#I have successfully bamboozled you all

[shut-up-rabert]

Soooooo I tried reading Amish Tripathi's Sita : the Warrior of Mithila and bro I was so confused from the start meko kuch samajh hi nahi aa raha lmao 😭🔪

Bhai maine khaali summary oadhi main usme bhi confuse ho gayi😶‍🌫️

My honest feelings were

And I have no other words, kyunki constructive criticism ke liye kavi kya kehna chahte tha samjh bhi aana chahiye barkhurdaar 😶‍🌫️

Tune kaha tak padhi?

[dykedivorce]

if any other bitch in konoha had been gay apart from sasuke none of this would have happened to my son naruto.

[newkatzkafe2023]

Hey have you ever heard of Courtnapping among demons? Basically when a demon really likes someone, they make their home as welcoming and comfortable as possible as well as have enough to provide their potential mate with anything and everything they need, so let's say the Monkeys are having a stroll one day when suddenly they're picked up by a female monkey who's larger than them and taken to a very large but very homey cave. This cave has food, drink, clothing, weapons anything they would want or need. While the monkeys were impressed, they decided to ask why they're here, she looked into their eyes and said, "I've kidnapped you, so you're my mate now."

I HEARD OF COURTNAPPING AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 and I think we can do something better the a cave😉😉😉😉

(Lmk Wukong) Honestly you're not the first demon to try and courtnap him, but you are the first to succeed though🤣. Wukong was always able to slip away from anyone trying to get him, ever since he became the great sage equal to heaven people and demons of all kinds wanted a piece of him. Now for the first to succeed part well he was taking a nice long he was then bought to a incredibly luxurious Mansion and saw food, drinks, weapons, cozy and warm blankets with a giant Flat screen TV. Wukong was shocked by how privileged he feels and finally saw you come in with hot chocolate, he asked you why did you kidnapped him you then told him that you took him to be your mate. Wukong was Blushing and totally caught off guard by your Purposal, well at least your adorable.

(MKR Wukong) Ok he is just trying to wrap his head around the situation he's in, one moment he was patrolling the camp protecting his master. The next moment he was thrown over the shoulder of a tall, large female monkey who was heading for this massive fancy Mansion. Wukong was bamboozled by your surprisenly fancy mountain home and had all the stuff he could ask for in it. The house food, drinks, weapons and other cool treasures and items and Wukong was admittedly impressed by the display. He had to snap out of it and he demanded to know why you had kidnapped him and why did you bring him to your house. After a while you finally answered stating your name and the reason why you kidnapped him is being you wanted him as a mate. With this info Wukong had put two and two together before his face became red with embarrassment, and he felt something else. He got courtnap..HIS ASS GOT COURTNAP, and for some god Forsaking reason, he is not angry at all as he was hugged and kissed by you.

(HIB Wukong) He definitely put up a good fight at first, so you had to use a slightly drastic measure, but nobody was hurt. Now he was bound and gagged as he was carried to your home in another mountain. It was filled with treasure, food, drinks, weapons, and Apparently baby clothes, toys and medical supplies, and more. Wukong was admittedly impressed, but he had to get back to Luier and Silly girl and with that Wukong had asked you what you wanted and why you kidnapped him for. You then said that you successfully got him so he's officially your mate now, ohhhhhhhhhh the look on his face was priceless as he sat there blushing and shocked at your words. You are admittedly attractive and clearly interested in him to the point you had went and courtnap him, Wukong could never recover from this.

(NR Wukong) Ok, you'll need patience, careful planning, and a lot of booze in order to catch this guy because catching a butterfly is way easier than catching him. What you did catch him with was deep fried fish you made, and he was busy eating that as you carry him back to your home. When Wukong was done eating, he looked around your surprisingly fancy house and found it impressive even with all the stuff he saw with the food, drinks, weapons, and more things he's never seen before. Wukong was impressed, and when you came along, he asked why you bought him here, and you told him that you courtnapped him, so he's your mate now. Wukong brain was buffering excessively, so he was kidnapped by a hot lady who was very interested in him. You know you could have just asked him right??

(Netflix Wukong) He's freaking out a like alot he has no idea how to handle this situation at all. Wukong was coming home to Lin's house after fighting a bunch of demons when suddenly he found himself, Tackled, Tied up and carried over the shoulder of a tall monkey woman AKA YOU!!!! He rightfully panic as he's never expected something like this to happen to him. Later on, he was put in a cozy house with food, drinks, weapons, cozy pillows and blankets, and a bunch of other awesome stuff. Wukong was soon given peach tea from you, and he took this time to Interrogate, you on, what's going on?Why did you kidnap him and what your intentions are??? You laughed as you told him your name and said that since you successfully courtnap him that he's your mate now🥰🥰🥰. Now Wukong heard of courtnapping but never thought it would ever happen to him and by a Gorgeous monkey woman at that. He's not sure if he should be fortunate or not, but at least he took this chance to brag about himself to you.

(BMW Wukong) How is this even happening right now like seriously, he's at a lost at this. Let me explain Wukong was just being himself looking for enemies and adventure or looking to cause trouble, when he spotted something in the distance a tall female monkey which was you. Wukong demanded that you state your business as he was cautious incase you want to try something, but the next thing he knew he was being bound and gagged by the same female monkey who was now carrying him away. Wukong was then bought to a Huge bur comfortable looking house, where it was full of treasures he had never seen before along with food, drinks and other cozy comfort items. Wukong was admittedly impressed by everything but still wanted an explanation on why he was kidnapped, and well you told him😏. After given the explanation of your introduction and intentions He found himself in a state of shock at you calling him your mate, meaning he just got courtnap by this powerful Strategic Attractive devil monkey woman got him off guard. You sexy little Theif😍😲

(Destined One) He's confused at best because he appears to be being kidnapped by a taller than him female monkey. Now the shenanigans continue as you bought him back to your home that what a big cottage in a quiet and peaceful looking forest. The Destined one already like your house and it gets better on the inside it has everything he can ask for, their was his favorite food, drinks, awesome weapons and cool treasures that were never seen by him ever. Their was ever a cozy soft heavy slightly heated blanket just for him to snuggle and nap in. The Destined one was very impressed by the place he was bought too, and before he could almost fall asleep on your couch, you came in introducing yourself and openly called him your new mate. The Destined one instantly knew what happened, and considering you went on, you went out of your way to provide a good, safe, comfortable place for him. Also, you were adorable and attractive looking and clearly strong if you could haul him around with absolutely no trouble, and that's secretly sexy to him.

Feel Free to Reblog🔔💒💍👰‍♀🤵‍♂️

[mswyrr]

why i think agatha has never walked the Road before

Based on the song lyrics, if she had walked it before, she would have needed a coven to do it, and we have every reason to believe she hasn't had a coven since her first betrayed her.

Gather sisters fire Water, earth and air Darkest hour, wake thy power Earthly and divine Burn and brew with coven true And glory shall be thine

Even if she had previously bamboozled some poor bunch of witches into the Road, if they didn't become her "coven true" in that process, the attempt would have been a failure. Perhaps she has survived a previous, failed attempt, but she's never walked it successfully. To walk it successfully would mean to have community at the end, and that would require her to be changed in key ways.

Another lyric talks about "fate" and another about facing your "fears." If Agatha had faced her fears or fate successfully in the past, she wouldn't be the person she is imo. She's currently someone who is in constant flight from her past, her own feelings, other people. Only Wanda's magic trapped her, pinning her in place, forcing her into community with others. And that has just (for the moment) made Agatha double down on running and using. At least at the surface level.

Moving beyond the specific lyrics of the song, there's two broad categories of how to handle magic in stories. The first treats it like a possession--like a powerful weapon or tool in a character's hand--something that belongs to them and they can do with it what they wish and, pivotally, who they are is separate from it. The second treats magic as something that transforms you -- it's not a tool you wield, to wield it creates/requires a change in your very being. I think the way they're writing magic on the show is the second (to me, vastly superior) approach rather than the first.

The song itself and the use of a Road both point to this. The idea of a walking a path or road and being changed by it is widespread in global spiritual practices -- many religions articulate the religion itself as a road/path to walk -- the process of walking the path is supposed to bring you more and more into alignment with the power/enlightenment you seek, rather than the power becoming a thing YOU own.

Agatha herself is so deeply unenlightened at this moment in her life that she is TREATING the Road as if it is the category one kind of magic. Just a tool or a weapon she can grasp and possess without changing. She's treating the magical commitment she's made to this coven similarly, as if it has no weight to it. But I think she's dead wrong about all of that. That the magic in this story is of the second category, and through walking the Road--and committing to a coven-- she will experience change and find a "coven true." Not that she will become all nice; not that the coven will be all sweetness and light. But that it will simply be real and true.

As Jac herself has said about community:

"I hope what people take from the show, is that yes there is a tremendous amount of benefit from the circle, from the tribe, that you can have communal power, and your can find your own internal power in that circle. But also it was really important to me to show that there can also be in fighting in that circle. And there can also be bad decision-making and backstabbing, and the complexity of these witches no being able to get along. The goal for them (coven) is to harmonize both literally and figuratively, and they fail at it! You know, in a number of occasions, a circle can give you so much. But it's always going to be an imperfect thing." --podcast interview with Jac Schaeffer, quote transcribed by the lovely @isagrimorie (thank you! <3)

Even at its best, community is hard work. A "coven true" doesn't mean easy. Just real and sincere. Agatha lost the "grounding" of herself in her youth (my meta on that is here) and she will be more grounded again.

At its worst, as Agatha learned in her youth, community can become monstrous and terrifying. A prison rather than a home; a death sentence rather than a safe place to live and grow. But even when things aren't in that failure state, it can be painful and difficult -- its own hard road to walk. But on that journey you *become*. And others become along with you. By committing to each other, you are not instantly made whole and enlightened. But you allow yourself to live and breathe and become. To do the hard work of becoming. And it is that process of becoming (of living) that Agatha has cut herself off from by cutting herself off from people.

[some-beans]

Hi! I wanted to request dormleaders with a reader like Millie from helluva boss?

yes 100% yes but god i'm bad at answering these fast 🧍‍♀️🧍‍♀️

✎...pairing: twst dorm leaders x millie!reader ✎...themes: hints to murder, mentions of blood, reader is fem with she/her in mind ✎...enjoy !!

𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐋𝐄

ngl a little freaked out

given your horns and tail, and the vague/slightly tad bits of what your line of work is, it's safe to say riddle was very weary of you

but, i suppose that lessens up when he sees you respecting the queen of hearts' rules

lowkey loves that fact you fit in with the red aesthetic tho

also loves when you easily whip Ace and Deuce into shape

riddle feels surprisingly comfortable with you after the overblot incident due to the fact you simply held onto him and allowed him to cry, and get it out of his system

𝐋𝐄𝐎𝐍𝐀

ma'am

he laps up ALL the love and affection you give him

such a smug bastard [ affectionate ]

also kind of "he asked for pickles" but it's more that he's just lazy

definitely respects the shit out of tho

girlboss over here

is so impressed when he witnessed you take down, like, 15 of his housemates like it was riding a bike

did i mention cuddles??

cuz you are now his fav pillow

yeah nah, you're not moving until he's awake

well, i mean, you can cuz not gonna stop you, but ready to then deal with a grumpy lion later on

𝐀𝐙𝐔𝐋

flustered yet intrigued

you said you did some bodyguard work and know how to deal with problematic customers??

