, Jimin was talking your ear off about some guy he screwed around with at a party last weekend.

as usual, you hummed and nodded, throwing out mindless 'oh really?'s and  'that's wild's as your mind wandered to somewhere different entirely.

and as usual, your eyes were glued to the door, waiting impatiently for a certain someone to finally grace the room with their presence. and finally, he did.

your body went rigid, jaw slacking, eyes widening as Jeon Jungkook slipped into your health classroom.

his body was adorned by a complimenting pair of ripped skinny jeans that hugged his lower body in all the right places, a loose black t–shirt that was cleanly tucked into his pants, put on a teasing show of the lower part of his toned biceps, and a pair of his infamous timberlands.

"y/n."

you felt yourself falter as you took notice of the thick black belt wrapped around his waist, drawing attention to just how slim it was.

holy fucking hell.

no matter how many times you saw him, you were never able to get over just how fine he was.

when he walked past your desk, you had to remind yourself repeatedly that it would technically be conserved sexual assault if you just reached over and spanked his ass.

...unless he was into that... then you were fucking golden.

but no, you refrained from touching him inappropriately (to your own disappointment) and resorted to just watching him.

you watched as he strode gracefully through the classroom, weaving his way through the desks until he reached that of his best friend, Kim Taehyung.

you watched as he grinned at him, small, pink lips molding around the words of a greeting.

you watched as he pressed his large hands against the top of the desk, leaning his body over it slightly, putting the profile of his curvy backside on full display for your hungry eyes.

"y/n."

your tongue slid over your lips, eyes zeroing in on your personal favorite part of his gorgeous body: his thighs. those babies could crush watermelons. but you'd rather them be wrapped around your head.

"y/n!"

"jesus fuck what do you want?" you hissed, whipping around to face park jimin, your best friend of ten years. "can't you see I'm trying to enjoy the walking porn star?"

"you're drooling, perv," he rolled his eyes, "literally."

you raised your hand to your lips, "am not— oh fuck." you quickly used your sleeve to wipe off your damp chin as Jimin snorted loudly.

"do you know nothing of subtlety?"

"I'm subtle," you scowled at him defensively, hands dropping against your desk with a harsh thud that drew a few eyes in your direction.

"sure, that's the reason why the only person unaware about your little infatuation is Jungkook himself, and that's because straight dudes are stupid oblivious."

you pouted, arms crossing stubbornly over your chest, "I'm not infatuated, just interested."

"yeah, in his body."

"nuh–uh!"

"yuh–uh!"

you swatted at his arm harshly, making him gasp dramatically, before he childishly hit you back. soon enough, it turned into a full blow smack war.

"ms. l/n, mr. park. if you wouldn't mind postponing your flirting until after my class, I'd greatly appreciate it," your teacher smiled sarcastically at the two of you.

you rolled your eyes, about to lean back in your seat, when suddenly Jimin's arms were around you, tugging your body into an awkward position against the arm of your desk as he all but groped you. "but, miss, you don't understand, I just can't keep my hands off of her."

your teacher grimaced, "I implore you to try, mr. park."

Jimin pouted, gripping your chin, staring intensely into your eyes. "but she's just so sexy... I can hardly contain my raging testosterone. you know, miss, a man has his needs." you gasped exaggeratedly as his hand suddenly gripped your butt, squeezing.

"naughty boy~ we were just in the janitor’s closet during lunch," you 'whispered', biting your lip, both for the little show you two were putting on but also to contain the laugh threatening to burst out of you, "do you already need more, daddy?"

he moaned loudly, eyes fluttering shut. you slapped your hand over your mouth, head falling against his shoulder as your body shook with silent laughter.

that seemed to be the last straw for your teacher because she looked about ready to burst from the twenty shades of red her face was turning.

but, instead of throwing detentions in your faces (knowing she'd have to spend an extra hour after school with the two of you tormenting her), she brought her fingers to her temples, massaging roughly, muttering to herself several times in a row, "ten more years until retirement. jail time isn't worth it."

"I think we broke her," you cackled, Jimin nodding in agreement.

"alright," she shouted suddenly, slamming her hands down on the top of her desk, "enough time wasted. since I have no interest in so much as attempting to teach you hormonal reprobates, I'm going to give you a project."

Jimin and you side eyed each other hopefully, waiting for her to spit out those last words.

"and you will be working in groups of two or three,"

the class erupted into eager conversation, people turning to their friends and shooting looks across the room. you and Jimin performed your secret hand shake, cheering excitedly. until,

"that will be randomly assigned."

groans of protest and annoyance filled the room. she just rolled her eyes and pulled up a randomizer on her computer, spinning a wheel and waiting for the groups to be assigned. she turned to screen around to face the class, who quickly scrambled out of their seats to see who they'd be working with.

there were a few sighs of disappointment but no adamant protests. once you and Jimin reached the screen, seeing your names paired together, you high–fived, muttering out a, "hell yeah." but your excitement was cut short by your buzzkill of a health teacher, who quickly took notice of your eagerness.

"well that just won't work," she tsked, shaking her head disapprovingly, "for the love of all things holy and pure you two should definitely not be paired together. hold on just a moment."

"miss, you can't be serious, we were just—" you began.

"mr. jeon, please switch with mr. park and be ms. l/n's partner."

"see ya, bitch," you snorted, swiveling on your heels to face a confused looking Jungkook.

he glanced once at his irrelevant partner before shrugging and making his way over to you. you yelped as a sharp pinch was delivered to your arm.

"traitor," Jimin hissed as he stalked away from you. you simply shrugged, smirking to yourself.

for that fine piece of ass, you'd betray your bestie any day.

"hey, Jungkook," you grinned. he smiled lightly nodding in greeting as you both fell into nearby seats.

the entire rest of the class, ms. stickupherass was explaining what the project would consist of, you were completely zoned out. instead of listening, you were intensely focused on staring at the side of Jungkook's stupidly cute face.

your eyes traced the pronounced curve of his nose, fluttering over those little pink lips, following the strikingly sharp line of his jaw. this was the closest you've been to the boy since you accidentally ran into him in the hall, accidentally dropped your stuff, and accidentally let yourself admire his thighs and butt as he picked it all up like the gentleman he was.

so no, you were not about to waste this precious opportunity to listen to your teacher ramble on about some trivial project.

before you knew it, the bell was ringing.

with a disappointed pout, you began packing your belongings away.

"so... where should we work on the project?" his soft, breathy voice took you by surprise, sending shudders of delight down your spine just by the mere sound of it.

"hm?"

"when should we work on this?" he repeated with a soft giggle that had your heart doing all kinds of weird gymnastic tricks, "maybe in the library... we could stay after school if you want to?" he suggested softly

"and spend another hour of my life in this hell hole? no thanks," you scowled, nose scrunching at the suggestion. he nodded meekly in understanding, head lowering. you bit your lip lightly, resting your chin in the palm of your hand, "how about you come by my place after school today, and we can get some real work done there."

he seemed oblivious to the double meaning behind your statement. instead, he took on a somewhat worried expression, eyes drifting off somewhere else.

"would your boyfriend be okay with that?"

your face scrunched in confusion, "boyfriend, what boyfriend? I don't have a boyfriend. where the hell did you get that idea?"

he blinked at you, visibly bemused, "but, I thought you were with Jimin?"

you nearly choked on your own laughter as it came bursting from you lips, "please, he's about as straight as your ass looks in those jeans."

"what?"

lmao, exposed yourself bitch.

"he's gay, very gay."

"oh."

it was surprisingly easy to convince Jungkook to come to your house, despite his endearing refusals of not wanting to intrude, but you insisted. adamantly.

because intrusion was exactly what you were hoping for.

you even convinced him to let you drive him, seeing as he usually took the bus or got a ride from one of his older friends.

he looked cute as fuck sitting in your passenger seat, fiddling shyly with his fingers as his big eyes gazed out the window.

several times you had to stop your hand from reaching over the console and gripping those thick, luscious thighs. they were just fucking begging to be squeezed, and kissed, and bruised, and rode—

okay. so you might have a bit of an infatuation.

you knew it would be about fifteen million times harder to control the urge to grab him and fuck him in every position known to man once you actually had him in your house. especially with your parents at work...

it'd just be you, him, and the demon sitting on your shoulder with a massive thigh kink.

"welcome to mi casa," you sang, throwing yourself down on your living room couch, smiling cheekily up at a visibly uncertain Jungkook, "make yourself at home, babe."

you watched in amusement as his cheeks tinted a soft pink color as the nickname slid off your lips in a flirtatious purr. he faltered briefly, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth as his cheeks filled with air, eyes flickering noncommittally around the room.

"Come on, I don't bite," you grinned, patting the seat beside you, adding under your breath, "too hard."

he lowered himself onto the couch, and you pouted at the unreasonable (it was reasonable) amount of distance he put between you two, but decided to let it be. he pulled materials out of his backpack, setting them up on the table in front of you.

"do you think you can explain what exactly we're supposed to be doing, because I may or may not have completely zoned out while she was talking," you admitted.

he chuckled softly, "well, she said were supposed to make a poster showing or explaining the positive and the negative of engaging in sexual intercourse as teenagers, and it's supposed to show us how like, sex isn't worth the risk at a young age."

haha. yeah, okay.

"so, the pros and cons of fucking?" you reiterated, brows raising. his cheeks tinted a shade of pink at your blunt wording and he nodded slowly.

"y–yeah, I guess you could say it like that."

a wicked smirk twisted onto your face. wonderfully sinful ideas began to swirl to life in your mind. you were beginning to appreciate ms. stickupherass more and more every second.

until you actually started to do the project.

"one pro? really? that's all you can think of?" you scoffed in disbelief, staring at the t–chart he had compiled. the long list of negatives far outdid the single positive he had come up with.

"there is only one positive to sex: momentary pleasure. other than that there is literally nothing to gain besides std's and regret." he muttered, matter–of–fact.

"have you ever even had sex before?"

his deeply blushing face and skittering  eyes were all the answer you needed.

"you've never had sex before? are you crazy? then how the fuck can you sit here talking shit about it? that's like when people say pineapple pizza sucks before they've even tried it! It (insert opinion on pineapple pizza bc I'm not tryna start any wars ya feel), but I can say that because I've actually tried it before!"

"I know about all the risks and consequences that come with sex! it just doesn't seem worth it."

"but you're only exposing yourself to the negative. you gotta give yourself a chance to experience life and all its messy, beautiful qualities. you can't just make your mind about something you've never experienced before," you countered quickly, "sex can be... life changing."

"yeah, especially when you end up with a new addition nine months later."

"ever heard of protected sex, jackass?"

"no amount of protection is full proof."

you took a deep breath, closing your eyes. you will not hit Jeon Jungkook. you will not hit Jeon Jungkook. you will not hit Jeon Jungkook.

of course the first guy you've ever met to not want to have sex is the kid you've been obsessing over since the first day of high school. how fucked up is that.

"listen, Jungkook," you sighed, rubbing your temples, "sex is a whole lot more than you're giving it credit for."

"I know what—"

"hear me put, okay?" you interrupted quickly, giving him a pointed glare. he sealed his lips, nodding obediently. you continued, "sex isn't always just about pleasure. it's about intimacy, connection, trust, love. it's about forming a deeper relationships with someone. why do you think some people wait until after marriage? it's about putting faith in someone, and showing them trust."

he watched you intently as you spoke, lips faintly parted, eyes wide. every word that passed from your lips, he listened to devotedly.

"that's not to say sex can't be dirty or heartbreaking or wrong. believe me, I know it can be anything but good. but,  I've also seen how amazing it can be. if you do it right, with the right person, in the right place... shit, it can be—"

"life changing?" he finished for you, a thoughtful smile on his lips.

you chuckled, nodding. "exactly. and I'm not saying you should go out and fuck everything with a pulse. I'm just saying, sex isn't always this horrible, disgusting thing that you think it is. if it was, I doubt so many people would be having it."

all at once, his mouth was on yours. your eyes widened, body going rigid. well, you weren't expecting that.

just as quickly as he had kissed you, he pulled away. he looked horrified, mouth gaping, eyes practically popping out of their sockets. it seemed he was just as caught off guard as you were.

the kiss couldn't have lasted for more than three seconds. but in those quick seconds, you had gotten a taste of him.

and you wanted more.

he began to spit it a flustered mess of an apology, "holy shit, I'm so sorry, I don't know why I—"

"shut up," you growled, grabbing him by the back of the neck and drawing his lips back onto your own.

he emitted a sound of surprise, but didn't make a move to pull away. even so, his lips were puckered and stiff. it was obvious he had no idea what he was doing. chuckling, you leaned away just enough that your lips weren't touching.

"relax, Jungkook," you murmured, pecking his lips lightly.

"I'm sorry," he managed to choke out, face turning beat red for the umpteenth time that day, "I've just never... done this before."

"you've never kissed anyone before?" he shook his head weakly, features burning with embarrassment at his admission. you smiled, caressing your thumb over his warm cheek, "that's alright... I'll teach you."

"o–okay," he whimpered, dark eyes focusing in on your lips.

seeing the need that sparkled faintly within them, you decided not to make him wait any longer. you pressed your lips gently to his, moving slowly, but with purpose. his motions gradually grew from stiff and uncertain to relaxed and fluid. you let out a sound of approval, one of your hands sneaking down to squeeze his thigh.

god damn.

he gasped in your mouth, and you dipped your tongue skillfully between his lips. a loud moan escaped his chest, the sound sending chills down your spine. you couldn't help but to wonder what he would sound like moaning your name, begging for more...

that thought alone was enough to have you tugging him closer to you, pulling his leg over your lap until he was straddling your thighs. your hands wandered to his waist, thumbs rubbing small circles. he shuddered faintly, giggling into your mouth as you hit a ticklish spot.

"god, you're so cute," you chuckled, kissing over his jaw as his head tilted back, offering you more access. he mewled as you hit a weak place.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," he gasped, hands jumping up to grip your shoulders tightly.

"don't think too much, just enjoy," you purred, nipping at his collarbone playfully, "and follow my lead." the grip you had on his waist slipped down to his narrow hips, guiding them in slow grinding motions.

"o–oh," he swallowed, jaw slacking as his eyes dropped between you, watching himself grind against you. it didn't take long for a prominent bulge to form in his tight jeans, the restriction making him squirm. he let out a strangled whine, "y/n... it hurts."

you smirked, "why don't you strip for me, baby?"

his cheeks ignited in a hot crimson blush. "s–strip?" you hummed, unbuckling his belt and pulling it out from the loops, dropping it onto the floor. that may be useful later.

he nodded, "okay." you grinned, excitement boiling up inside of you, leaning back as Jungkook stood up before you. he bit his bottom lip, eyes fluttering shyly as he gripped the bottom of his black t–shirt.

"d–don't laugh."

your eyes widened, brows raising. "I would never laugh at you, I promise," there was steadfast certainty in your voice, your hand rubbing soothingly down the back of his leg, "it's okay if you don't want to do this—"

"no! no, I want to," he cut you off quickly, and you couldn't help the feeling of relief that washed over you.

"okay," you leaned back, "then take it off."

with an adorable look of determination, he began to strip; starting with his shirt. you had to bite your lip near the point of blood when he slowly peeled the fabric off of his body to keep from crying out 'glory, glory, hallelujah!'. hot was an understatement.

muscular shoulders that melted into sculpted biceps. a bulky chest that screamed push up fiend and formed into a set of six tight, toned abs.

"Jesus," your mouth watered.

you couldn't stop your hand from reaching out and caressing down his body, watching as his stomach flexed under your touch.

"work out much?" you smirked up at him.

he chuckled, shrugging faintly, "it’s a hobby of mine."

yeah, it fucking shows.

once again, your eyes slid down to see his erection still standing proud, straining hopelessly. you licked your lips lustfully. seeing what was above the belt, only made you want to see what was below it a hundred times worse.

"fuck, take your pants off," you impatience was beginning to show as your hands found the zipper of his jeans. but he suddenly grabbed your wrists. you looked up at him, concerned you'd gone too fast for his liking.

but his dark, desire filled eyes and the playful smirk on his lips told you otherwise. "please... let me," he murmured, you nodded in a slight daze from the look he was giving you. releasing your wrists, he slowly pushed his jeans over his hips, letting them slip teasingly down his thick thighs, before they finally pooled at his ankles, where he had earlier kicked off his timbers.

you groaned softly, nearly melting at the sight of his bare legs in front of you. shaved, they were fucking shaved. you could see the taunt muscles bulging underneath his soft skin. and holy fuck his thighs, his thighs, his fucking thighs. tan and big and bite–able.

shit, they were even hotter than you imagined.

"you... you can touch me... if you want..."

his soft, bashful voice broke you from the trance you'd put yourself in, and you quickly snapped your stare away from his thickness and up to his face. he looked shy again, bottom lip sucked into his mouth, cheeks rounded, raised, and tinted by a subtle pink, eyes big and shiny in the most endearing way imaginable.

how the holy fuck were you supposed to say no to that.

in less than a second your hands were back on his thighs, rubbing, squeezing, savoring. his skin was warm and tight under your greedy hands, tensing every time your fingers grazed a particularly sensitive area.

just touching suddenly wasn't enough. leaning forward, you grazed your lips over the hem of his tight boxers, biting gently at the flesh just below it. he trembled, moaning softly as you placed a flurry of kisses and light sucks on his legs.

thigh kink? confirmed.

you were so close, you could see his erection growing by the second. and shit was that a turn on. with a twinge of reluctance, you detached your mouth from his thighs, peering up at his slack jawed face with a smirk.

"you look good in black, Jeon," you teased, lightly tracing your index finger over his boner.

"please, y/n," he moaned, his knees beginning to grow weak underneath him. as much as you would have loved to have kept teasing the hell out of him, there were far more important matters to take into consideration.

pulling away from him, you shifted over to make room for his large body on the couch. "down," you demanded.

he all but launched himself onto the couch, before staring at you like an obedient puppy awaiting his next command. you were already power hungry enough as is, and now he was looking at you like that? the fuck was he trying to do to you?

he yelped in surprise as you planted your hands on his shoulders, shoving him back. he fell, head landing near the arm rest, torso propped up on his elbows, legs parted, one foot resting on the floor. he looked like a work of art laid out like that. you could just devour him.

you crawled on top of him, trapping his head between your hands. "do you know how long I've wanted you, Jungkook?" you muttered, brushing your nose over his. he shook his head, breathing heavily as you positioned one of your knees against his crotch. "do you know how long I've wanted to have your gorgeous body underneath mine? too fucking long."

he moaned out as you pressed into him, at the same time capturing his mouth in yours in a wet, sloppy, hungry kiss that had his mind reeling. his large hands gripped your jaw, one of his legs hooked over your hip, keeping you close to him. he loved feeling you.

