#I’ve been questioning this for many many years

[whytheylosttheirminds]

Don't Call Me Kid - Chapter 8 (part two)

(Rafe Cameron x Reader series, 6.2k words)

series summary: You'd had a crush on Rafe Cameron since you were six years old, but he friend zoned you at every turn. Once shy and insecure, you found new confidence and self-love after high school. When your high school friends go on a reunion beach trip, Rafe finally sees what he lost, but he isn't going to give you up without a fight.

tropes: unrequited crush, glow up, she fell first/he fell harder

series content: some angst, eventual fluff, slow burn, tomfoolery and shenanigans, drinking, fem!reader has occasional insecurity and body image issues

⇢ series masterlist

A blood curdling shriek rang through the house, jolting Carter from her restless dreams.

She sat straight up in bed, heart racing as she looked around the dark room, head so heavy she could barely remember where she was or how she got there.

In her hungover mental fog, she pieced it together slowly. She was at the beach house, in her room, it was early, she drank so much last night and Topper said -

“OH MY GOD!” 

Another sharp scream came from downstairs, and her heart rate spiked all over again. She pulled the fluffy comforter around her shoulders and hurried out of the room, quiet on the stairs as she nervously approached the source of all the commotion.

When she saw what was inducing Sabrina’s shock, she doubled back, hiding around the corner so they couldn’t see her. Her stomach churned with bitter loathing, and something else even more nauseating…

She dropped the blanket and rushed to the half-bath off the house’s entryway, doubled over the toilet bowl as last night’s poor choices continued to haunt her.

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Rafe drove faster than he had before your interrupted rendezvous, seeming not to want to drag this adventure out anymore. You eyed him nervously from the passenger seat, searching for words that weren’t coming to you. 

Tongue tied and exhausted was not how you wanted to begin this…whatever this was between you. Rafe had given you words, so many of them, back on the beach and all he asked in return was a simple yes or no.

Are you my girl?

No four words had ever felt so heavy. The shitty part was, you wanted to say yes. At the sound of his breathless question every cell in your body was screaming yes! I’m your girl! I’ve always been your girl! 

But then there was that pesky piece of self preservation that cemented itself in your heart all those years ago and didn’t plan to give up any time soon. 

He looked so disappointed when you couldn’t give him a quick and easy answer, his chest now deflated and shoulders sunken as he drove the rest of the route home. Despite your lingering hesitation, you felt like you needed to give him something, needed to lift the frown that was settled on the lips you had tasted so many times this morning.

“I’m sorry,” you mumbled.

“For what?” He asked.

“I’m…slow,” you began, “it takes me a while, y’know? To find the words. I’m not like you, I don’t know how you came up with that speech in less than a minute.”

Rafe laughed, confusing you.

“What?”

“You think I came up with that speech in a minute?” He chuckled, “I’ve been practicing it every day since senior year of high school.”

Your heart clenched at the endearing thought of him in front of the mirror, driving to class, taking a shower all while rehearsing what he’d say if you ever gave him the chance.

“Oh,” you tucked your hair behind your ear.

It was infuriating, your complete inability to get a grip on your own thoughts and feelings around him. It had always been this way. You were well-spoken and sound-minded, until this one person was in your atmosphere, his presence your own personal kryptonite.

To be fair to yourself, it wasn’t just your own weakness for him that had caused you to build such high walls. When you were kids, he sometimes made you feel this way on purpose. He used to have fun watching you get flustered, just the right amount of flirting to send you into a tizzy, only to leave you spinning like a top with no one to stop you.

You truly tried to leave the past behind, burying it somewhere back in the sand on the beach. You reminded yourself that the Rafe of your memories was not the one sitting next to you right now. But that might just be the problem, because at least you knew that Rafe, you knew exactly what he would do next.

If he grabbed your hand, you knew he was about to drop it. If he said something sweet, you knew he was about to say something passive aggressive. If he acted like he loved you, you knew he was about to act like he’d never met you a day in his life.

But this Rafe, this new one, was completely unpredictable. Wild and dangerous in his apparent affection for you. How were you supposed to know what he did next wasn’t going to hurt? He was right about what he said on the jet ski - you won’t know until you give him the chance. Easier said than done.

“You don’t have to say anything right now,” he offered after you’d been quiet for a long time.

“This week has just been…” trying to come up with one word to describe it felt like a futile task.

“Overwhelming?” Rafe tried to help.

“Surprising,” you countered. “I’ve never been good with surprises.”

“You like to know what’s coming next,” he nodded, once again displaying a deep knowledge of you that you never knew he possessed.

Like he could read your mind, his arm stretched across the small divide and his palm, warm and soft, settled on your thigh, a single soothing stroke to let you know he’s still here, he’s still yours. The feeling of his skin touching yours was like aloe vera directly on the burn.

With a grateful smile, you leaned back in the seat and took a deep breath as he steered you home.

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Carter padded down the hall, stopping three separate times, trying to decide if she should just go back to her own room. But the sight of her frantic texts to you still saying “delivered” and not “read” was too concerning to ignore.

She opened Topper’s door without knocking.

He was sitting up against his headboard, typing feverishly on his phone. At the sight of her, he clutched his duvet cover, pulling it up higher over his nearly naked body.

“Have you ever heard of knocking?” 

“Please, like I haven’t seen it all before. Like I didn’t see it yesterday,” she rolled her eyes.

“Oh okay, so you do remember. Based on the way you were acting last night I thought maybe you’d forgotten we’d ever been together,” he snipped at her.

“I don’t want to talk about last night,” she waved him off, dismissing his complaints flippantly, “are you aware of what’s happening downstairs right now? Of who is happening downstairs right now?”

“Yes, I saw her pull up,” he returned his attention to his phone and his frenzied typing.

Outside his cracked open door, Carter heard Kelce, Tom, and a few others come barreling up the stairs, chatting about the recent arrival.

“Be so fucking for real, did you invite her?” Carter said, attempting to lower her voice.

“I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this but you do this thing where you think you’re whispering and you’re actually not,” Topper informed her.

“Topper…”

“No, I didn’t invite her.,” he answered. “Actually I was about to ask if you did.”

“Why the fuck would I do that? I hate her.”

“Wow alright, hate's a strong word, Carter, maybe calm down a little.”

Ever since their knock-down-drag-out at the club last night, the arguing that was usually playful and lighthearted had an edge of actual bitterness to it.

“First of all, if you ever tell me to ‘calm down’ again, I’m going full Lorena Bobbitt on your ass. Second of all, you need to go down there and tell her to leave,” she flicked her hair behind her shoulder and held her chin up as she bossed him around. He hated that despite how mad at her he was, he fucking loved it.

“How does that job possibly fall on me?” He scoffed.

“Aren’t you Mr. Team Rafe-and-my-sister? Don’t you want to get rid of the reason they stopped talking in the first place?” She reasoned.

“I’m not gonna tell her she can’t be here,” he shut her down. “It’s not my house, and it’s really none of my business. Or yours.”

Her eyes narrowed at him, “oh yeah? Then who are you texting so much over there?”

“I’m just giving him a head’s up,” he shrugged. “She should probably know too.”

“And you’re just assuming they’re together?” She snarled.

“Puh-lease,” he rolled his eyes, “did you see them at the club last night? There’s no way they didn’t hook up.”

She wouldn’t accept it, couldn’t, even though she knew somewhere deep in her gut that he was probably right. 

When Rafe still didn’t answer any of his texts, Topper sighed heavily, “fuck it, I don’t care if I’m cockblocking, I’m calling him.”

Before he could dial, the house shook with the slam of the front door. Carter and Topper hurried out to the hall and hesitated at the top of the steps. Your lone voice carried up to them, talking to no one in particular as you muttered, “un-fucking-belivable.”

Carter actually did whisper this time, “I think it might be too late for that…”

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The feeling of Rafe’s hand, warm and steady on your thigh, as he drove the rest of the route home was so nice and comforting, you let yourself slip into the possibility that this could actually be it. Maybe you really could just leave the past behind you, maybe you really had finally found each other and it could just be simple like this.

But your fantasy didn’t last long.

Rafe parked in the spot across the street that you had taken Carter’s car from a few hours ago. Even when he turned the key and cut the engine, he didn’t remove his hand from your leg. 

“You ready?” He sighed.

“For what?” You questioned, eyeing him curiously, his face serious as he looked down at the site of his hand on your skin.

He shook his head like he didn’t know the answer himself, “reality, I guess.”

You placed your hand over his, smirking at the sight of your fingers encompassing each other’s, wanting so much more from these hands and truly believing you’d have all the time in the world to enjoy them. 

“Bring it on,” you gave him a small smile.

“He leaned across the center console and dropped a deep kiss to your lips, causing you to sigh into his mouth. All the times you imagined kissing him, you never thought such a rough-around-the-edges guy would have such soft lips. You felt like you might be able to spend forever with them on your skin.

When he finally pulled away, you reached for the handle of your door, beginning to open it, but Rafe reached across your body and pulled it shut again.

“What are you doing?” You asked in surprise.

He smiled that perfect, dimpled grin of his, “extra credit.”

You giggled as he hurried to climb out of the driver’s side, hurrying around to your door and opening it with a chivalrous flair.

“Wow,” you beamed, accepting his hand as he helped you down from the tall vehicle. “You weren’t kidding about trying to be a gentleman.”

“For you, I’ll be anything,” he flirted.

Despite your best efforts not to, you blushed, the red hue on your cheeks deepening when Rafe kept your hand in his, intertwining his fingers with yours as you walked back to the house. It was the first time he’d held your hand out in the open like this, where anyone could look out from the windows of the beach house and see the two of you together. It was foreign to you, his public display of affection, and yet it felt so right. You couldn’t help but wish it hadn’t taken this long.

“Can I ask you something?” You said quietly.

“Anything,” he squeezed your hand assuringly. 

“Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?” 

Rafe’s face fell slightly, watching his feet as they made less and less forward progress on the sidewalk, until he came to a full stop. The question was mostly meant to be lighthearted, a tease really, but his solemn reaction made your stomach twist with concern.

“I…” he started, voice unsteady, not meeting your eyeline, “I don’t know if I should tell you this but -”

You never knew what he wasn’t supposed to tell you, because before he could, a sickeningly familiar voice called out from the front porch.

“Hey guys!”

Head snapping toward the sound, you looked up, and there she was, as stunning as ever in that same signature everything-you’re-not-ness. 

Cassie Bryant.

Her face was adorned with a glistening smile, yours was noticeably not. Everything in you sunk, including the corners of your lips, completely unable to hide the way your heart dropped six feet under the ground at the sight of her.

She was somehow even more golden and glowing now than she was back then. Glossy blonde hair flowing down her back like a waterfall of silk. Her perfect, blemish free skin glowed in the early morning light. Her big, round Disney Princess eyes quickly found Rafe and flicked over your joined hands, clocking the way they were folded together in unmistakable intimacy.

It happened so quickly, and yet it felt like years worth of hurt and heartache compacted into one small moment. 

At the sight of Cassie on the porch, Rafe dropped your hand.

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Surely, any minute now, a camera crew would pop out from the bushes and announce that you were being Punk’d.

Or maybe it’d be the Mythbusters:

The myth? That you can actually heal from your childhood trauma with just four years of painstaking hard work. Well, we’re about to prove that all of that can be unraveled in the span of 72 hours! Also, we will be using your heart as our crash test dummy. Myth busted!

You didn’t look over at Rafe, couldn’t bear to watch the way he pulled his body away from yours, ever-so-slightly, almost imperceptibly. But you could feel it all the same, and you were sure she could too. 

Before Cassie could say anything else, the front door opened behind her, Sabrina stepping out of the house and taking in the unfolding scene on the lawn.

“Oh shit,” she laughed, “this is awkward!”

It’s like her main goal in life was to find new and creative ways to make your bad moments worse.

“Is it?” Cassie asked, seemingly unaware of the cause of Sabrina’s laughter. “We were just saying hi.”

She caught your eye as she said it, a polite but knowing smile on her lips. You realized with shock that she absolutely knew what was happening and was trying to make you feel better about it. You should just be grateful for the unexpected kindness, but something in you was suspicious. The Cassie you knew would’ve jumped at the chance to embarrass you, and she would’ve loved the way Rafe was treating you like you had the plague.

Plus, her taking pity on you, acknowledging the way Rafe had just hurt you, was somehow worse than her just being mean to you. You’d rather she go back to that.

“Y’all having a good trip?” She asked you and Rafe when the silence had lasted just a little too long.

You looked to Rafe, waiting for him to answer, begging him silently to say something that indicated that you were in fact having a good trip…together.

But he just said, “it’s been cool. Weather’s shit, though.”

“Yeah that’s what Sab told me, but I got a few days off my internship so I thought I’d come hang with y’all,” she said, eyes on you as she spoke, like she owed you an explanation.

“Well, welcome, then,” you smiled a polite smile that didn’t meet your eyes.

“You ready?” Sabrina asked, linking arms with Cassie, thick as thieves. 

“We’re going into town for some brunch if you guys want to join,” Cassie offered.

“That’s okay, I need to check on Carter,” you declined, all eyes turning to Rafe for his response.

“Uh yeah, I’m good here, th-thanks,” he stuttered, so awkward and shaky, a completely different person from the guy who was delivering monologues and sweeping you off your feet just a few hours ago.

Cassie just smiled politely once more as Sabrina pulled her into the car. As they drove off, you stood wordlessly with Rafe on the front walk, your chest completely hollow. You mustered some nerve and finally looked at him, head tilted, a completely unamused smile tugging your lips.

“Weather’s shit?” You repeated his words back to him.

“Look…” he began but didn’t finish the thought.

You just laughed humorlessly, shaking your head at him as you stormed off toward the house. Rafe stood frozen for a moment, kicking himself mentally and begging his brain to catch up with the moment, finally rushing off after you, but not able to before you slammed the door in his face.

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Carter and Topper exchanged nervous glances at the sound of you stomping into the house. 

They slowly and quietly settled on the top step, sitting forward to listen in as the front door opened and closed again, Rafe’s voice echoing through the house.

“Wait…” he said, following after you as you marched further into the house toward the kitchen.

You didn’t stop, “No, go ahead, you should go to brunch with her. Don’t let me keep you from a good time.”

“Wait, let’s just talk,” he pleaded.

“I’m too tired, Rafe,” you rejected him. “I can’t do this right now.”

“So you’re not even gonna let me explain?”

At the top of the steps, Carter and Topper simultaneously held their breath as they listened, both jumping as Kelce’s voice startled them, “what are we listening to?”

“Shhh,” Carter waved her hand at him, motioning for him to shut up.

Kelce plopped himself between them on the top step, shuffling a bit so they’d make room for him. He listened in, picking up your and Rafe’s raised voices quickly.

“Oh shit,” he barely whispered, “trouble in paradise already?”

“Dude shut up,” Topper cut him off.