. . . do you need a job??

but in all seriousness, very much becomes your malewife

man legit folds at any and all affection you give him, big and small

very surprised when you help him get more contracts for him and he swoons lowkey

something to do with the fact you're from hell or something

he didn't really pay attention cuz azul's brain had crashed from the smile you sent him

𝐊𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐌

oh our sweet sunshine baby

you honestly end up taking over jamil's job at this point

jamil cried tears of joy over this

you can easily calm kalim down and divert his attention back on track

and easily dispose of any hitmen *ahem*

he definitely buys jewellery to decorate your horns

you casually mentioned your, uh, job once, and let's say kalim is grateful that he's on your good side

𝐕𝐈𝐋

you're like a slightly more violent cheerier version of rook in a sense

but also somehow less intense too??

ugh whatever

your bright red skin does intrigue him

and your makeup is quite impressive

. . .

what do you mean you have naturally smooth skin?? had no acne too??

vil may kind of reprehend you for your country accent, but quickly shuts the fuck up from the wicked glare you give him

epel snickered to himself when say that happen

𝐈𝐃𝐈𝐀

you are intense

but in a good way??

you have successfully bamboozled idia shroud

it confuses

he has heard of imps before bc duh ofc he has

he's watched too many manga and shit to not know what those are

you two very much give "he asked for pickles" and "girlboss + malewife" vibes

gets spooked when you don't bat an eye to the gore when watching horror series with him

may have prayed once or twice

𝐌𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐔𝐒

at first, he mistook you for another dragon fae cuz of ya horns and got really fuckin excited

tho lowkey sad once you explained you're actually an imp from hell

still jazzed about the horns and tail tho

loves to share stories and whatnot

. . . kinda concerned when you mentioned a job that left your leg in a bear trap

yeah

malleus may have almost asked to . . . talk to your boss

[qqtxt]

I don't know if you take requests but I thought of something which could be like a funny/fluffy fic

What are your thoughts on Taehyun x S/o who's in med school or medical training where he approachs them shirtless in an attempt to flirt but they don't get the hint and take a pen and start marking anatomy on him in an attempt to study... And taehyun is just standing there like mission failed 🤡🧍

HAHAHA! the way this made me giggle and i just thought it was absolutely adorable and funny! i tried to make sense of the situation a tiny bit but... well, here it is!

[🐿] mission failed successfully (?)

✿ pairing: taehyun x reader / non.idol!au / college!au / fluff, crack 🌸🤡 / established relationship / reader is a medical student, taehyun's major is unspecified but he plays soccer / reader is obliviously cute / word count: 560 words ✿ flirting isn't your best forte but... you're cute, that's all taehyun thinks about. [masterlist 🌸]

when taehyun suggested that you watch him at soccer practice, he hadn't exactly predicted that you bring your studying materials. now, was it nearing finals? yes. did you still dedicate time to see him? also yes. so to taehyun, it was a win-win solution that–quite honestly–made his heart melt at the way you were so quick to agree that you wanted to see him practice but also prompted him that you were going to study, too.

a couple of hours fly by with occasional cheers and sounds of excitement that erupt. occupying the front-row bench with your textbook and notes out, scattered pens and paper, you look up whenever you feel like it just to smile at your boyfriend who's just as enthusiastic to see you here with him. 

an idea sparks in taehyun's mind when he has to change into another shirt after drenching his current one. he mindlessly goes to remove it considering the rest of the guys were doing the same but he decides to approach you with a smirk on his face. he's able to succumb to the success that he surprised you with him being shirtless with his toned muscles on display; strands of hair sticking to his forehead from the sweat.

he smiles at you sweetly, pointing at his towel next to you, "help dry me out?"

then he momentarily forgets just who he's dealing with when you–"ah! okay!" your hands search for the towel and you stand up to taehyun's request. he pouts a little when you're so focused on towelling him dry, even spinning him around so you can wipe his back. you're not even noticing what–"tae...?"–okay, wait a minute, maybe there's something here.

"hm?" he hums, turning around with a raised brow.

"could i use your body?" you ask, tossing the towel onto the bench and his eyes widen. he'd be lying to say he wasn't completely bamboozled but then again, you did have your way of being honest. something he found quite endearing. he stammers a reply, but he manages nonetheless, "s-sure."

"okay, stay still," you gently tug him to stand by your side as you sit down, reaching for a marker and...

"what the hell is going on there?" yeonjun snorts, after taking his sip of water and now noticing one of their star players is currently hogged up by a bench, where his partner is drawing lines and marks on his body while holding up a textbook. beomgyu nearly dies of laughter watching the scenario, but doesn't say anything directly.

when taehyun glances over and meets eyes with them, all he does is shake his head and shrug, motioning for them to play the next round of games without him.

((taehyun can't even be mad when he sees how hard you're studying. knowing very well that one day, your goal is to help save people's lives and to better society for the... better, his heart warms at the thought.

"could you turn your arm a little bit?" you mutter under your breath, focusing on drawing the line along his arm. he nods and does as he's told, only to get surprised with a small kiss you plant on his wrist before you continued drawing on him. while it's not what he had intended with his attempt at flirtation, the way you're unapologetically yourself, already wins his heart over.))

[negronispagliato]

of fine tastes || modern!soma jarlskona

summary: soma rescues you from an awful date.

words: idk but they’re all gay.

note: merry first day of queermas y’all. IYKYK. Please ignore the fact that I was supposed to post this during pride month LMAO

As always MINORS DNI.

9 pm.

It had already been an entire hour that you’ve reluctantly decided to stay for a date you reluctantly agreed to even more. When you weren’t too busy essentially eye fucking the brunette woman that kept sending smiles your way, you were checking your phone to see if the son of your mother’s work friend had even bothered to send a smoke signal of any kind.

Both of your mothers were really adamant (well, his more than yours, because even your own mother had her limits) about you going on this already disastrous date. It was something you had successfully avoided for months, until your mother had bamboozled you into the other night over Sunday dinner.

It was to be beneficial for everyone’s sake, especially for both families considering how well off everyone involved was. But you didn’t give a shit about doing things for other people’s benefit. You weren’t interested in standing there and looking pretty for someone who wouldn’t appreciate it, and you definitely already had a very successful business of your own to tend to.

Please do me this favor, little bird. You could practically hear your mother’s voice right in your ear as you sipped on another glass of finely aged Bordeaux, glancing at the mysterious woman yet again. As you swallow the carefully savored wine, you tilt your glass over to her in thanks before checking your phone for the umpteenth time in that moment.

You sigh, clearly annoyed that the guy hadn’t considered that your own time was equally as valuable.

“Sorry I’m late.”

The sudden intrusion shakes your attention, making you grimace. The guy removes his jacket and shakes it slightly, making a few raindrops fall into the half eaten bread basket, making you grimace. Though the contents were no longer as warm as your initial outlook on this date, you had been planning on at least having one thing to eat for coming all the way out here.

He’s already a little too posh for your liking. From his borderline condescending tone down to the way he extends a hand for you to shake (or kiss like he was some sort of mafia don, if you had to take a guess)--he’s rubbing you in all sorts of wrong ways. He looks like he stepped right out of a Men’s Health magazine--the epitome of picture perfect to most conventional people.

But you weren’t conventional, and you weren’t interested in picture perfect.

It takes a Herculean effort not to roll your eyes as you shake his hand in an impersonal way, also introducing yourself, before settling back in the respective seats again. You make a mental note about thoroughly washing your hands if you ever managed to make a clean break for the bathroom.

This guy hadn’t really done much of anything with a lot of effort. But you figured that was his thing--doing not a whole lot while blowing the effort out of proportion when it seemed most convenient to him. He hadn’t even bothered to ask if you had arrived to the date well, or if you had even looked forward to this inconvenience at all.

He was on just this side of icy with the waiter, all but shooing him off with his drink order. But most of all, he had interrupted the intense eye fucking that had been going on between you and the ridiculously attractive lady at the bar, currently surrounded by the menagerie of her friends.

You’re hoping he doesn’t mistake the shiver and flush you’re suddenly overcome with as something of his doing.

“I see you already helped yourself.” He says, eyeing the open bottle of Saint-Emilion that was already half empty along with the bread basket, “I hope you’re not too expensive down the line.”

Leaning back in your seat as you take another sip of wine, you glance over at your not so secretive admirer. Unlike you, it looks like she’s clearly enjoying herself with the company she has, an arm draped around a rather tall blonde woman in what was hopefully a friendly way. Part of you wishes that it had been her instead of the lukewarm wet mop sitting in front of you. Lord only knows how much you would’ve enjoyed yourself more with her.

“Are you normally this quiet, or do you just save it for the bedroom?”

Turning back to your intended company of the evening, you couldn’t stifle the budding frustration in your stomach at offensive question. It was like no part of him was redeemable the longer you sat in his presence: misogynistic, condescending, and much too aloof for someone who’s probably had the silver spoon up his ass since the umbilical cord formed.

It’s also as if he’s been scrutinizing you the entire night. He’s got too much of an eagle eye on the way you hold your fork. The way you chew and wipe your lips with the cloth napkin. You can’t really get a word in while he’s talking about mostly himself and what he does at his family’s company. But it’s not like you’re really all that interested in having any sort of conversation with him anyway.

That’s why you feel no remorse when your gaze flitters back to your pseudo date again.

The weight of her stare doesn’t pass you by entirely. Another glance proves your guess correct, making you smirk a little. You tear your eyes away knowing you were looking a little too long, struggling to stifle a laugh when you look at the quizzical expression on your actual date’s face.

The date clearly wasn’t between you and him anymore. It hadn’t been for the perpetual drone of his stuffy drawl, and the fact that he hadn’t realized it clearly amused you most of all.

It was clear that the not so foreign stranger was still interested in you by the way your skin prickled in goosebumps. It was also clear that in all his talking, your date hadn’t even bothered to compliment your dress. For all you knew, it could’ve been too inappropriate for his tastes.

Fuck this guy, you thought. He clearly didn’t have any good tastes in clothes to even compliment you. He could fucking choke on his own self importance for all you cared.

Seeing as one out of the two of them seemed to genuinely enjoy your outfit, you figured it would be a shame to let your dress go to waste. You had put in great effort, as you do with most things in your life, and you were determined to get your much deserved validation from someone who’d truly appreciate it, and you.

You lean forward to rest your elbows on the table, resting your chin on top of your laced fingers to try and fight the urge to keep the slit of your dress revealing any more of your leg. You subtly cross one over the other, clenching your legs slightly, pushing your cleavage out a little to give a lovely view. Clearly none of it was for Wet Mop’s enjoyment in any kind of way.

By some miracle, the message you were trying to send reached its intended recipient.

“Someone you know?” He asks, finally looking at you fully for the first time that night. He glances at your cleavage, grimacing.

“Hm?” You cooly glance at your intended participant in this date, awful at hiding the sparkling interest in your eyes. “Oh, not at all.”

Not yet, at least.

You always were an awful liar.

For the first time that night, Wet Mop gives you a semblance of an unrehearsed smile. He waits for you to elaborate, giving you time to sip and appreciate the wine you were gifted.

