#I’m really sounding like a dumb American in this one but oh well

[goosehadfood]

European cities scare me. You’re telling me you guys just have like… underground tunnels full of dead bodies that are hundreds of years old? What if you step on the wrong brick on the sidewalk and get cursed by an ancient spirit from 1312. Like I was researching Salzburg for a German project and you’re telling me that place was founded IN 696?!?!?? NO! Idk if it’s just my small American brain that can’t comprehend this but the city where I live was founded in 1846 (which mind you is pretty old in comparison to other North American cities) and I thought that that was old. How do you guys make sure you don’t destroy any historical sites? How do you make sure you don’t actually dig up a body?

[paperstorm]

Thanks for the tags @heartstringsduet and @corsage! Have a slightly longer snippet than usual to introduce you to a musician AU I am in the very very early stages of working on. ([Band name] redacted only because I haven't settled on one yet 😂 My dumb brain that loves a pun keeps suggesting Strand and Deliver but that's too silly)

-

TK blinks. For a moment, he’s sure he heard wrong. “A tour?”

“Limited American, to start,” Billy says. “And then expanding to Europe if we can, depending on ticket sales.”

With another blink and a dumbfounded shake of his head, TK reiterates, “You want me to go on a world tour? When I literally just got out of rehab?”

Billy frowns. “Oh, is there like … more shit you need to do? With that?”

“I – not, there isn’t …” TK babbles, unable to adequately voice why he’s reacting this way, because really, Billy isn’t wrong. He finished his 30 days. It’s been two weeks on top of that, and he’s stayed away from anything stronger than a regular strength Tylenol for the headache he had last Thursday. He’s not on probation, he’s not being required to do another month in some kind of halfway house. The only thing on his calendar for the foreseeable future is rotting on his couch with a bowl of cereal and binging some sitcom he’s already watched a million times. He doesn’t really have a good reason that he shouldn’t jump right back into work, he just wasn’t expecting it to happen. He hasn’t even reconnected with his band, yet.

“I’m not gonna force you to do anything,” Billy tells him, folding his hands on his desk and looking at TK with a furrowed brow. “If you don’t think you’re ready, we can put all this on hold until you are.”

“But?” TK asks, sensing there’s a big one coming.

Sniffing loudly, Billy’s hands transfer to his keyboard. It clacks noisily in the quiet room as he types, and then he rotates the monitor so TK can see the screen.

The sight that greets him is a Google search of his own name, and as Billy slowly presses the down arrow on his keyboard, TK’s eyes travel over headline after headline – Musician TK Strand seen emerging from upstate drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, and Lead singer of [band name] checks out of rehab; fans wonder what’s next for the group, and [Band name]’s critically acclaimed album dropped almost eight months ago, here’s why no one’s heard from them since.

He gets stuck for a moment on a particularly cruel one, questioning whether the band will have what it takes to pick up where they left off after a widely publicized relapse derailed what should have been their biggest tour to date.

“The most surefire way to shut all this up, is to get right back on the horse,” Billy says, in a voice that’s serious but not unkind. “You’ve still got an album full of new songs that your fans are dying to hear live, it’s just a few months later than it was supposed to be.”

“They don’t think I’ve got what it takes.” TK nods toward the computer screen.

Billy rotates it back toward himself so TK can’t see it anymore. “They’re wrong.”

“What if they’re not?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“I guess,” TK concedes, swallowing over his dry throat.

“There’s one more thing.”

“Okay.”

“The label suggested it, just so’s you know.”

“God, what?” TK groans, expecting the worst.

“If you agree to this tour, they want to pick your opener.”

“Oh.” TK frowns. It’s not nearly as bad as some of the things he was imagining. “That’s all?”

Pursing his lips, Billy asks, “You heard of Carlos Reyes?”

The name sounds vaguely familiar, but TK doesn’t recognize it well enough to be positive as he asks, “Carlos … wait, that song that’s been all over TikTok? That people are like hoedown dancing to?”

“That’s the one.”

“He’s a country singer,” TK says, stating what surely must be obvious.

“He is,” Billy agrees without further explanation.

“I don’t feel like we’ll have a ton of crossover fans.”

“He is up and coming.”

“Does he even have more than that one shitty song?”

Billy turns to his keyboard again and shows TK the guy’s Wikipedia page. He’s a year younger than TK and handsome in that wholesome, good Southern boy sort of way, complete with a cross necklace glinting against his clearly shaved chest. As Billy scrolls to the bottom, TK’s gaze catches the information that the lead guitarist and bass player for Reyes’s travelling band are a married couple, and TK barely holds in a scoff.

“He has two albums and an EP,” Billy points out. “He just hasn’t really taken off much, until now.”

Annoyed, TK asks, “And the label thinks, what, we can’t put asses in seats anymore without some lame TikTok star? That I can’t?”

“He’s not a TikTok star, he’s a musician with a growing fanbase. And he’s got a reputation that is not, unlike yours at the moment, covered in shit,” Billy explains in a no-nonsense voice.

“Right.” TK huffs and slides back in his chair. “So, that’s what this is. I was high at a Grammy party three months ago and now my name is mud, so the label wants me to bring some Mouseketeer in a cowboy hat along to calm the shareholders down.”

“I doubt they’d put it exactly that way.” Billy exhales and shrugs. “But basically, yeah. That’s the long and short of it. Reyes and his band are good clean fun, whereas people are still circulating pictures of you almost puking on Ariana Grande, so they’re not willing to put up the money for the tour unless you agree to bring him with you.”

“Fabulous,” TK mutters. “What could go wrong.”

“For the sake of your future in this business, you better hope absolutely fucking nothing,” Billy warns, and it still isn’t unkind, but he isn’t joking.

Tagging @theghostofashton @birdclowns @reyesstrand @strandnreyes @cold-blooded-jelly-doughnut

@carlos-in-glasses @actual-sleeping-beauty @thisbuildinghasfeelings @herefortarlos @heartstringduet

@goodways @alrightbuckaroo @lightningboltreader @freneticfloetry

@liminalmemories21 @nancys-braids @whatsintheboxmh @bonheur-cafebonheur-cafe

@reasonandfaithinharmony @thebumblecee @never-blooms @lemonlyman-dotcom

@sanjuwrites @orchidscript @jesuisici33 @kiwichaeng @honeybee-taskforce

@fifthrideroftheapocalypse @butchreyes @just-inside-her @firstprince-history-huh @captain-gillian

@tellmegoodbye @anactualcaseofthetruth @ironheartwriter @eclectic-sassycoweyes @ditheringmind

@emsprovisions @irispurpurea @nisbanisba @corsage @cheekgirl89

Want to be added or removed from the list? Lmk

[sailforvalinor]

So, I am back in the States!! HUZZAH, I am so happy to be home. But now I can talk a little about where I was, I’ve been living in Greece for the past three and a half months—so much happened that I don’t know how exactly to talk about it, so here’s a few of my favorite things:

THE RUINS. OH MY WORD, THE RUINS. I wanted to be an archeologist as a kid and I was living her DREAM. There are kind of just ruins everywhere, I was seeing them all the time, but of all of them I think I’d have to say that my favorite was either the ruins at Delphi or Ancient Corinth. (Y’all, I probably saw Paul’s tent shop.)

The coffee is absolutely fantastic there, you can get a good latte or cappuccino at any restaurant almost guaranteed. They also have amazing chocolate croissants, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat one in the States again. There is also the gift from heaven that is Lemon Coke, it comes in a solid yellow can and you can find it just about everywhere, restaurants stock them along with their regular Coke half the time. It is SO good and I don’t know what I’m going to do without it, and putting lemon in regular Coke is NOT the same.

Among other things, I got to take Greek Mythology, which was by far my favorite class of the semester. (Also, coincidentally, I took my final the same day that Percy Jackson premiered. Weird.) I also took Greek, which I did alright in. One of the most interesting problems I ran into with it was that my pronunciation was far better than my vocabulary, so anytime I’d greet someone in Greek (because I didn’t want to sound like a dumb American), they would usually assume I was fluent and start speaking to me in rapid-fire Greek. And then I’d have to shamefacedly ask if they spoke English 😂

The cats! There is an absolutely ridiculous amount of stray cats in Greece—I’d usually pass no less than three just on my way to the coffee shop. I wasn’t a cat person previously, but this semester might have turned me into one.

I found an absolutely wonderful church, as well as a Bible study with a ton of girls my age, the latter of which was something I was lacking growing up.

In general, I feel like I gained a lot of confidence on this trip, both in a broad sense and spiritually. For our Christmas Eve service today, my dad asked me to talk about a Christmas poem since I’m so passionate about poetry (I got to blab about Gloria in Profundis guys!!!), and it occurred to me afterwards that there was no way I would have been comfortable doing that before I left. There was a lot this trip taught me, but one of the greatest things I think I learned was how to be an independent member of a church without my parents. They’ve always told me that they wanted me to make my faith my own, which of course I’ve always understood, but that’s a little difficult when your dad is the minister. Being halfway across the world really forces you to be independent and weigh your own priorities, and having to make the active choice every morning to get up and take the hour-long trip via often uncomfortable public transport to church, to talk to people and make friends and not be antisocial and hide in a corner, was really good for me. I found myself becoming way more comfortable with both talking openly about my faith (something that used to terrify me) and just talking to people in general.

There was honestly so much on this trip that could have gone wrong, but it didn’t, and I’m so grateful for that. It of course wasn’t all sunshine and roses (the living was, shall we say, challenging), but there were so many moments where I felt God blessing me with something and going “Hey! This is for you! I’m giving this to you on purpose!” and I got so much comfort out of that.

All of that said, I am VERY happy to be home.

[tartsinarat]

Ngl was writing Luz speaking my home language and referencing specific slang from my cultural melting pot of a country for memey drawing purposes and I didn’t realise until I was rereading it I was like wait- Luz is American and Dominican she wouldn’t even know what that is

I’m so used to speaking my home language for jokey stuff so it was like second nature lmaoooo I’m such a dumb ass

At least I’m researching Dominican slang and its language coding right now so she’s more accurate because I would feel really bad for removing an important part of her identity even if the show doesn’t really go into it much

But on the other hand I kinda wish I didn’t realise because it would have been really funny for somebody to read without any context Luz speaking my home language as it’s not only a dying language that’s niche except in my home country it also sounds completely made up but is still technically both a Spanish and English dialect so I always forget which one is standard Spanish and which one is my countries version as it can be spoken with both standard Spanish or English in a sentence without it being grammatically wrong but in Luz’s case it wouldn’t even matter because she’d obviously speak the Dominican dialect of Spanish but at least I can her be more accurately bilingual though from my experience at least

Oh yeah further detail on my home language is that the best way to describe it is literally multiple languages in a trench coat that’s then been stitched into a Frankenstein language that’s arguably worse than English in that regard and speaks only in slang.

Being somewhat trilingual sucks (I can’t speak Spanish very well 😔 so I’m not properly fluent in all of them)

[lannisterdaddyissues]

I want to enable your BillRita screaming so for those ship asks...

How do they sleep?

What's their most and least favorite thing about each other?

How are they with PDA?

What's their favorite thing to tease each other about?

What little things remind them of each other?

I would apologize for how many of these things I sent but we both know I'm not sorry...

OHHHHHHH HEATHER YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH YOU’VE ENABLED ME WITH THIS I’M FROTHING AT THE FUCKING MOUTHHHHHHH GRGSHGRHFJGHASRJGHASJFHSAGRJSFSGAS YOU KNOW I LOVE THEM!!! YOU KNOW I DO!!!!