Soon, Maddie, Tom and Jack joined the little huddle on the top step, each cluing in on the source of the entertainment in their own disruptive way before being shushed by the group and eventually sitting. You continued your argument with Rafe, completely unaware you were performing in front of a live studio audience.

“You don’t need to explain,” you told him, trudging down the front hall toward the kitchen. “I know exactly what just happened because it’s happened a thousand times before. What I don’t know is why I’m even surprised.”

“Come on,” he caught up to you, stopping you in your tracks as his large frame rounded you. “It is not the same as it used to be.”

“It’s exactly the same,” you side-stepped him, walking into the kitchen and dropping Carter’s keys on the counter. “I mean jesus Rafe, it’s the same fucking person! I can’t believe I’m here again, it’s like I’m having a nightmare where I’m back in high school. Next thing you know I’m gonna walk into homeroom and I realize I’m completely naked.”

“Sounds more like a dream to me,” he smirked, trying to flirt.

You just blinked back at him, your sharp eyes cutting straight through his head.

“Do you think this is funny?”

His smirk dropped, snatched right off his lips by your ice cold tone. Good. You’d been waiting years to wipe that shit eating grin off his face. 

Something new was rising in your chest, knocking out the embarrassment and sadness with a closed fist, a fury long buried coming back with a vengeance.

“I thought all that shit was behind us, over and done.” Rafe reached out towards you but you stopped him with your own rough grip, lowering his hand away from you and dropping it like he’d dropped yours.

“Oh, it’s fucking done alright, so fucking done,” you spat.

 “You’re really gonna let ten stupid seconds ruin everything that’s happened between us? You’re not even gonna give me the benefit of the doubt. You really think that little of me?”

“It’s literally only been two hours, and you’ve already lied to me once and pushed me away the second someone saw us. And you wonder why I'm having a hard time saying yes to being with you? It’s because I fucking can’t trust you, Rafe!”

“I don’t know what else I can do to show you I’m different,” he threw his hands up in exasperation. “This is so fucking unfair.”

“Are you being fucking serious right now?” You stepped towards him as you snapped at him. “You’re actually pissed at me?”

“Yeah, I am!” 

“Why?”

“Because I lost my best friend!”

Everyone on the top of the stairs winced, air sucked from the room when Rafe raised his voice at you. For all his flaws and mistreatment, he had never raised his voice at you before.

“Oh shit,” Kelce whispered.

“Shhh!” Carter and Maddie hushed him in unison, everyone leaning in a little closer to hear how you’d react. But you said nothing. They couldn’t see the widening of your eyes, jaw locked tight as you gave him space to follow up on his outburst.

“Do you really think it didn’t hurt me when you just up and stopped talking to me back then?” He took the space you gave him and slowly unpacked the hurt feelings he’d buried for years. “I know I was a dick, I shouldn’t have taken advantage of how you felt about me, I shouldn’t have strung you along. But when that shit went down senior year and you just ghosted me, I wanted to talk to you and make it right. I tried, but you blocked me out, you went from talking to me every day to radio silence without giving me a single explanation. That fucking hurt. And you’re doing the exact same thing now, not even giving me a chance to explain things. So yeah, I am a little pissed. I’m pissed that you’re just gonna throw it all away again over nothing.”

He waited for your response with baited breath, prepared for you to yell, or cry, or do something. But you gave him nothing, mouth closed in a tight line as you turned on your heel and walked further into the kitchen, lifting the coffee pot from its home and filling it in the sink.

He watched your back as you scooped the grounds into the filter and turned on the machine. Minutes passed and you remained silent, hands on the counter, looking out the big window towards the ocean while the coffee brewed one drop at a time.

Finally, after eight cups had dripped into the pot, you spoke.

“How was prom, by the way?” You turned to face him, the edge of the marble countertop digging into your waist as you leaned back against it, hands crossed in hostility over your chest. “I never asked.”

Rafe’s gaze fell from you almost instantly. He didn’t have to ask why you were bringing this up, the ‘hell hath no fury’ look on your face dragging the memory forth from its carefully hidden spot in the back of his brain. Nothing made him feel like a jackass quite like that memory, and based on the mocking curve at the corner of your lips, you knew it.

The memory used to keep you up at night. 

For a full year after it happened, it was like a fire poker bent into the shape of regret and shame was branding your heart over and over. 

Now, the burn was healed over, still calloused and red at the edges, but you’d done your best to cover the scar tissue in the healing balms of self-love and lots and lots of therapy. Still, it was the moment in your life you were the least proud of.

You’d thought it was gonna be you. Really, earnestly, completely delusionally, you believed when he asked for your help with his grand prom-posal that it was all a playful ruse to ask you to be his date. You stayed up all night, decorating three different poster boards with glitter glue so he could pick the one he liked best. You bought out all the battery-powered candles at Michael’s - he said he’d pay you back, he never did. You waited with him in the park until the sun set, giddy with the hope that he’d drop the ruse and pop the question any minute.

“What will you do if ‘she’ says no?” You attempted to flirt.

“I guess I’d just have to take you.”

Every muscle in his body flinched at the memory and the white hot regret he felt every time it replayed in his head.

The kid who said those words was such an asshole. Standing here in the kitchen, looking down at you, the love of his goddamn life, and facing the possibility that he might lose you for good, he wanted to ring the idiot’s neck.

Because he hadn’t asked you. He made you watch while he asked her. And he didn’t even give you a ride home from the park.

Fuck, he wouldn’t forgive himself if he was you, either.

Rafe felt about two feet tall, looking back at you with absolutely nothing to say. He was relieved for a second when you opened your mouth to speak first, until he heard the words.

“You don’t understand. The voice in the back of my head, the one I’ve spent years trying to silence, the one that tells me I’m not enough, that I’ll never be enough…it’s your voice, Rafe.”

He grasped desperately for a reply, but there were no words in the English language that made that statement any less devastating.

“Maybe that’s not fair,” you continued before he could come up with anything, “but I don’t think I have control over that. I don’t know how to undo it, if it can be undone. So those ten seconds that just happened out there? They’re  not nothing to me. When you dropped my hand at the sight of her, I felt like I was that stupid teenage girl again, giving my whole heart to the one person who knows how to break it. Blind and foolish and desperate for you to notice her. I don’t like that girl.”

You made it through the whole speech with a steady voice, up until the last sentence. Your voice cracked on those words, your heart doing the same as you pictured your younger self. The one who would sit on her bed for hours, rereading the texts she sent him and praying he’d reply.

Thinking about that version of yourself, you weren’t sure if you wanted to hug her or slap her. Surely, she’d hit you right back if she saw what you were doing now, potentially pushing away the boy she loved more than anything, finally having him within your grasp and letting him slip right through.

At the top of the stairs, unbeknownst to you, Carter was picturing that girl, too. She would roll her eyes at you back then, using sarcastic comments like “are you sure Rafe even knows how to read?” to mask her truer concern; that he could but he wouldn’t, and the heart you wore on your sleeve would end up crushed again. Even now, she couldn’t protect it, couldn’t save it from reaching out to this boy who did nothing but break it.

Frustration welled inside her, the absolute powerlessness to put an end to this cycle that hurts you feeling like a dark cloud over her head. The anger manifested into hot, watery tears gathering on her lash line. Without permission, one slipped through, rolling down her cheek slowly.

Topper caught the whole thing, and despite their fight and his resolve to freeze her out until she apologized, he couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out and stroking her cheek softly, wiping the tear away with a gentle swipe of his thumb.

They shared a look so full of unspoken words and tender emotions that they almost forgot about the conversation in the kitchen, until Rafe’s voice cut through the moment and pulled them from their silent reconciliation.

“Are you okay?” He asked you after you’d been silent for nearly a minute, trying desperately to compose yourself.

“Yes, that's all just a lot. I’m processing,” you sniffled.

“Take your time,” he said, pulling out one of the high back stools from the counter and motioning for you to sit in it.

Your body was so exhausted, even your stubborn anger at him couldn’t stop you from accepting the offer. You slumped on the plush stool, folding your arms on the counter and resting your chin on them.

“How do you like your eggs?” Rafe asked.

“Is that a pick-up line?” 

“Nope, just a question,” he said as he opened the high cupboard and pulled out a frying pan.

You tried to remind yourself you should reject his offer to feed you, you should storm out, you should tell him where he can put his frying pan…but you were hungry. And so tired.

“Sunny side up,” you answered.

He nodded and got to work cooking you breakfast, eggs and bacon sizzling on the stove, Rafe close by with a spatula in hand, silent as he stirred and flipped. You rested your head on your folded arms, eyes half-closed and brain sleepy, watching him. 

If you blocked out the last twenty minutes, you could pretend this morning was your real life, could let yourself imagine it really was all this simple and pleasant and sweet; he’d cook you breakfast, you’d make him coffee, and you’d kiss until the sun rose.

At the top of the stairs, Kelce stood and started descending, before Carter reached up and grabbed his arm.

“What are you doing?” She whispered.

“I’m hungry!” He whined.

“You can’t go down there,” Maddie scolded him, “give them some space.”

“Are we just gonna stay up here all day?” Tom complained as he and Jack stood to join Kelce’s crusade into the kitchen.

“Everybody sit down!” Topper whisper-yelled. “Give them five fucking minutes, you’ll all survive. You can fuck off back to your rooms if you want but no one’s going down there.”

Carter couldn’t help the heart eyes she made at him, surprised and delighted by his show of aggression in your defense.

Kelce groaned as he backed back down, Tom rolling his eyes and throwing his hands up as he trudged down the hall back to his room, Jack following with a huff.

“Kelce, I have a granola bar in my purse, c’mon,” Maddie offered, leading him towards her own door.

Alone again, Topper and Carter looked at each other for a long, quiet moment.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed.

“I know,” he mouthed back.

She scooted towards him, nuzzling into his side as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, kissing her temple.

Downstairs, Rafe was done with your meal, scooping it onto a plate and sliding it to you across the counter.

“Thank you,” you sat up and began nibbling at a slice of bacon.

Rafe took the stool next to you with his own plate of food. You sat in silence for a while, only the sound of forks scraping against porcelain and the occasional “can you pass the salt?” between you.

Between bites, you rested your head on your arm again, nearly falling asleep.

“I’m so tired,” you mumbled sleepily.

“It’s been a long twenty-four hours,” Rafe agreed, taking a sip of his coffee.

“That’s an understatement,” you snorted, sitting up again and finishing the last bite of your eggs.

“What about…the next twenty-four hours?” He asked quietly.

You took a deep breath, the smile falling from your face as you considered the question underneath his question. You didn’t answer him right away, hopping down from the stool and collecting your plate and his, carrying them to the sink. Rafe was quick behind you, arm reaching around and pulling the dishes from your hands to lay them in the sink. His hand rested on your waist, turning you to face him, pulling you in. Reluctantly, and without returned tenderness, you let him.

“Rafe, I can’t…” you said sadly.

“Please just talk to me,” he pleaded, hands running up your arms and resting on your shoulders. You shook your head, blinking away fresh tears as you pulled away from him.

“It hurts too much, Rafe,” your voice cracked. “As great as the last few days have been, you can’t see that being close to you hurts me. I worked so hard to get over you. So this isn’t me throwing it all away, this is me protecting myself. Protecting what I’ve spent years rebuilding.”

“So what, that's it then? You’re just gonna go back to school and pretend this never happened?” The pain in his voice was palpable, and you cursed the part of you that wanted to reach out and make him feel better.

“I don’t know, Rafe,” a small tear slipped through, gliding slowly down your cheek.

“You’re just gonna stop talking to me, stop thinking about me?” He continued desperately.

You looked up at him finally, searching his face, nodding sadly.

“I’ve done it before.”

Hurt flashed in his crystal blue eyes, flinching like your words had burned him. “You didn’t…you don’t…think about me?”

“No,” you told him honestly, another tear joining the one before it. “Never. Because if I let myself think about you, I would’ve fallen apart. I’m not strong enough, I would’ve run to you, and every time I did that before, you’d let me down.”

“What about yesterday? What about this morning? Just think about the beach, everything was so good, it can be that way now…”

He reached out and cupped the side of your face, thumb brushing over the tears as he pulled you in toward him, kissing you out of sheer desperation. Like maybe if you tasted his lips, it’d transport you both back in time, back to the beach, back when he’d done and said everything right. 

You allowed him to take you there for just a second, before the incident on the front walk flashed in your mind again, the pain of rejection like a knife to your gut. You pulled away from him quickly, side stepping him and moving to the other side of the kitchen, creating as much distance between you as possible.

“No, no, you can’t just kiss me and act like what just happened with Cassie didn’t happen,” you shook your head rapidly, wiping your tear stained streaks with the backs of your hands. “I can’t do this right now, I need some time to think.”

It required fighting every impulse he had, but he didn’t push, didn’t close the space between you, didn’t try to regain the control he was so used to having. He just sighed deeply and nodded, eyes low.

“Okay, well let me know when you’re done…thinking.”

With one last longing look at you, he stepped away to the basement steps, stopping at the top and turning halfway toward you.

“Oh and that girl? The one who gave me her heart? For what it’s worth, I like her. Always have.”

With that, he was gone, the door clicking softly behind him.

Carter and Topper could hear you approach the bottom of the steps. Carter stood first, fully ready to greet you and grill you on everything that had happened since you last spoke. Topper could see all her questions and comments written on her face. He grabbed her hand and squeezed gently, stopping her before she marched down the stairs towards you. She looked at him in surprise but understood quickly as he gave her a slight shake of his head, whispering, “give her some space.”

Reluctantly, she nodded, allowing him to lead her quietly down the hall and into his room.

Your footsteps were heavy on the stairs, body aching. Your brain was so fried you couldn’t even pick one thing from the morning to focus on, like the part of your brain that processes events was temporarily out of order. So you stopped trying to think and just let your feet carry you to your bed, crawling under the covers in your clothes, falling quickly into a restless slumber.

⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄

In your dreams, you were back in the kitchen with him, shoulder to shoulder in comfortable silence as you did the dishes together. Rafe washed and you dried. 

Only, it wasn’t the beach house kitchen, it was one you’d never been in before. And in that dream-state way of knowing something you don’t actually know, you were sure it was a kitchen the two of you shared, sometime in the distant, unwritten future.

(to be continued)

a/n: I'm so sorry, I had to do it.......also the prom thing may or may not be based on a true story and I may or may not have cried writing it....

also I’m sick and tired so I didn’t edit much sorry for typos!

please note: the taglist for this series is closed. For updates when I post, follow @whytheylosttheirminds-works and turn on notifs <3

friendly reminder that writers live off of reblogs, don’t forget to feed your faves! 💘

[frannyzooey]

Veneration

Marcus Acacius x f!reader

Rating: E

a/n: another piece from Ao3 — enjoy! ❤️

—

“Where is she?”

Marcus stalks into his chambers, his white cape billowing behind him, a guard following in his wake.

“I asked for her, sir. I’m not sure where she is. She –”

“Just find her,” he growls, frustration etched on his face.