“I suppose it’s not too ridiculous to owe our admirer a thank you,” he adds after a poignant, uncomfortable silence. He was clearly feeling ignored, having trouble getting you to look at him longer than he liked you too.

“You mean my admirer.” You correct a little too quickly for his liking.

“I’m sorry?” He raises a brow, his expression matching the incredulous tone.

“You were late to this dinner by more than an hour, nowhere to be found. Didn’t even send so much as a courtesy text, so you could’ve stood me up for all I’ve cared.” The words came out a little more vehemently that you meant them too, but if he noticed it would be news to you. “So she is my admirer”

It doesn’t take anyone with half a brain cell to figure out what someone like Wet Mop would react like when hearing that his “competition” was another woman. Someone as smug as he is, you can only brace yourself for the incredibly disgusting response you’ve received a million times before.

“Oh, then I have nothing to worry about.” He waves his hand as if to shoo away some superfluous thing flying around, laughing easily.

The very phrase itself makes you chortle loud enough to make him look at you weirdly again. Knowing that he was waiting for you to clarify yourself once more, you sigh and roll your eyes.

“I’m bisexual”

“Oh!” he pipes up, eyes shining bright like he found some new toy to play with. Once again you feel your stomach roiling at the idea that was cooking up in his gelled up head. “So that means you--”

“Yes.”

“Would you be--”

“Absolutely fucking not.” You snap immediately, cutting off whatever fuckery he was already forming up in his brain.

Whether it was a request for a threesome or a request for you to not be…”obvious” (whatever the fuck that meant), you weren’t going to put up with it. You never had to, and you weren’t about to start tonight. Especially not from another guy who couldn’t even keep dinner appointments the least bit interested in what he had to say.

Wet Mop doesn’t get much of a chance to say anything, jumping a little when you toss the cloth napkin a little too hard on the table. You didn’t give a fuck if it knocked anything over, you were sure he could afford it. He could complain about it to both of your mothers too, for all you fucking cared.

Snatching your clutch bag, you give him a murderous glare before shoving the chair back and making your way to the ladie’s room to cool off. Under any other circumstance, maybe one where you didn’t have any semblance of sanity or taste in actual human beings, you might’ve entertained your mother’s idea of becoming someone’s trophy wife.

You knew you’d get yelled at for ditching him with a mouth gaping like a fish struggling for air, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to give a fuck about it or him.

It’s not like you’re against the idea of threesomes, or inexperienced with them by any stretch of the imagination. But you just didn’t like it when men did this shit to you, or when women declared you gay by virtue of being with them. You knew exactly who you were, and you weren’t ever going to entertain anyone’s bullshit.

You’re determined not to have your resolve whittle away when you see that you have to pass by the enticing and tall brunette stranger to get to the women’s bathroom. She’s probably not paying attention to you anymore, but it doesn’t make the feeling in your stomach any less floppy.

You try to keep the knowing smirk at a minimum as you pass her by, squaring your shoulders and swaying your hips confidently as you pass her by, muttering a small “excuse me” to avoid bumping into another patron. You don’t see her stormy eyes following you, but you can sure feel them on your back.

Even if you never spoke tonight, she’d supplied you with plenty to fantasize about later over more wine and a nice, hot bath. Cliché, yeah, but you couldn’t help it.

Barreling into the surprisingly empty bathroom, you let the door slam in on itself as you let out a deep breath. You set your clutch down on the marbled countertop, turning the knob for the cold water to dip your hands into, and cool yourself--and the rage you were feeling, off.

You wondered about the mysterious woman back at the bar, and how she seemed to be having a genuinely fun time with what seemed like the rest of her friends. You figured you could probably scrawl your number on one of the thick, fancy gold embossed napkins--maybe pass it off to a waiter to give to her if you wanted to be mysterious about it all.

You’d make your way back home while it was all happening. Maybe start a nice warm bath that you were pondering earlier, with even more wine while spending some quality time with the plug and the vibrator; thinking about the woman that had already enraptured you so easily while you dragged out your own climax and pretending your fingers were here own, fantasizing about her voice.

Blinking at your reflection in the massive and well lit mirror, you pondered at the kind of compliments the woman would tell you. But you let out a hum of disappointment, knowing that the interaction the two of you had back outside was just a one off thing, a fantasy never to actually be acted upon.

You shrug, figuring you could at least take a decent selfie of yourself before making your way out the back. You adjust the imaginary wrinkles in your dress, letting your hands linger on your waist for a moment before they travel up to your chest.Taking advantage of an empty bathroom, you shamelessly adjust your plush breasts. You let your palms linger, gently squeezing and caressing, once again wondering what it’d feel like to have her hands on your body instead of your own.

The door suddenly swings open, startling you out of your intimate hype session. But you’re too surprised to even let go of your own breasts, your brain trying to decide on what to do or what excuse to come up with.

Soma’s eyes hold your eye contact in the mirror, letting the door shut behind her. They’re sparkling with lascivious enthusiasm, waiting for you to react.

“Hi there.” She all but coos, voice as smoky and husky as the mezcal she had been drinking earlier. She hums in approval as she looks, her lips curling into a smirk when her gaze travels from your face down to your breasts. You can’t help the way they harden beneath her stare, nor the heat and the slick blooming between your legs.

She’s only said two words to you, and she already has you feeling a lustful weakness in her presence.

You let out something of an embarrassed whine, your agape mouth snapping shut in shame. Soma saunters over to you while keeping eye contact, reaching over to turn off the faucet that was still trickling.

“I’m Soma.” She says in lieu of a hello, resting her hip against the marble counter, angling her body towards your own.

Your breath hitches, hands slowly coming back down to your sides as you imagine running your fingers across the smooth skin of her neck, appreciating the feel of the fine suit she’s wearing.

You swallow hard, almost struggling to say your own name. “Hi, Soma.”

God, you wanted to absolutely melt beneath her with the way she was looking at you like you were her dinner. You’re certain that the lascivious enthusiasm in her eyes is something that must’ve come naturally to her.

“Did you like the wine?” Soma asks, as if she was asking a lover if they liked what she was doing to them in bed. She’s so close to you, standing just there, but she doesn’t do anything. She only looks, waiting for your next move.

“You have fine taste.” You said, nervously wiping your palms on your dress. It takes you a second to catch onto the innuendo of your words, and you’re flushing all over when you realize what you said as Soma bursts out a beautiful, melodic laugh.

“I-I meant the wine…” You huff out, feeling quite embarrassed of your inability to keep a coherent sentence formed around someone attractive.

You were never usually like this around people, especially men. But then again, you had been ensconced in work for so long to even bother going on a date for who knows how long. Soma was the first woman you had been this close to in such a long time, you’d be surprised if you hadn’t turned into a puddle of mush already.

Soma licks her lips, and your eyes can’t help but focus on the way her lips have a natural shine to them. They look just as inviting and tantalizing and sweet as the bottle of Bordeaux she had sent over to your table, that had now long been abandoned along with your tragically awful date.

She catches on to you glancing at the clock above the door, because the next thing she asks you is how much time you’ve got left until you have to go back. She could tell you were trying to plan your escape, even if it meant walking out of the front door and pretending like you couldn’t see him at all.

You swallow again as you feel your pulse quicken, angling your neck to rid yourself of the discomfort. You wondered if you could get Soma to come home with you, or if you could get her to take you home with her. The low huskiness of Soma’s voice and the sparkle of mischief in her eyes reel you in even more, and you knew then that you were a goner.

“Honestly? I don’t give a fuck.”

Soma’s eyes widened slightly at your frankness for the first time that night. For a moment you wonder if you fucked up, if you came onto her too strong or too desperately.

But you’re not left wondering about her intentions with you for much longer at all.

It all happens too fast and too slow at the same time. In a single moment, your feet, ensconced in matching heels, are still on the floor as Soma backs you up further and further until your lower back is pressing into the edge of the counter.

Her soft, perfectly manicured hands roam your torso until she keeps one on your waist while the other one reaches up to softly cradle your jaw, thumb softly tracing your full lips--as if asking for your consent before she proceeds to do anything to you, with you.

You release another whine, unable to hide the way you squeeze your thighs together to keep your slick from escaping the confines of your body and your underwear any more than you could help. Soma keeps your eye contact, humming softly when she feels your lips kiss the pad of her thumb just so before wrapping your lips around it and taking it into your mouth a little, experimenting with how far you could go.

As much as Soma liked the feeling of your tongue around her fingers and how much it made her think what other parts of her could get your lips on and around, she was desperate to kiss you. She slots her lips across your own, hands cradling your head to kiss you more, deeper.

The kiss is all kinds of messy and desperate, hot breaths and moans escaping both of you as hips grind into each other. Your hands finally touch her, roaming everywhere to be able to feel everything, until they reach her chest, slightly smaller but no less plentiful. You knead them softly, experimenting with just how much she liked, earning a shaky moan out of her that you swallow in the kiss.

“Can I--” Her words are slightly shaky as you knead her breasts again, a little more firmly this time, as she rucks up the skirt of your dress.

“I will literally cry if you don’t.”

Soma beams, “Oh. You’ll see.” As much as she loved the way you played with her breasts, she was eager to make you see stars now that she had your attention.

“Up.” She commands, nearly making you come right there and then with the authoritative tone of her voice, “I want to see just how fine my taste is.”

You’re able to steal one more kiss from Soma before she growls, making you quickly place your hands on the counter for support as you hop up with some help from her. You let out a small squeal at the feel of the cool marble on your bare ass, giggling when you see her shake her head.

Soma gently quiets you with a small squeeze to your lush hips, nudging her nose with yours.

“You trust me?” She asks, hands fiddling with the straps of your lacy thong, “Because I’ve got you.”

You dig your teeth into your lips, nodding desperately. A shaky moan escapes you as she unzips your dress slightly so she can pull it down, revealing your bare chest to her.

“Naughty girl.” She coos, eyeing the nipple piercings adorning your chest. A delicate, red gem adorning each end of the metal studs. Soma bends down as she pulls the top of your dress down, practically unwrapping you like a gift, and takes a nipple into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it as if savoring an ice cream.

You hiss at the arousal that sizzles through your body, nearly already lost in the heat of it all until you remember an important detail.

“W-wait, Soma--”

Soma instantly stops, thinking she did something wrong.

“The door..” You gasp out, “Someone will--”

That half smile that had you melting returns to her face. “Maybe they will. I can lock it, if you want.” Soma’s fingers dance across your waist, toying with the fabric of your dress as she pushes it further up slowly. “But isn’t it more exciting, knowing that anyone, even that asshole date of yours, could walk in here while I’m eating you out, my tongue deep in your cunt?”

Soma’s words nearly have your eyes rolling to the back of your head, pulse fluttering as much as your lashes.

Eyes, and lips, meet again. Crashing messily and consuming each other with determination. Soma searches every inch of your soft, lightly cocoa lotion scented skin. Her lips and teeth latch onto whatever part of you will make you shudder and melt underneath her touch. Your fingers hook themselves together behind her neck while she practically unwraps your dress from your body like a gift, letting it pool and gather around your waist.