"do you know how much of a tease you are?" you growled against his mouth, biting his bottom lip. "shit, you have to know. walking around in those tight jeans, showing off that tight little ass. you love it, don't you? having everyone's eyes all over you."

he was panting as his hips began to slowly grind against your leg, desperate for friction. "I– I never realized—"

you cut him off with a hand around his throat, tsking softly, "don't lie to me, baby. liars get punished." shit, y/n don't get too kinky on him, it's still his first time, you silently reminded yourself. but he seemed to enjoy it enough, because his grinding became rougher and faster, to the point where he was essentially dry humping your leg.

"f–fuck, punish me," he moaned out, clenching and unclenching his fists in your hair. you choked.

he was asking for it. literally asking for it. if it was any other guy, you would have already jumped his bones.

but this was Jeon Jungkook, your not so secret obsession since the beginning of high school. he was underneath you, horny, hard, and asking you to punish him. and yet, you still weren't sure.

on one hand; you wanted to fuck his shit up. you wanted to feel him writhing, hear him crying out, see him sweating. you wanted to wreck that boy. fuck him into oblivion, until he was seeing stars.

but on the other hand; he was still a virgin. he had no experience whatsoever, and had only just had his first kiss that day, with you. you didn't want to hurt him–hurt him his first time. you didn't know if he could take it.

Jungkook must have seen the conflicted expression on your face, because he made a soft noise to bring your attention back to him.

"please–," he whimpered, spreading his thighs with a needy moan, "please, be rough with me."

w—

was your life a joke to him?

"shit, Jeon," you huffed out a strained chuckle, "you're really fucking me up here."

he whimpered again, looking up at you pleadingly. "I can handle it, I promise. I want more. I want you."

was this the same guy that said the only things you can gain from sex are std's and regret?

it wasn't hard for him to shatter any tiny amount of resistance you offered with a single look. you nodded faintly, smiling as his face lit up. "don't be afraid to tell me to stop, okay? I don't want to get too carried away."

he hummed, head bobbing in acknowledgment.

"words, baby," you scolded.

"yes, I promise," he breathed, eyes honing in on your lips, "can you kiss me again?"

as much as you wanted to tell him this was serious, you still couldn't bring yourself to say no. you kissed him again, slowly this time. you chuckled at the feeling of his tongue prodding at your lips. "impatient thing, aren't you?"

he opened his mouth to respond, but could only manage a gasp as you began to trail your mouth down his body, until you were face to crotch with his throbbing arousal. you looked up at him with a cocked brow. "want them off?"

you had barely finished the question before he was rapidly nodding his head, biting his lip as he hummed desperately. chuckling at his eagerness, you slid your fingers under the waistband on his black Calvin Klein's, and tugged them down.

his erection swung out of it's confines like a god damn baseball bat, slapping against his stomach hard enough to make him flinch slightly. you don't remember ever seeing a guy that hard before. and you'd barely even touched him.

"impressive, baby," you purred, soothing your hands over the inside of his thighs. pressing a slow kiss to his hipbone, you murmured, "you're already so hard for me... it makes me wonder..."

your fingers glided closer and closer to where you knew he wanted you most, but never touching him. frustration blossomed on his face in the attractive shade of crimson.

"if I could make you come without even touching you."

he cried out, desperately shaking his head, "no, no please– I can't. please touch me. I need you, plea—" he cut himself off with a thunderous moan as your hand wrapped around his dick and began pumping quickly.

you smiled cheekily up at him, "since you said please."

he was already slick with his own pre cum, hot and throbbing in your palm. spluttering moans escaped his lips as his body tried to process the pleasure of your smooth, rapid strokes. little need be said that it was a lot for his virgin cock to handle in that moment.

his head jerked up when you suddenly pulled away, staring down at you with furrowed brows and hopeless eyes.

"you wanted me to kiss you, right?" it was more of a rhetorical question, and you didn't really give him the chance to reply anyways before your mouth was on his dick.

Jungkook cried loudly, throwing his head back as you french kissed his tip.

"f–fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck," he whined between harsh onslaughts of gasps and moans, tightly grabbing the armrest above his head. you hummed in admiration as his chest broadened and his skin tightened with the stretch, putting his taut pectorals on full display.

every flick and twirl of your tongue sent tendrils of pleasure shooting through his body in hot, wet, glorious waves. his back arched off of the couch cushion every time you sucked, cheeks hollowing, tongue flattening.

you watched, ego practically bursting out of your head at how responsive he was. every thrust of his torso, every tremble of his legs, every gorgeous sound that thrust itself from his lips went straight to your core. he was undeniably intoxicating.

he suddenly threw his legs over your shoulders, ankles locking on the small of your back. you moaned around him as you realized the position he'd just put himself in. your hands crawled up his flexing thighs, gripping them tightly.

talk about a dream come true. literally.

you applied some vigor to your motions, bobbing your head eagerly and twisting your tongue around him. you felt him begin to twitch in your mouth, the fluid leaning from his swollen cock lathering your tongue. that combined with the sounds he was making, beautiful, high whines, signaled that he was close. but you weren't done yet.

all at once, you pulled away, panting slightly but smirking nonetheless.

"w–why did you... s–stop?" he gasped, brows furrowing as he looked down at you desperately.

"because I want to show you another trick I learned during one of my rendezvous," you purred, kissing down his thighs to soothe the orgasm you prevented him from experiencing, "if you're up for it?"

"if it feels anything like that, I'm down," he was quick to agree, pulling his legs off of you as you sat up.

"I'm happy to hear that..." your eyes wandered below his dick, and your eyes glistened with excitement. before he could put two and two together, your fingers were tracing his lips. "do you mind sucking?" you asked. he shook his head, and you chuckled at his big doe eyes, sending you silent pleas, "then suck, baby."

he obediently took your fingers into his mouth, small lips delicately wrapping around them. you hummed in appreciation, loving the way he looked with your fingers in his mouth.

"that's right baby, use your tongue, make them wet," you groaned, pushing them deeper. he silently complied, tongue shyly swirling around them, cheeks going concave and he sucked gently. all the while, his eyes, wide and glistening, looked into yours, hungry for approval.

Jesus Christ, have mercy.

"you'll make me come in my pants if you keep this up," you joked, biting at the inside of your cheek. that statement only seemed to add fuel to the fire, because before you could process what he was doing, he had you fingers knuckle deep in his mouth, sucking them like his life depended on it. now, it was your turn to go slack jawed.

when it got to the point where you could feel the arousal beginning to drip between your thighs, you drew your fingers from his mouth. you shuddered with glee at the sight of a string of his spit connecting the tip of your finger to his lips. hot. hot, really fucking hot.

"damn, baby. you're good with your mouth," you chuckled breathlessly, trying to ignore the sexy way his brows rose in suggestive arches at your statement.

"I can be even better if you give me something hot and wet to eat."

well fuck you too, Jeon. now my ovaries have exploded, thanks a whole fuckin' lot you little tongue slut.

"maybe if you behave yourself, yeah?" you all but growled, feeling the heat in your body increase tenfold. and then he had the nerve to smirk at you. as if you weren't turned on enough. now you had to show him who the fuck was in charge here. "you're asking for it, Jeon."

he chuckled shortly, biting his lip. "then give it to me."

welp. there goes taking it easy his first time.

in seconds, you had his hands pinned above his head and the belt you had discarded earlier wrapped tightly around his wrists. he groaned at the feeling of the taut leather pulling at his delicate skin, loving the sensation of being restrained more than he thought he would.

"such a spoiled little brat, aren't you?" you snarled, grabbing one of his legs and forcing it up over your shoulder, holding the other against his chest. he bit his lip, eagerly nodding in agreement. "making demands like that. shit, you want it so bad? then have it, baby."

he cried out as the tips of your wet fingers slowly penetrated his virgin hole. hot, salty tears pooled in his eyes at the foreign stretch. you placed soothing kisses down his neck, murmuring sweet, encouraging words against his skin.

"tell me to stop if it's too much," you uttered, feeling his body trembling and tensing beneath you.

he quickly shook his head at that, "I'm okay– I'm okay... keep going... please keep going."

you praised him quietly, continuing to ease your fingers into him. his back arched deeply, forcing your chest together so firmly not even a piece of paper could slip between you. his head rolled to the side, panting lips pressing to his bicep, prominent bunny teeth biting into the flesh as his brows scrunched.

beautiful didn't begin to describe him.

"you're taking my fingers so well, baby," you cooed, thrusting your fingers shallowly, slowly in and out of him at a consistent pace, allowing his body to adjust properly. you could tell he was still in some pain, but it was quickly melting from his feature, being replaced by something entirely different.

"y/n," he drawled out a low moan, hips steadily beginning to roll in time with your fingers.

oh, you knew what that meant.

"you want more?"

he nodded quickly, whining for emphasis. you only grinned and continued your now painfully slow motions. he groaned in frustration when he tried to grind his hips down, only for you to grab them and pin them down. this was becoming torturous. this shallow pleasure and weak stretches weren't enough to get him anywhere. you know that. and now so did he.

face blossoming in a deep red, he weakly squirmed against his restraints in order to lift his head. "y/n, I can handle it, please! I need— shit," he squeaked loudly, eyes popping open almost comically when your fingers suddenly pushed deeply into him. his entire body jolted and you felt him clench around you.

"relax. you said you could handle it right?" he could only nod, words evading him as you pulled out, only to plunge right back in. the motion sent his head into a fuzzy state of euphoria that he'd never had the pleasure of encountering before.

it wasn't long before you were pumping into him at an arm numbing pace. your bicep and wrist ached, but you really couldn't care less. not with how utterly, stupefyingly gorgeous he looked.

hands bound above his head, which was thrown back as his strained throat shot out whorish moans. sweat making his rippling skin shimmer like an ocean at sunset. every muscle in his upper body was flexed and on full display for your greedy eyes, bulging and trembling.

"you look like you're about to just burst, Jeon," you teased, biting your lip at the sound of your palm connecting with his toned backside with sharp smacks.

wet? nah bitch you were drenched.

"w–wa... wait–wai... wait!" he gasped and moaned as your skilled fingers brought him closer and closer to the edge. you immediately still, quickly drawing your hand away from him.

"did I hurt you?" you asked, concern shining in your eyes.

"no, no it felt good. really good, fuck. I just..." you furrowed your brows in confusion, waiting for him to continue, "I don't want to come from your hand."

your brows raised, "oh?"

"I want you to fuck me."

oh.

a massive smirk split your cheeks. "don't have to tell me twice," you swooped down, kissing him fiercely. you moved the undo his binds, letting the belt hit the floor with a soft thud. with his freed hands, he reached down and helped you tug off your pants. you were both far too eager even bother taking off your underwear. you moaned softly as his slender fingers pushed the fabric to the side, grazing your wet lips.

he gasped, looking up at you with wide eyes. "you're so wet."

chuckling, you ground against his lingering fingers, moaning soft at the sparks of pleasure that followed. "mm, all because of you, baby." he blushed deeply, biting his lip to contain a wide smile. he hadn't realized he was affecting you just as much as you were affecting him.

he took you off guard as he slid his fingers against you, lightly pressing against your core, applying pressure to your sensitive clit. you jerked, legs quivering beneath the weight of your body. "easy, I'm not trying to come before I even get to feel you inside of me. I've waited too long for this."

in one swift motion, you sunk down on his erect cock. you gasped as he moaned in shock, both of you taken off guard by just how good it felt. you hadn't expected that much of a stretch, his dick filling you flawlessly. he hadn't expected you to be that tight, squeezing and clenching around him. he thought he was overwhelmed before, but this was an entirely different ball game. hehe, literally.

"oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," Jungkook choked, hands searching hopelessly for something to grab onto but unable to decide what he wanted to hold onto.

you chuckled breathlessly between soft moans, rolling your hips in slow figure eights. "God's got nothing to do with this, baby." You gripped at his muscular shoulders for support as you rode his dick.

truth is, he felt a thousand times better than you thought he would. he wasn't massive, but he was the perfect size for you, just thick enough to stretch you out without causing any real pain and long enough to reach that perfect, sensitive little spot inside of you with ease.

"fuck you feel so good," you groaned, throwing you head back as you sped up your pace, bouncing with renewed stamina.

Jungkook keened, feeling already himself teetering on that edge. but he didn't want to finish, he didn't want it to end. the feelings, the sensations you were giving him were unlike anything he'd ever faced before.

"y/n— I think I might–" he began to warn you, but his words got lost in gasping moans and hopeless whines. you got the message though, especially at the feeling of him throbbing and twitching inside of you.

"then I'm going to need you to touch me, baby," you guided his wrist to your aching pussy, moaning loudly when his fingers made contact with your swollen clit, "f–fuck right the–there."

he whimpered, wanting to please you just as much as you were pleasing him. "how?" he asked desperately, hips reflexively jumping as you clenched around him.

with your hand laid over top of his, you were able to lead his long middle finger in drawing small circles, until he was doing it all on his own. "oh shit, yeah– yeah, just like that... just like that." he couldn't hide the smile that grew at the sight of your eyes rolling to the back of your head, your mouth gaping in silent moans as his touches worked you closer and closer to your undoing.

but you wiped that smile off his face when your hands landed back on his chest, brushing his nipples and making his back arch upwards. you tested it again, this time with gentle pinches that had him crying out in euphoria, bucking into you hard.

"oh? you like that? you like getting your nipples played with? how cute." you managed, tweaking his hardened buds with a sadistic smirk. he sobbed, tears of pleasure rushing from his eyes. it was getting harder and harder to hold himself back. but he refused to come before you.

forcing his mind out of the euphoric haze, he put his hands and hips to work, drilling into you with every ounce of strength he had.

he managed to hit your sweet spot with every powerful thrust. and before you knew it, you were coming faster than you'd ever come before, vision filling with blinding stars, body going rigid above his and trembling uncontrollably. your walls constructed around him as you came with the most mind numbing orgasm you'd ever experienced, and that was just enough encouragement to have him exploding inside of you with a loud cry.

"fuck– fuck, y/n, fuck," he moaned, riding out his high with hard, sloppy thrust. you could only manage a weak whimper from oversensitivity, slumping on top of him, completely and utterly spent.

you laid them for at least five minutes, both of you trying to catch your breath and collect the wits that had just seemed to implode.

unexpectedly, you let out a bellowing laugh, wrapping your arms around his neck as his lazily looped around your back. "shit, Jeon. didn't know you had it in you," you giggled airily, kissing his shoulders in a surprisingly tender gesture.

he smiled, giggling along with you. "you brought it out of me."

"oh, I'm flattered, gorgeous," you cooed playfully, plastering kisses across his cheeks. he lightly swatted you away, squirming as you tickled at his sides.

with a soft sigh, you pushed yourself off of him. he watched in confusion as you grabbed his clothes off the floor, handing them to him. you chuckled when you saw the worried look on his face, leaning down to press a reassuring kiss to his lips. "as much as I enjoy cuddling after a good fuck, you should probably ditch before my parents get home. they’re not always so welcoming to strangers."

his shoulders relaxed, realizing you weren't just going to kick him to the curb after giving him the best afternoon of his life.

"understandable," he swiftly tugged on his shirt, followed by his pants and messily stuffed book bag. he turned back to you with a hopeful glimmer in his dark eyes, and a shy blush coating his cheeks. it was amazing that he was still so bashful after having just fucked your brains out.

"you'll... you'll text me... right?"

you laughed softly, cupping his jaw and drawing him into one last kiss. "how could I not?"

he grinned giddily, pecking your lips in his excitement. "okay! okay, good!" He coughed quickly, trying to cap his happiness, "I mean— cool, cool. very cool. I'll see you tomorrow. have a good— uh, night!"

you shook your head with a soft smile as he darted out the front door, closing it gently behind him.

"I might just have to keep you around, Jeon."

[lailoken]

“In his book The Return of the Dead: the transparent veil of the pagan mind Lecouteux exposes us to older definitions of ‘body’ and ‘soul’ that are ultimately heathen in origin. He shows in detail how Christianity went about ‘de-corporealising’ the soul and making it into an immaterial thing. To our ancestors there was no such thing as an ‘immaterial’ thing. Everything had a kind of body; some of them were just denser and more easily perceived by humans than others.

Emma Wilby also touches on this when she speaks of the question posed by many witch-interrogators: ‘did you do all this in your body or in spirit?’ Although Christianity was long established in Scotland by this time, these ancient ideas seem to have lingered on up until at least the seventeenth century. Today we feel very clear about what is meant when someone says ‘body’ because we are in the habit of believing that we have only one. We also believe that whatever the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ is, it is something that forms the natural opposite to the body and has less reality value.

If you can try to imagine that your mental universe does not have a concept of something that is ‘without substance’ then you will find it more possible to understand how the notion of ‘more than one body’ could exist. Not only were people able to send out a Double of themself, a less dense body that could travel great distances while the other body slept, but they were also able to expel an animal form from their body.

This notion of the animal form has come down to us in modern Traditional Witchcraft as the ‘fetchbeast’ or ‘familiar’. And for those who experienced the presence of one in the past, the animal was believed to be a tangible part of the body that could be expelled through the chest or the mouth of the sleeper and cause literal effects in the world, including being seen by others.

This close connection of the animal self to the person is particularly pronounced in ‘were animal’ phenomenon, where the person experiences an actual transformation of their physical body into the form of that animal. The real, though highly plastic animal form was able to impose the experience of itself over the experience of being a physical man. So that whilst a scientist would say that the man had not transformed into a beast in his body, a person at the time might have seen a ‘man-wolf.’

It is easy to see when we think about this, how the appreciation of something like a werewolf requires at least two people, or preferably a community. It requires a man who experiences his fetch-beast’s form over taking his man form, and it requires someone to perceive his beast form as altering the status and meaning of his man-form. Today we seldom have two such individuals in one space to be able to comment on these things that were understood parts of life for our predecessors.

So let us dig a little deeper to try and better understand the older way of seeing the body and soul and the Double that goes forth. In Eva Pocs book Between the Living and the Dead she describes how the ‘Double’ of a person was a believed to possess substance, a literal ‘second skin.’ As she puts it: ‘According to the documentation, the alter ego is imagined to be a physical reality. This means that it was not a soul but a second body; and while it was of a more spiritual nature, it also had physical reality.’

