#I’ve got an MA now. and no job prospects and no idea where I’m moving when my lease ends in July but that’s a concern for future me

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

Graduated! Jack of all trades but now officially a Master of one!!! (Classical archaeology + museum studies)

[gladiatortale]

My DEPRESSION BEATING, fandom obsessing, shit-tastic FANTASTIC year in review!

TL;DR: I’m fixing my mental health and figuring out WHO THE FUCK I AM one fandom filled day at a time! Thank you to everyone who’s been there for me along the way. xoxo

what’s up HEATHENS.

stating the goddamn obvious here, it’s been a HELLUVA YEAR. One emotional rollercoaster after another but we’re ALMOST DONE. I know things aren’t gonna magically get better the second it flips to 00:01 on January first, but I’m excited to put this year behind me, and (SHOCKINGLY) a bit sad to see it go.

It was a year where the whole world completely stopped, we realized what is really important, what is really worth fighting for, and took a GODDAMN SECOND to just breathe.

For me personally, the year (which I’m counting off from November 1st) started out UNBELIEVABLY SHIT. I had just been kicked out of the country I called home for the last four years (thank you Brexit), I had ZERO job prospects, my depression was the WORST it had ever been, and I just didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. And in the beginning, the pandemic felt like salt in the wound, an extra kick in the teeth to my early twenties that had already “failed to launch.”

But I tried to embrace the madness, really take advantage of the world (that I always thought moved to fast) properly slowing down, and take time to try and become myself again. I wanted to figure out what I loved and try and become a bit more like the person I was before my depression got so bad.

I often say I became that Manic Trash Planet Lady™ you see in sci-fi adventure films; a bit zany to say the least, with a million ideas and a very eclectic fashion sense, but embracing the insanity as it comes...

*cough cough* audrey, get to the goddamn point!

Right. lol. THE POINT IS! 

I’m not 100% “healed”, I’m not sure if I think depression is a “oh look you’re officially cured! hooray!” type of disease, but this year I let myself ENJOY SHIT for the first time in god knows how long. I still don’t know “wHaT i WaNt To dO WiTh mY LiFe”, but I’ve got a better idea and I’m heading in (what feels like) the right direction. And most of all, I can look back and say I am better than where I was a year ago.

So I wanted to say T H A N K Y O U to the mad lads on this website that introduced me to the fandoms, shows, movies, fics... THE SHIT that made me happy this year and were there to be one (BIG) piece in my healing journey.

AND SO, with out further rambling ADO! Here are the highlights of the year marked by my ridiculous hyper-fixations and OBSESSIONS. Thanks for putting up with me ya fiends, xoxox

November 2019  The Arcana (Visual Novel)

I had just gotten home and I was in a LOOOOOOW place. Randomly decided to download this app when it came up and it proceeded to ruin my life (and my bank account...) for pretty much the rest of the year. It was exactly what I needed to get me through a tough time and I was thoroughly, horse-blinders-up-to-the-rest-of-the-world, OBSESSED. These gorgeous magical fiends ruined me and all I could say was thank you.

Joined the fandom: November 2019 Obsession peaked: Late November Obsession faded: December 2019; I started a new job AND my bank statement came in and I realized I had accidentally spent over SIXTY BUCKS on this stupid app. No ragrets, but I definitely started to phase out at that point. Fandom friends: Velma, (@lanavxds on insta) miss you girlie xx Fanfics you NEED to read: ‘Second Mistake’ by DeathBelle on AO3, because DAAAAAYUM SON. Favourite moments: Basically the whole of the Julian arc. That gangly himbo OWNED my ass for a month.

December 2019 Hazbin Hotel (TV Series)

Y’ALL okay here me out. Am I proud of this one? No. Is the show crass as hell? OOOOOOOOHHHH YEAH. Did my angsty ass love it at the end of last year? DAMN STRAIGHT IT DID. Goes without saying, but this is NOT FOR EVERYBODY, but it definitely helped me along the way to becoming more comfortable with myself and being open about being the massive geek that I always was, and watching things I enjoy regardless of what people say about it.

Joined the fandom: December 2019 Obsession peaked: Shortly there after. Fandom friends: None. Dipped one toe in fandom discourse and then promptly YEETED the fuck outta there. Obsession faded: January 2019. Still curious to see the full series if A24 actually ever does produce the whole thing, but I have def moved away from it. Fanfics you NEED to read: Haven’t read any. Maybe I’m a pussy baby piece-o-shit, but I DID NOT want to go down that rabbit hole, NO MA’AM. Favourite moments:

Discovering the Hunicast podcast. These guys are a riot and Ashley is a flustered GEM. Even if you don’t watch the show, go watch an episode of these fucking LADS just dicking about and your day will get better.

Watching the first episode with my partner and watching him realize his girlfriend is a total freak.

January 2020 Lore Olympus (Webtoon Comic)

*Officially* discovered this one thanksgiving weekend in 2019, but my Arcana phase was still raging pretty strong at that point so I didn’t really get in to it until later. EVERYBODY AND THEIR MOTHER NEEDS TO READ IT. It has everything and handles the reality sexual assault and it’s aftermath EXTREMELY well.

Joined the fandom: Late November 2019 Obsession peaked: January 2020 Fandom friends: KELLEY. MA GIRL XOXOXO Obsession faded: June-ish 2020. I’m like 10 chapters behind now, but I still love this story so much. Fanfics you NEED to read: SO MANY ON MY ‘MARKED FOR LATER’ LIST AAAAAH. I have to get to that... NEW YEARS RESOLUTION lol Favourite moments: Having a drunk conversation on New Years Eve in 2019 with one of my oldest friends from high school about how much she loved it too. Helped me see how popular fandom and fandoms, are especially after feeling like I needed to hide my enthusiasm through high school and uni. (THAT WAS A MISTAKE BUT I’LL GET THERE IN A MINUTE).

February 2020 Versailles (TV Series)

SO FUCKING GAY Y’ALL. Oh my god everyone in this show is so gay. Even when they’re not they still are a little bit. AND BEST OF ALL!! it’s very historically accurate (except for the demon satanic nonsense in season 3, what was that???)

Joined the fandom: February 2020 Obsession peaked: Like??? The SECOND I finished episode one. Fandom friends: none... WHERE ARE ALL OF YOU??? Obsession faded: March 2020. It was a fast and passionate love affair, what can I say? Fanfics you NEED to read: IF YOU HAVE RECS, GIVE ‘EM TO MEEEEE. Favourite moments: 

Showing the first episode to a friend of mine and the *ungodly GASP* that came out of her throat was... PRICELESS.

The ENTIRE throuple(???) relationship between the Chevalier, Philipe, and Palatine. PLATONIC/ ROMANTIC LOVE G O A L S.

March 2020 Yuri!!! On Ice (TV Series)

*deep breath* ...y’all knew this one was coming.

Was I ready for this show to ruin my fucking life? No.  Am I so glad it happened??? FUCK YEAH.

NEVER IN MY LIFE have I fallen off the deep end so quickly with a fandom. HOLY SHIT. This blog didn’t have much of an “identity” before, but I you said that this is a Yuri On Ice blog now I wouldn’t even be mad (nor could I really defend myself to the contrary... bc??? like??? just go LOOK at my archive). Craziest thing is I watched the first two episodes like?? a solid TWO YEARS ago, but I didn’t continue watching because I was just not in the right head space for all the love and silliness and positivity.

I could do a whole separate post about how much this show and how this fandom has changed my life (DON’T TEMPT ME I JUST MIGHT). But I’ll stick with the highlights for now ;)

Joined the fandom: March 2020  Obsession peaked: Has it peaked?? Went straight up and it still going lol Fandom friends: Sandra, my mentor, my queen @aeriamamaduck, my fandom ride-or-die. Thank you for taking this internet bby under your wing. RACHEL @idancewiththefairies I TRAPPED YOU HERE. MUAHAHAHA xxx Obsession faded: ON GOING. CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP. Fanfics you NEED to read: jfc, SO MANY.

‘Until My Feet Bleed and My Heart Aches’ and ‘Of Bright Stars and Burning Hearts’ by Reiya @kazliin​ -- Rivals AU companion pieces. Longest fics I’ve ever read and JESUS CHRIST these two fucking SENT ME. Most popular YOI fics on AO3 for a REASON.

‘Tell Me Where Your Love Lies’ by @aeriamamaduck -- Royalty AU, trope-breaking ABO. Ah sweet, TMWYLL, how you’ve killed me over and over again. This BEAUTIFUL wip has SUCH amazing world-building idk where to start (Congrats on passing 50,000 hits!) EVERYONE GO READ IT.

‘Blackbird’ by sixpences -- WWII/Coldwar Spy Fic. I don’t have enough words to describe how amazing this is. It’s elevated to a higher plane beyond fanfic. Just go read it. Thank me later.

‘Zanka’ by rinsled05 @dreaming-fireflies -- The geisha fic that ruined me. *deep breath* AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH *gasp* I’m fine. lol I sooooo not ready for this fic. Holy hell, Aoyagi had my heart in his hands from the first chapter. “’Please’ [...] ‘Don’t give me hope.’“ FUUUUCK.

‘Echoes’ by Reiya @kazliin -- Future fic. First fic I cried at... BOI. I was NOT ready for this. Shouldn’t be surprised given the author, but MAN. “‘A love like that, a love like what they had together, it never leaves completely.’ Yuri spoke again, eyes still staring out onto the ice, lost in memory. ‘There are always echoes.’” JUST FUCK ME UP.

Favourite moments: Oh good lord, where do I begin??

Having two (count ‘em TWO) main characters with mental health issues (Yuuri and his anxiety and Victor with burn out and depression) and NOT MAKING IT THE ONLY ASPECT OF THEIR PERSONALITY. CLAPS FOR KUBO AND YAMAMOTO!!

Everything about Yurio (ESPECIALLY HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH YUUKO AND HIS GRANDPA), that tsundere motherfucker is too pure for this world.

THE KISS. THE PROPOSAL. MY HEART WASN’T READY. AAAAAH!!

This fandom *properly* introducing me to smut on AO3...

Thinking I was going to get Rachel to like the show... NOT being prepared for her to fall off the deep end and START LIKING REAL SKATING TOO!!

Staying up waaaaaay too late waaaaaay too often to plan out plot points for TMWYLL with Sandra. Love ya dearie.

The warm fuzzy feeling I get every time I think about Victor and Yuuri.

April 2020 Bungou Stray Dogs (TV Series)

I had a hunch I was gonna like this show considering ALL of the characters are based off of famous classic authors from around the world... what I was NOT prepared for was just HOW MUCH I was going to love it. HOLY SHIT. The art style? Love it. The plot?? Bonkers, but so fun. THE VOICE CAST??? AMAZING. Highly recommend to anyone who wants to get in to anime, great place to start.

Joined the fandom: April 2020 Obsession peaked: Probably this summer? But we have DEF plateaued in a VERY high place. Fandom friends: FIJI. MA BOIIIII @lil-1nsane  Obsession faded: Hasn’t. Hope it doesn’t Fanfics you NEED to read: So so so many. The smut in this fandom is *chef’s kiss*, but here are a few...

‘He Works Hard For the Money’ by CataclysmicEvent @cataclysmicevent2019​ -- Sugar Daddy AU. FUCK MAN. I was not expecting to like this one, but bloody hell. This fic grabbed me by the throat and WOULD NOT let me go. Praying for chapter 16! But the author is working on another STELLAR fic so I’m okay for now.

‘Everything or Nothing’ by CataclysmicEvent @cataclysmicevent2019​ -- University AU. FUCK THIS FIC. Started reading it as I was waiting for HWHFTM to update and BOI, this fic ROCKS. The alternating POV fits so well with the enemies/idiots-to-lovers vibe. Solid 10 outta 10.

‘The City Where Wind Blows’ by @raven-rein​ -- Cancer Death fic. *pained shriek* AAAAAAGUUUUUUUHHHH *gasp* aaaaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHHH, FUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKK MEEEEE. THIS FIC. Only the second fic I’ve ever cried to but I BAWLED MY GODDAMN EYES OUT. FUUUUUUUCK. I was not ready, never would have been ready. This is so tremendously well done, it killed me so beautifully, 

‘Haunted by Hatred’ by DeathBelle -- Canon compliant Soukoku. It is a CRIME that DeathBelle doesn’t have more BSD fics on her page, but this one is still brilliant.

Favourite moments:

THE CHUUYA-DAZAI MAFIA REUNION TEAM UP WHEN THEY FIGHT LOVECRAFT. Ooof. BOI. We love it.

The first three episodes. Soooo many break neck plot twists.

Every insane hypothetical conversation with Fiji.

Every time Atsushi or Tanizaki is on screen bc I LOVE THESE LIL BEANS.

June 2020 Trash Taste (Podcast)

Goddamn I love these chaotic lads so much.

As I became more and more comfortable with myself and my love for anime I stumbled upon these three goons, -- Joey, Connor, and Garnt, -- best known for there SUPER successful (mostly) anime YouTube channels. Even if you don’t watch anime, WATCH/LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST. The focus is mostly on their lives and the overall expat/immigrant experience, with a bit of anecdotal anime references sprinkled in. 

This show is both wholesome and heathenous in equal measure, and after having lived abroad for a significant portion of my (admittedly still quite short) life, it was such a breath of fresh air to hear people talk so openly about how living outside your home country is both wonderful and terrifying. They’re wonderfully candid about the fact that even if you love a place dearly, no where is perfect, and you WILL hate somethings about your new home even if the majority of the experience is fantastic. I cannot rate this show highly enough.

Joined the fandom: June 5th 2020, loved it from the first episode. Obsession peaked: July maybe? I was RELIGIOUS about watching the episodes as soon as they came out. Still watch every week, but less “on time.” Fandom friends: None :( but I have tricked my partner in to listening several times :) Obsession faded: It’s dimmed from where it was, but still going strong. Fanfics you NEED to read: NONE. NEVER PLAN TO. Hard and fast rule, I don’t read fics about real people. Characters played by real people, even that’s a maybe for me. But real-real people? FUCK NO. (some of my) Favourite moments:

Any time Garnt and Connor get into a big-brain-monkey-brain argument and Joey is just LOSING his GODDAMN MIND in the corner.

Bringing a retired Japanese porn star in the show for an honest conversation about consensual sex work and showing people can have more than one career in life.

Everything about the, ‘Are Online Friends Real Friends?’ episode. GO WATCH IT, it’s brilliant.

Garnt making “chotto-THE-FUCKING-matte” an expression

August 2020 Great Pretender (TV Series)

Spent most of the summer marinating in my BSD and YOI bubbles, until THIS BAD BOI came up on my Netflix recommendations. HOOOO BOI. This is some Anime Of The Year shit right here. Has a pretty original concept (Catch Me If You Can by way of Oceans 11-ish) but generally starts out like most other shounen (sans the super powers). AND THEN EPISODE FIVE HAPPENS. Not gonna spoil it but they TOOK THAT SHIT UP A NOTCH. Brilliant, even with a bit of an insane ending. GO WATCH THIS ONE.

Joined the fandom: August 2020 Obsession peaked: Pretty much as soon as I started watching it. Fandom friends: What’s up Fiji ;) @lil-1nsane Obsession faded: Naturally faded, but so glad I watched Fanfics you NEED to read: None so far! Little scared about this one, heard mixed reviews, but maybe someday. Favourite moments:

Edamame’s “madness arc” at the end of season 2. HOOOO BOY.

Laurent getting fucking WRECKED when Edamame punches him mid way through season 2, kills me every time.

Introducing my partner to anime with this show.

October 2020 Attack on Titan (TV Series)

RETURN OF THE KING. lol

In my quest to find an anime that I can watch with my partner, I turned on season 1 of this bad boi. Holy hell I forgot how much I loved this show, NO WONDER everyone lost their goddamn minds when this show first aired. I NEED to catch up before all the season four spoilers come to get me...

Joined the fandom: Winter 2016 Obsession peaked: Basically as soon as I started watching it. Fandom friends: None yet, but I know you’re out there... Obsession faded: 2017, JUST BEFORE SEASON TWO... I should have stuck around longer I know, but it’s slowly coming back. Reeeeeally need to catch up on seasons two, three, and four. Fanfics you NEED to read: GIVE ME YOUR RECS HEATHENS. Favourite moments:

Watching my partner FREAK OUT about Eren’s “death.”

EVERYTHING ABOUT POTATO GORL! lol

Getting in a conversation with a die hard fan after I hadn’t watched it in three years and saying... “Who’s that blond bitch that cries all the time?”/ “Armin?”/ “THAT’S THE ONE!”

November 2020... kind of. Figure Skating (Sport)

Okay this one is a bit hard to explain. 

I have been a DIE HARD figure skating for A LOOOOOONG time. My grandmother got me a hat from the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City and I remember watching even then. But I first became consciously aware of different skaters, my faves, etc. from about 2010. I vividly remember watching Plushenko skating in 2014 while on a school trip to Hawaii, and my friends laughing at me as I yelled at the TV.

But I didn’t TRULY get involved in the fandom side of it until this year. I had all this knowledge bottled up, but didn’t have any skating friends to talk to... UNTIL NOW. Super ironic that this happened in a year with almost NO skating, but I’ll take what I can get ;) Also did I stay up until FOUR-GODDAMN-THIRTY IN THE MORNING a few nights ago to stream Japanese Nationals on my phone??? YOU BET I DID.

Joined the fandom: Three times; 2002, 2010, and 2020. Obsession peaked: 2014? 2018? Idk it peaks any time someone does something amazing. Fandom friends: Rachel, my girl @idancewiththefairies​, WHY DIDN’T I INTRODUCE YOU TO THIS SOONER??? Obsession faded: Hasn’t. Won’t. lol Fanfics you NEED to read: NOPE. NONE. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. No fanfics about real people. Never gonna change that. (some of my) Favourite moments:

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir doing THAT routine at the 2018 Olympics.

Rachel​ sheepishly admitting to me that Shoma may have replaced Yuzu as her favourite, and me being SO DAMN PROUD of her for growing and developing her own skating opinions apart from me.

Yuzu’s 2012 ‘Romeo and Juliet’ routine and Worlds. THE RAW FUCKING POWER OF THAT SKATE.

Plushenko, cheeky bastard, changing his 2014 Team Event routine AS IT WAS HAPPENING.

The worlds friendliest rivalry between Yuzu and Nathan.

Any thing the Shibutani’s do, and all they do to break up the stereotype that all of Ice Dancing has to be rOmAnTiC and SeNsUaL to be good.

Watching my early faves become coaches and the D R A M A.

Honorable Mentions:

Coco (Film): I watched this the weekend I came home and I owe this movie a lot. It is so sweet an heartwarming, and it a roundabout way it brought me back to Tumblr (needed somewhere to vent my feelings considering I watched the movie a solid THREE YEARS after it came out, Tumblr seemed like the place to go lol). Watched in again in 2020 and it’s just as amazing.

Jekyll and Hyde (All media): Loved this book from the first time I read it in my first year of uni. But in December 2019, my fandom understanding reached its PEAK. The musical?? The comic?? YOOOOOO.

Dear Evan Hansen (Musical): I have BARELY engaged in fandom discourse, but the MUSIC. She fucking SLAPS.

Sirius the Jaeger (TV Series): This show is such an underrated gem. It literally has so much; "dead” family drama? Eclectic international group of monster hunters? Cowboys and vampires?? Yes, yes, and YES. And the main character has the same Japanese voice actor as Atsushi from BSD!

