#IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHATEVER THE ORIENTATION WAS WHEN YOU SAVED IT

[lunarflare64]

MmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMM TEMPER FUCKING PISS OFF PISS OFF TEMPER WE DO NOT FUCKING NEED YOU WE WERE HAVING A PERFECTLY GOOD DAY WITHOUT YOU SO IF YOU COULD JUST PISS OFF AND DIE THAT WOULD BE FANTASTIC REALLY

[icyowl]

Idk if your taking request if not discard! lol but uh >< could we get some Vash & Wolfwood A/O/B head canons? What do you think their second genders would be? and how would they be w reader?

A/B/O Headcanons (Vash, Wolfwood)

Pairings: Wolfwood x reader, Vash x reader

A/N/: always up for ABO. Always.

As my bio says, I'm not open for requests per se, but if an ask strikes my fancy, I might get inspired!

---- ---- ---- ---- ----

WOLFWOOD

An alpha through and THROUGH

very growly. It's deep and slow and rumbly and he loves using it on others or using it on you and catching you off guard. He smells the effect it has on you through your scent glands and his eyes key in on the tiny shaking it puts in your knees. You alright there, ankle biter? Lookin' a little unsteady he says with a wicked grin. Even the cigarette bounces with mirth.

Whatever class Wolfwood was going to be, the experiments done by the Dr. turned him into an alpha. It's done on purpose because alphas are more goal-oriented and driven, and because its pretty easy to keep them in line with a steady dose of hard-core suppressants. Getting Wolfwood to detox from them was definitely an exercise in building trust. The ensuing rut you had to help him through was. . . intense, to say the least.

Puts out his cigarettes when you're around. Just because he can cancel out the ill-effects by drinking his vials doesn't mean he has to subject you to it.

Say his first name nice and softly with some of those omega hormones pushing out into the room and watch his whole shoulder line gradually slump until he's putting his head on your shoulder and licking the oils from your scent glands.

Look, its fact that at some point he will use himself as a human shield to keep you safe because, again, he's got those vials to help him recover. The first time he got, for all intents and purposes, murdered in front of your eyes was a horrifying experience. Even after he'd made a full recovery (another mildly disturbing moment when he seemingly came back from the dead just as quickly as he joined it), you'd lost many nights worth of sleep. When he found out, you had a long discussion about his ready-fire-aim tendencies.

It came as no surprise you began to have nightmares. Try as he might, he wasn't good at consoling you at first. It took time for Wolfwood to realize slapping you on the back like some bro and telling you the vials taste like candy wasn't the way to make you feel better.

Has gotten your group thrown out of a number of establishments after holding a man at gunpoint for so much as flirting with you. Very clearly used the moment as an excuse to show off in front of you.

Definitely gives you the talk about worrying about yourself before others or before you make stupid choices that might put you in harms way. Gets you a gun of some kind, something manageable, and maybe it won't obliterate some of the things that are coming after you but it'll give you a chance to get away or at least buy time until he can get there.

“Whatever Blondie does, you do the opposite, you hear me?”

Also chew you out if/when you put yourself in danger. Doesn't matter why. He'll get in your face and yell and interrupt you at every turn. “I don't care that you were saving some kid! Drop kick him out a window for all I care! The next time you do something like that, I'll kill you myself!”

Loves showing off your relationship in front of others. Favorite thing to do is, whenever you go to sit by him in a public place, his arm snakes around you (whether its your arm or waist or a part of your clothing) and simply yanks you to his lap.

This man. This man would not touch a healthy relationship with a ten-foot pole. Like, we can agree his most stable relationship is with his gun, right? So totally expect him to be a little lost when it comes to taking care of you emotionally. It never occurred to him how many days had passed without him scenting you; just figured you were dealing with something or had a change in hormones when you began to smell sour.

On your end, you're freaking out. There has to be a reason why he's not doing it. Is he over you? Do you smell bad? Is something going on in his life you don't know about? Is there someone else? How do you bring it up without sounding accusatory? Should you just drop it?

When you finally lean in and just go for it, fisting his shirt and burrying your nose under his chin, nestled right up against his pulse, and purr, he does nothing for several seconds. Meanwhile your heart is skittering wildly. What you don't realize is you've positively short-circuited this poor man. Could his heart always beat like this? So fast, so erratically? A low rumble escapes him and encases you in an embrace.

He realizes this is the first time he's ever purred.

VASH

could legit be any class. I'm sure most of y'all see him as an omega, but for funsies I'll make him an alpha for a change!

Like, come on, you can't tell me those canines from the last episode scream anything else but alpha. Plus, we all know how determined he can get. Just imagine that you're the one he can't turn his instincts away from, you're the one that makes him feel the most like a regular person, you're the one that elicits such a visceral reaction from him.

Three words: PRO TEC TIVE. If you got with him hoping to break him of his savior mentality, you've gotten with the wrong person. His habits include but are not limited to: keeping watch every time you sleep (even at the risk of his own lethargy), repositioning you to where he perceives to be the safest spot (picking dining tables closest to an exit, putting himself between you and strangers, ensuring an unobstructed path to you and his gun, etc.), scenting your clothes every morning before you wake to keep other alphas from bothering you, smiling in such a way that he shows off his canines to anyone that bothers you, and coming up with lame excuses to get you away from anyone that bothers him. Vash is mostly polite about it, but you know what't up. Nuzzle into him and watch him melt into you and purr gently.

Yo his glyphs pulse when his alpha instincts come to the surface. Defending you from another alpha? Needing to scent you to feel calm? You got him riled up? All those will do it and its sometimes been a close call to hide it from strangers. You love it when it happens in the dark of a room and he literally lights up the space.

Seeing you in his jacket sends a shiver up his spine and makes his pupils expand considerably. He's soooo attentive to you. The slightest change in your scent due to your emotions — whether they be fear or jealousy or loneliness — and he's on you, nuzzling into your scent glands to try and calm you and offering to get you someplace private for a scenting session. Don't be surprised if he completely ignores your protests and excuses the two of you from the rest of the group.

One time he was so caught up in the moment of battle, so fearful when he saw a gun aiming for your chest, that his cybernetic hand grabbed for your arm and yanked you aside. It almost hurt him as much as if you'd been shot when he realized his fingers left dark bruises on your skin, and he'd carelessly flung you into a bookshelf where you'd knocked the back of your head against the corner, causing wet blood to rush into your hair and face.

He refused to touch you for days after that. Thankfully, in the dead of night, long after everyone else had gone to bed, you found him leaning bodily against the wall at the end of the hallway, resisting his hormone-fueled delirium on sheer willpower alone, and were able to convince him to give in to the bond. Oh how he wanted to scent you and be scented, how his oil glands wetted themselves feebly, desperate to touch your scent glands. You had enough when he tried to escape you again; one gentle press to the gland on his wrist and he finally gave in — pupils expanded, eyes glossed over, canines descended. Vash pinned you against the wall, chuffing and nuzzling while you tried to keep your head on straight. His pheromones were positively overwhelming.

Vash reverently touched the bandage on your head and the bruises on your arm, apologizing with whines and whimpers. The poor man could hardly speak with the hormones buzzing through him, but he tried to convey the pain he felt at hurting you, even unintentionally. You soothed the guilt with gentle words and a steady stroke to the gland on his neck.

Because of his biology, he has a very unique scent. It's clean and fresh and everyone takes notice. You've had to fight off a few omegas during your time together. My man's totally clueless.

Like, he can smell you're frustrated, but why? Those ladies were just helping him get directions to the next town? Oh, they were holding his arm as they pointed to the horizon? He never noticed. They were just being nice. Why were you glaring at them? Whatever the reason, he can tell you need his pheromones and floods the space with them accordingly.

Sooooo hesitant when it comes to marking you, or really even allowing his mouth anywhere near your supple skin. He doesn't trust himself not to lose control or get carried away. Vash knows what being bound to him would mean; the danger, the running. To him, it's no different than painting a bullseye on you. It takes time, and a lot of trust and coaxing, but eventually he gives in to the trance tugging at his brain. Eventually, he gives himself over to it. His nibbling teeth and laving tongue don't leave your skin for some time.

[scretladyspider]

“Why is there a need for microlabels like demisexual or gray ace? Isn’t that just the asexuality spectrum? Why not just say you’re asexual?”

Let’s talk about the asexuality spectrum and why specificity in labels under asexuality can make a difference—

Asexuality refers to “little to no sexual attraction”. For some aces (short for asexuals), the ‘no sexual attraction’ part of that definition completely serves their needs in a queer label. This is the definition most unfamiliar with asexuality immediately think of.

And I want to be clear that that’s great! It’s a wonderful thing that there’s a word for ‘no sexual attraction’ and that we have more resources addressing this difference as a sexual orientation. Labels are tools. If you find one you like, that resonates with you, use it!

The expectation for sexual attraction is ever present. In the words of Alice Olivia Scarlett, “Love without sex is a difficult concept for society…there are still people who believe that sex is a biological need of the same importance as food and water.”

Our world demands sexual attraction — most often cisgender, heterosexual, heteroromantic attraction to the opposite gender. This expectation exists in queer spaces also, even if gender and sexual orientation are less rigid. Asexuality proudly counters that.

Celebrating differences in a world that says you shouldn’t exist is literally life saving. According to Healthline, “a 2019 study found that LGBTQ people who reported more connectedness to the LGBTQ community were less likely to report suicidal behavior.”

Returning to the definition of asexuality: there are people with no sexual attraction who are served by that part of the definition. They are the black stripe on the asexual flag. There are four stripes —black, gray, white, and purple.

That gray stripe allows for the spectrum, for those experiences that may include rare and/or conditional sexual attraction. This is the reason the definition includes “little to” in its “little to no sexual attraction”. Asexuality with an asterisk, an exception.

In 2003, AVEN founder David Jay proposed semisexual:

“If anyone wants to play a fun game, go to some queer-ass conference (called something like “transcending boundaries”) and play a game where you try to think up a term/identity for every letter of the alphabet. When you do you’ll be forced to think up new, interesting ideas like: Semisexual. It occurs to me that we’ve got a spectrum of sexual intensity, but we don’t yet have a word for those who are halfway in between asexual and full-force sexual. I’d say that this is extremely important: right now we don’t have a way to talk about people who are asexual but maybe feel like being sexual once a year, or sexual people who are just relatively uninterested and don’t know what to do about it. Thoughts?”

This lead to further discussion on asexuality being viewed as a spectrum. In 2006, AVEN forum user KSpaz coined the term “gray A” to refer to a “fuzzy” connection to asexuality. Many others related to this “fuzzy” experience and it became accepted as graysexual/gray ace:

“Alright, so don't know if this term is already around, but if not, I'm coining it now.Gray-A. Is there really a line at which point you are asexual?According to our logo there isn't. Just fuzziness.So, this thread I dedicate to our fuzzy members who may sometimes feel unsure of their asexuality/sexuality.Share your views, stories, whatever makes you think you'd like to call yourself Gray-A.I'll start:In simple terms, I have hetero attractions, can experience physical pleasure, and am indifferent (as opposed to repulsed) to the idea of having sex if it is with someone I care for (though can't imagine it for any situation without utmost trust involved). I don't get turned on and jump my boyfriend, but will respond to him in touchy ways and am pleased to do so willingly, because it does feel nice. If we never had sex, I would have no problem. But if we do some day, I probably won't mind, and may enjoy it to a degree. I call myself asexual, because I am, and because I choose my label.

In February 2006, the user sonofeazel coined the term ‘demisexual’, writing in a thread about their experiences,

…If “sexual” is for both and “asexual” is for neither, maybe we need a new term for people who only have one but not the other? I propose “demisexuals”.

In 2008, OwlSaint proposed the idea of what we now refer to as demisexual, which is when someone would only experience sexual attraction under the circumstance of a close emotional bond.

A demisexual is, in my book at least, someone who does not experience sexual attraction to people in general. I’ve yet to see a single person and think “hot” or “10 out of 10” or “I’d like to hit that”. Sex with someone rarely crosses my mind and when it does it’s usually more along the lines of “could i force myself to with…. ew no”. In that respect, I can and do identify as asexual. However, with someone I’m in love with, it’s completely different, and I might as well be a “full fledged” sexual, but only with that one person. Full fledged meaning actually desiring sex, both for the physical and emotional aspect, being attracted to that special someone, and feeling sexual arousal in terms of wanting to do something on multiple levels instead of simply the biological reflex or “ugh not again”.

Without that “little to” part of the definition of the “little to no sexual attraction” definition of asexuality, there are a lot of people who really wouldn’t have a word for what they are. Asexual would almost fit, but feel like a shrunken sweater; something’s not quite right.

When you almost belong somewhere but don’t entirely, it can feel very isolating. Like you’re not doing “you” right. This is where that specificity comes into play. It gives room for those in that gray space to breathe, a seat at the table when before there was just standing room.

In the words of blogger Siggy in 2012, a self identified gray ace,

Lots of people come to the asexual community, find lots of experiences to identify with, and are glad to finally have a word to describe themselves. But some of those people will feel that they don’t technically fit into the definition of asexual. Are these people supposed to abandon the possibility of a self-identity because of a technicality? Are they to permanently feel like outsiders to the asexual community?

“Gray-A” is a solution to these questions. A gray-A is someone who finds asexuality to be a useful idea, in the sense that it approaches a self-description, even if it does not quite fit. This allows a space where you can have an identity, fit on the ace spectrum, and feel at home in your community, without being disqualified by an arbitrary definition.

There are many, many terms under the asexuality spectrum that delve into specific experiences, some of which go into the gray area and some that do not but that still describe a very specific experience. There is an effort to put language to the unknown, to be better understood.

Even within those served by the definition of no sexual attraction, there is nuance to language discussing specific relationships to sex and sexuality. Terms that describe individual favorability towards sex, or that describe importance of tertiary attraction, for example.

This thread focused on demisexual and graysexual because they’re more widely used. But it’s worth noting these labels do not serve everyone who exists in that in between space. Here is an expanded list of asexuality spectrum labels by asexuals.net.

I personally also use “gray ace” or just “ace” if I don’t feel like explaining myself. But that’s just me. Everyone is different. Everyone is served by different pieces of language and labels. Some are served best by no labels at all. There’s no wrong way to label your aceness.

Labels are magnets on your queer fridge. You can put as many on there as you feel are right for you, and if you stop liking one, you can take it off and stick it in your magnet drawer.

And that gray area? It matters. If you belong in it, you are welcome in ace spaces. I promise.

if you liked this post you can support me on patreon this pride month 🏳️‍🌈

[sunset-synthetica]

also don't russians consider themselves white? isn't there a massive pro-progrom The Nasty Jews Stole All Our Money movement in russia? i know that ukraine is full of neo-nazis but then again i've seen white supremacists over here say that irish and spanish and greek people aren't actually white so maybe us nazis are just imagining putin is holding up some sort of great bastion of whiteness in the savage orient crap

it's. a fucking mess. like tldr and as we all hopefully know, race and particularly whiteness is bullshit and the latter changes its definition like every 5 seconds.

The Russians I've spoken to overall do consider themselves white or white + Slavic, and that's the funny thing. You have white supremacists in Russia claiming themselves to be the bastion of crackerism, and you have white supremacists in Czechia or Ukraine or fucking Germany saying Russians need to be exterminated or whatever the fuck because they're all evil Asians apparently, but also not the Cool Asians™ where they try to interfere with elections or spy on us, but the Barbaric Asians™ where they don't know what a toilet is.

It's basically just a bunch of artificially divided groups of Slavs going "that bitch 20km away from me across the border isn't white" while looking literally identical.

Nazism in Europe and particularly Eastern Europe is a whole fucking topic that I'd rather not get into rn because I'm tired as fuck, but tldr from my lived experience, it's given popularity by the staunch anti-communist mentality in post-Soviet countries. The USSR is the Big Bad and was literally the worst thing ever (paraphrasing) and it feels like as a result, Nazism and fascism overall gets not only dismissed, but elevated to a status where its opposition to communism is its saving grace. Communism and fascism are also the same apparently, which does not make sense, but when have reactionary beliefs ever been coherent?

[ananke-xiii]

You will always find me here, at the end of all things, still complaining about Supernatural S13.

At the end of the day I think the reason why I hate Apocalypse World is that a world without Sam and Dean is doomed to be a failed experiment from the start.

Loosely speaking, Supernatural has always been a sort of cosmogony, at first it’s very metaphorically so in that it’s a story that originates with its two protagonists and every other relevant character/event is created for them, because of them or thanks to them.  Later on it gets a little bit more literal in that God/Chuck’s obsession over Sam and Dean both makes them the stars of the show of the creation of his World(s) AND involves them with the events that led to the creation of the Universe (Amara, MoC) and its (possible) Apocalypse(s).

This means that, with the exception of Castiel (Castiel is always the exception in Supernatural), every character/event is necessarily weaved into Sam and Dean’s story. It’s not that I don’t care, for instance, about AW!Bobby. It’s that previously on Supernatural Bobby himself served as a function for Sam and Dean’s story. Everything about Bobby’s story (like his past and his friendships) serves either as a mirror or a parallel to the brothers’ story or to advance/hinder its progress. Same goes for Charlie. Therefore, when I find them in the Apocalypse World these characters are empty to me. Without their relation to Sam and Dean we don’t know who these people are. It goes without saying that, in a world that fundamentally exists because Sam and Dean were never born, these characters are totally uninteresting since we were not given the tools to care about them without the brothers in the first place.

Now, I think it’s cool that Mary goes into this post-apocalyptic world with Lucifer because the imagery reminds me both of “Swan Song” and it overturns the premises of the series as a whole. In s12 Mary is back in a world where she feels guilty and responsible for the atrocities happened to her own children. She also kinda feels like she doesn’t belong, plus she’s forced to accept to exist in a world she had doubly refused (a world without John and the hunting world) with her grown-ass children who, understandably, have their own expectations of who she should be. So I like the irony when Mary is tossed yet into another world, definitely a worse world than the one she was in before and yet, she feels freer here than there. Why? Because of course this is the both the world where she didn’t make the deal with Azazel (conscience: kinda clear) and the world where her own literal grown-ass children do not even exist. It’s grim to say, I know, but this doesn’t make it less cool.