At this point, your outfit stops resembling a dress entirely--tucked up above the swell of your ass and completely exposing almost your whole body to her. The cool air of the bathroom pebbles your nipples, both of which Soma plays with teasingly, mouth and hand switching breasts.

“You’re not playing fair…” You whine, throwing your head back as your knuckles strain with your tightening hold of the counter’s edge.

Soma draws her lips away with a soft pop, kissing the swell of your breast, then your sternum until the ephemeral kisses reach right below your ear. “I’m not really one to follow the rules. But I like making an art out of breaking them.”

“You’re also wearing too much.” You groan, pouting when Soma tuts at your grabby hands.

“I’ll make it up to you later” She murmurs, loving how you wiggle underneath her touch as she slides the thong over your soft thighs and further down your legs until she can actually take them off and pocket them in her pants. Her hands are on your knees again, massaging them softly. “Spread your legs for me nice and wide, baby.”

The praises were already doing you in, doing wonderful things to the arousal crackling like electricity throughout your body. Your stomach swoops and flutters when Soma glides down to her knees without any hesitation, determined to make you see stars.

You moan softly, head lolling to the side against the mirror, nibbling on your bottom lip as you eagerly spread yourself open for her.

“That’s it, honey.” She coos, rubbing your legs encouragingly before sliding your legs over her shoulders. Her warm breath on your center practically has you shuddering. She makes a whole show of it: sucking and licking her fingers to lubricate them with enough spit. Both of you were sure you were pretty wet as it is, but Soma enjoys making a whole thing of the pleasure she wants to give you. And you enjoyed the pretty show she was giving you.

“Relax for me, ” She says in between soft kisses on your inner thighs, “We’re both going to enjoy the hell out of this.”

You whine even more when Soma softly blows some air over your center, teasing you just over your slit by kissing you everywhere but directly where you want. She looks up at you, enjoying the way she watches you squirm, desperate for her to fuck you.

“Please,” You whine, “Want it, want you.”

Soma finally decides to indulge you, and herself. Holding on to your legs that were over her shoulders, she opens you a little wider and makes sure you’re not going anywhere before she digs in. Her tongue softly laps at your folds to spread the arousal. She hums at the taste of you, the sounds vibrating against you.

Soma is absolutely driving you up the wall with need, each soft kiss and lick stoking the fire hotter. She explores your cunt like she did the rest of you, tongue lapping at you from your hole to your clit until she pushes her face in, determined to make good on her promise to make you cry.

When you feel her slide a finger, then another in, you slap a hand against the marble counter, squealing when she begins to curl her fingers in the way she could tell you liked. Just like with your nipples, she takes your clit into her lips, softly rolling it with her tongue while her fingers play you like a game she’s played thousands of times before.

Your hips start to squeeze her head, making Soma hum loudly against your clit. The sensation gets you to start rolling your hips, wanting her fingers to go in as deep as they could. Soma learns fast, loving the way you preen at the way she touches that spot that has you melting and your mouth dropping open. She slides in a third finger, and you moan at how full you feel. You let out the most embarrassing noises, sobbing at how very little effort it takes Soma to get you to the precipice of your orgasm. Sagging breaths leave your lungs when you feel her fingers come to a still.

“Shhh, baby, keep quiet for me.” She digs her free fingers into your thigh when you try to move and seek more pleasure. “You don’t want anyone checking in on us because of the noise and walking in, do you?” She moans when she feels your velvety walls clench around her fingers, letting her feel just how wet she was making you. “Oh, you like it when people watch,” —tsk-tsk— “naughty bunny.”

“Maybe next time we can get someone to join, huh? Would you like that, kitten? Have someone watch us while I ruin your pussy with a toy?”

“I-I...” Your body starts to shake, hips meeting the thrusts of her fingers. You prop your leg up on her shoulder, keening at the groan she releases when she feels your heel dig into her shoulder. “Please, I want it. I’m gonna--’mgonna cum soon. Fuck. I wanna cum so bad, please.” —”You wanna cum, baby? Wanna make a mess all over me?” — “Pleasepleaseplease.” — “That’s my girl, there you go. You’re doing so good for me, honey.”

You thread your fingers through Soma’s hair, tugging at her roots the more your orgasm builds and builds inside of you. You think you’re being too rough on her, but you’re proven wrong by the way Soma groans at the pull of her hair in pleasure the more she eats you out like a woman starved. It makes her actions on you grow more enthusiastic than before.

That familiar flutter in the pit of your belly comes alive again when Soma keeps her fingers in you, rolling her tongue harder against your clit, curling her knuckles deeper in your weeping slit as the tips of her fingers toy with the spongy spot inside of you.

“Fuck, that’s it…’m so close.” You moan, “s’little more…”

A loud, sharp knock rattles the door and you gasp, sweaty body trembling as your blooming climax leaves you boneless and breathless. You groan loudly, feeling yourself make a mess all over the counter and on Soma’s face. You bite your lip harshly to try and muffle the moans the best you can, even if it meant tasting copper on your tongue.

Soma is careful to slow down her movements, cooing to you about how good of a job you did making a mess all over her as you tremble and come down from your high.

The voices from behind the door grow more desperate and instant. You start to scramble to get your dress back on you, but Soma is already on it, helping you zip up. She pulls away after kissing your forehead to bark orders at the people behind the door, “Give us a damn minute! Dealing with some issues if you couldn’t tell!”

Leaning into Soma’s arms as she rubs your back while zipping up your dress, you chortle into her shoulder.

Soma listens for a few more moments, making sure the footsteps fade away for sure before getting her attention back onto you. She hums softly, a small smile on her lips when she sees the dopey, soft look on your face as you practically curl yourself into her embrace.

“How do you feel?” She asks, cradling your face after tossing the napkin used to clean your smudged makeup into the bin. “You okay?”

“Mm,” you purr, closing your eyes for a moment as you appreciate the feel of her caressing your face, “I just need a moment.”

“Been a long time?” Soma jokes, chuckling when she sees you nod bashfully.

Despite regaining the feeling back in your legs, you’re feeling much too self indulgent to even think of forcing yourself out of Soma’s arms. It wasn’t like she was forcing you to get off her either, so the both of you indulge yourselves in a close embrace, soft coos and whispers in between short kisses and giggles. You can’t help yourself but shiver at the way Soma licks the remainder of your climax from the corner of her lips, so you try to regain some composure by holding her hand after hopping down from the counter.

“When can I return the favor?” You ask her, glancing at yourself in the mirror to make sure you looked the most presentable as you could.

“Is this your way of trying to get my number?” She teases, squeezing your hand before cleaning up herself.

Your cheeks heat up again, using your tongue to soothe your swollen lips. “I was actually hoping you’d wanna come home to mine, or uh..me to yours. Whatever works.”

One step, then another, and Soma is in front of you again. There’s something about the way she towers over you despite being almost the same height as her that has you feeling small, protected by her enough to be able to let your guard down.

“I like it when you’re bold.” She says in a hushed tone, holding your chin with her thumb and forefinger. Soma’s always been used to the women that are much too shy for her own liking.

“Not as bold as fucking someone else’s date on the bathroom counter.” Already, you were thinking about taking her thumb into your mouth again.

“Touché. But you’re going to break that guy’s heart, you leaving with me.”

You roll your eyes, “It was an arranged date. We only met an hour ago.”

“So did we.”

“So what if we did?” You ask, holding her wrist as she cradles your jaw, kissing the pad of her thumb softly. “You ditched your friends too.”

“That I did.” She conceded.

“Then, I’d like to find out what you’d be like on a proper date, Soma.” You say, before sticking close to her as you two weasel your way out of the restaurant, ignoring the looks the both of you get.

“I think I’d like to find out too, ” She agrees, arm around you as she unashamedly rests her hand on your butt.

[cult-of-the-eye]

What experience I would give as a statement to Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London? Statement fucking begins...

Summer after GCSEs, whole fam picks up and goes to India for 3 weeks

Listen we are hubristic. We literally go from Britain to Turkey to Delhi airport, to a different airport, to Banaras in a taxi, to Siliguri in a sleeper train, to Kalimpong in a car, back to Siliguri in a van, then to Kolkata in a sleeper bus, to Dhakha, Bangladesh by plane, to my grandparents place in Sylhet by car, then back to Dhakha, then back to Delhi, then back to Turkey and then back to Britain.

Tell me we didn't have at least one entity on our side.

None of us got ill. We had a 6 yr old with us. She didn't complain one bit. I'm 100% sure I blacked out for the majority of it. No other explanation than paranormal.

Those sales assistants in shops have to be fucking avatars of the web or something the way they fucking smile and you until you've blinked and you've bought 3 lehengas and she's like very good ma'am

I met my grandma's sister who looks exactly like my grandma, speaks the exact same way, acts the exact same way. It was so uncanny I could've sworn she just was her. Probably very normal explanation (genetics) but we can never be sure.

I made friends with a hand sized spider in a bathroom by singing "Mr spider, please don't kill me" in the tune of Mr sandman to it every day. It disappeared on the last day. (giving spiral)

I got myself an Indian accent. I am not Indian. (Most of my family is from Bangladesh, I was born there) I am not good at accents. I'm not sure how this transpired (could be some elaborate sociolinguistics explanation but I'm gonna go with paranormal)

We went on a massive family day out with cousins to a river near the mountains and we all had a great time until this little menace of a cousin literally got carried away by a current and we were terrified until one of my uncles literally grabbed him by the leg and yanked him out right before he would've gotten completely carried away. I don't think that's pure luck, personally.

My aunts staged an intervention for me about my posture (Not supernatural, Im just salty)

My dad successfully convinced some strangers who sat next to him on the plane that the reason me and my siblings spoke such good English was that we went to an English medium school. When pressed, he came up with the most elaborate story ever. He gave them a random school we went to, told them we were his boss' kids and he was taking us home, bullshitted a company and then when one of them went oh my dad is a higher up in that company, he says oh didn't he retire recently and the guy goes yeah he did! We are completely oblivious of this story, until he leans over and tells us not to call him dad for the rest of the plane journey. If that's not fucking Stranger behaviour then what is.

We get home, exhausted out of our minds and we realise we can't find our fucking front door key. We pile into the back garden and proceed to search through the entirety of our bags, trouser pockets, pockets within bags, we're all on the verge of tears, I'm catatonic, my little sister has picked up a stick and is slowly peeling it, my other sister is the only one actually looking and my dad is staring at the luggage, as if it had grown legs and was doing a little dance right before his eyes. We do find the keys after 20 minutes. We never mention this again. That's fucking paranormal shit right there don't even try to convince me otherwise. Michael the distortion was fucking with us.

Statement ends... (Although that's definitely not even half the shit that happened)

Watch Jonathan "Jarchivist" Sims crumble beneath my experiences. Hes so bamboozled that he forgets to try and discredit me. I bring him a packet of laddoos and some aachar.

[degloved]

we're never getting reputation (taylor's version) and here's why:

1. the color-coding

taylor's discography is very obviously and deliberately color-coded, each album strongly associated with a particular color or shade. although there is some overlap (1989's light blue vs midnights' dark blue), the variations are distinct enough to avoid any confusion between them. in that sense, b&w is an extremely inflexible color assignment, on account of not being... well, not a color. b&w is b&w (not to be confused with folklore's grey; monochrome ≠ b&w), there aren't exactly many (or any, as it were) ways to stretch that palette to the extent it'd successfully take on an identity (album) of its own. which i believe blondie is aware of, and on that basis i believe it was a deliberate choice. and why? it's not as though she'd exhausted all of her options. there are colors she has yet to use, as well as different shades, tones, and tints of already used colors that would've been just as viable. why take this extremely particular and inflexible palette and, essentially, risk shifting that association from one album to another? unless she wasn't risking anything.