Studio Ghilbi (Films): My love affair with Ghibli goes back to when I was about 5 and BEGGED my mom to take me to the library so we could rent Kiki’s Delivery Service on DVD. But that love has been FULLY rejuvenated this year when I went to the Ghibli Film Festival in New York City (ironically in the last week in February). If you haven’t seen them, go watch From Up On Poppy Hill, Whisper of the Heart, and The Wind Rises. Spoilers, you’re probably gonna cry.

If you’ve made it this far, THANK YOU FOR READING! 

And thank you to all the amazing people that made my 2020 not so horrible. Good riddance 2020, don’t let the door hit you on the way out!

[punkscowardschampions]

Libi & Bobby

Libi: Guess what I’ve just seen

Bobby: ?

Libi: Had art first lesson

Libi: Look what was on the noticeboard when I got out

Libi: [Audition sign-up list]

Libi: !!!

Bobby: You haven’t written our names down yet

Libi: 😃😃 yeah?

Libi: The premise sounds interesting

Libi: not the worst; remember that Cinderella knock-off they did when I first started? That was REAL cringey

Bobby: There’s loads of people I’d fake kill, none I’d stay out til midnight 💃🕺 with

Libi: Maybe the ‘glass’ slippers are still in the cupboard

Libi: you can make it your diva request

Libi: you really FEEL your character would wear shoes made out of sellotape in every scene

Bobby: sticking to the floor might make me a bit easy to catch ❌🏃🏻🚔🚨

Bobby: I’ll probably save them to wear backstage

Libi: Power move

Libi: In English now, but I’ll go have a loo break and sign us up

Libi: There were only a few names already on there

Bobby: Hang on, is there anyone signed up that’ll put me off? You left that off the pic

Libi: Signing up doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll get a part

Bobby: yeah but

Bobby: whose name are you deliberately not saying

Libi: China must’ve had music, she would’ve passed by it too

Bobby: She’ll only be after the lead

Bobby: be alright when you get it, we won’t see no sign of her

Libi: There’s the 😇/😈 leads though

Libi: Which one do you think Jake will like? OMG! 🙄

Bobby: 😈🤘🎸 DUH

Libi: She already thinks she’s a femme fatale in her day-to-day

Libi: I hope someone else gets it, she’ll be seething

Libi: Mean but can you imagine?

Libi: She’d be unbearable

Bobby: You heard me say you will, unless you’re seriously gonna just audition for 😇

Libi: You think I could pull that off?

Libi: I’ll take any role I suit

Bobby: I think you’d suit a one-woman show but sir bothered to 💭 up all those roles now so it’d be a bit rude

Libi: You overestimate my abilities 😚

Libi: but it is encouraging

Libi: I think it could be really cool if you were the 😈 guy if I WERE to be the 😈 girl, because we could basically secretly communicate and no one would clock it was us ‘til the end and it’d be such a good reveal that we were signing in plain sight, you know?

Bobby: You underestimate yourself, that’s such a top idea, for 1.

Bobby: I was still trying to work out how to audition nevermind how they’d sort it if I got given the role

Bobby: 🏆🥇🎬

Bobby: Gutted you’re not directing it and all for 2.

Libi: You didn’t think I was going to volunteer us without a solid idea, did you?

Libi: Work on your brooding cold stare, Bobs 😝

Libi: I think they film it, but I also think Mr Mullan sets up a static tripod at the back of the hall and if anyone’s ma or da gets up the ‘shot’ is ruined 😷

Bobby: I never thought you wouldn’t get there, Libs, just wasn’t expecting it that fast

Bobby: I’ll stick on Clockwork Orange and The Shining and Voila! 👍

Bobby: Yeah? Didn’t have Mr M down as such an amateur

Libi: 🏃‍♀️

Libi: Oh, we have to have movie night

Libi: let Jim and Jan know it’s basically homework 🤞

Libi: Makes sense to get ahead of the competition

Libi: You’re free, right?

Bobby: If I wasn’t I’d be cancelling plans

Libi: I’d question who I was talking to if not

Bobby: 💔 if I’d been hacked and it took you this long to work it out

Libi: Never

Libi: not even in a bad teacher-written Agatha knock-off

Libi: too far fetched

Bobby: Sir sounds like he’s not above a 🔪 in the back murder if he’s still team tripod

Libi: I can’t wait to get out the corn syrup 😋

Libi: We can watch Scream even though it isn’t strictly genre

Bobby: Taxi Driver, The Godfather and Kill Bill too then for the 🥇🩸🏆

Libi: Now you’re talking

Libi: we might need a weekend marathon

Libi: now they’re boring adults, can’t pull all-nighters, even for 🥇🩸🏆

Bobby: maybe we can bribe them with back instead of front row seats

Bobby: not having to sit next to China’s mum could swing loads for us

Libi: Oh God

Libi: She LOVES to talk

Libi: and treat them like she’s known them since/they’re still kids

Bobby: I don’t wanna 🤞 that neither get roles, America’d probably be decent at the over the top stuff sir’s gonna want to make people laugh

Bobby: distance’ll have to do

Bobby: I’ll 🤞 instead that she don’t notice them sneaking in or out

Libi: She’ll for sure get a role, if she’s auditioning

Libi: Which I bet she will, the get-out-of-lessons-free pull is real for us all

Libi: She’ll be too busy making her own 📹 I reckon

Bobby: 🤔 How many lessons do you reckon we’ll end up missing?

Libi: The nearer the performance the more rehearsals they usually end up pulling for

Libi: But it’s Wednesday and Friday after school, so sometimes we get to miss last lesson on those days

Bobby: Alright, I’ll get over my 😳

Libi: You’ll be great

Libi: I wonder what other boys will audition

Libi: There’s never quite enough boys

Libi: What about Sean?

Bobby: I can’t imagine him learning lines

Bobby: Jake’s mates though, easy to 💭 of them trying to take over

Libi: Totally, every school event is a popularity contest as far as their egos are concerned

Libi: Some of them will think they’re too cool to even do it for a laugh but really it’s just 😳

Libi: As long as we have each other, it doesn’t matter

Bobby: It’ll be great, me and you, even if it takes me a sec longer to find my feet without sellotape 👠

Libi: 😚

Libi: It’ll be good to have a school thing we can actually do together

Libi: this school needs better clubs

Bobby: I bet he’ll let you start a 🎥📽🎞 club after the play

Bobby: when he’s 🤞🤩🤞 you’ll sign up for the next one

Libi: Okay I don’t know about that but that would be fun

Libi: even if it was just you and me again because no one else has seen a film that isn’t in Netflix’s catalogue 😆

Bobby: Even if it’s just us he’ll have a hard job ❌😒👎 when you’ve done such a good one

Libi: We’ll see 🤞

Libi: Usual spot at break then? I better go do some actual work now 😓

Bobby: 👀

Bobby: Me too, dunno who said there wasn’t any in transition year

Libi: They want to make it seem like there’s a break between exams, but as if they’re gonna let you get away with doing nothing

Libi: not got enough ideas to keep you busy 😏

Libi: Guess it is nice to have all that time to decide what to pick for next year but if you’ve already got a good idea… 🤷‍♀️

Bobby: Reckon if they could force everyone in the year towards that sign up sheet they would

Bobby: about as far as their ideas go

Bobby: good thing I can sort myself out

Libi: With a little help 🤏

Libi: I know my Grandma will help us out loads though, she’ll be buzzing about this

Bobby: Yeah 🤏 of work with Jim at his for a start

Bobby: when I’m not fake murdering people with you anyway

Bobby: he’ll be buzzing at the chance to art and craft again too 😏

Libi: Awh

Libi: Bet he’s missed school so much, like

Bobby: 😂

Libi: [Skip to day where they put the roles up]

Libi: I think I’m going to be late

Libi: If you want to walk to school without me

Bobby: I don’t mind waiting, not got loads on first thing

Libi: I can’t get my hair to do anything

Libi: stupid, I know

Bobby: I get it, you wanna look worthy of your starring role

Bobby: you’ve already earned it though

Libi: More like, I don’t want to look a total mess if I already made an idiot out of myself in auditions

Libi: China’s gloating will be insufferable enough without giving that satisfaction too

Bobby: I was there Libs, you didn’t

Bobby: China’ll be the one dreading the list and you can 😁 all you like

Libi: Lowkey feel like I’m gonna barf, this is ridiculous

Libi: and no one seems to know if they’ll put the list up break or lunch-time

Bobby: if you wanna stay home, I’ll keep lookout for it

Libi: No, I can’t do that

Libi: but thanks, I’ll only be 5 more minutes, max, promise

Bobby: enough time for me to make you a congrats card

Libi: Only if you make yourself one too

Libi: If I get a part, it’s only because of you, so you will too

Bobby: if I get a part it’s only because of you, more like

Bobby: and Jake’s mates messing up most of their lines

Libi: Okay, it’s not me admitting I was amazing to say some of them were awkwardly bad 😬

Libi: Thought Sir might start crying/have his nervous breakdown before we’d even started

Libi: Oh God what if one of us gets a role where we have to be all 😍 with one of that lot instead, that’ll be so… 😰

Bobby: I’d have to drop out of it before being 😍 with her

Bobby: save me from my own breakdown or her from a real murder

Libi: We can’t let you go that method, let the 🤩 go to your head

Bobby: You keep my head the right size, I’ll keep you from 🤮

Libi: Keep your hands clean of any real 🩸 it’s not that play

Libi: 🤐 on the name

Bobby: You don’t reckon I could play Scotish royalty? It’s not like I have to bother with the accent

Libi: ‘course you could

Libi: and she’d make an excellent witch

Libi: totally a compliment 😇

Libi: alright, I’m ready

Bobby: So’s your card

Bobby: If I was as 😇 as you, I’d have made her one saying sorry she missed out

Libi: no substitute for 🌹 at her feet, I feel

Libi: let’s 👀

Libi: [can skip again to after we actually know, ‘cos clearly that would be in person at school]

Bobby: [fuck that teacher for having a marvelous time ruining everything]

Libi: [could’ve been brave and taken that risk but nah, so rude]

Libi: hey

Libi: you awake?

Bobby: [at least IRL he could focus on being happy for her cos he is instead of having to pretend it’s fine when it’s not fine which she obvs would’ve seen through]

Bobby: You don’t need to keep worrying, you got the part over her and she’s still got one to keep her too busy if she fancies sabotage

Libi: I’m not worried

Libi: just bummed out, I suppose

Bobby: prospect of spending that much time with Jake’ll do that

Bobby: maybe China’ll bully him into quitting

Libi: he isn’t even her boyfriend

Libi: not that it matters, because it’s acting

Libi: I really thought he’d go for our idea

Bobby: I probably should’ve known he wouldn’t

Bobby: sorry for getting your hopes up, Libs

Libi: It’s not your fault

Libi: it feels kind of… wrong?

Libi: but not in a provable way, arguably he was better for the role and you still have one so

Libi: I don’t know

Libi: I’m sorry, are you alright?

Bobby: It’s not yours either, and yeah, maybe he was better

Bobby: face, and more importantly voice, fits

Bobby: we still get to hang out, that’s what’s alright by me

Libi: I don’t think he’s better

Libi: but yeah, that’s what it’s all about

Libi: and there’s plenty other people who got cast who are actually nice

Libi: we could do our own rehearsals separate to the regular ones, once a week or something, with those people, do some bonding

Libi: friday nights maybe? get takeout, watch a relevant movie or show, it doesn’t have to be all serious and 🤓

Bobby: Then I don’t care what sir thinks

Bobby: I’m in and Sean will be too, I don’t see why crew should be left out

Libi: 😊

Libi: Totally, whoever wants to come can

Libi: just think it’s fair to assume that they won’t wanna come any more than we’d really like them there

Bobby: What’s the first film or show gonna be?

Libi: That’s the question 🤔

Libi: [The relevant Poriot episodes] One of these, for sure, but how do you decide between a deadly murder mystery party and a deadly halloween party?!

Bobby: You were ready, have you been watching them both instead of 😴?

Libi: Maybe

Bobby: Your dreams are gonna be so on brand, let me know about it if you kill Jake

Libi: Bobby 😂

Libi: Imagine the look on her face if I was overheard dreaming about Jake

Bobby: 😡🤬🤯

Libi: Not trying too convince him it’s real, just the audience

Bobby: Neither of them need much convincing, they’re sure everyone’s 😍💘🌹 for them and their mate group

Libi: It’s so weird

Libi: How are they so unaware?

Bobby: I dunno but it don’t help now that sir has fuelled the ���

Libi: Yeah 🙄

Libi: Main characters of the School

Libi: must be nice to be so in 💘 with yourself

Bobby: You got a bit of their usual 👏🌹 today, what did you think?

Libi: I wouldn’t go that far

Libi: we all got parts

Libi: I don’t feel any different or better, that’d be weird

Bobby: 🤏 I said,‘cause I knew you wouldn’t

Bobby: but alright, I’m glad you’re still you

Libi: You thought I’d turn into a total diva? 🥺

Libi: how very rude 😏

Bobby: I’m just sulking ‘cause Mullan literally cast me as a mime, white gloves and all

Libi: Oh no

Libi: Can’t unsee 😬

Libi: but you’re gonna make it so much more than that

Libi: even if just to spite him, prove how 🔥 you can be without a voice

Bobby: and for the next play, unless it’s a musical or something even more 😬 than Cinderella

Libi: There’s the whole Disney catalogue to go through…

Libi: OMG

Bobby: Just don’t start dreaming of Jake as your prince charming

Libi: NO

Libi: LET ME STOP SHOUTING

Libi: but how cool would you as a boy Ariel be

Libi: unless you really want flowing long red hair

Bobby: BUT it’s such a fun throwback 🔊❕📢❗️

Bobby: 🤔💭?

Bobby: put it in the school suggestion box tomorrow in all CAPS

Libi: Hey! 😳

Libi: I was much younger and even more foolish back then

Libi: I’m reticent to give any more of my good ideas to Mr Mullan now

Bobby: yeah, what’s his excuse for being a poohead?

Libi: If we’re bringing up past embarrassments

Libi: I remember PLENTY too, FYI 😜

Libi: Honestly, I don’t know why J&J didn’t try harder to tell me to 🔉

Bobby: You’d never 😳 me when I’m down

Bobby: and you shouldn’t be 😳 for then, it was 🤝 not 👊

Bobby: your heart has always been massive and right where it should be

Libi: Backatcha Bobs 😊

Libi: Best friends for a reason

Bobby: Exactly, so you don’t have to worry

Bobby: we’ll have as much fun doing the play as we planned

Libi: That’s all I care about

Libi: well, I’d quite like to not shame myself and do a good job with this play

Libi: definitely 🥈 though

Bobby: Well that’s a given and all, didn’t you read your congrats card?

Bobby: I’ll have to get some real 🌹🌹 to chuck, you won’t be able to ignore them

Libi: Of course I did

Libi: but you’re my best friend, you HAVE to say all those things

Bobby: I’m a non-speaking character, saying it in spite of that

Bobby: must be important

Bobby: 🤏

Libi: I’ll stop worrying at full 🔊

Libi: It’ll be good

Libi: Do you think I should like, try to get together with Jake and Louie, get to know them and work out how to make our respective 💘s work?

Libi: I can’t think how to word it without sounding like I’m being thirsty

Bobby: *at any volume

Bobby: It will be good, I promise

Bobby: you could ask if they wanna run lines, see how they react, if they take it as you’re 😍💘🌹 1.’cause it’s them you’re expecting that and 2. it’s such a 😇🤓 request they’d be the ones who look 🤤

Libi: Ugh, how is that easy for you? 😎

Libi: That’s perfect

Libi: they signed up for the play too, they must wanna put some effort in too

Bobby: I wouldn’t go that far *😳

Bobby: It should work alright though, they bothered to learn their lines for the audition on top of signing up

Libi: Louie is alright

Libi: I’ll start with him

Libi: Lucie who’s playing the maid is cute

Bobby: He is, you’ll be alright

Libi: Don’t you think so?

Libi: She could be your 💘 and she can really beef up her role and be devastated when you get whacked

Bobby: I don’t mind her being 💔 if she wants but I don’t think I need a 💘

Libi: Married to the job

Libi: I see it

Bobby: There you go, it makes loads of sense

Libi: Plus Lord whatshisface might be being a rogue with her

Libi: that makes more sense

Bobby: 😂

Libi: Do you wanna go to the shops after school tomorrow? 👀 inspo even if we just window shop

Bobby: There’s loads of props I wanna have a go at making so I do need to have a look about to get them right

Bobby: it’s a date

Libi: I’ll wait on the 🌹🌹

Libi: Really should do some work for them first

Bobby: I can always put to 🖍 paper or fold you a paper one

Libi: Only if you colour it in [her favourite crayon colour name]

Bobby: [We’re obviously doing that as we watch these Agatha eps so prove of both those things in progress is gonna get sent]

Libi: 😇🤓 points x1000

Bobby: That’ll be why sir didn’t give me the 😈 role, if we asked

Libi: Hmm

Libi: He’s just failing to see your full potential but not for long

Libi: no one can ignore the talent

Bobby: He’s seen my potential for carrying a tray, might be as far as it goes for him

Bobby: least until my 🔈🧜‍♂️ starring role changes his mind

Libi: You are old enough to get that part-time job

Bobby: Imagine serving China and her mates ☕️ every day though

Bobby: not to disrespect the family trade but

Libi: 😅 I’m sure Jim would NEVER wish that on you

Libi: At least Asia was kinda nice, she could be anyway

Libi: Comparing her group to China’s now, feel like you’d be worse off

Bobby: he might wish the tips on me, but I reckon you’re right about it not being worth it

Libi: That’s true, it’s probably the best 💰💰 part-time

Libi: I want to get one, to help out, but I don’t know what I’ll do

Bobby: I’m gonna see if a proper job’ll come of going to work with him this year, even if that’s just doing ☕️ for everyone

Libi: That’d be ideal

Libi: I can totally see it happening, you’re enjoying it and they’re all impressed with you

Libi: 🤞🤞

Bobby: And we’ve got time to find a job for you 🎥📽🎞 that isn’t just scooping 🍿 into a carton

Libi: If I got to watch all the films for free

Libi: but that kind of slacking would make the whole job bit of it pointless 😅

Libi: We’ve got time

Libi: maybe I’ll be a maid

Libi: or a socialite, without the social-standing

Bobby: I bet [the name of a cinema that still plays films in an old school way] would train you as a projectionist

Libi: 😱

Libi: I can’t believe I’ve never thought about that

Libi: Do you think they would? That’d be-

Libi: -well 😍

Bobby: I’d put 💰💰 from my first wage on it

Bobby: you know loads of complicated stuff about 🎥📽🎞 already, I reckon they’d be 😁 to have you

Libi: I’ll take an IOU on a commission instead 🖼

Libi: 😘

Libi: Definitely going to look into it, I’ll have to see what hours they’d allow… nan and grandad might not be cool with the late shift a cinema allows for

Bobby: they might if J or J agree to pick you up

Bobby: but either way we’ve got a deal 🌹 not included

Libi: I could ask

Libi: but I don’t wanna put them out either

Libi: anyway, what am I even worrying about, it’s not like it’s happening yet, if at all 🤨🙄

Libi: Play hysteria is real

Bobby: by the time it is maybe you’ll let me pick you up 🚗

Libi: Maybe… 😱😜

Libi: Seems crazy you aren’t still 6 sometimes

Bobby: 😲!!!