The thing is that… as much as I personally would like to, Mary is not the protagonist of Supernatural. This is why spin-off exist you know, so interesting non-protagonist characters can become such and build their own narrative world. So a story where she wants to save the world she herself had doomed, while potentially interesting as I said, still leaves me a little meh. If you add what I said about other characters AND the fact that Apocalypse World is objectively just plain lame you can see why it was never going to be a successful experiment.

Now, let’s talk about Michael and Lucifer. These characters suffer from opposite diseases: while Lucifer is, by now, impossibly uninteresting without Sam (I understand why Lucifer cannot die until the very end of the show, but the how always matters, you know), Michael is potentially super interesting because of his failed relationship with Dean. As I’ve already said, such a thing cannot happen on Supernatural, a show where every character is Winchesters-oriented (partial exception: Castiel). So, of course, the whole plot eventually veers towards Michael’s possession of Dean.

Now I know this is all part of Dabb’s spiral narrative technique or whatever it’s called. Fine. My question is still why this way? The idea is cool but the how matters too. Part of the reason why S5 is cool is because of his many portrayals of the Apocalypse. It used a lot. A lot. Of Apocalyptic and Post-apocalyptic imagery (the zombies, the viruses, the Horsemen, the storm on Detroit, the War against each other and I might be missing some of them) and it eventually ended like all apocalyptic narratives end: with the disconfirmation of the apocalyptic prediction. It’s interesting because we see Sam and Dean actively work to prevent it. In the Apocalypse World we’re faced with the aftermath, which okay still quite cool but! There are no characters to make it interesting and Mary (and Jack) alone are unfortunately not enough to make it so. Conversely, Sam and Dean’s main goal in the season is not saving Apocalypse World but getting their mother and Jack back.

I don’t really vibe with this dissonance. The way I see it, the imbalance between substance and form is too strong, with the former being sacrificed at the altar of the latter.

I think Dabb’s, and to a letter extent, Carver’s retelling of s4-5 would’ve worked way better on paper, in a book or something (but actually thank you because you’ve provided infinite fodder for fanfic writers). With screenwriting we’re bound to the rules of the screen and there’s just so much that can be done when you want to retell 2-seasons worthy of apocalyptic material with a season where the Apocalypse is just an afterthought and the two protagonists don’t even actually care about it that much.

I’m curious as to what my thoughts will be after I re-watch s13. I plan to re-watch it in order to pay closer attention to Jack so I might change my mind. Or I might not. We’ll seeee!

[zombiebcit]

norman reedus. 50. cis man. he / him. ― i see you meet WILLIAM "WILL" GRIMES, huh? they are around for… well, it will be 1 AND A HALF YEAR, now. time flies when you are busy and as part of THE MILITIA, they are. if you want to meet them, they live in B1A2A, i think. people say they are ADAPTABLE + PROTECTIVE, but don’t piss them off, okay? because they can be also UNTRUSTING + UNREPENTANT, so be safe.

BASIC INFO

⸻ FULL NAME: William Daniel Grimes

⸻ AGE: 50

⸻ GENDER: cis man

⸻ PRONOUNS: he / him

⸻ ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: biromantic

⸻ SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual

⸻ SCARS / TATTOOS: many scars & tattos along whole body ;

⸻ OCCUPATION: before: many things ; now: militia ;

⸻ FAMILY: tba grimes ( child, wc ) ;

⸻ PLAYLIST: apologize by grandson ; i come with knives by iamx ; f.w.t.b by yonaka ( grandson remix ) ; 20 precent cooler by ken ashcorp ; devil by shinedown ; play dirty by kevin mcallister + [sebell] ; kill our way to heaven by michl ; devil's backbone by the civil wars ; follow you by bring me the horizon ; no one but you by every avenue ; ;

⸻ INSPO: carol peletier ( the walking dead ) , michonne ( the walking dead ) , ada wong ( resident evil ) , chris redfield ( resident evil ) , tess servopoulos ( the last of us ) , morrigan ( dragon age ) , flemeth ( dragon age ) , zaeed massani ( mass effect 2 ) , urdnot wrex  ( mass effect ) ;

STORY tw: child neglect, drugs, alcohol, discussion of abortion, mention of starvation, allusions to prostitution ;

will's parents didn't cared where he is or what he is doing at all. thye might not have raise their hands, but they didn't loved him either ;

it wasn't a surprise when will got caught up in the wrong crowd and everything that follows one - wild parties with poping whatever was there to just shut his mind off ;

and then, it happened. barely out of the magical line of finally legal age, will's one-night stand, a nice girl from good family who just wanted to have a go at the bad boy came to him with a positive pregnancy test ;

the easy way, the ' right ' way for them would be to go and end it. damn, will even said that to her face and sadi he will pay for it & drive her there.

and he did, but siting there, waiting and see her flinching at every little sound... looking at her stomach and thinking ' there could my kid grow ' made him feel weird.

so will blur out quick ' wait, just wait ' and they had a long and heavy talk about this all ;

she didn't wanted to get rid of kid, but didn't want to be a mother too, having to care about child when she just "started" her life and will... will wanted it now ;

so for the next months, he did everything to get clean, to get better, to find job, any job, and save a little for his kid ;

and then he hold his child in his arms for the first time and that was it. he was a parent.

it wasn't easy, even with the money the girl shoved in his hands few days after brith, with a quick ' just tell them i died. ' ;

he did his best to be a good father, remember what his own father did and did the opposite - care about his kid, telling them he loves them often, showing interest in any littlie thing they showed him ;

he was jumping from job to job, going hungry more often than not just to make sure his kid wasn't, that they had anything they needed ;

working as bartender, he began getting offerts and at some point, he started to accept them. a quick bj there and there was enough to put the food at the table and while he wasn't proud of it, he wasn't ashamed either ;

and then will meet him ;

will know the name man give him was false, he was too clean, tooo charming to be honest ;

but the job offer was too good to pass on, the money could get them out of the shoebox apartament and put his kid in college if will would be smart about spending ;

so he took it and then it was 'take this packcage there', ' keep this person save for evening ' , ' make this person talk ' ;

will did thing, clean out whatever was on his hands - blood more often than not - and go back to being loving father ;

he never told his kid what he did, now or before, just made sure they are as happy as they could ;

he was so proud of them, watching them groing into young adult and starting their own adventure in life ;

and then, the fucking apocalypse happened. at the start, he tried to call, desperate to get in contact with his kid, then he traveled to them just to find them gone ;

rationally, he knows they might be dead, but refuse to acknowledge it ;

it was hard for will to get used to safety of the domus spei, still is. but anytime he is out there, he is still looking ;

WANTED CONNECTIONS

⸻ 01. ' 𝚂𝙾 𝙵𝚄𝙲𝙺𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙿𝚁𝙾𝚄𝙳 𝙾𝙵 𝚈𝙾𝚄, 𝙺𝙸𝙳𝙳𝙾 '

child. ( main wc ) open. will had them very young, a result of one-night stand when he was 18-20yo, and he raised them alone. at the time when apocalypse happened, they were separated & will spend years looking for them without success. i would say they had pretty good relation but i am open to suggestions. this muse would be here for max 1-2 weeks.

⸻ more tba.

[dankusner]

Singer, activist Anita Bryant Dry dies at 84

Known for anti-gay stance in later years Anita Bryant, a singer, entertainer and anti-gay activist, has died.

She was 84.

According to the obituary submitted Thursday by her family to The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network, she died on Dec. 16 at her Oklahoma home surrounded by family and friends.

She became known as Anita Bryant Dry after marrying former astronaut Charlie Dry, who preceded her in death.

Bryant pursued music and performance, and achieved renown early, with her own TV show at the age of 12.

She was crowned Miss Oklahoma in 1958 at age 18.

Her records 'Paper Roses' and 'In My Little Corner of the World' were Top 10 Billboard hits.

She made guest appearances on 'Dick Clark’s American Bandstand' and other television programs.

The Grammy nominee was particularly known for her stirring performances, such as her rendition of the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic.'

Her talent led to numerous prominent singing engagements over the years. She sang for President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House and traveled with actor Bob Hope on his holiday tours to entertain U.S. troops abroad, according to her obituary.

The entertainer also sang at the Super Bowl in 1971 and co-hosted the nationally televised segment of the Orange Bowl Parade for nine years, according to her obituary.

She touted Florida orange juice and Coca-Cola in commercials.

In the late 1970s, Bryant became well known in a new way: as a vocal anti-gay activist who organized opposition to the movement for LGBTQ+ rights by founding an organization called Save Our Children.

In 1977, Bryant spoke against an ordinance in Dade County, Florida, that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, and a national bill in Congress to declare gay people a minority group, according to The Oklahoman’s archives.

During a news conference, she said, 'The war goes on to save our children because the seed of sexual sickness that germinated in Dade County has already been transplanted by misguided liberals in the U.S. Congress.'

Dade County voters repealed the ordinance.

Bryant also campaigned for a California initiative that would have prohibited 'pro-homosexual' views in the classroom. That initiative was defeated.

At a Des Moines, Iowa, news conference in 1977, gay rights activist Tom Higgins slammed a pie into Bryant’s face for the benefit of TV cameras, The Oklahoman reported.

She responded by saying, 'At least it was a fruit pie,' before breaking into tears.

In the wake of the pie incident and nationwide 'gaycotts' of Florida orange juice, the Florida Citrus Commission dropped Bryant as a spokesperson, according to the outlet.

Bryant’s family received daily death threats as well as hate mail containing feces and voodoo dolls, she said.

Her 1978 interview for Playboy is considered to be a key moment in the gay rights movement, galvanizing members.

In it, she advocated for returning homosexuality to a felony offense and said it violated 'God’s law.'

In 1980, Bryant gave up her career.

She told The Oklahoman in 2011 that she did not regret her stance against homosexuality. 'I did the right thing,' Bryant said, adding that she does not hate gay people. 'I’ve never regretted what I did.

PLAYBOY: Have you always been obsessed with homosexuality?

BRYANT: Not at all. If I had been, would I have waited until 1977 to speak up? We could have gone on the offense long ago. We would have tried to shut down their publications, which anyone can pick up at a local hotel, and which show that they can do what they want with kids of whatever age they want, and even what kind of sex they can have. The homosexuals have their national directory and it lists Miami as the most open city in the nation. I got involved only because they were asking for special privileges that violated the state law of Florida, not to mention God’s law. You know, when I was a child, you didn’t even mention the word homosexual, much less find out what the act was about. You knew it was very bad, but you couldn’t imagine what they tried to do, exactly, in terms of one taking a male role and the other taking a female role. I mean, it was too filthy to think about and you had other things to think about. So when I finally found out all the implications, it was a total revelation for me.

PLAYBOY: Then when you opposed the Dade County ordinance, at first you didn’t even have a clear idea what you were opposing?

BRYANT: Well, I knew some things, because Bob had told me–he is nine years older and he has taught me a lot of things about sex. He was born in the Bronx and I was raised in the Bible Belt–what can I say? I mean, you have visions of, well, now, what can they do as two men in bed or two women in bed? But I didn’t really know the nitty-gritty of the thing.

PLAYBOY: Until when?

BRYANT: I’m not going to tell you.

PLAYBOY: Wasn’t it when you got a letter in January 1977 with an explicit picture enclosed?

BRYANT: Okay, yeah. And, I mean, I was absolutely appalled. I just couldn’t believe it. And then, afterward, a local police sergeant gave a presentation in our church basement with slides and all about child pornography and it shocked our whole congregation. We understood then just how debased the whole thing was. I mean, it’s a sin under the laws of God. And sin is like leprosy–it starts with just a little speck and you don’t even notice or care. You think, That’s not going to hurt me, and all of a sudden it begins to spread and you still don’t worry until the sores spread to the shoulder and the pus starts oozing, but by then it’s too late. God says the wages of sin are death, and one little sin brings on another. The homosexual act is just the beginning of the depravity. It then leads to–what’s the word?–sadomasochism. It just gets worse as it goes on. You go further and further down the drain and it just becomes so perverted and you get into alcohol and drugs and it’s so rotten that many homosexuals end up committing suicide. The worst thing is that these days, so many married men with children who don’t have a happy marriage are going into the homosexual bars for satisfaction–if they’re not careful, they’re going to get caught up in it totally.

PLAYBOY: You believe in a kind of sexual domino theory, then?

BRYANT: Lots of wives and former homosexuals have testified to me about these things.

PLAYBOY: Didn’t your biggest shock about homosexuals come when you realized that male homosexuals eat each other’s sperm? A Miami reporter briefly quoted you as saying the reason God calls homosexuality an abomination is that homosexuals eat spermatozoa, the building block of blood, so, therefore, homosexuals are swallowing, and presumably digesting, the essence of life?

BRYANT: I did not … um … I did not say that to any reporter. I’m not that stupid.

PLAYBOY: Did you say it to anybody?

BRYANT: I was overheard talking to a reformed homosexual on the phone and I had no idea our conversation would ever get printed. It was a very personal thing and I never dreamed it would get printed. The reporter deceived me. I was very naïve about the media then–since then, I’ve been trained. At that time, I was like a babe among the wolves.

PLAYBOY: But you did say it.

BRYANT: It was a personal thing. I don’t want to talk about it.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

BRYANT: Because it’s just too gory, too raw for most people to comprehend.

PLAYBOY: You could take this opportunity to explain yourself, rather than let it stand as an overheard conversation.

BRYANT: Well, I was witnessing to this guy, and I didn’t let on that I knew he had been a homosexual, and I threw the question at him because I wasn’t sure myself and I wanted to find out. I had read about this phenomenon, but I wasn’t sure it was true. See, I was at my desk one night and I was reading and studying; it was about one in the morning and when I read about it—-

PLAYBOY: You mean swallowing sperm?

BRYANT: Yeah, when I read about it, I about fell through my chair. I said, “Oh, God, this can’t be true.” That was the first time I really knew. I mean, I had seen in writing before what they did in bed, and so forth, but I never knew that they ate the male sperm. I just wanted to fall off the chair. So when this guy called, I wanted to really find out if what I’d read was true. So I said very casually, “Oh, by the way, do you know that homosexuals eat the male sperm?”

PLAYBOY: What did he say?

BRYANT: He said yes.

PLAYBOY: And?

BRYANT: And I still couldn’t believe it.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

BRYANT: Well, throughout the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, men are referred to as trees. Even in the Garden of Eden, when God referred to the tree of life, He was talking about the whole spiritual salvation of men, and so forth. And in the New Testament, it says Jesus was called the fruit of the womb–which is very interesting, because even the homosexuals know this. Did you know there is a group in Seattle that calls itself The Fruit Loops?

PLAYBOY: So?

BRYANT: Why do you think the homosexuals are called fruits? It’s because they eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of life. God referred to men as trees, and because the homosexuals eat the forbidden fruit, which is male sperm…. There is even a Jockey short called Forbidden Fruit. Very subtle. Did you know that?

PLAYBOY: No. We’ve heard only of Fruit of the Loom.

BRYANT: You see, I agree with the anti-abortion people that the beginning of life is when the male sperm fertilizes the female egg. The Scriptures talk about John the Baptist jumping in the womb when he was in the presence of the Mother Mary when Jesus was still in the womb, and that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit. That was the beginning of life and I believe that–I cannot deny what I know to be true. That’s why homosexuality is an abomination of God, because life is so precious to God and it is such a sacred thing when man and woman come together in one flesh and the seed is fertilized–that’s the sealing of life, that’s the beginning of life. To interfere with that in any way–especially the eating of the forbidden fruit, the eating of the sperm–that’s why it’s such an abomination. I can’t deny it. When I discuss this with Christians, it revolts them, especially when they don’t know the Bible and cannot see sin in its most hideous forms. You really turn people off when you speak in these blunt terms, and they can’t believe I’m saying it. But you have to tell them that it’s true. It’s there, it’s logical and it makes the sin of homosexuality all the more hideous because it’s antilife, degenerative.

PLAYBOY: Surely, you must know that the eating of sperm is not confined to homosexuals. In fact, it’s quite popular in heterosexual relationships these days.

BRYANT: It’s true. I agree with you. The abomination is spreading. Ideally, of course, the relationship between a man and a woman should embody oneness with God–the most natural thing is the reproducing of life and having the first fruits from that oneness together.

PLAYBOY: So sex is only for procreation?

BRYANT: Oh, no. But God created the family to be a picture of perfection. Nothing is perfect, of course, but a woman’s giving herself to her husband should try to resemble perfection, just as the husband’s protection of his wife should be a love like he loves his own body. How many men do that with their woman? If you could see that bliss as an expression of God’s perfection, it would make you yearn to know God.

PLAYBOY: You’re saying that sexual intercourse between man and wife is an acknowledgment of God?

BRYANT: Right–it’s a picture of the Church, in a sense. It’s a beautiful thing, ordained of God, meant to be enjoyed and to be pleasurable, not looked on as debased or ungodly or dirty, as so many Christians unfortunately see it. Sex was never meant to be that. God tells us it’s like a mystery–he means a coming together that releases the joy you have in that moment of climax when there is a oneness with you and your husband and with God. It’s physical, but it becomes spiritual. I’ve often thought that at that moment, you experience the release and the purity that God meant to be…. Well, it’s like the way Christ loves the Church. When you come together, it’s like when the Church is brought up to meet Christ in the air, when we will all take on immortality. There is a releasing of all the burdens of the mortal body and such sheer release of joy and oneness–it’s almost like floating in the air and you know someday you will be able to meet Christ. I think the reason there’s so much promiscuity and so much emphasis on sex these days is because people leave out the spiritual part.

PLAYBOY: Is birth control an abomination against the Lord? Is taking the pill a sin?

BRYANT: No, because the way it’s done, you are not wasting the sperm. I’ve never really gone into this before. I’ve never had that question asked of me. I do think it’s important to realize God’s glory when you come together–if there’s not the oneness of the spirit, soul and body, then there’s an imperfection. This whole discussion is so delicate–that’s why it’s so important that the government and the public schools should not take the responsibility to explain sex to our children–it is the province of the parents.