But not all visitations from the dead or travelling witches was a case of this ‘second skin’, there was also the notion of ‘the Shadow.’ The term ‘Shadow’ was in the past applied to the soul that lives on after death and can become detached from the body dreams or after death. Some records on witchcraft are unusually precise about what part of the spiritual complex of a person they are referring to. In one case a woman went into the room ‘and there she could not be experienced in her person, she just walked as a Shadow.’ Or: ‘Not Mrs Moricz herself, but her image walked with me as a Shadow.’

So when it is claimed that something happened ‘in the body before the eyes’ this may often refer to the second skin that was believed to be tangible. Not all dead people or all sleepers who roamed during their dreams seem to have possessed this second skin or perhaps to have known how to detach it from their other body. The Skin was often given to the witch by a spirit, such as in the case of the gift of an animal form that a witch may henceforth project her Shadow into and go forth.

The revenant (a potent type of ghost) also had this corporeality, something derived subtly from its corpse, which was deactivated if the dead body was destroyed or dismembered. As it was not unusual for the medieval and post medieval person to believe in Shadows and the real occurrence of dreamed events (more on this below) we are hitting upon a crucial point here. This ‘second skin’ that belonged to the witch, either in the form of a Double of themselves or an animal form, is one of the things that makes the difference between a witches nocturnal adventures and those of the ordinary dreamer. The ordinary dreamer goes forth in Shadow form, something that is generally invisible but may sometimes be perceived by those with The Sight, whereas the witch is able to project the Shadow into forms, as it testified to by the old term ‘dressed in forms.’

The expression ‘turnskin’ makes a lot of sense when one considers that to our forebears this meant the literal donning of another secret Skin. It also helps us to make sense of the notion of witches appearing in ‘someone else’s form’ or ‘riding’ them. We know revenants were able to use some subtle part of the corpse to send forth a second skin and that this only worked so long as the corpse remained intact. So we can deduce that all humans have such things but that only some humans have the gift of separating it out from the other body during life. We can deduce this because of the large amount of evidence to suggest that witches often stole or borrowed other people’s ‘Skins’ to get about the countryside disguised as them. This may have been simply for revenge or to implicate somebody else other than themselves but the tiring effects of being ‘hag ridden’ suggest another purpose behind this ‘skin taking.’ It is likely that sending forth the second skin requires a large power output from the witch and that, therefore, to send the Shadow out to occupy someone else’s and use their vitality instead has its advantages. To illustrate this I will present a detailed folkloric account of a witch attempting to ‘ride’ a man. The story was originally recorded in Appalachian dialect but I’ve rendered it in standard English:

‘I’m doubting if anyone can help me now. But I’m telling you this because when I die, I want you to know what killed me. Now, you know I never believed in witches but I’m afraid a witch is going to make a ghost of me. Every night of my life for the past three months, a witch has come through the keyhole [typical for a Shadow] to my bedroom. She changes me into a horse and puts a bridle on me and leads me outside. Then, she puts her witch saddle on my neck, plaits my mane into stirrups, jumps on my neck and rides as hard as she can till daylight. Then she brings me back to bed all petered out and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

This concept of being ‘hag ridden’ is in fact a form of possession, of a living person by a living person and the notion of riding the second skin allows us to explain the difference between standard dreams and ‘big dreams.’ We all know that there are some dreams that we have which seem quite insubstantial; our forebears would say that these dreams were true but that we only attended in our ‘Shadow.’ But those of us who feel called to witchcraft have often had experiences, open eyed experiences, lucid dreams or visions where we feel that we saw with, or were still in, our body. The ‘second skin’ separating from the physical skin and becoming filled with the Shadow, something that typically feels ‘very real’, can often explain these experiences of doing seemingly impossible things. It appears, given that the Shadow of a witch is attested over and over again to inhabiting the ‘Skin’ of other people, that the Shadow is the sentient part and the ‘Skin’ a kind of vessel.”

—

A Deed Without a Name:

Unearthing the Legacy of Traditional Witchcraft

by Lee Morgan

[seblaine-rph]

Speaking as someone who has autism and has been in DK for a while.. I've got some tea. And the tea is that the admins have been nothing but kind and welcoming, even more so than other rps I have been in throughout the years of roleplaying. You will most likely not post this, but hey, it needs to be said.

That’s the thing here, you’re all so ready to invalidate the experiences of multiple other people, simply because you had a better experience? I think in the political climate we’re in, we should all know better than to assume that just because you have been somewhere and felt safe, that doesn’t mean that everyone that has been there has been safe. And it’s this very reaction that is why people wouldn’t feel safe talking about why they don’t feel safe in that group. Why would anyone want to speak up about their struggles if all they’re going to be met with is:

Well I’m having a great time so clearly you can’t be having a bad one.

Here are all the ways that you having a problem has ruined everything and should make you feel guilty.

Here are all the ways that you are wrong in your feelings, and in the wrong for stating that there is a problem.

In fact I’m going to kick out the people that stood up for you and list it as “complaining and making an outburst” as the reason for being kicked out.

And because they dared to take one for the team and speak to me about the triggers other people brought to their attention, I’m going to suddenly decide that everything they do in the whole grpc is just to attack me. Now they’re a bad person, because someone asked for help and you’re a bad person for asking for help.

I’m going to kick them out and make sure everyone in the group knows they’re a piece of shit and also shit talk everything else that they do in the grpc-- because despite having my own glee rp, it’s decided that any glee rp they make is obviously an attack against me. 

Clearly, nobody has a problem because I said so and amidst all this, nobody else has complained so.... 

The clear truth is, these two weren’t vilified and kicked out of DK until they started to get an influx of apps on their own roleplay group and the admins made it very clear that they were unhappy that there was another D/s group in the tags. 

I read things myself that were very obvious examples of bullying autistic people for showing autistic traits. I ran these screencaps by people in the community that are also autistic or have learning disabilities and what I was told hurts me to my core. The same things I saw happening in DK happen to them all of the time in roleplays. Maybe people don’t realize it, but it has happened in that group. Maybe you’ll get a better understanding of it all after @disabilityrph comes out with her guide, explaining all of the ways (subtle too) that she and other people with learning disabilities have been bullied in the community. I think you’re forgetting that bulling isn’t just pushing people down physically or being obvious with insults, it’s microaggressions too. It’s having an attitude with autistic players that you don’t have with other people. Bullying can be subtle. You may have been bullied and you didn’t even realize it.

The fact of the matter is, what happened in DevilsKey was M/s activity. It was non con. What would you do if someone raped you and then was like, “Well it only happened once, so why are you calling me a rapist?” The fact of the matter is, it happened, and that makes it an M/s rp. If that is allowed to continue to be part of the plots that people are playing with in their server (aka they are playing out the trauma caused by it), if they are going to allow non con punishments of that nature to happen in the future, then they are an M/s rp and need to be labeled appropriate so that nobody is triggered. If you can’t figure out how to dole out punishments in a way that does not break the rules of D/s by forcing kink and traumatizing people in and out of character, then you don’t belong running a D/s rp. 

Because another fact of the matter is that D/s is used by survivors of trauma as a means to overcome their past. There is no reason at all that anyone should expect non con in a D/s setting. To find it would be triggering to a lot of people. Maybe not you, but that just makes you privileged. We’re not in an era where flaunting your privilege (like you did with this anon) is cute anymore. It’s ugly. 

Another fact of the matter is that people were made to feel upset by one of the admins, and both admins allowed the roleplayers as a group to talk shit about the people who were triggered in the ooc chat. The immediate response should have been to step in and tell them that they needed to stop. There is no reason for someone to point out that people are hurt and then allow a mass attack on those people in the ooc. You were already told that the people that were triggered were feeling too anxious to come forward, so you allowed them to be attacked and proved to all of them why they should never speak to you about anything. Who would want to speak up about being triggered in a group where doing so will only end in them feeling like the whole roleplay is going to hate them by the time they wake up? Look at what you guys did to the two people that did take credit for wanting to make things right. And now me.

All of the stuff that I have seen has happened through my research indicates that there are a lot of things that need to be exposed. There needs to be accountability taken instead of trying to launch a smear campaign against people that did the right thing and stood up to bullies. 

I’m still laughing at that GLEE IS OVER, WHY ARE YOU HERE bullshit. Are you kidding me? Why are you here? It still baffles me that you guys are so privileged and so entitled that you think that you’re the only people that can be honestly and genuinely interested in the glee rp community. Which is why, after seeing your group try to shift the blame on these two people over and over and over again in different ways every time they’re proven to be baseless, I’ve just come to the conclusion that there never was an issue on your side and everything that is being done just proves the absolute lack of maturity that’s going on from your side of things. 

What do I mean by that? Well here’s the timeline of excuses, so far:

They stole DK when they made TDS.

Oh wait, TDS was made in 2017 so they’re just stealing ideas.

Oh wait, TDS has a completely different plot and CAN’T use ideas... they stole our NPCs.

Oh wait, they don’t have NPCs? They stole our OC.

Oh wait, the player created her own OC and you can’t be mad at people for writing their own muses? They made up drama in the ooc then.

That one player that wrote a Dom character was “too much like a Dom ooc” (which proves you know nothing about D/s if you think that’s an scary offense?)

You mean you have screenshots of people saying they were triggered so we can’t say that didn’t happen? Well they said this was an M/s rp and we’re upset about it.

You mean this is an M/s rp because we have M/s content so it can’t be called D/s without being triggering? Then they made people uncomfortable, we won’t explain how or why because there is none. I’ve read the entire three server’s worth of information through screenshots, I’ve seen these two interacting with people IC and I’ve seen them plotting and joking OOC right up until the point they were kicked out though.

Why would they open a Glee rp anyway? What even is Glee? Who has a Glee rp? Clearly, we’re the only ones that made our own groups innocently. These people purposefully joined our group so that they could make theirs and ruin us! (Nevermind that they have other Glee rps, and those were started months and years ago)

This is what the timeline should have looked like:

Oh, you’re telling me that I have triggered people by not labeling my roleplay group properly? People didn’t feel like they were warned about the content that was going to be in place and taking over all three servers? 

Please, explain that to me because I don’t know if I understand it correctly because I disagree with you-- but you just said people are upset and triggered, so I would like to fully understand with no malice intended, in order to better take care of my roleplay group and the people in it. 

Oh, maybe I don’t want to label it an M/s rp and maybe I personally think you can traumatize people with D/s and have it still be real D/s, but I’m going to stop the plot, take some time to research, and better understand this situation. 

Maybe I still don’t want to label it an M/s rp after doing research on D/s and trauma, because I don’t like the stigma in the glee rp community about it, but what I will do is I will put a more clear label on the main and in the server channels somewhere. That way nobody is surprised by this again, and everyone joining knows what they are getting into. None of the admins wants anyone to be triggered because they don’t expect non con. 

Then a simple addressing the issue post in the announcements channel where they explain that new information has come to your attention that has made you reconsider a few things; that things will be a little different moving forward (either you will do zero non con and never use D/s to traumatize characters or you will put a label that says that excessive force and non con can be used in this group, so it’s not traditional safe, sane, and consensual D/s) but that you know everyone will help you keep things going.

Never out that someone was upset. Never out that you don’t personally agree in the ooc chat, because you don’t want them to feel alienated or as if you didn’t listen to their concern. Don’t allow players to argue the new way of things in the ooc, let players know if they do say anything negative about it that they need to be mindful of other players in the group as well, because everyone has thoughts and feelings. With your secret knowledge that people were triggered, you should have known better than to let people shit talk like that. Your first concern should not have been your plot or your pride, it should have been to focus on the fact that someone was upset and you should have wanted to clearly understand why so that you could fix it. And you definitely shouldn’t have guilted and attacked your players for not being comfortable coming to you ooc. Yeah, that would be the goal and hope, but it’s not their fault that you make them uncomfortable. Trying to make it out to be their fault and attacking them for it is only going to make people even more uncomfortable with you. 

And the “outbursts” from those two players? I read it. They screencapped it when it happened, because they had been warned that they might be removed for speaking up about their friends being triggered. They said nothing wrong. Everything they said was right. One of them very politely said what I just said the admin should have, which was that nobody should be trying to make anyone else feel invalidated by hopping into the group chat to talk about how they didn’t feel uncomfortable so it was preposterous that anyone else might be. She asked people to use more inclusive language, to remember that whatever they feel... it was obvious that other people felt differently. It was obvious that people were hurting. And the other player explained how it was traumatic to people to mislabel something as D/s and when your main says “safe, sane, and consensual” but you allow NON CONSENSUAL, that it’s triggering because that makes non con unexpected. Which it is. Very much so. I think the reaction from everyone outside of Devils Key should prove that. Non con should not have to be on the banned kink list in a D/s rp because non con is already banned by the basic rules of RACK and the very phrase they put on their main. 

You can’t say a person will have a “safe, sane, and consensual” experience and then attach electrical currents to their genitals while you rape them anally for hours and damage their physical health by pouring something that’s very nearly poisonous down their throat for hours while they’re naked in the middle of town square, with a bunch of other people who are also getting non consensually abused for a full week. 

I don’t know how much clearer I can be on that. I don’t know why it wasn’t clear in the first place. The fact that bringing this up to the admins is what started this all is mind blowing. How are you going to kick people out of your roleplay for letting you know that people were triggered? How are you going to kick people out of your roleplay because they have their own group that was made in 2017? Admins are allowed to remove people at their own discretion, but this isn’t just kicking people out. This is purposefully slandering and bullying people because they dared to tell you that you had hurt people and because they dared to love the same glee rp community that we are all still trying to thrive in and THAT is DISGUSTING. 

The fact that YOU have a good time there, does not negate all of the negative experiences of other people. 

[anneapocalypse]

Carolina’s Story is a Forgiveness Story but Not in the Way You Think

A Critical Look at Her Fan Guide Profile, Part 2 

[Read Part 1 Here]

From the Red vs. Blue Ultimate Fan Guide:

Carolina spent the next few years in hiding before hunting down Epsilon to find and kill the Director. However, rather than taking her vengeance, she forgave the old man and decided to move on with her life.

I don’t think this is an accurate description of what’s happening there, and I want to talk about why.

(For the record, the reliability of the Fan Guide as a whole is questionable at best. You can take a jaunt through my Fan Guide meta tag for more on that.)

Let’s talk about why I feel that season 10, though pretty rocky in terms of writing, ends up the way it should for Carolina.

I know not everyone finds it satisfying that Carolina chooses not to kill the Director—both because of what he did to her, and because of what he did to other beloved characters. 

I think Carolina’s decision is important. I think it’s a good one. 

*

Part of the mistake people make, I think, is seeing Carolina’s arc as simply a retread of Wash’s arc when it’s not. Granted this is understandable, as Carolina’s arc does closely mirror Wash’s, one of the major differences in framing being that Wash’s motivations are never obscured from the audience. We know about his experiences with Epsilon from the minute go, and his desire for revenge is established just as early. 

With Carolina on the other hand… despite being the ostensibly the protagonist of seasons 9 and 10, we’re largely denied her point-of-view for most of it, because to give us her POV might undermine the Big Reveal they were saving for the very end. The result of this, however, is that no one knows where Carolina is coming from, why her investment in all of this is so personal, until her arc is already over. 

I think this accounts for a lot of the negative fan reception of Carolina during seasons 9 and 10. 

So the takeaway for new viewers of season 10 is mainly that Carolina is hyper-competitive and making bad decisions. As present-day season 10 interweaves with the Freelancer flashbacks, all a new viewer sees is that present!Carolina is angry, impatient, and dismissive of the safety of the people she has dragged into her revenge quest.

Something which, I would like to note, Wash also did. 

Season 10 Carolina is often compared to Season 8 Wash, where Wash is arguably at his worst. But the real comparison is season 6, where Wash’s actions most closely mirror Carolina’s. Season 6 and season 10 read very differently because of tone and framing. But when it comes to actions, they’re basically doing the same thing: commandeering a group of sim troopers to break into a secure facility and take down Project Freelancer. If you give season 6 another watch, you may notice that Wash very transparently has nothing for the Reds and Caboose to do once they arrive at Command; they don’t even help him get inside, and in fact having to smuggle them in is an added inconvenience. Once inside, his only orders to them are to create a diversion and hold off the guards for as long as they can. He’s explicitly brought them along as canon fodder. It just doesn’t read the same way, because the tone is different, and this goes back to a longstanding double standard in the framing of RvB where gender is concerned. When a guy is mean, it’s funny. When a girl is mean, she’s just mean.

So Carolina in season 10 is just mean. And her story is a repeat of Wash’s story, but less entertaining. And instead of rooting for her, the way most viewers root for Wash in season 6, the audience becomes impatient either for her story to wrap up or for Carolina to be put in her place. Subtle clues to her true motives, her concern for her team in the past and the loss she feels in the present, gets missed, ignored, or simply overshadowed by that overwhelming framing of her as “mean.”

What that also overshadows, of course, is that Carolina is actually trying to finish what Wash started.

*

Notably, while Wash’s vendetta against Freelancer is certainly personal, it’s personal in a very different way than Carolina’s. Wash certainly has hostility toward the Director; we can hear that in his voice when the Director speaks to him over the loudspeaker. Yet when he’s describing the Project’s misdeeds to Church, you might notice that he repeatedly says they. They tortured the Alpha. They harvested the fragments. He refers to the Director specifically, too, but it’s clear that for Wash, Project Freelancer is more than just the Director. His extended familiarity with the Counselor might have a lot to do with this.

In season 6, Wash’s goals are twofold: stop the Meta, and expose Project Freelancer. His plan is a two-pronged attack. One: lure the Meta inside Command and set off the failsafe to destroy the rest of the AI. Two: steal Epsilon out of storage and send the Reds and Blues to take him to the authorities, who can then use the evidence to bring down the Director. 

That first prong succeeds, and the Meta is defeated, but the second prong fails, with Caboose as the point of failure: Caboose never turns Epsilon in. Epsilon was supposed to provide the evidence to have the Director arrested, tried, and convicted of everything the Chairman had already deduced he was doing but could not prove. Because Caboose fails to turn Epsilon in, the Director is never apprehended.

So Wash’s plan in season 6 is never completed. Epsilon!Tex, brought to life during season 8, also sets out with the goal of finding the Director and she also fails. This is why Recollections is not the end of the Freelancer story. 

This is probably also a big part of why Wash agrees, initially, to help Carolina. He knows as well as she does that the book is not closed on Project Freelancer. He only objects, at long last, when he sees Carolina making the same mistakes he made, making decisions he now regrets. Whether or not Wash knows Carolina’s relationship to the Director, whether or not that was passed to him in the memories from Epsilon, I think he does understand better than anyone why this is important to her, why bringing the Director to justice matters. 