IM SORRY THIS TOOK 84 YEARS BTW AND THERES A LOT OF TONAL DISSONANCE IN THIS BECAUSE I WAS BEING SILLY AT FIRST BUT THEN I GOT SO FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT THIS YOU KNOW HOW I AM AHRESGAKJHJSGKHALSJGKHFASG ANYWAY-

im putting this under a cut because it is. so fucking long. im so sorry for my mental illness

3. What's their favorite thing to tease each other about? AHHHHHH i think we all know rita will bully bill over anything and everything because she's just. so mean to him 😭 but i think her favorite thing to make fun of him for is his accent, or really just his being american in general because i think he’d be the most stereotypical american guy lol. he has a silly, dumb american accent and he likes silly, dumb american sports and silly, dumb american food! rita pretends to find his Americanisms™ exasperating but privately she thinks they're funny lmao

as for bill, his favorite thing to tease rita about is how messy she is. i’ve already said it, but rita being a messy bitch and bill being a neat freak is one of my favorite headcanons about them sjdfhskjgffjs… you’d think being in the army would’ve taught rita how to put things away but no, bill finds her bras and stuff lying around all the time and it was awkward at first but he’s gotten used to it now, so he lets her have her little rebellion against army regulations and politely pretends that isn’t her. uh. underwear. wedged between the couch cushions next to him when he sits down to do Important Media Relations Major Stuff™ on his computer 😳

5. How do they sleep? they sleep back to back because it's a show of trust and vulnerability for both of them... blubbubbublbddlwwbwudfbfbldludubldublub;;,.,$$.,$,&.,., goodbye... i'm crying now...

of course, by the time the morning rolls around bill is normally lying half on top of rita and drooling a bit on her shirt, which isn’t super sexy but bill will be bill 🤷‍♀️

7. What's their most and least favorite thing about each other? AHHHHHH oh my god. i have to think long and hard about this and it sounds like a cop-out but i truly don't think bill really has a favorite thing about rita. if you ask him what it is, he will actually spontaneously combust from thinking too hard.

but the short answer is her smile!!! he works so fucking hard to make her smile—cracking jokes, doing nice things for her, earning her praise by proving his competence—and he swears it lights up the entire room whenever he can get her to do it!!! 😭 and if he can get her to laugh? he won’t be able to think about anything else but that sound for DAYS

on the other hand, his least favorite thing about her is…well, probably her optimism. she's not very good at it. in fact, most of the time it just makes him feel worse whenever she tells him he’ll just have to try harder next time! like gee, thanks rita! he was already doing that but he’ll take it into consideration… just like he did the last time… and the time before that… and before that…

when it comes to rita though, she would never, even on pain of death, say anything sappy like her “favorite thing” about bill where someone else can hear her, but i think her favorite thing about him is—surprisingly, since it’s his least favorite thing about her—his optimism.

for her, it’s just been so long since she was able to enjoy things without feeling guilt or some kind of loss, but bill somehow never lost that. which certainly isn’t to say he didn’t acquire his fair share of trauma or grief or loss along the way, but he remains steadily resilient in the face of adversity even in the very last iteration—“we’ve had worse :)”—and that strikes a chord with her, i think. then, slowly, being around someone so stubbornly happy despite carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders starts to not only impress her, but it heals her. with his help, she learns to enjoy things again: the delight of a good meal after years of carrying a bad aftertaste in her mouth, the comfort of a spacious hotel room and a soft bed after sleeping on the ground for god knows how long, the satisfaction of a healthy jog just around the block after spending years running at a sprint with no breaks. the all-consuming joy of someone knowing her the way she never dreamed anyone would ever know her again after before. the relief of not having to think about 'before' anymore because now she has an 'after' to look forward to instead.

ahem. sorry. i got carried away for a second.

that being said, her least favorite thing about bill is easy to pin down and that is his complete and utter lack of dignity LOL... rita can say for absolute certain she has never met a man with as little pride as bill cage, and although he is rather funny and makes for surprisingly good company on a quiet day, he is often ridiculously embarrassing to be around and can be very difficult when he doesn’t want to do something because he’s being a chicken about it🙄

14. What little things remind them of each other? ohhhhhhh 🥺🥺🥺 i apologize because u will get a LOT of sappiness for this but-

on bill's side, he is reminded of rita in everything, but mainly in their experiences together. he sees her in a young woman's loosely braided hair as she passes him on the street. he sees her in his coffee cup when the waitress taking his order asks if he wants sugar or cream. he sees her in the sun at 6:45pm exactly, when he and rita sat together on the fence outside the farmhouse and watched it disappear over the horizon. in his lifetime, he's experienced everything with her, and he probably has as many things to remember her by as there are stars in the cosmos.

of course, he's reminded of her in other ways as well. things she taught him. he thinks of her when he looks to the sun to check the time rather than turning over his wrist, just like she taught him. he thinks of her when he does his stretches at the gym, just like she taught him. he thinks of her when he checks all his exits every time he enters a room and someone closes the door, just like she taught him. everything he knows he learned from her and for her.

it's harder for rita though, because she doesn't have anything to remember him by, so she remembers the little things instead: his preferences and whatnot. she pretends not to care when he tells her where he's from or what his favorite color is, but she thinks of him when his favorite baseball team is shown on television, or when she goes for a walk in the park and it starts to rain even though it's sunny out because sunshowers make him smile the brightest :')

26. How are they with PDA? UGHRGRHREHGHUDRHGJSHRKHASG DONT MAKE ME THINK ABOUT ESTABLISHED BILLRITA AND PDA ILL EXPLODE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

no but bill has ALWAYS been a pda guy that much is so obvious!! i think he was always chasing something real with his old girlfriends, and even if it never felt like much with them, it was better than nothing... and then he fell head over ass into the mimic war and the closest thing to PDA he got was a kick in the gut or the barrel a gun trained on his temple, so surely no one can fault him for craving comfort, reassurance, intimacy—anything to take him away from the reality he was living in for even 5 seconds.

...and this did not answer the question at all which is to say bill is SO fucking annoying (affectionate) about pda 😭 rita please hold his hand please kiss him on the forehead please cuddle him he wants to hold you he wants you to hold him PLEASE!!! he will actually die if you don't and then you'll be sad (he hopes) :'(

meanwhile rita is a fan of pda in the way cats are a fan of anything. she either wants all the fucking pda or none of it. if she's not the one initiating, bill is Not the one getting it 😔

[jerk-bitch-idjit-assbutt]

How to Fix Ilvermorny

Issue: 

One School for ALL of America??

Fix:

A seperate school for each state. (more detail under the cut, i've put too much thought into this)

Ilvermorny STARTED OUT as a single school is Massachusetts, founded by Morigan and her family. At the time (1620) this was perfectly fine. “America” was still just the 13 colonies. Which is still pretty large and could have likely used a few more schools to manage well, I imagine a witch from Ireland wouldn't have really thought of that. Especially since she canonically didn't intend to found a wizarding school from the get-go. She was just trying to teach her sons. Other little wizards and witches slowly made their way there, and she decided to try her hand at teaching them too, and the school grew from there. 

Now, as America grew in size and population… One school ain’t gonna cut it for long. I’m sure we’ve all seen the maps that compare the size of the UK to the size of the US. (If you haven't, look it up, its pretty funny. Texas alone is bigger than the whole country.) The expansion didn’t happen overnight, but i imagine at some point the Ilvermorny staff would have had an “oh fuck” moment, having way too many students and way too little space, and they needed a solution FAST.

My solution? Ilvermorny School of Magic is one school, technically. One curriculum, one main campus, one overarching school leadership. However, every state (other than Massechusets, which is where the main campus is located) has it’s own satellite school or branch campus. Idk which term is more accurate. Essentially, every american wizard goes to Ilvermorny. It’s just “Ilvermorny of Pennsylvania,” “Ilvermorny of Texas,” “Ilvermorny of Washington,” etc etc. All of these schools function basically the same with only a few minor differences based on the cultures of where their from. They all have the same four houses, mostly the same structure, the same general curriculum and content. 

This solution also allows for worldbuilding that would further differentiate American wizarding society from British wizarding society (because i’ve always felt a little iffy on how it kinda seemed like the US corner of the wizarding world was just a british author being like “haha look at the americans trying to copy us cause we’re cooler,” yknow?) 

FOR EXAMPLE

Quidditch is still a big thing here, yeah? I think thats a pretty agreed upon fandom thing. (I’m also playing around with maybe we gave it a different name, to mirror the “soccer/football” divide lol, but for now lets call it Quidditch for ease.) Every state school has it’s own Quidditch team, and rather than playing against the other houses, you play against the other schools. Which means… y’all know how the South treats college football? 

Yeah. When Quidditch season starts, we are invested. We are locked in. Oh, your kid made the school Quidditch team? You’re bragging about that shit. You’re traveling to all the games. I don't care if their playing in Alaska, you’re going. Your kid didn't make the team? Doesn't matter! You’re still so fucking invested. Signs in the front yard, foam fingers, jerseys, posters, bitching about how the ref must have been blind because how in the world did Ilvermorny Illinois beat Ilvermorny Georgia? There are rivalries, too, and they are INTENSE. And they 100% mirror the state rivalries that already exist in muggle US culture. (And yes, i’m using muggle instead of no-maj. Cause no-maj sounds dumb as hell.)

ALSO

The size and prestige of each Ilvermorny campus depends solely on the population (and general wealth) of the state that they are in. California has a gigantic school that is practically it’s own fucking town at this point. Rhode Island, on the other hand? They pretty much only have their own school for principles sake, they could probably have been looped into Ilvermorny Connecticut or Ilvermory Massechusettes without causing too much of a problem. But if every other state gets their own, Rhode Island kind of has to as well. This also means theres totally conversations that happen when you meet someone from another Ilvermorny that’s just comparing campuses. Like you’re telling me you had Three whole quidditch pitches?! And how many students per graduating class?? Jesus. (Think the conversation you have between small town kids and big city kids.)

(There was also definitely some fucked-up complications when segregation and “separate but equal” happened, but i dont want to get into the politics of it all, that’s a whole different post that someone with more knowledge can make.)

Anyways, that’s my two cents. I have more ideas, more issues with Ilvermorny that i want to find ways to fix and flesh out, but this post in long enough already.

[ask-hannah-blog]

Heels! I mean, hi...

I'm the feetster of soleone who sent an ask on your toes? Solery, blog...

I'm heely worries about my roomie's feet, she hasn't been home in weeks and idk where she's gone! I hope you can heel. Help. I hope you can help.

I just need to wiggle my toes until I feet better... so much foot brain fog recently

Wow that’s hot.

I must have you, I mean help you.

So you and your sister have been infected by a pack of your local foot fiends. You are already pretty far gone, while your sister is only starting to show sign. All that brain fog, and difficulty speaking, it’s from the infection.

But don’t worry your sister and I are here to help. She’s decided that the best thing for the two of you is to turn into clown. That way we stop you from going completely feral and falling into the clutches of those evil fiends. I know being a clown isn’t ideal. TRUST ME I KNOW, but it’s better than being a predatory animal, or the toy of one like the fiends want for you.

It’s up to you though, I won’t force you. I’m a special type of clown and you’ll only be infected by me if you follow my advice.

Your sister might already be changing. She might have white splotches on her skin, bright streaks in her hair. She maybe be giggling a little bit or even smiling. These are all common symptoms and are going to accelerate as time goes on.

If you follow my advice the same things will start to happen to you, so be prepared for that.

Let’s begin.

The two of you are becoming clowns for me. Accept that, and let my power move through you. Give me a nice big smile when you accept this fact.

Good.

Good girls.

Sit there and smile, realize how good it feels to smile, how good it feels to smile for me. Look at your sister realize how pretty she looks smiling. Think of how pretty you could look if you smiled to. Every time you see your sister your smile gets just a little bit bigger.

Good Girlsi

While you sit there smiling with your sister, you’ll want to find some clown porn to play on your screen while you smile, and obey. You don’t have to watch it, it doesn’t even really matter what you pick, though it will probably be foot porn knowing you two. You just have to have it playing on the background. Let the sounds of those clowns having fun fill your ears. Let your eyes rest on it when your brain fog makes reading too hard. It’s okay, you’re not watching it, just looking at it. It’s important that you do.

Find some clown porn now. I’ll wait.

Good girls.

Now this one should be easy for you.

Rub your feet for me.

That’s right good girls.

As much as we despise the fiends, they have good taste. They share our love of feet, but we’re so much more. This should be exciting for the two of you. You’re going to be the first clown fiends. You might be the trick to solving this conflict between us. A bridge! Like the bridge of your feet! Gives those a rub, squeeze them, good girls. Good clown girls.

Big smiles now.

That’s nice.

Just two smiling sisters watching a bit of clown porn, and obeying their queen. It’s so natural so American. You might as well be sticking your feet in apple pie. Oh yeah, that’s a funny thought isn’t it? It’s okay to laugh we’re all clowns here. We all wish we could be wiggling our toes in some sweet mush right now.

Brain fog getting better?

No I wouldn’t think so, but that’s okay. Fiends have brain fog because they’re dumb animals. Clowns have brain fog because I think for you! Isn’t that nice? I see you smiling. Good, yes that’s nice. So nice of me. Don’t worry I don’t ask for much, just keep following my advice.

That’s all for now girls, just keep rubbing and smiling until your porn is finished. You’re not clowns yet but it’s a good first step.

Keep doing this every day and my powers Will shield you from those nasty fiends.

Keep me updated 😘

[satansapostle6]

Angel With A Broken Wing | Jonah Simms

And if I may just take your breath away / I don't mind if there's not much to say / Sometimes the silence guides a mind / To move to a place so far away / The goosebumps start to raise / The minute that my left hand meets your waist / And then I watch your face / Put my finger on your tongue 'cause you love to taste, yeah / These hearts adore, everyone the other beats hardest for / Inside this place is warm / Outside it starts to pour

Warnings: Mature language and themes. Sexual content.

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten: Don’t You Know

“Hey. Sophie,” Jonah grinned as he looked up from our table by the cafe.

“Huh?” I looked up.

”If you could go anywhere, right now, on a free vacation, for as long as you want, where would you go?” he asked me.

“Vietnam,” I offered. “It’s cheap, and it’s awesome.”

Jonah didn’t seem thoroughly pleased by this answer.

“No, but… Okay. Somewhere you haven’t been before,” he decided.

“Easy. Paris,” I reply.

He smiled. “Paris, huh?”

I nod. “Mhm. I’d do the whole thing. Food, shopping, cigarettes, gay stuff…”

Jonah nodded appreciatively. “Those are your favorite things… I’ve also never been to Paris. I’ve been to Chamonix, though…”

“Ugh,” I mutter at his exaggerated pronunciation. “Did you tie an ascot around your neck, too?”