PLAYBOY: Some parents may be less qualified to explain it than educators are.

BRYANT: I don’t care, the child should hear it from the parents.

PLAYBOY: Many parents refuse to accept the responsibility. What then?

BRYANT: I know. It’s not easy. I don’t have all the answers. I know what you’re talking about, because my mother and her mother didn’t know how to talk about sex.

PLAYBOY: Okay, let’s get back to deviant sexual practices, as you characterize homosexuality. Why did you decide to oppose the Dade County ordinance last year? You’d never taken a political stand before.

BRYANT: Right, I never had. The basic reason was because I am first and foremost a mother, and I was standing up for my rights as a mother to protect my children after I realized what the threat the homosexuals were posing meant. That’s why we called our organization Save Our Children, though we’ve since been forced to change it to Protect America’s Children, because the Save the Children Federation took us to court. The ordinance the homosexuals proposed would have made it mandatory that flaunting homosexuals be hired in both the public and the parochial schools. My children attend a religious school. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by the Constitution, and if you believe that adultery, homosexuality, drunkenness and things like that violate your religious standards, you then have a right to prevent a teacher from standing up in front of your children and promoting sin. We were fighting religious bigotry. What gives the homosexual any more right to stand up in front of children and talk about his sexual preferences than a man who has a great Dane as his lover?

PLAYBOY: Bestiality is just around the corner, then?

BRYANT: Under the proposed ordinance, every sexual deviation would have been legally acceptable among schoolteachers. Right behind the homosexual community in Dade County was a group of prostitutes who were going to initiate similar legislation permitting whores to stand up in front of kids in the classroom and proclaim their sexual deviation and then ply their trade. Ad infinitum. The issue had nothing to do with what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. If two men or two women live together and don’t flaunt their deviant lifestyle, fine. Let them do what they want. But when they try to interfere with my right as a mother to raise my children the way I see fit, then I draw the line. I mean, no one got very excited about the ordinance–no one knew it was an issue, really, it was so secretive. It had passed two readings at the Dade County Commission before we even became aware of it. On the third reading, it would have become law–we only had a week and a half to try to stop it. The ordinance sounded very simple–it said there should be no discrimination in the areas of housing, public accommodations and employment. Who wants to discriminate? It’s a no-no. But the discrimination they were talking about was not based on race or religion. Homosexuals would have us believe they’re born that way, because they’re in total darkness and they’ve never been told any different. But if they’re a legitimate minority group, then so are nail biters, dieters, fat people, short people and murderers. Who will be the next in line to ask for special privileges? When it came down to a courtroom hearing, the homosexuals in Dade County said it’s not a matter of housing, public accommodations and employment–we’re already there, they said. Which they definitely are. They said, “The point is that we want to come out of the closet, we want to tell you where we’re at and we don’t want to lose our jobs because of it.” One of the homosexual leaders made a statement before the Community Relations Board. He said he became a homosexual when he was seven years old but that it bothered him that he never had a role model to look up to.

PLAYBOY: Aren’t you just resorting to the same kind of argument that Joe McCarthy used in the Fifties against communism? He insisted that Americans could not be exposed to it lest they immediately turn into raving Marxists. Do you think “flaunting homosexuals,” as you put it, will automatically turn America’s children into homosexuals?

BRYANT: Of course it’s not just an overnight thing. What happens is that the door then opens onto a lot of other things. It may not have an immediate effect, but certainly down the line it will–on your kids and your grandchildren, for generations to come. We can’t see the evils of sin right off. It looks so innocent at first, but I’ve seen too many lives ruined by that kind of thinking.

PLAYBOY: A moment ago, you lumped homosexuals into the same category as murderers.

BRYANT: But I’m not saying homosexuals are murderers.

PLAYBOY: You’re saying they’re just as bad.

BRYANT: No, I don’t say they’re as bad. God says it. It’s in the Bible. First Corinthians, I think.

PLAYBOY: Since you’ve never been connected with political causes before, how did you feel when you found yourself embroiled in a controversial issue as its leader?

BRYANT: I was petrified. I was devastated by the fears within me that I would make a fool out of myself. I knew what I was up against–the homosexuals in Dade County had amassed support from homosexuals around the country and they had the active backing of a wide range of liberal politicians. I asked myself, what can I possibly do that will matter? But, thanks to the encouragement of my husband and my pastor, I became aware of the difference one person can make. Similar ordinances had been passed in 36 other cities around the country and Congressman Ed Koch [now New York City’s mayor] had even proposed a federal bill along the same lines. The homosexuals in Miami knew that Dade County was one of the most liberal counties in the country. They said if they won, it would be a barometer for all of America. I’d really done my homework before I stood up. I went through a lot of anguish.

PLAYBOY: Your pastor convinced you it was a sin not to stand up?

BRYANT: Yes. I was totally convinced of that. My eyes had been opened and I really had no choice. Still, I vacillated between being weak and being strong. Then I told myself, well, if God is before me, who can be against me?

PLAYBOY: You had God on your side?

BRYANT: Yes. I had given the Lord my total being–I mean, everything. So I had a confidence, a strength that everything I had always tried to attain in my own flesh, and never could, would be now possible. When you give yourself to God, God gives you everything. My pastor, Brother Bill, had a much bigger picture than I did. He told me, “I don’t know anyone else in the nation who could take a stand like this.” He saw that I was the one person who could make a difference. When I finally surrendered to God, I gained a confidence and I’ve not been afraid since.

PLAYBOY: You weren’t afraid when you got the bomb threats?

BRYANT: No.

PLAYBOY: The death threats?

BRYANT: No.

PLAYBOY: How about your children?

BRYANT: They’re not afraid because we’re not afraid. I’m not afraid for myself, but I am afraid for my children.

PLAYBOY: You must know that the homosexual leaders, as much as they loathe you, nevertheless credit you with helping them publicize their cause. You’re saying it was a quid pro quo–that they had the same effect on your cause.

BRYANT: I don’t owe anything to them. I owe it all to God, because God pushed me into that corner. I will never give the homosexuals the credit. In fact, the more the homosexuals rant and rave, the more the committed Christians are going to come out of the closet. It’s God’s plan. I am only his humble servant. I never wanted to be the leader of anything. In fact, knowing what I know now, if I had the choice, I would definitely have chosen the role way back when of just a simple wife and mother.

PLAYBOY: You’d have given up your career?

BRYANT: Yes, definitely, knowing what I know now. It’s so much easier to do that than to stand up and rant and rave for your human rights against militant homosexuals.

PLAYBOY: All right, back to Miami. What was your first step when you decided to take a stand?

BRYANT: I wrote a letter to the nine county commissioners, stating my convictions. After I wrote the letter, the homosexual leaders united against me. They called the Florida Citrus Commission and threatened a national boycott of Florida orange juice. The commission was very upset–they didn’t understand why I was standing up. Then the homosexuals went further–they said they’d make me the laughingstock of the country. They said they’d sue my A-S-S off. It was just a scare tactic–we didn’t know if they could follow through with their threats, but it was scary–we had never been up against anything like that before. I remember walking around the house for several days, talking to myself, wondering what to do; I’d get real bold one minute and the next minute I’d burst into tears, crying out loud. I was so scared. Anyway, before all of this happened, I’d agreed to go on a local radio station–the disc jockey was a real Christian gal, so I felt pretty safe in her hands. But I was trembling still–I had hoped my letter to the county commission was enough. But I decided I had to do the show, to help our cause, and I did it. It was great. I’d brought my daughter Barbara with me, and when we started driving back after the show, there was a drizzly rain. Suddenly, in front of us, there was a car crash. It was a real bad accident. I swerved around it, and to this day, I don’t know how we escaped death. We were real shook up. I pulled over to the side of the road and I said to Barbara, “Let’s just pray. Let’s thank Jesus for saving us from this accident.” I took her hand and we prayed–Barbara is like me. I mean, when she was born, she was 42 years old. She looked up at me and said, “If God can help us like this, can’t he help you win against the homosexuals?” I tell you, my tears started coming and I knew then we would win.

PLAYBOY: Did Barbara understand what homosexual meant? She’s nine years old. Had you discussed the issue explicitly with your children?

BRYANT: Yes. We had to talk with them in very practical terms on their age level.

PLAYBOY: How do you explain homosexuality to a nine-year-old?

BRYANT: Well, now you’ve got me on the spot. Basically, we explained to our children that marriage is a sacred vow and that in Genesis, God said he knew man was incomplete and man needed a helpmate, so God made woman, and that man and woman were meant to come together and multiply the earth. I explained in simple terms to the little ones that some men try to do with other men what men and women do to produce babies; and that homosexuality is a perversion of a very natural thing that God said was good, and that it is a sin and very unnatural. I explained to the children that even barnyard animals don’t do what homosexuals do.

PLAYBOY: That’s simply untrue. There is a lot of evidence proving not only that barnyard animals do engage in homosexuality but that in many primitive human cultures around the world, homosexuality is and has been institutionalized as part of tribal culture.

BRYANT: Well, I’ve never heard of it. The point is that God says it’s an abomination of nature and it’s wrong.

PLAYBOY: That’s a different point–we’re saying that among various species, human and animal, it is a common occurrence.

BRYANT: That still doesn’t make it right.

PLAYBOY: What if, despite your efforts, one of your kids turned out to be a homosexual? Would you disown him or her?

BRYANT: I would never disown my children, no matter what. I’m a firm believer in taking my children in my arms every day and saying “I love you”–every day. I have a real bugaboo myself–if I fail as a mother to my children, then I have failed completely. My family is my first priority. If one of my kids chose the homosexual lifestyle, I would sit down and explain to him that he’s hurting no one but himself and that God cannot tolerate that kind of sin in his life and that lie will have to suffer the consequences of sin, particularly in knowing that he will never be happy choosing the way of the Devil rather than God’s way.

PLAYBOY: But you would regard yourself as a failure if that happened?

BRYANT: Yes. If my kids don’t become happy, worthwhile, responsible citizens, then I will have failed everything. All else will have been in vain–the career, everything. Nothing else really matters.

PLAYBOY: Were there particular problems with your children after you took your anti-homosexual stance?

BRYANT: There was one point where our daughters, Gloria and Barbara, told me that they didn’t want to hold hands with their little girlfriends anymore. They were afraid people would think they were homosexuals. I had to sit down and talk to them–I told them in very practical terms that that had nothing to do with homosexuality. And then I talked to our other kids, individually, to make sure their views in regard to their friends weren’t warped. You know how kids are–they tease kids who have effeminate qualities. They harass them.

PLAYBOY: You told your children it was wrong to harass boys who were effeminate?

BRYANT: Absolutely. I’ve taken great pains with the children to educate them that that kind of thing is not Christian. But kids are influenced by their peers; all of a sudden, they get very brave when they’re with other kids. My kids aren’t perfect–they might resort to that. Kids have a tendency to call each other queer or weird. We’ve stopped our kids from saying that, I think, through careful explanation of how wrong it is to do that. I think our kids are much more careful about that kind of thing, because they know the harm they can cause, especially in that the accusations can be false accusations. The militant homosexuals in Miami accused us of printing a Kill a Queer for Christ bumper sticker. I mean, never would we endorse that kind of thing. That would be disrespectful to homosexuals as human beings. We would never say “queer” or “faggot”–I mean, “homos” is not that bad, really, but we would never say it. And that’s a much more honest position than the militant homosexuals take. I have no respect for homosexuals who insist that their deviant lifestyle is normal. We pray for them, we try to lead them out of it–that’s more honest than the stance of saying what they do is normal. I mean, you ask them, “What is your role in the sex act–is it male or female?” They say, “Well, sometimes it’s male, sometimes it’s female.” Isn’t that play acting? Is play acting normal? Let’s clarify the issue of what constitutes a homosexual. I think a lot of parents pass down to their kids a misconception–if a boy doesn’t have masculine muscles and he doesn’t go out for sports, that doesn’t make him a sissy or a queer. I don’t think a homosexual is a homosexual until he commits the act. I mean, just because a child fantasizes about another man–lots of psychiatrists claim that it’s the latent homosexuality expressing itself in the brain of a little one. That’s garbage. It’s not a physical problem, it’s a spiritual one. Just because this kind of kid has certain characteristics that make him different when he’s growing up, and he was laughed at or mocked by other kids, that doesn’t make him a homosexual, any more than it makes me a grandmother.

PLAYBOY: So a homosexual is not a homosexual until he commits a physical homosexual act?

BRYANT: That’s what I consider a homosexual to be. I don’t think that if you have fantasies or dreams or whatever counts. No matter if your father or your mother rejected you, no matter what happened in your life, still, it’s a matter of choice in a context.

PLAYBOY: As far back as 1948, Dr. Alfred Kinsey showed that, from his research, two out of every five American males had committed a homosexual act. You’ve heard of his research, we assume.

BRYANT: Not that much, no. But, of course, we know where he was coming from, personally.

PLAYBOY: What does that mean?

BRYANT: Well, I mean, he had no spiritual beliefs, no religious beliefs.

PLAYBOY: Nevertheless, as a social scientist, Kinsey claimed that 37 percent of the American male population–and this was in the late Forties–had committed at least one homosexual act.

BRYANT: But that doesn’t mean they were homosexuals.

PLAYBOY: But wait, just a moment ago, you said that committing the homosexual act defined the homosexual being.

BRYANT: Well, one or two acts don’t make you a practicing, full-fledged homosexual.

PLAYBOY: You said precisely that.

BRYANT: Yeah, I did say the sex act constitutes…. Look, what I’m saying is that people experiment–they may do it a couple of times. It doesn’t mean they are practicing homosexuals for life. Some people will try it out just for the kicks–out of curiosity. They can still be forgiven for that sin.

PLAYBOY: In your most recent book, The Anita Bryant Story, you say that you don’t know what causes homosexuality. Don’t you think you should have studied its causes?

BRYANT: You see, that’s the whole thing–the militant homosexuals contend that they are born homosexual and that it’s a natural thing. All I know is that God condemns it as unnatural. That’s why I insist on saying “homosexual” and “so-called gay.” The word gay totally belies the homosexual lifestyle. I don’t even know how the word gay was attached to the homosexual lifestyle. The militant homosexuals took the word and with the power that they have, they programed it into our modern vocabulary. That in itself is a frightening example of what they can do to a society–how they can brainwash you into using their terminology. It’s a matter of habits. It’s like most homosexuals, when they go into the deviant lifestyle, they don’t take on the effeminate affectations until they have become part of the homosexual community–they go almost into camp, that’s what it is, and they take on those roles whether male or female. It’s a learned pattern–so it can be unlearned. That’s why it’s so dangerous–I think it is so difficult to unlearn because it becomes natural after a while, and they don’t have to think about it.

PLAYBOY: What about bisexuality? Is it as great a sin as homosexuality?

BRYANT: Because homosexuality is an abomination, whether you do it once a month or it becomes a lifestyle, when it becomes harder for you to come out of it—-

PLAYBOY: So is there more hope for salvation for bisexuals?

BRYANT: I can’t say there’s more hope for them. It’s a dangerous place to be, because they’re in a promiscuous area. They’re committing fornication and homosexuality as well–sin. It’s almost as if those people are playing with it. They think, “I’m not really a homosexual, I don’t do it that often.” They don’t really want to align themselves with the depravity of the homosexual community, per se. They’re enjoying their cake but not eating it, you see.

PLAYBOY: Let’s return to the Dade County ordinance for a moment. What were the immediate consequences of your standing up against it?

BRYANT: Threats, blackmail, boycotts, intimidation. I won’t say who, but someone threatened our business manager in New York that if we continued with the campaign, he would start the rumor that Bob was a former homosexual.

PLAYBOY: Was he?

BRYANT: Of course not. But during the time of the referendum, we lost 70 percent of our bookings. You’ve got to remember that, predominantly, I’m a variety artist and the bulk of my income comes from performing–Florida Citrus is only a small part. We had no conventions in 1977 and I had been one of the top convention entertainers in the country. I did a grand total of two state fairs in 1977. The militant homosexuals will go to any extreme to try to get me out of my livelihood. In New Orleans, they went to the manager of the New Orleans Pops orchestra and tried to prove to him that I had been responsible for local homosexual suicides. Every place I go, there are bomb threats. Every place we go, they send half a dozen people from other towns and they come a week before and organize a protest against me. We were really surprised that they had the power to do what they do. It’s not the democratic way at all–if we had lost, we would have said, well, we feel bad, but that’s it. Well, they lose and they punish you for winning. I had no idea of the viciousness or vindictiveness of the homosexual community. I was very naive in that respect.

PLAYBOY: Any regrets? Would you do it all over again?

BRYANT: I would still stand, I would still make the same choice. I might change some of the statements that were made that were not mine, but unfortunately, that’s part of what you have to go through when you’re working with people from all walks of life who are part of your organization. It hasn’t been easy. I don’t think anybody wants to see his livelihood stripped away from him, and you’ve got to come to grips with the threats to your family–that’s something you’d never ask for; you’d have to be crazy to ask for it. But we also got to work with some wonderful people. Seventy percent of the Jewish rabbis supported us, as well as the majority of the black community. That was a wonderful experience.

PLAYBOY: What did you think when the Florida Citrus Commission renewed its contract with you?

BRYANT: I thought it was a courageous thing to do and, of course, I was very glad.

PLAYBOY: Is the tide now turning on your behalf? Your contract was renewed, you were named Most Admired Woman by readers of Good Housekeeping and liberal columnists such as Nat Hentoff have come out defending your right of free speech.

BRYANT: It’s too early to say, and I don’t know what the homosexuals still have up their sleeve. They are very desperate people who will stop at nothing.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel any responsibility for homosexual suicides? Or for the murder of homosexuals? There was a lawsuit filed against you in San Francisco last year, later dismissed, that charged you with creating a homophobic hysteria that resulted in the murder of a young homosexual.