The guard makes a hasty apology, slipping from the room. “Yes, sir. Right away.”

Candles fill the space, pools of shadows gathered around the edges. The fabric on the bed is rich and decadent, every piece of decoration in the room dripping with luxury.

It’s jarring, after so many months living in a battle tent.

A table filled with food in abundance, he bypasses everything on it for the jar of heady wine. Pouring himself a cup, he drinks deeply.

He thumbs at the slice on his neck, smearing blood on the tips of his fingers. His hands are used to being drenched in blood, crusted with it, the firm hold of a sword nearly molded to the creases of his palm.

It took everything he had not to raise it to the fucking pup who cut him. The one who is so careless and callous, he threatens to burn down everything Marcus has worked for.

All of his protection, wasted. His entire career, played with for sport.

Where is she?

He rips the pin off his tunic, tossing it to the side — he should be more careful with it, but he’s in no mood to be careful with anything. The laurel comes next; the stupid fucking pageantry. He’s a general, a man made of sweat and blood and his fingers tear at the clasps of his armor, but he quickly gives up, pouring another cup of wine. Beautiful and untarnished, the armor is all for show, just like the adornments they covered him with.

It felt good to ride through the city and wave to the people he has been campaigning for months, but he could do without the show of it all. He recognizes the need for celebration, and he’ll gladly give it to them, but he wishes he could do it in his actual armor. The one he defends their city in. The one nicked with a thousand dents from a thousand swords. The leather that fits to his body like a second skin, and he wished for it during the ceremony more than ever, wanting to present himself to the city like the soldier he is.

He sighs, the weight of the day resting heavy on his shoulders. He’d hoped he’d feel more relieved after his conversation with Lucilla, that maybe he’d finally have someone useful he could persuade to act – and yet, the conversation was fruitless.

Frustration throbs behind his eyes, and he closes them, rubbing at his brow.

“You’d think someone who just had a parade held in their honor would look a little less plagued.”

At your voice, his head snaps up. He watches you slip into the room, servant girls on your heels.

He shakes his head, a stern look on his face. “Alone.”

His command is clear, and you obey, dismissing the girls with a slight wave. All for show in the first place, they turn and leave the two of you.

“Where have you been?” he asks. “I’ve been waiting to see you since we entered the gates.”

You walk closer, bending to pick his cape off the floor. “You know I’m not allowed up there with them.” You finger the rich fabric, fighting the urge to bring it to your nose just to inhale his scent.

A scent you’ve missed for almost a year now. A scent that was pressed into your bedding before he left, a scent you used to have memorized from the soft divot just underneath his ear. Oil and sweat and a heady fragrance that clung to his curls and clothes - one you’d been longing for since he left you behind for the promise of North Africa.

“I know,” he answers. “I thought you’d come to see me sooner. Or that I would have seen your face along the route.”

“Would you even have remembered what it looked like?”

It’s childish, the question. You know it, but a barrier comes up automatically, placing protection around your heart. You were so sure of your bond until you saw him climb those steps, taking his place alongside the Emperor. A tiny prick of doubt at the display of his status bled within you, and though you want nothing more than to run to him for reassurance, you can’t bring yourself to do it.

“How can you even ask that?” he asks lowly, hurt and frustration buried between his dark brows.

He steps closer, and yet you withhold, standing your ground.

You did see him on the route, hidden in the back of the crowd, watching from underneath the hood of your robe. The second you heard he was approaching the city, anticipation stole the air from your lungs, so strong that you had to stop your chores. A thousand different scenarios of reuniting with him swirled through your mind, all of them abruptly stopped by the remembrance that you couldn’t greet him. Not in public, not where anyone could see. You watched him instead from the depths of the crowd, feeling pride as he rode past.

There, he looked like a shining god. Here, in front of you, he looks older.

Aged in a way that makes him even more handsome, there is new gray along his temples. More, along the curve of his jaw. The candlelight catches strands that mix in with his dark curls, and you take in the wrinkles the line the edges of his eyes, the ones that crease his forehead. The one between his brows was there before he left, only it’s deeper now - something you know has to do with the way you haven’t touched him yet.

“This finery suits you,” you muse, fingering the edge of his armor.

He scoffs, catching your hand in his. Bringing it to his mouth, you watch with rapt attention as his lips mold to your knuckles, one delicate kiss after another.

“I hate it,” he mumbles against your skin.

You smile. “Then let’s remove it.”

–

He’s patient as you help, but barely.

You can feel the tension radiating off his body as you unclasp his armor and lift it off, the heavy leather set to the side. His eyes stay trained on you as you guide his thick tunic upwards, discarding it onto the floor. He stands in his underclothes for a moment before you sink to your knees and undo the tie at his waist, letting them fall as well. Bare now for your eyes, you inspect him from your position, your hands running over his skin.

It’s familiar, yet not: new wounds that have healed, new scars for your touch. He stirs under your exploration, twitching along his thigh, but you don’t give into the touch you know he wants - not yet. You used to spend hours exploring his body: working oil into his tired muscles, memorizing the firm planes of them born in the training yard. He’s just as thick and strong as you remember, maybe even more so now.

Standing, you turn to retrieve a strigil from his bedside table, undoing the clasp of your tunic with one hand with your back facing him. It falls from your shoulders, slipping onto the floor in a puddle of cloth and when you turn to face him, the hunger in his gaze at your nakedness floods you with arousal.

“They bathed me before the parade,” he says dismissively, glancing at the tool in your grip.

You had a ritual before he left: he would summon you to his chambers, and be waiting for you. You’d help him undress, and sometimes you’d bathe him, but sometimes he liked it better this way - your small hands smearing rich oil along his tanned skin, your fingers working it in. The deliberate strokes of the strigil swept along the lines of his muscles, the tool gathering all the grime and the dust and the sweat from the yard. Never enough that it disappeared though. You smelt it on you when you slipped from his chambers later that night, always pressed into your limbs, his seed trickling from between your thighs.

Assuming he wants the same veneration tonight, you’re surprised when his hand flicks out faster than you’re prepared for, his grip relentless on your wrist. It tightens, and he pulls you towards him, your back to his front. The heat of his body is flush with yours, the weight of his cock thick along the curve of your ass.

“How long I’ve waited to have you,” he breathes into your ear, his tone a growl that sends a shiver down your spine. The scruff along his jaw scrapes against your skin, and you melt into him. “Why are you doing this?”

You drop the stirgil on the tiled floor, the sound barely heard over the pounding of your heart. Letting yourself lean against the thick, broad plane of his chest, his hand lets go of your wrist to skate up your side, roughly palming the weight of your breast. He groans when he touches it, a relieved one that blends with your softer moan, and his other hand curls around your front, cupping you firmly between your thighs. His fingers reach for the curve of your entrance, his teeth scraping along your shoulder when he finds you wet. His touch lingers there, his fingers spreading you to find more evidence of your need.

There is a tension that still vibrates from his form behind you, hidden underneath his skin. He’s holding himself back just for you, and though you want nothing more than to put aside your hesitation and your pride, it’s actually easier to do it this way. To encourage him to take, so different than the sweet murmurs you’ve wished for in the night, less vulnerable than the tender touch of his hands.

You want it to hurt, just like you’ve hurt, and you know he also needs this right now.

Your hand rests upon his, sliding it up.

Up, up, up until it circles your throat.

He flexes his grip, his fingers pressing into your pulse that thrums underneath his touch. You give him silent permission — permission to be the one he wants to be with you sometimes.

Permission for him to be rough, like he is in battle.

Permission to take you as he needs to take you.

Tilting your head to the side, you whisper against his scruffed cheek. “I’m yours, General.” The title gives away the game, your slip into character. “Tell me what you want.”

Your words set him alight, his body moving just how it does on the field: in control, precise, power emanating from his stance when he tugs you away from him and pushes you to your knees. He blocks out the light above you, his fingers curling around your chin to pull you closer. Your hands splay on his sturdy thighs to catch your balance, and he steps forward, crowding you.

“Open your mouth.”

An order, like he was born to give.

Dutifully you do, and he wastes no time feeding himself between your warm, wet lips. The thick tip of his cock brushes against your bottom lip, the weight of him smearing across your tongue the deeper he gets. He tastes so good and so familiar, so musky and masculine, and your tongue runs along the underside of his shaft, curving to the skin as he hardens even more. You slide it along every ridge, every vein of his thick cock, and when he pulls back just before pushing himself deeper with a groan, you swirl your tongue around the rounded tip.

Going back for more, you do it again.

Your hands slide up his thighs to his hips, your fingers digging into the skin, and you pull him deeper, encouraging it. He groans loud and shameless, your cunt throbbing when you look up to the light flickering over his skin. It looks so rich and real , your hands slipping backwards to palm the curve of his ass with a greedy grab.

The release of want pours from you both, his body still tight with tension but a different type of tension: not frustration, but need.

He gives in, thrusting into your mouth harder, flickering candlelight catching the drool that gathers around the edges of your mouth and slides down your chin. Your cheeks hollow, his thumb fitting into the indented curve. Your eyes shut tight, his cock pushing against the tight ring of your throat. He holds there for a moment, and then pulls out, his is cock glistening and he strokes it while you catch your breath, but you’re already grabbing for him before you’re ready.

“I want more,” you beg, your voice hoarse. “Take what you need.”

He strokes himself faster, harder, his stomach tensing.

“I know you’re holding back, but don’t. Take anything you want from me. I can take it.”

Those are the words that do it. He growls, his hand palming the back of your head to force you back onto his cock. He pushes it past your lips as far as it will go and then some, not stopping this time when he reaches your throat. He feels the tight, constricting curve of it, and pushes a little further still, thickening at the strangled whine you let out into the dark curls at the base. Swiping the hair from your face, he cups your cheeks in his hands and angles your face to turn up towards his own.

Then, he fucks.

His pace is relentless, brutal, his cock slipping into the tight fist of your throat with every thrust forward. Stars dance along your vision, your chin soaked with spit. Desperation radiates from him, his grip tightening on your face, your fingers digging crescents into his hips and he groans, wanting more pain.

A familiar ache, one that he’s used to. Something to distract him from the deeper pain of your hesitation when you first walked in the room. Deeper still, the ache he felt for you while he was gone.

“You have no idea how much I missed you. How much I missed this.” Every word of his confession is mixed with his heavy breaths, with soft grunts from the back of his throat.

You hum, a tiny frown pulling between your brows. You missed him just as much, missed this just as much — the way he emanates authority, the way he bends and molds and positions you just like his soldiers, to do as he bids.

He pushes you further, shedding the frustration and pent up tension of the day with every harsh stroke. He feeds it to you, makes you swallow it as it pours from him into your waiting mouth and an ache blooms in your throat, your jaw tense with the effort of trying to stay open wide enough for him to fit. Slipping your slim hand between his strong thighs, you cup his heavy balls with a tender squeeze — a touch that makes his head tip back as they draw up.

Harder, faster and then he doesn’t give you any warning before he fists your hair and pulls you off his cock, stroking it with a slick, rapid beat to come on your chest. Your collarbones, the swell of your breasts.

More, when you start to smear it into your skin like oil, pressing it into your skin.

When he’s finished, he sags with release — though you know he’s not done. His hands reach for you, pulling you up off the floor and then finally — finally — he kisses you.

Fevered and desperate, his mouth open to taste yours, his tongue sliding against your own. Your fingers thread through his curls to keep him close, and his own dig forcefully into your skin, as if you’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold you tight. They splay to slide up your back and down again, stretch to cup the curve of your bottom and he lifts you to carry you over to his bed. He means to drop you there so he can sink to his knees, but when you cling to him, he falls with you, his weight settling over your body.

This — this is what you dreamed of every night he was away. This is what you held onto, this is what you missed. This version of Marcus that no one else gets. Not the stoic General, but rather the tender touch of his calloused hands. The slide of his body against yours, the murmurs of his adoration poured along the column of your neck.

Your legs wind around his waist, your hips canting up and he groans into your mouth at the sticky smear you leave on his stomach. More than ready for him, desperate for it.

“My love, I need a minute.”

My love. The endearment fills your heart until tears leak from the corners of your eyes, and you pull him closer, wanting to be buried underneath his bulk. Winding your arms around his neck, you keep his mouth pressed against yours, only to frown when he pulls away.

“I need a minute,” he repeats, his head bending to brush his mouth along your throat. “But let me indulge myself in the meantime.”

You watch the muscles in his thick shoulders shift as he holds himself above you and bends his head, taking your breast into his mouth. It’s a greedy suck, his hand pushing the soft weight of it up so he can fit more. His teeth scrape against the peak, and then he’s moving onto the other one, giving it the same attention while you moan underneath him.

Down further still, he presses kisses along your belly, against each hip. Your thighs open wider, making room for him. A part of you expects him to tease you like you did him, but he doesn’t — he settles in, hooking his arms under your thighs and spreads you wide right before he bends to devour.

Your hands rest upon the top of his head; your own version of a laurel resting on his curls. No adornments, no finery, no pristine armor and gold.

Your eyes close, savoring the slow, wide licks of his tongue. The devotion he gives your cunt with every slick, firm slide.

Not the General that the city fears and adores in equal measure - just Marcus, bending the knee for you.

[corseque]

On the scale of 1 (Rise of Skywalker) to 10 (Shadowbringer/Endwalker), where would you place Veilguard?

critical post

I’ve burst into enraged tears like 5 times since I finished it, which is not nearly even close to as many times as Rise of Skywalker, but still 5 times too many. Just the shallowness of the writing, the obviousness, the incredible frustration at the simplicity, the ignoring so much of my favorite character in order to make a stupidly simple plot work, the horrendous time I had trying to ignore Rook’s annoying stupid fuckass pov while just trying to self-insert myself into the end of my favorite fictional character of all time’s story after waiting 10 years. I screamed in frustration that I had to hear the painfully obvious commentary these brand newcomer characters who I did not give a shit about, explaining to me like a toddler how I should feel about revelations I have been writing about for 10 years, especially when what they were saying was stupid as fuck. I cried at the thought of so many cutscenes and so much effort went into stories I found very forgettable and went nowhere, while they were able to only scrounge up like 10 total animated shots reuniting Solas and Lavellan. I mourn that I could not make any decisions in a BioWare game. I mourn Solas’ story so much, and probably will for years. I will never get over the way they talked down to him and never listened to him for even a second, lest they actually have to write a branching path into their game. I hate that the theme was regret but Rook regrets nothing ever so (shrugs) regret doesn’t affect them or mean anything to them. I mourn the loss of the voice and point of view of his people, the ones he was fighting for, the ones who are alive. I mourn that it turns out that he’s just a stupid feral dog who is 100% wrong about everything always and he always has been from the beginning of time. I cried that the game said the answer was that Solas should NOT try to help his people and they never even discussed it as a philosophical question or the ethics of it or anything, or playing as a character so dense they never once even wondered if accidentally freeing the gods killed more people overall than the veil coming down would have. (We avoided this question like the plague, lest we feel less like purely Good Heroes who could talk down to the gods with righteous fury). I mourn that I’m never going to know what would have happened without the Veil. I feel so stupid for thinking that elves or spirits as factions would appear in any capacity with lines and perspectives in this game. I’m so angry at how safe and smoothed over everything in the setting is, and how it felt like the main characters never struggled with anything and have nothing to say. I can’t believe Dragon Age is so shallow and unsatisfying and head-empty. I mourn that the story of Dragon Age is Over to me and I will never play another game.