Bobby: You must mean that I’m SO 🤴🗡🐲

Libi: Of course

Libi: You know I didn’t mean anything bad by it

Bobby: I 💭 you meant if we were still 6 we could do our own play with no adults telling us how

Libi: That is an 💭

Bobby: one that’s keeping us up

[a pause for realisation when she hasn’t replied that she’s fallen asleep lol]

Bobby: * me anyway 😂

Bobby: night Libs

[thetwoguineabook]

I'm curious to learn what led you to decide to make a career change to software development from your original field of study (if it's not too personal of course). I'm an undergrad student who shares many of your interests in history and politics, but I've recently been having doubts about the sort of career I want to pursue in the long term, and wondering what I might do should I want to do something else in ten years or so...

(a note of warning: I’m going to talk about some Bad Mental Health stuff here)

Well, it’s something of a long story. The last few years of my life have been a pretty continuous disaster- I had to quit my PhD programme (in Theology), I had a row with my sister that’s caused a rift in the family ever since, my girlfriend of three and a half years dumped me out of the blue a week before Christmas, I was harassed for several months and then evicted by my previous landlord, with the additional stress of the move and the Brexit vote I had a nervous breakdown and had to take time off work, but my mental health only deteriorated and I ended up losing my job.

I was at absolutely rock-fucking-bottom. If I was not as lucky as I am in having parents who helped me out financially I probably would have killed myself. As it was, they were kind enough to cover my rent while I focused on getting better and taking some time to really think about what I wanted to do.

The career I’d imagined in academia clearly wasn’t going to happen, and while the job I got fired from was reasonably well-paid and I got on with my colleagues, it was absolutely killing me intellectually. I was so bored, and when all the other good things in my life started to crumble away, that boredom just made my depression worse and worse. I’d also realised that the kind of career I was pursuing- in government/third sector administration- is an absolute fucking dead end in terms of career progression. You can’t move up into a management job without experience. You can’t get that experience unless some weird fluke happens and a management role gets dumped on you when you’re being paid to do something else. And I can’t imagine that being a manager of a bunch of admin monkeys is massively more intellectually stimulating than being an admin monkey myself. I was doing it because I didn’t see any other options, not because I really wanted to.

It occurred to me that, had I chosen to pursue a STEM field instead of the Humanities, while the job prospects are still pretty dicey in a lot of fields I’d at least have a much clearer path of progression. And I’d been wanting to learn to code and putting it off for years, or attempting to self-teach and then getting intimidated by just figuring out where to start. So I googled things like ‘learning to code’ and ‘career change coding’, and came across the bootcamp I am two weeks’ shy of finishing. And I’ve discovered in the process that yeah, software development is highly paid and there are more jobs than there are developers and there’s a lot of opportunity to advance, but also that I just really fucking love to code. It makes me feel like my brain is really awake, like I haven’t felt since I was doing my MA. And it’s been strangely, intensely therapeutic for my mental health too.

I would say that if you enjoy what you’re studying right now, get all that you can out of that study and that enjoyment. I loved studying Theology. I miss it. And honestly, when you’re in undergrad it can be hard to have any idea of what kind of career you might have if you’re not doing something really vocational (and even then, it’s not simple).

But your intellectual interests and your career don’t have to match, and the kind of job that you pick when you’re just out of university does not in any way lock you down for life. I’m about to turn thirty and I am the youngest person in my bootcamp cohort- there’s people five, ten or more years older than me, from all kinds of different backgrounds, who’ve decided that they want to change direction. 

There isn’t a time limit on this stuff. Stay open to new possibilities, make sure to save if it’s at all possible so you have a fallback either if the worst happens or if you need to fund a change in direction, and let life come at you. The idea that so many of us seem to have that you have to have your whole life figured out before you’re 25 is some serious bullshit. We’re all just making it up as we go along.

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2019, Part II

Part I is here. ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS

106. Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez)- I'm not looking at a list of films with budgets over $175 million, but I guarantee this is the one with the lowest stakes. It concerns a cyborg who tries to uncover the identity that the audience knows she has all along, and it takes place on three sets. I was intrigued by the prospect of Robert Rodriguez directing a James Cameron production, since the former uses effects to be lazy and the latter uses effects to challenge himself. Alita is more of a Rodriguez movie in that regard. Although it looks slightly better than those pictures he used to make in his backyard, it ain't by much. 105. The Upside (Neil Burger)- As good enough as movies get, good enough right up to the childish screenwriting contrivances of the third act. ("I guess he knows about wheelchairs now, so he gets a job at a wheelchair factory? Or maybe it's his own factory? I don't know--I'm still spitballing in this production draft.") Queen Nicole is criminally underserved though. Have you read that story about how Keanu Reeves's friend forged his name onto the contract for The Watcher, but Keanu didn't want to go through a prolonged legal battle, so he just showed up despite the fraud? Surely it's got to be something like that. Or maybe she was under the impression her character was still being fleshed out, but she got there and saw that nothing has been changed since the last draft? It's just like, "Yvonne looks stern. More to be added." I know for sure that no one told one of the greatest actresses in the world about the part in which she's supposed to be a good dancer. She would have prepared. 104. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Dean DeBlois)- HtTYD is still the most visually experimental animated franchise. For example, DeBlois hazes the image when a character is looking at another through a torch, there's a five-minute wordless sequence of dragons falling in love, and a lot of work has been put into crafting peach fuzz. I also appreciate that these films retain consequences. Hiccup has a prosthetic leg, and his dad is still dead. Narratively though, everything feels like a holding pattern, a brand extension that doesn't offer real stakes or real laughs. (Fishlegs has a beard now. That's his character development. That's it.) Even if The Hidden World offers an ending of sorts to the trilogy, it's a story of retreat/escape that can't help but feel like a sideways step from its already disappointing predecessor. My daughter tuned out and got really restless with about twenty minutes left. 103. Greta (Neil Jordan)- Such a boilerplate thriller that I was actually predicting the dialogue at points: "Miss, I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do if she's just standing there across the street. She's not breaking the law." There is one notable thing that happens though. In a scene at a church, Huppert makes the Sign of the Cross incorrectly. As an actress, kind of negligent. As a French person, pretty exquisite. 102. Anna (Luc Besson)- The timeline-jumping didn't work for me, but without it, I don't think there's much notable about the quadruple-crossing here at all. The awe-inspiring restaurant fight sequence is the film's saving grace; I'm awarding an extra half-star for its slashing-throats-with-plates viscera. 101. Captain Marvel (Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden)- Was I supposed to know what a Skrull was before this? Lee Pace and Djimon Hounsou show up playing Guardians characters, so I think I was supposed to connect more of the sci-fi dots of the first twenty minutes than I did. All of that inter-planetary stuff was tough sledding for me, and I preferred the Elastica music cue and Radio Shack jokes. As it turns out, especially in this genre, it's dramatically frustrating to go on a hero's journey with a character who doesn't know who she is. It was nice to see Samuel L. Jackson, with convincing de-aging effects, get a real arc in one of these movies, rather than just posing here and there. Brie Larson does enough posing for the both of them. 100. Frozen II (Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee)- Frozen begins with sisters being separated after one injures the other. It plays for keeps from minute five. Frozen II, whose smaller stakes are felt in the one-or-so location, B-team songs, and forgettable new characters, never feels as real. 99. Aladdin (Guy Ritchie)- Even if the songs still bang and Nasim Pedrad is very funny, Aladdin feels as cynical and--don't say it, don't say it--unnecessary as all of these live-action remakes do. I'm looking forward to the animated remakes of the live-action remakes, which might figure out a way to reincarnate Robin Williams. One can dream, even cynically. 98. El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (Vince Gilligan)- Finally, the TV movie--and no shade, but this ending we didn't ask for is definitely part of the TV movie tradition--that answers a burning question for Breaking Bad fans: Was Jesse ever interesting by himself?

97. High Life (Claire Denis)- As uncool as it makes me, I have to admit that I just don't care for Claire Denis's aesthetic. Knowing nothing going in, I was captivated by the mysterious first half-hour, but once the film started to explain itself, it seemed like a B movie with more ponderous music. High Life is effectively claustrophobic, but I found myself "yes-anding" most of it. Yes, for example, space is lonely, as I've learned from every other movie about space.

96. Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (Richard Linklater)- From the get-go, this movie doesn't work--structurally, tonally--but the miscalculations of Linklater and Blanchett and especially the mawkish music don't have enough consequence for the film to even fail on a noteworthy level. It's not unpleasant. You just laugh sparingly and think, on the way out, "I don't think she loved her daughter as much as she said she did" or "Get to Antarctica twenty minutes earlier or twenty minutes later." Linklater, an inestimable talent, has added an entry to his filmography that might as well not exist. Making movies, especially adaptations of epistolary books, is hard. I'm being too understanding of that or not understanding enough. 95. Dumbo (Tim Burton)- Just as Dumbo begins to take chances--fashioning itself as an anti-corporate parable with Keaton playing a Disney-esque "architect of dreams"--it settles back down to its own low expectations. Expectations that come from the storytelling and characterization and not the production design, which seems grandly practical except for the CG [rolls up sleeves, adjusts glasses, tightens shoes] elephant in the room. Of the performances, Farrell comes out on top, displaying Movie Star confidence despite very little to work with. (Can a World War I veteran who lost his arm and his wife be allowed a bit more pain?) It gives me no pleasure to dunk on child actors, but both of the kids seem to be reading their lines, and their monotones nearly sink the movie at the beginning. 94. Echo in the Canyon (Andrew Slater)- A nice enough introduction to the scene, but Jakob Dylan's constant presence as an interviewer and performer turns it into a vanity project. The film shuffles among talking heads interviews, prep for an anniversary concert, and an anniversary concert, and I'll let you guess which one of those is interesting. The access that the filmmakers got is impressive, but if a person didn't participate (Carole King is the obvious one), the filmmakers just pretend he or she didn't exist. 93. Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt)- I like the notion of someone so specialized in his profession that he has a child-like understanding of the outside world, and Carloto Cotta sells the innocence of the title character. (The Donna Lewis needle-drop killed me too.) But too often this film feels as if it's focusing on sheer weirdness over satisfying narrative. Cult classics are fine, but you should try for the regular classic. 92. Ma (Tate Taylor)- There are some cool ideas here--the innocent entrees that technology provides, the way the movie earns its R rating. But the script needs a few more passes for everything to congeal past the silliness, especially with regard to the hammy flashbacks that attempt to provide motivation for the Ma figure. I respect the attempt to humanize a monster, but she would be more scary if left opaque. 91. Bombshell (Jay Roach)- The films that try explicitly to comment on our current social climate are never the most successful ones, especially if their internal politics are this muddled. The film takes great pleasure in implicating the toxic system of Fox News, taking shots at anyone who would participate. Then it starts to pick and choose who to like in that system, which is where it gets weird. Obviously, a Fox News employee who sexually harasses another employee is "worse" than an employee who gets harassed. But then the Charles Randolph screenplay starts to sort closeted lesbians and career-strivers, and it's not sure who the bad guys really are. The film moves quite swiftly in its first half, and Charlize Theron's mimicking of Megyn Kelly is eerie. But I don't think Jay Roach knows what he believes. The lurid, claustrophobic scene between Margot Robbie's composite Kayla and John Lithgow's breathy Roger Ailes is the transcendent moment. It teases out the humiliation slowly and powerfully. With a quite meta flourish, the scene makes you hate yourself if you've ever objectified one of the most objectified actresses in the world; she's that great at illustrating her discomfort.

90. Glass (M. Night Shyamalan)- 1. A great example of "story" vs. "things happening." A negative example, I'm afraid. 2. The Osaka Tower represents the literal and figurative highs that the film will literally and figuratively not reach. 3. Spencer Treat Clark back!!! 4. The flashbacks are actual deleted scenes from Unbreakable, which is amazing. 5. Not since Lost has there been a work that seems like obsessive fan service, but the fan in mind is the creator, not any member of the audience. We do not want your explanations about Jai the security guard's role in your universe, Night. 6. This is a sequel to Unbreakable and a sequel to Split, but it somehow does not feel like a third chapter of anything. 7. It makes sense that I watched this on the same day that I listened to Weezer's The Teal Album, their surprise collection of punctilious '80s covers. In both cases, there's an artist who was really important to me in formative years but who has used up the last of whatever capital he has accrued by giving in to his worst instincts. In Shyamalan's case though, at least it's a confident swing. The second act pretty much tells us that we were dumb to believe what he sold us on. Even though it's dramatically inert and completely stops halfway through, this is exactly the movie he wanted to make, which I stupidly still admire. 89. Five Feet Apart (Justin Baldoni)- I checked this out because I have the sneaking suspicion that Haley Lu Richardson is a Movie Star, and she is continuing to progress into that power/responsibility. Otherwise the movie is a by-the-numbers weepie that doesn't really have a new spin on anything but hits its marks adequately. I was surprised that Claire Forlani got neither a "with" nor an "and" card in the credits. How rude. 88. Pet Sematary (Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer)- I like the bleak dive the film takes following its second big twist, which is handled well, but there is a ceiling for an adaptation of one of King's least ambitious and most predetermined tales. 87. Wild Rose (Tom Harper)- So conventional that Jessie Buckley almost got nominated for a Golden Globe. 86. Judy (Rupert Goold)- Just as the leaves start to change, we get biopics like these: too earnest to be cliched, too safe to be original. I'm on the ground floor of the Zellwegerssaince, but Judy is a slog in stretches. 85. The King (David Michod)- Capable but superfluous. Animal Kingdom was nine years ago, so it's quite possible that David Michod, even when he has an imperious Ben Mendelsohn at his disposal, has lost the urgency. The reason that anyone should see this--at least until someone puts together a YouTube compilation of just his scenes--is for Robert Pattinson, whose take on The Dauphin is the frontrunner for Most On-One Performance of the Year. 84. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams)- There are just enough moments--the first Force battle between Kylo and Rey being one of them--that remind the viewer of the magic of Star Wars. Kylo Ren's arc concludes in a more satisfying way than I expected, Babu Frik is officially my dude, and Daisy Ridley's post-Star Wars career intrigues me. My Dolby seat was rumbling, and I was pretty charged up on candy. But, man, most of the business here feels compromised, undermined, and inessential. It's a rushed connect-the-dots compared to The Last Jedi. There's a scene in which the gang has to risk wiping C-3PO's memory to gain important information--they need a thing to get to another thing to get to another thing--and there appear to be stakes for just a second. Then, as if to reassure the audience that there will be ten more of these movies, Rey adds, "Doesn't R2 have a backup of your memory?" That's the whole movie in an expensive, nostalgic nutshell.

83. Queen & Slim (Melina Matsoukas)- Capable of tender moments but shot in the foot by its episodic nature, Queen & Slim is the most uneven picture of the year. The characters work well as foils to each other, but Jodie Turner-Smith's performance is overshadowed by Kaluuya's. I have no idea what Chloe Sevigny and Flea are trying to do in their brief time on screen, and I have no idea what the film is trying to do when it disturbs the point of view for a misguided protest sequence. 82. Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria)- It has been a long time since I was so surprised that a movie was over. The coda comes up telling us about, in real life, what kind of criminal slaps on the wrists the characters received, and I got pushed out of the theater wondering what it all amounted to. Yeah, that's the point. I know. Just as none of the 2008 bankers went to jail in the wake of their destruction, none of the women who drugged and exploited them did much time beyond "14 months of weekends" either. But should I applaud moral confusion? Can I be angry about the lack of consequences for both parties? If you want me to judge the film I watched instead of the film I wanted to watch, I can be more complimentary. Some of the most electric moments in 2019 cinema are here, rooted in 2008 strip club music. And saying 2008 strip club rap was good is like saying 1890 French Impressionism was good. Nearly every performance works, from Lili Reinhart's bashfulness to Wai Ching Ho's gratitude to Jennifer Lopez's intractable confidence. Also, I don't know if anyone has noticed this before, but J. Lo has a nice butt. 81. The Report (Scott Z. Burns)- There are some interesting things going on here. For example, this feedback loop: An hour or so in, protagonist Daniel Jones watches a fabricated news feature that explains what waterboarding is, and I had an instinct as an audience member to go, "Like we don't know by now. Don't hold my hand." But the only reason I know is because of news reports like that, informed by work that the real Daniel Jones did, dramatized in the events of the first half of this very movie. Still, this movie is a lot like one of those dishes in which every single element sounds like something you would like--"Ooh, pork belly, delicious. Oooh, lemongrass. Bet those would go well together"--but you take a bite, and it doesn't taste good. Is that your fault or the restaurant's?

[blackkatmagic]

Submission: Why I think they made Naruto a bad father.

Hello! Blackkat, I am a huge fan of yours! I’ve never commented on your tumblr before, but I finally got the courage because I wanted to add something to the Naruto-is-a-bad-father conversation. I think Naruto’s transformation makes more sense if you are Japanese or if you live in Japan.

At the moment in Japan there is a phenomenon that the newspaper refers to as the “absent father” phenomenon. This is seen as a sociological problem with problematic consequences. In Japan, particularly in the major cities where many people have corporate jobs, overtime is a huge issue. There is this idea that the hardest working employees are those that work overtime or extra hours. Now, this isn’t exactly true (in my opinion). I know some people that work longer overtime, but are inefficient with their time (or take naps at work because they are so tired). I often manage to complete more work even though I don’t take that much overtime. There are also work parties in the evening that cut up into your time. With all this mixed together, it’s not that unheard of to hear fathers that go home after their child is in bed, and then leave in the morning before their child wakes up. I know it sounds ridiculous but it happens more often than you would think! Fathers can live in the same house with their children yet never see them…

Another thing that often happens is that families will not live in the same house! In the olden days, the shogun would often move the samurai around so they were working in different places. This was done so the samurai could not get too comfortable in their position and stage a coup (Japan has a history of civil wars).   Anyway, this idea that people should be moved around so they don’t get too comfortable is still prominent to this day (although now people are moved in order to stop laziness, not civil wars). Because of this, spouses often don’t live together because they are moved to a different city! I live in housing provided by my company (to make up for the fact that they move us around), and half the apartment building is filled with people not living with their spouses… and with their children.

Then you must wonder, what about the women? I myself am a woman, and I have a strong feeling about this. Often companies doubt a women’s ability to be a useful employee. Children and overtime often don’t mix, after all. When a woman is young, she may get promotions and whatnot. But when she reaches the proper age to marry and have children, somehow her prospects sour. Everyone is waiting for her to get married and quit her job. In Japan, it is much more common for women to work part-time. Families in which the mother only works part-time will get a tax reduction. Also, childcare and nursery schools often have waiting lists and are horribly expensive. If a woman passes the proper marrying age, and children no longer seem to be in her future, work promotions may become a thing again. Note Tsunade, who is the highest ranked women in Konoha’s history, and also middle-age and sworn to never love again. I’m not sure if you know the movie, the Devil Wears Prada? There was an interesting article in the newspaper a while ago. In the American version, Miranda has to juggle being a mother and career women. The movie shows this struggle. In the Japanese version, the Miranda character is not married and has no children. She had to sacrifice ever being a mother in order to make it to the top. The newspaper article stated (and I agree), that this accurately shows the problems women face in Japan today. Women are really pressured into having children (Japan has a declining birthrate, which the newspaper is always panicking about). But once you become a mother, it seems your previous life is now dead. Women often try to put it off, saying “I’ll wait one more year!”