BRYANT: Yes, that’s true. But I had nothing to do with any murders. There is a homosexual murder every day in San Francisco. It made me sad and it shocked me that anyone would think I had anything to do with it, but my conscience is clear. I can’t be responsible for how people react to what happened in Dade County. My stand was not taken out of homophobia but out of love for them. Look, I’m not as stupid as people make me out to be, especially concerning homosexuality. In Richmond, four of them came up to me. One of them gave me the record Hurricane Anita and looked at me like he was waiting for me to faint dead away or turn pale, and I said I was familiar with it, and I wrote down a Scripture and said, “I love you.” And one other guy came on real strong and he said, “You’ve broken my heart and I cry all night and day because you hate us.” I said, “I don’t hate you, I love you.” I took his hand and said, “I love you; can you say you love me?” This guy started shaking. He said, “I can’t say that.”

PLAYBOY: That record is just one of the satiric attacks made upon you. There have been more Anita Bryant jokes than Polish jokes in the past year. Rod McKuen said–

BRYANT: He’s really a … nothing.

PLAYBOY: People like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope and Martha Raye have also made jokes about you.

BRYANT: Right, and I really was hurt by them. I mean, I could tell you stories from being on U.S.O. tours with Bob Hope and Martha Raye that would make your hair stand on end, but I won’t. Yet they attack me. I asked my son Bobby one day about it and he said, “Well, they have a lot of jokes around school about you.”

PLAYBOY: Dirty jokes?

BRYANT: No, funny ones. And he said, “They don’t bug me.”

PLAYBOY: What other kinds of repercussions did you suffer from the so-called gaycott of you?

BRYANT: Well, I couldn’t get booked on virtually any of the talk shows, where I’d always been welcomed before. And I recorded a song called “There’s Nothing Like the Love Between a Woman and a Man,” a real upbeat, down-home country tune. All the record companies agreed it was great, but none of them wanted to risk putting it out.

PLAYBOY: In some jurisdictions, homosexual behavior is now prosecuted as a misdemeanor. Are you in favor of returning it to a felony status?

BRYANT: Yes, I think so. Any time you water down the law, it just makes it easier for immorality to become tolerated.

PLAYBOY: Let’s say two adult men are caught in bed, fornicating. Under felony provisions, they could be sent to jail for 20 years. Do you think 20 years in prison would rehabilitate them?

BRYANT: Why make it easy for them? I think it only helps to condone it and to make it easier for kids who wouldn’t be so concerned if it were just a misdemeanor, whereas a felony might make them think twice, especially the younger ones.

PLAYBOY: What if it doesn’t? Boys should spend 20 years in jail for one act?

BRYANT: If they’re on good behavior and everything, and they really–

PLAYBOY: What are you saying–that someone will be rehabilitated and turned away from homosexuality in prison? Surely, you know that prisoners are gang-raped routinely. Someone jailed on a homosexual charge is particularly vulnerable. You must know that.

BRYANT: They’ll have plenty of time to think. Just because prisons are corrupt and not doing the right job in rehabilitation because they don’t have enough spiritual emphasis doesn’t mean that there should not be a strong punishment for that.

PLAYBOY: Does punishment lead to redemption?

BRYANT: It’s in the Bible.

PLAYBOY: Twenty years in jail?

BRYANT: Well, there’s no easy answer and I’m sure we don’t have all the answers.

PLAYBOY: You’re avoiding the question, not just the answer. To stick a kid in jail for committing a homosexual act would seem to most people the greater crime–and sin. If anything were going to reinforce his homosexuality, it would be prison.

BRYANT: But, you see, if there are no consequences for any kind of sin, if there’s no law and order, if there’s no price to be paid for–

PLAYBOY: But you’re advocating making homosexuality a felony. The price would certainly exceed the “crime,” if you had your way.

BRYANT: Are you saying do away with the law totally? Look, I’m just thinking of a deterrent to keep young people from going into it. That’s why you’ve got the ministry in the prisons. They’re trying to find an answer there. Maybe the answer is to put the homosexuals in a different place in the prison.

PLAYBOY: That’s already the case; do you think that would deter them from homosexuality? How familiar are you with prisons? Have you ever performed inside one?

BRYANT: Yes, I did the Huntsville Prison Rodeo. It was great–the audience was very captive. [Laughs]

PLAYBOY: Did you get a firsthand look at the prison conditions?

BRYANT: No, I’ve read about them and I have mixed feelings, because I’ve heard a lot of radical people who come out and say the prisons are terrible, but you know where they’re coming from–they want to do away with law and order because they’re rebellious against God. I know what the cause of the prisons is. The cause is sin.

PLAYBOY: So for one sin, the sin of one man making love to another man, you would send them to jail? That’s the Christian approach?

BRYANT: As a Christian, I know the only answer is the Gospel.

PLAYBOY: And you would set it up so that the Gospel you advocate would be preached to imprisoned human beings surrounded by the very crime you accuse them of.

BRYANT: All right, you have a point. Especially when you put it in terms of kids; I would like to be working with them to save them from their sins.

PLAYBOY: Let’s explore some of your theological beliefs. For instance, nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus make any statement about homosexuality.

BRYANT: Well, Jesus did. He spoke about adultery and fornication.

PLAYBOY: But you didn’t conduct a campaign against heterosexual swingers’ teaching your kids. The fact remains that Jesus never even mentioned homosexuality and virtually every reference to it is in the Old Testament.

BRYANT: But he talked about fornication and he said, “If you love me, you’ll keep my commandments.” He was very plain on it. Jesus never wavered from sin one iota. To say that Jesus wasn’t against sin is ridiculous. A lot of people who want to interpret the Bible for their own ends, such as the so-called Metropolitan Community Church, ignore parts of it to condone their immoral lifestyle. They make a sham of everything Jesus stood for. If he was not truly the Son of God, then he’s just … nothing. It sounds like it’s contradicting itself, but when you read the whole Bible, all of it together, then you understand why at certain points it seems like it’s contradicting, but yet it’s not. God is simply trying to explain the truth.

PLAYBOY: When did you come to that realization? When did you first sit down and read the Bible from cover to cover?

BRYANT: I never have. I have tried.

PLAYBOY: That’s surprising.

BRYANT: See, I never went to a Catholic or a Baptist school where they made us do that.

PLAYBOY: Why haven’t you read it on your own?

BRYANT: I don’t know. Why did you ask me that? I just learned to love the Bible and read it and I read it all the time. But I’ve never had the time to read it from cover to cover.

PLAYBOY: What is your interpretation of heaven?

BRYANT: The Bible describes heaven as a place where there’ll be no sorrow, no tears nor sin. No day and no night; a continuous joy and peace. I’ve been so high with the Lord that I believe I’ve had a foretaste of glory divine, of what it’s going to be like to not have to put up with pressure and hassles from the physical body. There will be no temptation from the Devil, no evil thoughts will enter your head. I won’t have to worry about a schedule, I won’t have to live by my little black book, I won’t have to write everything down, I won’t have to be interviewed. I won’t have to sing unless I feel like it. God talks about heaven in a very literal way. He says the streets are paved with gold, a pure gold, and he talks about the pearly gates–it’ll be pure pearl. I believe it will literally have those things that are described; that’s why it was described that way. A lot of the Bible I take literally.

PLAYBOY: And hell?

BRYANT: That is a place God did not make for mankind–he made that as a place for the Devil, a place he could put him because he was the maestro of music in heaven, and he betrayed God. God created hell to pass Lucifer down into it. In the meantime, he let him become friends of this world, and that’s why we have to suffer a spiritual warfare until he comes back for His own.

PLAYBOY: Do you believe in purgatory?

BRYANT: No.

PLAYBOY: All or nothing, then. How does the Devil tempt Anita Bryant?

BRYANT: Through my kids, my husband, just getting on my nerves; my family is where I’m most vulnerable. If I get really tired, I can put my garbage on Bob very easily. Not like before–we used to really fight.

PLAYBOY: But how does the Devil get to you?

BRYANT: Like he gets to anybody. I know the days when I am so beaten down I can see 12 demons around me with billy clubs on my head and I know they’re there and I verbally cast them out. I say, “Satan, get thee behind me.” I mean, you can’t let clown your guard for a moment. You simply have to remember that God is your best friend and know the peace God can give you when you’re in the flow of the stream of his wisdom and love. It’s like they call me Hurricane Anita–the Weather Service sent me a letter telling me the name had been picked out 10 years ago, for the storm that hit last spring. It was so weird, the timing. I just thought it was another of God’s jokes. He has such a sense of humor, he really does, you know. So some Weather Service people sent me a picture of the hurricane and in the middle of all this turmoil is a perfect eye of stillness. That’s me, in the center.

PLAYBOY: You often quote Leviticus and Deuteronomy–the “lawbooks” of the Old Testament–to support your beliefs against homosexuality. But the Bible is so ambiguous that people on fundamentally different sides can quote it against each other to support their positions.

BRYANT: There were certain things in the Old Testament that you had to do in order to be clean and righteous. Yet when Jesus came, he fulfilled the law. In other words, it’s not the Ten Commandments that save you, it’s the fact that Jesus died on the cross that saves you. You are not bound by all the things that it says to do in the Old Testament.

PLAYBOY: So you pick the ones that suit you?

BRYANT: Jesus was the fulfillment. He told us we were not to be concerned by the things the Old Testament said–that kind of thing–again.

PLAYBOY: Yet you consistently quote the Old Testament as a justification for your positions, particularly regarding homosexuality. It reminds us of the Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925, when William Jennings Bryan insisted on a literal interpretation of the creation.

BRYANT: Well, when you start nitpicking, when we try in our own feeble minds to understand God … God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” There’s no way you can comprehend what creation is. You’re trying to come to a logical conclusion as to how God did it and there’s no way we can know how God did it. From man’s point of view, miracles never happen. From God’s point of view, they do.

PLAYBOY: Does there have to be a conflict between belief in evolution and belief in God?

BRYANT: Except that Darwin did not believe in God.

PLAYBOY: That doesn’t answer the question.

BRYANT: Look, because of his atheistic influence, Darwin is taught in the public schools as fact. That’s fine, if people want to believe that, but I say we must also put Genesis and the Bible in the school teachings as an alternate belief. And, look, really, there’s no way I can answer your question, because I don’t know how God did it. I just believe he did it. It’s like when Moses parted the Red Sea. To man, that was an impossible feat, yet it was one of the great miracles of the Bible when Moses lifted his rod again and the sea closed. I mean, it boggles your mind to think of the majesty and supernatural power it took to do that. My pastor put it this way: He said, for God, it took only the flick of his pinkie to part the Red Sea.

PLAYBOY: God has a pinkie?

BRYANT: Oh, I don’t know, it’s just an illustration. Actually, the biggest miracle of all was the constraint God showed not to split the earth in half when he parted the Red Sea. What I’m saying is that God didn’t have to do things man’s way. He spoke the universe into existence.

PLAYBOY: But even from your point of view, is it not still a miracle to create the universe over a period of billions of years?

BRYANT: Why would he take that kind of time? He doesn’t have to.

PLAYBOY: Why not? If he is eternal, time is nothing to him.

BRYANT: Well, that’s true … but the Bible says God just spoke the universe into existence.

PLAYBOY: Many Biblical scholars aren’t nearly as fundamentalist as you are in believing such things.

BRYANT: I don’t know! What do I know? We’ll know those answers when we get to heaven, all right? And you can ask God yourself!

PLAYBOY: Do you think that people who either don’t believe in Jesus as God–Jews, for example–or those who have never been exposed to Christian teaching are condemned to hell?

BRYANT: Well, I personally have to believe that, because I believe God’s word. I didn’t write the Bible, and that’s what the Bible says. But there are a lot of Jews today who are accepting Jesus as the Messiah.

PLAYBOY: What about those who are not–the vast majority, in other words?

BRYANT: You’re putting me on the spot again. As much as I would like to say other people can be saved by some other means than Jesus, I cannot deny what I know from the Bible. It doesn’t make me feel good or give me any gratification to think someone’s going to hell. I have great respect for my Jewish brothers. But I am what I am, I believe what I believe and I can’t stick my head in the ground and say, “Well, I believe if people are really good and if they live by other standards, they can get absolved”–God just didn’t say that. This whole question is very hard for me, because I have come to love Rabbi Weberman and the other Jewish people I have worked with in Dade County very much. I have a great respect for them, so I don’t think in terms of hell-fire and damnation.

PLAYBOY: Presumably, you feel the same way about other faiths–the Moslem faith, for instance.

BRYANT: God is using so many people all over the world to get the Gospel to the Moslems, to everybody. Whether a person will accept or reject the Gospel is between him and God. I’m not responsible for that. I mean, God could just have made us all into robots, but he took a chance. He wanted us to choose his way.

PLAYBOY: If you tried to tell a devout Moslem about Jesus as savior, he would be just as immune to hearing your message as you would be if he tried to tell you Mohammed was the Prophet.

BRYANT: I don’t have the answer for that. I can’t approach it from an intellectual point of view. There’s a lot of things I don’t understand about God.

PLAYBOY: Where is your sense of justice? If someone truly lives a good life, if he’s sincere and moral, just because he doesn’t believe in Jesus–

BRYANT: Even though he is sincere, he is sincerely wrong. Sincerity doesn’t make you right. The homosexual community believes it’s sincerely right too.

PLAYBOY: What about some Pygmy or some South American Indian who has literally never heard of Jesus and never will, who has his own set of gods that he’s worshiped for thousands of years? He’s going to hell too?

BRYANT: That’s all the more reason we have the responsibility to pay for missionaries to get the truth to them. I mean, I’ve heard weird stories all over the world about where missionaries have gone to odd places and where people have been saved just by seeing a torn page of the Bible on the floor. There are some weird salvation experiences all over the world. I believe that it’s God’s plan that all should be saved.

PLAYBOY: But, according to your way of thinking, Jews, Moslems, Pygmies, Eskimos and atheists are going to hell.

BRYANT: According to God’s word, they do. I mean, if there’s no heaven and no hell, what are we talking about? You know, your problem is that you have to have all the answers. It’s impossible to have all the answers!

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about the inferior status conferred on women in the Bible? Would you agree, as some women do, that it’s because the Bible was written by men in the context of the times?

BRYANT: Well, no, men didn’t write it, the Holy Spirit did. Most of the preachers are men, though, and I think that’s brought about an unhealthy balance. It’s a thing where you hear so much about “women, submit yourselves to your husbands,” and that is Biblical, where women must submit first but it also says, “submit yourselves one to another.” It has to be a submission of both women to men and men to women.

PLAYBOY: But you’ve also said that women are weaker vessels than men.

BRYANT: Well, they are. I don’t think that has a bad connotation.

PLAYBOY: Weak isn’t exactly a complimentary term.

BRYANT: Well, it’s a Biblical term, you see…. All I know is God did have a plan. I don’t always want to agree with it and I don’t always understand it, but it’s like the clay trying to understand the potter. All I know is that he did set the man over the woman. When he said we were to become as one flesh, he meant it in all ways. So if I don’t submit to Bob–

PLAYBOY: Why shouldn’t he have to submit to you first?

BRYANT: I believe that it’s easier for the woman to submit. That’s Biblical.

PLAYBOY: Why?

BRYANT: I don’t know, but I just think that a woman has the capability of submitting. I really thought in my younger days that I could do anything that Bob could do and probably better, and for a time, maybe I showed that I could. But I had a limit. I could take only so much, whereas God has equipped men to take much more responsibility–he made them to be the head and he gave them a certain ability. Women come at things with a much more emotional point of view.

PLAYBOY: What do you mean, emotional?

BRYANT: I can’t explain it. I just think women have a softer approach. We’re more vulnerable, just like in the Garden of Eden. Bob has an ability to see things from a totally different perspective than I. I am much more trusting. Women are vulnerable as far as people are concerned, whereas men can see through things. Of course, I’m talking about the perfect specimen–everybody’s different. But I believe there is an innate ability that men have that’s different from women’s. I think women have much more of a capacity for pain, for instance–no question there. I’ve seen it time and time again. I know I have much more endurance than Bob in many areas, and yet for decisions and responsibilities, I got into an awful lot of trouble by taking on more than I was able to handle, and when Bob finally saw that, he took the responsibility for that and it was a tremendous burden lifted off my shoulders.

PLAYBOY: If Bob told you to do something right now that was against the grain of your thought, would you simply submit to him?

BRYANT: I might rebel against it–and I have many times–but, Biblically, I would submit, yes.

PLAYBOY: You’ve gone against your own better judgment?

BRYANT: Oh, yes. For me to learn to submit was one of the most difficult things in the world, because from the time I was a little child, I was a very hardheaded, independent human being. Yet God showed me my weaknesses, showed me where I was the weaker vessel in many respects, and I still didn’t want to recognize that. It was in real submission, when I was able to let Bob take over, that I really realized I was usurping his authority by not allowing him to be the person God meant him to be. Submission really means to throw oneself under, so the decision an equal person has to make is to become the one underneath, and that’s a matter of choice. Jesus Christ is a terrific example of one who submitted. And either he was who he said he was or he was the greatest liar ever on the face of this earth. I am not intimidated by being called the weaker vessel, because I know that in many areas I am the stronger vessel. I mean, for a long time, I really would have been in agreement with the feminist movement, particularly for the anger I had toward my father that I transferred to Bob. I usurped Bob’s authority in many ways for many years and our marriage was rocky, really rocky, until I recognized I was in rebellion against God, and I got right and submitted. I’m not saying it was easy. I’ve read some of the feminist materials these days, and some of them get so uptight when the Bible refers to “man” when God talks about the individual, but there was much discrimination in the Jewish heritage against the woman, so when Jesus Christ came, he freed them and made them equal spiritually. Now, we all know there’s a tremendous difference between men and women, but we have different roles. It really bothers me that these feminists get so uptight–they have this attitude. It’s so rebellious, not only against God but against man. You can tell they hate men and they hate even the word of God–they want to change the word of God.

PLAYBOY: You mentioned your anger toward your father. Let’s talk about your upbringing. For instance, most people would be surprised to learn that the first liquid to enter Anita Bryant’s throat was a slug of corn-mash moonshine.