2. the pre-ttpd announcement period

as is customary for her, in the weeks before the official announcement of ttpd, all of taylor's social medias began taking on a b&w color scheme. the same had happened with purple and speak now (taylor's version), with light blue and 1989 (taylor's version), so on and so forth. a kind of unique mass-hysteria ensued as all signs pointed to reputation (taylor's version.) as it turned out, every last one of us was wrong in that assumption. if reputation (tv) were to drop, she'd have to go the b&w route again—which, for one, would in this case be predictable (we got bamboozled once, no way is it happening again) and that's very much not her style; and for two... there'd be no novelty. doing the same bit twice, really? not her!

3. the themes of reputation

reputation centered two core concepts: joe & falling out of public favor. a "good" thing and a "bad" thing. this would remain true for several years after the fact, yet no longer is—instead having turned into two "bad" things. i would not blame her if she chose not to return to this notably awful period of her life by way of re-recording, especially given the fact that the thing—person—that was once a shining star in all that proverbial darkness simply blends into the void with the way things are now. and while, yes, she had re-recorded songs about her exes, she'd only done so after a long while has passed. not only was this the longest relationship she's ever had and therefore likely uniquely devastating, the breakup itself is also very recent.

4. the contrast and the timing

and continuing the last point, only last year she'd dropped a couple devastating songs about this relationship on midnights, followed by more than a fair share of them on ttpd. doubtless she's still moving on/healing (judging by ttpd); i simply do not see her delving into an album that'd dredge up all those memories of the good times, the better times—not to mention that ttpd and rep are as antithetical to each other as it gets. if she'd recorded lover any earlier and had no ownership of it, for very similar reasons i wouldn't believe she'd re-record that one either.

4. the ttpd logo (NOT!!! my finding!)

now i never put much stock into this when i first saw it, as whoever had found it had taken it to mean "yay reputation (tv) soon!" and i simply did not agree. i actually thought it was a really freaky coincidence. bc, c'mon. let's be serious. however, i did realize it sort of fits remarkably well into my "ttpd is replacing rep because ttpd is reputation (taylor's version) in fewer words."

5. thanK you aIMee

kim? we're talking about kim now? who was maybe relevant around the year 2017? around the release of rep? oh. okay. i'm sure that means nothing

but that's just a theory... a game theory.

[disappointingyet]

American Fiction

Director Cord Jefferson Stars Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K Brown, Leslie Uggams, Tracee Ellis Ross USA 2023 Language English 1hr 57mins Colour

Affectionate portrait of a bourgeois family? Gleeful satire of people desperate to endorse diversity? How about both at once, successfully?

There’s a mixed blessing for the smart film with an attention-grabbing pitch. It simplifies selling the movie, both to distributors and the audience: ‘It’s the one in which…’ ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about that one…’  But it can reduce the movie to something it isn’t really – in this case, you might be surprised to find that American Fiction spends more time on two brothers and a sister dealing with an aged parent than satirising white people’s stupid ideas of what authentic black stories are. I’d say that this movie is closer to The Savages, an excellent but under-seen film with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as middle-aged siblings trying to cope with their difficult father than, say, Spike Lee’s raging satire Bamboozled.

Yet the catchy ‘about’ sticks, and I’m not in a position to criticise that. Watching the film, I was wondering if the family stuff had been added by writer-director Cord Jefferson because I didn’t remember it from Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, from which American Fiction is adapted. But no, the blurb on the back of the book describes it ‘as a profoundly moving story of family turmoil’ – so it’s clearly there, but my mind had only held on to pointedly satirical part of the plot.

Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (played in the movie by Jeffrey Wright) is a curmudgeonly academic and writer whose attitude towards his students is becoming unacceptable to the university in California where he works (for those who like to check on fiction’s relationship to life, Everett teaches at USC.) Meanwhile, his agent (John Ortiz) is struggling to find a publisher for Monk’s latest highbrow novel. And over in Boston, his widowed mother (Leslie Uggams) is acting erratically, and his sister and brother are both feeling the financial and other impacts of divorce. 

American Fiction is, then, effectively two films in one – a comedy-drama about a troubled (but not unloving) upper-middle-class family and a satire about a snobbish novelist who writes a spoof tale from the hood that (of course) is taken for the real thing. That’s an incredibly tricky mix to get right and at least a few people have been wrong-footed by the movie – ‘what’s all this family-reckoning-with-trauma stuff? Where’s the skewering of the white literary scene I was promised?’

I mean, that’s certainly there, it’s just sharing story space with eg, a tour of a care home the mother might move to. But that’s not just OK, it’s a positive, because the family stuff is great, particularly Sterling K Brown as Monk’s brother Clifford, voraciously making up for lost time after coming out in his forties. 

Which is to say, the family scenes are not just ‘funny too’, the biggest laughs we had watching the film came from the interaction between the Clifford and Monk and Monk and Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross). The writing here is so sharp, so precise, so spot-on. Yes, there are also a few moments of emotional realisation, but as with The Holdovers, I’m working on being less prickly about this kind of stuff – it’s good to feel, too. 

This is Cord Jefferson’s debut as a director, but it doesn’t feel like a first film at all. It’s very assured, walks that tonal tightrope perfectly, marshals the cast well. Maybe that Jefferson doesn’t feel like a first-timer is not surprising seeing as he’s not young (he’s 42) and has a ton of experience writing for TV. But he’s not even got any screenplay credits for a movie. So this is extremely impressive. 

Along with Wright, Brown and Ross, there’s good work from Erika Alexander* as the Ellisons’ attractive neighbour plus Adam Brody as a slimy movie director – with this and Fleishman Is In Trouble, he’s finding a groove as a glib sleazeball. 

I was expecting to quite like American Fiction – as it turned out, I loved it.   *I spent too much time watching the movie trying to figure out what I recognised her from – which was playing Rza's mom in Wu-Tang: An American Saga.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello! Anon with the history professor who refuses to take a stance on anything here. It's time for our semester final paper. Thankfully it's not on why communism is bad because he still absolutely won't talk about that but it's on the equally frustrating topic of US involvement with the war in Ukraine. And on one hand, it feels like it should be a fairly easy thing to write about given how much the war has been in the news for the past year, right, but at the same time, I feel like I'm writing basically from what I've learned from reading the news only. Don't get me wrong, my history professor does absolutely know what he's talking about. I don't exactly know how to explain it- he clearly knows his stuff but is not good at conveying it to the class? And it leaves me scrambling because yes, this is a topic that I can write a paper on but at the same time I just don't feel as though we've spent enough time talking about it and learning about it.

That is to say, we've spent plenty of time learning ABOUT the war in Ukraine, right, but the paper topic is basically "should the US get involved in Ukraine and if so, to what extent, why or why not" (I can look up the exact phrasing if you want) but while we've talked about the war, we haven't discussed things so much as what the US is currently doing exactly, nor what benefits and/or consequences would be the result because remember, he's not here to influence us one way or another and that's our opinion to form and that's why he's assigning us this essay but can't talk about whether he thinks US involvement is a good or a bad thing so I have very little to work with from the actual class. And I get it, I do, we're supposed to be able to do our own research and not just have the facts from either side spoon fed to us so that we can crap out an essay but it feels like I'm working with nothing here.

If it helps at all, it's a Russian history class I'm taking that counts as a gen-ed history credit through my university's honors college. All of first semester was basically all pre-WW1 history and we've covered everything from there up until present day in the last couple months, then the rest of the school year will be learning about the modern political, social, and economic situation there. It's definitely a fun class even if it can't go super in depth into any one specific thing there (because there's so many units in this class that could be an entire class all on their own) but I still enjoy it even if it's not taught in the best way possible. I'm a freshman this year, yes, but it also feels like after almost an entire school year I should have a better idea about how to deal with this sort of thing and I don't and it sucks. I'm definitely enjoying the class and everything that I'm learning there, I just feel as though it could be taught so much better, and I'm just reaching out for help and advice now if you have any. I'm not asking for help with the paper itself, to be clear- I'm asking more about how do deal with this situation and the class and the professor's style of teaching that I feel like I'm struggling more and more to deal with just because he can't take a goddamned stance on fucking anything. Ahem. Rant over. Sorry.

Okay but yet again, this remains utterly bamboozling for me. Not least because the paper topic is one where you HAVE to take a side, but how the heck is he going to mark it? Just correct your grammar/spelling/style and say nothing about the content and whether you have successfully made an argument, because that might be Expressing An Opinion? Not least because you will need to draw material from the class (which he won't really teach you about for fear of expressing said opinion), and you will have to demonstrate how it all works together and the actual moral and physical consequences of the system, which he seems to have avoided giving you any intellectual tools to do??? I just. Yeah.

Likewise, if he just treats it as an abstract exercise where "either point of view is valid" and he somehow grades without making it clear which side of the argument he supports, you're going to end up with some weird theoretical exercise where you could end up entirely justifying the war in Ukraine from Russia's perspective, which is... not what a history class on the USSR/post-Soviet Russia should have taught you. Like, you could literally write this paper using nothing but Russian propaganda sources, and you technically would have made a successful argument that US involvement in Ukraine is bad and this war is all NATO's fault and Ukraine should have just surrendered and Russian war crimes are justified and etc. etc., but if your professor won't take a side, how would he actually be able to discredit that or call it into question? After all, that might be expressing an opinion! In other words, he's teaching you, intentionally or otherwise, that you can make arguments that sound coherent and faithfully represent talking points offered up, but you have absolutely no ability to separate propaganda vs. actual empirical information, you have automatically given up the right to make any critical distinction between that information for your audience, and that's not... that's not what a historian DOES!

Anyway, this man's pedagogical style remains completely mystifying to me, especially in a field that is so distorted by ideology/misinformation as Soviet/Russian history. Like... you can't study Russian history without studying the historiographical and narrative systems that Russia has used to tell particular stories about itself, and you have to be able to critically differentiate between the reality and the narrative! The Russian word dezinformatsiya, imported into English as "disinformation," literally came from the Soviet-era KGB in terms of their political strategy to just make stuff up about dissidents and anyone else who threatened the Soviet regime, and since we are all talking about "disinformation" and "fake news" these days, it's kind of important to know how to deal with that! Plus, Putin has presently weaponized it to an absurd global degree with Western election interference campaigns and internet troll-farms, so like again. How can you say anything useful or valuable on this subject if you're essentially acting like "both sides are valid," when they are NOT??!

I realize that I have answered your rant with one of my own (oops) and I'm unsure how much help this is, but I still don't get this professor's teaching choices at all. I'm glad you're still getting something out of the course, but yeah. Mystifying.

[zonotrichia-albicollis]

Adding the same images but with alt text below the cut, because if I had to read about the antimatter black hole and the God of Ruse origin story then everyone else should too.