Anyway, I’m not sure if you read all this. I’m not very good at articulating my thoughts. Anyway, I’m really displeased with Boruto, and how they butchered Naruto’s character and made the women shadows of their previous selves. However, I understand exactly why it happened, because that is what I see in my everyday life. But Boruto is a fantasy, and for once I would like it to not accurately reflect reality. Let Naruto be a good father. Let the women be mothers who are also something more. Thank you.

[darsacarrington]

Homecoming Part 1

Coming through the wormhole the first thing I noticed was the taste of the air. I’m not Mal, I don’t get excited when stale air hits me or the cool chill hits me from a place being long forgotten. That’s what I’ve walked into. This is Stonebrill.

From my comm. I heard Mal’s voice. “Dar. Did you get there okay? Are you stuck in a wall?”

I originally wanted Mal to join me in this, she knows more about the Forsaken and in that vain Lordearon than I did. Picking up the comm. I spoke. “I’m fine, got here safe… It’s pretty much… deserted.”

And I really wasn’t glossing over the details. The entrance way I was in was rather unopulent, the door sturdy but looked as if the world had forgotten it. The floors carried a thick carpet of dust, only spiders seemed to have found a home here. The thin gossamer webs lined the walls and ceiling. One of the big things I noticed was a lack of decorations everywhere.

“that makes sense, just north of you is a cursed area called Garren’s Haunt.” Mal said on the other end. “The Forsaken are afraid of the plac, they used to make me do missions for them in the area.”

Wait, no. “Sis we only know one Garren.”

The voice on the other end was clipped and suddenly she wasn’t my adopted sis, she was a spymistress. “Lord Nishan has his own past. If that area is caused by him then we can be thankful he’s on our side.”

Right, Gar probably fucked someone up in that area, makes more sense to me than anything else. I didn’t need to know what my drinking buddy did at one time, that’s a part of his past he could keep to himself. Instead of dwelling on it I pressed myself forward through the castle. Each room I found was like a shell of something that was once here.

This could have been my family home. If in a very different world I could have grown up in these walls, running down the hallways, dodging servants… The images of a past that was so far from my own hit me like a tram. If I put myself into this place one day I could hand this off to my own kids, or to one of their kids. Make this place something better than what it is now.

Walking I came across a small room with a large table in the center. It was probably a dinning room, but I have seen enough noble homes to know that this could potentially be a place for me to hold meetings. Of course I’d have to get used to the bickering nobles, but what else is new?

“Are you seeing anything interesting Dar?” Mal asked on the other end.

“Probably my future war room… Or a least on for now.”

We grew quiet again as I left the future war room. Now it was getting absurd, none of the rooms had any hint to the wealth Lochlyn had spoken about. Supposedly my Grandfather was a shrewd man who had a good set of mines. The metal that came out filled his coffers, but looking around… I couldn’t see that wealth at all. Sure everything was built well, so that did count, but I hadn’t seen a single tapestry since I entered the place.

Making my way past a varied number of rooms I came to a staircase that lead down. Calling Mal I spoke. “There are steps to something under the castle. I’m going to check it out.”

“Remember hello in Gutterspeak is Borne. Don’t forget to not say he ‘e’.” She instructed. “Ya know, incase there’s a Forsaken down there.”

My sister, the woman who’s more worried about my first impressions with a Forsaken than me staying alive. She really has some strange priorities.

As I made my way down the steps the cold air hit my face and sent a shiver through me. This place, it was forgotten to everyone. The only thing I had to worry about was if the forgetting was by accident or on purpose. Trea had mentioned her family were twisted and sick. This is something I know I carried, but I was able to fight. What if what she said wasn’t exaggerated? What if I didn’t fall to far from the family tree.

Walking down a new dark hallway I noticed the doors to each side. These rooms were small barely even enough room to lay down. The twenty some years cleared any fowl smells tat would be left. I’m pretty glad I don’t have to look what this place was originally, instead I can assume it’s a prison and move along.

Only trying to tell myself things weren’t bad kinda got thrown back at my face. The hallway ended in a room that only my darker self would dream of.

I seemed to be plucked from the family tree. Each of the ‘tools’ were known to me. Hell I even knew how to fix most of them. These days I have no reason to use a room like this, but I did know someone who could. This could be an incentive to have Ma come down and see me. Let her do her primal pain thing then I’d get to talk to her. It wouldn’t be too bad of a trade off.

“Did you see any Forsaken?” Mal’s voice called out.

“No one’s here, like at all?” My voice echoed around the room. The looming shapes of the torture devices surrounded me letting me know I was here, alone. This place had probably been my grandfather’s. Trea was right to be worried about me, if I wasn’t who I am now, this would have been home to me.

Mal didn’t need to know about the torture room, instead I kept radio silence as I looked around. The thing that caught my interest was a line in the wall. Coming up to it I ran a finger down the line. Feeling some air movement I continued to search until I found a bit of stone that wasn’t as set as the rest. Pressing on it the hidden door released and swung open.

Why the hell would my grandfather have a hidden door? He already had a torture room, what other weird shit was he hiding? I’m not going to delude myself and think that Trea’s family had much good in them. She wanted out for a reason. Maybe my Grandfather was some sicko who experimented and tortured people… It would just mean I’m not too far off from him…

Moving down a new hallway I found rooms, some filled with books, then slowly there were rooms filled with art. The first item I noticed was a tapestry. The black and silver threads colored the crest, the Stone family crest. Looking at it, I can’t see myself using that, at least not the one they had. I’m not a Stone, I’m a Carrington and anyone who will own this place after me will never have to have Stone as their name. That was my vengeance and I planned on seeing it through.

It was the next room that stopped me in my tracks

I’ve been a street rat all my life. When Loch sat me down offering me a job, it was the most money I had ever had in one time. Walking into the next room I was greeted with small mountains of gold. Gold, silver, cases where gems were stored, all of the items flickered and glimmered at me. This was the most amount of money I have ever seen in all my life, and I didn’t even steal it.

My silence must have tipped Mal off cause her voice came out of the comm. again. “Dar? You okay there?”

How do I tell her this… How can I even logic this for my own mind? This wealth… it’s something that has been known to corrupt. I had joked that my grandfather had buried himself with his money… looks like I was right in a way. He didn’t want anyone else to touch his worldly possessions.

“I found the treasure room… Shadow… I’ve never seen this much gold before.” My voice felt thick suddenly.

“Have you found anything about the mines your family owned? I can always contact Karrista’s father to prospect this for you?” She offered being more sweet than she needed to. I already got the request from Karrista, and it looks like a good idea.

“I’ll contact her myself, you’ve got a keep to run. I’m just… shocked.”

I had a right to be shocked. The gold and silver I saw, it was more than enough to set myself up and more importantly… to set up Stonebrill for whatever I want to do with it. If the mines were still viable then money could continue to come into this place.

This was too much for me. I’ve read book upon book on the law and how to handle politics, but I’m not a mover or shaker. Mal could be that, but she’s working for Loch. I needed someone who was only loyal to me. Someone who could figure out the logistics of all of this.

“Mal, I’m coming back to the Keep, I need you to set me up a portal for Stormwind… There’s someone I need to talk to.”

It’s been seven years since I’ve seen the guy, but I know he’d kill to have a chance like this. After all, we desperate men take any shot we’re given. If there’s anyone I could trust to take on Stonebrill’s financial and logistical backing it’ll be him. Now I just need to pray to the light that the idiot hasn’t gotten himself too deep in a bottle.

(( Mentions: @karrista, @lochlynkiden, @maluraunderchild ))

[maedarakat]

35. “Dislocated”

----

(from an ancient prompt list, takes place after “Gruff Around the Edges”)

----

Hiccup heard the pained moaning almost before he got to the door of the Twins’ hut. He sighed in relief that they were at least back; the pair of them had all but disappeared after snatching their cousin to safety. He’d like to say he’d have done the same, but based on what Ruff told him about how Gruff always treated her brother . . .

The brunet shook his head, and lightly tapped on the door. Almost immediately, it was flung open by an exasperated Ruffnut.

“Oh, good. It’s you.” Without further ado, she grabbed Hiccup’s arm and bodily pulled him into their living space, letting the door fall shut behind. He gave a startled yelp, but Ruff ignored it, shoving him toward a mess of crates, nets and rope that was apparently one Tuffnut Thorston’s bed.

The male twin’s back was to both of them and he was curled on his side, making pitiful noises. Hiccup’s heart rate increased in concern as he approached, able to see multiple bruises. That had been a pretty vicious fight. Feeling awkward and out of his depth, he reached out to gently touch his friend’s shoulder. “Uh, hey, Tuff. What’s wrong?”

A whimper and Tuffnut’s good arm raised up, gesturing to his body. Hiccup sighed fondly. “Tuff, you just gestured to all of you. Come on now, where does it hurt?”

When her brother didn’t answer, Ruffnut threw back her head and groaned.

“His hip is still dislocated from being tied up in a cave, by guess who – and running into the wall a million times to get out of his ropes. Don’t know who told him that would work, but they’ve got a date with my fists.” She punched her palm for emphasis. “I managed to get his shoulder in, but now he’s being a total baby and not letting me do the rest.”

As frustrated as her tone was, Hiccup could hear the underlying worry in it. “You guys should have flown to Berk to see Gothi.”

She threw her hands in the air, turning to face Hiccup. “Wow! Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of such a great idea? Oh right, because it isn’t one! Have you ever flown to Berk for several hours with a dislocated hip?! I didn’t think so!”

Sometimes Hiccup deeply regretted being so sassy in his younger years. It had definitely been a bad influence on the twins. Oh well, imitation was the sincerest form of flattery . . .

“Fair enough. Well, let’s see how bad it is.”

With some help from Ruff, they got Tuff’s vest, tunic, and leggings off, despite the boy’s occasional noises of distress. His modesty was left intact by a loincloth, but nonetheless he trembled and kept his face hidden. Hiccup ran his hands over Tuffnut’s ribs, then felt up along his collarbone. Ruff hadn’t done a bad job with his shoulder, but Hiccup winced when he felt out Tuff’s hip. A gentle prodding revealed that the muscles were stiff and hot with swelling – which was not good.

There wasn’t any time to fly him to Gothi – Tuff’s joints and ligaments could be permanently damaged if this wasn’t tended to within a couple hours. He’d never walk the same again. “Tuff, how the Thor did you manage to fight Gruff so well, while in this much pain?”

Ruff answered for him. “Technically, you can kick someone’s butt with a broken leg if you’re mad enough. Lucky for me and our dragon, Tuff was pretty mad.”

“Oh, I bet he was, and he probably made things worse by moving around so much . . .” Hiccup bit his lip; if he’d known, he never would have taken Tuffnut with him. Toothless could’ve just snatched him out of Belch’s saddle and it would have been over with.

“Yeah, and by not letting me fix it as soon as we took care of our ‘heroic’ cousin,” Ruff grumbled, folding her arms and scowling at her twin’s back.

Tuffnut didn’t even bother to reply to that, still hiding his face under his arm and breath starting to hitch. Hiccup frowned reproachfully at Ruff as he heard the low sobs that Tuff couldn’t seem to stifle. Looking subdued, she sat down on the bed beside him. “Too harsh? Sorry.”

“N-No,” Tuff managed. “You were right, sister. I didn’t listen. Honestly, don’t bother fixing me at all. The constant pain will serve as a reminder to never trust that jerk again.” Hiccup sighed softly and rolled his eyes. Of course his friend would be melodramatic over this – it was Tuff.

“I mean, no matter what else Gruff’s done to me over the years, I’ve always completely forgiven him by the time he shows up again, right? Guess that really does make me the s-stupid twin.” Tuffnut reached up to wipe his streaming eyes, and then started to cry in earnest – the kind that couldn’t easily be stopped.

Hiccup felt his chest grow tight, wishing he’d gotten a few punches in on Gruffnut while he’d had the opportunity.

“Aw, bro, you’re not stupid,” Ruff sighed, pressing her forehead against his arm. “Just . . . trusting. You give people too many second chances and they walk all over you.”

“Is-Isn’t that the same as being stupid?” Tuff hitched, wiping his eyes.

“Of course it isn’t.” Hiccup walked around the bed to face him. “It means you’re capable of forgiveness. That’s not always a bad thing; it’s . . .” He struggled to find the words. “If anything, it just makes us all that much angrier at Gruffnut.”

“Yeah, bro. Whenever people take advantage of you or hurt you this bad, you gotta start letting us kill them,” Ruffnut soothed him, gently ruffling Tuff’s hair. Hiccup felt himself nodding, then startled.

“What? No –! I mean, we’re not killing anyone-“

“Oh, relax. I’m talkin’ collateral damage. Accidents do happen, my dear Hiccup,” She batted her eyelashes, in a parody of innocence.

Hiccup groaned, knowing she was mocking Viggo’s constant pet name for him. Right now, it was more vexing than funny.

“You know what, I’m not even gonna respond to that. Listen, Tuffnut,  let’s get your hip back in so you can get some sleep. You’ve got your early morning show to do, right?”

Tuff nodded, not seeming too excited by the prospect. He let Hiccup and his sister arrange him on the bed so he was flat on his back. Carefully slow, Hiccup moved Tuff’s leg up, bending at the knee, and keeping a hand on the opposite hip to press his pelvis flat. He started to apply lateral force to the inside of Tuff’s thigh, pushing it open.

It was easy to do from the other side, but Tuff let out a wail of pain and tried to sit up, only to be pushed back down by his twin. “Yeah, I know. Allis’s Manuever wouldn’t have been my first choice either. Far too slow, and thus excruciating.”

“Wait, you know how to do this?”

“Duh. I was figuring you’d hold him down and I’d pop it back in. Hard and fast, that’s the way Ma always taught us.”

Shrugging in defeat, Hiccup switched places with her. Tuff immediately put his arms around the brunet’s neck, looking up at him with a breathless pleading whine. There were still bright tears in his eyes and he was shivering hard. “H . . . please . . .”

Hiccup hugged him, letting Tuff bury his face in his shoulder.

Ruff was indeed fast; there was a ‘clunk’ and Tuff tensed in his arms and screamed. He trailed off into sobs and allowed himself to be moved back on his uninjured side, refusing to let go of Hiccup.

“I – okay, hold on . . .” Hiccup quickly adjusted to lay down facing Tuff. His friend had an iron grip on him, and didn’t lift his head, desperately nuzzling Hiccup’s already soaked shirt. He looked at Ruff for help.

She did help, technically, by putting a blanket over the both of them, and neatly tucking them in. Hiccup glared. “Thanks,” he said, flatly.

“You’re welcome.” Ruff smirked and laid down to join the pile, spooning her twin and creating a ‘Thorston Sandwich’ that would likely last throughout the night. Well, Hiccup supposed he’d slept in worse places. Toothless would have to figure it out and either sleep here or stay at the forge.

He absently stroked Tuff’s hair, not finding it in his heart to be angry. In the twin’s defense, dislocated hips were said to be one of the most painful things a person could go through. Men twice Tuff’s size were usually sedated before Gothi did the job. 

The gentle caressing worked somewhat; Tuffnut eventually lifted his tearstained face from Hiccup’s shoulder and loosened his hold as he relaxed. “You smell like leather and sweat,” he said weakly. “In a good way.”

“Uh. Thank you, Tuff. So, are you going to do your morning show tomorrow?”

“I guess . . . do you actually like it?”

“Sure, I think it’s a fun way to wake up. I was asking because you might need a little help getting up the ladder to the Thunder Ear,” Hiccup offered. Tuffnut nodded, looking a bit unsure and embarrassed. “You could always just say I’m a guest.”

Over Tuff’s shoulder, Ruffnut gave Hiccup a gratefully warm smile.

“Huh. I guess . . . you don’t mind, even if it’s totally not the truth?” Tuff asked.

“Come on, Tuff, what are best friends for?”

Tuffnut looked like he might cry again, and hugged Hiccup tightly. He chuckled and hugged Tuff back.

“Awww,” Ruff cooed.

It wasn’t long before all three of them fell asleep.

  - END

[seriouslyhooked]

Just a Taste (A CS AU) Part 8/10

AU where Emma and Killian are contestants on the Great American Baking Show and all twelve contestants hail from Storybrooke Maine. In this AU Emma is a book editor by day, while Killian is an architect who just moved to town a few months prior. Expect baked goods, flirtatious interactions, a little drama and a whole lot of fluff with a guaranteed HEA for Captain Swan. Rated M.

Part One Here, Part Two Here, Part Three Here, Part Four Here, Part Five Here, Part Six Here, Part Seven Here

A/N: Week eight brings the remaining players in this story to another Americanized week. I have deemed this the breakfast challenge, mostly because I wanted to return to baked goods I know how to make myself. Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of bad puns and cuteness to go around, and enough fluff and smut to get us through another week. Thanks for reading, and I hope you guys enjoy!

If anyone had tried to tell Emma that in just a few weeks time she’d be used to cameras tracking her every move in the kitchen while she baked, she’d have called them crazy. Baking for the longest time had been personal for Emma, and a means for her to melt away from a present moment and into whatever she wanted to think of or dream of instead. To do that, to reach that same state of zen while on display for cameras and an eventual at home audience, should never have been possible, but here she was. Finally, content that everything in her life was going well, Emma lost herself in the process of making her favorite muffin recipe.

As she beat together the eggs and sugar, folded in the flour, and created her first baked good of the weekend, Emma thought about the week that had passed. In six days she had managed to move nearly everything she planned on taking from her house to Killian’s. Things were moving quickly, but the blending of their two lives was going about as seamlessly as a good bake. Everything was clicking into place, save for one element. Killian and Emma had discussed it, and for now at least, it made sense to keep Emma’s home unlisted. At least until all the buzz around the show wound down, they’d keep this new part of their lives quiet. The only people who needed to know about this next step were their close friends.

“Focus in on Tiana’s methods, if you would. She’s bringing together her batter in a different style than the others. Make sure the light is with you. Aye, like that.”

Emma could hear Liam’s quiet demands of his crew and for the first week in her Great American Baking Show memory, it didn’t put her on edge. The change in Killian’s brother had been profound, and whether it was thanks to his renewed relationship with Killian, or the harsh censure of a certain assistant, Emma didn’t know. All she could say was that the man beneath the bluster and ambition was one she’d appreciated getting to know better. With Killian’s trust restored in him, Liam had been introduced to their home a few nights back for dinner, and Emma managed to get more than a few stories out of Liam about him and Killian and their rambunctious youth.

Unfortunately for Liam, the forgiveness and acceptance he’d largely found with Emma and Killian did not spread to all of the bridges he’d started to burn when fueled by network wants and ratings. Tink, though cordial and attentive to her professional responsibilities, was still throwing herself into activities that didn’t require interaction with Liam whenever possible. Not that Emma could blame her really, hell she didn’t even know the whole story of what their history was, and Liam had been extremely guarded over it when she’d asked. It was just hard to watch a person she’d grown to care for, a woman who had been strong enough to risk her standing at her job for what was right, suffer this sort of discomfort.

“I think I have an idea about how we can fix that,” Belle said to Emma discretely as she stood beside her friend and gestured over to Tink. Emma placed her own muffins in the oven to bake, and by the time she’d closed the door, Mary Margaret had joined their impromptu meeting.