I’ve also cried a few times at the completely separated and individual imagery and music in the last scene. I’ve cried that my favorite character didn’t die in any world after 10 years of being at death’s door. I’ve cried at the thought of him being a little worm spirit, and that I was right about him the whole time. I cried when activating Felassan’s crystal in the final fight and seeing all the buffs. I cried when I turned the page and realized the default inquisitor was exactly the same as my personal Lavellan, down to hair style, eye color, hair color, vallaslin removed. I cried when I realized Solas thought he should have died as a spirit rather than be born. I cried that the main story Dragon Age has been telling the whole time has been about the reconciliation and freeing of my favorite fictional character. I cried that Solas and Lavellan got married in the end, when I genuinely wasn’t expecting either of them to even be alive. They’re both still alive and in love in every single world. I can’t wrap my head around that.

I have no idea where to put it. It’s a few high highs but some intolerably low fucking lows. It could have been so much worse but the bar is on the fucking floor. I go back and forth between moderate enjoyment to just being so angry. It could have been so much more and I do not know who to bite for it.

I have no idea.

[dakota1435]

Moonlight – Vampire!Sylus X Reader ✩₊˚.☪︎ ⁺₊✧

word count: 2K (short)

tags: mention of violence

previous chapters here! x

Chapter 8

You don’t dare to draw a single breath. Those who were originally looking now turned away, knowing this was Sylus’ business now. For a second, it felt like time was frozen. Nobody moves, even Sylus. Caleb was going to get himself killed, all because he came to ‘save’ you. You still didn’t understand how he knew you’d be here, with Sylus. How he even knew somebody like Sylus in the first place. You exhale shakily, trying to calm your nerves. Your lips part, about to speak, before Caleb inserts himself. Not good!

“What have you done to her?” There’s emphasis on each word, through gritted teeth. Never in your life have you seen this side of Caleb. Despite Sylus’ overwhelming presence, Caleb doesn’t back down on his death glare.

“To think someone like you came all the way here…You must have quite the confidence to take what’s mine?” Sylus said, his voice calm and collected. You could feel the pressure of his hand on you tighten a bit. Internally, he must be seething. 

“She’s not yours!” Caleb yelled back, uncaring for the situation unfolding. You had to say something, you had to get him out of here. Out of every possible outcome, it would be the best course of action. Caleb looks at you, hesitant. 

“Um…Caleb…Please. You should leave,” you beckoned, your hands shaking by your side. Your voice doesn’t feel as strong as theirs. Clearing your throat, you speak again. “Caleb. I’ve been safe. I promise.” You hope he takes you seriously. He looks at you, astonished, before returning to the same angered expression. 

“He’s brainwashed you! He’s bit you, hasn't he? After all these years of protecting you, I am not going to give up. He’s been trying to find you this whole time.” Caleb doesn’t give you a chance to react before he speaks again. “He’s a monster. He’s trying to turn you into a monster, too. Listen, there’s so much you don’t know. So much I haven’t told you. But trust me when I say–”

“You have a lot of nerve to stand in front of me. The only reason you’re still breathing is because of her. I suggest you leave, now, before I do something about it,” Sylus warned Caleb, his grasp feeling tighter on you. Oh, he was definitely angry now. Caleb’s words ring in your head, making you question too many things. But no matter how it made you dizzy, you had to do damage control now before there was bloodshed. Seeing how Caleb is now, you knew he wouldn’t hesitate to fight Sylus. Worst of all, you knew Sylus would win against a human within the blink of an eye. 

“Stop!” You called out, the first thing you could think of. You turn to look back at Sylus. His eyes glared and his expression troubled. “Let’s leave,” you muttered to him. Your face pleaded you didn’t want to experience another moment of this. Even if it meant leaving Caleb, again. Forever, this time you’re sure. It broke your heart, but there was nothing else that could be done. Caleb heard your words, his mouth open with shock. He doesn’t say anything. Sylus calms himself at your words, removing his hand on you. 

“Very well,” he said, his voice rather curt. He leans down close to your ear, his eyes still burning onto Caleb. “Hold tight.” He wraps his hand around your waist. You spare Caleb another look before Sylus takes you, vanishing within a second. 

For a moment, you thought you saw Caleb reach out. It was too late. 

As quick as disappearing, you and Sylus arrive back at his estate with ease. But the event, the entirety of tonight, made you feel sick. You hunch over, for fear of actually getting sick. Your mind and everything around you spins uncontrollably. How? Why? Why?

“Sylus…” You began speaking. A part of you was afraid to meet his eyes. Was he angry? Did he think you knew about Caleb coming? Your mind suddenly recalled Caleb’s words; he’s been looking for you. 

He rests his heavy hand onto your back. It felt…supportive. “It seems I can’t let this kitten out of my sight,” he said, his tone amused. You were relieved he didn’t sound angry anymore, but it still didn’t put you at ease. Your dress was uncomfortable now, your jewelry feeling heavy. The choker around your neck felt suffocating. When you didn't respond immediately, Sylus spoke again. “Are you hurt?” 

“No…I just…I don’t understand anything right now,” you said quietly. Your face flushes with heat and suddenly you feel like you could cry. You couldn’t recognize your own emotions and it made you feel like a foreigner in your own body. You still don’t look at Sylus, hesitant to show him such raw emotion. You begin to walk away, expecting Sylus to stop you. But he doesn’t, instead he watches you go to your room. You change, the weight of tonight’s clothes bearing the turmoil of what happened. Slipping into something more loose and comfortable, you decide you will ask Sylus your questions. You leave the room and expect Sylus to be in his dining room. As you walk, you try to gather the questions in your head. You won’t let him be vague this time, because there’s something definitely going on. 

You push open the heavy doors of the room, finding Sylus gazing out of his massive window. He couldn’t be more beautiful in the moonlight, but he doesn’t turn at your arrival.

“We need to talk,” you said with newfound confidence. You needed answers. Your heart raced, never speaking to Sylus in this way before. 

“Oh? What about?” He still stared at the window. You figured he was still irritated over Caleb. You sigh, walking over to him as he sits in his large leather chair. He glances up at you, something playful in his face flickers for a moment. He liked seeing you stand before him. 

“I need answers. Caleb said you have been looking for me forever. I asked you if you were the reason I was put up at auction and you said no!” Your voice raises, frustration bubbling inside of you. Whatever feelings you had that you buried were now coming alive. You didn’t like it, you didn’t feel like yourself. Sylus cocks an eyebrow, surprised at your energy. 

“I don’t lie like mortals do,” he sneered, “I have been looking for you, yes. I only found you because of the auction. I had no part in any of it.” He still stares at you from his chair, watching you unfold. That familiar feeling of pressure forms in your face again, tears urging in your eyes. It was almost equally embarrassing and frustrating. 

“How does Caleb know you?” You clenched your fists, trying to control your emotions. 

“I don’t know him personally. I know he’s been with you since you were a child. My name is everywhere, though. It does not surprise me,” he said, matter-of-fact. He was starting to be vague again, the one thing you were not going to let him do. He notices your hand tightly closed and gently touches your hand with the back of his fingers. You started to question everything, you backed away from his touch. He didn’t like that. “I was going to ease you into things, but it looks like that man ruined it,” he said, sounding disgusted. He waits for your reaction for a second, then grabs your wrist. “Sit. You will want to sit for this.” You don’t protest as he pulls you into his lap. You adjust, sitting comfortably. He strokes your cheek, tenderly, as if to prepare for what’s to come. 

“He is right; I have been looking for you. He’s done a very good job at hiding you, until recently.” Sylus hold on you is possessive. He speaks slowly, letting each word sink into your mind. “That man was against your former profession, wasn’t he? He could no longer keep you away. You’ve wanted to know the unknown, haven’t you?” Sylus was right. Caleb was like your brother, but easily overbearing. When you took on your new job, going on missions, he was unsupportive. Little did you know that Caleb knew Sylus would get 

you. 

“Why…” is all you could mutter out. Your life from the start felt like a lie, and you weren’t sure what to believe. Your eyes said it all. 

Sylus wears a troubled expression. “I don’t expect you to believe me. Trust me when I say I do not lie.” He takes a breath, making you nervous. “Long ago, there was an experimental research factory. They discovered aether cores and used human subjects, as young as five.” 

          He pauses, his words slow and concise. Your stomach churns, as your brain tries to fill in the gaps.

        “I was one of their subjects. They were cruel, and inhumane. They wanted to create a human with power, strength. Countless humans died and I happened to be the one to survive. I came out, exceeding their expectations. They made me an artificial vampire, whether that was their only goal or not, I survived.” The silence after his words were heavy, almost deafening. You continued to listen as hearing Sylus speak of himself was rare. “I was unstable, uncontrollable. I escaped, leaving myself to the horrors of the new world. The organization of vampires knew about these experiments—them being heavily against it. They found me and made me who I am today.”

“What about the research facility?” You questioned. Your mind thought about all of the possible pain and torture Sylus went through, at such a young age too. 

“Nobody, including myself, would predict my capabilities. I was stronger than a human, yes, but found myself to be more powerful than a pureblooded vampire. I took that power and ascended. I returned to the facility, knowing they still continued with their research. I single handedly killed every member of that facility and burned their notes.” Sylus stares at his fingertips, as if reminiscing the blood stains. “There were only a few human subjects this time. Two of them were beyond saving, but there was one human left; you.” He gently touches your side, his comfort minimal but it kept you in reality. 

Upon hearing this, you couldn’t believe it but deep down in your gut you knew Sylus was telling the truth. If you were standing, your knees would’ve fallen weak. You run your hands through your face and hair, making sure you are still real. That, all of your entire life, was real. When Sylus stopped speaking, you could hear your heartbeat drum in your ears. You could tell Sylus was still trying to ease you into it all, trying not to overwhelm you, but you were already at that point. 

“…Tell me everything,” you said, voice muffled as you lay your face in your hands. 

“You were the youngest subject they ever had; you were born with an aethor core inside of you. You grew up in the lab healthy, alive. It seemed that you weren’t displaying any change but before I did anything, the lab was raided by government officials. I withdrew, immediately knowing you would be taken somewhere better,” he explained. He clenches his jaw as his eyes burn into yours. 

Your world was cracking around you and you felt heavy with confusion. Your brain tried remembering a shred of anything, any form of memory or feeling of being at a lab. You were raised by your grandmother until she passed, and your older childhood friend Caleb was around after that. How could it be possible? The same thing that created Sylus was buried in you, somewhere. The same thing that made him desire blood and crush anything in his way. The thought of all of it made you tremble out of fear and anxiety. 

“...You have been monitored by government officials your whole life. They feared I would come back to finish you off, but I have been searching for you because we are the same. I want to show you the potential you have, not those selfish fools.” Sylus strokes his hand down your hair tenderly and his actions ground you to reality.

Everything is falling out from your feet, your brain scattered with anxious thoughts– answers you’ll never know. It’s too much, too much, too much.

We are the same.

[glitter-stained]

Jason Todd Meta: My opinion on the csa headcanon

Does Jason's behaviour suggest he was a victim of csa?

There is very little, in terms of clinical signs, that’s going to point to csa specifically, because most symptoms, for psychiatric disorders, aren’t specific to one disorder or cause. One thing that’s usually a good hint would be children making very sexual statements/references/jokes/behaviours that are very inappropriate in context (a good example of this would be Roman Roy from Succession); night terrors are bed wettings amongst children/teenagers over a certain age. But that is absolutely not necessary: many, if not most victims of csa don’t display these specific signs, and a twelve years old that suffers from night terrors is not necessarily a victim of csa. The one thing that tells you for sure, in a person with trauma, that they have been a victim of csa, is that they’re telling you they have been a victim of csa. I’m insisting on that part because there’s a whole bunch of therapists (cough cough psychanalysts) that will tell you confidently that your psychiatric symptoms stem from a childhood sexual trauma (cherry on top of the shit cake if it’s incestuous) that you didn’t know about because you’ve repressed it. I repeat, that’s bullshit. If you meet a clinician who tells you that, RUN. So, a warning: this is probably the least “psychological analysis” of my “Jason psychological analysis posts”, because Jason’s symptoms do not allow us to conclude formally for or against a history of sexual abuse. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do some meta, make sure we're on the same page with what's analyzed here, some textual analysis, discuss what the csa headcanon does and does not imply in terms of his behaviour. I think it’s a good idea to start with it so we know where we’re standing with our analysis, regardless of the fact it’s maybe not the most interesting in terms of psychopathology and neuropsychology.

A couple of disclaimers:

I only talk about the comics I want to talk about. This is for two reasons, which are that 1) I do what I want and if I don’t like/don’t find something interesting, I’m not gonna waste time on it; and 2) I’ve been reading comics for a couple of months only, and there are, like, a lot of them. If there are comics you wanna see analysed under that lense, feel free to suggest them! I might not want to, but it also could be that I haven’t read them yet. Additionally, I'm not interested in questioning the morality of Jason's actions here. Ethics are fun, and I like talking about them sometimes, and morality sometimes has a place in talks about demonization but largely speaking this isn't the space for that. I separate talk about morality and psychology stuff as much as I can for a reason, so if you are looking here for excuses for his behaviour or arguments as to why he is a bad person, you're in the wrong place. Moral judgement is irrelevant here for the most part.

On the events of Red Hood: Lost Days:

Jason has, at some point in the comics, been a victim of csa. When Talia kisses Jason before pushing him off a cliff right after he got out of the Lazarus Pit, and when she initiates sex with him in Lost Days, that’s not consent!! That’s a grown woman taking advantage of a traumatized teenager who is, on top of that, deeply indebted to her. That’s a predatory act, with a steep power imbalance, it’s sexual assault, and on top of that there’s an element of suggested pseudo-incest. That decision was retconned, and thank god, because it was a brutal assassination of Talia’s character based on a good bit of racism, and also because the way it was portrayed doesn’t make it clear that Jason is a victim in a situation rather than that super annoying trope of “teenage guy gets to bang a hot MILF and hahaha lucky him”, writing a male character in a situation of SA without acknowledging it as SA or taking it seriously is one of the tropes I hate most, it reinforces stigmatisation and isolates victims. For all of these reasons, I’m not gonna include that element in my analysis, but it’s important to note that if you do include those scenes in your conception of it, then Jason is undeniably a victim of csa and everything discussed about it applies to him.

What if it were a lie?