And for Carolina herself, as personal as it is, it’s not just about herself. She says to Epsilon outright, in a brief moment of vulnerability Epsilon effectively forces out of her: “Not just for what he did to me, or for what he did to York, and to Wash, to Maine, the twins, to all of them. And for what he did to you, Church.”

This isn’t just personal vengeance to Carolina. It’s justice. It’s not just for her, but for her team.

And when Wash finally stands up to her, it is not the mission he objects to, but her treatment of the Reds and Blues—while fully acknowledging the trouble he himself has caused them.

In a way, I think Wash confronting Carolina, forcing her to see what she is becoming, is the kindest thing he could do here. I don’t personally think Carolina had any intention of actually shooting Tucker—had she shot him, she would have lost the others for sure. But if Wash hadn’t confronted her, I don’t know if Carolina would’ve come to the realization she comes to in that bunker.

Maybe a part of Wash wishes that someone had been there to confront him with what he was becoming, back in season 8—before he pulled the trigger.  

Because of Wash’s intervention, Carolina and Epsilon go to the Offsite Storage Facility alone, and because they go alone, Carolina becomes overwhelmed by the army of Texbots and begins to despair— right before the Reds and Blues appear, with Wash, to give her backup, having had a change of heart.

Their change of heart is mostly about Church. It’s Tucker who initiates it, in response to Caboose’s sadness over his best friend leaving him again, and the Reds follow, and Wash, despite misgivings, comes along.

But once there, something changes.

Wash offers Carolina a hand up off the floor. He hands her his pistol. “I told you,” he says, “they’re not so bad once you get to know them.” There’s no more anger in his voice, and none of the uncertainty we heard in his earlier interactions with Carolina in this season. Wash is sure of himself again, sure enough that he can extend this gesture of forgiveness toward Carolina.

I think that’s important too.

*

So this is where Carolina is when she walks through that last door, into the Director’s hidden office deep in the underground facility. She’s had to face herself, to face the way she’s been misdirecting her anger; she’s felt alone and helpless; and for probably the first time in a long time she has experienced a team rallying around her, and a gesture of forgiveness.

This is the Carolina who steps into that room, and sees this old man. An old man weary from a mind more filled with memory than it is with hope. A man who abused her, manipulated her, lied to her, violated her trust. A man who was once her father. A man responsible for the violent deaths of the teammates she once called “the people who were closest to me.” Her history with him spans her entire life, and though we do not know the details of that history before Project Freelancer, it is a history unique to Carolina. No other Freelancer has the relationship to him that she has. No other Freelancer, Wash included, would be feeling exactly what Carolina is feeling in this moment.

Carolina has really been fighting her own demons this whole time. In Freelancer, and in the present. I said once before that she didn’t need two voices in her head to destroy her. She didn’t even need one. The voice she’s carried since childhood, telling her that she is never, ever good enough, has been doing a hell of a job on its own.

When she walks into that bunker, her first words to her father after “Hello” are: “So. This is what you’ve become.”

And her resolve to put a gun to his head and pull the trigger seems to dissolve in an instant.

Is this forgiveness?

If forgiveness means the absolution of a past wrong, the idea of her forgiving an abusive father, and in fact the common narrative of forgiveness as a moral imperative, might seem pretty unsavory.

But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.

“The past doesn’t doesn’t define who you are,” Carolina says to Church, by way of explanation. “It just gives you the starting point for who you’re going to be.”

This has nothing to do with the Director. The Director is an old, broken man obsessed with doing what cannot be done. He hasn’t even eaten in days. The Director isn’t going to be anything or anyone. It’s also pretty clear he’s not going to walk out of here, even before he asks her for her pistol, so that’s important.

This is not Carolina forgiving her father. 

This is Carolina separating herself from her father, and from her past.

This is her seeing what her father’s obsession with the past has made of him. This is her refusing to become that. Not just what he is now, in this room, but the man who displaced his pain onto everyone around him.

Carolina needs to let go of her father because if she can’t do that, then she can’t forgive herself for displacing her own pain onto other people. 

This doesn’t mean that Carolina wanting revenge was wrong. It doesn’t make her mission, in and of itself, was invalid. There are layers to this. She had to follow that anger to get here. She needed to be angry at him. She needed to hate him. That was part of the journey as well—recognizing who hurt her and her team. But on her journey for revenge, she’s been taking her anger out on the wrong people, so the journey isn’t just being angry, but figuring out who that anger is actually for.

It’s really important, by the way, that in season 13 Carolina’s apology to Sharkface is her refusing to displace her anger onto him. It’s her refusing to find an enemy anywhere she can. That’s a major point of character development for her. Recollections Wash and season 10 Carolina saw anyone who stood in their way as their enemy. Both of them, at the end of these arcs, had to grow past that.

She doesn’t have to forgive him for what he did. But she does maybe have to find a way to forgive the part of herself that could have become him, had she continued down a similar path.

She does have to let go of him, to set herself free of him. And if she kills him—shoots him in the head with her own hand—that’s one more thing she has to carry with her out of the bunker, one more memory she has to live with.

Instead, she chooses to see that the Director has already taken the burden of his own destruction upon himself. And she lets him have that. She cuts herself loose from him, and walks out the door so she can live her life free of him—so that she can become who she’s going to be. 

The conclusion of Carolina’s Freelancer arc isn’t about her forgiving her father. It’s about her forgiving herself.

[tinkdw]

14x06: Toxic Love v Healthy Love

14x06 watching notes.

This episode we see our Cas stand-in (Jack) team up with Dean and ask him to explain what love is, with Dean explaining that he very much does know the difference between healthy romantic love and toxic romantic love (exposed this episode with the zombie boyfriend “don’t leave me, it’s better you be dead and stuck with me than leave to live your life” storyline which I’m sure has no correlation to Dean and Cas coming up where they may be separated but let each other go, I’m side eyeing you 14x08). With Yockey emphasising that the lesson he himself exposed last season of sibling toxic love (the witch sisters) has also been learned as Dean and Sam exhibit perfectly healthy, open, communicative sibling love. 

And I mean...  mirrors...if we get any more mirrors Dabb’s going to have to open up a funhouse on set.

- So the episode opens with a Cas visual reminder with Harper wearing a beige coat before she changes after that job of “remember Cas in this episode” is done into her *warning sign* red clothing. Beige trenchcoats in Vancouver are clearly in limited supply after SPN has decided to dress everyone in one for the Cas effect. Get yours now.

- “Mary and Bobby’s" well, that didn’t take long to be an established thing.

- To Jack nothing tastes right without his powers whereas to Cas nothing tastes right with his powers >....>

My theory as a firm endgame human!cas meta writer with the later addition that Jack is a mirror exposition of each of TFW’s arcs that Jack gets his power back because he wants and chooses it as a part of his identity and Cas decides to be human in opposition because of his own choices and identity feels like it’s being fed here. Excellent.

- Sam smiling at the fidget spinner gives me feels of a positive goof nature

- Jack feels guilty for not killing Michael while Dean feels guilty for enabling Michael and I have feels about them understanding each others’ guilt and not pushing each other to get over it but just being supportive.

- Sam and Dean COMMUNICATING! MARK THE CALENDAR! Dean knows Sam won’t be particularly happy about him taking Jack hunting but he doesn’t hide it, he calls Sam and lets him know. Sam in turn doesn’t forbid it but shows he is not happy with it. COMMUNICATION. Taking into account each others’ judgement but not stifling each other. I’m living. This is what I was saying about the toxic sibling relationship v healthy sibling relationship in my opener. Steve clearly has big feels about this just as we do and wow he’s done an amazing job at firstly highlighting it with mirrors and metaphors then slamming it home with text... side eyes all the current metaphors and mirrors being highlighted for *other themes*.

More under the cut...

- Lol @ the barn behind Dean in the diner while Jack fills in the Cas visual gap.

- Wait did they even explain where was Cas is?! Nope. Yockey didn’t even bother cos he knows how stupid anything will sound lmao. *Cas is *throws dart** is about right here lbr.

- Chuck Berry as Dean and Jack’s pseudos. I love it.

- DEAN TURNING THE COCK AWAY WHILE TALKING ABOUT SEX I CANNOT. WHERE ARE THE GIFSETS?! I NEED GIFSETS! I WILL REBLOG ALL THE GIFSETS! it literally goes from talking about courting, dating and specifically sex and dean gets awkward and turns away the cock. I MEAN. This ain’t even SUBTLE.

- Are we supposed to see the two women they interview as a couple, I’m not sure. 

- Charlie’s story is A. sad AF B. Political AF. C. Super thematic to the show. She worked at Richard Enterprises as a nice callback to show Yockey knows his canon on OG Charlie, then her story is full of fanfic tropes an ultimately death. Now, I hate kill your gays as much as anyone but I don’t think this is what Steve’s doing here, he literally can’t have her gf alive here. Now could Charlie go off to find her in this world? That would be brilliant.

- Did dean just call sam Thelma lol

- So Jack says he has no understanding of romance despite seeing Dean and Cas doing “googly eyes” each other to death and saying he knows this means someone loves you. 

x

So Jack is the one who doesn’t know as the Destiel romance GA stand in where they figure it out but so does he so they don’t feel stupid as there’s someone on screen who’s like oooooooh I see now! So Sam can have the role of “I knew all along I just didn’t want to force you out of your comfort zone or get involved in things that don’t concern me” just as he did with Mary/Bobby last episode and which explains all his “strictly into Dick” “maybe you’re overcompensating” “because it’s Cas” lines from previously. Brilliant. Please continue.

- “Old man” good cop bad cop with sass. Jack, I love you.

- Jack doing all the OG Hunter tricks I love it. Again Yockey telling us he knows canon and knows what he’s fucking doing. Good lad.

- Sam: “people need people, we’re social animals”. Yockey and Dabb laying down what BS it is that Sam and Dean want to be alone just the two of them nearly every episode now is just the best. Sam wants people around him, now imo he’s not necessarily telling Charlie she should stay a hunter, just that it would be a real shame for her to ostracise herself on top of a mountain with wifi all alone. He gets that, he gets the escapism after all the trauma but he wants to help her and thinks she would be better off surrounded by others, my family and friends and he’s offering this to her and well, he knows this is what helps from his own experience. He’s living this change and seeing the benefits for himself. Just. So much yes.

- I also love that Charlie’s personality is part similar to ours but also part totally different because she’s not the same. Good, thank you Yockey. She’s not a replacement for our Charlie. No matter how hard Bucklemming may try and think they “fixed” her original death. She ain’t our Charlie and they haven’t fixed it. We are grateful to have some semblance of her but you are not forgiven for your complete lack of credibility, writing skills and total problematic behaviour regarding both her and all the other things you’ve done just by giving us an AU version of Charlie. 

- So Harper is evil, quelle surprise. She exposes a codependent and unhealthily toxic relationship where she preferred to kill her boyfriend and tie him to her, having him literally kill and eat others rather than just let him go and live his life. So, I will write a separate post about this because I think it is the theme of the episode but this heavily reminds me of Yockey’s witch sisters being a dark Sam and Dean mirror of toxic sibling love last seasons, emphasising their choice to be toxic or healthy, with them now exhibiting all the healthy and rejecting the toxic behaviours. 

So who is Harper and her boyfriend a dark romantic love mirror of now then with them potentially soon to choose a healthy route instead in direct opposition and one of them letting the other go, hmmmm I wonder...

x  Just getting this gif out again cos well I’m sorry but Cas wasn’t even in this episode or last or last last yet he’s all over them with not just human!Cas stuff here but also all the Destiel like wow... it’s impressive tbh.

- Meanwhile Dean is dishing out healthy relationship advice. Again this feels relevant to Cas’ recent admittal to Nick that he had to “eat” someone to live in a way ie possess Jimmy for his body. This feels even more like a metaphor for his giving up his grace and exposing Cas again as not this but having his own body now created by Chuck just as everyone else does. Just in case people want to continue to use this argument against him and Destiel with the necrophilia rubbish which is already totally disproved but again rears its head in a “clearly this is not the same as that” way with actual dark mirror necrophiliac toxic love going on.

- Okay so we have more blatant overt textualised metaphors with the word “metaphor” in the text with Charlie v the big fly. They really are hammering home the concept of “pay attention to metaphors and mirrors people” this season. Wowzers.

- Next week’s promo also gives us another mirror with Jack driving the impala and telling Dean “it’s like I’m you!” “no it isn’t”. Honestly, is this a memo that they have to do this every episode because I approve. Knock that memo home.

- I would also like to point out as @margarittet reminded me, the queer story in this episode (Charlie x her girlfriend) is beautiful and positive though tragic due to outside circumstances and the heterosexual story is toxic and gross with codependency, necrophilia and murder by Harper’s own choice. This isn’t to say it’s anti hetero it’s just making a point that it doesn’t matter who you love it’s what you do with it and who you are that counts.

And isn’t that a beautiful way to end this.

[phroyd]

A March news release from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) touted a new study that could be useful for infrastructure planning along the California coastline. At least that's how President Donald Trump’s administration conveyed it.

The news release hardly stood out. It focused on the methodology of the study rather than its major findings, which showed that climate change could have a withering effect on California's economy by inundating real estate over the next few decades.

An earlier draft of the news release, written by researchers, was sanitized by Trump administration officials, who removed references to the dire effects of climate change after delaying its release for several months, according to three federal officials who saw it. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, showed that California, the world's fifth-largest economy, would face more than $100 billion in damages related to climate change and sea-level rise by the end of the century. It found that three to seven times more people and businesses than previously believed would be exposed to severe flooding.

“We show that for California, USA, the world's fifth largest economy, over $150 billion of property equating to more than 6% of the state's GDP and 600,000 people could be impacted by dynamic flooding by 2100,” the researchers wrote in the study.

The release fits a pattern of downplaying climate research at USGS and in other agencies within the administration. While USGS does not appear to be halting the pursuit of science, it has publicly communicated an incomplete account of the peer-reviewed research or omitted it under President Trump.

“It's been made clear to us that we're not supposed to use climate change in press releases anymore. They will not be authorized,” one federal researcher said, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal.

In the Obama administration, press releases related to climate change were typically approved within days, researchers said. Now, they can take more than six months and go through the offices of political appointees, where they are often altered, several researchers told E&E News.

In the case of the California coastline study, the press release went through the office of James Reilly, the director of USGS, a former astronaut who is attempting to minimize the consideration of climate change in agency decisions. Reilly is preparing a directive for agency scientists to use climate models that predict changes through 2040, when the effect of emissions is expected to be less severe. The New York Times first reported on the directive.

At his 2018 confirmation hearing, Reilly promised to protect the agency's scientific integrity.

“If someone were to come to me and say, ‘I want you to change this because it's the politically right thing to do,’ I would politely decline,” Reilly told lawmakers. “I'm fully committed to scientific integrity.”

A spokeswoman for USGS said the agency has no formal policy to avoid references to climate change.

“There is no policy nor directive in place that directs us to avoid mentioning climate change in our communication materials,” said Karen Armstrong, the spokeswoman.

“Scientists at USGS regularly develop new methods and tools to supply timely, relevant and useful information about our planet and its processes, and we are committed to promoting the science they develop and making it broadly available,” she added.

The agency's press release about the California coastline study was significantly altered to mask the potential impact of rising temperatures on the state's economy. Instead, it described the methodology of the study and how it relied on “state-of-the-art computer models” and various sea-level rise predictions.

“USGS scientists and collaborators used state-of-the-art computer models to determine the coastal flooding and erosion that could result from a range of peer-reviewed, published 21st-century sea level rise and storm scenarios,” the final press release said. “The authors then translated those hazards into a range of projected economic and social exposure data to show the lives and dollars that could be at risk from climate change in California during the 21st century.”

The USGS release didn't include the dollar figures outlined in the study.

An earlier draft of the press release, which was put online by the environmental group Point Blue Conservation Science, a participant in the study, compared the possible effect on Californians to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. The release had stark recommendations for coastal planners and emphasized that by the end of the century, a typical winter storm could threaten $100 billion in coastal real estate annually.

“According to the study, even modest sea level rise projections of ten inches (25 centimeters) by 2040 could flood more than 150,000 residents and affect more than $30 billion in property value when combined with an extreme 100-year storm along California's coast,” the draft stated. “Societal exposure that included storms was up to seven times greater than with sea level rise alone.”

The agency has omitted climate change from other press releases.

A release in 2017 that publicized a study on how polar bears were expending more energy due to a loss of sea ice did not mention climate change. It noted that a “moving treadmill of sea ice” in the warming Arctic forced polar bears to hunt for more seals and placed pressure on their population in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, without stating that climate change is a key driver of sea ice conditions.

Another USGS release, on shifting farming regions due to climate change, mentioned "future high-temperature extremes" and "future climate conditions" but not climate change. The first sentence of the study that it was intended to promote mentions climate change. It was published in Scientific Reports.

Some of the USGS studies point to national security repercussions. One study released last year found that a military installation in the Pacific Ocean that would play a role in a possible nuclear strike by North Korea could become uninhabitable in less than two decades due to climate change. The study, which was ordered by the Department of Defense, was released by USGS without a press release.

USGS conducts important climate research and manages the Landsat satellite system that has tracked human-caused global changes for almost 50 years. Government researchers study sea-level rise and glacial melt and manage regional climate adaptation centers housed at universities from Hawaii to Massachusetts.

Allowing valuable information to fall through the cracks is a waste of taxpayer dollars and could prevent science from being included in policy decisions, said Joel Clement, a former climate staffer for the Department of the Interior, USGS’s parent agency. Clement, who is now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said the promotion of studies is an important way to get information into the hands of planners, homeowners, and policymakers. He said Interior appears to be suppressing climate science.

“It's an insult to the science, of course, but it's also an insult to the people who need this information and whose livelihoods and in some cases their lives depend on this,” Clement said. “What's shocking about it is that this has been taken to a new level, where information that is essential to economic and health and safety—essentially American well-being—is essentially being shelved and being hidden.”

In the last year of the Obama administration, USGS distributed at least 13 press releases that focused on climate change and highlighted it in the headline, according to an E&E News review. Since then — from 2017 through the first six months of 2019 — none has mentioned climate change in the headline of the press release, according to the list of state and national releases posted on the USGS website. Some briefly mentioned climate change in the body of the release, while others did not refer to it at all.

Other studies have been quietly buried on the agency's webpages.

That subtle form of suppression fits a pattern elsewhere in the federal government.