Also, captions for the two huge wall of text images are gonna be at the very bottom since they're too long for alt text.

All remaining images are from a reblog by nationalshitpostingagency.

Full text of image #14:

I've lied to you... a heinous and dishonest act, yes, but I did so with purpose. My goal, friend, was to get you to respond as though it were the God's honest truth. By doing so, I planned, successfully to put you in a bad mood... but why? Haha! That's the beauty of it. The purpose of my doing so was that it amuses me! It's a unique way of gaining laughter at another's expense. I call it:

Humorous Deception

And I'm afraid you've fallen prey to it! Yes, it's true. You're not quite as quick-witted as you may think you are. Even now I'm laughing at you for the way you've lagged in catching on to my scheme, and others may very well have joined in my fun. You've been duped, sir, and it's made you look quite the fool.

Full text of image #20:

Many things have been said and done in these past few moments. It is quite obvious that your Jolly-John-Johnsonheimers have been Jiggly-Jostly-Juxtaposed, relative to the Bonkers that exist in a peaceful unclonked state. However, it may come as a shock to you that not only have you been tricked, but you've been tricked by one of the few masters of the trade! Your Jimmbos and John Does have been disrupted by one of the few remaining tricksters from the greatest age of rustlers known to human kind! You appear to be more than just tricked, disoriented, bamboozled, or even hornswaggled. Yes my friend, it's becoming clear to me now. You have RUSED! That's right. You, a lowly internet user, have been rused by a trickster unlike any other. You see, my trickery goes back deeper than you can imagine. Long before the age of technology, long before the discovery of the practical applications of electricity, there existed a group of men. A group so ancient and powerful, that any jimmerinos that were unlucky enough to come in contact with it were gaurenteed to face mighty oppositions. Just as many before have fallen, you too have become a pawn in a large game of tricky chess! How gullible, how innocent, how unsuspecting you must have been, to be swamped with such oh so tricky and devious plans? If you have not yet guessed who I am, allow me to explain a bit more to you about how undeniably scammed you are! You see, I am part of a higher power. I am a member of the Master Rusemen, and I have been a member of the Master Rusemen for several years. This would explain your painful and embarassing situation! You see, you have fallen right into my trap. Years of planning, decades of constant training, have allowed me to trick you to this astounding degree. Even the gods have fallen to my trickery. And you, my friend, hold no immunity. You have been given the sour apple out of the bunch. The short end f the deal belongs to you. Maybe you shall ver, maybe you will not. All that I know as a fact is that you, yes YOU... Have been RUSED by one of the few... one of the powerful... one of the trickiest tricksters of all...

AND I HOLD NO REMORSE OR REGRET FOR I AM AND ALWAYS SHALL BE A MASTER RUSEMAN

Full text of image #22:

Note: Tumblr apparently has a limit on number of words per paragraph so I had to add a bunch of paragraph breaks.

Full text begins

Hi there my young fellow. How are you doing? It appears to me that you are, in fact, kind of displeased with the current situation. What is it, that makes your life hard currently? Is it maybe a cause of the recent roasting of your jeromes that suddenly happened? I really have to say that this roasting was, without any doubt, the strongest since the year 2000 hoax. Do you may have an idea why this waddling of your walters was so powerful? No? Well well well... I can for sure tell you the truth about this important event. It was ME who tricked you into this displeasement. I can hear your brain trying to comprehend who this is even possible. But, and I'm sure about this, you cannot comprehend of what happened to you because it is too complex. Even Zeus and Thor were struggling finding the right way in this gigantic and evil maze of trickery. It took me 1000 years to fully write my plan down, and another 1000 to understand it. The complexity is higher than that of a 14-dimensional dodecahedron. It all starts out with the day of this legendary ruse. The day of rusement was carefully planned and calculated on this exact day.

The day were an astronomical constellation appears, that will never occour again in the next 3 googolplex years. A constellation that generates an antimatter black hole. This sort of black hole doesn't suck matter. Antimatter black holes suck the „well being" out of everyone. But did you see someone feeling bad today?

Yes, my little fellow I created a lens that focus the power of the antimatter black hole directly on you. It took 300 years to create this extremely complex lens and I had to combine the power of god and satan to create it. But not enough with the rusement. As I'm not some faggot ruseman, I have planned even more trickery tricks to lead you into this discomfort. When you were mindlessly surfing on this /b/ i made a post that I was sure will put you in the mood of rage. This post was sprinkled with lies and intentional logical fallacies and a good portion of something you dislike seeing in your surroundings. With my ruseman instincts I already knew you were typing your response to the displeasing content you just saw. At the exact moment of sending your response you have started up the machine of displeasement and „not well being". A machine that once started cannot be stopped. Not by God, not by Satan and not even by Cthulhu himself. While your comment was traveling through the cyberspace you started feeling bad. Something in your brain was screaming but you just didn't know why.

It was destiny that you fall for my trickery. With this message you are currently reading I am telling you something you should have thought before you were sending your pathetic comment to me. I am, in fact, A MASTER RUSEMAN GRADE 3. I was part of the ancient circle of master ruseman. I can see on your face, that you already knew this. A ruse this fantastic and gigantic cannot be done by some low grade rusenoob. Yes you have been RUSEDI by me. There were only one RUSEDI knowen to mankind until now. Can you imagine of how hard it is to do? Only two RUSEDIS were executed in the past... 3... Trillion... years! Now you finally know about this unbearable discomfort you started feeling right when you got my response. The response, this message, reveals of what has been done. You... yeah YOU... have been rused. You are powerless, you want to scream but you can't. You just sit there in a mix of rage and helplessness. You want to find this guy, this MASTER RUSEMAN GRADE 3, and you want to kill him. But at the exact moment of thinking, you also realize that you will never be able to even come near such a powerfull being like me. This ruse has set me into a position higher than Hades thus making me a god. Well well well... you seem ever smaller now. Compare your pathetic life to me and you will realize that you are nothing. You think now you might come over this rumbling of your jordans. You think you can bear it, but my devilish plan goes far deeper. Now after you've already been rused to infinity this letter discomforts you to a new level of discomfort.

In the moment you are reading what I wrote you realize how pathetic you are. How useless you are. With every single word you, your very SOUL gets crushed.

Your soul is now demolished. God can’t take you to heaven, and Satan does not want demolished slaves. Your soul i permanently banished from a real afterlife.

Your soul already tryed to escape your body. But your soul cannot escape into the eternal spheres thus it will be stuck in a permanent state of dying. Every day you will suffer thinking of a way to escape this almost deadly RUSEDI, but it is too late. You are RUSED FOREVER! Yes my dear fellow, I know you want to know who is responsible for this. I will tell you my story now. I don’t know were I’m from, but I know I was the first to exist. I was alone but soon a few people followed.

We made a circle called MASTER RUSEMAN. Only real MASTER RUSERS were allowed to join this exquisite circle. We agreed that we will never decide who is the best MASTER RUSEMAN. But after some time I found a way to lead my fellow comrades into a tricky situation. I claimed that I’m the best MASTER RUSEMAN in the circle. It didn’t take long till everyones jacobs were rommled. After they found out what exquisite trickery was played on them, they agreed to give the one who caused this discomfort the title GOD OF RUSE.

Now you finally realize what huge impact this ruse had. You never thought that you will be, in fact, rused by a godness. Somehow you feel honored. Honored to get your gustavsons jingled by the god of all MASTER RUSEMAN. The life you know does not exist anymore. You can only return to a dimishing shadow of what you called your life. The rusement was too strong. Not even time itself could recover from the wounds this monumental trickery caused you. I am, for my part, pretty proud of myself. Even I had my doubts if I could make a contrivance this huge and tricky. But I did it. I managed to create the most thoroughgoing RUSEDI. You have been rused by me, the ONE AND ONLY!

Even after 100 years you will still remember this day. The day of THE ruse.

The day the GOD OF RUSE personally made a statement, to intentionally discomfort YOU. SONGS WILL BE WRITTEN ON THIS MASTERFUL RUSE.

AND I HOLD NO REMORSE OR REGRET FOR I AM AND ALWAYS SHALL BE

THE GOD OF RUSE"

End caption

There is nothing funnier to me than poorly redrawn trollfaces made around the time everyone was mocking people who made rage comics

[fashionablejelly]

While procrastinating on my studies, I got to watch Jujutsu Kaisen. But there can be no free time if everything looks like a good object for Fashion and Philosophy essay! So here are my random thoughts on tattoo-like and not-tattoo-like things:)

In the 23-24 episodes of the 1 season there is a vilain, whose blood is poison which makes other people decompose if it touches them. And in the picture is one of the main charachters, when this blood got to her (don't look at the nails in her arm, it's her own doing and whole another story). So this poison-corrosive effect shows itself on the skin of the victim as this tattoo-like flower-looking drawings.

...But why did I think that they are tattoo-like? At first I didn't even see that these are flowers, they were simply tattoo-like marks. How do I distinguish which marks look like tattoos, and which are not?

Tattooing involves putting pigment under the skin with some kind of needle. But the marks from the cursed blood is not from any pigment and was not put in the skin, so deffinetly NOT a tattoo.

°•°•°°•°•°°•°•°••°•°•°°•°•°••°

I thought of other things that are like tattoos but not tattoos. So... temporary tattoos? They are not tattoos, they are stickers that stick to the skin. But they are tattoo-like.

Probably because there is an imitation of black ink on stereotypical place - sleeve tattoo. It's like the temporary tatto denies that it is fake, trying to persuade it's viewer that it is real.

But looking closer we can see, that it is not: in the photo it's a bad photoshop (an imitation of an imitation of a tattoo, wow), but in real life a temporary tatto is glimmering, slowly breaking off, etc.

But for children the temporary tattoos do not try to look like tattoos. They look like prints or drawings intentionally. So they are imitation of tattoos that do not try to imitate tattoos.

Then I thought of tattoos that are not tattoo-like, for example tattoos by Luke Cormier, that imitate stickers. However, looking closer, it looks like a tattoo - you can see that the pigment is under the skin, in real life you see that it is not the sticker by how it moves with the body part, all of that. It tries to bamboozle the viewer, but it's meaning is not to pass as a sticker, but to be a tattoo of one.

This is a tattoo that tries to imitate not a tattoo, but a thing from real life.

Another type of tattoos that are imitating something else is scar tattoos. Usually these are tattoos on parents to comfort their kid with the scar the tattoo copies. And it is a tattoo of what could happen naturally - that person could have got the same scar if he had a surgery their child had, and have grown that scar with their body. It's the only case out of mentioned, where a tattoo imitates an existing object and not a concept. However, this tattoo is not made to deny that it IS, in fact, a tattoo. It can copy but still stay a tattoo and it won't make the meaning less meaningful.

To continue a trend I established, this is a tattoo that fully copies not a tattoo, but has a meaning of a tattoo.

What is denying that it is a tattoo, are artificial freckles. It tries to look natural, like real freckles. But it goes through the process of tattooing, so definitely a tattoo. However, a viewer cannot differentiate between real and fake freckles. The person could have never had freckles, but the tattoo would look like they are there naturally. It's a tattoo that tries to successfully and completely imitate a real life thing, like it's natural on a person. So I would say it's one not-tattoo-like case.