BRYANT: Yeah, it’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? You see, I was born dead. My mother was visiting her parents, my Grandma and Grandpa Berry, and I was a month late in coming. When I came, somehow my mother’s system had filled up with poison and I was all black and blue and not breathing. My grandfather was not yet a Christian and he picked up the doctor and said, “You blankety-blank son of a you-know-what, either you save my daughter and my granddaughter or I’ll kill you.” Well, the doctor sort of had to go along. He told Grandma Berry, “All right, get me a pan of ice water and some whiskey and make a strong pot of real thick coffee as black as you can make it.” Then he stuck my head in the water and that shocked me into gasping for breath, and Grandma got the whiskey and they got that down me. I vomited and filled a big pan full of black-green poison. I shrank from nine pounds down to a tiny thing–and that’s how I came into the world. I was born in my Uncle Luther Berry’s bed–that’s prophetic, you see, because he’s a Baptist minister.

PLAYBOY: You recovered from birth trauma sufficiently that you were able to make your singing debut at the age of two, though?

BRYANT: Yeah, Grandpa Berry felt I was his special grandchild. When I was six months old, he’d rock me in his arms and say, “Sing, Anita, sing!” and I’d yell back to him. So when I was two, he bribed a preacher in the church to let me sing “Jesus Loves Me”–or at least he nagged him to death. And people who would come over to the house, I’d set them down and say, “Do you want me to sing for you?” I was a brash kid, real ornery. Grandpa used to call me the brave one, because one time during a tornado, I went rushing out of the house after a washtub that was rolling down the street and he had to rescue me. Later on, when I was learning to ride horses bareback, I’d get thrown 50 feet and get back up and try again, and so the neighbors would call me brave, too. I didn’t think I was so brave.

PLAYBOY: Were you a happy child?

BRYANT: You have to remember that my parents were first divorced when I was two years old and a lot of my insecurities started then. Mother had to go to work and I had to live with my relatives, and that affects a child greatly. They had married very young and they really had no idea of the responsibilities of marriage. I had lots of nightmares after the divorce and I walked in my sleep. I was a very hyperactive kid and a very sickly child. I caught everything that came around. I had the measles, the chicken pox–and every disease I had was like the worst in medical history. I was anemic and had worms. I had pneumonia about eight times. We didn’t have the money to go to the doctor every time I was sick, so it wasn’t until much later that I found out that I was a highly allergic person. Even today, I can’t take certain foods–I eat beans and I itch all night long. I’m allergic to dust–lots of things. And nobody in rural Oklahoma knew anything about nutrition, so my meals were imbalanced. I was raised on fried quail, frogs’ legs, wild rabbit, squirrel, venison–stuff my dad or grandpa would hunt. I do remember parts of my childhood as being happy and other parts I’ve blocked out because it hurts too much. I guess I was happiest when I was eight years old and my parents were remarried, and I was baptized and came to know Christ as my personal savior. Most of my life, I’ve been a real go-getter, the original Unsinkable Molly Brown. I’ve been down but never out. Even when I was very young I was determined to be a star. I told the Lord, “Lord, let me be a star.” I was a strong-minded, independent kid. Remember–we were really living in the sticks. There was only one television in the neighborhood, and on Saturday nights we’d go over and watch it. I remember the first show I ever saw was Ed Sullivan. My dad was a real roustabout–he went from job to job, working in oil fields and what have you, doing what he could. I mean, it was the sticks and basic things were hard to come by. We lived in a trailer for a year and a half and went to the bathroom in the woods. Even the local school had outhouses–and that was when I was in the sixth grade. Your life was centered around God, your church, your family. But primarily the church.

PLAYBOY: Were your parents as fervent as you in their religious convictions?

BRYANT: No. They got away from the church; they really never had a church home. I felt responsible and I blamed myself.

PLAYBOY: What happened after your parents remarried?

BRYANT: We moved to Oklahoma City and I thought it was the end of the world. It was the biggest city I’d ever seen and the adjustment was real hard. Then my mom and dad started fighting again. They divorced again when I was 12. I didn’t see my father for a long time afterward–he moved to another city, found another job, and we’d hear from him once in a while, but it was a long time between phone calls. A lot of that period I don’t remember. I guess I really don’t want to. It was real painful and it just about killed my mother. She was a very submissive wife–she was too submissive and it angered me. She let my dad step all over her and she would have done anything to get him back. Mother had a terrible inferiority complex. My father was a very proud man, a hard worker, but he didn’t communicate well with his family. When Daddy left, I had to sort of become the head of the household–iron the clothes, make the dinner and generally be supportive. I learned to relate to adults and I seemingly had great sophistication, though I really don’t. Life was hard for my mother, because she had to learn everything the hard way. I mean, she married when she was 18 and she didn’t even know anything about sex until after her honeymoon night.

PLAYBOY: Did she talk to you about sex?

BRYANT: When the time came, she tried, but it would have been better if she had described more. Even so, she did better than her mother. Grandma married when she was 15 and never told a soul about anything. Grandma Berry was love personified and a real pioneer woman, but she did have her hang-ups. Anyway, after the second divorce, Mother had to rely on us kids–and trust us in our dating. We were proud that she could trust us. It was almost like growing up with my big sister rather than my mother–she was only 18 years older than me. I knew she blamed God for her problems–and she was very bitter about God. Eventually, she remarried, we moved to Tulsa and my mother rejoined the church. She was really beautiful when we were growing up; she had a great figure. She’s chunky now since she stopped smoking, but that’s okay, because you want your mother to smell sweet.

PLAYBOY: So you resented your father?

BRYANT: I tried very hard to forgive him for what lie had done to my mother–and to me. Because of him, I think I went through life for a long time hating all men, including my husband, Bob. It took me a long time to get over my resentment of Daddy. For many years, I thought I’d forgiven him, when I really hadn’t. It wasn’t until 1974 that I truly forgave him, when I realized that I couldn’t blame him for his actions. But it took a long time, let me tell you.

PLAYBOY: How did your musical ability progress?

BRYANT: People kept saying, “How can such a big voice come from such an itty-bitty child?” It’s just a natural gift that God gave me. I have natural rhythm, a quality you either have or you don’t. It was in my blood and I was determined to make the best of it. I’d spend most every weekend traveling around the state and singing before the Lions Club, the Elks, that sort of thing. I was billed as Little Miss Terrific. By the time I was 12, I had my own television show. I’d won a contest on the Gizmo Goodkin Talent Show and I got my own 15-minute show every Friday night. I had to become an adult real young. In some ways I was ready, but in other ways I was robbed of having a nice normal childhood.

PLAYBOY: Did you have normal childhood fears?

BRYANT: Oh, yes. I remember one time when we were living in a bad part of Oklahoma City, after Daddy left for good, there was a Peeping Tom around. One night I was sleeping with my mother and she heard a noise and ran to the back door to make sure it was locked, and somebody grabbed the doorknob and tried to open it. Then she ran to the front door and just as she got there, somebody tried to get in the front door, too. It was a very frightening experience. So afterward, Mother went to bed with a butcher knife. As far as a physical experience is concerned, I’ve never been afraid–I always thought I could do anything. But spooky movies used to freak me out.

PLAYBOY: Do they still?

BRYANT: Yes; I would not see Jaws or The Exorcist. In fact, most movies made these days I find morally objectionable. But one movie I saw as a kid that really impressed me was So Dear to My Heart. It was an old Disney movie in which a little kid who didn’t have much money raised this little black lamb and entered him in the contest at the state fair. The black lamb didn’t win, but he got a special ribbon–he was a loser, and I identified with him and the movie has stuck in my head forever. I really do think I grew up too quick. Bob tells me I never had a real childhood because I’m so serious about so many things. I think the thing I’ve had to learn as an adult is a sense of humor. I don’t mean learn it, really, but just to be able to laugh at myself in different situations. You know, knowing how to relax and just be silly, do silly things. It’s taken a lot of pain for me to get to a place where I can have a sense of humor. Oh, I always had a kind of cynical, straightforward one. In a way, I guess I’ve always been funny–not to everybody but to people who know me. My friends tell me I’m a big tease all the time.

PLAYBOY: Did your sense of humor help you when the jokes started during the Dade County campaign?

BRYANT: Yeah. A lot of the jokes that are told about me are not really filthy or vicious–well, I’ve learned to laugh at them. I got a big kick out of one cartoon in The Miami Herald that showed me leaning over some guy’s shoulder and saying, “Oh, I think I saw one over there underneath the Sunshine Tree.” And I was bending over and my bottom was real huge and there was a flag on it. I thought, Well, they could have made my bottom a little smaller. They really thought they were hurting me, when really it’s so far from the truth it’s funny. But I liked the flag. At least they caught the fact that I am patriotic. But I didn’t like the big bottom. So I’ve learned more how to relax and be silly about some things. Not everything, of course–I never read silly novels, for instance.

PLAYBOY: What do you read?

BRYANT: I read constantly, but I don’t read nonreligious stuff. I don’t have the time.

PLAYBOY: Have you read the classics? Shakespeare, Melville, Henry James …?

BRYANT: I read Hemingway and stuff like that in school. I loved The Old Man and the Sea. The theme is nonviolence and I hate violence. There’s so much of it on television these days, it makes me nervous. I loved reading romantic stories–I loved Wuthering Heights when I read it a long time ago–but I don’t read those kinds of things anymore. I used to read books that would make me fantasize–romance stories and what have you. I’ve since learned…. It’s like the movies. I loved romantic movies like Gone with the Wind, but I realized the effect of that kind of thing–when your home life isn’t ideal, you seek it somewhere else, so that your natural relationship with your husband becomes distorted. For a long time, that was a real problem with me and Bob, because I was preserving my own ideal–Hollywood’s ideal–and ignoring the real problems that come up between a husband and a wife. It’s the same thing with the modern-day housewife and the afternoon soap operas. Let’s face it–the housewives identify with the soap operas because the shows uplift them from their humdrum daily life. They compare their own lives with the TV show, rather than remembering God’s word–it’s bound to affect them badly. The women are told it’s OK to have an affair if their home life is frustrating. Just plain garbage. They watch television because it’s a vicarious thrill to live that life–to those poor bored women, the grass is always greener on the other side, and they are tempted by Satan to believe his side is the way, so that by the time the husband comes home after a hard day at the office, the housewife hates the box he’s put her in. What she’s missing is the challenge she can create–what greater responsibility is there than to be a loving wife and mother, to compensate for the things her husband is missing?

PLAYBOY: Let’s back up a moment. What gave your career its biggest push?

BRYANT: Arthur Godfrey. One of his talent scouts came to Tulsa and held a competition. I won hands down, week after week. I was determined I would win. When I won, the decision to go to New York was automatic–I didn’t even have to pray about it, until my pastor talked to me. I really didn’t have peace in my heart about leaving for the big time. What if God says no? I thought. I was miserable until I prayed to God and he gave a yes right back to me. I can’t explain it, but I just knew it would be okay.

PLAYBOY: But you were already a star, in terms of Oklahoma. How did that affect your teenage life? In terms of boy-girl social intercourse?

BRYANT: Well, it didn’t help my self-image. I was kind of scrawny–I’d never get the captain of the football team, I knew, so it was surprising to me that I got to date a lot of neat guys. As a matter of fact, I dated my pastor’s son for three years. We made plans to get married. Oh, we were so perfect–he had a beautiful voice and we sang together in the church choir. I just adored him. But one night we went out in his car and he pulled out a cigarette. “Look, you don’t really know me,” he said. I said, “Of course, I’m surprised that you smoke, but what does that have to do with us?” He told me he wanted to live it up and get his kicks. So we broke up and, immediately, he started going with a gal who had a bad reputation. It just broke my heart. I wanted to die. I felt the world was coming to an end and I didn’t even go to school for a week. I was just sick. I decided then that I wouldn’t marry until I was 25.

PLAYBOY: But you were glamorous by small-town standards. Surely, Satan tempted you in numerous ways–such as sex. How did you resist? Or did you?

BRYANT: See, the kids today have a much harder time dealing with sex, because it’s no longer “in” to be a virgin. In my time, when I went to Will Rogers High School, it was not the hip thing to do to go to bed with somebody, or even to let a boy fondle you–you just didn’t do that. Some girls did it, sure, but their reputation was ruined all over town. And because I was such a hardworking girl, I didn’t date that much. I concentrated on my career, my church activities and my grade-point average, and I was just too busy to be tempted by the Devil. If I dated some guy who tried to pet with me, I just told him, “Look, you can take me home right now, if you want–I’m not gonna go any further. If you don’t enjoy being with me as a person, just take me home.” I mean, I loved the kissing part and, I must say, I had some pretty passionate feelings, too, because I’m no prude, but I knew where to stop. My faith was so much a part of me that I knew my body was a temple of God and that God held it sacred. And I knew that my husband would know if I had been promiscuous and that if I didn’t save myself for my marriage, if I wasn’t pure, I would miss out. The consequences just weren’t worth it to me. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was saved when I was eight years old and my beliefs were reinforced in the public schools then through prayer–this was before that atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair made the worship of God illegal, you see. Kids today don’t even know God, unless their parents are religious.

PLAYBOY: You never let sexual temptation get out of hand, then?

BRYANT: Well, there were times when I was tempted, but because I was faithful to God, I wasn’t willing to step over that line. I knew the boy would go as far as the girl would let him and, mainly, I tried not to get into situations that I couldn’t get out of.

PLAYBOY: What about other teenage temptations? Is rock ‘n’ roll today something you disapprove of?

BRYANT: Oh, yes. In my days, the lyrics were understandable and you didn’t have to slow it down to hear the dirty cuss words and the jargon that parents today can’t understand.

PLAYBOY: Come on. You admit in one of your books that when you added a hard, driving beat to “Till There Was You,” you achieved your first 1,000,000 seller. And even when you were coming of age in the Fifties, there were plenty of sexual double-entendres in the rock lyrics.

BRYANT: Yeah, but it’s not like today, where there are a lot of rock dances and rock music that are brainwashing the kids, because it’s all very promiscuous and it glorifies promiscuity and acid rock and a lot of those things. The kids get into the dirty lyrics and the beat is just very, very seductive.

PLAYBOY: What do you suppose the thrill was that Pat Boone found on Blueberry Hill?

BRYANT: All I know is that there are a lot of filthy words I’ve heard in listening to the radio these days that are just shameful and outright sinful. I think a lot of evil things are much more prevalent these days. I think kids growing up today have pressures that we never had in the Fifties. It’s so discouraging.

PLAYBOY: Let’s get back to the emergence of your career. It was Godfrey who got you out of Oklahoma?

BRYANT: Yeah. I went to New York and, I mean, he was really the king then–he ruled the roost. I went on his morning show, so I had to live in New York and scrounge like a dog to keep up my school grades. Speech was my strongest subject. English I had no problem with. Math–forget it. I just couldn’t comprehend. But I did all right, all in all. I had to work hard, and I knew how to work hard. Mother, of course, was very concerned with my fate in New York. We went up there together the first time and found that the Salvation Army ran a hotel for women right on the edge of Greenwich Village–the area was a pretty good neighborhood then. And in that hotel, no men could get past the lobby–mother liked that. I met some interesting people during that period.

PLAYBOY: Like who?

BRYANT: Well, Chubby Checker–he was very hot and heavy. And Leslie Uggams–talk about a straight little girl who was really naïve…. Anyway, there were things I didn’t tell Mother about.

PLAYBOY: Such as?

BRYANT: I don’t want to tell you.

PLAYBOY: Oh, go ahead.

BRYANT: Well, there was this one television producer who made it clear to me that I could be a very, very big TV star if I slept with him.

PLAYBOY: You were still a virgin?

BRYANT: Absolutely. Anyway, the whole thing scared me to death. I really prayed and prayed–I wanted to make it in show business so bad. So I went to a guy who was like an uncle to me who was in the business. He asked me if I drank and I said no. So he said, “In that case, you’ll have no problem.” I prayed some more, and then I went to this producer’s apartment for dinner. He made the overtures, but I was able to talk him out of it.

PLAYBOY: How?

BRYANT: I made sure that the cook stayed around–I didn’t want to be alone with him. Anyway, it worked. The word got around and he was so embarrassed that he didn’t dare try to hurt my career. Thank God.

PLAYBOY: As you did.

BRYANT: As I did.

PLAYBOY: What was your next noteworthy achievement? Entering the Miss America Pageant?

BRYANT: Not yet. When I was 16, I did a tour with Ricky Nelson. I really had a crush on him.

PLAYBOY: Was it returned in kind?

BRYANT: No. He was very big then. He liked to swing with the airline stewardesses. I was just a kid to him. I also did some tours with Fabian and Bobby Rydell, and later on, I did American Bandstand with people like Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon–that was after I got a recording contract.

PLAYBOY: Then you entered the Miss Oklahoma pageant, first as Miss Tulsa, then on to the Miss America competition. Why did you do it?

BRYANT: I did it on a dare. Some of my friends made me do it. One of my basic motivations was to get the Miss America scholarship so I could go to college. I was very awkward–I had skin and weight problems. I was fairly well proportioned, but I knew I was no beauty. And most of the other girls were much older than I was–I was only 18. I had to fake my way through the pageant. And I just couldn’t believe that I made Miss Oklahoma and the national finals.

PLAYBOY: Wasn’t the act of parading around in a tight swimsuit a violation of your Christian ethics?

BRYANT: It did bother me. But I figured, well, you go to the beach in your swimsuit…. I didn’t feel ashamed or anything, but I didn’t enjoy it. It was kind of a necessary evil. My over-all attitude was that it was a one-time experience, so enjoy it. My basic weakness was in answering the judges’ questions–I was not aware of world affairs and I felt very inadequate.

PLAYBOY: What did they ask you?