Politico recently reported that officials at the Department of Agriculture buried dozens of studies related to climate change. In one case, agency officials tried to prevent outside groups from disseminating a climate-related study. The research looked at how rice provides less nutrition in a carbon-rich environment. That could have global consequences because hundreds of millions of people have rice-based diets around the world.

The Interior Department has been accused of deleting climate change references from previous press releases. In 2017, The Washington Post reported that the agency deleted a line mentioning climate change in a press release about a study on flood risks to coastal communities. That line was: “Global climate change drives sea-level rise, increasing the frequency of coastal flooding.”

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist, is under investigation for his ties to the energy industry while serving in government. A separate investigation is exploring whether he sought to block an Interior Department study on the dangers that a pesticide posed to endangered species.

There is no evidence that Trump political appointees at the agency have blocked climate studies from taking place, but the censoring of press releases has affected the work of researchers worried about their jobs, according to another federal researcher.

“We are pretty cognizant of political pressures, and with these press releases people are definitely biting their nails over ‘how should we word this’ and if there are proposals within USGS, should we use climate change or not,” the researcher said. “It's a lot of stuff that definitely filters down, and it affects the reality of people on the ground doing the work when you're not sure of how I should present this. It's definitely a huge waste of time.”

Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. Copyright 2019. E&E provides essential news for energy and environment professionals at www.eenews.net

Phroyd

[caterinaprimrose]

Metamorphosis (pt 2)

(WAIT if you haven’t yet, go read PART 1!!)

Caterina felt a tight wrenching sensation in her gut as Cazneaux spilled his thoughts upon the midnight air. Her face twitched with little subtle reactions and jolts. Eyes linger here then there until they rapidly flick about. Finally she shudders in a breath and weaves her blues between his browns. "Are you going to think less of me if I'm completely honest with you?"

Her various twitches were caught by his deadened gaze, though he mostly looks into her eyes as he speaks. Upon her inquiry, he shakes his head with earnest in his voice. "I'd respect you more."

 Dark lashes bat a few times, her bottom lip caught between her teeth just barely, like she was preparing to say something for the first time. "I think that I  don't see what you see in myself in relation to him because I've spent -so- long feeling.. -small- next to him." Her nose curls in disgust, eyes narrowing like she'd just seen something foul. "I've been broken into this sick and twisted cloud of being secondary. Not just from him but all of them. -He's- protected first. -He- is the priority. -He- is the one they'd die for. And, surely, I've wormed my way into the hearts of some of them but even then I feel a chilling knowledge that if he  gave the command I'd be dead within the hour.” A pause lingers. “I’m frightened because If I step away from this I have no clue what will happen to me. I won't have those suits protecting me as they did. I won't have that security of my well being and in doing so my social -image- drops. I became what I am with his help. How much of that can I do on my own? If I change my environment so drastically - the foundations, won't I just crumble?"

 If he could make his gaze soften, he would. If he could invoke some sort of emotion within his eyes, he would. But alas, he could not. Instead, he resorts to his face, not desiring to interrupt vocally, sporting a frown. Not one of disappointment, but  one to express sympathy. He slightly steps forward and removes his left glove, exposing his tattooed, worn fingers. And with said calloused, slightly crooked digits, he rests them on her naked shoulder, gently rubbing his thumb against her much softer skin. "I'm quite proud of you for speaking so openly to me about your dealings. About how uncomfortable and trapped you are. About your self doubt and insecurity. I -will- be honest with you, just as you have been with me. As long as you truly think so poorly of yourself, if you believe yourself to be so weak and small and little compared to him, which he has designed your life to end up being, you will ultimately be his slave for the rest of  your life. You'll never reach your potential, you'll never reach your peak, and yes, you've a fantastic reputation for yourself and you're highly esteemed, and he may have aided you with that, but is -he- acting? Is -he- the star? Is -he- the talent that everybody looks up to and loves and beats off to in their shack? I don't fuckin' think so. And nobody else does, either. But the longer you stay with him, the more you depend on him, the more you cling to his arm, the more people will see you  as his 'pretty lil' bitch' and once you're gone, he'll nab a new one. One that's younger, one with more bravado, one that will look better on his arm than you as time goes on." 

He gently pats her shoulder, "Now, are you going to settle for that life? Having his kid, no longer acting, staying in your big ol' manor by yourself with a kid of a guy that you don't love, he doesn't love you, and everybody in your circle knows it? Or are you going to grab life by the balls, scream 'who's your  bitch', spit in its face and make it squeal your name? Are you going to show Azeroth that you can be successful, powerful, innovative and not a force to be motherfuckin' fucked with for decades to come? Or..." He trails his hand down her bicep  before dropping it at his side like it was dead weight, "Are you going to end up a housewife that had fun while she was young, but sold out to her insecurities? Where people would see you taking your lil' ten year old to the bookstore and maybe one  or two parents might recognize you and their kid won't give two and a half shits about? Where when you're done signing their autographs and walking back home, they gossip how disappointing finally meeting you was."

 She felt sick. Like she might throw up or pass out. A light headedness came upon her, his hand the only thing steadying her. Like he was laying her whole life out ahead of her. And she really thought about it. About how she would like for things to go and how, even if she tried to convince herself, she knew that Braxton would never allow those things. That he'd be free to continue expansion of his life, goals, business. But she would be expected to stay home with the baby. To educate and teach it.

She reflects back on Quellys. That's what this felt a lot like. Like the same conversation she'd had with her best friend the night she died. 'But you could have a life, you could be Caterina, have children that will grow up to adore you and ones that you could safely teach to sing to dance, you could go to bed and actually be held by a man that loves you instead of a man who will likely have a separate room in his home for you…Caterina you are so much more than you give yourself credit for, you’ve made a cage for yourself out of this life and you’re walking yourself to the hangman’s noose like you’ll be given the courtesy of a long drop!' She'd remembered it word for -fucking- word. Against her will, her eyes stung. She was flooding with anxiety and the only way her body knew how to expel all of the tension were tears. But she fucking hated crying. She didn't do it very often, not without command. So her feminine fingers rise, both of them - lightly cupping  over her face. Barely touching it as not to smudge her makeup. She was just gathering herself. A hitched breath came out but a more controlled one was deeply sucked in. He could see a flick of her thumb move and wetness on its nail. She stayed like that for several moments.

Spotting the tears begin to form within Caterina’s eyes, Cazneaux slowly lowers his head and raises his ungloved left hand to brush the top of his index finger along her cheekbone before retracting and moving his whole hand against her upper-back. Noticing her aiming to disallow her tears to fall too far, he begins to nudge her into his warm mass, keeping her there, allowing her to wet his leather and mail mixed armor. All the while, he continued his slow, calm, calculated breaths to combat the tension within her body. A sensual, circular rub against her back. "There, there, love." he eventually states, his rumbling voice causing a slight vibrate if her head was to rest against his chest.  

"I don't know why I'm crying, it's so -stupid-." the actress nearly hisses the word. "I -know- you're right, you all are. All of you that have told me this same exact thing - so why am I so fucking startled!"

“Because he -molded- you to be that way. Think about it, Caterina. You weren't scared of any other man before him, were you? You dominated them all the while making them think you were just a pretty lil' thing. But he was smarter than the rest of them. He broke you down, and brought you back up to fit the mold he wanted you to fit, and you went along with it because you're an actress and playing parts is what you do. Just like any other time. But -this- time was different, because you ended up believing that character -is- you. You -are- that character. You stopped acting, in that sense. You ended up -living- somebody else's life, and now their life is yours. All the while, your -true- life. The person you -truly are- is suffocating, and if you marry that man..." He shakes his head, speaking with a stern tone. "If you marry that man and have his child, the -real- you dies. They are buried under a nameless grave, because nobody knows who she is. Only who you -act- to be. And you've acted so well that you've even tricked  yourself. Now if -that- doesn't show your skill, I'm truly at a loss for words."

 'Be safe…be smart…and for whatever you’re worth, don’t marry that man.' Echos off along diamond dripping ears. -Those- were Quellys last words to her. Caterina inhales once, her breathing had slowed slightly, a trembling hand pushing her hair back from her face as she looks up and backs away. Exposed to him, her eyes are big, red along the corners and leaking. She's leaking. Her nose and cheeks are cherry and her lips fuller. Her lashes look darker, wet, longer.

What a sight. From 'stumbling into' one another, and around two months later, she's crying in his arms about an abusive man and not knowing who she really is. A widely renown actress of whom he had watched when they were so, so young. Eyes wet, runny  nose, and flushed cheeks in his grip. If he was a poet, he'd write down many thoughts. But he was not. He is instead an ex-military man, ex-felon, arms dealing, smuggling murderer who has taking more lives, innocent or not, than he'd expect his accountant to be able to take. Far more than his mind and heart could handle, that's something he knew for certainty. And yet here she was, using him as someone she's depending on and trusting with so much personal information. His mind continues to think and re-evaluate as she describes her story, in what he believes her attempting to calm herself down and think out loud about her situation of which she seems to finally admit the truth about. "There's a saying in the streets,” Cazneaux started again, 'Be your own best friend, 'cause your -other- best friend'll sell you out the moment they can gain from it'. Apply that here. You've allowed the drainage of your true character, your -true- personality and soul. And now that you know this, are you going to watch her wither away and die alone, or are you going to be your own best goddamn friend, and invigorate her and bring  her to life with color and bravado that I know you can?"

She blinks soft, the back of her hand gently skimming over her tear-stained cheek. She inhales soft, taking a moment. But when she opened them? A darkened tone had over taken her eyes. Something much more calm and serious, residue of her tears still dot her visage. She tilts her head in that way she does, eyes flooding over his expression. His hand that was curled around the back of a slender neck felt warm. She brought her fingers up in front of her stomach, twisting her rings so the gems were all  facing up to the stars. 

"How would you like a powerful addition to building your empire?"

 An open-mouthed grin. That was his first physical response to her inquiry, matched with his moral-less eyes may be a haunting sight for most. An immoral man, happy? Surely no good could come from that. His fat tongue runs along the edges of his teeth before he closes his mouth and releases a low chuckle. "You already know the answer to that, babe. But, you absolutely deserve a firm answer. I'd love one. Especially if they've the eyes that you hold, and the wits that you store and use like an expert."

She didn’t smile back, no, she was far too severe. "And Cazneaux?” Caterina inquires, eliciting a “Aye?” in response from him.

“If something happens to me, if -he- does something to me?" She exhales a single breath, her eyes turning cold and vicious. "Burn him to the ground."

 And there it was. The smile that best fit his graveyard gaze. The vengeful, machiavellian, toothy grin of which rivaled a Devil's. "With pleasure." 

@mister-reigns

@braxtonhudson

@quellys

[loverofthefiction]

Don’t Read That!

Summary: You and Natasha send each other hot pictures of you fellow Avengers, but one night, you accidentally send Bucky a picture of himself.

Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 1830

Warnings: some talk about hot/shirtless dudes, a lot of wrestling over phones, and really awkward conversations

Author’s Note: Hey, hey, this is my first requested story (thank you to the lovely anon who requested it, I was very excited to finally receive one lol). I really like how this turned out despite the fact that I wrote this in like four hours. I might be a little busy because of finals at my school so I apologize in advance. Um, enjoy!

It was late one night in the Avengers' facility that you had created an undercover Twitter account. You wanted one to keep up with all the thoughts and gossip that spread throughout the internet about your coworkers and yourself. Though the real reason for your stalking nature was to feel a connection to your admirers, you couldn’t help but follow a few of Bucky fan accounts as well.

It wasn’t wrong, per se, you two were friends after all, but Bucky was just too much of a good guy (and too good-looking) to not accidentally fall in love with him. You had promised yourself that you wouldn’t get involved with a coworker (in this case, best friends); it was wrong and dangerous. But it despite your greatest attempts, you had fallen, and fallen hard.

You checked your feed whenever you could (well whenever no one was around). You felt normal to not be recognized and even after a while, you didn’t have a big following like on your public account, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

One day, on your way back to the compound on the Quintet after a mission with Natasha, you were scrolling through a thread about a cosplayer when she entered the room.

“Hey, Y/N, mind if I sit here?” You nodded she sat down next to you and opened her own device. You quickly exited out of the app and opened another, not trying to look suspicious but being the secret assassin/spy that Natasha was, of course she noticed.

“What was that?” she asked and tried to take the phone out of your hand.

“Nothing!” you said loudly, only increasing her curiosity and determination.

“Give me the phone, Y/N.”

“No! I have private stuff on there!”

“Come on, we’re best friends!” Still wrestle over the phone, she somehow slipped it out of your hands and pushed you away, opening the newly closed app.

“Ooh! You have a secret Twitter!”

“Please don’t tell anyone! I swear I-I’ll do your laundry for a week! A month!” you pleaded.

“Relax, I won’t say anything about it. I have one too, you should follow my account.” You couldn’t believe what came out of her mouth. You had thought that you were the only one on the team that even knew about Twitter.

“Wait, what?”

“I have an account too. Follow me,” she shrugged simply, tossed you your phone and went back to her own.

“What do you use it for?”

“Really? We’re surrounded by hot men and you’re asking me what I use it for,” she chuckled, not once looking up from her phone.

“Seriously?” you said, still not believing it.

“Of course.” She showed you a picture of a shirtless Steve Rogers. “You see this? I can’t like this on my public account.”

“I’m sorry I’m in a bit of shock.”

“It’s fine, here I’ll even send a couple of Bucky photos to you.”

“W-why Bucky?”

“Really, Y/N? You are not subtle at all. Literally everyone knows about your little crush on him. Well, except Bucky himself, he’s almost as clueless as you.”

“Shit, am I really that obvious?” You looked down onto your phone, looking at the photo Natasha had sent you.

“Duh,” she said while glancing down at her watch. “We’re almost home, buckle in, the team will be waiting for us when we land.”

“Nat,” you said when she was almost out the door.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for not telling.”

“No problem,” she winked.

..

After the discovery of Natasha’s own twitter account, you two sent a lot of pictures to each other. Now sharing your guilty pleasure with someone else, it wasn’t as bad as you had painted it in your head. It was nice to thirst over the hot men that you worked with with someone else.

Tonight in particular had been a great day; Bucky decided to take a shirtless jog early in the morning and was photographed by paparazzi. You knew immediately when you saw this that you had to share it with Natasha.

You screenshotted the post and sent it to her with a text saying “I swear, he is the perfect guy. I would give up a kidney to go on one date with him.”

“Hey, Y/N,” you heard Bucky’s voice call out from the entrance of the lounge, which you were currently sitting in.

“Yeah?” you blushed at the sight of him.

“I’m going to go take a quick shower, can you please tell me when Steve gets home from his meeting?”

“Yeah, no problem,” you smiled.

“Thanks, doll. I’ll be right back.” And with that, he left to take a shower (your eyes may or may not have followed his, er, back side as he walked away).

Sighing, you looked back to your screen. You looked at the thread of texts with Natasha that should have shown previous pictures that you two have sent. Instead, they should some vague texts that didn’t quite make sense. It was only until you saw a text that called you ‘doll’ that you noticed it.

You hadn’t sent the text to Natasha.

You had sent it to Bucky.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

You scrambled to your feet, your heart was racing at a speed that you hadn’t thought was humanly possible.

The text had just been delivered and hadn’t even been open. Maybe Bucky left his phone in his bedroom, you thought. I’ll just get it and delete the message before he sees it. Yeah, that’ll work.

You ran into the elevator and pressed the button to Bucky’s floor. Your foot tapped rapidly as you encouraged the machine to go faster, although you knew it was dumb, your main goal right now was to get to his bedroom.

Once the elevator dinged, you ran to the right door and opened it. You looked at the few pieces of furniture, finally spotting the phone on his bedside table. You grabbed it and turned it on, seeing your text in the notifications.

“Y/N? What’re you doing in here?” you heard Bucky’s voice say.

Your heart leapt up to your throat and you swallowed. Slowly turning around, you saw him with only a pair of sweatpants on, his exposed chest making it very hard to concentrate.

“Uh, I wanted to ask what you needed Steve for,” you stuttered out despite your attempts to keep your voice steady.

“I need to give him my part of the mission report. Why were you looking through my phone?” His eyebrows furrowed making him look very confused.

“I was just… installing a new ringtone, the one you have now is pretty boring, so I decided to change it for you.”

“Oh, really?” he asked in a very skeptical way.

“Yep.” You looked around the room, your eyes not wanting to accidentally make stare at the exposed abs in front of you (boy, was he ripped).

“Can I have my phone back?”

“No!” you said a little too loudly. “I, uh, mean I haven’t installed it yet.” He moved closer to you, extending his hand and waited for you to hand it over.

“That’s fine, I don’t mind.”

“It’s not that big of a deal, I could even change the wallpaper too if you’d like,” you said desperately clutching the phone.

“What I’d like,” he stepped closer, “is for you to give me my phone back.”

“B-but the ringtone is cooler! Seriously, it’ll only take a moment, I swear.”

“Doll, just give it to me,” he said in a non aggressive yet loud way.

“No, Bucky,” you stood your ground. At this moment, his hand flew to take the phone out of your grip, but your instincts made you pull away faster than he could grab it.

“Y/N! Hand it over!”

“No!” you said, backing up into the wall. Soon, your wall bumped up against it and you knew you were trapped.

“I don’t get what the big deal is!” He gave another attempt at taking it, but still you kept it close to your chest. At this point, he was so close to you that you could smell the day old cologne he had put on this morning.

“I’m not letting you embarrass yourself by having a stupid ringtone!” He finally grabbed the phone out of your hands and you chased after it, but he placed his arm in front of you, stopping you from being able to take it back.

He looked at the screen and you looked away to not see the disgust in his eyes. You held your breath as he lowered his arm slowly but you kept your gaze to the floor.

“Doll,” he muttered. “Look at me.” You sighed and looked up cautiously. His blue eyes showed a bit of fear and hesitation.

“What’s this text about?” he asked in a small voice.

“I-I didn’t mean anything by it, just that you’re, you know, you, a-and it was supposed to get sent to Nat but being the dumb ass that I am, I accidentally sent it to you instead and now I’m dying of embarrassment so if you would please just forget this ever happened I would really appreciate it,” you rambled.

“Why would I want to forget?”

“Because this is just a weird situation and I’m practically in love with you but I know that it would never work out and I now realize that I really should not have said that. I need to keep my mouth shut…”

“You’re in love with me?” his voice was still small, as if he didn’t want the answer to the question. You nodded and tried to hide the extreme blush that spread across your face quickly.

“I, um,” he cleared his throat to impede himself from messing up his statement. “I think I’m in love with you too.” Your head whipped to try to spot any ounce of lie or humor on his face.

“Are you only saying that because you feel pity for me?”