“How?”

“Well how do we fix all matters of the heart?” Emma and Mary Margaret smiled before responding together.

“Wine.”

“Right, so tonight, we’ll invite her out with us to girls night. No taking no for an answer, and with the trusty assistance of a much needed drink on her part, we’ll figure it all out.” Emma sized up her friend Belle, who more and more had been demonstrating that she was incredibly intelligent when it came to people. Emma had always known she was book smart, but this was a newfound skill.

“I think you’ve just really taken to match making,” Mary Margaret said, taking the words right out of Emma’s mouth. Belle shrugged.

“What can I say? I need an outlet for all of those romance novels I read, and a man would get in the way of that.”

Emma laughed but a thought came to mind. Belle would actually make a really great author. Emma had seen some of her writing samples, and knew her friend was not lying about her wealth of romance literary insight. Emma made a mental note to bring that possibility up to her friend at a later point, maybe even tonight after they’d finished getting the truth from Tink.

“We should give it a code name so if we bring it up the rest of today, no one knows what we’re talking about.” Mary Margaret’s excitement at the prospect of covert operations was laughable, but perhaps effective.

“Operation One More Couple?” Belle joked. Emma shook her head.

“Too obvious. It needs some level of hiding what we’re doing.” Emma looked at big red count down clock and an idea came to her. “Operation Time’s Up?”

“Sounds kind of ominous. How about Operation Right Time?” All three of them agreed to that idea only for Ruby to make her way over, camera crew in tow and a hand on her hip.

“Girls, I love you, really I do, but I can’t save you if you have a bad bake today because you’re too busy planning world domination.” Belle’s dramatic response of a hand thrown over her face to cover her eyes and a groan had Emma muffling a laugh.

“Ruby, now you’ve gone and ruined it! Thanks for nothing!”

As Belle and Mary Margaret made their way back to their stations, Ruby sidled up to Emma and hit her hip against hers.

“We were actually planning girls night tonight,” Emma filled in. “Now that I think about it, that seemed like an incredibly overconfident thing to do.”

Ruby laughed at that and then walked through with Emma every step in her process. Today’s bakes, all of the contestants had been told, would be getting more in depth profiles. Thanks to the fact that there were less bakers, and that there was a new direction for the show, the hosts, either together or separately, wouldn’t just be providing comedic relief, but gathering more information about the process.

“So, if people wanted to make this recipe, or one like it at home, what would you advise?” Emma loved this question, and was thrilled that finally she was getting her chance to approach this competition like the people in the original franchise. Thank goodness she’d lasted this long in the competition to get her shot.

“The thing about muffins is that their kind of like cake, only if the cake you were making had a tendency towards denseness. The best muffins I’ve ever had and ever made have toed that line between being just a bit too heavy, and still having a sort of lightness. The key to getting that is to chill your batter for a little while before baking.” Ruby smiled.

“So that’s why you put yours in a bit later than everyone else.”

Emma nodded, checking on her bake and deciding it was time to take them out. The happy little sigh that Ruby let out when she smelled the Twist on Traditional Blueberry muffins sealed for Emma that at least her taste would be right, no matter how the bake turned out. The addition of cream cheese Emma knew added a richness and an almost silky composition to the muffins, and also added a bit more savory of a smell into the sweetness of the berries.

“Well that and I just like playing with fire. The closer I get to the zero on that count down clock, the higher the adrenaline rush,” Emma joked. Ruby laughed heartily, but Emma’s acknowledgement of the time reminded everyone that there was more to be done.

When the bell did chime, signaling that all bakes needed to be presented, Emma was happy with her display, and luckily for her, so were the judges. She received almost perfect feedback (well as close as one could get to perfect with Mr. Gold as a judge) and was excited, until the judges moved on to Belle’s and announced that her muffins were dry. When Mr. Gold decided to use Emma’s standard against Belle, it undercut any good feelings Emma previously had. She didn’t ever want to be used to shame someone like that.

“Alright that’s enough.” The comment from Liam as Gold was about to continue his breakdown of every single flaw Belle’s bake had, silenced the room. No one moved for a moment, breaths caught, the air filled with tension. Mr. Gold was shocked for a moment but soon prickled at the command.

“I’m being paid to critique the food, and I’m damn well going to do it,” The man sneered and Liam crossed his arms over his chest, hitting home the size difference between the two men.

“At this rate you’re intending to go on for another ten minutes, and with a forty-five minute show, I can guarantee it’ll all be cut. I got your snippet, and so enough is enough.” Mr. Gold stepped forward, his snarl becoming more apparent on his face.

“You realize that I could leave right now, and then where would you be?” Liam smiled, but it was almost more a bearing of teeth. It reminded Emma of wild animals that seemed to grin at an opponent just before attack.

“In a fantastic position to sue, and likely doing better with young female viewers. There’s just something about you they seem to find so off putting.”  Damn, when Liam went in, he did not pull the punches.

“Liam,” Tink’s voice cut through the moment, soft but stern. Maybe their producer was willing to go toe to toe with one of their main judges, but that didn’t mean it was a great idea. Liam looked at her, and Emma saw in his eyes a want to understand her, but he caved instead to her wish, even though he’d found no answers.

“We’ve got what we need from this bake. On to the next one.” As the crew set up the required next elements, Killian approached Emma, standing close enough to whisper.

“Well that was certainly something,” He acknowledged. Emma nodded, feeling herself calm from Killian’s presence alone. Emma let the kind, almost melodic lilt of his accent wash over her as she moved the slightest bit closer to him.

“Who knew your brother was a crusader for justice all this time?” Killian smiled, shooting his brother across the tent a thoughtful look.

“I did. But bloody hell, when he commits, he doesn’t half ass it. Making an enemy of a judge like that for a woman he barely knows…”

“It was honorable. And whether or not he meant for it to do so, it seemed to thaw some of the ice away.” Emma gestured to Tink who was ignoring her own clipboard to look at Liam. Emma felt Killian’s hand on the small of her back, the warmth was powerful even though it was a simple touch.

“I think it’s very likely my brother’s affections for the lady rival mine for you,” Killian mused and Emma looked at him surprised.

“Really? You think he loves her then?”

“Aye, love. Now, do I think anyone capable of love as strong as I have for you? Certainly not. The world would be a far less productive place.” Emma laughed at that.

“So you’re some sort of hero for managing to carry on a relatively normal life despite your overwhelming love for me?” Emma teased and Killian’s other hand came to rest on her hip, moving her to face him, no thought of their surroundings at all.

“I don’t know if I’d go that far, Emma. Life with you is far from normal after all. It’s spectacular.”

Emma smiled, and rose to kiss him lightly, not allowing anymore than that to pass between them. She didn’t care if the action made it’s way to TV, for she knew no one would use their quiet confessions against them, Liam had made sure to promise that. It was faith in that promise that let her freely say what she needed to say.

“I love you Killian Jones,” He smiled, the look in his eyes so filled with love it turned those clear blue eyes a little hazy.

“And I love you, Emma. More than I can ever say.”

“Alright love birds. You may have some sort of truce with production, but if you’re going to stand here making heart eyes at each other all afternoon, I won’t promise any such protections from me.” Ruby’s words were light hearted, though neither Emma nor Killian sought to test the validity of the statement. They broke apart, returning to their stations and faced their technical challenge.

“Bakers, this week’s technical challenge is a dalliance with delicate details. A courtship with complex creation, a stroll with-,” Ruby groaned mid statement from Graham.

“Oh my God, come on guys, seriously?! This much alliteration? You’re just messing with me at this point, right?”

Graham grinned at her, reminding everyone in the room (and eventually America) why he was considered such a heartthrob. Seriously, it took a lot of looks, charm, and kindness to spend a season searching for love on national TV only to say none of the women were right for him, and still be beloved by so many. The fangirls were going to eat this up.

“Actually, that was all me. Just wanted to see how quickly I could drive you crazy.” Ruby’s face flashed with a bit of surprise before she composed herself and gave him a smile of her own that made her look like the cat who caught the canary.

“In your dreams, pretty boy.” Emma watched as Graham’s own cockiness diluted a bit, he’d fallen right into one of Ruby’s oldest, and most consistent traps. Now the man hardly knew if she was flirting, or waging war. It was hilarious to watch and would play so well on TV this week. “Now, leaving Graham’s love of letters behind, this week brings us a standard from one our judge’s kitchens. Chocolate Curse Croissants from Miss Regina Mills.”

Belle raised her hand with a question, surprising Ruby.

“Yes Belle?”  

“What about it is a curse?” Ruby looked to Regina, who stood with the others and the judge gave a smile.

“You can’t have just one, and they wreak havoc on your figure.” The whole tent laughed at the claim before the bakers set to work on the pastry before them.

Emma knew that croissants were incredibly easy to mess up, so she kept focused, drowning out the sound around her by lightly humming to some music in her head. Unsurprisingly, the music turned to love songs, and when she realized the transition, it had her looking over to Killian who was already staring at her. When she caught him, she watched the most adorable little flush cross his cheeks, a hint of embarrassment at having been caught. It made him all the more endearing and she wanted to just forget about the bake and go home for the day, even if that wasn’t an option.

“I’m really glad it all worked out, Emma.” Emma turned to find Tink standing beside her, a genuine smile on the petite woman’s face. “With you and Killian and Liam I mean. I’m happy that you guys don’t have to hide anymore.”

“Me too. You know, that’s in many ways thanks to you.” Tink adjusted her glasses and shook her head.

“I didn’t –,” Tink tried to deny her involvement, but Emma wouldn’t let her.

“Oh yeah you did, Tink. But we can pretend you didn’t if it makes you uncomfortable.” Tink gave another smile, clearly relieved not to talk about herself within the confines of the tent. “I was going to ask you after filming, but I was wondering if you wanted to come to girls night with Mary Margaret, Belle, Ruby, and me.”

“That sounds really nice actually,” the smaller woman said and Emma was surprised but delighted that Tink had accepted so easily, though they couldn’t do much more than share a time and place since it was soon Emma’s turn once more to explain her strategy for chocolate croissants.

The afternoon passed in a relatively pleasing way. There were no more outbursts or moments of tension. Emma even came in first in the technical round. The only real bummer for the day was that Belle had once again suffered from a lack luster bake. Her friend wasn’t upset by it though. If anything, she shared the same relief that David had the week before.

All through the girl’s night that came hours later, Belle spoke of her desire to have her weekends back once more, a want they were all familiar with. When Mary Margaret asked what she would do with those weekends, they all discovered that Belle was actually already working on a novel as Emma had hoped she would. Whenever it was ready, Emma knew it would be fantastic, and Belle had told them all they could have dibs on reading it first. Through the evening, they toasted to their new friendship with Tink, and the new chances in Belle’s life, but though Emma had a wonderful time, part of her couldn’t wait to get home so she could see Killian once more.

…………………

“You didn’t have to come pick me up,” Emma said as she and Killian walked into the house together hand in hand. Closing the front door behind him, Killian smiled at her, clearly amused by the slight bit of tipsiness she’d acquired from wine night.

“I wanted to. Making sure you’re safe is a top priority, love.”

Emma smiled, moving her hands to his chest ready to strip him of his jacket. She’d been thinking nearly all day about what she’d like to do to her hot, adoring boyfriend when they were finally alone again, and all that time had given her some creative possibilities to explore. While Killian allowed the jacket removal, he stopped her hands when she went for his shirt, causing Emma to pout a bit.

“Trust me love, we’ll get to that part later, but when we do, I want you sober and able to feel everything I give you.”

The shiver that coursed through her at the promise and the raw sex appeal in his voice was powerful. Emma doubted she could be more in tuned with her feelings but she also didn’t hate the idea of waiting if it meant the satisfaction would be that much richer later.

“Alright then, what’s the plan?” She asked and Killian pulled her into the kitchen. There before her was a spread of… wait, was that breakfast food?

“Killian, what is all this?” Emma asked as he stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her front, and pulling her close before filling her in.

“All day long under that blasted tent, I thought of how badly I want normal weekend breakfasts with you. We won’t have that chance for a few weeks yet, I’m afraid, seeing as you’re so exceptionally talented, so I’m making amends. Enough breakfast to keep us sated for a while at least.”

Emma felt tears sting at her eyes. This was such an incredibly thoughtful gesture, a real over the top breakfast made for her by the man she loved who loved her in return. Emma couldn’t comprehend it, but she knew it was one of the most beautiful gifts she had ever been given. He brought her to the table, opting to have her sit perched on his lap over giving her own chair. It was such a domestic display, and made Emma feel like she was living one of those romantic stories Belle was such a fan of, only this was so much better than any words on a page ever could be. As they chose from the spread before them composed of Emma’s favorite breakfast foods (fruits, pancakes, waffles, omelets and a dozen donuts from Granny’s), Killian asked about her night out with her friends, and Emma was eager to tell him everything, especially when it came to Tink.

“She and Liam kissed a few months before Liam got the offer to head this show up. Tink’s been in love with him for a while now, and one thing led to another…”

“But they just left it at that? I find it hard to believe my brother, who is obviously just as taken with her, was content with that.”

Emma noticed the way Killian’s hand stayed firmly above her hip, as if keeping her in place, unconsciously worried that he might lose his chance at love as his brother had. His thumb moved back and forth though, finding a patch of bare skin just under her shirt. It wasn’t helping to stop the craving she had for him, so she had to distract herself, continuing to talk about what she’d learned while she ate the food he’d worked so hard on.

“She got scared. She doesn’t see that he wants more than a fling,” Emma confirmed and Killian scoffed at that.

“Love will blind you, I guess.” Emma nodded knowing he was right.

“You’re brother apparently has a bit of a reputation, and to protect herself she told him it was a mistake. Saying those words has become a huge regret for her, and to live with it she’s dug herself into a state of denial that gives past me a run for my money.”

Killian pressed a kiss to Emma’s temple at the mention of her past, prompting Emma to close her eyes and take a deep breath. He was so sweet with her and yet also so commanding. They fit together so perfectly, and it went unspoken but not unfelt that the only reason she’d been able to get over her past hang ups was because she’d had a man like Killian to put her trust in.

“And now? What state does current Emma live in?”

Emma turned to face him, losing herself in how intensely he watched her. He was searching for confirmation, trying to convince himself that she was just as head over heels as he was. Lucky for both of them she was.

“She lives with her incredibly sweet and problematically sexy boyfriend, eating breakfast at midnight and marveling at how much she loves him and her life.” Emma ran her hand across his chest again, tracing at the v of his t-shirt. “She’s also sober, and really wants said sexy boyfriend to take her to bed.”

“As you wish.”

With all the flourish and coordination she’d come to expect from Killian, they left the remaining spread behind them, finding themselves right where Emma wanted to be most in no time. There was nothing slow or tantalizing about this, any thoughts of a languid seduction were over now. All day and all night they’d been skirting around what they both wanted most, physical affirmation that they belonged together. No one could argue with the chemistry zinging between them, and as more and more of their clothes were stripped away, Killian and Emma sought to touch, to kiss, to feel as much of the other as they could. Despite their proximity to a huge, lush bed, Killian pressed Emma against the wall, when they had nothing left between them.

“Do you know what it’s like to watch you all day long, Emma, knowing that you’re mine and not being able to take you how I want, to please you how I want?”

She moaned as one of his hands trailed its way down to her sex, forcing her legs wider before he honed in on her clit. He peppered kisses on her neck, sucking and biting in between words, and all Emma could do was claw at him for closeness, silently begging him for more.

“Yes!” She practically yelled the word a whole octave higher than her normal voice, feeling the pressure of one and then another finger as it pumped inside her, rhythmically working as his thumb left delicious swirls just how she liked.

“I’m not sure you do, love. I’m not sure you war with yourself constantly as I do. I see you mixing together ingredients, the light catching your hair, that little smile you get when lost in your world reaching into those beautiful eyes, and I think of all the nights I come home to see you doing that here and how you so willingly share that happiness with me. Under that tent, you’re untouchable, but Gods what I’d give to touch you, to take you.” Leave it to Killian to mix sweetness with a burning inferno of desire.

“So take me now,” Emma pleaded and Killian growled at her pulse point before coming back to look her in the eyes.

“Soon, love. First I want to watch you fall apart… twice.”

Emma was more than happy to oblige him, embracing the sensation of being on fire with lust as her orgasm built and then snapped inside her. She expected him to continue his ministrations on the wall, but Killian had different ideas, bringing her to the bed to bring her to even more pleasure with his mouth. Emma could hardly breathe, she was so wound up from every thing he did, trailing from her lips down to her breasts and finally down until he reached her core. It was easy for Killian to make good on his word with the skills he had, but as soon as he did, Emma changed the dynamic between them. He’d given her what she’d needed all day, now it was his turn.

“You have it all wrong you know,” Emma said as she moved above him on the bed, straddling his legs, taking his waiting length in hand and pumping slowly. “I think about this just as much as you do. That smile on my face, the light in my eyes, the happy aura you see, is because of you. I would never have been able to have that, that safety in a room full of people, without you.”

Killian’s eyes had grown dark, lust taking over nearly completely, and Emma took advantage of that, releasing him with her hand and lining her own aching entrance up with him before setting a demanding pace designed to have him feeling every bit of explosive pleasure as she had. They went on like that, mindless on the quest for pleasure, until eventually he spoke again.

“You have all of me, Emma. You’re everything.”

Everything about Killian was a turn on, but those words, that promise, it was the last thing Emma needed to spiral into bliss once more, this time pulling him with her. In the aftermath, the world was quiet, peaceful, and nothing filled the space between but their ragged breathing as they came back down to earth.

Lying beside him, knowing that in the morning she’d wake up to this same glorious feeling in his embrace and would come home to this again tomorrow and every day thereafter made Emma smile. Killian didn’t miss it, his thumb coming up to trace the upward tilt of her lips. Without another word, they continued to lie together, both soaking up the feeling of each other’s presence, until sleep finally came. The last thought to cross Emma’s mind was that they were another day closer to forever, and that undeniable fact made for wonderful dreams and the restful kind of sleep that only Killian could ever seem to give her.

………………

“Okay, look guys, I know you want us to do a song and dance for our ode to breakfast week, but there’s a baseline of respect I have for myself which simply will not allow it. Please, just have mercy and throw me some terrible puns.”

Emma had to hand it to Ruby, her friend was a terrific actress, and after all of this, if she wanted, Emma was sure she could get another job in television based on her dramatic flare. It was this silly sort of theater that allowed all of the contestants to keep their cool in the weekend’s final challenge.

In typical Baking Show style, the challenge for the final day was tricky, even if the contestants had all week to work on it. Today, they were expected to create a perfect dozen of New York-style bagels. The flavors could be whatever they wanted, but the key would be uniformity and perfecting the process.

Emma had done her homework. In order to be ‘truly New York’ and not like the bagels they had locally in Maine, the bagels would be boiled and she would use malt sugar and syrup to create the proper sort of encasing. Both Emma and Killian had tried multiple times to make heads or tails of the process this week, and they’d both gotten it right all of one time. She had to hope that today would be a mark in the win category instead of another loss.

For her book-themed creation, Emma opted to step away from the classics, and instead move to a book she’d read recently. Her Brie Before Bleu Cheese bagels brought together two types of creamy, melted goodness, traditional brie, and a mild variation on bleu called cambozola. It was a riskier bake, but Emma had supplemented the cheeses with some lighter herbs and she knew that if she got them right, they would be a hit.