Interesting case: temporary tattoos that are made to look like a makeup of a scar. It's, like, a tattoo-like-not-a-tattoo-that-imitates-an-imitation-of-a-bodily-posible-thing.

One other thing we need to consider are drawn characters with implied real tattoos. It is implied in a lore of a character that the tattoo process happend. So a character with tattoos is an imitation of a real person with real tattoos (the kind of imitation that does not try to decieve us that it is a real person)

Coming back to tattoo-like marks, they are tattoo-like because they do not look natural (like freckles or a rash, for example) and because they imitate black ink, they are in a drawing pattern, on a sleeve tattoo place. At the same time if you didn't see the character without these marks, you would think that these are her tattoos that were always there. It's because we cannot see a difference with a real tattoo in drawn world as it is drawn as a drawn tattoo would look like.

Phew, it was a lot.

But there is another thought about these tattoo-like marks that have appeared because of poisoning. They are not made consciously buy anyone: the ”tattoo master” - the vilain, whose blood made the marks appear, did not intended to make the marks (he wanted to poison, not to tattoo them, but he new that marks will appear)

The tattooee did not concent to be poisoned or to have these marks. It's just a signal of what is happening inside.

And then I thought that there is something in common - tattoos often represent thoughts of tattooed person - what they want on their body. So in some sense it is a signal of what is happening inside, thoughts, to be exact. The difference is in that tattoos are conscious, while the aforementioned marks are behaving more like an allergy reaction :))

[bluewithpurplepolkadots]

I recall 2012 Irma being such a damn disappointment so I have made my own version in that universe:

She’s a normal human girl and I picture her as being desi. Shés pretty tall, has braces and glasses and a messy pony tail and the signature big blue jumper like her 80s form did. She’s in April’s grade and a computer hacker expert.

She’s also a hopeless romantic (and yes reads fanfic oh no) as a call back to the 80s toon and gets a huge immediate crush on Leo after he saves her which she desperately tries to hide but only ever successfully hides from Leo himself really. Even Splinter knows.

Her bestie out of the turtles is Donnie though and they can at times when doing their brainiac thing take breaks to lament together: though at first they are terrible enablers they also at times can help each other not get too weird about it. (Thank god for that).

She also still really really hates Casey because he’s an asshole who destroyed her stuff once in the computer lab and ruined a massive project and NEVER apologised and worse is an ass to her: but like only because I find the idea of her hating him funny. One time April walks in on her and Donnie at a blackboard debating the pros and cons of getting rid of him (even though the only cons are ‘Raph and April would be sad :(’ and ‘logistics’ and April is afraid of what that last point means.

She’s kind of a lonely only child with distant adoptive parents who just gave her computers to keep her occupied. She kind of idolises the idea of having siblings/ a big family so she’s also protective of Mike because he’s the baby and she always wanted a baby brother.

She thinks Space heroes is kind of dumb but likes how Leo lights up about it a lot and even writes a fanfic for him. It’s terrible but he loves it.

Raph weirds her out because he likes Casey honestly at first but they get along eventually. Though she often swats at him for Mikey meanness and he rages as Mike sticks his tongue out from behind her.

Eventually as she goes through a character arc she kind of calls out the other romantic bullshit around her and saves the show/day in that regard. (Like April seriously wtf was up with kissing Donnie. Donnie you do have to stop but don’t compare yourself like that. Leo she’s your sister. STOP. I’m not just saying this because I have a crush on you either.)

She’s also a bi disaster and ends up also having a much more minor crush on Karai which she hates and April hates even more. Donnie is just bamboozled by all of this.

[postsforposting]

The double yellow lines mean do not cross, no passing, and specifically on the side of the road like these are, no parking, stopping or standing or waiting because all that is dangerous in this area and you will cause a wreck. Metaphorically it means stay on your own side, no fraternizing, with threat of catastrophe. This season we see a lot of fraternizing though, so those warning lines get permeable, ie dirty and faded.

E6: Battle lines are drawn: everyone on their own side, heaven and hell calling everyone a traitor ready to go to war, only barely stopping that. Heaven eradicates the third side, leaving Crowley by himself, Beez and Gabriel are off on their own with zero care for anyone else, under threat and left alone only because everyone else is busy.

Sides are defended, but not completely impassable. There's some wiggle room if you're smart but you're taking a huge risk. Hence, clear lines but kinda dirty.

E5: Everything is hunky dory until hell shows up. Sides exist, but ehhhh. This is absolutely not how Crowley feels about it, so I don't think the lines have anything to do with him. I think it's based on Az's perception and defense of the shop. Not exactly a "welcome" sign, more like a warning, I suppose.

E4: Shax hitchhikes with Az and he flashes back to 1941 where Furfur tries to expose Crowley and him. Battle lines, but they did get away without consequences, so dirty battle lines.

E3: Az has his Clue and things are going Great, Muriel is not a threat and easily bamboozled. No lines until Shax shows up, but even then, she still can't get in. It's a problem but not enough of one Crowley won't help her out with the water heater. So, dirty lines, because some fraternizing is allowed. However, Az doesn't know about this at the time, so I think Soho and the environment is acting like the sentient Bentley and responding in its own way to defend him in absence. It can't move like the Bentley but it can tell people to fuck off and watch their step. It knows who's persona non grata.

E2: Az does not like heaven but he has beaten them before. He also can't directly be mean to them, so I think his fear of them is showing here in that he does want them to piss off, but he can't say that. Much like how Crowley's plants shake when Shax threatens him in the car, though Crowley himself shows no sign of that. When the angels are successfully fended off, Az relaxes and so does the street; lines are completely gone when he's got a plan made with Crowley. I do not have an explanation for why they pop up for a flash at the start of the "our car" scene then disappear; apprehension that Crowley will say no about the car or the fact he's asking him to move in? It's a scene out of order with the rest? Something else is going on that we don't know about? Being that the street hops from wet to dry suddenly, I would go with either out of order scenes and/or the something else.

E1: Sides are still a thing, though it's been four years with no word. The lines do show up super bright but slightly dirty while Jim is waltzing down the street naked, which tracks with a refugee from the other side jumping ship, and Az absolutely not wanting him but reluctantly taking him in anyway. There is a single, not a double, patchy yellow line in Crowley's alleyway scene after Az takes Jim inside--single means you're allowed to do stuff but there are restrictions, you have to ask. Fits with Az taking in Jim conditionally, he only allowed it because of circumstances and after talking to him. When Crowley comes to the coffee shop, the lines are less bright and more dirty, following Az's apparent decision to help Jim, with or without Crowley. The lines are even more faded and filthier as they leave the shop to go meet Jim. I can't tell if the lines aren't there or we just can't see them when they fully cross the street. Same level of dirty as Crowley does the lightning, possibly completely gone during the actual lightning? Show back up during a second of close up during the lightning, so I think they are just too faded to see during a farther back shot. No lines when Crowley gets back from being summoned to hell in the alley. Bright, solid, unblemished lines as Crowley is far from the shop driving back, where we see crosswalks and he changes the lights to green to allow his traffic and stop pedestrians. Very faded lines, almost invisible when he unlocks the coffee shop back at the shop.

A really random and boring observation about Good Omens

At this point I’m just spotting new weirdness every time I go looking for screenshots of the previous weirdness I was looking at.

This one is with the double yellow lines and how they fade in and out seemingly at random. I’ve tried to explain the inconsistency away, but this is a set not a real road and the lines shouldn’t do what they do. It’s also not due to water because although yellow lines on the road can show up more when the road is wet quite often the wet patches on the road in GO are right over where the lines should be and they are still really faint. If the lines were painted on they’ve either had to repaint them in order to make them inconsistent or the lines are CGI-ed (which I think they might be because sometimes they look like they aren’t quite real) and they are either making a mistake with the CGI or are deliberately brightening and dimming the lines.

Anyway here’s timeline of what I mean (under the cut):

Episode 1:

The double yellow lines are there. Also we are flown right under the car when Crowley arrives, which seems like an unnecessarily complicated camera move if they aren’t trying to draw attention to the road surface in some way.

Anyway the lines stick around at this level of brightness until the end of the episode.

Episode 2:

The angels arrive. The lines are quite patchy but I think brighter than before.

When Crowley and Aziraphale leave the pub the lines are very light to the point where you can’t see them at all behind the Bentley.

They’ve pretty much gone entirely when Crowley walks to the Bentley at the end of the episode during the “our car” scene.

Oh, but wait suddenly they’re super bright (and the street is much wetter).

And oops, they’ve gone again (and the street is dry).

Episode 3:

Jim looks out the window. Notice how the street is wet around the gutters where the lines should be but they aren’t there, so it’s not wet=the lines are brighter.

Aziraphale leaves and there’s a hint of the lines and the parking space on the left. This is the faintest they have been.

They sort of fade in a bit more as he drives away. This is what makes me think they are CGI.

Then we come to Shax visiting the bookshop, which happens later that day. Look at those lines now! The brightest they ever appear, on both sides of the road (and the space is clearly marked as well).

Episode 4:

The next day Aziraphale returns from Edinburgh to brightly painted lines although not as bright as they were the day before, especially not around the parking space which looks more worn and dirty than it should, particularly since the street is wet (and in combination with his bizarre parking I wrote about here this seems really odd to me).

Episode 5:

Crowley arrives before they invite people to the meeting and the lines are there but not as bright as in the Shax scene, although this might be due to the lighting, which is very bright here and might be washing them out.

We only get a few more brief glimpses, when Jim goes to jump out the window, when Ms Cheng heads to the ball and when Mrs Sandwich heads to the ball, which is the clearest example. Notice how the lines aren’t dirty at all here.

Episode 6:

The next time we really see the lines is all the way at the end of the series when Crowley takes Maggie and Nina out of the bookshop. They’re bright, but dirty and patchy (we saw them clean with Mrs Sandwich just a few hours before).

They stay bright when Aziraphale is leaving with the Metatron – look how clean they are again.

Then Crowley drives away and the lines are dirty and scuffed again.

Why might this be?

Well if the lines are painted on the set then some of the dirtiness and scuffing might just be due to the fact that the scenes will be filmed out of order and the constant moving of equipment, cars and people might have made them dirty over time. This doesn’t explain the times when the lines are barely there though. What might explain that is post production lighting, where they turn up the brightness of the scene so much it washes the lines out and no one worries about it because they aren’t an important detail. It could also be a CGI mistake where they are generating the lines post production and the software isn't quite generating them properly and doesn't know how much to darken/brighten them depending on how wet the road is and also varies the dirt and fading ebcause its generating them fresh for each new scene. I don't know enough about CGI to really comment on the likelihood of this!

I should add, I don’t like set wear as an explanation, in particular because it takes months of use and exposure to weather for yellow lines in real life to show that much wear and this is an indoor set so I don’t think it’s what’s happening.

I tried to fit in the brightness of the lines to in-world explanations such as whether Aziraphale is in the bookshop or not. Or how much danger is around at the time. Or whether there are demons present or not. None of those seemed to work, but I'm not very good at correlating things like that so maybe someone else could fit them into something. The only explanation I could come up with that fits is that it’s a mistake or time in the GO universe isn’t working properly. So basicallly this post was just to point out the weirdness. If someone else can fit it in to an actual explanation I'd love to know what it is. Or maybe it's all just a filming error?