He frowned. “It was winter… You know what, never mind.”

“I’d wanna go to Chamonix,” I remarked.

“It’s beautiful,” Jonah expressed.

“It’s where Frankenstein was set.”

He just smiled. “You’re really odd, you know that?”

“What?” I argued, “It was.”

“I read it,” he nodded, not disagreeing with that particular fact.

“I think it was the best book ever written,” I confessed.

“It was amazing, yeah,” Jonah agreed, “It’s amazing what you discover when you realize the book isn’t about some dumb, grunting monster…”

“Mary Shelley was an icon,” I offered my hot take, “She lost her virginity on her mother’s grave.”

Jonah made a face. “I… really hope that’s true,” he admitted.

“I hope I find someone who matches the energy of my perversions that well,” I sigh wistfully.

“That’s more or less the dream, yeah,” Jonah agreed.

We both smile as we eat and drink. He studied me for a moment, before having something else to say.

“I like that tattoo,” he said, pointing to the American traditional rose on the right side of my neck.

I smiled. “Thanks.”

“I don’t see tattoos like that often,” Jonah told me, “They look like… old sailor tattoos, or something. They’re really cool.”

I nod. “American traditional’s a lost art.”

He nods. “Is that what that is? It looks really cool.”

“Thank you.”

He nods as he looks at the one on the other side of my neck. “An eight ball… what does that mean?”

I stare. “People… get it for luck.”

He looks at me curiously. “Did you?”

I shake my head, and he slowly picks up on it.

“Right… Uh…”

“Eight years,” I finished. “I’m eight years clean. Snow, and ice.”

“Got it… Cool,” he smiled, “I mean… Not the drug stuff, obviously or… not that I would judge someone for doing drugs, I just mean, like...”

I just nod, knowing what he meant.

“That’s… impressive, for sure. Good for you, like truly…”

“Thanks,” I nod, as we just quickly move on. “I work at a Cloud 9 and used to do meth… I’m not special.”

“No, you are,” Jonah said, before immediately realizing how it sounded, “I mean… You’re impressive. Like, really impressive…”

“Thank you,” I responded, as we eventually moved on from the topic.

“Mhm.”

Jonah thought to himself for a moment before speaking up again.

“What about that? On your shoulder. What’s that?”

“My grandpa’s name,” I explain.

“That’s sweet,” he smiled, “How do you say it…?”

“Trăng,” I spoke.

“Oh, okay,” he nodded.

“That’s usually a woman’s name, but he was named after his dad’s ex-girlfriend,” I explained.

Jonah stopped. “That’s… Something I have a lot of questions about.”

I nodded. “So did I.”

“That’s… really nice, though. That you got that… Not… the ex-girlfriend thing,” he corrected.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“You were really close?” he asked me.

“Mhm.”

“What about your grandma?”

I froze.

“…Really?” he asked softly. “What was the story there…? If you’re okay with, you know…”

“She sucked,” I concluded. “Or does… I don’t even know if she’s alive.”

“I’m sorry,” Jonah said sympathetically.

“It’s fine,” I shrug, “She’s dead to me.”

Jonah looked at me curiously. “You know, I’ve never really heard of someone having that bad a relationship with a grandparent before…”

I didn’t really know what to say.

“You can have one of mine, if you want,” he offered. “I’m sure I could spare the extra Werther’s caramels…” he joked lightly.

I smiled. “I… appreciate the offer,” I concluded.

He nodded. “Of course,” he agreed with a smile. “You know… I kinda feel bad for her, your grandma…”

My brows furrowed. “Don’t. She sucks.”

I couldn’t have emphasized this enough.

“No, I believe you,” Jonah promised, “I just… pity anyone who misses out on being close with you.”

I smiled softly. No one said anything for a second, as we picked at the french fries we were eating.

“You want another soda?” he asked attentively.

I nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“I’ll be right back,” Jonah smiled, picking up our cups.

I thought for a second as he walked away, the fear slowly setting in. It was inescapable. There was nothing I could do but surrender to a violent current. I felt myself screaming inside, my chest getting hot, and my ears ringing so loud I couldn’t hear myself think.

“Hey,” Jonah smiled brightly, passing me a brand new Coke, “I got you new ice… I tried to kinda crush it up because I know how you like the ice chip-y ice, but it kinda got all over me…”

I practically dissociated right in front of him as he tried drying off his shirt with shitty thin napkins.

“Uh-huh,” was all I could manage absentmindedly.

I had a crush on Jonah.

“You want more fries?” Jonah babbled on as he sat across from me. “I kinda want more fries, but I can’t eat a whole other basket by myself… I also kinda got ketchup on half of them, and I know how much you hate ketchup… You know what, I’ll just go buy ‘em. My treat.”

This entire time Jonah had been smiling and then walked away, I barely had any time to process what was going on.

“Thanks,” I murmured.

*****

“You’re crazy,” Garrett said flatly.

“Garrett!” I snapped, looking around to make sure no one was listening in on our conversation, “Be serious!”

“I am being serious!” Garrett exclaimed. “I don’t know what you want from me! You have a work crush. Big deal. I have more work crushes than I do wheels.”

“Dude!” I groaned. “It’s Jonah…”

“Yeah, I got that part,” he assured me impatiently.

“Come on, bro, I cannot have a crush on Jonah!” I whispered.

“Why not?” Garrett shrugged, “He’s a good-looking dude—”

He caught himself just as he said it.

“Do not tell him I said that,” he muttered, “He doesn’t need it.”

“Do you really think I’m gonna be talking to Jonah about this conversation?!”

Garrett sighed. “Sophie… You have a work crush. On the work slut. Big deal; you have eyes.”

I groaned in frustration. “It’s a problem, Garrett!”

“Why,” he wondered, “Has there been the taping of a picture of his face to things? ‘Cause that’s usually when it becomes a problem.”

“Garrett, can you be real for, like, two seconds?!” I cried.

“I am being real!” he exclaimed. “I’m always being real! It’s kind of my brand.”

“Garrett, I’m a mother!” I reasoned, “I can’t be distracted by work ass!”

“Why? Fathers do it all the time,” he pointed out. “You think any of the Mad Men guys went crying to Jon Hamm when they found themselves ogling Christina Hendricks?”

“Well—” I paused. “Wait, does that make you the Don Draper in this scenario…?”

“Not the point!” Garrett interrupted me. “Point being, you need to just accept that you find him attractive, and move on, like a normal adult.”

“Ugh,” I sighed, as he seemed to get more and more fed up with me.

“Sophie, dude,” Garrett breathed, “You’re into the little pretty boy flirting with you. Big deal—”

“Wait,” I cut him off, looking at him nervously, “Is he actually flirting with me? Did he say something?”

Garrett stopped dead in his tracks, eyes widened.

“Garrett!” I cried.

“Dude, I don’t know what to tell you,” he reminded me, “The only person with any real insight as to how Jonah feels is Jonah. Anything else is just working you up for nothing. You need to either decide if that’s worth asking, or just accept it’s just a silly little work flirt, and move on.”

“You’re right,” I nodded, thinking. “…What do you think I should do?”

Garrett sighed, fully prepared to give his full, honest opinion.

“Honestly? I think… if it’s worth Marcus, what harm could Jonah really be?” he looked at me expectantly.

Damn, I thought, Garrett really had a point there.

“Look, I’m staying as far away from this whole situation as I would any other,” Garrett stated, “But I do know Jonah well enough at this point, probably better than I want to... But any terrible, or otherwise obnoxious thing he would do would only be because he’s Jonah.”

I nodded slowly, taking in that realization.

“He’s not gonna go out of his way to hurt you,” my friend assured me, “And he’s not gonna cheat on his girlfriend with you.”

I saw that he was absolutely right. The only reason I was afraid of liking Jonah was because of Marcus, and not Jonah. Fuck.

-

Chapter Eleven

[henrys-wee-hen]

No-one Fucks With The Lobos - Chapter 27

This one might be the end. It might not. I'm going to go back and re-read everything, because believe it or not, I wrote this without a plan at all.

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48070186/chapters/127886374

Teddy was indeed a man of his word. He did fuck my brains dumb, and then he fed me, and then he took a hold of me in ways I didn’t think I’d ever been taken hold in. Of? See, I told you – he fucked me dumb. So dumb that I still apparently can’t form a full, coherent sentence.

The morning after was when Teddy relented. He woke me up with rather minty morning breath, and then – asking full consent before he did so – slipped his hand down my stomach and turned me right on again. He woke me slowly, with kisses everywhere he could reach before he rolled on top of me and slid himself into me easily… because of course, with the morning haze, I was fully prepared and ready for him. I must have fallen asleep again (or he’d knocked me clean out again), because I woke up a little while later to the smell of waffles, and the sound of plates clinking.

I made my way into the bathroom and took a shower already, then dressed comfortably for the day. I padded quietly through to the kitchen, and found that the double doors to the roof top terrasse were open. I felt a faint trickle of guilt slip down into my stomach. We hadn’t really used the roof terrasse after Teddy’s incident… but since Teddy had done something to me for months, I realised I couldn’t be sure of any single memory I had of him. So, I made my way out there, and found Teddy on the phone, surveying his empire.

“Sure. Call me when it’s done.” He passed a hand over his hair and sighed. A young woman in a cleaning-type apron was setting a breakfast out. Just two seats at the table overlooking Teddy’s little slice of the world which he controlled. I felt like baby Simba watching Mufasa work his kingdom. Everything the light touches is yours… well, I knew everything the light still shone on in my brain was mine… but for the rest? All shadowy dark areas I had no idea about at all. “I know, but I can’t be there today. I promised (Y/N) we could talk for a bit about stuff, and I don’t know how it’s gonna fucking go. I think you can handle a couple runners, Mack, come on.” Teddy put the phone down after a moment.

The woman gestured for me to sit.

“No habla inglese,” she said a little meekly. I nodded, and took a seat.

“Gracias,” I murmured. She smiled pleasantly, and when I continued in Spanish (albeit rudimentary Spanish), she broke into a full grin. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m (Y/N). I’m married to Teddy.” I had forgotten the Spanish for spouse.

“I know who you are.” She bowed her head. “Would you like some coffee? Or tea? I am just waiting for the hot food to cook.”

“Please,” I said. Teddy was watching me. “Have you worked for Teddy long?”

“Yes.” She picked up an insulated pot and poured me a cup of coffee. “Many years. But you were either sleeping, or out when I come to clean. I don’t speak English, you see, so Mr Lobo always asked me to come and clean when you were out.” She served me some berries, and some other fruits. I thanked her again. “But you were also sleeping a lot. So I did not disturb you.”

“Right…” I sipped my coffee. “What is your name?”

“Monica,” she smiled.

“Monica here is an absolute angel,” Teddy said, in near-perfect Spanish. But for the soft American twang he had when he spoke, I’d have thought he was Spanish. “She’s really done a lot for me over the years. She works hard, she’s reliable and trustworthy… and she’s an excellent cook, too. Always finds the best berries.” Teddy took a seat and helped himself to the berries.

“Gracias, Senor Lobo,” Monica smiled.

“How’re you feeling, beautiful?” He switched to English. Monica took it as her cue to leave us and check on the food.

“Oh, I’m beautiful now?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“You always were.”

“Funny. Yesterday morning, you couldn’t stand me being needy.”

“Because you were being fucking needy. Now you’re not. You’re all cute –“

“You mean you’ve finally had a decent fuck and you’re feeling benevolent.”

“Put those claws away, sweetheart.” Teddy’s eyes flashed annoyance, but like an adult dog with a puppy, he let it slide with a small warning. “Or I won’t be feeling so benevolent…”

“Got it.” I looked around as Teddy poured himself some coffee. “First thing I really want to know is whether you actually did nearly throw yourself off the roof that day.” Teddy looked at me as he took a sip.

“Well…” He sighed. “What do you remember?”

“I remember you were coming off the coke, and you climbed up on the railing and slipped, because it was raining. And I grabbed you and hauled you in.”

“Huh. Right.” He set his cup down. “Not entirely what happened. But I’ll get to that.”

“Go on, then.”

“Let’s wait for Monica to bring the food. Then I’ll tell you everything while we eat.”

Teddy

In a way, Teddy had been waiting for this day to come. The day that (Y/N) would finally crack that what had actually happened, versus that beautiful perception of an addled, swimming brain. And indeed, the two were not entirely joined together. In fact, there was a lot of stuff that (Y/N) remembered just plain wrongly, rather than slightly off. Teddy ate a little quicker than (Y/N), so he ate his fill, then replenished his coffee.

“I’ll start from the beginning, ‘kay?” (Y/N) gave a nod, eating quietly.

Teddy took a breath in, leaning back. He turned his phone on silent, and placed it into his pocket. He stretched, and got himself comfy.

“When we were in the restaurant that day, I was on an enforcement job. Run of the mill, you know? We were there, me and the lads, because the people running it hadn’t paid up in a while, and one of the lads thought there was a mole. And a couple days before, I found out that one of my guys was the cousin of one of the restaurant owners, and they’d been selling intel on us for a decent price, and then paying us to keep them safe. Meaning, keep their guy on the team. So I went over there to shake ‘em up a bit, and it got a little zany.