“No, I really mean it, you know how hard it is to talk about this kind of stuff,” he looked away, his own cheeks now showing a tinge of color.

“Um, cool. So…”

“So…” he repeated.

“I’m going to head to my room now, good night,” you slipped by him awkwardly. You must’ve called yourself an idiot a hundred times by the time you got to the elevator.

“Y/N! Wait!” Once again, you heard Bucky call your name from behind you. You turned to see him jogging down the hall, and he stopped in front of you.

“Maybe, if you have time, you’d like to get a coffee or something with me?” he scratched the back of his neck nervously, the whirling in his metal arm giving it away as well.

“Of course, I’m free tomorrow actually,” you bit your lip.

“Ok, I’ll see you tomorrow then,” he smiled. “And don’t worry, you won’t have to give up a kidney.”

[hanzi83]

Its About That Time

It is about that time where I write another blog and bitch unconditionally about my life problems and repeat things ad nauseam for the sole purpose of spewing my irrational anger out there, especially after I have ranted and raved on my other social platforms due to people who want a reaction out of me, and them knowing how my mental illness works they get it out of me, and because I know with responding and reacting to such nonsense, I already lost, but then I go the extra mile to be disrespectful because I feel like if they are going to want a response from me, then I want them to regret everything. These certain people will make accusations like “Someone with mental illness, would not have to state they are mentally ill” Yeah I get that might not be what you are used to and I am so sorry ti disappoint savage type of people who want nothing more but to be like Howard Stern and try to push people to the brink of insanity, while having your crew cheering you on because you happen to do it under the guise of “comedy” but understanding the deeper seated issues of how this world is run and how people at the top want nothing more but people to be negative and ignorant toward each other, I found a way to convey how my mental illness works, because for the last decade, I have spent time analyzing myself and why I think the way I do, and how people could be pushed, especially when it has to do with the industry, and people just laugh at something going on with certain people, but think they are just reacting to a natural story and we should joke about anything, and you are fine to, but I am allowed to point out why certain people are going through what they are going through, and why they react the way they do.

There has been such a fucking stigma on mental illness for the longest time, that even when someone, who might happen to be a public figure, flips his/her collective lids, people just react to the symptom of the problem and think they are doing some edgy work poking fun at people, especially when they can’t explain what is going on and if they do dare explain the deeply rooted issues in the system, they are chastised and made to look like they are the fucking asshole. They use it as a marketing tool now, because even certain right wing type get in on the action and make their words and actions seem like they are the victim of something. This is why people resonate with Trump, because the people have understood the system to be the liars, when there has been a change, a limited one, nonetheless a change, so now anytime they make fun of Trump constantly and daily, people think he is some kind of victim, even though there is truth to what he says about the media, but now anyone who repeats anything Trump says will be lumped in with racists. They censor ignorant racists and truth tellers because they want you to correlate that there is no difference between the two.

So luckily for me, putting out, what some call delusional theories, has been the worst and the best for me. I have made myself an easier target putting it out there, and it becomes more ammo for people to use against me, and try to manipulate me. It could be trolls online paid to harass people, my own friends, my own family at times, or supposed Stern fans. I realize it would make me a target, and while it has made me an easier and bigger target, people can dismiss it as craziness because they are not allowed to speak out on how this shit works and they are worried they won’t get the perks they receive behind the scenes. So they think by organizing attacks and making it look like they are just random people hating on me for the shits and giggles, that it won’t be seen as anything serious. They have propagandized comedy and used it for their sick pleasure to fuck with people because they have been trained by the Howard Stern’s of the world to fuck with people and feed off the negativity. I know this from experience, and I have been in that same boat because I wanted to be like Howard, because he was one of the most successful people in the radio business and I had to follow those same steps, and when I realized it was bullshit I quickly tried to distance myself from those methods. Now I am under attack and when people try to get me on their platforms and I recognize they are imitating Stern in more ways they would like to admit, not just with the material of the show, but the tactics that are used. I left and I went my own way, and now these same people try to lure me back and making these accusations that my mental illness is some kind of act. I take issue with that because anyone who knows me, knows I don’t like feeling the way I do, or saying the things I do, but I rather be someone to spews his irrational shit, rather than end up like every other person in the world and overdose or go on a violent spree, which is their goal, it was said the purpose was to get me to kill myself and you are a relentless troll, and now you expect me to forget that. You analyze my mental illness, but don’t analyze your mental illness, because you have fake fans in your chats cheering you on, when you are the one who seek me out to be on that show. One minute you say you want me back, the next I hijacked your show and I was just a crazy whack packer, that you needed on your show and when you can’t find content that is remotely interesting, you decide to bait me into calling in, and telling people to talk shit in the chats, which you organize privately, in my opinion.

I didn’t like the direction of the show because you are one of those people that is going to be this edgy messiah to PC culture, while you are bowing down to ignorant bullshit the right wing wants people to be. I said to leave me alone. I can write a blog and convey my message. It hurts that I am not snapping the way you want, when you get me to snap, I will say some fucked up shit. In my opinion you have been connected with higher ups and they need you to have me on the show, so you can try to exploit more of my own thoughts and organize more arguments so I can yell at people. It is sick, you need help. Instead of getting it, you will get your people to come into my platforms to troll me constantly.

I was willing to leave it be peacefully, but you keep bringing me into this shit. You use my mental illness as this enjoyment, and I don’t even blame you fully, this is what people have been told is edgy and cool because being nice to people or being mean to the right people, the ones who are oppressing the people, is so uncouth and phony, while your brand of entertainment which is a bootleg version of what Stern does, is to humiliate people and make stupid jokes that are so passé, nothing creative. It bothers me that you can’t leave well enough alone, and even when someone from your show wants to talk to me, you have to oversee it, or you get incredibly butt hurt that someone else who does not want to be on your show, is talking to me. Someone you humiliated time after time, and then want them back. You and your sick “fans” spent nearly 5 hours going over her arrest records and exposing her real name and her age, and then you claim you want to be peaceful. Then you have certain republican women who lied about their connection to the Stern show, and then even lied about her political stance, because she knows I hate Trump supporters, especially ones who think he is doing something like draining the swamp, and not much after I left, she went on about being a Trump supporter. Nice to see I called out your alt right ass before you could use your “good looks” to manipulate me. These Stern republican chicks are the worst because they think they can grab on any Whack Packer, because we need to be embraced by any female interaction, and we are so desperate for it, that we will bend over backwards to cater to your ass, fuck out of here with bullshit. You people are sick and maybe instead of doing 5 hours shows, maybe you should seek help as well. You can be entertaining when you don’t cater to all this shit, but now fuck it, I don’t care. I was going to take a break from the show and maybe return, but every day since you left you either been transparent with your attacks on me, and then subtle with your followers coming into my chat.

You claim your viewership went up after I left right, then why would you need me back? My numbers are dwindling. No one cares about conspiracies and wrestling. I should just act like you and act like the biggest pervert on your show and check marking whatever else is on the Stern Show cliché list. I hate that I have spent this much time on this, but you know what you are doing. This goes for all of these trolls. Because I have been off that show, they have used their connections to suppress my numbers or anyone else from interacting with me.

I went on a wrestling podcast, and their accounts are suspended, because I dared talked about conspiracies on their show, then my time gets limited on other shows. Clearly these people know certain people who can do this kind of thing. People on my Face Book Live are telling me they are getting warning for liking my page or wanting to view my videos. They are limiting me so much that I would have no choice but to go back to these other shows. It is really sick. It is one of the sickest things ever. You want my numbers to dwindle down so you can claim I am nothing without you, when I am the one who was needed more. I was doing fine without you and I will continue to do fine without you, or as fine as my mental illness ass can be. Oops I acknowledged my mental illness and have analyzed myself inside and out, that knowing where my mind can go when I am extremely aggravated, so that means it is not real. I should get a group of people to organize and harass people, and do it like everyone else in the system.

I rather be on my own than be in group chats and organize this kind of thing and then on the surface acting like I am completely sane. Sorry that isn’t me, and that is why people gravitate towards me, because I am one of the realest people on this planet, and I am so real I can acknowledge I have to be a phony at times, which I don’t fucking like, If it were my choice, I would want to be dead, but these people won’t kill me, because it would make me look like a fat disgusting martyr, they want me to go out the way they want me to, and that is me inflicting harm on myself, and they have done that to other people in life as well. A lot of people are so doped up and so fucked mentally they can’t even speak about it because the savages in this world will call them pussies, and these same alpha male type are the ones who act like pussies, and they use fake accounts to fuck with people, because they would never want to show their fan base or general public know how insanely fucked in the head they are.

Leave me the fuck alone. I didn’t want to write this one, but it is bad enough people in my life are in bed with these shady people, and hide things on a constant basis, but know that to the system I am a valuable commodity, even if it doesn’t look like it, and maybe that is more delusions grandeur, but it isn’t high school anymore, you will not make me doubt myself anymore. You will not inject yourself into my life, no matter how many people from the past you tell to mention your name, so I feel the need to reach out to you, because you can’t take that I fucking blew up on the Stern Show before anyone locally ever did. I have been hated and vilified for this, and because my connection to the show is the reason for a lot of people to have the doors open so they can live in nice houses, take great vacations, and hang out celebrities at your private parties, and you get to hide this fact, then show up to me and tell me you love me and I am the man, while you secretly hate my fucking guts.

I wish these people would kill me, but it would never fucking happen. They will torture me mentally more and more. The writing of this blog will make me an even bigger target. I have to do it because I need to get this out of my fat head because I have no other choice. Leave me the fuck alone. Just let me die out and go on the other side, but I am sure you would for me to act violently and make threats right? Fuck off.

[moritzstiefelwiki]

It's Called Peacocking and I Will Have None of It

Hernst | 1748 Words | AO3

In which Ernst loves guys with nice abs and loses control of his mouth while trying to prove how not-gay he is.

This started as a joke and kind of? Spiralled a bit? I'm havin fun tho. Shoutout to @melgayiorgabor for beta reading and @alloftheus-es for helping me Keep Things Moving,, I lov u guys. Ab rant taken from here

Ernst loved Instagram. He wasn’t following a lot of people, outside of his friend group he followed 7 or 8 artists and a few photographers. He spent plenty of times in the tags so it didn’t matter, and besides he needed his feed to be as uncluttered as possible for a very important reason.

See, here’s the thing about his friend group- it included Hanschen Rilow and Melchior Gabor. They were both intelligent, insufferable (though in entirely different ways), and easy on the eyes. Of course, he had to follow Hanschen, the two of them were quite close and that’s what friends do. They follow each other. Melchior, of course, was close enough to Ernst that it made perfect sense to follow him as well.

Ernst would never admit it but the only reason he had gotten Instagram in the first place is because of the amount of times he caught Hanschen taking shirtless selfies- you can’t just stare at someone’s abs in real life, but it’s perfectly safe to do so through a screen. And, as he found out, Hanschen wasn’t the only one. He was looking through the accounts Hanschen followed, checking anyone with a familiar username or icon and found Melchior did the same thing. As did Bobby Maler.

Ernst didn’t have any reason to explain why he followed Bobby, the two of them had spoken maybe twice in the past year, but he had to. Bobby, Hanschen, and Melchior were all well-built and had no problems with showing off.  

And god, he was glad that they did.

Ernst was scrolling lazily through his feed as he ate his lunch. Wendla was leaning against his shoulder as she chatted with Ilse. He put his phone down so he could rummage through his bag for his water bottle, not bothering to lock the screen.

“Why does Hanschen post so many pictures of his abs?” Ernst turned to Wendla as she spoke, she was looking down at his phone where one of Hanschen's many pics of him lifting his shirt up just so was displayed.

Ilse laughed, “He’s an asshole, it’s probably the only way he can get anyone to go out with him. Hey, Ernst do you know why he likes to post so many shirtless pics? You’re his best friend aren’t you?”

“I think he just likes the attention- look at the comments on this one,” he pulled them up and held his phone out to show her.

Wendla rolled her eyes, “I don’t think it matters why he does it, he posts way too many of these.”

Ernst disagreed, Hanshen could post a new one every hour and he would be more than happy to see them.

God, he sounds gay. Ilse is practically a mind reader, what if she suspects he likes Hanschen- she wouldn’t be wrong but- oh god-

“If I want to get a girl, I don't need to show my abs- mainly 'cause they don't exist. And I don't want to have to do this but I'm gonna. Why do people show their abs on the internet?” Why was he speaking? “Why is it that when I go on the internet I have to weed through so many photos of guys just- lifting their shirts up to expose this part of their stomach, which is rock hard by the way,” he cringed internally a little bit, that sounded gay, oh hell, “I don't know. I don't get it,” he paused for a moment.

“Why? What good does it do? Are they doing this and taking the photo thinking  that ‘maybe if I do this just enough, somewhere in Africa a young child will get to the watering hole knowing that I was thinking about them.’”

The girls were laughing. Why can’t he stop?

"'I need people to know that I've got a flat stomach because I don't want them thinking I've got some sort of weird torso hole because they're going to start putting things in it’"

What is he saying, what on Earth is that even supposed to mean?

"'If the internet knows that I have a flat stomach, we will win the war on terror.’"

He heard a third laugh, this time from behind him. “What, is that supposed to be me?” Hanschen. Perfect, just what he needed.

He could feel his cheeks start heating up a little bit.

Ernst didn’t think before continuing, he couldn’t afford to, “Look, it's called peacocking and I will have none of it, you animalistic fuck.  Maybe you should try working on something that matters instead of your lower torso-- where those lines go that point to your dick like a weird, subliminal message. If you want people to know about this whole area of your body, just put it on your business card. You could say like-  ‘Dick Johnson, ab enthusiast.’"

Ernst could see the concern creeping into Hanschen’s expression, tainting his amusement. “Are you alr-”

“That way they know they don't want to hang out with you.” Ernst hated himself for being responsible for the hurt look that flashed across Hanschen’s face.

For reasons unknown, he continued talking.

“You can usually tell that people have abs just by looking at them, nobody is ever surprised to find out that somebody has abs. Woah Dickhead Jones! I didn't-” he faltered for a second when he saw the way Hanschen's jaw clenched, “would have never guessed! Never in a million years would've known that you have a flat stomach.” He didn't love the look in Hanschen's eyes. “You only tweet about going to the gym all the time and you wear a t-shirt that's kinda like saran wrap"

Hanschen laughed again, this time it almost sounded forced, “you love it.” He did. “Look,  ladies you don't want a guy that has a flat stomach because the whole time he's with you he's gonna be thinking ‘Jeez, this might be good for my abs.’” Jeez, he really needed to stop talking. "'Oh, I wonder what my abs think of this.’" Oh, why is he still going on about this?

“And guys like me, we're only thinking, y'know, ‘I really hope this doesn't make me fart.’” Ernst wanted to curl up and die, “and that's for you really, that's all for you 'cause I don't care where I fart.”  He really needs to stop. “If my pants are off, it doesn't matter where I'm farting 'cause the whole front row is getting wet.”

Oh, God.

The girls were laughing but he paid no attention to them.

Hanschen wasn't laughing. His face was suspiciously neutral.

“We’ll huddle over the Homer, maybe do a little Achilles and Patroclus.”

Ernst hadn't missed the innuendo when Hanschen approached him after school and asked him if he wanted to study, he just hadn’t thought anything of it. It wasn’t unusual for him to say things like that- he’d been “flirting” and using pick up lines on Ernst for as long as he could remember. Sometimes he was cheesy, sometimes he was clever, sometimes he was dirty, and sometimes he was just downright terrible. Ernst had figured it was just practice- just Hanschen’s way of keeping his mind sharp for when he was actually flirting with someone.

He felt awful about the things he had said at lunch earlier that day and nearly declined Hanschen’s invitation to study, but he took the pick up line as a sign Hanschen wasn’t (as) upset anymore (not that he would ever admit to being hurt in the first place) and Ernst really needed help with calculus, he was dangerously close to falling behind again.

The walk to Hanschen’s house started fine, but it wasn’t long until they fell into a tense silence.

Hanschen was the one who broke it.

“You're very passionate about abs, aren't you Ernst?”

Somehow this threw Ernst off more than any of the things Hanschen had said in the past week- including the time he punctuated a breathy “I like to keep my hands busy” by squeezing Ernst's inner thigh.

“No.” What was the point in lying, if he couldn't talk to him about this then who? “Yes? Maybe not passionate but-” He shook his head before continuing, “I'm really sorry about what I said earlier. It's just-” He stopped walking. “I just really like all those pictures you post.”

Hanschen stopped as well and turned to face him. “Oh?”

“I didn't want the girls to know, I'm sorry, I got nervous and just started talking and I couldn't stop. I'm gay, Hanschen.”

“You're gay? You like men?” Hanschen looked incredulous. “You mean to tell me you're attracted to men and none of the flirting, none of it, had any kind of effect on you?” This time Hanschen was the one shaking his head, “Christ, I thought you were straight. Am I really that bad at hitting on you?”

“You- what?”

“Surely you must have noticed, I've been far from subtle about this for how many years?”

“I didn't? I mean, I did, I didn't think you meant any of it.”

“You can't be serious.” Hanschen sighed, “what on Earth would make you think that? You know I'm not straight.”

“Yes, but-”

“What's the problem then?”

“Why would you want to flirt with me?”

“Why would I- because I like you, you moron!”

“You what?” It was Ernst's turn to look incredulous. “But you're-” he gestured vaguely at Hanschen “-you.”

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“I don't know?” He paused for a moment as his mind caught up with the conversation, “hold on did you just say that you like me?”

Hanschen laughed, “how much clearer do I need to make myself? It's not a problem, is it?”

“A problem?” Ernst's hands were suddenly very interesting. “No, definitely not a problem.”

“So then wha- mmph!”

Ernst had, in a brilliant moment of definitely not thinking, all but lunged at Hanschen and kissed him.

He pulled away from Hanschen after he realized exactly what he had just done and looked at his (surprisingly flushed) face. He had a feeling his own face was pink as well.

Oh god, he really shouldn't have done that.

Hanschen brought his right hand up to gently cup the back of Ernst's neck and pull him into another kiss, this one brief and gentle.

Or maybe he really should've done it sooner.

“Let's go Ernst, this is hardly the place for Achilles and Patroclus.”

His calculus grade was about to drop, wasn't it?

[lesbrarians]

Junkrat/Roadhog:: Origins Ch. 16

This is the penultimate chapter! The final chapter should be posted sometime on Monday night. I feel that I should warn you guys about this chapter, tho -- there is a scene that, while it is consensual, cannnn be read as dubcon so proceed with caution if that's something that disturbs you (I promise it turns out fine, if that helps)!