I’ve said it before (and I’ll say it again), I deeply, violently hate headcanons/tropes where a character lies about being a victim of csa (whether it’s for manipulation, personal gain, any reason really I don’t care). It’s rare as fuck in real life, however it’s a common trope that feeds into fear of being wrongfully accused that causes push-back and increases social stigmatization. CSA is a painful thing associated with intense feelings of shame and already a deep fear of not being believed. Imagine making a considerable effort to seek help after something terrible happened/is happening to you, and you have to brave your fear of not being believed on top of that, and once you’ve made all that effort you get rejected and villainized because it’s just easier for the person you’re reaching out to not to believe it. So I’m awfully weary of this type of headcanon, and I think a general rule of thumb is “if your interpretation of what the character is saying is that he’s talking about how he was abused, especially if he’s talking about sexual assault, then it happened.” If you don’t like that, if you don’t feel like that’s good representation, then you can question the story, think it should be retconned, or rethink your interpretation of what the character says if it’s ambiguous, but hcing that the character lied about his assault is not a hypothesis we’re going to accept here no matter what. So we can start by scratching that one out: Jason never lies about being a victim of csa, or wilfully hints at it even though that’s untrue, at any point.

Two other ideas I’ve seen floating around that I think are worth mentioning:

No, just because Jason lived in the streets as a kid doesn’t mean the only way he survived was through underage prostitution. I genuinely don’t understand that idea, yes being a street kid makes you extremely vulnerable, yes it makes the risk of resolving to underage prostitution to survive higher but it’s absolutely not a fatality. That idea is, quite frankly, weird. Do you automatically assume if a real life person tells you they were in the streets for some time at a kid that they are a victim of csa? Also, I've seen the idea go around that because some people have a strong reading/hc of Jason as bi (which I have no problem with I love bi Jason), that would be an argument in favour of the csa hc. Please don’t do that. There’s no link between queer sexual orientations and childhood sexual abuse, that’s a harmful myth that we should work to deconstruct or, at the very least, not continue to vehiculate.

Another important thing to keep in mind: childhood sexual abuse =/= childhood sexual trauma.

Now, a traumagenic situation is a situation that might induce trauma (so development of, acute stress disorder, ptsd, cptsd, derealization, any traumatic pathology really). These situations exist on a continuum of probability to be traumatized by this situation. For example, a flood, a car accident, witnessing a murder and being sexually assaulted are all traumagenic situations, but the probability of developing trauma from them are very different. It hinges on personal, situational, social, and environmental risk factors (that have nothing to do with being weak, anybody can develop trauma). A definition for traumagenic situations can be found in the diagnostic criteria for ptsd in the dsm-5:

A. “Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in one (or more) of the following ways:

1. Directly experiencing the traumatic event(s).

2. Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others.

3. Learning that the traumatic event(s) occurred to a close family member or close friend. In cases of actual or threatened death of a family member or friend, the event(s) must have been violent or accidental.

4. Experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event(s) (e.g., first responders collecting human remains; police officers repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse). Note: Criterion A4 does not apply to exposure through electronic media, television, movies, or pictures, unless this exposure is work related.”

Note that the this last criteria has been added from the DSM-5 in order to explain cases of PTSD observed in at-risk jobs like cops exposed to repeated detailed child abuse, first responders collecting human remains, or, crucially, vigilantes repeatedly exposed to brutal crimes. This means that Jason, when he works on the Dumpster Slasher case, when he is horrified to find Gloria in the immediate aftermath of her rape (and later finds her dead body, because witnessing the consequences of these traumatic events is also an important component of that second-hand trauma), is being exposed to a very traumagenic situation. As I said before, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will experience trauma (thank fuck for that), but there are factors that influence that. SA related situations has an already pretty high probability of inducing trauma. On top of that, age is a big factor in that: the younger you are, the less resources, emotional regulation, development and coping mechanisms to face the traumagenic event you have (though there is such a thing as “too young to have PTSD" -when your memory is simply not developed enough for the memory to traumatize you because you will not remember the event.) At fifteen, with his memory fully developed but his brain going through so much changes because of teenagehood and his past history, Jason would be at risk. On top of that, you’re more at risk to get traumatized if you’re already stressed out when the event happens, so Jason’s mental state at this point in his robin run is also a risk factor. All to say, it’s very plausible for Jason to have sexual trauma without being a victim of sexual abuse in relation to canon events. Besides, in headcanon territory when it comes to Jason’s childhood before Robin, there are so many ways to be exposed to sexual violence : witnessing/finding his mother being a victim (considering the position of extreme vulnerability Catherine was in), witnessing assault in the streets, being the victim of attempted SA and escaping, watching street kids get picked up and later find their bodies/being told by other kids, as a cautionary tale, in excruciating detail, testimonies of their own assault… Or for example, if we’re thinking about Arkham Knight, being constantly threatened with SA, it being hinted and joked about and hanging over him like a sword of Damocles is something I could see Joker and other inmates do that could definitely induce sexual trauma even if it doesn’t happen ; what matters most, in trauma, is that the fear is real. Mechanically, when we’re looking at the way trauma works even on a biological level, the overwhelming fear is at the core of the pathology. (This is also why you can develop PTSD after a psychotic episode.) Like, my point isn’t that one of these things happened to Jason, or that he has to have sexual trauma from the events of the Diplomat’s Son or anything -mostly just that this is a possibility, something very serious that happens and an important nuance that I never see in discussions on the csa headcanon, and while it’s not exactly what the debate is about, I think it’s something important to ponder.

Do you consider the csa hc to be canon?

So, there are a lot of Jason stories, and I’m very pro “not take in account what is said in comics you dislike in your conception of canon” because if I did that absolutely no bat character would be readable, I have to believe that no character is defined by their worst writers. And boy, does Jason have a lot of bad writing… On top of the personal retcons, there are also the canon retcons: like Battle for The Cowl is retconned… Unless someone decides to reinject/revamp it into the narrative (please don’t please don’t it’s irrecuperable let it lay with the Flying Todds where it belongs). So, let’s see. There are three writers/arcs that imply/mention the csa hc: Starlin’s writing of Jason’s post-crisis Robin Run (canon though some stuff in it seems to have been retconned), Winick’s writing in Green Arrow: Seeing Red (canon as far as I know), and Battle for the Cowl (retconned). It’s worth noting that one of those are considered to be foundational works for Jason’s character (Jason’s post crisis Robin Run and Starlin’s part in it), and another was written by Winick, who wrote the other two foundational Jason stories: Under The Red Hood and Red Hood: Lost Days. On a personal level, I’m very mitigated about what I like and accept about it. I base my whole love and characterization of Jason about his post-crisis Robin Run, I love that little guy so much, Starlin’s take on Jason’s Robin Run is absolutely canon to me (which does not mean I like Starlin as a writer, thank you very much). On the other hand of the spectrum, the only reason Battle for the Cowl isn’t my least favourite comic ever is because The Killing Joke exists, absolutely not canon, get this thing away from me. And then in the middle, my feelings on Seeing Red (on the entirety of Winick’s Jason really) vary depending on the day, because I do like a revenge story that challenges the status quo with tropes of “bad victim” and it sets up Jason as a character based on love rather than morals which I adore, but there are also some elements of psychophobia in the writing that I (who approach stories through the filter of psychopathology first and foremost) can’t just look past, and also the way it intertwines with classist stereotypes. So do I consider Seeing Red to be canon? In good faith, yes, but whether I’ll accept it as such really depends on the day. In terms of the csa headcanon: it’s heavily hinted in BTFC but not outright said, it’s there as a undercurrent in Starlin’s run because of his intention (to make Jason die of AIDS). And then we have Seeing Red. Basically Jason lists elements about Mia’s life, including her past with underage prostitution (so, just to be very clear, csa), and says they’re very similar, having both lived on the streets, and understand having to do bad things when it’s necessary. This is not the same as saying “I was a victim of csa”, and what he’s saying could be interpreted differently (we know that he was stealing tires, and “only what he needs to survive”, so he could have been referencing small-time theft.) So, it could be a reference to something else, I totally understand why some people want to interpret differently. It just… Feels like such a weird and weak argument to be equating boosting tires to underage prostitution, to me it’s very ooc (in comparison to UTH Jason), and it would feel like weak writing from someone like Winick. Aka it’s not technically canon, and you don’t have to accept it as such(I understand the mentality of "I'm rejecting this interpretation because it feels like demonization of csa victims" perfectly), but personally I think it takes a lot from Jason’s character in Seeing Red and from this story in general.

[forsetti]

On American Exceptionalism: Stupid Is As Stupid Does

“We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.” -John Naisbitt

Right after the 2016 election, the dominant hot take from pundits was Hillary lost because Democrats failed to understand Rural America. This explanation was complete nonsense. Liberals who grew up or lived/live in Rural America very much understand them. That wasn’t the problem. As I wrote about at the time, the problem with Rural America was/is the racism and misogyny that are deeply embedded in their culture and religion and their willingness to all these to dictate their choices, even at their own expense.

Here we are eight years later and with Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump, the stupid hot takes are again flying off the shelves. This time around, the reason for Trump winning was Democrats didn’t care about the working class. As with “Dems don’t understand Rural America,” the reasons behind why Trump won were racism, misogyny, and stupidity. “Dems don’t care about the working class,” is a flat-out lie, no matter who says it, (I’m looking at you Bernie Sanders.) All the evidence shows America has done better than every other major country responding to the pandemic and EVERY economic indicator is better now than just about any time in the past fifty years regarding unemployment, job creation, DOW, wage growth… Trump’s reelection showed how much facts and evidence don’t matter in America.

As long as people “feel” a certain way, that is all that matters. Any argument that hinges on “feelings,” or “vibes,” is intellectual laziness at its finest. Why do people feel a certain way? Are these feelings justified? These questions are completely ignored or quickly glossed over because no one wants to know or discuss the answers to these questions.

No one wants to discuss why a large number of Americans are willing to believe a Five-Star, chronic liar. No one wants to know why these same people are willing to vote for a self-serving billionaire who has a long record of fucking over working-class people who have done work for him. No one wants to know why “good Christians,” happily support an adulterer who paid off a porn star not to divulge he had sex with her four months after his wife gave birth to their youngest child. No one wants to ask why these same, “good Christians,” are gleeful about fucking over immigrants and asylum seekers. No one really wants to know why Republicans are hell-bent on stripping women of rights and economic opportunities. No one really wants to admit that “The Greatest Nation On Earth,” “The Shining Beacon On The Hill,” and “God’s Country,” is very much racist, misogynist, and really stupid.

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." -Agent K

People are generally stupid. Stupid people are easy to manipulate, especially when it comes to their feelings. Most of the “feelings” about “economic anxiety,” are rooted in racism, bigotry, and misogyny.

In America, truth and evidence have been replaced with feelings and vibes because it takes no effort to feel something, to believe something. It takes a lot of work to understand and know something. There are too many Americans who are intellectually lazy and poorly educated and are either convinced they are smart or know they aren’t and overcompensate by gish galloping and talking very loudly. The only thing more dangerous than a stupid person is a stupid person who is convinced they are smart.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had little to no tolerance for stupidity. As a kid, I would often come home from school or church and complain vociferously to my mom about the stupidity I’d encountered. Her advice to me was always, “You can’t fight every battle against stupid people, there are too many of them. Even if you “win” against one, there will always be another to take their place.”

Whenever she would tell me this, it would remind me of something I once heard the population of China was so large and growing so rapidly, that they could walk ten-abreast into the ocean and the line would NEVER end.

That is how I few stupid people. Never ending.

Instead of constantly battling against stupidity, I tried to carve out niches of smartness and sanity wherever I could. It is why I felt the need to leave America and go to Japan for a couple of years. It is why I studied philosophy. It is why I ended up in grad school at a Big 10 school in a very progressive town. It is why I’ve always surrounded myself with a very small but incredibly smart group of friends.

For a long time, this way of dealing with stupidity worked. Then social media brought the stupidity I’d fought so hard to avoid to my door with a vengeance.

Nobody was more excited for the internet than me. I’m an information junkie. My “hobby” as a kid was reading the Encyclopedia Britannica every night until the wee hours of the morning. Having all the information readily available was amazing. At least it was amazing until the Libertarian Tech Bros decided to create social media platforms to “democratize” information and bad-faith actors realized how easily they could manipulate a poorly educated population.

Thomas Jefferson knew that democracy could only truly function and succeed with an educated citizenry. Poorly educated people cannot make truly informed decisions. This is why mentally incompetent people and children cannot enter contracts. It is why people on certain drugs in hospitals are not allowed to make decisions about their health care. A democracy of idiots isn’t a real democracy (and if you tell me America is a Republic, not a democracy, I’ll send a civics teacher to your house to beat you about the head and neck with the largest textbook in their library.)

You can’t have a functioning democratic government with un/misinformed people. The exact thing is true when it comes to “democratizing,” information. It might sound like a good idea to open up information to any and all because good/sound ideas will rise to the top and win out in the end. To quote from, “A Stress Analysis Of A Strapless Evening Gown: Essays For A Scientific Age,” “There goes another wonderful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts.”

When you “democratize” information you automatically give everything equal weight of legitimacy and truth value. Then, somehow, the right/true things become apparent and win out. This treats facts as opinions. The answer to, “Which is better, Coke or Pepsi?” is not a factual statement. It contains no truth (even though anyone with any taste buds knows the correct answer is, “Coke.”) When scientific theories and data are treated the same as opinions and opinions are treated as facts, we are beyond fucked.

The other thing “democratizing” information either takes for granted, completely ignores, or willfully denies is, in order for their notion of a “free marketplace of ideas,” to work, people need to have the skill sets necessary to properly understand and process the information, in order to make informed decisions.

The tech bros don’t have these skill sets. Libertarians, by nature, are idiots. The best description of Libertarians is from Tom Morrow - “"Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand.” Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg don’t give one fuck about the well-being of people. They care about their egos. They care about how much data about you they can extract to sell to other amoral dicks. They care about how many toys they can buy and how many expensive, unique experiences they can have to brag about to their other equally amoral dick friends.

Truth isn’t contingent on popularity or who has the most followers or poll numbers. To treat truth this way obliterates any and all standards of evidence, validity, and soundness. It does away with the need for truth. To pretend otherwise is to either not understand a functioning view of truth or to understand it and use the destruction of truth to your advantage.

When you combine a completely misguided idea like democratizing information with a poorly educated population, the result is the stupid become proudly and arrogantly stupid. It becomes the perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories.

Social media sites always kind of were this way but two events really showed just how problematic and dangerous they were: The election of Barack Obama and the pandemic.

The amount of sheer bullshit spread on social media about Obama’s birth certificate and the Affordable Care Act was staggering in volume and stupidity. Stupidity that is still believed as absolute gospel by a good chunk of the right. This really isn’t surprising since many of these same people deeply believe Jesus was white and apparently a vindictive, gun-toting he-man.