Anyway, now I've got that out of my system I'm going back to relationship dynamics in my next post. 😂

[muffindaddystyles]

prompt 1 with older brothers best friends!harry 👀

1. “Everyone keeps telling me you’re the bad guy.”

8. “I said stop staring at me.”

23. “I have a name and it’s not sweetheart.”

Third wheeling could never be fun. Not when you’re basically not even a wheel but an invisible person on a vacation watching couples kiss and yada yada.

“For fuck's sake.” Y/N grumbles changing a side snatching the blanket that got stuck under her and sandwiches her face into a pillow when she hears the steel roof atop her creak furiously accompanied by high pitched obnoxious moans.

Y/N's brother brought her along to their Italy trip, his wife’s bestfriend and his own bestfriend tagged along too leaving only Y/N to grump about their wild sex rendezvous.

She’s sleepless, homesick and probably about to get a stomach bug for living in yacht for four days atleast!

What’s so fun about jiggling in your sleep? None perhaps and the waves crashing at night that threatens you to swallow you down to the pit of ocean --- my pal, nothing is entertaining about it. Atleast for Y/N. She’s more of a hill station going person with her pup Frankenstein that oogles out from his small globe like window, comfy in his lil bag that Y/N moves around on her shoulders everywhere.

When the fracas of whatever’s taking place up doesn’t comes to halt, Y/N had enough, she isn’t very versed in coping with such situations since her dorm-mate is very nice.

So, she’s throwing the lid away to pop her head through the square like space and spreads her elbows up the roof, “Aish.” She immediately covers her eyes upon the sight of his brother and his wife doing it.

Their expressions comically panicked as they embarrassingly scrambles to clutch the flimsy sheets over them.

“Who does it all naked under an open sky?” She squeaks out, feeling her pulse tick and she peeks out towards the darkness from the slight gap of her fingers which are barely helping her avoid the scene that’d haunt her for life.

“Them bunnies and monkeys, ‘n many of our kind, Sweetheart.” She rolls her eyes at the familiarity of deep slow rumble that’s a bit slurred, probably from the Tequila they took with them. The voice never fails to froth bubbles in Y/N's tummy and it always involuntarily makes her nails dig into her palms.

Harry and Tina’s bestfriend went out to roam around Italy, or they told so and Albeit Y/N very well knows their intentions were more to exploring the city she didn’t butt in.

“I’ve a name and it’s not, Sweetheart.” She dismisses him with a grumble and his smirk shines through the shadow aggravating Y/N to an extreme she slips down shutting the door (like lid) at the them.

Harry Styles. Y/N's brother’s bestfriend. He’s everything Y/N loathes about. Bright green eyes, silken features and that dopey pearlish smile that makes everyone fall in love with him in nano-seconds.

To Y/N. He is an incubus. A witch that allures people without even knowing.

He’s a narcissistic asshole and Y/N's bad boy dream, unfortunately.

She hates herself for having a puppy crush on him for years now.

That friggin, Asshole.

He’s with everyone but her. It seems as if he’s getting stung by bees upon the mere closeness between them. A lamb ready to bite her down his stomach if she steps a foot near him.

At the moment when she’s sitting with her knees pressed to her chest, swollen eyes and puffy lips from not getting sleep last night.

She’s really hating that Harry looks so hot from the swim he just took as he dries himself sitting opposite to her. The droplets twinkling on his tanned thick body, his trunks wrinkled and bunched up into his thighs baring the tiger tattoo on front, his hair wet and oh so fucking tug-able – Y/N feels like Rachel from friends thinking all of that.

“Stop staring,” She mutters out loud when he wouldn’t stop licking the saltiness from his pink bottom lip keeping his intense gaze on her.

“What did y'say?” He pretends that we too engulfed in something else.

“I said stop staring at me.” Y/N grits. It’s annoying because it’s making her belly feel funny and loopy.

“The hills behind y'are just s'admirable.” He elevates his shoulders a bit panicked from inside and Y/N forced herself to not to twitch her eye when his chest muscles flexes due to his action.

Bamboozled she takes a glance from her shoulder to where he diverted his sight once she caught him. Her nose scrunched up and chin butted in disgust at the scenery, “That’s literally a heap of dead fishes!”

“Better than starin’ into a dead soul.” His lips down turned into a careless grimace and Y/N gasps out loud pushing the strands of her hair sticking to all of her face because of the breeze gush, “Why would you say that!?”

“’Cos you’re so mauve, that’s why?” He just wants to take a piss out of her. Nobody’s around and he’s finally getting time to talk to her even if it just to sit cross legged on her nerves and sip tea.

He’s actually lying. He thinks she’s more than mauve. She’s all those colours that usually macarons have, all those hues that butterflies wings have and all those tinctures that one find in gems then keep them safe.

She’s the colour he misses in his life.

“And you’re so fucking blue!” She grumbles and that slithered a deep wicked smile on Harry’s lips, “Like this deep ocean yer afraid of?” Her eyes widens at that and she almost lunges on her knees.

How did he know? Ofcourse, he'd. He’s everywhere. In every damn picture of wherever they went for recreation.

“I’m not.” She scoffs, her tone inconvenient and hazy as she shrinks into herself.

“Then take a dip,” She wishes that she could wipe that beautiful stupid smirk off his gorgeous stupidly lame face.

“Kiss my ass.” She spat out throwing a cushion towards him that lands on his lap, “I’d love to.” He barks out a laugh that rings through the waves.

“You’re such a stinky asshole.” She hits him with another that dumps against his chest, “Ow!” He feigns hurt with ridiculous comical expressions and throws the cushion back towards her which she successfully dodges, but, it falls behind her into the water.

“Shit.” She complains ducking around the edge of the yacht and stretches her arm to the plausible extent to grab the floating cushion.

Though when the tips of her toes leaves the seat she was on and she’s bending too much for her own sake Harry’s standing upright, “Hey stop —-" But. It’s too late as with a high pitched squeaky shriek Y/N's rolling first and falling into the water leaving Harry frozen for a second.

Panic chokes her throat and she moves her limbs around everywhere splashing water vigorously. Mouth gasping for oxygen but all that comes is salty water filling her mouth and lungs too, maybe as she sinks deeper and deeper.

“Fuck, Y/N!!” He shouts out jumping to save her immediately knowing she doesn’t know how to swim and he’s wrapping his palm around her neck and pulling her from her waist to himself under the water as she watches him with frightened fading eyes.

He comes back to surface quickly and presses her to his chest. She too clings to him for dear life feeling herself drift into a state of unconsciousness and hard to breath while he grabs the deck and lifts her with himself to it.

He doesn’t risk a chance and lays her limp body down and clasps his hands together pushing them against where her heat beats feebly, winces when she spurts out water painfully.

“Baby...fuck.” He pats her soaked pale cheek anxiously when she still remains unresponsive to him, breathing wearily so he does what has to be done.

He grabbed her chin, squished her cheeks making her lips pucker out and wrapped his mouth around hers sucking the water out and spat it out once his mouth was full.

His eyes slip shuts and he slumps with relief when Y/N coughs out loudly into his chest and he brings her into him murmuring assurance into her wet hair.

“You’re okay darling,” His whisper wavers from the trembling of his lips and his fingers divots into her softest of skin when he hugs her tightly, “’M sorry ‘s me fault, Sweets.” He rubs the bridge of his nose to take the sniff of her scent to calm him down and she shakes her head unable to talk, hands bunched up against his tummy.

“You should rest, yeah?” His gaze soft with care and it’s baffling for Y/N that he ever had this side too. Before, she could be on her feet he slipped his strong arms under her and hoists her up and into him without any trouble.

If Y/N wouldn’t be feeling very droopy and breathless she sure would have fought with him, maybe blushed and hid her face into his neck but she’s already knocking out in his arms from the stingy feeling in her eyes that made her super duper sleepy.

..

Clouds. Y/N's merged into them and they cover every inch of Y/N, wait where am I? She feels real nice comforted around with such warm bedding and she sure knows it’s not hers. The blurry sight infront of her is enough to aware her and a perfectly calloused hand comes rubbing her shoulder when she tries to sit up.

“Not heaven, o'summat.” He chuckles airily. His smile small and a tad awkward, he’s changed into another pair of trunks that are yellow and his upper half now sadly is covered from a blue tee.

“How you feelin'?” Y/N let his question fly over her head and stutters out loudly, “Why you being s'nice to me now?” It etches a frown on his face but soon it vanishes into an expression that Y/N couldn’t pick point.

“You’ve always been such a meanie...” She murmurs glumly. White sheets tangling around her torso as she moves infront of him – their knees touching.

“I umm –-...like you, I guess?” He has never been this nervous and jumblish with words.

“You guess?” She asks and scared that he missed up he rushes out to hold her and to make her believe that his feelings are true.

“No, no! I’m sure. I like you very much.” That puts Y/N into silence where she stares the gleaming jewels onto his fingers and ponders over what he said.

Harry Styles. Her first kiss. Her very first candy love crush and her dream of bad boy actually likes her back.

She tries to ignore the party poppers going inside her body and the drums of happiness rolling around her heart.

“But ... Everyone keeps telling me you’re the bad guy,” She doesn’t meet his eyes smoothing out the crinkles of sheets and her palm halts immediately when Harry hooks his thumb under her chin and raises it gaze lovingly into her eyes with sincerity, “Just ‘cos I stole yer first kiss?”

He laughs out sweetly when she bobs her head vigorously, “C’mon we were just sixteen! I’d have made sure to tell y'to keep it safe fo’ your precious person if I knew back then.” His pupils gleaming with hope and a tinge of eagerness.

The next thing she said with a slight bubbly pout caught Harry off-guard and in awe that how to process what she said with so much liability and vulnerability.

“But you’re my precious person!!”

“Yeah, baby?” He grins with a dimple tutting in and grabs her small cold hands to pull her closer to him.

The sweet name shies Y/N away and Harry thinks she couldn’t be more endearing as he takes her soft looking puffy face in the warm embrace of his hands and bops their noses together.

“Then g’na make sure ‘m your last.” He murmurs feathering his lips to the corner of her mouth that flutters her eyelids like butterflies and she pants out for more with a sweet whine, “Shit. You’re still very candy like since I last kissed ye'.” He giggles stroking his thumb up her cheek and takes a lick of her jutted bottom lip.

“Harry....” She complains tugging his weary shirt, “Yes me baby?” He quips out with those fake surprised eyes he makes with raised brows and puppy gaze.

“Kiss me alre –—,” He's swallowing her words down with the tender smush of his lips against hers in a kiss that’s slow and comforting at first, hearing onto the noises that she creates from tasting him and it deepens into something ardent and red when Harry pulls her over his thighs and guides her arms around his neck.

Their foreheads comes touching. Their hearts in sync and beside eachother. Their tongues loving on eachother.

“Dunno if I could ever stop.” He whispers breaking the knot of spit that connects their mouths with the stroke of his thumb against her shinning lip and pecks that spot twice.

“Then don’t.” Y/N looses her brain cells and only butterflies to whoosh into her skull as she grabs his jaw never letting him go and kisses him harder and rougher this time.

She’s gonna be in oh so much love with this bad boy that’s such a softie for her and she knows that there’s no going back.