“I didn’t plan on kidnapping you, (Y/N). But when I saw you, I wanted to scare the shit out of you. But I also knew that, since I’d publicly killed your friend, and your body wouldn’t be found in the fray, that any rival gang would be out to get you. They’d be out for blood. Because you’d have seen things that day, and if the Sandersons had been selling info to more than one other family, they’d assume you knew shit. So, I had to keep you safe. But I also really wanted to break you down and make you part of our team. My mom and I understood that you were great at your job. Smart, clever, intelligent, and a good analyst. You would be very good on our team. But for that, we needed to turn you. I needed to turn you, honestly, mom wasn’t gonna do a fucking thing. But yeah. I know how to break people, and I did manage to break you pretty nicely.

“Once I had you wanting me, it was easy enough to start manipulating you. I put you on a light dosage of ketamine, to keep you a little pliable. I knew over the months – or weeks, I originally thought, but you didn’t fucking relent so it became months – I knew that you’d need higher doses, but I didn’t wanna have you addicted to it. So I kept your doses low, and sometimes skipped ‘em altogether. And in the end, you didn’t need any. I stopped dosing you completely recently.” He pressed his lips together, watching me eat for a second. “You didn’t make any moves to leave, aside from the fact that you thought my behaviour had changed outright. It hadn’t.” He took a moment to eat some of the food on his plate.

“Truth is, (Y/N), I wanted you for a shit long fucking time. And I wanted you on your knees and I wanted you to be yourself, your good little self... but those two together can’t exist. So I had to pick one. I wanted you to want me more than anything.” He drank some coffee and sat back, making it clear he wasn’t going to add anything further. (Y/N) watched him for a bit.

“I remember things from the past few months, Teddy,” (Y/N) said quietly, after a few tense moments of silence. “I have a lot of memories. Things that definitely happened to me.”

“Yeah.”

“So... alright. Fine. Let’s start with you coming off the coke.”

“Happened.” Teddy smiled. “You actually helped me with that.”

“Did I take the rest of it to your mom?”

“Yeah. You were a little out of it. But I was in a bad way with it. It’s addiction when you can’t fucking function without it… and my normal wasn’t fucking normal, was it?” he chuckled softly, shaking his head. “But you didn’t want me on it, so I got clean for you. And I got back to my old self.

“We went to see my mom when you were a little more lucid. I gave you slightly less. Gamble, by all means, but it paid off ‘cause you didn’t cause any shit, you know? You just kinda stood there and gave her the bag. You both spoke for a bit, and then I left because I realised I was crossing so many fucking lines I’d spent years drawing. And maybe this’ll answer another plot point for you, because you’d gotten way too fucking close for comfort with my professional life, too. Sure, your charity ideas were good – Villa Lobos for the dog shelter, and Loco Lobos for the youth centre have both taken off pretty well – but you were trying to pull me away from what I do best. Criminal activity. I fucking love being a criminal, (Y/N), and you were trying to stop me from doing that. So I faked a tantrum and left. I don’t know what you said to my mom properly, but when you came out… I was about ready to kill you.

“Speaking of killing you, I did also put you in the ICU. And I’ve never been more scared of losing something in my entire life. It was just after those jackasses had come in here and raped you into submission, and I lost my shit at them –“ he made a gesture with his hand “- and you told me I’d left you to them, as though I’d known there was a mole in the house who had keys to my apartment. I didn’t know, and it fucking hurt. But losing you hurt way, way more… I overstepped the line with it, (Y/N), and I spent so long there… Mom didn’t understand why I stayed by your say night and day, but I love you. Of course I stayed. I couldn’t imagine a life without you, not now.

“But going back to the original point… you learned a lot about my professional career, and I assume you thought you could make me only handle legal stuff. You learned a lot while you were pretty high, so I don’t know if you retained it or not… but at that point, I was dosing you up a little higher than before, just to keep you placid. You made a lot of notes, came up with your own ideas… it was incredible, really. I was proud. But I couldn’t justify giving up doing what I love doing. I love enforcing, (Y/N). I love watching people cower in pure fucking fear when I get ‘em on their fucking knees and stick a gun in their mouth. I love watching people piss and shit themselves… I love the rush of driving too fast through the streets. Get out the fucking way, or get fucking pancaked… I don’t care. People fear me and respect me, and that’s all I want out of life. I’m a simple person, at heart.” He gave (Y/N) a wolfish grin. “Just like my father.”

In truth, that’s all Teddy had ever wanted: to be just as powerful and great as his father. And if his mother would just step aside, he could have that. He could enjoy it, use the power to make New Orleans into something no-one in the states had ever seen before. He’d turned every single cop in the city onto his payroll. He had lines of import and export reaching the entire East Coast up to Canada, which was on his horizon as a new venture… but he’d needed someone like (Y/N) to be by his side for that. A partner (literally) in crime who could help him and who he could trust no matter what. Because a marriage usually meant both people trusted each other implicitly. And Teddy felt he could trust (Y/N). Especially now, after (Y/N) had made it clear there was no friendship with Quincy any more.

(Y/N) looked at Teddy with soft, gentle eyes.

“What about… the wedding? I remember that…” A tiny, barely there voice. Teddy felt a little bad.

“Yeah… it happened, baby.” He reached over and held his hand out. (Y/N) slid a soft palm into his. “It happened, and I’m fucking glad it did. But you were a little high. I still didn’t know if you’d accept me completely sober. After your performance with Quincy, I understand that you would have done.”

“You could have just asked me, Teddy.”

“And risk you saying no?” He smirked. (Y/N) coloured a little. “Look, I had my reasons for keeping you dosed up. Especially in the beginning. But… and maybe we need to address the issue of consent, too, actually. Because I might be a criminal, and I might hold no fucking value to human life… but I’m really not into fucking rape. No means no for me. Both ways. I say no to you, I fucking expect you to honour that. You say no to me, and I’ll honour that.” His face reflected the sincerity. “(Y/N), I can say honestly that I never took you against your will. You always wanted me. And I never touched you like that when I knew you were too out of it or high to make a full choice for yourself. A little buzzed? Sure, I’d take it. But there were times when you wanted me, and you were doped up, and I did nothing.”

(Y/N) stared at Teddy. Teddy said nothing.

“Right… right… okay…”

“I… I don’t know if that was an issue for you… but anything to do with our relationship… I’ve given you a full choice.” (Y/N) burst out laughing.

“You’ve just fucking said you kept me dosed up to make sure I didn’t fucking ditch you at the altar!” (Y/N) hissed, pushing back from the table. “How is that giving me a choice?!”

“Don’t – fucking spin out on me now!” Teddy growled. He stood. “Don’t. You could have said no, but you didn’t. I asked you when you were low dose –“

“I don’t give a fuck when you asked me! You said I had full choice – how was it full choice if I was coked up?!”

“You never fucking took cocaine!” Teddy hissed. He took a calming breath. “It was ketamine – look, (Y/N), if you fucking remember it, then it fucking happened that way. Alright?! Think about when you yelled at my mom for the coke. How does that memory sit?!” (Y/N) tried to remember, but couldn’t. Not fully. The memory was more like a loopy, woozy, drunk… thing… than anything else. But the wedding… that was clearer. Almost as though it was viewed through very tired eyes, but still - (Y/N) had a much more stable memory of it. Teddy held a hand up as (Y/N) backed off and sat back down.

“Right… and… and then… well… the only other thing I want to know about is the rooftop incident.” Teddy’s mouth twitched.

“Yeah… how… how exactly do you remember that?”

(Y/N)

As much as I hated to admit anything to myself, Teddy’s explanations made sense. But I had a much more stable memory of the rooftop incident, just a metre away from where we were sitting… and I remembered it well.

“Teddy?” I called, but no answer came. I felt a bit sick all of a sudden. “Teddy?”

Nothing.

I climbed up to the rooftop.

Teddy was sat on the railing.

Legs over the side the wrong fucking way.

SHIT.

The blueberries fell from my hand, rolling away.

He looked up at the sky, eyes closed. And he was swaying.

He was so, so close to falling. He slid a little, and startled, regaining his balance.

“TEDDY!”

It happened in slow motion, almost.

I don’t know if he slipped, or jumped. I don’t know if he was waiting for me to be there, or if I’d startled him. I don’t fucking know what happened, but I darted forward and grabbed him just as he slipped forwards. It took every single ounce of my strength to hold him in place – just hold him. My entire weight was back, I wasn’t even on my feet, I was just acting as a weight to keep Teddy from plunging down fuck knows how many floors to his death.

Because a fall like that would have pancaked him.

“Let me fucking go,” Teddy breathed, gripping my arms.

“Teddy - no -” I grappled back. He wasn’t trying to get away from me, though. He was holding me as much as I was holding him. I panicked. I fucking panicked. “Please - help me – fuck!” I felt him slipping. “TEDDY!”

“I can’t do it anymore, (Y/N),” Teddy said softly. “I’m... I can’t fucking do it... Just let me go... I fucking deserve to fucking die...”

“No - Teddy – please let’s talk about this!”

“You’re gonna fucking leave,” he whined.

“Teddy, I won’t leave – I promise you I won’t leave! I’m here to stay, Teddy! I choose you! I – fucking love you!” I held on for dear life. Teddy slid a little more, his legs flailing. I could feel his heart racing in his chest as he scrambled for purchase, a strangled cry leaving his throat.

Whatever depressive episode he’d just been through, the fog started to leave him as fear and adrenaline took over.

I managed to get my feet on the railing and, with the last of my strength, I pushed everything I had onto my feet. It worked. Teddy lifted up, and I felt backwards with him, both of us landing hard on the ground. I was winded, but he rolled off me and I pinned him down. I didn’t realise the tears that were pouring down my cheeks until Teddy swiped them away.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m so sorry!” He trembled violently as he clung to me, and I to him, lying there on the wet decking of the terrasse. “I’m sorry - (Y/N) I’m sorry! I’m so fucking sorry!”

“It’s - no, Teddy, don’t apologise, baby boy, it’s alright,” I breathed, pushing my face into his chest. He gasped for breath, his chest heaving as a panic attack, and the terrorised realisation of what he’d almost just done, hit him like a train. And he started to sob properly, far deeper and more gut-wrenchingly than I’d ever seen anyone cry before. He held me, as the mist around us turned to rain.

If we’d waited just a few seconds more, he’d have slipped out of my grasp.

Teddy fucking Lobo would be dead.

How could I forget that? Teddy Lobo, plunging to his death?! Almost slipping from my grasp?! I wished I could show Teddy what I remembered.

“I… you were… on the railing,” I said softly. “And I just about stopped you from slipping.” I looked at him, my heart racing. The memory had that edge to it, that weird, loopy edge that made everything dance. But the parts that were clear… me, clinging to Teddy in the rain. Someone holding someone against a railing… the smell of him through the rain… the fear in his eyes… “You were sitting on the railing…”

“No, (Y/N).” Teddy took my hands. “You were on that railing. And I had to climb over to get you.” He stood and took me with him. What I saw knocked the breath from me. There was a ledge, easily accessible if you climbed over. And then, a sheer drop. Almost like an overhang. But there was enough room for someone to stand there comfortably without needing safety harnesses or whatever… And I could see scratches on some of the ledge where something had dug in. “You were there. Sitting right there, legs dangling over. I climbed over to get you, because it was raining, and honestly, if you’d fucking fallen, I’d have jumped after you. And I grabbed you and got you over the railing… but I slipped, climbing back over, and you wouldn’t let me go. I wasn’t in danger, and it was sweet… but you were so high. So fucking high. I couldn’t move you for a while. Every time I tried, you just seized up and melted, and I couldn’t drag you because when I fucking tried that, you let out this piercing fucking scream.” He held both of my hands tightly. “I fucking hate heights, (Y/N).”

I had to laugh. God, I had to fucking laugh. How could I not laugh? But Teddy waited patiently while my little episode passed.

“And I’m clean now?” A slow, sage nod. “Right…”

“And since you’re clean, I want to ask you if you want to stay here with me, and be mine… let me romance you and show you what I would have done if you’d been fucking normal, and not a good little cop… or if you want out.”

My heart stopped. I wanted out? If I wanted out? He couldn’t be serious… Teddy wouldn’t let me go…?

“I… out?” I asked.

“Yeah. I mean… I love you, (Y/N). And in my fantasies, when I first saw you… I wanted you to be mine just because you wanted me. I wanted to pick you up and charm you the good old-fashioned way. Dinner dates, fun reckless shit, then hot sex in the car…” He chuckled, stroking my cheek. “But you had to go and be a cop… and be a good cop at that.”

“I don’t know, Teddy…”

“Look. If I could do it over again, I’d probably try to win you over. But with Quincy and Chandler in your ears, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“You’re right. You wouldn’t have done, because I found that fucking car hideous, and I hated the thing inside it.” I looked at him. See, the look he was giving me now… no-one but me got that look. And all the stable memories of Teddy, ones from before the drugs, they all had that look. Whenever I showed up on a crime scene, he’d give me that look as he drove away. Or if I saw him on the street, he’d give me that look… and he gave me that look when I first submitted to him. Because I remember that day vividly. The day I’d decided that he wasn’t so bad. That I was fighting for nothing.