However, as stupid and awful as the lies about Obama and the ACA were, they paled in comparison to those spread about the pandemic. The propaganda about the pandemic was unbelievably widespread and very dangerous. Literally, hundreds of thousands of people died from the lies spread, mostly on social media, about COVID-19 and the vaccines.

I have people I know very well and some I love deeply who adamantly believe the stupidest nonsense about the virus and vaccines for no other reason than the propaganda they read/heard on social media, pundits, and their social groups… The more people passed along something they’d heard/read, the more it turned into a very dangerous Purple Monkey Dishwasher situation:

Once people believe untrue things, especially if those things are closely tied to their self-identity, it is almost impossible to unscrew that pooch because it would mean they have to admit they were not just misled and wrong but adamantly so. It takes humility to admit you are wrong. This is why, no matter how many times we are promised that the “Republican Fever,” of Trumpism will break, it will never happen because it isn’t Trumpism, it is Republicanism, and because the right will NEVER FUCKING EVER admit they were wrong about anything, especially if the liberals were right. It just isn’t in their fundamentalist, white supremacist, misogynist, Manifest Destiny DNA.

The past few election cycles have been nothing but a constant barrage of well-designed, well-placed propaganda from bad-faith actors here and abroad. Fear, hatred, lies...all get more attention and traction with people, especially stupid people, than facts and the truth. Anyone who has a basic understanding of human psychology has to know this. The entire field of advertising hinges and relies on people being easily manipulated.

The culmination of decades of underfunding, undercutting, lying about, and demonizing education by the right and the proliferation of social media outlets resulted in the election of the most unqualified, uncaring, self-absorbed, chronic liar to run the world’s largest economy and military not once but twice.

I keep hearing people blame Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris for losing to Trump because, based on who Trump is, “the race should never have been close.” This is a stupid take. It absolutely shouldn’t have been close, either time. The problem wasn’t Hillary or Clinton or anything they did/didn’t do. The problem is Americans are fucking stupid and since America is a representative government, their votes are a direct reflection of who/what they are.

The day right before this year’s election, all the left-wing pod bros and Never Trumpers, to a person, talked about how Kamala ran the most perfect campaign they’d ever seen. The day after the election, every single one of them rushed to get on the “Dems don’t care about the working class” bandwagon like they were trying to get front-row tickets to Taylor Swift.

In my lifetime, ALL of the evidence from jobs created, unemployment, wages, and the DOW… shows Democratic administrations greatly outperform Republican ones. Yet, the narrative has always been that Republicans are better at handling the economy.

Why is there such a gap between facts and feelings when it comes to the economy?

One answer is propaganda. The right has a massive media advantage when it comes to pushing whatever narrative they want. AM radio, FOX NEWS, and Sinclair Corp… do nothing but pump out right-wing talking points all day, every day. If you hear/read nonstop that the economy is in crisis, no matter what the facts are, you will start to believe it. This is why, when Republicans were polled about the economy pre-election, the majority said they were in a good economic situation but the country was not. This also explains why, right after the election, when the “bad economy” propaganda was no longer being pushed, the very same people who claimed the US economy was in shambles a week prior, now think the economy is doing fine.

The same thing is true about crime rates, welfare, immigration… You name it and there has been/is a massive propaganda effort from the right that has made a whole lot of Americans “reprogrammable meatbags” (hat tip Driftglass.)

Let’s just put aside the fact the Biden administration did more for workers than any administration since LBJ and possibly all the way back to FDR. When it comes to Democrats “ignoring the working class,” every single economic crisis in my lifetime happened while a Republican was in the White House. And, every single one of the times this happened, it was a Democratic president who fixed the mess only to be replaced by another Republican who once again fucked up the economy.

The reasons why Trump won in 2016 and again in 2024 had nothing to do with Dem messaging or policies. The reasons are racism, misogyny, widespread propaganda, and Americans are unbelievably stupid. Full stop.

I’m not surprised Trump won again because I understand the American electorate. I’ve also been warning for at least the past three decades that as white, male Americans become less culturally and demographically significant, they are going to do and rationalize whatever it takes to hold onto their artificially created sense of importance and self-worth. They will not just fight like hell to protect what they deem their God-given place in society, they will burn it all to the ground and salt the earth behind them rather than see anyone they deem unworthy get a damn thing.

In one of my undergraduate philosophy classes, I can’t remember which one or the context, one of my professors brought up a hypothetical scenario where a wise king had a difficult choice to make. The public well in the village he ruled over had been tainted and anyone who drank from it went mad. The choice the king had to make was to either not drink from the well and rule over a bunch of raving lunatics or drink and become one of them.

The general consensus among the students was the right choice was for the king to drink the tainted water because, no matter how wise you are, you can’t rule idiots.

I completely disagreed with this and thought the entire thing was a false dilemma (an either/or fallacy.) The smart/right thing for the king to do would be to find another village to rule over or head to the wilderness. Trying to rule idiots is a waste of time and talent. However, idiots aren’t going to be any more easy to rule if you are also an idiot. Find a new place for your talents and/or get the fuck out of Dodge.

I’m certainly not a wise king. I’m just a lowly villager but I have the same choice to make because the public well of information has been tainted and those who drink from it are getting stupider by the day.

What does this all mean?

It means I’m out. I’m getting the fuck out of Dodge, not in the physical sense but intellectually and emotionally. I can no longer be a part of the public square of information because it has been overrun by idiots and bad-faith actors.

I’ve been out of fucks to give for some time and barely running on fumes. Watching 70+ million of my fellow Americans vote for chaos, white supremacy, lies, misogyny, and sheer stupidity and a whole lot of other Americans not even be bothered to vote for whatever reasons they tell themselves to feel better about themselves has completely exhausted whatever was in my public engagement tank.

I am going to completely stop using social media and pretty much avoid as much other media as possible. I know a lot of people who are leaving Facebook and Twitter and setting up shop at sites like Bluesky. I have a Bluesky account but won’t be using it. When I say I’m taking myself out of the public square, I mean all of it. If the public has access to something, the well of information that hasn’t been poisoned eventually will be.

There is a part of me that wants nothing more than to hang around and watch people who voted for the Face Eating Leopard Party get their faces eaten by leopards. Nobody loves the Find Out portion of Fuck Around And Find Out as much as I do. However, I can’t enjoy the Schadenfreude of people who voted for or enabled Trump to get exactly what they deserve because a lot of people who did the right thing for the right reasons are going to suffer as much, if not much more.

I also can’t watch people who keep telling me they are allies continue to make horrible choices, bitch about the consequences of their choices, and then make the same choices again. Every single person on the left who says things like, “Both parties are the same,” or “Dems have ignored the working class,” needs to go back and take a remedial civics class.

There is ONE AND ONLY ONE principle progressives need to come to terms with. If you want FDR-like policies, you HAVE TO HAVE FDR-like majorities in Congress. There is no fucking third or fourth or fifth option. The surefire way to not get these kinds of majorities is to sit out elections, vote third-party, and spend more time and energy attacking would-be allies than opponents.

I can no longer watch people be more concerned about coming across as “independent thinkers,” than being intellectually honest.

I can no longer watch people monetize anger, grief, racism, misogyny, bigotry, and stupidity.

I can no longer watch people care more about how many followers they have than facts.

I can no longer listen to people talk about “Christian values,” when their actions and words would make Jesus weep.

I can no longer hear people complain about “elites,” but continue to cater to billionaires and be fine with tax cuts for the wealthy.

I can no longer listen to people who do not understand basic economics, basic civics, and basic logic. I can no longer deal with people saying, "It's no big deal, it's just politics."

I can no longer watch people “punch down” on people/groups that are the most vulnerable in our society.

I can no longer watch women and minorities be treated as second-class citizens.

I can no longer tolerate the left being a shining example of “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”

I can no longer watch people who claim that women and minorities are high priorities to them but who constantly don’t do what is necessary to protect them.

I can no longer watch the hypocrisy of people who claim to be “Christian,” exude so much hate and anger towards people their Jesus would have taken in and washed their feet.

I can no longer watch people with little to no critical thinking skills carry more influence and weight than experts in their field. Sorry Uncle Freedom, but you don’t know Jack about virology or tariffs or Ukraine or gas production or (fill in the blank.) You don’t have the critical thinking skill set to even know why you don’t know what you don’t know and neither do the idiots you listen to on AM radio, FOX NEWS, Rumble, or OAN.

All of this probably comes across as “sour grapes,” and/or “arrogance.” I don’t fucking care. I haven’t been wrong about this stuff yet and I don’t believe I am now. I really want to be wrong. However, over the past few years, Americans generally haven’t done anything to prove me wrong.

Someone might think I’m, “just another elite liberal talking down to “Real Americans©.” First, despite all my scholastic training, I’m very much blue-collar. Second, I’m not being judgmental, I’m being purely descriptive. Finally, the Fuck Your Feelings Crowd don’t get to complain about what people think/say about them. If you are a liberal and think I’m being too harsh, get a backbone and stop pretending Republicans are something they are not, and stop wasting your time trying to convince them. No amount of evidence or arguments is going to make a meaningful dent. The ONLY thing that has a chance of making them change their beliefs is if they personally suffer from their choices, and even then that isn't a guarantee.

I saw a very popular Tweet from someone lecturing the left for “mocking people who are concerned about the price of eggs and bacon.” I’m not mocking them for their concerns. I’m mocking them for not understanding the very easily understandable reasons why certain things cost what they do at any given moment in time. Don’t wrap yourself in a flag of capitalism if you don’t understand the basics of supply and demand. Don’t be fucking stupid and certainly don’t let your stupidity lead to even stupider consequences.

It isn’t the fault of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or liberals that a lot of Americans don’t understand the consequences of a worldwide pandemic, deregulations, supply-side issues, how the need to maximize stock dividends led to a shortage of warehouses or dozens of other economic factors. They tried. A FUCKING LOT. Somehow, it just seemed easier for a lot of people to believe the person who lies about his wealth, lies about his crowd sizes, has a long list of failed businesses, including two casinos (BANKRUPTED... TWO... FUCKING... CASINOS something that no one thought was even possible,) than the President and VP who oversaw the largest growth in US manufacturing, wage growth, jobs, and saved pensions in the past 60+ years.

To call what happened on Nov 5th stupid is an insult to stupid. What it sure the fuck wasn’t, just like in 2016, was a result of “economic anxiety.”

I have to take myself out of the public square because I see no end to the stupidity. I only see it getting worse. It is going to get worse because too many billionaires are more concerned with their placement on the Top 100 Biggest Pricks List than making things better for anyone other than themselves. It’s going to get worse because white men and their enablers are going to fight even harder to hold on to the bullshit worldview of their stature and importance. It’s going to get worse because AI is going to further dumb down an already poorly educated population. It’s going to get worse because people running social media platforms are more concerned with algorithms that will generate profits than what those algorithms contain or their consequences. It’s going to get worse because young people don’t have the skill sets necessary to process the amount of misinformation and disinformation they are exposed to on a daily basis.

It is going to get worse because there is no more fragile substance in the known universe than the male ego.

It is going to get a lot worse because when fundamentalists think they have the upper hand, they ALWAYS make things worse.

It is going to get worse right away because the worst person and president in my lifetime, and possibly American history, isn’t going to have the people or guardrails around him like he did the first time. The upcoming administration is going to be a clown show. Not a Bozo or Krusty The Clown show but Pennywise and John Wayne Gacy clown show because every single person being singled out for top positions is not just grossly unqualified but a rabid nut job.

Germany turned to fascism largely because of economic factors. Between a decimated manufacturing sector, severe reparations due to Great Britain and France, hyperinflation, and the effects of The Great Depression, Germany was an economic disaster post-WWI. Hitler capitalized on this economic strife by telling Germans he’d make Germany Great Again.

America has the world’s greatest, most stable economy. The lives of everyday Americans are infinitely better now than they were a generation ago. Many of the problems we do have can easily be corrected with some basic regulations on our poorly regulated capitalism. Yet, despite this, Americans are turning towards fascism because they can’t buy whatever they want whenever they want for as little as possible, and, most importantly, white men see their self-appointed place at the top of the social/cultural pyramid, threatened. American White Christian Male Exceptionalism and Hitler’s Aryan Master Race are both based on pseudoscientific bullshit. They aren’t the exactly same but the Venn Diagram of the two overlaps a lot more than Americans care to admit.

Other than exiting from the public square, I really don’t know what I’m going to do. The last time I felt this way, to a much lesser degree, I moved out of the country. This is certainly something I’ve thought about and a serious option but due to personal responsibilities, it wouldn’t be for a few years.

When I lived in Japan, they might have been as stupid and conspiratorial as Americans (I don’t believe they were) but I didn’t know the language well enough to find out. There is something sadly true about the quote from “Bull Durham,”-“The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness.”

I’d really like to get back into writing but I haven’t figured out what to write about if I’m self-exiled. Writing about the Village Gone Stupid would defeat the reasons I’ve decided to leave the village. No matter how little you expose yourself to poison, it is still poisonous.

Whatever happens, I want to thank everyone who has read, tolerated and appreciated what I have posted and written.

I initially thought about ending with a quote from Douglas Adams- ”So long and thanks for all the fish,” but that doesn’t really capture how I feel. A better ending would be to post the entire lyrics to “Amused To Death,” by Roger Waters. However, that is too long and I’ve gone on enough. Instead, I’ll end with the lyrics from another song by Roger Waters from the same album.

Muslim or Christian, Mullah or Pope Preacher or poet who was it wrote Give any one species too much rope And they'll fuck it up -Roger Waters “Too Much Rope”

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

spent a good hour reading up on your Not What He Seems AU, it’s such a perfect mix of angst and whimsy! Ford waking up to find 30 years have passed in the blink of an eye is is the kind of body horror terrifying i eat up, as an avid enjoyer of time travel and its inherent tragedy.

i got a few questions, if you’ll indulge me:

- what kinds of tattoos you think Bill has gotten over the years? i think i saw some arm bands in one of your pieces, but i’d love to hear if you have any specific ideas for placements or images. if he’s doing it for the safe pain experience, i’d think there are some pretty big/detailed pieces involved? and do you think the pain helps ground him somewhat, to find and fit better in the boundaries of the body?

- in the show, Stan feels a lot of guilt for stealing his brother’s identity and he kinda thinks of himself as a fraud, an actor. do you think Bill ever feels guilty for the same? or would he just miss Ford a lot, without the Stan-specific aspect of pretending to be “the better one”?

also any fun tidbits you’ve been rotating in your head lately! it’s impressive how specifically it seems like you’ve thought out how Bill’s presence would affect the canon show events, while trying to keep them as unchanged as possible. also StanFraud is the funniest, most perfect thing I’ve ever heard!

Thank you!! I’ve always enjoyed writing horror based on human response, so Ford’s perspective is probably one of the most fascinating to me in this AU, although, all of it is fascinating and enjoyable to explore, really!