BRYANT: I don’t even recall. I rattled on and on–I didn’t know what in the Sam Hill I was talking about, even though I’d boned up all week by reading Newsweek. Part of the reward for winning the pageant was a recording contract, and I already had a recording contract. So I was quite pleased that I got as far as second runner-up, although I was really disappointed that I didn’t get the Miss Congeniality trophy–I’d ended up in a tie with another gal for it, and because I made second runner-up, the judges broke the tie and gave her the trophy. I really wanted it…. It’s funny, though. To this day, people come up to me and ask me what it was like to be Miss America.

PLAYBOY: What was your next step?

BRYANT: I moved to Chicago and enrolled in Northwestern University–I’d gotten an offer from The Breakfast Club to sing on the show and Northwestern had a good music school. I had no choice, really–in this business, when your career gets going, you take advantage of what you get. The pace was just running me down, I was working so hard. I was trying to do everything, I was overworked and I was very lonely in Chicago.

PLAYBOY: No boyfriends?

BRYANT: Well, kind of unofficially, I was engaged to Pat Boone’s brother, Nick Todd. We didn’t have a ring or anything, but we dated when we could and went to church together. That wasn’t his real name–he changed it because he didn’t want to feel he was making it because of his famous brother. I’d first met Nick in New York when I was doing the Godfrey show. We were very close and I think we were in love with love more than anything else–there weren’t that many straight guys around and he was available and I was available and we hit it off. I went to Nashville and met his parents and everything….

PLAYBOY: And then Bob Green entered your life. That was in 1959?

BRYANT: Yeah, right after I went to crown the new Miss Tulsa. Bobby Darin was the m.c. for the ceremony and he asked me for a date. I told him I had to leave for a disc jockeys’ convention in Miami that night to promote my records–and that’s where I met Bob Green. He was a real big glamorous disc jockey then. Bob met me at the Miami airport and I took one look at him and went “Wow!”–you know, he was a real dreamboat. He drove this neat white T-bird with his name on the side. He wore these silk suits, he came on real strong. He looked totally different than he looks now. He was so good-looking, and lie was in shape, and it was incredible. I didn’t think I’d have a chance with him–I expected to get rejected. Plus, I thought he was too good-looking to be a nice boy. And he was always surrounded by these pretty gals who were just falling all over him. Everywhere we went, the girls would scream and ask for his autograph–they didn’t know me from Adam. I was surprised when that first day he asked me out for a date, but I turned him down. I was too concerned about singing at the show that night, and Pat and Shirley Boone were there and I didn’t want them to think I was stepping out on Nick. And I still was hurting from the rejection of the preacher’s son…. I didn’t want to get hurt again. I mean, Bob had every girl in town and dated the airline stewardesses and all the pretty gals. He had it made.

PLAYBOY: Yet he was interested in you?

BRYANT: He just couldn’t figure me out. I was an oddity–I’ve always been an oddity. Anyway, after the show that night, I was sitting around in the club, getting bored, and there was smoke and drinking and all, and Bob came over and invited me for a drive, so I said okay. The moon was over Miami and we were driving down Collins Avenue and the music was on and I fell asleep! I knew I was getting to his ego, and when he drove me to the airport the next day, I never thought I’d see him again. Anyway, to make a long story short, he just kept after me–hours of long-distance phone calls, letters every day. I kept telling him not to get his hopes up, that I was engaged and that I didn’t want to get married until I was 25. But he just wouldn’t take no for an answer. But after Bob, I knew I just didn’t feel the same way about Nick. I told Nick about Bob and we stayed good friends after we broke up. When I broke up with Nick was when I realized how much I loved Bob. We were both ready to settle down, I guess, and we had the same values–plus, Bob didn’t smoke or drink, which surprised me.

PLAYBOY: And you shared the same religious beliefs?

BRYANT: Bob wasn’t born again until the night before we got married.

PLAYBOY: Was that a deal you made?

BRYANT: We had no conflict about it. But I was very scared of marriage and I almost backed out at the last minute.

PLAYBOY: Was marriage everything you’d dreamed it would be?

BRYANT: It depends on what you mean.

PLAYBOY: Well, sexually, for starters.

BRYANT: I have a fantastic sex life!

PLAYBOY: Emotionally, then.

BRYANT: Marriage is very hard. Lots of problems are involved with two people working out a loving relationship and adhering to God’s laws. And it upset me when I was told I could not bear children. We adopted our first child, Bobby, Jr. Later, when it turned out I could bear children, I had twins who were born months prematurely–and they almost died. Plus Bob was making a lot more money than I was then. Finally, Bob became my manager and that solved a lot of problems. He’s been a great manager, and until I started getting boycotted and black-listed by the militant homosexuals last year, I had all the work I could handle.

PLAYBOY: We’ll get back to that. First tell us about what you have described as the most important turning point in your life, when you had a nervous breakdown in 1974.

BRYANT: It was not a nervous breakdown–it verged on it, certainly, but it really makes me mad that the militant homosexuals try to use it against me by saying, “She flipped out, she went crazy.”

PLAYBOY: Well, what did happen?

BRYANT: I lost three people very dear to me in one year. I sang at all their funerals. Dan Topping [the former owner of the New York Yankees], my Grandpa Berry and a gal named Teddy who was like a big sister to me and who was about my age when she died. I couldn’t understand why God would just nip her in the bud when she was in the prime of her life. There are few people I can share my heart with, and I could talk to Teddy about things I couldn’t even talk with Bob or my pastor about. It was that deep. Then Bob developed a heart condition and almost died, and I had to think for the first time about raising four kids alone without Teddy to lean on anymore. It was after Grandpa Berry’s funeral when the straw landed that broke the camel’s back. It was like God wanted to put me flat on my back so the only way I could look was up. He knew I was holding out on Him and He wanted the whole of me, not just part of me. He knew I had a lot of rebellion and anger and bitterness in me. I thought I’d forgiven my daddy, but I hadn’t–I still hated and resented him, and the pent-up hatred was poisoning my marriage and my relationship with people all around me. So I collapsed after Grandpa’s funeral–I totally gave up. I lay down and I just…. I’d decided not to see his body, but after I sang at the funeral, I changed my mind; before they buried him I wanted to see him. When I did, I just broke down and they laid me down on the pew right next to him and I couldn’t stop crying–I was just hysterical and that shook everybody up. They just couldn’t comprehend that I would go under–I was like the Rock of Gibraltar, and always had been, even as a child. I’d always learned to lift my head above the jungle and be responsible, no matter what. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be responsible anymore. I wanted to do away with all responsibility–I was so tired. I think had I been anyone else, I probably would have had a heart attack or a total nervous breakdown, but I just came to a point where I didn’t want to do anything. I just sat in my office and looked at the stack of letters from people who were asking me for advice and counseling–and I just couldn’t be responsible anymore. I needed advice and counseling, and the one person I could have talked to, Teddy, was gone. I said, “No more,” and I would just sit in my office all day. I said, “I’m not going to do anything else, ever.” It scared me to death. Bob was scared to death, too.

PLAYBOY: Did you consider seeing a psychiatrist?

BRYANT: No, it was so painful–it was like I felt I’d be committing a sin by going to a psychiatrist; can you imagine that? I thought it would be denying Jesus. And I knew that a lot of psychiatrists tell you things totally contrary to Biblical teaching, such as in order to get along with your husband, go out and have an affair, or something like that. But friends of ours told us about this Christian retreat in Rosemead, California–it’s sort of a Christian counseling center, quite famous. Marabel Morgan and lots of famous Christian people have gone there. So I decided I had to do something, that God was sending me out there. The night before I went, I told Bob, “I don’t think I’m ever coming back.” I really thought that–I was so scared and weary. We arrived at night and I met the psychologist and I liked him very much. I was told to come back the next morning and to plan on staying for at least two weeks. When we got to the hotel, I just could not sleep. I didn’t want to wake Bob, so I went into this tiny bathroom and closed the door and got down on my hands and knees and just started praying. Something from way down deep inside of me was trying to come out. It was, so strange. I took a legal pad and a pencil and I started writing down these things that were bugging me. I filled 17 whole pages.

PLAYBOY: What did you write?

BRYANT: Some things I wouldn’t want printed because it does no good to bring them up, but…well, the hatred of my father and the resentment toward Bob, things that went way back into my childhood and other more recent things, such as little difficulties I was having with the kids that I’d kept pent up. And the fact that I’d had all the responsibility pushed upon me for so many years–I had had responsibilities thrust on me no 12-year-old should have had, and they were still weighing on me. Anyway, I felt like a different person when I walked into the psychologist’s office the next day and showed him the 17 pages. He said, “It looks like my work has already been done for me.” God had been taking me in different stages, but I was holding out on Him without even knowing it, and now I was saying, OK, God, I’ll give You my emotions, too. I still felt very ashamed that I’d even had to go to Rosemead–I just felt so guilty because of bad teachings about psychology and I didn’t want anyone to know I’d even gone.

PLAYBOY: Was it that hard to admit?

BRYANT: It hurt me to admit that I was that human, yes. It took me 34 years to be able to admit that.

PLAYBOY: Has your marriage improved since Rosemead?

BRYANT: I never realized before then how I dominated Bob, but, fortunately, he was stronger than I and we were able to work these things out. The main problem we had in our marriage was that, because of my father, I basically had a hate for men. I mean, there were times when I literally hated my husband–I couldn’t help it. But I was responsible because I allowed it to fester and didn’t take it to the Lord. And divorce wasn’t in my vocabulary, because I’d suffered the scars of divorce as a child and I knew what my children would suffer from it. But, above all, I knew it was against God’s word. Bob and I still have our ups and downs, because I’m not a goody two-shoes. I know now I’m a human being, just like anybody else. If it weren’t for Jesus Christ in my heart and life, I probably would have married several times. I probably would have slept around with guys and whatever. I always say that I’m just a sinner saved by grace.

PLAYBOY: What are your sins?

BRYANT: Oh, I don’t know…maybe the sin of intolerance. [Laughs]

PLAYBOY: That’s exactly what those you call militant homosexuals say about you.

BRYANT: I just meant it as a pun.

PLAYBOY: A pun? What pun?

BRYANT: I try not to be intolerant. All I’m saying is I don’t have anything to brag about. The reason I can relate to the homosexual is because I’ve had emotional scars in my own life. I really felt the rejection of my father, and that is one of the things that maybe lead someone going into homosexuality. Look, I don’t hate homosexuals–that’s the truth, no matter what they think of my motives. I’ve always said I love the sinner but I hate the sin.

PLAYBOY: You’ve been saying that America and her children are being destroyed. You’ve compared America to Sodom and Gomorrah; you say God destroys the kind of nation that America has become.

BRYANT: Absolutely. I believe that’s what has been happening to America.

PLAYBOY: Do you think it still is?

BRYANT: I believe now that we have a greater hope than ever before–that God is allowing America one last space to repent. If the parents of American children had stood by God’s word, had they not had their head in the sand for so many years, the destruction of America’s moral fiber wouldn’t have happened. But it happened so fast no one knew it was happening. But now it seems people have a hunger. They’ve seen how so-called humanism works. They were told, “Well, one way to change the world is to educate the people. You educate them to a certain point, they’re going to change.” Well, has that been true? Has that happened? No. Our country was strong for so long because we claimed we were one nation under God and God blessed us. I believe that right now, God has removed himself from America. If we’ll look through history, we’re in the same situation as were Greece and Rome, when homosexuality and other sins were so rampant they became the norm.

PLAYBOY: So this and your crusade are America’s last chance?

BRYANT: Yes. I didn’t even come to the realization that America was so far gone until the time of the referendum, when I got letters from groups all over the country describing the fights they were in and how they were righting some of the same things and it looked to me like a big octopus that had its tentacles around America and was squeezing our country to death. And it grieved me. I mourned for America for several days.

PLAYBOY: You cried for America?

BRYANT: Yes, I really saw for the first time in my life what was going on. I had been very idealistic about America all my life–I am still–because in reading the last book of the Bible, I know what the hope for the world is. And I think there’s a revival beginning in America now. What happened in Dade County is happening all over the country. I know that’s how God rewards prayer, and Dade County was the answer to a lot of prayers world-wide.

PLAYBOY: Let’s talk about the media for a moment. Do you think you’ve gotten a raw deal from the press?

BRYANT: Let’s face it–quite honestly, the press can make anybody look like anything it wants to. I mean, there are a lot of things in all of our lives that you don’t want known–nobody’s perfect–that could ruin you. The press has placed me in a stereotyped box. Like, I’m not a prude, but that’s the image they want to portray, because they’re after me. I think it’s snobbery. You see, there are so many intellectuals in this nation and they’ve really become snobs as far as how they approach grassroots things. It’s really true. Like, when we started the opposition to the Dade County ordinance–all the press figured it was for one of two reasons: either to run for public office or for publicity for my career. They just couldn’t accept my real motivation, because they don’t know me. It took me a while to see that I was really under a microscope and had to watch what I said. I’m OK now–I think I could handle the Good Morning America show and Gore Vidal.

PLAYBOY: You mean the show on which Vidal mentioned you in the same breath with Hitler?

BRYANT: Yeah; I think I could handle that now. I must be doing something right. I taped the Today show last fall and did so well against Tom Brokaw–and he wasn’t being his usual nice self, let me tell you–that they asked us to tape a second segment, where he was nicer. So we’re OK now. We’ve been trained.

PLAYBOY: A baptism by fire?

BRYANT: Yeah, I guess you could say that. I mean, I learned. Let me give you an example. After Dade County, some people from the media asked me, “Would you go to San Francisco and Los Angeles?” And I said, “Sure, if I’m asked and if after I’ve prayed about it God says yes.” Well, immediately, they put it on the wire that Anita Bryant plans on going on a crusade across the country. Okay, to counteract that, I say to the press, I am not going out on a “crusade” across the country, to do in other cities what we did in Dade County.

PLAYBOY: There is no crusade in the works?

BRYANT: God is saying there’s a different route to go. There’s a part of me that is a Carry Nation, that would very much like to go across this country. We could fill up every auditorium in America. If we had done so after our victory in Dade County, we could have gotten such a momentum going that we could have wiped the homosexual out. That was a very real possibility. We realized that. We could have made a lot of money, too.

PLAYBOY: That sounds brutal. Do you mean you’d wipe them out personally?

BRYANT: Well, not quite. But I must admit, when you’ve known that kind of power, it is easy to succumb to it and use it for your own advantage and to wipe out a lot of things that need wiping out. But sometimes the Lord has a different way.

PLAYBOY: Are you a militant Christian?

BRYANT: Not at all. That word has such a bad connotation, like the Crusaders who went out and killed people who didn’t believe as they did. I don’t want that label put upon me; that’s why I’m so adamant about saying I’m not on a crusade.

PLAYBOY: Yet you are in the forefront of a kind of Christian ground swell?

BRYANT: If it hadn’t been for the committed Christians, we wouldn’t have won in Miami. They’re being used for God’s purposes, because the people God wants to arouse right now are the Christians. They’re the ones who will make a difference in the future of this country.

PLAYBOY: Given that you now know it’s a sin not to speak out against moral depravity, why haven’t you embarked on a crusade throughout America?

BRYANT: Well, if nothing else, what we did in Dade County has had a nationwide effect. Koch’s bill HR2998 is buried—

PLAYBOY: Suppose it’s revived. Would you lead a fight against that?

BRYANT: Absolutely. But the reason we didn’t jump into a nationwide thing after our victory was that we needed a rest and I had no leading of the Lord to do it. I wanted and felt it was important to do it, but sometimes the hardest thing is to not go when the whole world is saying go. I mean, why not? It’s the logical thing, but God doesn’t always do things logically. All the people we’d been working with were chomping at the bit to go national, but I just did not have a direct leading of the Lord to continue in that light. I prayed and I prayed and wanted direction from God to do that and it wasn’t coming. And it bothered me. It’s been so hard to wait on the Lord.

PLAYBOY: Do you mean you’re abandoning the organization you established with your Dade County effort?

BRYANT: Oh, no. We’ve built up mailing lists and we’re putting out a monthly newsletter, and everywhere I go, I say to people, “Write to me so I can inform you as to what is going on in America.” We’ve got people watching and we’re really four years ahead of what any organization would be nationally, had it just started. Overall, God is showing me the core of where a lot of our ills lie. Right now, I want to have some meetings with important people and pick their brains as to what they see the need is and how we could go about things in a specific way, to counteract the feminists who say they represent the women of America but in no way do. I definitely believe those people are in the minority, and we have to gather the mothers together, through the churches, the pastors, the godly people of this nation. I see the plan coming together.

PLAYBOY: So you, in fact, have a national organization in the gestation period right now?

BRYANT: Oh, yes. I think we can inspire other people to stand and be a catalyst in their communities for bringing everybody together. To take a stand in their locale and find out what affects your children. Who is teaching them? What are they teaching them? Do you know? Do you really care? Who is deciding what the laws are in your community? What kind of men and women are they? Are they really moral? Check them out–get committed, get involved.

PLAYBOY: That sounds like a crusade to us. and a self-righteous one at that.

BRYANT: No, more of an encouragement. I think when you tell genuine true-life stories of other people and what they’ve accomplished in their communities, it’s a great help. Not an over-all guerrilla tactic of how to go out and change the world–that’s not my belief. But I do believe we have a right to stand up and say what we mean. It’s a big job. It’s not easy to do without being misconstrued. That’s the hardest thing in the world, but you’ve got to take a stab at it, you’ve got to try.

PLAYBOY: Do you intend to structure your effort more formally?

BRYANT: That’s coming. It’s in our heads now and we’re bringing people in and talking with a lot of people. We see the pieces of the puzzle falling into place, slowly but surely. We have a concept now called Anita Bryant Ministries, which would have centers in every key city across America. It’s just in the embryo stage, and I’ve been praying about it. I want to be very sure that’s the Lord’s leading.

PLAYBOY: Would these be centers where homosexuals could repent, as you might put it?