A life with Teddy could be miles better than the life I had before him.

“Please tell me what you’re thinking,” he said softly. He took both my hands again.

“Alright…” I took a breath. “I’m thinking of my life before you took me. My run-down house with barely enough cash to foot the bills each month. Wondering if I was going to get killed every day. Wondering what would happen to my place if I couldn’t make the rent… listening to Rebecca go on about you as if you were the only thing left in the world to discuss. No hobbies, no real life outside of being a cop…” I sighed. “I looked back and kinda realise just how boring it all was. But with you, I can do something. I know I’ve said this before… but I can, can’t I? I can actually do the charity work. Open hospitals and schools… you’ll give me money for that sort of thing, right?” Teddy nodded. “And we’ve already set up Loco Lobos, we’re funding Villa Lobos…” more nodding. “I could have leisure time. A nice place to live. No stress over where my next meal is coming from at the end of the month…”

“Exactly.” Teddy’s voice was soft.

“And… and it wouldn’t matter that the money comes from dirty sources. Because you can always trace it back to dirty sources, no matter where it comes from…” I sighed. The world, I realised in that moment, was far bigger than me. And truly, fighting Teddy so abundantly every day wasn’t going to help me, or anyone else. Truly.

I know I’ve already come to this realisation… but something about the finality of this moment made it even more real.

I genuinely couldn’t do anything without the backing of an empire like the Lobo empire.

I was a single tiny pixel on a huge screen. If I went out, the screen would keep playing the picture. But if an entire empire went out, like the amount of pixels the Lobo empire must take up… well, that would do far more damage to the picture.

And then… then I had to ask myself if I could live without Teddy. If I could live in a city knowing Teddy could burn around the corner. I thought back to the months I’d spent as a cop, working against him. And I had to admit that there was a tiny little thrill deep inside me that made me hope Teddy would notice me. Perhaps that had once been some weird kind of sick desire to fight… but maybe I’d misinterpreted it. Maybe it was lust. The tattoos were my cup of coffee, for sure. As was his hair… his fashion choices were a little too ostentatious for me… but the rest of it? Teddy’s lifestyle? The power he held? The way he held himself, the way he… the way he just was. Could I live without that?

“So, (Y/N)?” he asked again. “Do you want to stay with me, or no? Do you want out?”

I swallowed.

“That all really depends,” I whispered. “Did I imagine the sex being as good as it was, or was it genuinely fucking mind-blowing?” I took a step forward, reached up, and kissed Teddy. He tasted like the fucking berries he’d eaten. Intoxicating raspberries and blueberries… the motherfucker.

“There’s only one way to find out, baby,” he purred.

“Then blow my fucking mind,” I grinned. Teddy picked me up and whisked me off to the bedroom.

Because of course I couldn’t leave. Not now. Not after all he’d put me through.

The old me was dead. Teddy had killed me and made room for the real me.

I couldn’t leave.

I am (Y/N) Lobo. And that’s who I was always meant to be.

[moyazaika]

My birthday was on the 25th of July, but due to certain circumstances we couldn’t have a celebration with my family (both sides of my family). I had a small celebration with some family on my actual birthday and it was really nice, but we will be having another celebration on the 3rd of August, this time with both sides of my family and also with some family friends. It’ll be Spider-Man themed because I’m a sucker for him. I had wanted to do a “dress inspired by a marvel character” but I don’t think it’ll happen. I’ll save you a plate of cake and also some of the food served. A family friend will be cooking and he’s amazing.

Know for a fact that the moment some sort of lore of Red is dropped, I’ll be the happiest person on the planet. I’ll defend their actions with everything I’ve got, they’re my beloved and they have a special place in my heart. I just wanna get inside their head (and Valentine’s too) and just,,, learn. I kinda feel like the pathetic yan, maybe that’s why I like him so much. But,,, I just need to understand them. Or maybe just to learn more and more and slowly piece together all the information given. I love your characters, they’re probably the first ones who have me like this.

So, while I was reading the part about the scene bitches I actually snorted and almost choked on my drink. The same thing happened while rereading an ask an anon sent that said “It’s always 2 dumb bitches telling each other exactlyyy”. I’ll keep them in the small folder I have of things that make me laugh. There’s many amazing anons here and even if they may not know me, I love all of them.

My middle school self felt attacked by the “he would totally make a powerpoint presentation and it definitely has those stupid fucking star transitions that are so slow they take 3 entire seconds to get to the next slide.” I felt so cool adding transitions and animations and even those clapping sounds in the end, now I see why some classmates thought I was weird /j😭 Twinning with pathetic yan

My main language is considered a romantic language (Spanish), so I can’t really say much regarding the preference Europeans have for themselves. Latin Americans winning once again- Still, I love languages, I love learning, and so far I’ve seen so many amazing phrases and words that have me just frozen in place having to understand just how beautiful a word or a phrase can be. Languages can be such a beauty, I’m hopelessly devoted to them. Something I wanted to share: There’s this word in Nahuatl (native language in Mexico) which is ��apapacho” that could be translated in English to cuddle. It means “to caress with the soul”. It’s one of my favorite words. And there’s also this phrase in Nahuatl which is “Mitztemoa noyollo” which could be translated to “My heart looks for you”, which as far as I’m aware could be used to say you miss someone.

I feel like I write too much, end acting like some sort of overexcited puppy. I just get too happy, can’t help it. I’m jumping from one topic to the other 😭 anyways, hope you have an amazing week, you deserve it. Remember to drink water, eat well, and all the stuff you’re supposed to know. Keep the hard work but remember to rest when you need it! And even sometimes when you don’t feel like you need it but you’re supposed to. You deserve nice things, hope life treats you very well. Also, been thinking about drawing once again but I don’t really know what to draw, so please do share some ideas or stuff.

- With love, ❤️‍🩹 anon.

BRO I /COMPLETELY/ MISSED THIS ASK HEART NONNIE BELOVED HELLO <333 always loveeeee hearing from uuuu 💗💗💗

i hope ur bday was the loveliest so far!! as well as your actual celebration. would have been a week since then, but nevertheless i hope u enjoyed yourself!! spider man themed oh yEAHH i remember we gushed over the spider verse movies around the time the second one was popular good times haha when the internet was obsessed with o’hara fuck i need that man carnally 😂🙏🏼

know that every time you mention my oc’s in an ask you send i am in love with the way u talk about them. it just feels so introspective and i can tell u put thought into what u say and it flatters me greatly bshshuhshushjsj

I REMEMBEE THE CLAPPING SOUNDS HAHSU back in the days we used to use microsoft powerpoint now everyone just wants to use google slides damn 💔💔 but the dissolve transition.. the star one… they will Never lose their charm that shit was fire

languages are so lovely!! ive always wanted to learn spanish purely bc i hear it’s relatively easy for english speakers apparently, but it sounds so different to anything i speak and conjugations and grammar rules fuck me up and i’m scared 😭😭

my heart. my heart What. my heart. MY HEART LOOKS FOR YOU. IM FLOORED GAGGED THATS SO GORGEOUS OH MY GOD. bro. bro don’t even i’m like 2 seconds away from downloading duolingo i need this in my daily vocab ❤️❤️😭😭😭 oh that’s actually so beautiful; LOTE expressions of love my beloved <3 it reminds me of farsi’s jiggaram which is like,,, technically my liver,,, but comes off more as a term of endearment for people reeeealllllyy dear to the speaker and the connotations when speakers use it to mean like,, a part of myself i can’t be without,,, T_T I LOVE LANGUAGES THEYRE SO BEAUTIFUL 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

hmmmmmmmmmm i’m super indecisive so the worst person to ask for conclusive ideas or advice but maybe try drawing some marvel character? i know you like the mcu, so that might be fun!!!

[madstronaut]

Reading: Guile & Guilt by @the-californicationist

oh hey there is that you GUILE&GUILT aka one of my favorite comfort fics that literally powered my two end-of-year [redacted] projects and also that [redacted] presentation and helped successfully launch the [redacted] campaign at work in December? the world willl not know BUT I DO and me and my marketing team at [redacted] salute you for your service, cali & ao3!! I think I’ve literally read this fic about 30+ times lmao

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, welcome to my stream-of-consciousness thoughts + a few (fuck jk who am i kidding a fuckton) of my favorite bits

- this has so so so many of my favorite tropes - forbidden romance, pretend dating, gonna give in just once (sike), guys who love going down on you, secret dating, YEARNING SO MUCH YEARNING, SHARING A BED, SHAKESPEAREAN SONNETS, Taking Care of Drunk!reader, impromptu fashion show?!fuckyes, misinterpretation+running away+Big Fucking Declaration of Love, talking about you in another language you don’t know, finishing each other’s sonnets!!!, scary older sister who can threaten her special forces brother, text thread chapters!!!, did I mention guys who love going dow-

- GAELIC NICKNAMES + THIEF THIEF THIEF THIEF (my dumb american ass spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to look up pronunciations on youtube and sound them out)

- soap’s sis aka reader’s bff warning her off from him? only for him fully suited up to find her wearing his shirt? is there a hotter fuckin meet-cute

- this was like the perfect mix of worldbuilding for me - fleshed out enough for me to step into and get lost in the best way, starting with the people surrounding both the reader and Soap - the reader was extremely relatable on an emotional level that I came to like her all on her own too and I was rooting for her in my head and the journey you are taken on in seeing Soap through her eyes - but ALSO the way she grows and blossoms tbh in the way she is seen by Soap AND by Pidge & co. is like just UNNNFFFFH storytelling climactic cathartic perfection for me - what is love if not to see, and be seen? anyway I’ll save waxing lyrical for reader & johnny ❤️

- there’s almost a part of me curious to see this whole story from Pidge’s POV - esp. when johnny says she kept reader away from him cos she knew he would like her - as someone who absolutely despises disappointing the people I love and have done metaphorical triple lutz backflips to avoid doing so I also deeply enjoyed the tension of reader going to pieces trying to reconcile Ye Ole How To Tell BFF I’m Fucked For (& Fucking) Her Brother AND found the ending confessions scenes so so so cathartic

- also really loved the ways reader & soap bonded over how well they each knew and loved pidge <3 the scene where johnny cries seeing reader present that shawl to her and the small and big ways reader is present in all the right ways for Pidgey totally made me tear up too - seeing someone you love love on your loved ones is such a special thing to see and I really hope it’s something everyone experiences ❤️

- the way soap’s gaze is described as basically drinking in the reader was probably one of the hottest things I’ve read - I basically re-lived how it felt to be looking at a crush and realize YOU ARE BEING LOOKED AT AS WELL - cali’s writing is basically like that scene where remy in ratatouille is shown experiencing food and flavors in 4D explosions in written form

- the little perv in me enjoyed the slightly dub-con of sleepy soap fingering reader on a cosmic and indescribable level, i knew that little shit wasn’t sleepfingering or whatever the equivalent of horny sleepwalking is and alternately this scene from soap’s pov would probably cause involuntary combustion, i dont make the rules here ok

-I went to my local sephora during lunch/coffee breaks trying to find the perfume/cologne equivalent of soap’s scent described here, that is how IRL feral this fic made me at one point…and also how i realized i do not like the scent of cloves lol

- hehehehehehe Stiff Peaks bakery

- the reader’s initial disbelief and difficulty in accepting johnny’s attraction to her - even though she notes all the little subtle tells - and her insecurity with the bekah/anjali/cherise crew is so so relatable and made me just want to alternately give her a huge hug but also at the same time do a grab her by the shoulders and give an intense pep talk complete with whiteboard erasable markered bullet points of ‘Yes You For Soap’ PLEASE See Section I, II, III, and articles A, B, C, and sub-articles 1, 2, 3, etc. etc. 

- “You regretted your decision to drag him out of the house again. You should’ve kept him all to yourself, covetous and selfish like a hoarder, locking him in like a shorn Repunzel, playing like Circe with her pigs. But, you didn’t want to be Circe. You wanted to be Penelope. Permanent, as impossible though it may have been. 

Was he Odysseus? Or Narcissus?” is one of my favorite lines in this story. books on greek mythology were the first I ever picked up as a kid in my local library growing up and reading the odyssey in high school made these references just *CHEFS KISS*

- ProjectRunawayJudgeAU!Johnny makes an appearance and I’ll just leave this quote here: ““Creepin’ Jesus! You look like if 1982 was a person, lass. Back in the room with you, mhèirleach! Christ Almighty.”