— I haven’t worked them all out yet, but I know for a fact he has a tattoo of the Cipher Wheel on his back, the arm bands as you mentioned, a hyper-realistic tattoo of his ribs where his ribs would be (if that makes sense), and eyes on the back of his hands. Honestly, I’d be open to suggestions for him! I imagine him having some more grotesque, detailed tattoos that reflect the nightmare realm as well. And yes, the pain definitely helps ground him. It also gives him a sense of control as well, in a situation where he has none.

— If he does feel guilty, it’s a complicated kind of guilt. I don’t even think he’d fully process that he’s feeling guilty. It’s this sort of gnawing feeling he can’t get rid of, and it starts the longer he gets to know Dipper and Mabel — he never really felt it before that. He absolutely misses Ford though. He can’t define that feeling either. I’ve said before that he looks at Dipper strangely, and that’s because Dipper reminds him of Ford in certain moments, eager for discovery!

He and Stan never really talk about it, but the have both acknowledged missing Ford before.

Bill’s response was vague though, not an ‘I miss him too’, but an ‘I think I do too.’ He isn’t sure what to make of that.

Bill Cipher doesn’t feel remorse, or miss people, he does everything with intention and he’s never made mistakes. Or, that’s what he’s meant to be. Maybe he has gone soft.

And Tidbits! I have a few! Not as many as usual, only because Arcane’s been taking up a bit of my brain space lately, but I hope these shall suffice anyhow:

(And quickly, thank you again, I think way too hard on all the small details and how Bill’s presence would have a knock on effect. It makes me happy to see it get noticed!)

— In the early days of Bill being trapped, Stan obviously doesn’t open the Mystery Shack, and ends up having to take a few odd jobs around town instead. He’s earned a bit of a reputation for being a decent handyman because of that, and even now, old timers of the town will still come to Stan if they need something fixing, especially cars. He complains about getting too old for it, but he never says no. Money is money! It’s also interesting to think about how the little things would impact his relationship with the townsfolk and how they view him. He’s always been Stanley to them. He’s never had to pretend otherwise.

— I’ve toyed around with making the Blind Eye a bigger threat than they are in canon, being as the kids would have no reason to look into Old Man McGucket. I’ve also toyed around with McGucket ending up slightly different to canon, his mind still broken, but his motivation different, with him being aware early on that the man he sees isn’t Ford, and is in fact the beast he fears and tried to erase from his mind. A more antagonistic Fiddleford who’s been trying to get rid of Bill for years now would actually be really fun? If I can make it work, and make the Blind Eye work in this way, I’ll lean into it! For now though, it’s just an idea I’m throwing around.

— Vague ‘episode’ idea that exists within my brain is Bill accidentally starting a mini cult again after telling some sort of lie that catches on, and it ends up being a Mabel-Bill bonding plot-line as she tries to convince him to just be honest before this whole cult thing gets taken too far. I also love the idea of Bill making a comment about this being like 1952 all over again. He makes comments like that all the time. Surely he’s just joking!

— Another vague ‘episode’ idea I have is Bill taking Dipper and Mabel to the supernatural underground market of Gravity Falls under Stan’s nose, trying to prove he’s the cooler Uncle, and that he can handle the two kids by himself. This goes about as well as you’d expect. Stan isn’t too happy to find out Bill got Dipper and Mabel in trouble, as he tried to get them to do more and more risky things.

— Bill will sometimes start speaking in Euclydian without realising, especially when it comes to cursing, and no one knows how he’s making those sounds with his mouth. Stan’s actually started picking up some of the meanings in context and can roughly gauge what Bill might be saying.

[mydearestbeloved]

Chapter 14 [Draft]

Sung Jinwoo/Trial Player!Reader

CW:

Inspired by @circeyoru ‘s “Future Power Couple”

[Masterlist🦋✨️]

The soft rustle of leaves accompanied the gentle trickle of water from your watering can as Cha Hae-In’s words hung in the air.

“(Name), do you know Hunter Sung Jinwoo?”

You paused mid-motion, the steady flow of water halting as you processed the question. The vibrant blooms around you swayed in the breeze, oblivious to the tension blooming between you and your visitor. You finally set the watering can down, resting your hands on the pot rim for a moment before turning to face her. “What makes you ask that?” you asked carefully.

Hae-In, seated on the nearby wooden bench surrounded by vibrant flowers, hesitated before continuing. “Hunter Sung did something while taking down the dungeon's boss. Whatever he did, a foreign magic spread out and healed the B-team's wounds. It wasn’t his magic, though—it was something different.” Her tone was calm, but her sharp gaze betrayed her curiosity.

You took a moment, carefully brushing invisible dirt from your gloves to avoid meeting her eyes. Ah, Jinwoo, you thought, a flicker of irritation crossing your face. Could you be a bit more discreet for once? You sighed internally, recalling how lost in the heat of battle Jinwoo could become. It was one thing to act like this in a solo fight, but with so many witnesses?

“The foreign energy wasn’t unpleasant,” Hae-In continued. “In fact, it felt… familiar. I couldn’t figure out why until I came here.” She paused, her fingers lightly brushing the edge of the bench. “Your aura, though subtler, feels similar to that warmth from the dungeon. And your lack of scent—there’s something about it that’s always made you stand out to me.”

Your heart skipped a beat, but your face remained calm. Hae-In was sharp—too sharp for her own good. You turned back to your tools, neatly organizing them as you spoke. “Yes, Hunter Sung is... an acquaintance of mine,” you admitted evenly, keeping your tone steady.

Hae-In tilted her head. “Then, did you know it was him I was talking about a few days ago?”

“No.” Technically true—she’d never mentioned his name outright. You met her gaze briefly, “You didn’t tell me.”

A comfortable silence fell between you as you finished tidying up and sat beside her.

“(Name), There’s always been something about you that I couldn’t figure out. From the moment we met, your lack of scent... I thought maybe you didn’t know why, either. But after all these years, I’m sure you know more than you let on.” she said softly. “But it’s never bothered me. From the moment we met, you’ve been honest with me in your own way.”

The sincerity in her voice was disarming. You felt her hands suddenly cover yours, and despite the gardening gloves, her warmth reached you. “I’ve always admired you for that.”

“You’ve always respected my boundaries. And I want you to know I respect yours too. I won’t ask questions you’re not ready to answer. But…” She trailed off briefly, her fingers tightening slightly around yours.

“I want you to know how much you mean to me. You were my first friend, my mentor, and…” She looks sheepish all of a sudden, cheeks flushed and all. “To me, you’re like an older sister. You’ve always been there for me, and I’ll always be here for you too.”

The warmth in her gaze was almost overwhelming. You felt an old, familiar urge to tease her, to squeeze her cheeks like you used to do, if not for her holding your hands at the moment. But before you could speak, the chime of the shop bell interrupted.

The sound drew both your attention to the entrance, where a familiar figure stood.

Sung Jinwoo.

He seemed momentarily stunned to see Hae-In before his gaze shifted to you, and last to your clasped hands. His usual stoic expression was unreadable, but there was something sharp in his eyes that made you pause.

You felt your hand grow warm under Hae-In’s grip.

You gave Hae-In’s a soft nudge, prompting her to let go. As she withdrew, you gave her a brief reassuring squeeze—a silent message that everything was fine. She smiled faintly, understanding you without words.

Jinwoo’s eyes briefly flickered at the gesture, but you ignored it as you rose to greet him. Plastering on your professional smile, you stepped forward.

“Welcome to Perennial Atelier!” you said with practiced cheer. “How may I help you today, Sir?”

“I need to speak with you,” Jinwoo said, direct as ever.

‘I’m working, you oblivious man,’ you thought, though you maintained your polite façade.

“(Name), I—”

Here we go, you thought, already bracing yourself.

“—want you to come with me to my rank reevaluation,” he finished.

You blinked, “...Yes?”

“Good. Tomorrow. 10 a.m. You know the place.”

“Yes?? Wait—” But he was already turning to leave.

His eyes briefly flickering to Hae-In before stepping out, the bell chimed as the door shut behind him. Slowly, you turned back to Hae-In, whose expression mirrored your confusion.

“What... just happened?” she asked, echoing your own thoughts.

---

Later, as you worked on a bouquet of yellow roses, Hae-In’s voice broke the silence. “For a moment, he looked…” she murmured, her fingers fidgeting with Trick, the butterfly perched on her shoulder. “…scary.”

You paused, glancing at her. “Scary?”

She hesitated, recalling the brief flash of Jinwoo’s narrowed eyes, “Ah, never mind!” she said quickly, waving her hands in dismissal. “I’m probably overthinking it.”

You, however, couldn’t let it go. As you continued to fuss over her for the rest of the day, Hae-In didn’t complain, leaning into your care with a small, content smile.

---

Why did Jinwoo want you here?

You deadpanned internally as you sat on a bench at a safe distance from the throngs of reporters swarming around the South Korean Hunter Association's evaluation building. It was absolute chaos outside, a sea of flashing cameras, persistent microphones, and shouted questions all directed toward the entrance where Lee Min-Sung was scheduled to appear. But, unbeknownst to them, today’s true headline wouldn’t be the latest appearance of a celebrity Hunter—no, they would soon be scrambling for something much bigger. Because little did they know, today marked the reveal of South Korea's newest S-Rank Hunter, one who would go on to dominate headlines and leave the entire world begging for any scrap of information about him.

You couldn’t help the dry chuckle that escaped your lips. Poor fools. If only they knew what was coming, they'd be thanking their lucky stars for catching a glimpse of Jinwoo now, before he became the recluse he'd be infamous for.

But seriously, why were you here?

It wasn’t like you needed to see it in person. You could have comfortably stayed back in your garden, observing everything unfold through your butterflies, which you’d sent fluttering discreetly around the building. That was your original plan, and it was a good one. So why did you let yourself be dragged here, standing on the periphery, surrounded by this chaotic energy?

Oh, right. Because Jinwoo had insisted. You scolded yourself silently. Why did I agree to that again?

---

The wait was tedious. You watched through slitted eyes as reporters jostled for better positions, their excitement mounting each time the doors to the Association headquarters creaked open. They were all here for Lee Min-Sung. Yet, as you watched the throngs of people fidget and chatter, you knew their focus would shift in an instant.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, you spotted Jinwoo emerging from the building, behind him were none other than Baek Yoon-Ho and Choi Jong-In. The moment Jinwoo’s presence became known, whispers rapidly spread through the crowd like wildfire, and within seconds, the focus shifted entirely from Lee Min-Sung to him. The air was thick with anticipation as people strained to get a better look.

There it is, you thought wryly. The announcement of South Korea’s tenth S-Rank Hunter was going to be all anyone would talk about for weeks. The reporters were already scrambling, furiously making calls to their editors.

Despite the buzz, you remained where you were, hidden behind your enchanted mask, which helped obscure your presence among the crowd. You didn't want to get involved, and you certainly didn’t want to be caught up in this mess. I'll just wait until he notices me, then slip away, you reasoned.

Except, Jinwoo did notice you. And not in the way you'd hoped.

Before you could react, he moved so quickly it was nearly impossible for even the trained eyes in the crowd to follow. In a blink, he was right next to you, standing there with that infuriatingly calm demeanor of his, as if he hadn't just drawn every single pair of eyes in the vicinity directly onto you.

The crowd gasped in unison, and you could feel the burning stares of the onlookers. Even Baek Yoon-Ho and Choi Jong-In, who had been walking behind him, were left staring at the spot where Jinwoo had stood mere seconds ago. You could almost hear the gears in their heads turning, trying to figure out who you were.

Seriously, how tactless could this man get?

Gritting your teeth, you grabbed Jinwoo’s hand without a word. At first, his eyes widened in surprise—softening in a few miliseconds—before quickly turning into a wince when you tightened your grip, nearly crushing his bones.

“Jinwoo,” you said through a clenched, saccharine smile that could have fooled anyone else into thinking you were pleased, “get us out of here. Now.”

Jinwoo gulped, instantly understanding the gravity of your anger. Without another word, he activated his assassin speed, whisking you away from the prying eyes of the crowd. The sudden burst of wind he left behind sent hats flying and reporters stumbling backward, while Baek Yoon-Ho and Choi Jong-In stared on.

---

You only released your death grip on Jinwoo’s hand when you found yourself standing in his apartment. As soon as you were sure you were out of sight, you yanked your hand away, shooting him a glare that could have melted through steel.

“What the hell was that, Jinwoo?!” you snapped, voice barely contained to a whisper despite your fury. “Do you have any idea what you just did?!”

Jinwoo stood there, momentarily caught off guard by your outburst. “I… I just wanted to—”

“No,” you interrupted, crossing your arms tightly. “You don’t get to explain yourself right now. Do you have any idea how tactless that was? I told you I have my reasons for staying out of the public eye, and you—” You jabbed a finger in his direction, causing him to take an instinctive step back. “—you just dragged me into the spotlight like that!”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to the floor.

“Sorry isn’t going to fix this,” you shot back, your voice tinged with frustration. “What were you thinking? Were you even thinking?”

He tried to open his mouth to respond, but one look at your expression made him swallow whatever excuse he had. The hallway was heavy with tension, the silence thick enough to cut through.

Jinwoo wasn’t used to seeing you like this—your eyes cold and distant, disappointment clear in every word.

“Why did you even ask me to come in the first place?” you demanded, your voice softening, but not out of kindness—no, it was the calm before the storm. The kind that promised you weren’t done being angry.

“I… I just thought it would be nice to have you there,” he admitted, almost sheepishly. “I wanted… I don’t know, for you to see how far I’ve come.”

For a moment, you hesitated. Jinwoo’s sincerity tugged at something inside you, but your anger was still far from spent. You sighed heavily, your shoulders slumping.

“You know what?” you said, shaking your head. “I need space, Jinwoo. I can’t deal with this right now.”

Jinwoo’s eyes widened, and the look of hurt on his face made your chest tighten painfully. But you couldn’t let yourself soften. Not now. You had to stick to your resolve.

“I’ll check on you in a few days,” you said curtly, your tone leaving no room for argument. “But until then, don’t even think about disturbing me.”

Before he could say another word, you let yourself dissolve into a flurry of butterflies, vanishing from his apartment in an instant. The last thing you saw was the crestfallen expression on Jinwoo’s face.

---

Jinwoo stood there for a long time after you’d gone, his apartment feeling emptier than ever with Jinah still in school. He rubbed the hand you’d nearly crushed earlier, wincing slightly.

“Well… there goes my dinner plan,” he muttered to himself, staring at the spot where you’d disappeared. He couldn’t help but replay your words in his mind, feeling the sharp sting of your disappointment.

I really messed that one up, he thought with a sigh. And with you in no mood to talk to him, he’d have to figure out a way to make it up to you—assuming you’d let him get close again anytime soon.

Maybe a bouquet of spider lilies...

End Note:

Unfinished Draft of [15/11/2024] -

[mentalknot]

Sharing of Proof Between Friends

After spending over nearly eight hours of each day in a mathematics department for two years straight, I’m shocked that many high schoolers believe math is a solitary pursuit.