“I can’t tell if my tears are from how good those smell, or how emotional that book was,” Ruby said as Emma pulled her bagels out. Emma was flattered by the compliment, but very aware that Tiana’s sweet chocolate chip nutella bagels would really give her a run for her money this week.

Emma wasn’t threatened of the competition, actually she enjoyed the fact that there was a consistent opponent who performed just as well as Emma did. David was right; realistically it would come down to her and the other young woman in the finals. While Tiana didn’t interact with the other contestants very much, having her own friends in town who hadn’t been interested in joining the competition, Emma knew her to be polite and a good sport. Tiana simply had great aspirations, ones that winning this show would help her finally reach. Emma didn’t fault her for working so hard to achieve her dreams, and she actually appreciated that she was never unkind in her attempts to win like many people might have been. Tiana had a lot of class, and Emma was certain, whatever the outcome in a few weeks time, Tiana would get everything that she wanted someday.

“Maybe it’s relief that you didn’t have to put on your tap shoes and sing us the lyrics to a song about muffins.”

“Fair point. Very fair point.”

Ruby continued to ask Emma about her bagels, the conversation flowing naturally as Emma set up her display with just the right cream cheese and the design she wanted. Of course she had extras cut up in small bites for Ruby and Graham and the crew. The cameramen got a pretty great shot of a failed attempt at subtlety from Graham which Emma knew would likely make the cut for this week as well, and in those happy moments, she’d forgotten any fear she had about presenting to the judges. That lack of worry only helped her in the end, seeing her through to reach her desired tier of star baker. Unlike last week though, Emma was required to do an exit interview, this week with Liam while Tink handled Belle’s final goodbye after being cut.

“So, another week, another star baker title. Does it feel good to hold the record for most best bakes in a season?” Emma smiled.

“Yes and no. I am honored that the judges have liked my work enough to award me the week’s win so many times, but also, there’s no previous seasons to compare to. Maybe in a couple years, when you guys have a few seasons under your belt, it will be more impressive to have this many wins.”

Liam cordially went through the rest of his questions, barely fishing for anything past her feelings on the bakes. It was Emma in fact who brought Killian into the conversation.

“Do you have any words of wisdom for our audience at home who love to bake as well?”

“Yes. Find a partner, whether it’s a friend, a family member, a significant other or whoever, who isn’t afraid to be honest about what they think. There’s no way I would be doing this well or feeling this confident if I didn’t have pure honesty from Killian when I make him try everything first.”

Liam’s eyes lit up at the claim, happy on two counts, for he could see Emma and Killian were happy, but he now also had something to make the network ease off his change in direction for the show. That happiness was undercut though by the sound of Tink’s laughter on the other side of the tent. No doubt Belle had made a funny comment about her departure, but Liam’s gaze left Emma’s and turned into a longing look in the other woman’s direction. While Liam looked away, Emma motioned for the cameraman to avert the lens and shut off her microphone.

“She needs to know you’re serious,” Emma whispered and Liam looked back at Emma confused but sincere.

“I am serious. I had it out with the executives, I’ve changed the direction of the narrative, I –,”

“No, she needs to know you’re serious about her.” Liam looked a bit embarrassed at that, glancing at the other PA behind the camera, a guy named Gus, who typically wasn’t very outspoken.

“Well she’s not wrong, man,” Gus noted and Liam ran a hand through his hair at Gus’ comment, not unlike Killian when he was flustered. Then he finally turned back to Emma seeking advice.

“How do I do that?”

“Show her. Girls love a grand gesture… just don’t do it anywhere near this tent.”

Gus laughed at that, and Liam managed to crack a smile, excusing himself and leaving Emma with her interview clearly over. She hoped that Liam would be brave enough to find a way to talk to Tink, but in the end it was up to them. For now, Emma was more than content to return to Killian who was ready with a teasing greeting and a kiss on the cheek.

“Saw my brother moving like a bat out of hell from your interview. Would have liked to hear what you said to cause that reaction.” Emma smiled, walking with Killian hand in hand away from the tent and back into the real world.

“I told him to take a page form your book and go for it.” Killian lifted her hand to kiss her knuckles gently.

“I hope that he will, love, and if he’s half as happy as I am, he’ll be glad for it.”

They both will be, Emma thought to herself, hoping she was right.

Post-Note: Another week, another chapter for me to fill with dream baked goods, bad jokes, and cute CS moments. I hope that you guys enjoyed the chapter, I can’t believe there are only a few more updates left, but I’ll be sure to make them count. As always thanks so much for reading, and I hope you are all having a lovely week!

[tellerford13]

MO ASTOR- CHAPTER 20

We don’t own the bikes, brothers, or any “related” Sons of Anarchy, trust us, if we did we wouldn’t have the time to write. No money is being made from our stories. So, please don’t sue. It’d be a fruitless endeavor indeed. That being said, Harley, Journee, and any other newbies are ours, and we don’t share. :Whispers in creepy voice: “My precious.” The universe This reality is a mix of cannon, and our own ideas. We strive to keep the boys cannon, but since we will be shifting around some of the events, that will reflect in our writing and their personalities as well. It’s our goal to provide you with quality fiction, and solid, fleshed out OFC. We appreciate constructive criticism and love LOVE reviews, they are a writers life blood and definitely help encourage us and inspire us. We will be posting on our Tumblr where we’ll have fun pictures from time to time as well. http://tellerford13.tumblr.com We’ll also be taking requests for one shots, preferences or imagines for all things Sons at our other Tumblr, so check it out and send your thoughts!http://tellerford13oneshots.tumblr.com/ And just for fun, we’ve decided to start a Pinterest for the story! So if you want a glimpse at our girls and see into our world, check it out! https://www.pinterest.com/tellerford/

                                                           A/N: Sorry this is coming in late tonight. Mr. Teller didn’t want to stop talking. Chibs has so much to say too so … we’re breaking our every other week rule for the next chapter, so expect an early Valentine’s day present. ;)

                                              Mo Astor Chapter 20

Jax

“You got plans tonight, baby?” Mom asks as I wipe my hands off with a rag done with the final oil change of a day. Perk of the job here, I don’t do weekends.  

“No. You need me to do something?”

She sighs. “Listen. Lee ain’t Wendy or any of those other waste off skins you’ve had for girlfriends. You need to put some effort in to keep her. It’s Friday night. A nice dinner and a movie or something goes a long way. You guys are more than just friends now. You can’t keep treating her the same way you used to.”

“Do I do that?”

“Take it from the lady who works in the office with her and the garage with you. Yes, you do.”

“Trying not to make the same mistakes Ma. I know how Lee is. You hold on too tight, and she gets antsy.”

“Ain’t nothing confining about a little romance. Trust me. Your Father was good at that.” She shakes her head and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “That man had a way of making me feel like I was the only woman in the world he saw. Even with all the things he had on his plate. He made time for me. It’s why I was willing to walk to that man. Loyalty and love are everything. You do whatever you have to do to keep that once you have it.”

The sincerity in her voice opened my ears wider than they usually were when she spoke. Even after all this time, I could tell she missed my dad. What they had was special, and I respected her advice when it came to that. I’d seen this life chew up and spit out so many couples.  Hell Bobby was on wife number four, and still dreaming of forever after, because the big softy was romantic to the core. Maybe that was a requirement for all Elvis Impersonators.

“What would you suggest? And don’t play dumb, cause if you brought this up, you already have a plan.

She smirks and blows out smoke. “Can’t fool you, can I baby? Get her out of Charming. Go up the road to that nice new Italian restaurant they opened. There’s a movie theater near there or a place to go dancing. I know she and your sister always liked to go do that. Those two damn near gave us gray hair being out all night, after losing the prospects we assigned to trail them.” She shakes her head, and I laugh.

“And then you put me to the task.”

“Hah. Yeah, I did, and I think it made it worse instead of better.”

“What? They were safe, weren’t they?” I say with a sly grin.

“Yeah, and your rap sheet got longer.”

“And people got the picture and started staying away, didn’t they?” I took the job of guarding my girls very seriously. There was a time when Sugar got locked up, and Baby J had come to live with us for a spell. Given Menace’s position, and the fact that Sugar’s parent’s hated the club, there was no way Sugar could leave her or send her off with family. It had cemented our sibling-like bond.

“That they did, baby. You did a good job with those two. My little Samcro princess and my bonus baby.”

I shake my head at the satisfied smirk that lines her lips. She’d gotten exactly what she always wanted, Lee and I together and Baby J with a Son. One she respected and liked. I don’t know what woman wronged my Mom in her life, but she couldn’t stand ninety percent of females. Hell, I only think Aunt Luanne and her work so well, because Luanne is a follower who knows her place. My Ma’s shrewd like that. Can’t bitch too much when she’s taught me everything I know about ensuring my place and never letting anyone else get the upper hand.

I keep my mouth shut until I’m ready to make my move. It allows people to underestimate me. I like that. It gives me a chance to come up with a plan and execute it flawlessly. You make mistakes in this world, and you end up in a pine box.

“So dinner and a movie or dinner and dancing? I think I can manage that.”

“Good. And this time…keep your hands to yourself unless someone tries to touch her. Nothing ruins a night out worse than arrest.”

I snicker. “I Hear you.”

“Good. “ She tosses her butt to the ground and stubbs it out with the toe of her black high heel. “You might want to make reservations. Be a shame to make the drive and not get a table.”

“Why don’t you do it Ma. Since you did everything else.”

“It’ll be my pleasure.” She winks and walks off as I laugh.

Her words had me thinking about our interactions in the garage. We weren’t stiff, but I kept my hands to myself. Lee had always been the type to keep business and pleasure separate. She had to, in many ways, to keep her legitimate standing with the upper crust of Charming. Her beauty, schooling, and good reputation allowed them to overlook her Samcro ties. She was a much-needed bridge. One they should know had been claimed.. There’d been a number of square ass dudes who’d tried to tie her down. They didn’t see at heart; she was always made to be a biker’s woman.

She’d never be happy with some laid back, casual dude who wanted 2.5 kids, a white picket fence, and nothing to do with her family. Hell Tig, the most fucked up of us all, was her father figure. Someone outside the life would never be able to handle or understand that. Civilians were too damned judgmental for their own good.

I move to an area where I can see her without her seeing me. Dressed in a well-worn pair of faded jeans with ripped knees and a Samcro t-shirt she’s knotted at the waist to show a sliver off tan toned flesh, she’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever set eyes on.

I don’t want her doubting her importance or her place in my life for a second. I’ve always been good at pushing her boundaries without toppling her. I have no problem doing that now to let everyone know we’re very taken. It’s healthier than killing people who cross a line with her.

She turns her head towards my mother, and genuine adoration colors her brilliant blue eyes. Seeing the affection between two off the woman I love most makes me smile. Yeah, she deserves more, and I can step it up and give it to her.

I finish cleaning in the sink, scrubbing my hands with the orange scented Pumice soap, careful to get under my nails and around my cuticles. I had plans for these tonight, and they needed to be spotless to be worthy of entrance into hot, wet places.

Satisfied with my hands, I splash water on my face and pat it dry with paper towels and pitch them in the bin. It’s Friday, and I’m calling it a day. We don’t have any pressing repairs that can’t wait or be finished by a prospect.

I make my way to the office and lean into the door.

“You about done in here, Lee?”

“I don’t know?” She turns to face my Ma. “Am I?”

“Yeah, you two get out of here. I’ll close down tonight. Unlike you two, my only plans are a party at the clubhouse.”

Lee looks at me confused, and I smirk.

“What’s she talking about?”

“Mr. wonderful here got you a table at that new Italian place at seven tonight. If you hurry, you’ll have enough time to get all dolled up before you leave.”

“Did someone mention dolls?” Tig asks shuddering as he comes into view, silent like always.

“Yeah, Tiggy. The kids are going out for a nice date.”

“Where you taking her?” he asks, eyeballing me.

I stand my ground forcing myself not to respond to his lasers as they bore a hole through me. I ain’t going anywhere, so he needs to get used to it.

“The cute little restaurant up the road,” Mom says.

“Apparently that’s where we’re going,” Lee says with an almost shy smile I know I want to see more often.

“Huh,” Tig grunts. “Take care of my girl.”

“Always do,” I say refusing to back down under his crazed glare. Tig could back up his bark, but I had no plan to give him a reason to do that.

He nods and walks over to kiss her on the forehead. “Have fun tonight.”

“I will, Tiggy,” she says kissing his cheek. He softens, and I turn away feeling like I’m intruding on a private moment.

“Well get out of here before I change my mind,” Ma says waving her hand.  I wrap my arm around Lee’s waist, lift her off her feet, and carry her off.

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping while we can. It takes two seconds for shit to go to hell around here,” I say.

She giggles and relaxes against me. “Well, I’m going to need my purse.”

I return to the office and Ma hands her purse. “Ah, to be young and in love again,” She says.

Lee tenses and I squeeze her and jet out before my mother can freak her out more. It’s funny…I’m usually the gung-ho one who jumps into everything, but I can’t with her. At least not on the surface. She’s had too many men who counted disappoint her.

I ignore the whistles and hoots sent our way as we exit the garage into the sunshine.

“How long you need to get ready?”

“How pretty you want me?”

“You’re already drop dead gorgeous, Lee. The clothing doesn’t change that.” She gasps. “Oh, I forgot how much of a charmer you could be.”

“Just stating a fact, darling,” I say as I brush her lips with mine and set her down by her car.

“I’ll meet you at your house in say … one hour? It’ll give us both enough time to clean up and then hit the road?”

“Sounds good, to me Teller.” She pauses and studies me.

“What?” I ask.

She shakes her head and smiles as she unlocks her car and slips into the driver’s seat. I’m getting under her skin. Darling, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

I hurry back inside to my dorm and open my closet. Tucked in the back are a nicer pair of jeans and a button up. A knock sounds on my door.

“Yeah.”

I pull out the black button down and glance over my shoulder at Candy. The slender bleach blonde is poured into a pair of low-slung jeans and a crop top that barely covers her implants. Turgid nipples push out the thin white material.

“Ma need something?”

“No. I just thought I could help you get cleaned up.” She enters the room swaying her nonexistent hips.

“I’m taken.”

“Never stopped you before,” She purrs.

The words make me wince. She ain’t wrong.

“This time’s different.”

She pouts. “You sure about that? We always had a good time Jax.”

“Out.” I snap my fingers and point, and she huffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she stalks out.

I walk over, lock the door behind her and place my head against the door.

Sending away free pussy isn’t easy for any man. Especially when it’s a habit, but I’d cut my own arm off before I hurt Lee. She’d been betrayed enough to last a lifetime. Pushing away I head for the shower, wishing I could wash away my shady past as easily as I do the sweat and grime of the day. I let one heartbreak color my entire view on women, and now I had to pay for it, in the form of convincing my woman I could stay true to her.

***

“This is really nice,” Lee whispers as we walk up to Host/Hostess podium.

“Yeah, it is. I’m starting to think we might be missing out not getting out of Charming more often.” “Hah. Don’t let Gem here you say that.”

I smirk. “You know I’m smarter than that.”

The clientele makes me glad I left my colors at home and stepped up my attire. Blending in is an important skill to have, and while dressing up isn’t my thing I can do it when necessary. Lee’s little black dress and sky-high heels are worthy of a suit. The strapless number shows off her delectable collar bone and strong arms. I want to cover her in hickeys so any man would know in a glance she’s taken and well pleased. I find myself staring down anyone who looks for too long. I covet the shit that matters to me.

“Can I help you, sir?” The man in the black slacks, white button up, and black tie asks.

“Yeah, I have a reservation for Teller at seven.”

He opens his book and searches. “I see you here sir. Just one moment and I’ll show you back to your seat.”

I nod my head, wrap my arm around her waist and pull her to my side.

“I can’t believe you went through all this trouble for me.” The awe in her voice makes me feel like I’m on top of a mountain.

“Anything to see you smile, darling.”

She peers down, and a pink tinge appears on her cheeks. She’s got her walls down. It’s a beautiful sight because I know it doesn’t happen often.

“I want to believe that.” I tuck my finger under her chin tilting her face to look up at me.

“You should because I’m going to be spending my time proving it. You know I’ve never been an all talk kind of man.”

“I do know,” she whispers and I can’t help but peck her delicious looking lips.

We’re shown to our table, and I know mom must’ve pulled some strings because it’s a damn Chef’s table, set apart from the main room.

“Oh my God,” Lee whispers looking over the table.

“I know,” I say equally impressed.

The candle light flickering at the table paints her face in shadows. I’m lost in her eyes and in the moment. I’ve never done anything like this with a woman. It’s intimate and grown up as hell. What we’re doing isn’t playing at a relationship, it’s building a strong one.

We make small talk as we drink wine and eat food I can barely pronounce. I never imagined I’d be here doing this, but she looks right at home. It drives home just how unique my woman is; like a diamond made under pressure in the earth.

I reach across the table and take her hand, willing her to understand how much she means to me, even if she’s not ready for the words circling around in my brain.

I’ve been hit by lighting.

My eyes are opened, and my hurt is about to explode, yet I can’t say a word. It’s like having a secret too big to keep under wraps. My thoughts flash to Baby J. She’s a safe place. Once she comes back from her honeymoon, we’ll talk. I need help figuring out how to handle this. The last woman I gave myself completely panicked and bailed. That left a mark, and I refuse to watch Lee do the same. She’s a runner. Not physically, but mentally and emotionally. I can’t find myself on the wrong side of her walls. It would break me to lose all those years we’ve spent being each other’s best friends.

“What are you thinking about?” She asks as she scoops up a bite of Death by Chocolate.

“How lucky I am to be here with you like this right now.” I bring her hand toward my mouth, brushing her knuckles lightly with my lips.

She smiles and tilts her head. “Laying it on thick.”

“Being one-hundred percent real. The way we always are with each other.”

“I’m not used to this side of you.”

“What side?”

“This grown up serious side. It’s dangerous.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because it makes me want things that scare me.”

“You’re not alone in that, babe. But we both know I’m good at getting what I want, and the way I see it, as long as we’re on the same page, that’s not a bad thing.” I shake my head and smile at her.

Her brow furrows. “And you think it’ll be that easy.”

“Not easy, but when you really want something, it doesn’t matter how far you have to go. It’s never too much.”

Her eyes widen, and I clear my throat. Time to shift topics. “So, what do you want to do next?”

“There’s more?”

“If you’re up for it. I know accountants keep early hours.”

She kicks my shin under the table, and I jerk laughing.

“Oh screw you, Jackson. I see I need to remind you where I come from.”

The fire in her eyes makes me grin.

“The let’s pay the bill and see what you got.”

“What are my options?” She asks, sounding more like a general preparing for war than a girlfriend on a date.

“Movies or dancing?”

“Oh, Teller. I’m going to mop the floor with you. You’ll be begging me to leave before the night is through.”

I toss a couple hundred on the table and stand ready for a night of grinding and debauchery with my woman.

[ginnyzero]

Writing/Reading and Loving/Hating Different Series by the Same Author

Recently, I got a lovely review for the Dawn Warrior by the amazing Mrs. Y on twitter. And in her review, she stated that she isn’t going to review the Lone Prospect because she didn’t like it as much and she doesn’t want to hurt my book sales. (The very few of them that I have.) Mrs. Y likes books with very limited “breathable/ma/quiet” moments. The Lone Prospect is full of those types of moments. The Dawn Warrior has a few but is a much tighter book action wise.