- reader & soap’s “promise” text exchanges - even when they weren’t talking -  are dipped in resin for preservation and carefully wrapped and locked away in a china cabinet in a warm and cozy and safe corner of my hearthouse, to be taken out and ruminated over on tough days for me

- I could literally hear in my head 141 mocking soap when they were singsonging the sonnet they all ended up memorizing and laughed my ass off for a good 5 min when i first read this

- another favorite verse simply because of the AUDACITY of cali to juxtapose sex+sacredness+implying soap is basically worshipping reader with his dick - “melting into you with a slick slide, trusting you implicitly, believing you like a disciple. “

- i may be a leetle bit pervy but also a big fuckin softie and I also teared a bit at johnny’s tenderness at caring for reader/141 being so happy for johnny post-apartment romp, and also at price both being there/giving space to reader when she and johnny weren’t talking ❤️

- also sidenote ahem the pricethirst that gripped my throat out of nowhere at these two sentences AND him fishing out the dogtags-

“Price held the coin up to you like the sacrament, discovering your shame, bringing your sin out into the open. In that moment, you wanted to bend down on both knees and take it into your mouth, and you wanted him to make you whole again with it. “

- I had the most delicious privilege of seeing the fics go live each chapter at a time towards the end and I gasped and screamed out loud like when I used to watch LOST episodes air live lol - those Pidge vs. Johnny arguments about his service esp. when he CALLED HER BRIGETTE had me getting up to take a walk around the house before I could continue reading lol THE DRAMA!!!! yesyesyes I felt like I was the audience in a Jerry Springer episode here

- “Ghost spoke at full volume, not caring who heard him,” this line took me out for a full minute, big “THAT’LL DO” vibes iykyk and of course him being the one to point out the mic still being on was just *CHEFS KISS* PERFECTION

- literally my entire body went up in goosebumps the first time i finished reading the scene of the mic still being on and I just kept saying OH GOD PIDGE SHE KNOWS PIDGE! FUCK! PIDGE FUCK OH NO OH GOD for a good 10 minutes

- tbh i would read a Big Slut Choir Boy Johnny fic

- fun fact, I learned what a sporran is thanks to this fic! truly, thank you fanfiction for statistically increasing my vocabulary 4000%

- now i love me the many many flavors of all the different alternate versions of soap across fanfic (pouring one out for all my fanfic writers rn) but G&G’s soap has a special place in my heart in how cali both captured his character in the games story/campaign modes and took his best and most memorable traits and built on them in the best way possible on his journey in falling for the reader and esp. in him talking about his dreams and future plans with her, esp. in light of his fate in MWIII… if you’ve ever loved someone and not had it work out and had to let them go and not only grieve their loss but the dreams and hopes and futures and the potential of everything they/we could have been, and wondered… what if? I found something very tender and healing for me in a personal way in this Johnny Lives, Loves, and Is Loved story ❤️

i made literally a throwaway paragraph comment on how this was one of my comfort fics and cali wrote one of the most beautiful nonfiction pieces of writing I’ve read in fandom (and tbh outside of fandom?!) on basically like, the heart and soul of fanfic and I encourage everyone to give it a read here (https://www.tumblr.com/the-californicationist/738127290521829376/madstronaut-this-is-one-of-the-nicest-things) and let it fill you with a warm glow like it does for me everytime I recall it ❤️

The Challenge: Comment on every fanfic you read and enjoy in the month of January.

Every chapter. Every one shot. Every drabble. Every ficlet. Whether it’s on a personal website, a blog, or an archive. Whether you’ve read it a hundred times before or you’re reading it for the first time. Whether the fic was posted years ago or minutes ago. Whether you sign your name or leave your thoughts anonymously. Whether your comment is paragraphs in length or a few short words. Comment on every fanfic you read and enjoy in the month of January.

The Philosophy: Comments are what keep a fandom thriving and growing.

We don’t see comments as a transaction. They’re not a price paid for reading a fic. We see comments as an interaction, a way of building relationships. Comments are a courtesy, not a currency. [x]

Fandom is a relationship between dozens,hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of fans, and the only way for the greater fandom relationship to function, is for those fans to interact. One way to interact is by writing and reading fanfic. A writer prompts an interaction by posting their work; it is up to the reader to then acknowledge (or not acknowledge).

As one of our favorite blogs, @ao3commentoftheday​, said: [x]

“Comment if you can, but don’t be bullied or pressured into it. A comment should be written in the same spirit as the fic itself: wanting to reach out to other people who love the same fandom as you do. It’s not easy to do that, I know, and I don’t hold it against you at all if you can’t.”

The Only Rule: Be kind.

Be kind to your fandoms’ writers.

Please note that this challenge is to “comment on every fanfic you read and enjoy in the month of January.” As our fandom forebears were fond of saying, “Don’t like, don’t read.” For FaFiCoWriMo, we have taken that one step further by saying, “Don’t like, don’t comment.”

No matter how well-intentioned, critique is useless unless it comes from a place of trust. Unless you know an author personally and they have specifically asked for your critique, please keep it to yourself.

It costs zero of your currency and zero of your time to not be a jerk.

Be kind to yourself.

If you do find yourself unable to comment on every fic (for whatever reason), remember this: we forgive you, zero judgement. [x]

[pleasantspark]

Zamasu and Maru (OC) Incorrect Quotes

Just putting them here lol

Zamasu: BE A BETTER PERSON! Maru: WHY?! Zamasu: BECAUSE SOMEONE NEEDS TO HAVE MORALS IN THIS RELATIONSHIP, AND IT SURE AS FUCK AIN'T GONNA BE ME, SWEETHEART!

Maru: banging a pen on the table out of frustration Zamasu: Stop that. How would YOU feel if I banged you on the table? Maru: I— Maru: I don’t know the correct answer to that question.

Zamasu: I’m proud to identify as morosexual. I’m attracted to dumbasses and dumbasses exclusively. Someone asked me what the Spanish word for "tortilla" was once, and now I dream of kissing them under the moonlight. Maru: What kind of animal is the Pink Panther? Zamasu, already taking off his clothes: God, Maru, you’re so fucking stupid.

Maru, turning to Zamasu: Stop calling yourself hot, the only thing you can turn on is the microwave.

Zamasu: Ugh, crushes are so dumb. Maru: I know. Whenever I’m near the person I like I just start acting stupid. Zamasu: But you’re always acting stupid? Maru: … Maru: Yeah, don’t think about that too hard.

Maru: Did it hurt when you fell- Zamasu: From heaven? Wow, I didn’t think you were such a flirt- Maru: No, I meant when you fell down the stairs. Zamasu: … Maru: You just laid there for 15 minutes.

Maru: Well, Zamasu and I finally did it! The rest of the z warriors: gasps, shocked expressions, etc. Maru: That's right… We kissed!

Maru: Priest kink is definitely a thing and I am afflicted by it. Zamasu: Go to church. Zamasu: WAIT—

Maru: Come to dinner tonight. I can’t cook, but I’ll bring plenty of free wine. Zamasu: Marry me.

Maru: Since we're in a relationship now, your clothes are my clothes too. Don't ask me why I have your shirt on, this is our shirt. Zamasu: Fine, but when I come strutting in with your fuzzy socks I don't want to hear shit.

Zamasu: Bonjour, Maru. Voulez–vous coucher avec moi? Maru: No, I don't want to sleep with you. Zamasu: Is that what that means? Oh, man, I had a really gross tennis instructor.

Zamasu: I was going to suggest we do Marilyn Monroe and JFK roleplay, but I’d get way too into it. Maru: What- how? Zamasu: You’d be like “come to bed … Mr. President” and I’d be like, “I need to increase the amount of American military advisors in South Vietnam by a factor of 18.”

Maru, talking about Zamasu: WHAT THE FUCK I WAS ARGUING WITH HIM AND I SAID “OOH YOU WANNA KISS ME SO BAD” AND GUESS WHAT? HE DID. HE KISSED ME. WHAT THE FUCK WHAT DO I DO.

Maru: Heh, Zamasu sneezes like a girl. Zamasu: How about I pound you like boy? Zamasu: That didn’t come out right.

Maru: Zamasu, I think we have a problem. Zamasu: What, the fire? Maru: No, the- wait, what fire? Zamasu: Oh forget about it, this sounds more interesting.

Maru: Oh look who got laid last night. Zamasu: That’s right chumps, missionary accomplished!

Maru: Listen, we’re done, we’re over! Okay? Zamasu: Whatever bitch, you ain’t never gonna find no one like me. Maru: Yeah, that's the point shithead!

Maru: Hey, Zamasu, what do you think it would be like if we had kids? Zamasu: What would it be like? Inconvenient, mostly. Maru: No, I mean, what would they be like, the kids? You ever think about it? Zamasu: Can't really say I have. Maru: You know, for someone as eccentric as yourself, you can be boring as fuck sometimes. Zamasu: Sorry, Maru. For what it's worth, I'm picturing them now. A boy and a girl. Two perfect little freaks of nature raised by people who've clearly got no business bringin' up anybody.

Maru: What are you in the mood for? Zamasu: World domination. Maru: That's a bit ambitious. Zamasu: You are my world. Maru: Aww… Zamasu: Maru: Zamasu: Maru: OH.

[princesscolumbia]

Code of Ethics - Ch. 20 - Counter Measure

I think I'll push the update to Tumblr the morning after with an evening reblog from now on. I'm usually just so out of spoons after throwing a chapter up and when I gave myself permission to do the Tumblr update this morning instead of last night, I just felt so...light.

When last we left our protagonist, she was in an airlock sleeve on the outside of a slaver's starbase and unable to make entry due to a failure of a computer script...

...huh, if only she had an ability to manipulate computers directly...

Preview below the cut:

“Talk to me, Diane, what’s going on?”

“One of your hacking tools, it failed. Does your script autostop on a failure?”

“Of course,” he almost scoffed, “Which one?”

Diane squinted at the line on the HUD, “…really?!” she blurted, “PenMeDaddy-underscore-vee-dot-sixty-nine?!”

Russe’s teenage-boy-grade snickering came over the comms, “I didn’t name the thing,” he sobered up quickly, “But yeah, that’s one of the key ones. It takes advantage of a security hole that…well, if it got patched since I stayed aboard your station and the tool hasn’t been updated, we may not be getting through the airlock.”

Diane slammed her left fist into the airlock sleeve next to the panel access. Unfortunately, the vacuum of space meant she only felt the impact, she didn’t hear what surely would have been a satisfying clang of gauntlet on metal. “Sh~…f~…Godd~…”

Russe snickered, the traitor, “Oh, so you do know the words, you just don’t want to say them.”

She growled but didn’t otherwise reply directly. Instead, she asked, “So this is probably it, right? Getting through this line gets us through the airlock?”

“Mmmmeh,” temporized the tech, “Most likely, if all the others leading up to that one cleared. There’s only three more tools after that one and those are mostly cleanup. You know, nuke the logs, patch the firewall behind you, that kind of thing.”

“Right, leave no trace…”

He surprised her by chuckling, “Diane!” he made an almost scandalized sound, “Did a certain Morvuck dabble in hacking in her misspent youth?”

She grinned slyly and issued the timeless response that would confirm without answering, “Come back with a warrant.”

He cackled as she thought to herself, I might be able to dig around and figure something out…there’s probably also a manual override that…

At the thought of an override her mind went to the last time she’d ‘overridden’ the computer that bypassed all permissions entirely. …okay, that’s dumb. I’m not singing to a lock!

As she pondered, she heard Russe commenting on whatever actions he was taking on his end of the call, “…remote in…no, too much lag, no access until penme breaks in…” he was muttering, apparently thinking along the same lines Diane was, “…physical access? Computer, do we have records for this type of airlock?”

She heard the computer reply, “Searching…” Yeah, that’s gonna go so fast, she thought sarcastically. Even assuming some form of uniformity to door design, this was a slaver’s station. The likelihood that the manual access was in a standard location, if it worked at all, was laughably small.

Okay, well, the Commander’s Ability is a legit game mechanic, no reason not to use it…if it will work the way I hope it does.

Conclusion reached, she cast her mind to her library of music…

…she thought about a singable song…

…she told her memory to bring up ANY song she could sing…!

It’s a phenomenon of the human brain (and non-human game race or not, her brain was human) that most of the time it operates even better than the average computer, even with all the advances in digital computing in the last two centuries. One of the things Diane had always maintained kept humans superior to their A.I. counterparts was the ability of the human mind to do its job better, frequently faster, more intuitively, and all around in a far superior fashion to the way purely digital brains operated.

However, they had their problems, being subject to the foibles of being squishy gray matter influenced by environmental, genetic, and purely chemical factors over the span of generations. Diane may be above average for the general population of the American Republic (you don’t craft your own anti-A.I. VR handgun from component apps and scripts without being able to think at fairly high levels), but even her grey matter was subject to the occasional hiccup where it simply…didn’t do as instructed.

Whether it was because of the nutrient balance of her pod or the struggle of maintaining a hidden identity or the weird emotional fluxes she’d been experiencing, or the adrenaline rush she’d just experienced and was anticipating a renewed burst of once she got into the starbase…she was drawing a blank. Her mind, normally capable of indexing a curation of hundreds of her favorite songs from her personal playlists was giving her a big fat goose egg.

Except for one song.

Which she refused to sing!

It was bright, it was bouncy, it was singly inappropriate for wading through an army of slavers with the intent on ending the abominable practice anywhere near her station with extreme prejudice.