In reality, this community seems to be one of most welcoming and collaborative academic communities I’ve found. Let me share some moments:

“Hey! How’s it going?”

“Alright, been stuck on this interesting question my friend emailed me the other day… he said the first part of the proof is pretty easy, but I’ve been at it for 10 hours…”

“Never trust a mathematician who throws around the word ‘easy,’ c’mon let’s try it together at the board.”

Thirty minutes later, they had completed the proof, and sat back with wide smiles to admire their work. In truth, there was rarely a conversation that didn’t eventually turn to math in that department…

“Yeah, and I heard that the guy cheated with his best friend’s sister… wild right?”

“Yeah… not to interject, but I have this representation theory question… would you all be willing to take a look?”

The conversation took an immediate turn with collective enthusiasm. I have been lucky to have my own “collaborative math” moments since returning to my undergraduate studies, and do my best to share this part of “math culture” with younger students curious about the major.

“So that’s the proof that motivates our paper! It’s quite short, but there’s something about it I love.”

“Wait… but you’ve only done half, and this is a biconditional statement, let’s try it together.”

There was a reason my mentor never encouraged me to look at the other side of the proof… it was far more “ugly,” but tons of fun to piece together with a fiend. We looked back at our work after forty minutes with satisfaction before returning to our neglected problem sets…

And finally, I tried to assist a student with a calculus question using the “process of questioning” the research world had taught me:

“I need to find a closed-form equation for this geometric series… but I can’t seem to get the alteration sign?”

“Try writing out the first six terms, do you see anything that you could simplify? Look at the denominator specifically…”

“Well, they’re all multiples of three…”

“Try pulling that three out, any more similarities?”

“The numbers multiplying the threes are powers of two! But I still need that alternating sign…”

“Remind me, what happens when you raise a negative number to an odd/even power? Try it with (-1)^n”

“If it’s odd, the number stays negative, and positive if even… so if I add this to the denominator, the sign is alternating depending on the index n!”

“YES! This little (-1)^n trick comes up everywhere, it’s a nice ‘tool’ to hold on to if you decide to take more math.”

The exchange was wonderful… and motivated me to review the calculus I’d excitedly ran past when I was younger. I wish this type of discourse was taught more expansively.

[sleepyparalysisdmon]

2 Minus 1 - Epilogue

Seungcheol is doing good without you. Really good, in fact! He’s got a great job, has his own apartment, and has many friends surrounding him. He’s even done some dating in the three years that you’ve been gone. On some blissful days, you don’t even cross his mind. But when you reappear in his life, he has to come to terms with the fact that he might not be doing as good as he thought he was. 

Genres: ANGST with a little bit of fluff here and there. One suggestive scene (minors, use caution). 

Word count: 530

Requested? Yes!

You can find the series masterlist here.

The man is rather close to you, crowding you at the bar. You look up at him curiously over your beer. He gives you a sly grin. “So, you come here often?”

You resist a snort at the predictability of the question. “Occasionally.”

“Hmm. I’ve never seen you here before.” The man starts, stepping a little closer. A hand hovers at your side, like he might touch your waist. You raise your eyebrow, almost like a dare. “So, are you single?”

“What’s it to you?” You ask lightly. 

“Just want to understand my competition,” the man says smartly.

You can't keep up the act anymore, bursting into a giggle. “Yoon Jeonghan, I am not responsible for what your competition is about to do to you.”

Jeonghan grins widely. “And you don’t think that was the entire point? Man, I love riling him up. It takes so little effort."

“It’s your funeral. One day you’ll push it too far. Don’t worry, I’ll read a nice eulogy for you,” you smart back. 

Jeonghan chortles. He puts his hand down, stuffing it in his pocket, but doesn’t step away. He picks up another topic but you catch him peeking over your head across the bar occasionally, presumably to see if said competition is taking the bait. 

Jeonghan moved back recently, just a couple years after you. As luck would have it, you’d just moved out of your apartment and Jeonghan had taken over the lease right away. The extra surprise was that Joshua had come with him. You hadn’t expected that, but Joshua said he wanted to explore the world a little bit more, so he started looking for a job here when Jeonghan announced that he was planning to move back. 

An arm wraps around your waist and a kiss is pressed to your temple. “I can never get rid of you, can I?” The rough words aren’t directed at you, but rather Jeonghan and it makes both of you chuckle. Seungcheol isn’t chuckling, but he does have a slight lift at the corner of his lips. Still, his fingers hold onto your hip firmly.

“No, you both will never be rid of me now,” Jeonghan promises good-naturedly. 

“Isn’t that a shame?” Seungcheol laments, turning to you. “What do you think about moving? I don’t want him as a neighbor anymore.” He's giving you big eyes to soften you up.

You giggle. “Baby, we just renewed the lease. We’re stuck there for at least a year. Besides, don’t you think Jeonghan’s pretty cute to have around?” You tease, reaching up to pinch Jeonghan’s cheek. Jeonghan groans, swatting you away.

“No, he’s not cute to have around. He’s a nightmare,” Seungcheol bites, lips falling into a pout. 

Jeonghan exits the bar, mumbling something that resembles ‘big baby’, leaving you to it. You turn to Seungcheol, hand landing lightly on his cheek. He's recently cut his hair and you think you'd like him to keep it this way. It makes him look more mature in some ways, but it makes his cheeks stand out more. “We talked about this, baby. You said you’d try to be nice. Besides, he’s just trying to get under your skin. It’s worse if he knows it’s working.”

Seungcheol looks down at you with wide eyes and it makes you so soft for him. “I know. I’m trying. But maybe only call me cute, okay? And act more annoyed at his presence.”

You giggle. “I can do that.” 

He presses a little kiss to your lips. “I love you.”

You grin against his lips when he leans down for one more. “I love you too.”

[the-ineffable-dance]

Thinking of Nanny

A narrative poem for the weekly GOetry prompt, from Warlock's POV

My life has always seemed to be like a revolving door

Of teachers, coaches, servants, too, and oh so many more.

They swirl though my memory, their faces come and gone

But always there still remains alone a single one.

My parents were both quite busy, I didn’t see them much

But Nanny, she cared for me with cold words and gentle touch.

She was strict, and quite severe, and taught me many things,

Of war, death, famine, pestilence, and how I would be king.

And every night when I lay down, she’d sing me straight to sleep

Then after I had drifted off, a watch o’re me she’d keep.

And then, one day, she wasn’t there from my eleventh birthday

I never got to say goodbye before she went away.

-

It’s several years now since she left, but she’s often on my mind

For though she was so very stern, I know that she was kind

A business trip to London Town found me in St. James Park

Where He was sitting feeding ducks, all tall, and thin, and dark

And there wasn’t a single doubt about who it could be

This fellow sitting on the bench was certainly Nanny.

I don’t know how I recognized the person sitting there

So different from how she used to look but still with flame red hair

In my heart no single doubt had I so I went to see

If my old Nanny possibly could remember me.

At first he didn’t notice, he was so lost in thought

With ducks milling at his feet, eating the peas he brought.

-

I sat down on the bench next to the man Nanny had become

He glanced at me with sunglassed eyes, he looked so lost and numb

But then he smiled with her smile, with the smile of a rogue

And spoke just like she used to do, in her clipped Scottish brogue

“Well look at you, I’d never think that I would see you here.”

I was so nervous when I said, “You’re Nanny,” in his ear

“And you’re young Warlock, all grown up.” 

                                                                           “Not all grown up just yet.

But Nanny, please just call me ‘dear.’” 

                                                                           “Yes… as you like, my pet.”

“I’ve not seen Brother Francis in oh, so very long.”

Nanny turned his head away, pursed his lips and said, “He’s gone.”

“Oh… Nanny, how he fancied you, how ever could that be?

I was so very young back then, but even I could see.”

-

It took a moment for his reply, but then he said real low,

“He didn’t have a choice, you see.  I know he had to go.

But even knowing doesn’t help this fear that’s left inside

That we never could have made it work, even if we’d tried.”

He cleared his throat and straightened up, emotions locked away

“Don’t listen to me, dear. I’m glad to see you here today.”

He touched my cheek and looked quite proud, and I smiled wide

And just like that for a little time, we sat quietly side by side

Nanny I have many questions, was what I want to say

Where have you been, why did you leave, and why couldn’t you stay?

But as I watched him sitting there, one thing I realized

Fate had brought me here today to catch this fleeting prize

-

“Nanny, do you think you might find time to visit me?

It would mean so very much, but only if you’re free.”

My words took him by surprise, I watched as his breath caught

It seemed to touch him even more deeply than I thought.

“I’d like that, dear,” he finally said. “And now my name’s Crowley.”

I smiled and nodded, but in my heart, you’ll always be Nanny.

@isiaiowin @goodomensafterdark

[darkmaga-returns]

In an interview with Newsmax last week, U.S. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina said that one of the reasons she supports President-elect Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be the next U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HSS) is her concern about the safety of the COVID-19 shots. She confirmed that she suffered injuries following her second COVID mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) shot in the spring of 2021.1 2 3 4

Rep. Mace received the first dose of Moderna/NIAID’s Spikevax COVID mRNA shot on Apr. 13, 2021, followed by the second dose in May-June of that year.5 She said:

I now developed asthma that has never gone away since I had the second shot. I have tremors in my left hand. And I have the occasional heart pain that no doctor can explain, and I’ve had a battery of tests, Mace said. “I thought I was doing my civic duty to get vaccinated by this vaccine that had not been tested. My health has never been the same.1 2 4

Mace, who is a member of the House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee, that the public has not been told the truth about the safety of the COVID shots, and specifically that information about the shots was suppressed during the pandemic by social media platforms such Twitter (now known as X).1 2

Doctors Censored on Social Media for Criticizing Federal COVID Policies

In a House Oversight Committee hearing on Feb. 8, 2023, Mace questioned ex-Twitter official Vijaya Gadde about why renowned medical doctors and epidemiologists like Martin Kulldorff, MD of Harvard Medical School, Jay Bhattacharya, MD of Stanford University, and others were censored on Twitter for views that did not conform to the federal government’s narrative about COVID and the COVID shots.1

“You guys censored Harvard-educated doctors, Stanford-educated doctors, doctors that are educated in the best places in the world, and you silenced those voices. “Apparently, the views of a Stanford doctor are disinformation to you people,” Mace said. “I find it extremely alarming [that] Twitter’s unfettered censorship spread into medical fields and affected many Americans by suppressing expert opinions from doctors and censoring those who disagree with the CDC. ”1 4

“Millions of Americans were lied to and [are] living with the consequences of this decision. Thank God I didn’t vaccinate my children with this thing, but I’m living every day with the consequences of that decision, and I regret it,” Mace said.2

[savagewildnerness]

There’s really an awful lot of pondering on death & suicide & what it takes to endure existence in The Vampire Lestat… for all it’s viewed as a lighter book than Interview with the Vampire! Like, to the degree that every single main character is at some point either suicidal or wishes to die… or that actually happens. Even though the majority of them are immortal!

It’s making me wonder on this re-read, where I try to think about it more deeply, rather than just reading it - is an innate understanding of how difficult it is to endure/how easy it could be to just slip from existence a reason many of us initially loved this book? Is that Anne can articulate so well that desire to escape oneself & how it feels when that’s impossible one of the most important themes of the books?

Obviously, I’ve spoken about it often: I always associated with Nicolas a lot. Primarily due to how he perceives his own ability/experience of violin playing (I was 12. I definitely wasn’t then, nor am I now anywhere near as cynical as Nicolas….) but I don’t say it is *only* the violin & Nicolas’ music & how he feels to play and about his music that I associate with. Not least because in my opinion, how Nicolas perceives his own music is a reflection of how he perceives himself & how he perceives the world.

In any case, after my last night pondering on Armand’s internal desolation & the way he is actually most emptied of feeling when filled with some external source… yet that’s what he desires/needs because it is the only way he can feel safe… and he’d welcome death it feels if it came to him rather than him having to seek it, and going against God.

Well anyway, I haven’t read on yet, but I listened to the next bit on audiobook as I drive today. And it really struck me how delicate everyone’s mind & heart is.

Nicolas is actually like a fragile genius as a vampire - creating wildly creative, dark plays, articulating the horrors he feels are true (& thus creating Good Art Actually Lestat!) yet he cannot cope. But is it really *madness* that Nicolas screams of horrors in the streets to mortals; that he wants to create a league of vampires; that he wants humans to destroy them all; that he cannot bear it? It seems quite natural to me. Not mad really at all!

And Lestat too, gives himself over to death in despair. For all he talks of enduring, he would not have been able to rise this first time he went into The Earth, but for Marius saving him. And no wonder. He has lost everything. Lestat, talking on fate & how if we escape it, perhaps it waits for us.

It’s hard for me, as a friend died last week at a similar mortal age to Nicolas’ 30 years & this whole part is death & inability to cope with the simple Horror of existence. (Albeit; monstrous existence… but existence *is* monstrous as it is, right? Vampires are a fantastical representation of the very real & way more horrific in my opinion (as it can’t be contained in beautiful, sensual, philosophical vampires in reality…) truth of the actual horror of existence for us all.)

And Lestat speaking on fate reminds me too of Debbie. A girl I went to secondary school with. When she was 11 she got Lupus & her secondary school years were awful, but she endured. I didn’t keep in touch with her after school & her Uncle worked in aircraft engineering & got her a good job. But she survived Lupus in her teenage years, only for death to claim her at 23 in a totally unrelated way… as if it had always just lain in wait. She had escaped it, but then fate waited for her.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I kind of want to create a poll, but I’ve just made myself laugh out loud at what that poll would be - like something like *Did your wee tween self relate to the self-immolatory desires of vampires?* Nice cheery question for a Monday!

I don’t mean it in a depressing way though. We can talk about The Horrors, while allowing joy & fun & play & amusement & silliness & innocence & childlikeness, right? Can we? I am not sure what I’m getting at…?

But this part is hard for me to read right now. And yet cathartic always too. Because… we all feel it, right? Anne is expressing what we humans feel in our tiny existences too.

How to bear it? The overwhelmingness of that.

Right?

[whatinmobius]

Why couldn’t Robotnik find knothole?

It wasn’t hidden underground and invisible from the sky? He had satellites, planes, and drones? Sonar was a thing, so were radio signals.

Was the Great Forest just so massive that the machines ran out of fuel before they would search all of it?

Did Robotnik never make a battleship style grid of where it wasn’t and go from there?

Was Knothole hidden by a magic forcefield like in that one Smurfs movie?

Did Robotnik just think that it was in such an obvious location that there was no way possible way it would actually be there?

[heynhay]

How draw like you T^T

Do you have any advice for learning to draw better? Like, resources or practices or anything?

Time. and referencing. No way around it but to put in the hours.

[simcardiac-arrested]

ns has the burnt part of his wings plucked or cut off every time he falls. ends up with less and less wing.

you people come up with such evil ideas i think