BRYANT: Not just for homosexuals but for drug addicts, and America’s 1,000,000 runaway children, and families that have marital problems and don’t have a church home or a pastor they can go to. These people might come to an Anita Bryant center, and we could meet their needs on a spiritual level. Then we could perhaps set up homes for homosexuals and also for lesbians, so that if they were really sincere in getting out of their lifestyle, they could sign up for a year with us. It takes a long time and a lot of compassion and love and dedicated people to minister to homosexuals in that way, and that would take a lot of work. We could also work all denominations, educating pastors and lay leaders as to how to meet the emotional and moral challenges that confront America today that are not being met.

PLAYBOY: Although at one point you claimed to have some sympathy for feminists, you nevertheless refer more often to the feminist movement as if it were some kind of conspiracy against decency.

BRYANT: Well, look at that Houston convention last year. The government gave the feminists $5,000,000 and Phyllis Schlafly not one penny. It was a closed shop. It’s almost Communistic the way Phyllis Schlafly and the ones who truly represent the grass roots of American women cannot even get the forums to be represented in.

PLAYBOY: So the Communists are conspiring to keep the patriots out of the picture?

BRYANT: Well, it’s very suspicious that in many of the state conventions before Houston, they did not even pledge allegiance to the flag and they did not sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It goes hand in hand, it seems to me. Whether they’re all in a big conspiracy together, I can’t say. You can’t really say that anymore, because people pooh-pooh it and they say, “Well, that’s a very right-wing cop-out,” so you don’t even say that; but it seems very obvious that the Communist element is a part of all this, because a lot of these people have no reverence for their country. I still believe that America, with all her faults and trials and tribulations, is the greatest country on the face of this earth, and if women could get their eyes off of themselves and their own human life, if they could look at what they have and be grateful and thankful for it … I mean, where else but in America could someone like myself have made it? Where else could someone who was raised in poor surroundings attain what I have attained at the age of 38? Who needs the E.R.A.? The key to women’s rights is to activate the laws that are already on the books. Most of them are too lazy to do that. I mean, women are even admitted into the Armed Forces now. What more do they want? I mean, don’t talk to me about discrimination. I’ve experienced it. I’m an eighth Cherokee. My dad was a roustabout, low man on the totem pole. We didn’t even have a decent house to live in. I went to school in hand-me-downs. I just praise God that I live in a land of plenty where someone can come from the bottom and go up. If you want to make it, you can.

PLAYBOY: That sharply contradicts what you were saying about America as a decaying nation, but let’s go on. Do you have any heroes?

BRYANT: Hmmm. I don’t have many. I don’t know if I have any. I think the reason I’m so disillusioned is because I really looked at Jimmy Carter as a hero, as one who had caught the eye and the heartbeat of the grass roots of America. I really had great expectations of him, and I found that in life, when you put different individuals on a pedestal, God very carefully takes them off the pedestal and shows us that we’re to put no one there.

PLAYBOY: Why did you sour on Carter?

BRYANT: Well, how can a born-again Christian who’s truly born again not take a stand against the sin of homosexuality? He himself stated in the Playboy Interview, which my husband bought for me to read, that he was against homosexuality, and yet he allows [aide] Midge Costanza to go down to Dade County on a local issue and campaign for homosexuality. She was paid by our opposition to come down. I won’t say any further what I know about her, because that’s not important, but the thing is that she has an open door to the President of the United States, who claims to be a born-again Christian, when homosexuality is at the very core of what God is against.

PLAYBOY: You mean the Playboy Interview helped convince you to go for Carter?

BRYANT: I felt overall that it was not bad, except for some of the choice words he used, and I even understood why he felt compelled to use them.

PLAYBOY: And now you feel betrayed by him?

BRYANT: Well, we’re pretty much in touch with the heartbeat of the grassroots people, and most of those people are totally dismayed and disillusioned with Carter. But, at the same time, our whole family prays for the Carters on a daily basis. I voted for him; I now have my doubts, but I cannot judge him–only God can. I’ll tell you this, I would never jump onto someone again so easily. I wanted to support Carter because I wanted to believe he was really a Christian, but his sister Gloria Spann said in an interview that she doesn’t even believe in hell. That’s hard to believe. I think I represent a lot of Christians, I would say probably the majority of Christians, and they’re looking at Carter right now and most of them are saying he’s a one-term President. I believe that when a man is president, we have an obligation as Christians to pray for him, so I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, because I want to defend him, and yet I can’t dismiss the straddling of the fence he’s done so far on all the important issues like E.R.A., homosexuality, the Panama Canal, etc.

PLAYBOY: You’re a registered Democrat, aren’t you?

BRYANT: Yes, and until the Dade County thing happened, I thought I was a liberal.

PLAYBOY: Now that you know you’re no longer a liberal, you favor such conservative politicians as Jesse Helms, Phyllis Schlafly and Ronald Reagan. Are you becoming a friend of Reagan’s?

BRYANT: I admire him and like him very much and if I were a Republican and he were running, I would probably vote for him.

PLAYBOY: But you intend to remain a Democrat?

BRYANT: Well, yes.

PLAYBOY: If it’s Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter in 1980, whom will you support?

BRYANT: At this point, I can’t say, because I want very much to talk to President Carter.

PLAYBOY: Do you think he’ll talk to you?

BRYANT: If he looks at it from a political point of view, no. If he were to look at it from a Christian point of view, he should.

PLAYBOY: If the election were held tomorrow, would you vote for Reagan or Carter?

BRYANT: Considering everything, Reagan.

PLAYBOY: Would you ever consider running for political office?

BRYANT: It’s totally contrary to me, and yet my eyes have been opened to the need for involvement. The day after we won in Miami, as I was on my way to the airport, I bet I had 15 people who said, you know, “Run for President!” I mean, I laughed at them. I could not believe it. I just won’t even think about it, let alone entertain the idea. It makes me sick inside. It makes Bob sick.

PLAYBOY: What if God tells you you have to run for office?

BRYANT: Well, I can’t answer that until it happens. I feel I can be much more effective as a mother coming from my own motivations.

PLAYBOY: But if God came to you next year and told you to run for office, you wouldn’t refuse?

BRYANT: I can’t refuse God anything

[packernet]

New Post has been published on https://www.packernet.com/blog/2023/10/24/this-is-what-rebuilding-looks-like/

This is what rebuilding looks like

The current Green Bay Packers are not in the race for a Super Bowl. We have known this for close to one year now, from the great trade that took place in the spring. Their 19-17 loss against the Broncos in Denver on Sunday underscored this matter. There is a chance they might catch fire and vie for a wild card berth or even cause an upset in the wild-card round, though this is highly unlikely.

Led by their new QB Jordan Love, Sunday’s game was basically a battle of two struggling teams. The stage couldn’t have been better arranged for the Packers. It appeared that a substantial 35 percent of the audience was adorned in the team’s distinctive green and gold colors. The Broncos, known for their subpar offense and terrible defense, seemed to present the perfect opportunity for the Packers to capitalize on these advantages right from the opening whistle. However, it didn’t pan out that way.

Lackluster Offense

Just as they had in the preceding two weeks, the Packers’ offense lacked the initial spark they needed. After a strong start in the first six quarters of the season, Love’s performance has steadily declined, save for a standout fourth quarter in the game against the Saints. The display in last night’s game was nothing short of unattractive.

Whatever plays Coach Matt LaFleur is devising for the initial 15 plays of the game are clearly falling flat. This is the same person who’s renowned as an offensive mastermind and someone adept at working with young quarterbacks, right? We are uncertain about the methods or if LaFleur can steer the team in a different direction, but one potential approach would be to inject some motivation.

No complimentary football

Right now, the offensive unit appears to be going through the motions without much enthusiasm, resembling a group of individuals lacking energy and purpose. The sole positive aspect of Sunday’s game was the defense’s ability to limit the Broncos to 19 points. However, they faltered when, with a 17-16 lead in the fourth quarter, they allowed the Broncos to march right down field for the game-winning field goal.

Nevertheless, holding the opposition to 19 points represents successful football, particularly when you possess an offense that is considered below average.

We should not abandon our faith in Love under any circumstances. I believe he will gain valuable experience from this game, especially from his final pass.

This team won’t beat Dallas, Detroit, Philly or San Francisco. They could upset one of the rest of the rabble of NFC teams, but not the top four, who are all clearly a tier above the 2023 Packers.

Expectations for the Packers this year are not very high. We should however acknowledge that we’re just in the sixth week of a long NFL season. That said it’s crucial for the Packers to secure a victory in their next game.

A critical aspect for the Packers is restoring balance to their offensive game. Aaron Jones has been absent for most of the last five games. In his absence, the Packers’ running game has been virtually non-existent. Although he did see some playing time this week, head coach Matt LaFleur’s questionable decision to limit his snaps made it seem like a wasted spot on the game-day roster.

Building for 2024 and 2025

As many pragmatic Packers supporters understand, the team is in the process of rebuilding with an eye toward the 2024-25 season. The primary focus is on addressing salary cap issues and nurturing the potential of recent draft picks to become established talents. In my perspective, this implies that any potential trade executed by the Packers before the NFL trade deadline would likely be oriented towards next year rather than the current season. In other words, it would involve trading existing talent for the promise of future potential.

As you support a season turnaround for them. Remember you can make money by betting on their games by visiting ggbet-24.com/en. GGbet has the most competitive American Football odds you will find anywhere.

[capsicrew]

How is your character with touch? Are they a big hugger, relishing in spending time and connecting with others, or is the thought of someone touching their skin completely overwhelming? Does this desire for touch change under specific circumstances (someone who hates touch loving it for that one person, a very affectionate person hating being touched when they're crying, etc)?

Thanks for the ask! I can answer this for everyone--

Jalliim does like to connect through touch, but tends to be over-sensitive in respecting people's space. He'd never initiate contact with someone he didn't know very well, but can be close with his friends. Reciprocating, however, he is very open--even with people he may only have just met.

Capsisi is NOT, though. Under 99% of circumstances, she would prefer to keep folks keep their hands to herself. She's not gotta put up a scene if, like, Kola came in for a hug for some reason, but you can tell, like, when a person is being hugged and they don't like it--Capsisi's like that lmao. That last 1% would be in, like, the aftermath of some very serious shit like saving the world, then she'll let people be congratulatory or whatever, but better to get back to normal soon.

Kola is a very touch-focused person, and swings around with her bright emotions. She's always goes in for a hug, or an arm around the shoulder or grabbing arms and hands. She knows, like, Capsisi doesn't like this and will attempt to avoid bothering her, but can forget. As long as she puts the weapons down first lol (no accidents yet !). This stays true if she's upset, as well--a good way to comfort her would be with physical touch or a tight hug.

Beutiq is hard to read, as is typical for him. He doesn't seem to neither like nor dislike being touched, as he doesn't give any sort of indication one way or the other when it happens. Reserved as he is, though, hugging him might just kinda feel like hugging a tree or a lamp post. It'll stand there, for sure. He's working on being more emotionally available, but it's a steel slope. He's also not one to initiate contact--but again, more for just that being how he is rather than any distaste.

Ejvi is much less of a touch-oriented person than you might expect. Like Kola, she has a big personality and often speaks with her hands and body movement--but doesn't incorporate much physical contact, keeping to her own sort of "bubble." She doesn't have trouble reciprocating, but its rare for her to get to it herself. Probably the big exception would be getting intimate, of course (and even then, she tends to do more initiating than receiving). Opposite of Kola, though, she prefers to be left alone if she's upset. Depending on in what way she's upset, it could even make her more angry. Fortunately, it's pretty rare that she gets even close to that upset.

[imadudeenaugustsarvahusayn]

140) 2014

Only by this. But I'm sure I won't meet Ms. Rowling.

All that remains is that 2017 Reddit moment.

Onwards. ±54.

I'm the left of the screen one. But, yes Poland is for rest. US Countryside is like a good place to visit too at times. I'm more in the US rather Mehico but want to visit ABQ. Thérèse, hard compound tires. I already did my part with South. For adrenaline, or Polish ladies you have a thing or two? I don't know, I don't know everything.

Balkan visit too, İstanbul.

But anyway, I'm not coming, but receiving now sexually. Got no bedding whilst it's fame outside. Inside is one last ride. 🇮🇩.

From my notes📝, ehm, since I have only 3 that would me enough☯️🏡. Ola(Invert), Michelle(Jugs, Aryan jugs), Elif(Turkish Baroque Japanese house). İclal too if we meet.

Even until ±54, 2054. I only need 3 of them. I'm half empty. Ola, I will not go to Sonia or else before my body language is healthy. Also beside so Poles uncle inside, the world is really bigger than me, whatever I'm this and that. And 2023-±2054 will not enough. I just wanted satisfaction which is align with my taste when the Svastika rotare.

Amber Bain, Maya, also not ordinary, It's I need to restore body language. Can't get it to A+ List celeb world for now, my body language.

My childhood is a society, that if you ask questions in the classroom is like wall-street trading.

From notes📝,

Poland, Ola makes me want to, I mean it's enough, who doesn't like to mend w/ it's invert at least for me. Imagining it is so good. Good Lord.

Russia, if girl is beautiful it is so beautiful. But if it's ugly, then it's like construction worker that formed like aunties. No middle ground ever.

Eastern Europe, base operative 😬, once Sarajevo in my note.

Is there any hijabi MENA-Levant-Edirne-Iranian girls that not fat? Mostly that ubiquitous that isn't. I have this thing with with. But it goes both ways.

Hungary, Architecture Revival Roger Scrutopia.

Peaceful Ukraine.

UK, lips surgery, black armpits, Banter.

French, SJWs & angry forever like Beşiktaş. Except Countryside, it's like opposite of US one. French girls is like selected ones it seems, the Chevalier ones, real deal French.

German, Bavarian area only. I'm Orient but, you know the rest. Swiss Alps, with Bavarian girls.

Oceania, if I back South, Alycia Debicki New Lorde.

Irish, Saoirse whilst Hayley visit it too might be, but that's for A+ List kinda thing, I'm half empty guy.

Scottish Highlands, Irish is like reminiscing in high cliffs along the shore hearing the echoes of the waves, whilst dancing in warmth of hospitality in its pub, Scots is highlands, its reverbs sound, Freeedooom!, is shouting in the hills with its reverbs accompanied with rivers in the horizon, it can be as heard the echoes of moaning in PG ratings wit the gals inside a hut in the mountains.

Iceland & Scandinavian, I like cold weather. Only know the girls are blonde. And Vikings, ehm I like to be dominated.

Ehm, domina, back at it again, Scottish Highlands & US Countryside, if one day it is happening, I visualize myself hearing moaning of the girls echoes in Scotland highlands & in campsite of US countryside with its swamps & accompanied by raven sounds, when it's not near the, as I roam in.

Netherland of course, 3/8±. Dicks out for Harambe Dick Winters.

Architecture; Alhambra & Samarkand.

Also, I will stamp your chest w/ numbers📸 & save it. I like to, I have fetish of it. Imagine 1 Google Photos folder with lots of number stamps in the beautiful.

Now I'm rest, hope one day I don't need to being stomped per usual to feel it normal. At least I'm not being punched for being walking anymore. I'm professional in jerking off.

I have peace & able to jerk off. What I need now is no more painting Body Paint mo more. Then maybe I able to find job. My apartment girls not DTF. But I found out recently, I'm not too. Not White Girls.

Alright thats my 10s🇹🇷🇩🇪🇬🇧 with 00s too that there's nothing in it. And that you all know, I make moves 🗺️.

Also I don't even know how to fuck, really. I want to learn but there's always barrier, beside there's no girls for it. I can't even drive a car.

my awesome movie list of 2014:

birdman (dir. alejandro gonzález iñárritu)

the imitation game (dir. morten tyldum)

whiplash (dir. damien chazelle)

interstellar (dir. christopher nolan)

gone girl (dir. ben affleck)

foxcatcher (dir. bennet miller)

wild (dir. jean-marc vallée)

inherent vice (dir. paul thomas anderson)

the theory of everything (dir. james marsh)

the hobbit (dir. peter jackson)

i origins (dir. mike cahill)

the grand budapest hotel (dir. wes anderson)

boyhood (dir. richard linklater)

nightcrawler (dir. dan gilroy)

[witchthewriter]

Hey ! I hope this finds you in good health ☺️ It would be about the ships, for House of the Dragon, Game of thrones & Marvel (with men preferably)

Level : 4

Genre: Afab using She/Her 🌸

Age : 21

Orientation: I wonder, straight i think…

Astrology: Scorpio Sun, Cancer Moon & Libra Rising

Mbit: INTP

Alignement: Charotic Neutral🌗

House: Slytheryn every time

Aesthetic: Academia (light and dark), Royal core, cottage core

Looks: skin is mid-tone-brown like milk-chocolate if I should find a comparison? Naturally shoulder-length 4b dark hair but I straightened them and sports a Hime cut (shoulder blades ??). 160cm, 5.2ft I think?. Russet Brown eyes. Have a pear shaped body, I am overweight but all went to the tits, hips and thighs: my tummy is just lightly pudgy (thank god ?)

Love language: Quality time & Words of affirmation. I fall slowly but I fall so horribly hard that I avoid the possibility, love makes me dumb. From me to a partner, I am Big fan of PDA: would cuddle, hold hand and hug everywhere if the other party is okay with it, lap pillows and head scratches anyone?

Personality: Well my friends find me funny though it’s just me being serious (turns out I kind of like the fact that I can make them laugh without trying though sometimes I know it is I my own expense)

As an eldest child of a West-African family I’ve been a second mom to my siblings as soon as I entered my teen and various other “situations” make me a naturally nurturing and maternal person to those around me. Yes it came with its own set of trauma but okay- Yes I am the mom friend ! Pretty responsible if I say so myself, I love to take care of my dearest ones.

Now… I don’t care about a lot of things and am vocal only around those I am confortable around so people tend to think me calm and patient but I do have a limit and I turn virulent,mean even, when it gets crossed. So I prefer to talk things out as soon as I feel tension or annoyance.

I love drama. Not being caught in it, no I am mostly out of that, but being there when it goes down is chef’s kiss (specially when I called it out 🫢)

I don’t pay strangers and what they think of me no mind. I don’t care. But someone important to me’s opinion is the polar opposite, I get self conscious and angsty over it.

Thing’s I am good at: Singing , drawing, caring for children, cooking & mending clothes !