‘The Great American Songbook’ my eye! she fussed, Not a single song more recent than the late 1900s, every damn one of them Broadway showtunes, and all of them horribly, cloyingly schmaltzy!

In fairness, she hadn’t been dedicating any sort of serious time to finding music that she could break out into song at random times as needed to circumvent the normal operation of computers. It had been an interesting ability that she thought she might, maybe want to use so had dug up from the station’s archives the music library available at the time the original seed probes had been launched. Apparently, even back in the late 22nd century, according to the game devs, humanity decided to cram the entire digital library of all music ever with zero curation whatsoever. This meant Diane was stuck with randomly selecting tracks from the database or searching with keywords she came up with at random.

Simply because she was American, she keyed in just that and was hopeful when she saw “The Great American Songbook.” Track after track frustrated her no end, all of them perfectly singable but none of them the kind of thing she’d want to take the fight to her enemies with.

But there was one. It was an earworm. From the moment she first heard the first line it had been stuck in her head and the only time she hadn’t had it practically on loop thanks to her subconscious was when she was listening to other music.

She didn’t like it.

She didn’t want to have it memorized.

She wanted desperately to come up with a different song, any other song to try to sing.

But only one song seemed to be willing to offer up lyrics for her use.

She groaned, "...okay, Russe, I'm saying this in advance...shut up."

Read the rest on Scribblehub

[qqueenofhades]

I hope this doesn’t sound too ignorant, but as a non-American (South African here!), everyone is saying that this election is very incredible and different than others? Something about how the democrats have managed to hang on to power and it’s very close? What makes that so unique, and why is it so surprising that the democrats still (likely) have the senate? Shouldn’t you have a democratic congress because you have a democratic president? Here we do have a bunch of different parties, we don’t really have to main ones that always win, except the same corrupt party keeps getting elected again and again because it’s a very unfair system. While I do personally view Nelson Mandela as a hero to our country, his party has fallen so far from his beliefs and everyone is still so obsessed with him, and that seems to be much the case with America and the founding fathers, if I’m not mistaken?

I’m really sorry and I hope this doesn’t come across as sarcastic or dumb, I just don’t fully understand American politics and am a bit confused about your elections, and are they genuinely as bad and messed up as ours? Thank you so much!

Oh Jesus. Asking for a beginner-level crash course on American politics is a bit like asking for a beginner-level crash course on nuclear physics, but I'll do my best. Short answer: yes, American elections are fucked up to such a cosmic degree that it's truly astonishing that they still work at all, and yes, as many of my recent posts have discussed, it's shocking that the midterms went as well for the Democrats as they did. Because:

There are 50 states. Every single state has a considerable degree of autonomy over their own voting laws, voter eligibility, whether voters can register online, vote absentee, etc etc. Thus, the states run by Republicans have been rushing to enact as many restrictive voting laws as possible, meaning that this impacts who is able to actually cast a ballot (and indeed, have that ballot counted).

Each state is also very often "gerrymandered," aka divided into districts where one party has a better chance of winning than the other. Republicans, because they suck, also draw districts that erase or severely reduce Black voting power. For example, if you have District 1 that is 80% Black and therefore something like 80% Democratic, you cut little bits off the edges and put those in red districts, so you turn one safe-Democratic seat into multiple swing or Republican-leaning seats. It sucks.

The Supreme Court, after Trump got three picks with lifetime appointments, has 6 conservatives and 3 liberals, which means that if the conservatives vote as a bloc (as they often do), they can overrule pretty much anything they please (as long as it is a pending case before them). This has been especially notable with voting-rights cases this cycle, and was also the reason that Roe vs. Wade (the right to an abortion in all 50 states) was overturned this summer, capping 50 years of Republican efforts to do just that.

Every election, with the big exception of one, is won the old-fashioned way (whoever gets the most votes wins). The exception is the presidential election. There, it doesn't matter if you win the popular vote, as long as you win the Electoral College. Because of racism, each state in America has a certain number of electoral votes that reflect its population. California, with 40 million people, has 55 electoral votes; Wyoming, with 300,000, has 3. (And yet, they both also get two senators! This seems fair). Therefore, winning the popular vote in blue California is more important than winning the popular vote in red Wyoming.

This is also where we get the term "swing states." These states don't consistently vote Republican or Democratic, so whoever can win those has a better chance of winning the presidency. For example, Pennsylvania voted for Trump (red) in 2016 and for Biden (blue) in 2020, by relatively small margins each time. Yes, the Electoral College is a horrible system and we all know it. It's why Trump became president in 2016 despite losing the nationwide popular vote; he eked out just enough votes in key states to win the Electoral College (you need 270 electoral college votes to win; there are 538 up for grabs overall).

Likewise, the midterm elections are, almost without exception since 1934, used to punish the incumbent president's party for the perceived fuckups of the last two years. So if the president is Republican, the midterms lean Democratic; if the president is Democratic, the midterms lean Republican. The reason that everyone is so surprised at the Democrats doing well is because of 80+ years of historical precedent dictating that they would take a beating. But because Republicans have gotten so crazy, people shied away from voting for them. The Republicans were projected to win up to 5 Senate seats and up to 40+ House seats. As of this writing, they have won... zero and 8, or thereabouts, and it's still not clear who will secure 218 of the 435 seats in the House, which is the amount needed for a majority. Some of those House wins are also offset by the Democrats winning Republican seats back from them, hence why overall control is still up in the air.

So in other words, Congress is LESS likely to be Democratic when the president is Democratic, rather than the same party.

Trump's big thing after he lost in 2020 was to yell to the high heavens about imagined "voter fraud," which was clearly the only reason he could possibly have lost. This is why he tried to launch a coup and sent the January 6 mob to attack the Capitol during Congress's certification of the 2020 election results.

There are probably a ton of other factors I am forgetting, but yes, once again: I cannot possibly emphasize enough what a shitshow it is, and the fact that despite all of the above, the Democrats are guaranteed to keep the Senate and are still in the running for House control. Even if the Republicans do win the House, it will be by such a tiny margin that they will have trouble doing anything except wasting everyone's time with pointless revenge investigations. Democrats will still control the Senate and the Presidency until 2024, and thus can block House GOP nonsense and continue to confirm judges, which is very important after the number of unqualified right-wing hacks that Trump stuffed onto the bench with lifetime appointments.

[flyoverkushtaka]

The bulrushes rustled as Billy stumbled through the undergrowth toward the lake. On a summer day like this, everything was covered in an interminable and near-unbearable haze: The cloying air, the smothered grasses, the scorching metal of car exteriors, the suffocating leather of car interiors, the bitumen, the clay, even the water stretching before him now looked as though it were covered in a cling-wrap of heat and fug. Not even the insects buzzed.

Billy stopped to draw in a breath, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The sultry air invaded his lungs and he had to resist with all his scrawny might the urge to keel over then and there, finished in a heap. Instead he hissed through his teeth, then let out a sigh.

It was a hot and scary summer. The jocks were tormenting poor Billy again. He thought he could escape them by picking up a temp gig in the library, but no. Of course not. Summer school pulled them back into his orbit. Intermediate Algebra. Spanish II. Chemistry. The American Novel. Into to Getting Interesting in Thinking about Geology. Of course they’d been too interested in working out and showing off instead of focusing on their grades when it mattered. And now there they were again, and now he was even more visible, walking down the school corridors, alone except for his handful of books. They could target him all the more easily, their big beefy eyes boring straight into him, smiling so arrogantly, probably dreaming up all new ways to torment a shy little nerd like him, someone who was going places, once he got over getting out of here.

What sorts of horrible things did they do to poor, long-suffering Billy? Well. . .

Billy shut his eyes. He didn’t want to think about it. Then he opened his eyes again, because with his eyes closed it was easier to imagine anything and everything. Better to look at the reeds, at the wavelets, at the cardinal dangling from a branch, at the spattered mulberries on the ground. They were fat and juicy and wasted.

Billy really was a nerd, it’s true. Imagine perfect grades. Imagine unfashionable glasses. Imagine K-12 braces. Imagine a reticent stutter. Imagine argyle. Imagine tweed. Imagine D&D. Imagine DOTA. That’s our Billy, alright, five-eight on a good day, 115 sopping wet. Bowties, for chrissake. A bit of a twink too, goes without saying. Not that he’d be challenging any dolls to a cigarette race anytime soon (”I need my lungs for breathing!”). Just a nerdy little gay boy with a wish and a prayer inhabiting one of those liminal spaces where sometimes good things happen. He trembled at the thought of it. Or not. Magic is fake, after all. You can only trust what you can perceive combined with what you can logically deduce.

Mainly he was out here because school was finally out and he needed to get away from the place as fast as he could before those Neanderthals got bored of jerking each other off in the showers and caught wind of him. He didn’t particularly want to go home, so he wandered the trails around a nearby lake instead. In his argyle and tweed, this was a bit of a mistake considering the weather. You’d think someone as smart as Billy would’ve logically deduced that. We all make mistakes sometimes, don’t we, Billy?

Billy sighed under the weight of the summer heat and, perhaps because of it, began apostrophizing at the scenery aloud.

“Oh,” Billy sighed. “I’m tired of those big, dumb jocks always thinking they can rough me up just because I’m small!” He had a voice like Hoppy Harrington’s. Considering the fact that Billy had full avail of his arms and legs with no congenital mutations to speak of, this was even more pathetic. “Maybe if things were different, if I could just find some way to turn things around on those meatheads, I, I’d get my revenge!”

Three seconds after he’d finished his queer little monologue, an eerie keening sounded from the woods. The cardinal took off from its perch with a start. The noise—no, music—sounded as though both close by and far off. It was the most horrifying, most beautiful sound Billy had ever heard. Billy was transfixed. He felt himself moving toward the lake’s rocky beach without any will to do so. He let himself be led.

A short, sudden, steep incline dropped him face-first onto lower ground. Vaguely scraped, bruised only in ego, Billy picked himself up, dusted himself off, and realized the music, if it had been music at all, had stopped. He looked around, confused. What had happened?

Before he could open his mouth again, a nearby thicket of bushes began to rustle. Billy jumped back in shock and let out a noise of fright, then he dominated himself. He peered at the rustling bushes, trying to make out any sort of animal or whatnot that could be in there.

“So,” a low voice suddenly pierced through the foliage, bassy like a seductive lion. “You wish for revenge, do you? You wish to turn the world on its axis, make the strong grow weak, the weak grow strong, hmm?”

Billy took a step back, then another. Fear rose inside him once more. He tried to reason with himself, but only fantasies came to mind. He’d read plenty of stories on Tumblr about gods and reality warpers and strange presences that react to wishes spoken aloud, especially when they’re spoken aloud by nerdly little twinks like himself. They’d take those wishes, grant them fully and literally, and the world would turn into the protagonist’s erotic banquet. Truth be told, he’d jerked off to them plenty of times. It was so easy, so magical, like justice was finally being served by the universe itself. Billy found himself flush with excitement at the thought that it was finally his turn.

“A-are you a god?” he asked the voice within the bush.

“Mmm,” it responded in a pleased tone. “Only if you want to worship me, little morsel.”

The bushes rustled once again, and Billy quickly surmised that the presence was now going to reveal itself. His small muscles clenched. He drew in another hot breath. He waited, he tensed, he let out the tiniest of squeaks.

Out of the greenery emerged a rather ordinary-looking man. Tall, slender, with the build of a swimmer. Shaggy brown hair brushed against his ears. Stubble ringed his face. He was wearing Eddie Bauer.

Billy’s eyebrows furrowed. He wasn’t really sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. Gods can take many forms, he reassured himself, even if those forms tend to look more like Colby Keller. It’s fine.

Something in the hindquarters of his brain told him that no, this was very much not fine, that something was wrong, but he ignored it.

The two regarded one another silently. Then, the man spoke.

“You’re kinda one weird little dude, you know that? Sorry about your bullying problem, but fantasizing in the woods won’t make it go away.”

Billy was taken aback. The man’s voice was so different from a moment ago, less basso, more tenor, more casual, less numinous. He started to feel crestfallen, started to feel that instead of some moment of glory, he’d just come across literally just some guy. He also felt terribly awkward that a stranger had heard him dramatically lamenting his situation.

Despite his hangdog look, the stranger just smiled, teeth bared, and let out a small chuckle. “Don’t worry about it, kid,” he said. “Happens to the best of us.”

Billy sighed, relieved that at least he wouldn’t have to live through some new torment. A passing wave nudged an empty Gatorade bottle from the lake onto the shore. The man’s smile disappeared entirely.

“That’s not yours, is it?” he asked. A sudden edge came into the stranger’s voice, as though the question were of grave importance. Almost growled it. Billy, gulped, and shook his head. “N-no, sir,” he quavered.

The man shrugged. “Figured it wouldn’t be, but,” he made a circular motion around his right ear with two fingers before tapping the part of the skull just above the lope, “not everyone is capable of calm, rational assessments of the situation.”

Billy stared at him.

“And don’t call me sir, alright? Makes me feel like you want me to tie you up or something.”

Billy frowned, perplexed, suddenly feeling as though he’d completely misjudged the nature of their conversation.

“Say,” the man continued. “Tell me this, if you don’t mind: What do you dream about?”