This is deliberate. I wrote these books for two very different audiences. The Dawn Warrior is more of an old school romantic fantasy a lah Mercedes Lackey and her Elemental Mages or 500 Kingdoms Series. While, The Lone Prospect (Rodeo’s Run and Serpent’s Smile) is a more modern style fantasy a lah Anne Bishop’s The Others Series. So, if you like Mercedes Lackey, you’d probably prefer the Dawn Warrior. And if you like Anne Bishop, you’d probably enjoy the Lone Prospect more.

That’s okay. That’s fine. I accept that. Because I wrote them that way on purpose.

The themes of the Heaven’s Heathens MC and the Dawn Series are very similar. I’m tackling them in different ways. Also, the worlds are very different. In The Dawn Series, I’m relying on standard fantasy world tropes. Roxana is a Princess who has been cursed with a traditional curse. There are standard Grimm (and others) tales that I’m working off of, there are well known rules and guidelines that crop up in fantasy over and over again that adults who love fantasy know already. I don’t have to explain myself! I don’t have to go “here are the rules.” That would bore everyone to tears.

If you’ve seen a Disney movie, enjoyed How to Train Your Dragon, played DnD, or read Narnia, Tolkien or Grimm’s Fairy Tales, you’ve got a basic idea of how the Dawn Series works. It’s your basic standard fantasy world just a bit more broken up. The Sleeping Princess happens to be a Warrior and is helping a Beauty and the Beast to keep their daughter from becoming a Rapunzel. Oh, and there’s a dragon. He’s a teenager. He’s also very powerful and a bit of a magic nerd. He’d be excellent at CinemaSins.

But, Heaven’s Heathens MC isn’t like that at all. I’m working against genre and against common knowledge. Heaven’s Heathens is set in a post-World War 3 future, where there are flying cars and huge towers offset by tiny towns and huge expanses of wilderness reclaimed from cities and mega-farms. And the main characters are werewolves that ride motorcycles. Motorcycle culture isn’t well known. I can’t assume that everyone who reads my books has watched Sons of Anarchy. I’m a big fan of showing things rather than telling things.

This takes pages.

This takes making breathable, quiet moments where the characters interact and it doesn’t look or feel like it’s effecting the plot at all. I’m making the rules. It’s science fiction, but it’s not space opera science fiction with aliens and star fighter battles where everyone knows the rules because of Star Trek, Asimov, Weber and to some extent Star Wars. It’s more Minority Report. It’s Dredd. It’s a touch of Mad Max.

Those are very niche science fiction types.

So why do this? Why make this hard for myself? Why not write a straight up contemporary urban fantasy about a werewolf biker club that has adventures? Wouldn’t that be easier? Whelp, A, I don’t want to offend REAL biker clubs. I value my life and if I wrote contemporary I’d have to mention REAL clubs. That is a recipe for disaster so, I’d really rather not. B, for the past 60 years, science fiction has been always about the perils of technology and fear of the alien. We have been stuck in this Cold War and then the Vietnam War mindset.

It’s time for Science Fiction to move onwards. There can be more to science fiction than aliens and ray guns and space ships. There can be more to urban fantasy than mysteries and really bad toxic abusive relationships. There can be more to fantasy than women only throwing magic and dragons being ‘evil.’

This may make my work non-commercial. Perhaps, retellings of fairytales are overdone. (Though Lackey is the only one I see mixing them up instead of doing them straight.) Seeing the same things on shelves over and over with just the names and the “jobs” being different is leaving a rather large gap in the market that is thirsty for new things.

However, experimenting is risky. That’s why I have the Dawn Series. My Heathen’s series is an experiment. It’s an experiment that is probably not going to get huge. (I mean, it’s my baby and all but I’m more than well aware of how complicated it is to sell ‘biker werewolves’ that are pushing ‘family themes.’) The Dawn Series is something simple. It’s different but still easy to understand. It’s an introduction to my writing style more than anything. It’s me. But it’s me edited.

I really do feel that Heathens is more ‘what I do’ than the Dawn Series. As much as I love the Dawn Series and the idea of breaking up fairytales and stitching them back together, Heathens and that type of writing, where I put in a lot of character and family type moments, is really my first love. Yes. It’s longer. Yes. It at times may seem to drag if all you want is fighting and explosions.

Now, I love fighting and explosions. That’s why they turn up in every book!

At the same time, I love the quiet moments. I love when characters are picking on each other. I love when they’re doing things together that prove they are human. I love characters with hobbies and flaws and friends. There are many series I’ve put down because despite them being over 125K words, I get to the end of the second or third book and still know nothing about the characters.

It’s easy to keep your books short if your characters don’t have friends or family or a life outside of their work. But that’s not healthy and it’s not realistic. But if you want something that’s no friends, no family and no life outside of their work, go read the Dawn Warrior. Roxana is pretty stubborn that way. But if you want to see a bunch of people being a huge family with siblings that squabble, go read the Lone Prospect.

You can like both. You can like one or the other. It all depends on your taste. It’s okay to like one series by an author and not another one. Different series allows writers to reach different audiences, play with different themes or tropes and dabble in different writing styles and worlds. You can like Pern without liking the lesser known Talents series. You can like Valdemaar and not like the Elemental Masters or the Jousters Series. You can like Dresden but not like Codex Alera. You can like Heaven’s Heathens and not like the Dawn Series. It’s FINE. It’s okay!

We accept this. (I mean, as long as you like something. J/K!)

Diversifying our range of books is how authors make money. It’s how we grow our audience without sacrificing our current audience who many not like certain tropes or genres. Your hardcore fantasy reader probably isn’t going to jump into your steampunk fantasy right away. (I loved the Black Jewels. Ephemera didn’t do anything for me at all. So I was very leery about the Others books. They were good until Book 4.) It’s okay. It’s fine. It’s normal.

What isn’t normal would be telling the author and being put out that they didn’t write something exactly to your tastes all the time. That’s entitlement and not cool. So, I’m grateful to Mrs. Y for her being honest and saying “Heathens isn’t my cuppa, so I’m not going to officially review it.” That’s classy.

Writing like this can make it hard for authors because we can’t always say, “Well, you like this series so I’m sure you’ll like my other series.” Because we know that’s not the way it works, especially if the only thing they really have in common is werewolves. Not everyone who loves werewolves is going to love what you do with the werewolves either!

Shortly, we write different series because we have different things to say that appeal to different people. And if you don’t like what we say to other audiences, that’s fine. As long as you aren’t rude to us when you say so. Because we love all our of readers no matter what series you read. So, stay classy everyone and read what you love.

[mollyalicia3]

Green Latrine Introduces Green Revolution in Portable Toilet Industry

Will and Kyleen Niccolls’ Green Latrine in Seattle Washington is providing a rare portable restroom benefit for the company’s customers to pass on to their own environmentally conscious customers—green portable restroom service.

Seattle Youths Become Green Entrepreneurs We asked Will Niccolls to walk us through his move into the portable toilet industry and the process of deciding to make his new business green. In 2015, I left my job. That was scary as heck, leaving behind benefits and good paychecks. It was a plunge into icy waters. It’s not for everybody, Fortunately, my wife was in a job that enabled us to take the risk. A friend of my brother has a small portable toilet company in Canada. He invited me to come up there to get an introduction to the business. I spent a week there, working with him in his business, and then I was more sure than ever that this was right for me. I really enjoy the outside part, the manual labor. The inside stuff, billing, invoicing and the other administrative stuff is not what I like to do. My wife, Kyleen, handles those responsibilities. So, I got going with our first purchase of toilets, truck and tank, and started building relationships with vendors and building a client base from there.

Quality Commitment Sustains Green Latrine Business was slow at first. But, over the years, customers kept coming back. I’m not sure if it’s accurate to say we’ve never lost a client, although I can’t think of anybody off the top of my head who hasn’t come back to us after using our service once. Events are the majority of the work we do. We also do some residential construction. There’s a lot of commercial building going on in downtown Seattle too. But, we don’t do a lot of that. We’ve worked really well with other vendors for the events we service. For example, we know the tent rental guys, so we can work directly with them, to make sure we know exactly where is best for us to set up units. We also know the barricade companies, the trash can companies and other vendors. So, we can get good work done without bothering our clients, the event coordinators. Our phone rings pretty consistently with a lot of repeat customers and the occasional new business. With new projects from current customers, we’re lucky to be able to maintain the steady flow of business that we have without any marketing.

Simple Growth Model at Green Latrine When I ask new clients how they hear of us, they usually say something like, “I saw your toilets at an event and thought yours were cleaner than I’ve seen anywhere else.” That’s probably the most common way we gain new clients. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have several loyal clients who’ve become friends and who sort of evangelize for Green Latrine. They sometimes introduce me to event producers, and we get involved in small events they’re doing. Then, they’ll ask to us to service their bigger events. One of the larger events we’ve done more recently was providing service for the Special Olympics USA, a regional event that was on ESPN. It got national attention, and many thousands of people attended the event, which included activities at multiple locations. Green Latrine provided hundreds of toilet units across the sites where the events were held throughout the region.

From Academics to Entrepreneurial Enterprise Asked about his personal background and how it prepared him for the entrepreneurial challenges of business operations and planning, Will explained that he has a master’s degree in organizational leadership. I always thought I’d be working in a big corporation where I would lead a chunk of the organization. That’s what I got my MA to do. But, this little toilet deal came out of left field. My brother said his buddy in Canada was running a portable toilet business and that I should give it a try. I would have laughed if anyone had said I would be working with portable toilets, but when I got introduced to it, I loved it. We’re in a market where there’s a ton of competition here in Seattle. There are national and huge regional portable restroom companies. Breaking into a very well established portable toilet market has really been an education. Our growth has been phenomenal year to year. Sales tripled one year, and quadrupled another. We’ve been extremely fortunate. We really focus on the service. We provide very good stock and high-quality deodorizing. We’ve done a really good job and, as a result, today we have hundreds of rental units and three trucks and drivers. Competitive Philosophy of a Savvy Entrepreneur When I first started, I felt like I should do whatever it took on pricing to get a client. So, I was playing the pricing game—matching prices, deeply discounting, etc., and really devaluing my own product. I came to realize that by doing that, I was saying to prospective customers, and to myself, that I wasn’t worth my own price. At some point I thought, “Take pride in yourself man!” Now, as the years have gone by, I tell prospects, we’re not the lowest priced service in town, but we have amazing service. In fact, customers are stunned at how amazing our service actually is. As time went by, I learned to let new business go, if I don’t believe the client will pay a reasonable price. Will shared with an inspiring story about elevating a peer competitor and the portable restroom rental industry too. He mentioned this only as an aside, but we love the dual messages of helping peers in one’s market and of appreciating business owners’ role in protecting the image of the industry in more ways than just by giving good service. One customer we worked with who became a friend shared with me that when his company got the bids for the work we did, they had collected three bids. There was a higher priced bid than mine. There was mine, which was about ten percent less, and there was a third bid that was about 35 percent less than mine. I called the underpriced competitor and told him, your bid was 35 percent lower than mine, and even lower compared to the highest bid, vs. a more normal ten or fifteen percent below. That’s leaving a lot of money on the table unnecessarily. But, it’s also concerning to prospective customers. The customer in this case ended up coming with me, because they were concerned that the bid you offered was too low to deliver quality. The competitor took it well, and I’m glad I made that call to help that person. We had a nice conversation. He had actually been in the business longer than I had. Since then, I’ve had the same discussion with two other competitors. I believe in the power of the industry. Everyone in it needs to do our part to preserve it, for our own, and everyone’s best interest. There’ s a very large portable restroom company here in town. I’ve seen that company invest in the industry. I want to be a guy who engages in growing and improving the image of the portable toilet industry. Asked about some of the things Will suggests for portable restroom business owners to do to help support the industry, he offered some simple and important ideas. I want to show up at association meetings. I’m a member of the American Rental Association (ARA) and of several other associations. Recently, the PSAI held its conference in Portland. I attended that. It was a great event. I met other portable toilet business owners from around the industry. I also read all of the industry-related magazines, to see what others involved in the business are doing.

Green Latrine Quality Control Innovation Green Latrine’s unique 10-point Clean Guarantee is another industry ground-breaker. We’ve seen such guarantees across a number of other industries, but this quality checklist for customers concept appears to us to be a fresh one in the U.S. American portable restroom market. So, we asked Will about the origin of the concept and his motivation for promoting it as the centerpiece of his service policy. Early on, I went on a ride-along with a different toilet rental provider. Their service guy dropped off a toilet at a higher-end home, where the homeowners were having a fall festival event in their barn. The toilet that was delivered was not worthy of the home we dropped it off at, in my opinion. It was dirty. It actually had residue on the toilet seat. I remember thinking, here’s a really nice house with a really nice barn for a nice party. It was kind of embarrassing to have been there as that toilet was being dropped off like that. I want to be proud of what we deliver, and I want to be comfortable with my own family using it. To me, the cleanliness is the top priority. That’s the mark I want to leave.

Green Latrine Business Model We asked Will about possible future plans for service diversification. We’ve thought about adding new revenue streams. Early on it was a question of capacity. Now, it’s more a question of margins. If you do a good job on your business of portable toilet rental service, you can grow your business. So, we’re very focused on doing a good job at our core business. But, in some more years, I imagine that we could go into other related services that make sense and that don’t strain our long-term reliable employees. My wife does the books and handles countless other responsibilities. I do our routing and scheduling. All the client interface is through me. For really big events over twenty toilets, I’m out on site doing the event, and I’m also the backup for guys when someone is out. I do all of the sales. When we first started, it was just me really getting out there and beating the streets and shaking the trees. Now the phone rings a lot more than when we started. Will explains that, in fact, the company needs to do very little marketing or advertising with the way it’s currently operating.

Green Latrine Management Model Asked about his experience in finding and retaining good employees, Will relates his experience to the difficulties we said other owners throughout the industry have told us about in interviews. I think we encountered the exact same thing as others in finding employees. We’ve certainly had folks who needed to move on. It was best for them and us. But, overall, where we’ve been successful is in retaining employees. (This summer we’ll need to add a part time or full time, or a seasonal employee as we come into the busy summer season. We’ll have to decide.) For our employees, we’ve offered experiences and opportunities. You do have to be willing to share some of the wealth. We provide a competitive salary, but we also want to give our employees positive experiences, gifts, tokens of appreciation, lunches dinners to celebrate success, a Christmas, etc., to try to make things fun for the guys and do things that other companies may not do to show respect and appreciation for loyal employees.

Equipment and Technology at Green Latrine In our fleet of trucks, we’ve had both brand new and really old trucks. An old truck seems appealing on price, but you pay a price, because an old truck requires a lot of maintenance. We’ve worked really hard to focus on investing the money we do make in new trucks. Maintaining new equipment is so much easier, and I think employees really appreciate the bells and whistles that come with a new vehicle. We’ve bought a new truck each year over the past two years. We asked Will if he keeps informed on new technologies that might have a positive impact on his business. His response reflected his take on the irony of being a Seattle local without a lot of tech interest. I’m in Seattle, the city that Amazon, and that Microsoft and all the tech companies call home, but I’m not a flashy tech guy. I’m the least “tech” guy out there. I’ve found success in focusing on the fundamentals of the business—providing a clean toilet, an abundant stock of paper, a good blue, and the other things it takes to deliver an excellent product and service.

Advice for Industry Newcomers from Will Niccolls As I mentioned, the experience of doing this for a few years has given me time to build the confidence to price my services at the level that I’m worth. At the start, I didn’t do myself any favors with my rock-bottom pricing. I’ve since had to drag those early customers with me through rate increases, while trying to maintain good relationships with them. There shouldn’t be any gouging with prices, but there shouldn’t be rock-bottom, no-margin prices either. As an industry, we should respect ourselves, which means pricing at a fair rate and delivering amazing service. Remember that fair customers are willing to pay that, because they’re receiving really good service and fair prices. So, it makes no sense for someone to race to the bottom, slashing prices.

Being Green in Today’s Portable Restroom Industry Will and Kyleen Niccolls are pioneers in the industry, virtually standing alone as green portable restroom business owners in an economic subsector that has not yet gone green. Green Latrine is ahead of its time, though, fortunately for its owners, it appears clear enough that the portable restroom rental market will necessarily need to catch up very soon. At this point, Will Niccolls says, it’s a neat element. I’m really proud of it, and we do have some green conscious clients. However, he adds that, so far, typically price has driven more business for his company than green motivations. Will reflects on his experience with the difference that the green aspect of his portable toilet business has actually made to-date on Green Latrine’s success. I think that, when we started, I believed customers would be willing to pay more—not a lot more, but at least a little more—when they found a company that brought a lot of value for the environment. But, in our business, it too often comes down to price. If there’s a comparison in which everything else is otherwise equal, someone may choose our company based on the green factor. But, so far, typically, it’s about price. Still, he emphasizes, I’m really glad that we do it. Based on Will Niccolls’ experience, portable restroom clients who rent units for their events or construction sites aren’t yet quite ready to go green exclusively based on the environmental merits of doing so. However, their customers (both external and internal), as in virtually all industries can be expected to become increasingly ready for all of the products and services they utilize to be as green as possible over the coming years. That growing demand is naturally likely to include the portable restrooms they use at public and private events they attend and at remodeling or construction sites in which they have professional or personal interests. Green Latrine offers an exceptional opportunity for its event planning customers to appeal to their own up and coming Millennial and Gen X decision-makers and event attendees. It’s an opportunity for such portable restroom customers to get out ahead of a market inevitability for them. The Niccolls’ service model provides one more green initiative that is of fundamental importance to generations who are soon-to-be the predominant groups of employers and services consumers. What Green Latrine offers is forward thinking of the highest order, in terms of both corporate responsibility and organic marketing methodology, to benefit itself and its customer companies. Therefore, the impending broader shift in green marketing indeed appears to bode well for Green Latrine. The transition to eco-friendly everything also promises a significant soft marketing bonus for Green Latrine customers who can market their companies as ones who’ve long chosen only green suppliers whenever possible. Congratulations to Green Latrine for contributing to a better environment and for a spectacular example of ideally positioning the future

http://www.americanliquidwaste.com/2019/03/spotlight/green-latrine-introduces-green-revolution-in-portable-toilet-industry/

from Septic Tank Pumping Pros https://septictankpumpingpros.wordpress.com/2019/03/12/green-latrine-introduces-green-revolution-in-portable-toilet-industry/

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In the Indian property market, there is a sub set of property advisors, who want to upgrade their knowledge and skill but are unable to  do so in the absence of a system of real estate education in which they can study as well as run their business.In this scenario, a proper system of property education and training, consisting of a network of real estate institutes offering full time, part time, evening, week end, distance and online real estate courses, could have improved the subject knowledge of professionals and in washer dryer clearance  turn would have improved transparency in property transactions and professionalism in the business, especially property consulting business. A point to be mentioned here is the initiative of EduMark realty education services which offers courses for those looking for real estate jobs as well as for existing property professionals looking for professional development. 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[lazylacadaemon]

(1) hi! this is a similar question to the other anon asking advice, but with a different twist. i'd like to ask specficially if you have any advice for uni students planning to major in classics/classical studies? how was your experience with it? did you end up focusing more on the history/archaeology side of things or the ancient languages? is it possible to do both? also, on a somewhat related note, how do you find doing your masters in classics in canada? i'm briefly (cont..)