Title: Origins

Characters: Junkrat, Roadhog

Rating: R

Summary: The origins of Junkrat and Roadhog. Junkrat finds a mysterious treasure in the nuclear wasteland of the Australian Outback and quickly finds himself a target. When a hitman is sent to kill him, he convinces the man to become his personal bodyguard in exchange for half the spoils. Their ensuing crime spree could be legendary – if they can get over the initial bad blood between them. Can also be found on AO3 if you prefer reading it there!

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen

---

For the first time since arriving at prison, Junkrat felt at ease. Beginning work on his new bombs relaxed him. Home was where he could build explosives, after all.

He twisted off one of the metal fingers on his mechanical arm to expose the screwdriver beneath it. He’d added screwdriver heads to the last joints of his internal skeleton for added functionality, and it was proving incredibly useful when he was without his usual tools. He unscrewed the back of the radio and selected the wires that he would attach to one of his D batteries before screwing it back together. He went back to grinding the flammable powder off of the match heads. He’d converted the pipe into a container by fixing a scrap of blanket around one end with a piece of elastic from the wristband of his jumpsuit.

“Po-lice!” the block’s sentry shouted from his cell, and he hissed, stuffing his supplies in an empty cereal box. He really needed a better hiding spot, but hopefully he would be out of the joint before it became a necessity.

The footsteps of the correctional officer stopped outside his cell. “Fawkes! You’ve got a visitor.”

Confused, Junkrat turned to Thatcher, then pointed at his own chest. “What, me?”

“Who the fuck else? Is there anyone else by that name in this cell that I should know about? Hands out.”

The door to his cell slid open, and Junkrat dutifully let himself be shackled and led to the visiting room. It resembled a metal box, with a sheet of glass separating inmates from the visiting party. Ava was sitting at the desk that straddled both sides of the room. Junkrat sat down on his side and picked up the phone to speak with her through the glass.

“Doc? Why ya visitin’ me -- not that I’m complainin’, but I woulda thought you’d visit Roadhog first.”

“Yeah, I asked for him, but get this, they said I’m not on his list of approved visitors! I told them they could go stuff it, but they wouldn’t budge, so here I am.”

Junkrat blinked at her. “What, do they know the both of ya were in the Australian Liberation Front?”

Ava gave a delicate shrug. “Beats me. Either they have a bone to pick with him, or they know we have a shady history together and don’t want me seeing him. So I’m here to visit my good friend Junkrat instead! Thought you might want to talk to someone on the outside after, you know, losing everything you worked for.”

“Yeah, about that--” Junkrat started, then paused as Ava’s eyes darted upward. He followed her gaze to the security camera fixated on them. Ava tapped the side of her nose with her finger. Junkrat had no idea what the gesture signified. He carried on, being mindful of his words now that he realized that they were being recorded. “What they do with all my shit anyway?”

“Evidence, probably,” Ava said. “Last I heard, there was a big storage unit in their impound lot where they keep the big guns.”

“Impound lot?” Junkrat repeated. He’d never heard the term before in the Outback, but it sounded significant.

“Yeah, where they keep all the vehicles they confiscate from people like you.”

This got Junkrat’s attention. “So what, would Roadhog’s bike be there?”

“Probably.”

“So ya can’t take it then? Even though yer practically his next of kin and all.”

Ava’s eyes twinkled. “I would if I legally could, but the police wouldn’t like that. It doesn’t work that way and is, in fact, frowned upon in this establishment.”

Junkrat grinned at her through the glass barrier. “I see,” he said knowingly. If he was reading the room right, he had the impression that she would get it back for the two of them. “So if we were to ever get outta this shithole someday, we wouldn’t be able to get it back?”

“Probably not. But you’re in here for life, remember? I don’t think Judge Knowles would have mercy on you. So you’re just gonna have to get used to life on the inside without your bike. Sorry, pal.”

“Eh, I’ll get used to it. Maybe.”

They chatted idly about their life partners, both romantic and criminal, until the CO banged on the door and announced that their visitation time was almost up.

“So, when am I gonna see you again?” Ava propped her chin on her hand and winked. “Let’s talk plans.”

Junkrat considered the amount of time he needed to finish cobbling together his varied weapons. “Two weeks, maybe? Let’s aim for the thirtieth.”

“I’ll see you then.” Ava placed her hand on the glass, and Junkrat mirrored her. It was like they were shaking hands, sharing a secret plan.

It had been a good talk, but after the stress of trying to carefully communicate plans without being explicit, Junkrat needed a drink. The closest thing he had was coffee, so when he got back to his cell, he heated up some water in the microwave and made himself a mug of instant coffee, immediately followed by another, then one more for good measure. If he could finish the canister soon, he could make good use of it.

He was practically vibrating by the time their recreational hour rolled around. He’d had coffee maybe once or twice in his life, and he hadn’t realized how wonderful it was. Even this instant mess tasted delicious to him. Maybe when he got out, he’d get some real coffee from a real place. He’d heard flat whites were top notch.

He bolted out of the cell when the doors slid open, full of jittery energy. “Roadhog!” he shouted when he caught sight of him. “My tubby friend!” He slung an arm around Roadhog’s waist and poked his tattoo. For the first time, Roadhog actually didn’t hit him as a result, a fact which delighted him. “Mate, I’m fuckin’ wired, didya know coffee was so good? Y’ve been holdin’ out on me, I coulda been havin’ coffee at those fine dining establishments we went to on the outs!”

Roadhog looked down at him. “Who gave you coffee?”

Junkrat laughed and pointed at himself. “Me! I gave me coffee!”

“Can you also take it from you?”

“Now, why would I go and do a daft thing like that? I bought it, fair and square, I should get to drink it! I mean, I had to buy it, it woulda been suss if I just got the creamer by itself. Didya know you can set coffee creamer on fire? All that powdered fat? Massively flammable!”

“Lower your voice.” Roadhog shook his head. Junkrat continued nattering away about his grandiose plans until Roadhog finally interrupted, “How was Ava?”

Junkrat forced himself to stop grinning maniacally and sober up a little. “Good, best as I could tell. She wanted to see ya but they wouldn’t let her.”

Roadhog sighed. “I figured. They probably suspect she was my partner back in the day.”

Junkrat knew the term didn’t have to be romantic -- he’d quipped that his cellie was supposed to be his life partner -- but after hearing Ava refer to her wife as her partner, the phrasing piqued his curiosity. “What kinda partner?” he asked.

Roadhog tilted his head at him. “In crime,” he clarified, stating it as if it was perfectly obvious. “Neither of us could be interested in anything more.”

“Ah.” Junkrat considered the implications of this statement and found that he liked them. It made it easier for him to reconcile the thoughts he’d been having about his bodyguard. “Anyways, we talked about, ah, ‘plans...’” He crooked his fingers into quotation marks and elbowed Roadhog’s side. “In code!” he hastened to add when Roadhog’s chin jerked up.

“Neither of you are subtle people.” Roadhog groaned. “You are incapable of acting discreetly.”

“It’s fine, really! We were careful, cross me heart.”

“Recreation hour is over,” a tinny voice rang out through the loudspeaker above them. “All inmates return to your cell for count.”

“I’ll fish ya a note about dates,” Junkrat rushed to tell Roadhog before they had to separate. “The thirtieth, I’ll write it all down!”

Junkrat returned to his cell and stood next to Thatcher while the CO made his rounds to ensure everyone was accounted for.

The cell doors closed. The CO who did the count left the block. The moment the thick metal door clicked shut behind the officer, Thatcher jumped on Junkrat.

Warning bells flared in Junkrat’s mind, and he automatically shouted, “Roadho--” before Thatcher clapped a hand over his mouth and wrestled him to the ground.

“Junkrat?” Roadhog sounded concerned, and there was an ominous rattle of a cell door.

“Tell him you’re fine, or I will kill you right here, right now,” Thatcher hissed in Junkrat’s ear. The tip of a sharp piece of metal dug into his side, reinforcing the threat.

Junkrat swallowed. “S’nothin’,” he called out, forcing his voice to sound casual. “False alarm.”

Thatcher derisively patted his cheek, but it was more of a slap. “Good boy. Now… where the fuck is it?” he snarled, grabbing a fistful of Junkrat’s hair and shoving his face into the floor.

“Wh-- where’s what?” Junkrat gasped. For once, he wasn’t being flippant, the fact that he had stolen something valuable from his cellmate had already left his mind.

Thatcher yanked his head up and cracked it against the concrete floor, and he saw stars. “Don’t play dumb with me, you piece of shit -- the cigarettes! You’re the only one who knew where they were!”

“Oh-- oh shit, those things. Listen, listen mate, I got a good explanation for that.” Thatcher pulled his head up off the ground, and Junkrat cowered with a wince and covered his head in anticipation.

“Explain.”

Junkrat’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “Okay, so I really needed some things from the workshop that I can’t get meself, for obvious reasons, so I had to pay for it. And I don’t have nothin’ worth those goods, but you did, and it was just sittin’ there unused, so...” Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a good explanation after all.

Thatcher’s grip on his hair tightened. “That’s it? That’s your good explanation?”

“I, uh, heh… retract that statement.”

Thatcher exhaled, nostrils flaring. “So here’s the way I see it,” he said, his level voice brimming with barely contained rage. “There’s two options. Either I kill you, or you get me my cigarettes back and I don’t pound you into a bloody pulp. Decisions, decisions. On the one hand, I get the satisfaction of snuffing out your worthless little thief life. On the other, I get my goddamn ciggies back.”

“Can I place a vote for the latter?” Junkrat tentatively suggested.

Thatcher pushed off of him with a violent shove. “One day,” he said ominously. “Get them back to me by tomorrow night, or you’re dead meat, Rat.”

Junkrat nodded furiously. “One day,” he echoed.

A note whipped under the door to their cell, attached to Roadhog’s fishing line. It presumably was Roadhog confirming that Junkrat was, in fact, fine, but he didn’t get a chance to read it and find out. Thatcher snapped it up before he could get to it and stuffed it in his mouth.

Junkrat watched as Thatcher chewed and swallowed, never taking his eyes off of him. He shivered. He’d eaten a lot of questionable things in his life, but he’d yet to taste paper.

He made a mental note never to fuck with Thatcher or his belongings again.

---

“Are you okay?” was the first thing Roadhog said the next day during their social hour.

“Yeah, yeah, m’fine,” Junkrat muttered, brushing away the concern. His eyes flitted around the room in search of Belmont; he only had one hour to retrieve the stolen cigarettes, and he couldn’t waste it talking to Roadhog, as much as he would’ve liked to. “Just a lil’ spat between cellies, nothin’ happened.”

Roadhog looked him up and down. “Well, you don’t look hurt,” he finally said.

“Toldya I was fine.” Junkrat finally spotted Belmont slipping into the shower area. “Listen, I’ll be back in a jiff, gotta go talk to this bloke for a sec.”

Junkrat made a beeline for the showers. Belmont was in the back of the room, running the shower at full blast and filling the room with steam that made sweat trickle down the back of Junkrat’s neck. The crinkled black pack was in his hand, and he tapped out one of the cigarettes.

Junkrat took a deep breath and sidled up to Belmont. "Hey, Belmont... y'know those durries I gave ya?” He nodded at the pack. “Y'haven't smoked 'em all yet, have ya?"

Belmont looked up at him. "Why you asking?"

Junkrat grimaced. "I'm gonna be needin' 'em back." He anxiously twisted the fabric of his jumpsuit while Belmont stared at him for several long, suspicious moments.

"A deal's a deal," he said. "I don't have any use for those pipes I gave you, so I'm not trading back, if that's what you're on about."

"Well, good, 'cause I wasn't plannin' on givin' back the pipes either."

Belmont narrowed his eyes at him. "Let me get this straight. You want the cigs back. But you're not willing to give me anything in exchange, not even a useless piece of pipe? Why the fuck should I make that deal?"

It was a good point. "Come on, I'll give ya somethin' if ya swap back, honest."

Belmont folded his arms across his chest. "What's on the table?"

Junkrat struggled to think of something that he was willing to part with that he wasn't planning on using as a weapon. "I've got some extra wires, I can rig ya up a lighter?"

The look Belmont gave him was positively contemptuous. "What fuckin' good is a lighter if I have no cigs to light up?"

Junkrat bit his lip. "Fair point. Whaddya want, then? Gimme some suggestions."

A slow smile spread across Belmont's face, and that should have been Junkrat's clue to back out before things got ugly. "I can think of one way you can pay me back."

"Yeah, sure, anything!" Junkrat said, relieved.

Belmont began unbuttoning his jumpsuit.

Oh, no.

“On your knees, Fawkes.”

“Junkrat.” He didn't know what it said about him that his first objection was to not being called the proper name, but his second objection was hot on its heels. “Wait, ya don't mean--”

“I mean, you talk too much, and I'm kindly requesting you put that big mouth to better use.”

Junkrat wet his lips, his brain rapidly cycling through his options. No matter how he swung it, it looked like it came down to the same thing: either give head or get his head bashed in by his cellmate. “Fine,” he finally agreed. “But I won’t be happy about it.”

“I don’t care whether you’re happy about it, I just care about you doing it. Like I said: on your knees.”

Junkrat grumbled, but he obeyed and knelt down in front of Belmont. He fumbled uncertainly with the jumpsuit before tentatively taking his head between his lips. He closed his eyes as he bobbed up and down. Maybe it would be better if he could imagine it was somebody else.

Junkrat held out his palm to request payment and was grateful when he felt the cigarette pack pressed into his hand. He was less pleased when Belmont gripped the back of his head and forced him down, keeping him from pulling away now that he had gotten what he wanted. Caught off guard, Junkrat gagged a little.

He was trying to relax when Belmont came, shooting down his throat, and all he could think was Thank god, because it meant he could stop degrading himself.

All at once, Junkrat was shoved aside, and Belmont was pinned against the shower wall by one massive hand.

“What did I say?” Roadhog growled, and the abject anger in his voice frightened even Junkrat -- the only other time that he’d heard such rage from Roadhog was in the bottle shop, when he’d made the offhand comment about “fire never hurting anyone.”

“He-- he’s yours, I know! But he agreed!” Belmont gasped, trying to cover himself back up, as if he was afraid Roadhog would cut off some of the more sensitive parts of his anatomy. “He said yes, I didn’t make him to do anything!”

Roadhog didn’t let go. He simply turned his head to look at Junkrat, whose stomach plummeted. From his position on the floor, Roadhog looked bigger and scarier than ever, but it wasn’t his imposing figure that filled Junkrat with fear, but the knowledge that Roadhog thought he wanted this. Of all the compromising positions for Roadhog to catch him in, having a near-stranger’s cock down his throat was the worst.

"...Yes," he admitted, voice unnaturally small and quiet. He didn't know why he had told the truth, that he had consented, when he could have lied to save face in front of Roadhog and get Belmont permanently out of the picture. There was just something about Roadhog that made him want to be honest for once in his life, even when it meant confessing to whatever awful thing he had done.

Roadhog released Belmont and started walking away. Seized by panic, Junkrat scrambled to his feet and chased after him, cigarettes in hand. "Wait, Roadhog! I didn't-- I mean, I did say yes, but I didn't want it, promise--"

"I don't care what you do with other people," Roadhog said levelly. "It's none of my business. Just tell me next time before I try to kill someone for taking advantage of you."

"There won't be a next time! Roadhog, it was just -- it was a business thing, see--"

The familiar, disembodied voice crackled over the loudspeaker. "Recreation hour is over. All inmates return to your cells for count."

Junkrat didn't budge. He touched Roadhog's arm. "Mate, ya gotta believe me, I didn't go askin' for this--"

"Get back to your cell before the CO catches you." Roadhog pulled his arm away from him and headed back to Cell 23. Junkrat watched him go, helpless and despondent and filled with self-loathing like he'd never felt before.

The door that separated their unit from the main prison hallway beeped. Jolted back into reality, he hurried back to his cell before two COs stepped through. Junkrat tossed the cigarettes at Thatcher, who stuffed them beneath his mattress. They stood at attention, backs rigid, as the correctional officer walked past each cell and counted everyone, his partner at the ready in case any prisoners had any funny ideas about attacking them.

“All clear!” The CO shouted, and the doors to the cells slid shut with a resounding clang.

The minute the two officers left, Junkrat dove for his pencil and paper.

Thatcher dug the cigarettes out from under his mattress and scooped out his brick hidey hole. “Good. Don’t ever even think about stealing from me again, understood?”

"Yeah, 'course," Junkrat muttered, distracted. He tapped the pencil against the floor as he tried to figure out how to word his letter to Roadhog. He was acutely distressed; he needed Roadhog to know that he had no feelings, sexual or otherwise, for Belmont, and that he wasn't the kind of person who would suck dick for no reason.

"Roadhog," he wrote. "Mate. Listen, here's the deal. I've been getting some weapon parts, ya know how it is. And I’m making some bombs, see? But I needed some pipes. Don’t got nothing worth trading, so I did a stupid thing and traded Thatcher’s ciggies to Belmont. He didn't take kindly to that, so I had to get em back from Belmont. Which meant sucking his dick. I swear, I only did it cuz I don't want Thatcher to kill me. The only d--" He scribbled out that phrase before it got too far, because wow, that was certainly a thought he was experiencing, that the only dick he'd want to suck would be Roadhog's. He rubbed his face with his hands. What was happening to him?

"It don't mean nothing, honest. I'm not the kinda bloke what goes around blowing people all the time. I mean, you know me. He ain't me type, he's too small. I told ya I like em big, right? Pretty sure I did, but me memory ain't the best." He gnawed on the end of his pencil, worried about how best to proceed. "Thanks for sticking up for me. Ya always got my back. Don't be mad at me, yeah?" He didn't know if that last bit sounded desperate or not, but frankly, he was a little desperate. He couldn't handle the thought of Roadhog judging him.

"P.S." he added, "Destroy this letter. Flush it or eat it or something. That's a thing hogs do, right?" He gave a small, guilty giggle. He was trying to bring some levity to the mood, but it was a serious request, there was far too much incriminating information in his note.

He looked over the letter. It was probably riddled with spelling errors, as the only words he was 100% sure he knew how to spell correctly were the ones he learned from assembly manuals, which were how he taught himself how to read in the first place. Still, Roadhog was sure to get the gist of it. He tied the note to his fishing line and cast it over to Roadhog's cell. He couldn't feel anything for a long moment, and he tried waggling the string in case Roadhog hadn't noticed it. He was about ready to reel it back in, crestfallen, when he finally felt the note being detached. He waited anxiously for Roadhog to read it and, with any luck, reply. When he felt a tug on his string, he pulled it back through the narrow space of his cell door.