Billy perked up. Maybe he’d get his wish after all! “Well, I really want to be a top researcher at a lab in—”

The man waved him off. He picked up a small rock, worn smooth by the tides, and juggled it in one hand. “No, not like that, dude. Tell me,” his eyes swiveled from the stone to meet Billy’s gaze, eyes that fixed him in place with their stare.  “What do you see when you close your eyes at night and all goes still as you fall into the face of the deep?”

Billy opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

--

The two sat there on the beach for some time. The man listened to a litany of Billy’s oneiric tales, one after the other. He didn’t know why he was telling this stranger all of this, but it came out of him like a babbling brook. The man, for his part, only listened, sitting back, one leg crossed over the other, extended, sometimes nodding, sometimes making a small grunt of acknowledgement.

At some point, Billy ran out of things to say. He’d told the man about his lighter dreams, his fantasies, strange half-memories from childhood, then the anxieties, the fears, the nightmares, weight rooms that stretched onward into infinity filled with the clamorous sounds of lifting, grunting, barbarisms, the stage on which he stood surrounded by an enshadowed audience scrutinizing him in the blinding spotlight and finding him lacking, bumping into a wall of muscle that stretched into the sky above the clouds and the agony in the pit of his stomach over what terrible fate awaited him. Then he was done. He had said everything he had thought to say.

The man nodded once more, then stood. He had a certain poise to him as he rose, no need to balance against the earth. “Well,” he finally said, “I think I’ve heard enough. You’re a perfect candidate.

Billy’s head perked up. “A-a candidate for what? An experimental drug trial? A ritual to make me big and muscular? A brutal training regimen that leaves me forever changed in mind and body.”

The man smiled sympathetically, though still showing teeth in the corner of his mouth. “No,” he responded, matter-of-factly. “I’m going to eat your soul and turn you into a monster like me.”

“Wha-”

“To be honest I’ve never done this before,” the man continued, rubbing the back of his head almost sheepishly. “You’re uh, you know, you’re my first.”

Billy started to rise, much more uncertainly, pressing his hand into the rocks for a better grip on his legs. He suddenly felt the utter, urgent danger he was in.

“You’re coming down with me, Billy,” the man said, locking eyes with him once more, and Billy froze. He wasn’t sure what to do, but, gazing at the dense forest covering the trails, still wrapped in the sweltering heat, leaving suddenly felt a lot worse than staying put. He didn’t know what to do. He stared at the man once more, trembling. What had happened? What was happening?

The man took a few steps toward him. They were apologetic steps, steps of peace and love.

“Listen,” he said, “don’t take it the wrong way. I’m not gonna kill you. It’s not like that at all.” He extended his arms. “Not at all, dude. I can just tell, you’ve got that dog in you, am I using that right? Whatever, I can tell you’re like me. It’s either now and you adjust now, or later and you make up for lost time.”

Billy gulped. “Wh-what are you talking about, even? Monsters? What? You don’t look like a—”

“I know, I know. Don’t worry, I’m no Dahmer. Listen, this was always going to be a hard sell, I get it. But you’re the one going around wishing. I can give you what you want, believe it or not, even if it’s not the way you probably wanted it.”

Billy said nothing, now perhaps even more confused.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

Billy continued saying nothing.

“Don’t you want to be strong? Don’t you want to not be afraid anymore?”

Billy continued to say nothing, but his ears perked up.

“I can make it so you’ll never be afraid of anyone ever again.”

The waves crashed against the shore so loudly, his heart pumped so hotly in the drums of his ears, Billy could scarcely hear himself say yes.

--

The two stood there still.

“So, uh,” the man raised his right arm and rubbed the back of his head again. Billy took the moment to take note of his thick, bushy armpit visible up the short sleeve of his t-shirt. The shirt had a hiking Sasquatch emblazoned across the chest and torso, clearly on the move but head swiveled back to smile wide at the viewer. A happy camper, indeed.

“Yeah, I don’t actually really know what I’m supposed to do. They didn’t tell me.”

They?

The man looked around as though he’d dropped something. His eyes narrowed. He let out a “Hmm.” Thought seemed to come to him like a freight train pulling into a depot station. He approached Billy.

“Okay, maybe I,” he began and grabbed Billy’s left arm. Billy made no resistance, too caught up in whatever was going on to interrupt. The man twisted his arm gently this way and that, pressed into it at random with his fingertips, grasped the wrist, traced the veins. “No, that’s not it. Uh.” He dropped the arm. He looked deep into Billy’s eyes. This close up, Billy felt almost lost in his interlocutor’s. Gazing into them gave him the same feeling as swimming out on the lake, when you suddenly don’t know just how deep down the water goes, and so part of you can’t help but imagine that it simply goes down forever.

The man spit on his face. Billy recoiled, suddenly jolted out of whatever half-dream he’d been caught in. Disgusted, shocked, he wiped the spittle off with the back of his hand. “Dude, what the fuck!” he yelped.

The man shrugged. “Hmm, that’s the spirit, but not quite what I was hoping for.” He cast about once more, then his face turned toward the empty Gatorade bottle.

“Hey,” he said to Billy, then indicated the garbage with a nod. “Pick that up.”

Billy obliged.

“Okay, now, I want you to throw it on the ground. No, out into the water. As far as you can. Just kind of throw it like—“ The man sputtered for a second as though his throat had closed up. He murmured something under his breath, took in a deep breath. “Yeah, throw it out there like you’re done with it, and you don’t care what happens.”

Billy blinked, a little uncertain, then turned toward the lake. The sun was starting its descent to the west, and the waters sparkled. He turned the Gatorade bottle over in his hand. The faded wrapped said it was cherry flavored. It weighed next to nothing. He spotted a wave forming a few meters right in front of him. He decided that would be his target. His reeled back, his shoulder blade contracted, and he threw.

The bottle hit the wave as it reached its crest with a plop. The next thing Billy knew he heard a new rustling sound behind him. He turned, and saw the man was already halfway out of his clothes. A look of intent was nailed to his face. He shucked his pants by rubbing them against a larger rock, and Billy noted beneath them the sleek black jammer hugging his frame. Then before he knew it the man was in the water, swimming at a near-inhuman pace toward the bottle. Without missing a beat, the man, grabbed it in one hand, then gracefully turned to swim back toward shore, his gaze now fixed on Billy.

What’s going on? Billy thought. Are we. . . Are we playing fetch? Is he some king of dogb—

Billy’s thoughts were cut off by the man lunging out of the water onto the shore, pulling up onto his feet again with eerie grace, closing the gap between himself and Billy, and seizing Billy by the throat using the hand not holding the bottle, which now hovered threateningly before his eyes.

The man looked at Billy with nothing but hate.

“Is this,” he snarled, voice low once again, “yours?”

Billy said nothing, now too frightened to speak.

“Do you think you have the right,” the man continued, “to throw your fucking garbage in my lake?” The man’s teeth were bared. He pulled Billy closer to him.

Billy managed a faint stutter. “Um, um. . .”

“You fucker,” the man growled, and he threw Billy to the ground. Hard. Billy yelped as the stones bit into his flesh. Before he could get his bearings, the man was bearing down on top of him, pressing him deeper against the rocks.

Billy couldn’t fight back even if he were a fighter.

“If you ever throw your garbage in my lake again,” the pressed the mouth of the Gatorade bottle against Billy’s forehead.

The sun continued to set.

“I’ll fucking kill you.” He pressed the bottle so hard into Billy’s skin it left a mark for a week.

--

That night, Billy had a nightmare. Of course he would, but this was different than expected. He was back in the infinite gym. The dumbbells weighed more than he did. Everything took up so much space, wandering through the room meant tracing a labyrinth around the imposing equipment. Things he could never lift, bars he could never reach. He hated this place. Hated every time he dreamed of it. The jocks would be around some corner soon, like usual, to taunt and tease him, use him like a dishrag, spit on him, knock him down.

Should have been, but now he realized his wandering had a destination in mind. He had no indication, but in his heart he knew he was heading toward the center. The invisible sounds of clanking and grunting grew louder. The music over the PA turned into a mind-dampening drone. A smell filled the air of sweat, testosterone, whey protein. A darkness began to fill the air as well, a shadowy imminence. Every step forward turned from a trepidation into a pilgrimage. Whatever chant was buzzing over the PA’s drone now, he too would chant along, even if it was in a language that existed nowhere else.

A red haze settled on his vision.

Faster, stronger, more vigorous, give it the oomph, more, more more.

And then there he was before its throne. A great figure of shadow and muscle. Billy gazed up at the Strongman, the giant that had haunted his nightmares for so long, but now looked upon it not in fear but in awe. The Strongman was benchpressing the heaviest weights in the world. The Strongman was working his lats to their ungodly limits. The Strongman is doing a squat so mighty the whole of creation inverts colors for eight whole seconds.

The Strongman stood before Billy. It picked him up. It raised him, so tiny like a baby rabbit, to meet his gaze.

For the first time, Billy saw the Strongman’s eyes. They were the same color as his own.

Billy gulped. He felt like he was on the precipice of an abyss, but he didn’t feel afraid.

The Strongman ate him in one gulp.

Back to the weights. Five hundred pounds. Five thousand pounds. Lift. Press. Extend. Lunge. Flex. Lift. Press. Extend. Lunge. Flex. Lift. Press. Extend. Lunge. Press. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Billy woke the next morning with a scream and the certain knowledge that he could lift a car if he wanted to.

[number-1-kuaidul-fanboy]

Some Yugioh Dub Names I Actually Like

Because sometimes these dubs can do things right. The name changes I’m gonna mention here are all either justified changes or just fitting names in general, to the point where I actually use a few of these over the Japanese names.

Lua and Luca to Leo and Luna

Those sub names are fucking confusing, have a bajilion different spellings and are easy to mix up. “Leo” and “Luna” still definitely give off a twin name vibe while not being too similar and are also way easier to use. Also, “Leo” means lion and lions are prideful and loud and is a fire sign, associating it with the sun. “Luna” means moon and the moon is quiet and reflective and is often outshined by the sun. Their dub names reflect their characters perfectly.

Obomi to Lillybot

“Lillybot.” How can you hear that name and not melt a little? It’s so cute. And definitely something a 13 year old would come up with when using the word “litterbot” as a base.

“Other Yugi” to Yami Yugi

I didn’t watch this one in sub but from the clips I’ve seen, the implication really does seem to be that Yugi has had this other spirit inside him for who knows how long that all his friends know and not one of them though to come up with a way to differentiate them outside of calling him the “other Yugi.” The nickname Yami is cute, even if it wasn’t used after like… season 3? XD Other than that though, I like it.

Haruto Tenjo to Hart Tenjo

“Hart” is a cute name, dammit. Also, he is Kaito’s entire motivation in part 1, or, in other words, his “heart.” I don’t know if that was intentional or if I’m reaching but it’s cute.

Revolver to Varis

Yeah… I gotta admit I do kinda like this name, not to the point where I use it over his original name, he’ll always be Revolver to me, but I do think it’s admirable how, when they were likely required to change his name since a revolver is a gun and American censorship is… the way it is, they just changed his name to a lesser known but BIGGER gun. That is hilarious, and pretty much exactly what I’d do in that situation. “Oh, the gun boy with bullet earrings and a gun based deck can’t be named after a gun?! Well fuck you too then. Lemme just Google some gun names real quick.” I have no idea if that’s what happened, but it’s what I like to imagine.

Darkness to Nightshroud

Okay, credit where credit is due to this dub I hate with a passion: Nightshroud is a pretty badass name. I still enjoy the simplicity of the name “Darkness” but I get how it could be confusing in a dub and it’s not like any of the symbolism behind the name is lost, his whole thing is still the power of darkness, he just has a cooler name.

Tokunosuke Omoteura to Flip Turner

I can’t even spell Flip’s sub name without Googling it. I watched Zexal for the first time in sub and prefer it that way but I still call him Flip because it’s way easier to type and just far more memorable, especially since he’s the first character I can remember who used a flip deck. Yeah, it’s a silly pun but he’s a silly character so I don’t mind it.

Ute, Hyugo, and Joeri to Yuto, Yugo, and Yuri

I have no idea if this was just a weird romanization of their names or what but every last one of these names have the same first sound yet were initially spelled completely different in the Japanese episodes (and I don’t just mean the subtitling, I mean the footage of the episode itself before it was touched by the subtitles). Giving them all the “Yu” prefix groups them with Yuya which ties them together in a smart way considering the fact that they’re counterparts. It’s also way less confusing that way. Who the fuck would guess “Joeri” is pronounced “Yuri” if they haven’t seen Arc V?!

Pandor to Pandora

Very minor change, I just enjoy the implication that Ryoken “opened Pandora’s box” when he created her. Okay, this one is definitely just me being a nerd. Moving on.

Anna Kozuki to Anna Kaboom

That’s just fun, I can’t help it. Yeah it’s over the top and dumb but so is Anna so the name suits her. Admittedly, I like Zexal’s name changes in general. They’re mostly non-intrusive and some actually feel justified. Either that or they’re just fun like Lillybot and Anna Kaboom.