(2) considering it (i’m on the west coast), but job prospects look…. a little dismal. is that just me, or is that a legitimate concern? would you happen to know what kind of options are out there in academia now for people who’d like to pursue more than an undergrad in the humanities? sorry that this ask is a little out of control with the questions. feel free to filter out your answers; i don’t want to bother you too much or take up too much of your time!

Hey thanks for dropping by to ask, I’l do my best to account for as many things as I can. This could get long haha. A lot of this is from my (limited) personal experience and the experience of people I know, so don’t take it as the be all end all answer.

1. Classics in general

I adore the discipline, I adore my profs, and while I complain a lot about dead languages I really don’t have any regrets doing it. I think the experience will vary from school to school and country to country, but I just want to get my overarching fondness for the ancient world out of the way.

In my undergrad I focused mostly on art history and archaeology (though my minor is in linguistics) because I’m a very visual person, I’m a self-taught artist, and it was interesting to me. My supervisor (who sort of adopted me because I took so many of her classes) is the one who really loves getting down in the dirt and she’s always trying to get me to get out there too but I’ve never been on a dig and I honestly don’t know how useful I’d be on one. xD In grad school now I’m in a program called Ancient Societies and Cultures which is an interdisciplinary program- there are people like me who are Classics majors that want to bridge that gap between literature/language and archaeology and history, but there are also people who major in things like math/engineering who want an older perspective on things too. As far as I know, my university is the only one with such a MA program in classics. 

But yeah it’s certainly possible to do both in undergrad- I took a lot of myth courses, a lot of history courses, and a few courses I wouldn’t have thought to take due to limited options in certain years (but tbh I nearly died in 500 level Roman Monarchy because I know pretty much nothing about Late Imperial Roman History, just the art lol). I of course took a lot of Greek and Latin- I was going through a bit of a crisis in my first couple years trying to decide between East Asian Studies and Classics, and taking Intermediate Japanese at the same time as Intro Ancient Greek was… interesting. I didn’t take Latin until my MA- I don’t think it was a Super important requirement for what I was doing, but I’m very glad I did it anyway. Also… a shameful admittance… I have my BA in Classics, I am maybe 2 months tops from getting my MA… and I have never read the Iliad- the closest equivalent to a bible there is- all the way through. In English. (I’ve read the Odyssey twice to make up for it though)

2. Classics in Canada

The first most important distinction in Classical studies: in North America, Classics is usually put together with the history department. In Europe, Classics is still fundamentally linked to its origins in philology. Classical archaeology in particular is actually a really niche discipline, at least in North America- the anthropologists don’t want it because we have “too much literature”, the historians don’t want it because we have “too much dirt”, and the art historians sometimes begrudgingly take us in even though they aren’t super fond of dirt either. I had a colleague who referred to a complete and utter lack of good programs in classical archaeology at “the university that shall not be named” in Toronto (whatever it was, it did leave quite a sour impression on him).

Secondly, Canadian students relative to American and European students entering classics are at a particular disadvantage if they want to dive right into languages: in the States, there seems to be a Latin revival in secondary school- maybe even in primary school- so you can legitimately have people with 4 years of Latin straight out of high school under their belts. In Canada, the last private school that offered Latin at the secondary level dropped the program. It’s not a big problem if you are doing an undergrad and are super interested in doing languages (although they’ve cut the Classical Languages Major here because only like 2 people did it… pretty ridic still and a lot of my profs are Very Angry), but say you are me who took Greek in undergrad on a whim but no Latin, and then looking at grad schools like UBC who seem to cater to American/International students by requiring a minimum of six years of Latin or Greek and four in the other- friggin impossible when you only have been doing Greek and no Latin for half your undergrad. However, if you love Latin there are (or at least… there were, idk what’s up with this political mess) a lot of prospects in the US for teaching Latin and it’s an easy straight shot from uni into the field (easy if you don’t mind living in the States).

Finally, specifically, I don’t know much about Classics outside my university. I’m a student at the U of A and, being the filthy rich Albertans we are, we tend to have a lot of advantages that other universities might not. We have a tidy little collection of artefacts in our museum from Greece, Italy, Egypt and the Near East, the UK, and so forth. We have regular exchange programs in Italy for students interested in poli sci, history, art history, or classics, and we have regular digs in both Italy and Greece. We also have pretty decent entrance requirements and great profs- still pretty limited to Greece and Rome, but I think we recently got someone who is an expert in Sanskrit for instance, which is great. I don’t know much about other universities- I’ve heard gossip that U of T has some interesting department drama, and I had a former classmate who really really really loved a particular school on the east coast (the name is escaping me right now but it was clear she would have much rather been there- I want to say it’s in New Brunswick). 

3. Job Prospects

ok let me get one thing very clear: i’m really

really

rEALLy tired of people who have only taken high school repeatedly telling me that the Only Thing you can get with a History/Classics Degree is being a professor (or a teacher). The professor life is a very viable option and a lot of profs will either nudge you toward it or away from it- my dad is a prof (not in humanities) and is really pressuring me to do a phd because ‘its the best job in the world’ etc etc but I’m not sure if it’s what I wanna do, at least not yet. I really don’t like the idea of moving around where the jobs are, and a lot of it does depend heavily on travelling around to lectures and talking to people and hoping you make a good connection. It is dismal, as my profs will be the first to admit, but Classics is definitely still hiring new profs- my uni just got a new mediterranean archaeologist I believe after holding auditions for a couple months. 

This is a worry that comes up so often in classes and there isn’t a straight answer for it- the terrifying and also liberating answer is that life is messy. It’s not terribly likely you’ll get a job in your field- but that applies to classicists and historians just as it does to engineers and microbiologists. The degree, the specialty, isn’t that important. Getting it done, doing something is more important. 

I’m not the best person to ask about what happens after university because I’m right on the brink of moving to Toronto to do another MA in Museum Studies/Information Studies - I’ve been in school from Kindergarten with no breaks and I’m going to be in University for exactly 10 years- not too keen on spending another 7 doing a phd. I’ve been in a very lucky position and my parents have been very supportive of me, I can’t thank them enough. They’ve been saving since I was born to send me to university, and my dad was very supportive of my arts degree because I get to do a lot of the things he didn’t have the option to do when he was going to school and I get to provide his discipline with a new perspective and vice versa every time we talk. I have a great support network of family and friends who have made this possible for me and I’m forever in their debt.

Knowing ancient greek isn’t going to get me a job, but knowing how to talk about ancient greek to people who are curious, knowing how to communicate in writing, how to communicate orally, how to make my subject less impenetrable and elitist for other people are all skills that are invaluable to me. Who knows, maybe some employer will look at a resume like /you know greek AND latin? you must be a crazy hard worker and disciplined to pick up dead languages/. If you get wrapped up in the “what am I going to do with this”, you’re not really focusing on the right things? Sometimes it won’t be obvious until you’re looking back on it, or until someone else is looking at it. I’ll pull up the typical ‘JK Rowling was a classics major’ of course, and I’ll point out that there are so many many many more jobs out there than there are fields that account for them. If that piece of paper gets you a job you enjoy, regardless of whether you use 100% of your skills and knowledge every day, then enjoying the road to getting that piece of paper is worth it imho. 

Think beyond teaching, think about archaeology, museums, archives, local history, information, movies and documentaries, writing fiction or non-fiction… and there are possibilities out there that haven’t occurred to me only because I’m still in school. You can’t predict what jobs are going to look like in the future and hell, job prospects for snake people are dismal enough as it is. I live in a province that’s absolutely flooded with engineers for example, and a lot of them face difficulties because of the rollercoaster economy here regardless of how ‘useful’ the degree is considered relatively. Might as well do something you enjoy, something that is applicable to multiple disciplines (Classics is like history, language arts, art history, etc all rolled into one and they all teach basics of communication, critical thinking, etc. that are indispensable for any society). Also, Classics remains desperately isolated from other disciplines in part because people have been avoiding it- there’s a lot that could be done uniting it with other disciplines like cultural studies or computers - especially because so many profs make new websites that look straight out of the 90s. -cries-

I know this wasn’t part of your question but also consider it from a social angle- Classics is considered to be a dying discipline in part because it is considered “useless” and partly as it has been historically perceived- correctly- as “elitist”. However, you’ll notice that classics is becoming more and more relevant, particularly with the rise of extreme right, white/euro supremacist groups appropriating the imagery of “western civilization”. The discipline desperately needs fresh ideas, new perspectives, and challenges to the status quo to keep idiots like this from misusing the ancient world for their own racist, sexist agendas. My thesis is getting increasingly relevant to this as I continue writing it, and though it will ultimately reach a small audience the knowledge that I’ve researched myself and have had peer reviewed will become invaluable to me in dispelling misconceptions and outright lies about ‘western’ civilization. Please consider it from that angle as well. 

[tellerford13]

MO ASTOR- CHAPTER 18 Pt. 3

We don’t own the bikes, brothers, or any “related” Sons of Anarchy, trust us, if we did we wouldn’t have the time to write. No money is being made from our stories. So, please don’t sue. It’d be a fruitless endeavor indeed. That being said, Harley, Journee, and any other newbies are ours, and we don’t share. :Whispers in creepy voice: “My precious.” The universe This reality is a mix of cannon, and our own ideas. We strive to keep the boys cannon, but since we will be shifting around some of the events, that will reflect in our writing and their personalities as well. It’s our goal to provide you with quality fiction, and solid, fleshed out OFC. We appreciate constructive criticism and love LOVE reviews, they are a writers life blood and definitely help encourage us and inspire us. We will be posting on our Tumblr where we’ll have fun pictures from time to time as well. http://tellerford13.tumblr.com We’ll also be taking requests for one shots, preferences or imagines for all things Sons at our other Tumblr, so check it out and send your thoughts!http://tellerford13oneshots.tumblr.com/ And just for fun, we’ve decided to start a Pinterest for the story! So if you want a glimpse at our girls and see into our world, check it out! https://www.pinterest.com/tellerford/

                                                            A/N: Happy New Years! We’re coming into the New Year with both our couples done right by! Thank you to everyone for the kind words, reviews, and messages. We love them. They keep the words flowing. Hope you enjoy!!

                                                 Chapter 18 Part 3

Jax

I used to think people were full of shit when they got googley eyed at weddings and started thinking about their own lives, but I get it now. Watching my brother stare are my sister like she was everything important got me caught up in my own feelings when Lee walked down the aisle looking like a queen in a sparkling gown that set somewhere between blue and purple. The dress hugged her curves and showed off her cleavage without being vulgar. Her blue eyes popped against her tan skin, and I found myself grateful I had on boxer briefs so no one could see the wood I was sporting.

I don’t know how it took me so long to see what I had in front of me. You can’t ask for a better woman. She gets the life, loves my family, blood, and brothers, and they adore her. Hell, getting my mother’s approval alone makes her a fucking rarity. I haven’t been able to take my eyes off her all night. Neither have a lot of men. That shit ain’t sitting well with me.

When we started out, secrecy sounded like a good idea. We could get our routine down without my mom butting in and the club giving us a bunch of shit. Her Godfather in particular. I ain’t never been a huge Tig fan. He’s so far up Clay’s ass; I think his job as an SA is compromised. It’s less about making the best decisions for the club and more about making Clay happy. A club needs an SA who can be objective and go head to head with the President if necessary.  I shift my weight and finish off my beer as the music lulls, and the DJ speaks.

“We need all the single ladies on the dance floor. The bride is going to throw the bouquet.”

I glance over at Chibs who looks happy to be nearing the time they can exit the wedding. I’m surprised the two of them haven’t spontaneously exploded. I saw him all but fucking her in the hall as Lee and I ushered people away from the alcove in the hallway. While neither of them minded, we figured Sugar and Menace could do without seeing them consummate their marriage live and in person. The crows rush to the floor, and I laugh out loud. Even if they caught the bouquet no one would be claiming them, let alone marrying them.

A female hang around, maybe. There were girls who liked to party with us, and occasionally took a lover, but never made it their hobby to be on their back. Hell, even some crows were respected if they played their card right. Men needed a release to keep them from blowing their stack and making mistakes. They play a pivotal role, and in turn, we take care of their needs. I’ve seen women come in , get their degree and go on to make something of their life. It’s the ones who get caught up on the prospect of being an old lady that grow bitter, get catty, and cause problems.

Chibs comes to stand beside me with Tig on the other side.

“Milkshake” by Kelis comes on, and I throw my head back and laugh along with the two men.

“Always knew Lips had fire.” “She’s something, ain’t she Jackie Boy?” Chibs asks with a grin made abnormally wide by his scars.

“That’s one way to describe her,” I say thinking of all the shit we’ve gotten into together over the years. She couldn’t be more my sister, if my mother gave birth to her.

“Shocker, her wife caught it.”

“Wife?” Tig roars. “Oh shit, that’s fitting for those two.���

The knowledge in his voice makes me want to ask him how much he knows. The thought of him knowing about their close connection before I do pisses me off for some reason.

“Time for me to go get me garter. You ready to fight for it, brother?” Chibs asks patting my back as he moves to take his place on the floor with his new wife.

Tig gives me a curious glance I ignore. He’ll be finding out soon enough. ‘Cause I’ll knock out teeth to get that strip of lace. Ain’t no other man taking shit off my woman.

Ten minutes later, I’m lined up with a bunch of hungry looking rowdy motherfuckers waiting to catch the garter. “You Shook me All Night” Comes on.  Before I can really react, the scrap of plaid is hurtling directly toward me. You sly dog. It brushes my fingers, and I close my hand around it. I fist pump the air. Lee takes a seat, and I walk toward her. I barely register the pats on my back as our gazes lock.

The mischief in her eyes makes me grin. She has no clue what’s about to happen. I’m done hiding, and the important people are here. I kneel in front of her and twirl the garter around my pointer finger.

“Be nice, Jackson?”

“Oh, I’ll be real nice,” I say as she hikes up her dress carefully and holds out her shapely calf. “Keep your hands to yourself” comes on and I slid the garter up her thigh, slowly. I grip the chair on either side of her and raise my body as I take her lips. Of all the hoots and hollers, it’s my mothers’ shrill cry of joy that catches my ear. I smile against her mouth as I slant my head and kiss her deeply. I’m in this shit, and I want her to know it. She cups the back of my head and the world around us recedes. We part for air, and I swear we receive a standing ovation. I turn to see Chibs and Journee wearing the biggest smiles of all. Cheeky bastards set this shit up. Not that I mind. They gave me the perfect venue. We stand, and I offer her my hand. She takes it, and we walk back to the crowd. My mother rushes up to her.

“You little shit! How long have you been hiding this?” She snaps.

“Not long, Ma. Just needed a chance to figure out what we were doing.”

“Uh huh. You’re lucky I like you both so much.” She points her finger. “You come over here and give me a hug. Didn’t I tell you? I knew it all these years.”  She pulls Lee to her, and I relinquish my hold. Even with me, Ma is the queen bee I differ too.

***

The clock is pushing three am when we make our way into the hotel. I wrap my arm around Lee and guide her to my room. I slip my key card in and scowl when it goes red.

“Really?”

She laughs. “Did I wear you out tonight?”

“No, but this is fucking with my plans of doing that to you.”

“Oh.”

I pat her ass and spin us around.  The ride downstairs takes ages.  We walk to the front desk.

“How can I help you, sir?” The gray-haired woman asks, all smiles.

“My keycard isn’t working.”

“What’s your room?”

“Four twenty-five.”

She takes the keys from me. “Oh, that’s because you’re room has been upgraded, Mr. Teller .You’re in the honeymoon suite now.”

I laugh. Fucking Baby J.”

Lee giggles beside me.

“Well, that would explain why the key isn’t working,” I say.

“Here are two new keys. Your room is now Six hundred and thirty-five.”

“Thank you.” I take the keys on the desk and hurry Lee back the way we came.

I grip her neck and pull her to me as the elevator takes us up. I slip my tongue into her mouth and give her a sampling of what I’m going to do to her pussy. She whimpers and I suck her tongue and pull her against me. She grinds her body against my cock, and I moan as the elevator comes to a stop with a ding.

I sweep her up in my arms and stride toward the room releashing her giggle. She wraps her arms around my neck, and I hitch her higher as I unlock the door. I step inside, turn on the light and let out a low whistle at the bottle of champagne chilling in a silver bucket and the chocolate covered strawberries beside it.

“She pulled out all the stops,” Lee whispers.

“Yes, she did. We’ll save that for after, when we need to replenish our strength.” I nip her bottom lip and move to the bed tossing her in the center.

She bounces laughing. Our gazes meet and the air in the room grows thick. She licks her lips, and I follow her down onto the bed, framing her in my arms as I take her lips and nudge her knees apart.

“You want this dress?”

“Yes.”

“Then roll over.”

I pull back and admire the view of her from the back. I unzip her dress and nibble my way down her spine as the skin is exposed. She shivers. Goosebumps dot her soft skin. I help her out of the dress and push the material onto the ground and roll her onto her back. Her full breasts with rosy red nipples make me moan. No bra, and no panties. Jesus Christ. I reach my hand between us and caress her clean shaven, wet pussy. She parts her thighs, and I inhale the sweet scent of her arousal. I slide down the bed and press her thighs open. She watches me as I lick her pussy. I hold her thighs apart as I fill her with my tongue, circle her bundle of nerves and suck.

Her hips rock and throaty cries spill from her lips. Our fingers twine and I sink into the deep connection we’ve formed over decades. My cock strains as she comes undone and yields her cream. I drink it down, a man in a desert who’s found an oasis. She goes limp, and I quickly remove my clothing and return to the place between her legs where I swear I could live the rest of my life. I stroke her slick lips with my cock.

“You feel so fucking good, baby.”

She whimpers.

“Did you get your test back?”

“I’m clean as a whistle. I told you when I made you mine I didn’t want anything between us. Your birth control still good?”

“For three more years.”

I grip my base and ease the tip into her tight pussy.

“God, you feel so good.” I continue to tease her moving in and out. She spreads her legs wider and digs her fingernails into my ass cheeks.

“No more teasing.”

“You ready for me? Cause I can’t do slow. Not with you. Not right now.”

“Who says I want slow?” She flashes me a wicked grin, and I drive home, stealing her breath. I grit my teeth allowing myself a moment to adjust. I could spill inside her right now and be happy. She’s wet, tight, and the first pussy I’ve felt without a rubber in nearly a year. She flexes her muscles, and I grunt.  The gleam in her eyes tells me she knows exactly what she’s doing. Two can play that game. I pull out and thrust back in. She arches off the bed, and I continue the pace, bottoming out as our bodies slap together and her breasts bounce. I bend down and suck one into my mouth as I trap her against me and fuck her even faster.

“Yes, Jackson. Oh, God.”

She wraps her ankles around my thighs. We move together as one, and my heart threatens to beat out of my chest. Nothing has ever felt this good or right in my entire life. Buried inside the woman I love, I’m whole in a way I never thought possible. She tightens around me, pulsing as her body trembles. I’m tongue-tied as she comes like a star in the night, shining so brightly I can barely stand to look at her. I’ve never seen her look more beautiful. She grips me like a vice, and I follow close behind her, spilling everything I have inside. I collapse on top of her, careful to keep most of my weight on my forearms. I kiss her lips with the words I love you ringing in my head.

It’s too soon for her, but I know what I feel and what I want. This is my happily-ever-after, Harley Grazer is my happily-ever-after.