"You're an idiot,” Junkrat read. “That’s it?” he called out. He'd come to realise that Roadhog calling him an idiot was more often than not a term of endearment. Once upon a time, it had been a proper insult, but as of late, there was more affection to malice in his voice every time he called Junkrat an idiot. Still, it didn’t sufficiently answer whether Roadhog was angry over the whole incident.

“Turn the paper over,” Roadhog replied from two cells down.

Junkrat flipped the page over. “But I'm not mad." He exhaled in relief. He was glad he hadn't irreparably fucked things up with Roadhog, and that he -- hopefully -- wasn't being judged for going along with Belmont's terms of payment. There was still the pressing matter of the fact that he had nearly expressed a desire to blow Roadhog, but that was a thought that he would deal with some other time, because that was a tangle of emotions that he was not prepared to sort through.

[augustwinsome-blog]

Vacation Outtakes

On Wednesday morning, I have a very vivid, drawn out dream on that my laboratory is exposed to some intelligence group after an explosion occurs in one of the wings, and that I’m arrested at work and the whole thing is televised and I’m led out of the building with my jacket over my head. 

They put me on trial for treason, I’m found guilty, and I watch myself in court from a television in an NYPD police station. When I wake up, I immediately grab my phone to check the news. Nothing has actually happened - no explosions to speak of - but the anxiety of it keeps me in bed for some time, seized by what feels like a minor panic attack, paralyzed. At this point, it is still dark out.

That same afternoon, I am supposed to spend an hour or so alone at a friend of my mother’s house. I told her - my mother - that if she wanted me to, I would be more than happy to visit this woman, but by the time the date arrives I’m so reluctant to go that I spend an extra 10 minutes at the breakfast table, seated just one seat from Garth (ostensibly, because I want to be, but in reality because there was a concerted conspiracy to take up every other seat so that I truly had no other choice), mulling over whether or not I’m going to do this before determining that I have to, getting up to get dressed in a haze while Garth nudges their leg out from under the table in a covert attempt at tripping me that I notice and evade with a graceful hopping step. I end up leaving an hour early, and not because I am just that eager to meet this woman - who claims to have known me since childhood, but whom I hardly recall even in the backdrop of any of my more important memories from that time - but because we live in such a secluded area that driving anywhere - especially to someone else’s equally secluded home - is an ordeal that can take half an hour or more with good road conditions and little traffic. I haven’t slept for more than  consecutive hours in the last 24, which is probably why it takes me some time to get there (though I’m still not late), driving very, very carefully, mostly because obstacles keep arising that I can’t determine the realness of but would rather be safe than sorry about.

The woman - Elise, I think - greets me with a warm smile and I return it with all the subtle curves and infinitesimal details that make a smile ‘warm.’ She hugs me lightly and I do the same - but even more lightly, I tell her how refreshing it is to see her again, how lovely her home is. We are floating together through her large colonial, and I am replying graciously to her chatter, trying to ignore the shadows in the corner of my eyes. The sky is perfectly gray, rendering the whole white home also blue-grey and shadowless, like a flat plane without a single deviation. The flowers on the living room table around which she has me sit are bathed in a thin sheet of dust, which is what tips me off to their being fake - and they’re also overlaid in a blue-grey.

“And how is your mother?” She asks perfunctorily. “She’s doing quite well, very well.” I say with a smile, no idea what it is that just came out of my mouth, admiring a large vase on her living room mantle.

“I’m glad to hear that. And have you been enjoying the holiday?”

“Very much.”

“This weather has been lovely, hasn’t it? Perfectly mild.” She says. Why did she invite me here, I wonder. I find myself imagining her lying face down on the carpet, skull wedged open by a large porcelain shard of the vase, gray aberrations all over her arms, still twitching. I can’t help it. I clear my throat and try to clear the image but it won’t go away.   

“It’s been…. Very nice. Far less harsh than New York, it seems.” I say good-naturedly, and then covertly pinch my hand. The image goes away once she turns and I have the opportunity to blink a few times and cross my eyes, focus myself.

“Say nothing.” She smiles.

“Pardon?” ask.

“That’s lovely.” she enunciates again. I touch my watch carefully, running my finger over the row of buttons on the bottom panel of it as she starts off on a mild tangent about her daughter in New York, who’s finishing her final year at Barnard very soon. Barnard is my mother’s alma mater, so I guess that this would be relevant to me. She’s talking up the girl’s accounting credentials, which leads me to believe that she’s trying to secure her a job of some kind. We don’t hire recent graduates at my company - I am the only full-time employee under the age of 28 - but I don’t say anything.

“She’s so hardworking,” she admits. “Sometimes I worry about her. She’s so young.”

“It’s difficult to maintain that… balance these days. A work-life balance.” I say, nodding empathetically.

“How do you manage it?” She asks, seeming genuinely interested. I like it when people ask me for advice, so for a moment I find myself really, actually invested.

“Well… I find that it’s very important not to lose sight of the importance of hard work, devotion to that work. I think that the most important part of work life balance is… understanding that your work and life are not separate from one another.” I pause thoughtfully, she leans closer. “They are irrevocably connected. Work is… I apologize, did you say something?”

“Oh, no. No, no.” She rushes through it. “Please, go on.”

“Work is what keeps life from becoming monotonous. So, really, a balance between work and life doesn’t have to be even. I would consider it a… more of a ratio. A work life ratio.”

She nods silently, obviously confused, not willing to ask a question because she knows that I’m more intelligent than she is and - if she it doesn’t understand - It’s more than likely her fault. “Many people believe that a balance entails a net-zero difference, and that’s not necessarily true,” I warn. “This is why many are never fully able to achieve their potential: because they’re so concerned with reaching someone else’s arbitrary concept of ‘balance’, rather than their own.”

“Fascinating…” she breathes. “How fascinating.”

“There was an interview in Business Insider in… November I believe? Where I discussed this. You might send it to her if you think that it would be useful.”

We talk for 45 minutes, during which my vision is continually blurring at the image and I’m experiencing lapses during which I keep thinking that I should get up and grab that large gilt vase and smash it over her head just to see if it would be possible, something I have no control over - but I’ve become so adept at functioning on this level regularly that it doesn’t effect the conversation or even startle me. I look like I’m paying rapt attention, though partway through the discussion when I suddenly snap like a rubber band into the moment, I realize that I’ve not idea how it is that we’ve reached the subject we’re discussing. I feel slightly sorry for it because I hadn’t actually meant to lose track, but not too sorry - given that she apparently is none the wiser.

-

On Thursday morning at 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning, I can’t sleep at all. Everything in the house lies still except me, and maybe the cat. Even Romeo is still sleeping, which really says something because they hardly ever go to bed before I do - neither of us being particularly regular sleepers. But at the moment, they’re dead to the world - and I don’t want to violate that, so I untangle myself from them as gently as I possibly can.

When I get out of bed I’m very careful not to wake them or anybody else up with my movement, dazed and searching. This isn’t so difficult because of the thickness of our walls and doors, and the familiarity that I have with my childhood home and every creaking floorboard. I shuffle very quietly into my night shoes, positioned at the edge of the bed, and don’t bother to dress any further. I have a niggling feeling that it will get in the way of something - that I won’t have enough time to get dressed - which makes no logical sense, but I still find myself standing at the head of the room in nothing more than a fleece set of nightclothes and moccasin houseshoes.  When I leave, I shut the bedroom door behind me very quietly - sorry to leave Romeo alone, but feeling that I have no other choice -  and then I go in a haze all the way downstairs. At night, the vast space that one finds themselves at the bottom of the main stairs looks like an alien landscape. The moonlight carves ridges into the hardwood, all the white furniture gleams silver and blue. Lorraine is a small blob of a shadow in the center of the plain, blotting out a hole in the scene. I examine her thoughtfully, focused on this animal. I make eye contact with her for a weird minute or two from the bottom of the stairs before she becomes bored or senses something I suppose and begins in the opposite direction. I think about going after her, but I don’t.

I leave the house through the solarium door - which is the way I’ve always gone. If you look very, very closely at the knob of the solarium door, you may well see my fingerprints permanently driven into it. I prefer it because it opens to the garden, and isn’t as heavy as the other doors in the house so you can’t hear it so clearly when it opens or shuts.

It is exceptionally cold outside, but I didn’t expect anything else. The sky is a powerful black, the moon carving a large hole out of it so that it appears almost like one is standing at the bottom of a manhole or a well with the cover removed. The moonlight, however, seems to have been obstructed by something before it was able to reach the ground - except for the stony pond in the center of the garden a step from the patio of the solarium, where it floats contentedly in the square middle. This sight soothes me for no particular reason, I guess maybe because it’s familiar. Forest surrounds the property on two sides, with the other two sides opening to a clear swatch of land that - at night - is indistinguishable between land and sky, with both being so clear and so black, but for a silver sliver that runs between the two like a string of gilt thread. There are no lights outside except for the sconce on the patio, whose rays don’t quite reach me.

I start on the edge of the garden, skirting the outer hedges where the facade of the house is almost entirely flat, and make my way from the northeast most corner of the properly, and then the west, and then the south through the dark thick of the woods, out again and in again. I’m not thinking much at all, besides that Rhode Island would not have been good for me in the long run, that there are too many people spread too far apart there, that if I planned to return here after college - I was going to have a very rude awakening, that the lack of white noise in these rural parts is probably why I can’t sleep, stop, Lorraine got out somehow and is in that tree over there, that I should probably go back to the city soon, that the scenario of a laboratory explosion was still a distinct possibility and that every moment I spend away is another moment I leave open to some sort of freak accident that could be prevented if only I were around to preempt it, maybe if I keep going for long enough I’ll get there or a solution will come to me, go back, stock prices go down when I’m not within city limits, if I go too far out of the bounds of the property something bad will also happen, I should go into Garth’s room and light their sheets on fire, go back, a reservation at Jeanette’s is difficult to get, turn left and then stop or you’ll step on something that you’d rather not step on, I hope that my father doesn’t find out my mother is seeing someone, disaster reels, bergamot oranges, Lorraine is on the patio, two moons, and plastic grass.

I come back inside when the sun is only beginning to rise, and the string division between the sky and ground starts to widen. When I get back into bed - Lorraine shut out of the bedroom for trying to follow me from downstairs, maybe catching the smell of ozone on my clothes -  Romeo sleepily flinches away from me, pitching a muttering complaint about me being cold, but it isn’t long before he’s taking my hand and blowing warm air against it, not fully awake but still thoughtful - maybe not cognizant of the fact that logically, there is no reason for me to be this cold unless I had been outside for quite some time but not questioning it. I don’t end up falling asleep again, but I am also not fully functioning and awake again until 10 o’clock in the morning, spending the hours between my return and then in something like a catatonic stupor.

-

On Friday morning my mother wants private time with me - she wants to “regroup” - so we go to Tiffany’s together for brunch, alone; me in a very handsome ensemble that includes a sweater I was bought for Christmas and a her carrying a lovely black Birkin bag that I bought her for Christmas. I expect to pay for everything, but I don’t care. She wears round sunglasses that I also bought her as a Christmas gift on the car ride there, a trip on which my mother provides the directions. I say that I can use my GPS to navigate, but she insists that they’ve moved recently, too recently for GPS. When I’m not in the city, I drive a Tesla Model S. When I’m not in the city, I drive a Tesla Model S. My mother likes it far more than my Rolls Royce, and she makes her preference known each year: she calls the Rolls “a monster.” She describes it as “an obstacle.”

At the restaurant, we’re seated by a tall bay window in some secluded corner. It throws large rectangles of white over my mother and me, rendering her auburn hair a pale blond and my hands featureless. The whole restaurant is broken up by slats of white from the shaded windows, tables are bisected by blue swaths of shadow. Every plain tablecloth within reach of the light looks silver, flowers on top - soft and the vases - indistinguishable. It seems like it should be warm, springtime weather outside but of course it’s not. All of the faces are made gleaming and amorphous, until the only two that still stand out starkly are those of mother and me, even though most of hers is obscured by her round sunglasses and a hand rested on her cheek. I blame my stress and lack of good sleep for everything sounding filtered through a sheet of water. It takes an inhuman amount of concentration to look fully engaged, and it’s not that I don’t want to be or that I find her boring - I simply am not.

“You look very chipper.” She says suddenly. “Very bright.”

“I am,” I reply, not detecting sarcasm. “I am quite… chipper. I slept well.”

“Did you?”

“I did. You’ve kept the bedroom as inviting as ever.” I say, smiling. “That’s good.. Very good. I’m glad to hear that. I do know how finicky you can be with sleeping arrangements…” She says, sounding almost timid. Finicky is code for “prone to sleep disturbances,” which I do have a regular basis - but I’m sure that that’s not what she wanted to hear. “I hear… well, pacing - it sounds like. Sometimes I go down the hall to get a glass of water or use the restroom or… and I hear footsteps coming from your room.“

"Ah, well: that’s not me. That’s the white noise track I’ve been using. I’ve been sleeping well."She looks momentarily alarmed: I can see the divot above her eyebrow where she’s quirked it behind her shades. 

"Is it? Is that…What you listen to for white noise?”

“It’s just a… ritual of mine. It’s very soothing. I do it regularly at home, it’s only that I’ve become used to it." 

"That’s lovely.” She breathes.  "I’m delighted to hear that.“ She smiles cautiously, but I can tell that she’s still mulling over my lie and cannot make sense of it. 

She lowers her shades slowly. "Oh sweetheart,” she sighs “It’s so lovely to spend these little moments with you.” She looks at me, raises her eyebrows emphasitorily, and then looks away again. “It’s so important that we spend time with one another… These days, you know.”

The statement has no logical connection with anything else she’s said thus far, so I’m unclear as to where it’s come from.  I think that maybe I’ve missed something."I want you to know,” she continues. “That nobody will ever come between you and me.”

“I know that,” I say finally, maybe even cutting her off slightly - but not meaning to. It’s only that I’d rather not discuss it here, now. “I’ve never doubted it.”

She gestures vaguely. She rubs her eyes, pinches and rolls her fingers, and then the sunglasses go back on. “Well, I felt that I should reinforce. There are certain things that can never be said too many times.”

A waiter materializes seemingly out of nowhere and takes our orders: grapefruit juice - actually, cranberry - a halved grapefruit, one Americano, one iced tea with mint and lemon, the milk and sugar on a platter. I’m still pondering what route he could have possibly taken to arrive so quickly at our table without my noticing. She begins speaking again once the waiters disappeared into another hot pane of light, tells me that I’ve  not been secretive about my disapproval of what she’s doing - dating - but that she’d “like [my] support.” She hesitantly wants to know… something, I don’t know. I’m momentarily distracted by the thought of the waiter. I only look at her for a moment, not to indicate anything, but because I simply did not quite hear her and am now trying to posthumously process the words she said - dead on my ears - in conjunction with the movement of her lips, but she seems to become unsure of the question when confronted with my momentary silence, and sighs uselessly “Well, it is so difficult to tell with you.”

“Is it?” I recoup. 

“Oh, you’ve hardly told me anything.” She whines, and picks up the crystal glass with the cranberry juice.

“Haven’t I?" 

"Stop it, Claudius." 

She purses her mouth. 

"I’m sorry. Did I say something?”

“You know just what you’re doing.” She closes a straw between her lips. I glance down and suddenly there’s a small mound of sugar in a silver bowl. The grapefruit halves fleshy part points skyward, stiffly sparkling. “You’re being… sarcastic. You’re not being serious.”

“My apologies.”

“It’s only that you’ve been so distant recently, and now - well… You’ve always been sensitive to change. And with everything that’s gone on.. I can hardly imagine how you’ve been faring in the city..” She pauses thoughtfully. “Sensitive. You’ve always been quite sensitive.”

“I’ve developed a thicker skin.” I smile reassuringly and then glance back down at my saucer. “But have you, really?”

“Now you’re being sarcastic.” I reply, still looking down. When I look up again, I’m not looking her directly in the eyes - but over her head. It looks like I’m looking at her directly, but I’m not.  I’m distracted by a pair sitting at the table to our left. The steams from the food of the pair seated at the table to our right overtake the citrus smell that permeates our small sphere. I’m distracted by their conversation, of which I catch very little besides some benign talk about winter coats. “People do pay attention,” one of the two - a woman, presumably - says to the other “to the way that you button your coat. I’m telling you, they do.”

“…And, oh, Claudius. I’m concerned.” I’ve lost track of her again.

“Alison’s son. He works on Wallstreet, you know. You do know, don’t you?” She asks. I nod my agreement. Alison’s son is hardly a speck in my eye, but I have seen him before - sometimes if I’m on the exchange. “He commutes an hour from work each day - back and forth - but he says that it’s worth it, the added security is very much worth it.” “I’m sure, but he and I are not in even similar lines of work.” I reply. She considers my statement, and her relentence to the fact that I do have a point is in her shrugging body language. She asks me in defeat if I’m going to eat my grapefruit that - for some time - I hardly recall ordering, let alone having it brought to me. I pick up a knife and right the grapefruit onto its bottom, sawing with a butter knife until the half has been halved, and then placing the second half onto a small saucer, which she accepts curtly. “I’m afraid that we have absolutely nothing in common,” I continue. “Alison’s son.. [voice, lowered] is not the kind of individual I aspire to be. I will put it that way. I do not want to be Alison’s son. I will do everything within my power not to be Alison’s son…”

She frowns. “Now, what’s so wrong with Alison’s son?”

“You know very well what’s wrong with Alison’s son.”

“Oh, stop.” She says without force.

Her hand - dimly freckled like my own, and suddenly I find myself realizing how small and fragile looking it really is - plays as if it’s going to stretch to mine, but retreats. My hand does too, perhaps as a reflex. First, they were laid flat on the table, now they’ve pulled back into a politely covered fist.

“I understand your concerns, but I can assure you that I’m perfectly alright. I’m doing well.” I say.

“I’ve told I don’t want you to be…hurt…” Pause. “Physically. And I don’t want you to become unhappy." 

"You shouldn’t worry yourself about my happiness. I’m very happy.” I assure her, not lying.

“But sweetheart, I am.” She considers her grammar. “I.. do.”

“Then… I’m not sure. I’m sorry then.” I say. Silence. I’m looking out of the window, thinking that I see somebody standing on the lawn. The sky freezes into a painting, the grass looks markedly fake - like plastic, the sun beats brutally onto the lawn, the cranberry juice in the glass looks like blood.