Trivia :

- Like most of the people here I think, I am multilingual (4 languages)

- love to learn about other cultures (a mythos geek !)

- Love piercings and other then the regular lob I had a smiley pierced and planning on a septum or a nostril

- I attach a lot of worth to gifts (I still have the teddy bear giving to me at birth by my aunt next to my pillow) gift me something and I might keep it for decades !

- Live to read and sleep, I love me a good nap and am a nigh owl : please spare me my mornings 😢

- If I am left alone I sing my days away

- I hate dishonesty and disrespect, one would talk to me wrong once, or worse lie and I’d be done (friendship, romantic, family you name it)

- If one is “worth it” to me I am willing to put my foot down and argue, even if it ends up upsetting that person. I will tell the truth and what I think need to be said in order to help and fix whatever situation it is. Would “fight you to save you” as some say…

- If it were me or the world, I’d choose me. My safety and well-being : is ain’t no hero😅

Want one? Here be the rules 🦋🌈

𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐥

𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

I ship you with Spiderman/Peter Parker! I think you two would be such a cute couple. You would definitely worry about Peter and why he has bruises and injuries. He does like the attention from you.

𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠

・Will write words with his webbing; "I love you", "I miss you"

・He rests his chin on your head when you hug/cuddle

・When he goes off on missions you feel like you can't breathe until he comes back. But every time he does, he has something for you - a necklace, a book, a trinket etc

𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈:

↬ Flying with Mother by John Powell

𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒔:

↬ Puppy Dog Eyes

𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢

He loves when you sing, he could listen to it all day. Even if you aren't the best singer, he really doesn't care. He just likes to hear you.

𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑

Your best friend would be Wanda! I think your personalities are similar in some ways, and you would be a nurturing person she can turn to.

𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬

𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

I ship you with Podrick! He is so overlooked, like he has never done anything wrong??? He is such a sweetheart and so incredibly loyal. He would definitely fall first, especially at first sight, and you would be on his mind non-stop.

𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠

・Will help you dress in the morning, and undress at night

・Does a lot of things for you - washing your clothes, drying and folding them. Plating up your dinner, filling your cup. Until you realise it's because he was a squire for so long. You then tell him he doesn't have to do that, he can relax.

・He's more of a listener than a talker, but once he had too much wine and he wouldn't stop talking. He admitted so much to you, and that would've been the moment he let out that he loves you

𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈:

↬ The Train by James Newton Howard

𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒔:

↬ Love At First Sight

𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢

He loves when you get passionate about something and rant about it. He would listen to you talk all day. You're just perfect in his eyes.

𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑

Your best friend would be Sansa Stark; she would feel like she could be honest with you, without worrying about backlash. Being honest is something that she rarely grew up with at King's Landing.

𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧

𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

I ship you with Harwin Strong! I honestly think he is the least problematic and most wholesome man in this universe.

𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑜𝑛𝑠

・You feel very safe in his arms - he's so tall and strong that you feel invincible. He likes PDA and wouldn't care who was watching, he would hold you as close as possible.

・Always offers his arm, literally all the time. You slip your arm between his and he holds you close to him as you walk

・You guys would totally marry and it would be such a gorgeous wedding! He's the type of guy to cry when he sees his wife walk down the aisle

𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈:

↬ Nancy From Now On by Father John Misty

𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒔:

↬ Childhood Marriage Promise

𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑣𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢

Your maternal personality and how you take the role of the mom friend in the group.

𝑌𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑑

Your best friend would be Alicent, I think you both have a lot of responsibility thrust on your shoulders and can see the freedom of others with jealous eyes.

[stvvlblcde]

º ✧ 。–––  [  millie brady  ,  thirty  ,  cisfemale  ,  she/her  ]  welcome  MELONY ROYCE ,  the  LADY OF RUNESTONE  ,  to  king's  landing  !  the  ravens  have  carried  word  of  their  - AMBITIOUS  and  - RETICENT nature  ,  but  we  have  high  hopes  that  their + ARDENT  and  + DAUNTLESS  qualities  will  shine  through  .  when  you  think  of  them  ideas  of  watching dusk break into dawn from the small of your window,  girlhood forfeited in lieu of greatness, softly demanding the best of others, the choice between contentment and endless ambition come  to  mind  .   they  are  arriving  to  the  red  keep  ,  OPPOSITION  TO  house  velaryon  .  we  do  hope  that  whatever  happens  ,  they  play  the  game  wisely  .

tw death.

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒 .

name : melony royce. ( lony to those dear to her ).

title ( s ) : lady of runestone.

age : thirty.

orientation : bisexual.

religion : faith of the seven.

loyalty : house royce.

height : 5′6″. / 167cm

hair color : chestnut brown.

eye color : green.

𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐓𝐑𝐄𝐄 .

martial status : unwed & unbetrothed.

children  :  none.

father : former ruling lord andar royce. ( deceased. )

mother : former ruling lady royce. ( deceased. )

siblings : ruling lord orys royce, lord/lady/liege utp royce, liege petra royce.

𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 .

the second babe born to house royce entered the world shrieking far louder than the bells that rang in the ports. it was a warning call for the precocious child that melony would grow to be, for she was constantly asking questions and tugging on her mother’s skirts to ask why her brother got lessons she was not allowed to attend. the woman, ever kind and gentle towards her children, guided her curious daughter towards the library and the vast amount of stories that resided there. gifting melony with a hunger for knowledge that she still carries to this day.

growing up, her eldest brother was her first best friend- a bond forming between the pair that made them near inseparable. often following after orys, going from crawling to running so that she may chase after him easier. this is a trait that melony still carries to this day, eyes nearly always searching for her brother’s reaction and guidance first in most situations. when their mother died it was him that she gravitated to for comfort more than their father.

when their mother passed, melony felt as if a piece of her heart was gone with her. merely a young girl when it all happened, the shift in who their father once was terrified her at first. seeking out brother as she had done before, but with the new knowledge that they had those younger than them to protect. melony knew she could not save their brother from his wrath, so she shifted herself to shield the younger ones as orys had always done before. following his example once more,

now, several years older and wiser, melony is incredibly proud of her family and what have they done, but a part of her wishes for more. the harsh words their father had called her, called them to her, are still an echoing voice in the back of her mind. a piece of her wants, needs, to prove the dead man wrong. to help her brother achieve something greater than themselves because of it. the woman is fiercely loyal and protective of her siblings, daring anyone to be anything but kind to them, less they feel her wrath and cutting words.

melony is more guarded with her feelings outside of her family now, keeping her true opinions primarily to herself or the few she’s holds dearest to her. she always has a kind smile and a listening ear, but whether or not she tells the advice is another thing altogether.

while she has no desire to engage in this courting game with the prince, melony has entertained the invitation if only to hopefully spare her other siblings. she knows orys does not wish to force any of them into a false marriage, she knows that declining such an “ honor “ would look distasteful. and while she despises the velaryons for what they did to ceria’s brother, she knows they cannot risk seeking the crown’s wrath currently.

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 .

broken betrothal (s): this was something that ended within the past few years, we can plot out whatever you want! 

past and/or current flings: self explantory but mostly a physical connection on surface levels, because melony does not trust easily. 

pen pals: people that she met the few times she visited court or stayed with the baratheons in stormlands, she adores writing letters and often sent two pages each time, 

friends!! 

this is my biggest weakness tbh. i run out of steam and don’t know what to write

[theladyofdeath]

Heels {Rowaelin}

The prompt: walks in front of their crush in stripper heals and a short skirt because they want their attention

Rowan x Aelin os

Written with @snelbz​

There was no way this could be a good idea.

Aelin was sitting on her bed, watching as Lysandra flicked through her closet. She had told her that tonight was the night and had recruited her to help her do what she considered nearly impossible.

She was going to get the attention of Rowan Whitethorn.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know she existed, it was quite the opposite. He was one of her friends, having met during orientation week their freshman year, and as their group grew, so did their friendship. But after three and a half years, she had very solidly gotten her stuck as just that: his friend.

“You’re wasting your time,” Aelin crooned, flipping through the timeline on her phone. 

“Bullshit,” Lysandra muttered, flipping through the clothes in her closet. “You need to feel confident, Aelin. Rowan is obsessed with you, and you’re obsessed with him. This whole thing is ridiculous.”

Aelin rolled her eyes, but remained quiet. 

“How about this?” Lysandra asked, pulling out a denim mini skirt and black halter cropped top. As Aelin was about to reply, Lysandra said, “Say nothing. Put it on.”

With a roll of her eyes, yet again, Aelin did as much. Once she had the skirt and top on, she looked in the mirror. 

And she looked hot as hell.

“Shoes?” Aelin asked, despite herself. 

“Oh, I have the perfect heels,” Lysandra said, fleeing from the room. She came back a moment later with a pair of black stilettos that were Aelin’s  size. 

Scoffing, Aelin held them up. “I’m going to break my neck.”

Lysandra snorted and flounced back into the bathroom where she continued to straighten her hair. “You’re exaggerating.”

“Fine,” Aelin amended. “I’m going to break my ankle.” She set the shoes on her bed and joined Lysandra in the bathroom to finish getting ready.

She let Lysandra curl her hair, but drew the line when she offered to do her makeup. They had very different styles when it came to that and while Lysandra looked drop dead gorgeous with her cat-eye liner and ruby red lips, Aelin would never be able to pull it off.

“Where is this party even at?” Lysandra asked, pulling her hair back into a stylish ponytail.

“Lorcan’s.” Aelin was trying to keep her hand steady as she applied the thin line of liquid eyeliner to her upper lid. “I think Elide convinced him to throw it.”

Lysandra snorted, applying her mascara.  “Sounds right. Lorcan isn’t exactly the host-type.”

Aelin grinned, tossing her eyeliner in her makeup bag. “Alright, hurry up. I want to make my entrance.”

With a roll of her eyes, Lysandra took one last look in the mirror and declared herself ready and they were off.

Lorcan’s apartment was just on the edge of campus, so the two girls walked and earned the eager glances of many as they did so.

Aelin took it as a good sign.

“Will Aedion be here tonight?” Lysandra asked, shooting a glance over at Aelin.

She groaned. “Probably.” She still couldn’t believe that her roommate actually had the hots for her cousin. He was practically her brother and the thought of him in any sort of compromising position made her want to gag. “If you hook up with him tonight, please do it at his place. I can’t afford therapy on my barista’s salary.”

“Trust me,” Lysandra said, adjusting her ponytail as they approached the steps to Lorcan’s. “I plan on giving you complete privacy at the apartment tonight. And you better take advantage of it.”

Butterflies grew in the pit of Aelin’s stomach. 

She planned to, hoped to, wanted to…but, she had to catch Rowan’s eye first - something that made her nerves go haywire. 

Lysandra must have caught it, because they stopped outside of Lorcan’s door and Lysandra made Aelin face her. 

“You look gorgeous,” she said, and brushed Aelin’s hair back. “He’d be an idiot not to come after you.”

That was the goal, after all. Aelin was not going to be the one doing the chasing. She wanted Rowan to see her, want her, not be able to take his eyes off of her. She knew he’d be here, the party was at his best friend’s apartment, knew that everyone from their friend group would show up. Yet she was absolutely fucking terrified he’d see her and have zero reaction.

She played it off with a joke though. Scoffing, she tossed her hair over a shoulder. “He’d better. I didn’t book an emergency appointment with my waxer for nothing.”

If Lysandra noticed the fake bravado — which she absolutely did, she and Aelin had become as close as sisters over the past three years — she didn’t call her out on it. Instead, she smirked, smacked Aelin on the ass, and said, “Then let’s go get your man.”

The music could be heard from a block away, and when they opened the front door, the apartment was already packed.

People definitely noticed them come in, though, including Elide who was running towards them, a drink in hand. “It’s about time you two showed up!”

“The host himself isn’t here to greet us?” Aelin mocked, giving Elide a hug.

Elide chuckled as she rolled her eyes. “He’s been out on the balcony for about a half hour, avoiding all human interaction.”

“Sounds about right,” Lysandra replied, rolling her eyes, but then she began looking around the spacious townhouse Lorcan and Elide shared. “You haven’t seen Aedion tonight, have you?”

Elide gave Aelin a knowing glance, but said, “Last I saw, he was playing beer pong with Fenrys. Don’t know who the poor bastards getting their asses handed to them were, but they’re probably still in the kitchen.”

Lysandra gave Aelin a wink. “Good luck.” And then she was gone, lost in the bodies dancing to the music.

Her part in tonight was done, to help Aelin get Rowan’s attention. It was all up to Aelin now, so Lysandra was free to find someone to occupy her own time. Even if the thought of who she’d be with made Aelin want to shudder.

Alone with Aelin, or as close to it as they could be, Elide let out a low whistle as she finally took in Aelin’s outfit. “I have a feeling that outfit isn’t just to impress me.”

“Does that mean you’re not impressed?” Aelin asked, pretending to pout. 

Elide looped her arm through Aelin’s and led her to the bar. “I’m always impressed, but I don’t think you care so much about my opinion, do you?”

Aelin snorted as she began to look around, but Elide saved her the struggle.

“He’s on the patio with Lor,” Elide said, simply. “Don’t worry. I’ll drag his ass back in here soon and Rowan will follow.”

Elide poured them both a shot, which Aelin gladly took and even asked for another. But when Manon and Asterin Blackbeak showed up, she waved Elide off to go greet her friends, and leaned against the bar, debating on a third shot.

She wasn’t trying to get shitty tonight, just a little messy, but her nerves were beginning to grow again.

Just as she decided to say fuck it, and get another shot, and heard a whistle from behind her. She turned and found Dorian Havilliard staring at her legs.

Or maybe he was staring at her ass.

They had messed around her freshman year, when his dorm room was just down the hall from hers, but it had never been anything more than that between them, and they agreed that they were better as friends. It didn’t mean they didn’t have fun though.

She smirked as she tossed the glass back and set it down on the bar top, before turning to him. “See anything you like?”

“I see quite a few things I like,” he said, raising his drink in salute. “Then again, only a fourth of your skin is covered, so there’s a lot to look at.”

Aelin laughed, quietly, and clinked her empty shot glass against his full bottle. “Gotta show off what the gods gave me.”

“As you should,” he agreed with a wink. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”

“Well, it is school, and I actually study,” Aelin said, turning to refill her shot glass.

Dorian had the audacity to look offended. “Hey, I study, too.”

Aelin laughed as she turned back around. “Reading a bunch of books that have nothing to do with any of your classes doesn’t count as studying, Dor.”

“But they’re so much more interesting,” he replied, chuckling as he thought of the boring curriculum he studied for his pre-law degree.

Aelin rolled her eyes as she tossed back the shot and set it behind the bar. Four shots was enough. She’d be fun, she’d be confident, but she wasn’t tipsy enough to make an ass of herself.

Yet.

“I assume all of this skin isn’t for me, so who are you trying to impress?” Dorian asked, and then added, with a wink, “Chaol?”

Huffing a laugh, Aelin shook her head. “Absolutely not. That ended in a disaster and I’m not inclined to repeat it.”

The sliding glass door opened and Aelin’s eyes snapped to the door, before she quickly turned away before Lorcan and Rowan stepped inside.

“Oh,” Dorian chuckled, softly. “Whitethorn then.”

It wasn’t a question.

He had moved imperceptibly closer and she knew how it would look to Rowan. For whatever reason, she decided she wanted him to be jealous she was talking to another guy.

Even if she had no idea whether or not he’d even noticed her.

“Is this who I am now?” Dorian asked, quietly, leaning into her ear, fully aware that it looked like he was coming onto her. “Your super hot wingman?”

Aelin snorted, and didn’t bother moving away. “My overly cocky wingman, maybe.”

Dorian huffed a laugh. “I still take it as a compliment.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be flirting up Manon instead of fake flirting with me?” Aelin whispered, quietly. She glanced at Rowan, who was filling up a red solo cup.

“I like to make Manon wait,” Dorian said, running a finger up Aelin’s forearm. “She gets jealous, too, and it makes things so much more exciting in the bedroom.”

“Thanks for the image, Dor,” Aelin said, pushing away the need to roll her eyes and flick him in the nose.

He and Manon weren’t exclusively in a relationship, but everyone knew they hooked up with each other, and only each other. But, again, totally not exclusive.

“Besides,” Dorian mused, his finger skimming Aelin’s arm. “She’s busy doing body shots with Asterin. I’ll enjoy her later.”

Aelin snorted, reaching behind the bar and pulling an ice cold beer from the open cooler. She handed it to him and he opened it for her, flicking the cap in the air as if it were a coin.

He let it fall to the bar top as he leaned in to whisper in her ear one last time. “Pretty sure that’s my cue.”

She followed his gaze across the room, and found Rowan looking at her. Watching her and Dorian both.

“Have fun,” he added, before sauntering off towards the kitchen.

Rowan watched Dorian walk away to the other side of the room where he sat to watch Aedion and Fenrys continue to dominate in beer pong.

When Rowan’s eyes trailed back to Aelin, she was already watching him, a slightly-forced mischievous smile on her lips.

On the inside, she felt like she was going to puke.

He made his way across the room, pausing in front of her and slipped his free hand into his pocket. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” she said, and she wasn’t sure why it sounded so breathless.

“I didn’t see you get here,” he said, taking a sip of his beer.

She did the same, fighting the urge to toss her hair over a shoulder. “You were outside.” She realized that told him she was keeping tabs on him and she quickly added. “I mean, Elide told me Lorcan was outside, so I assumed you had to be with him.”

He smirked. “Right. Well, I was. It’s a little crowded in here.” She nodded, but he went on. “However, seems like you didn’t mind when Havilliard was over here with you. Not too crowded for you, then, huh?” 

Aelin slowly lifted a golden brow. If Rowan wanted to play, she would play. “Not crowded enough for someone to be blocking your view of me with Dorian, apparently.”

A light lit up Rowan’s green eyes as his jaw twitched, suppressing a grin. “I can always count on you to manipulate my words and their meaning, Galathynius.”

Aelin’s grin was wide. “Someone has to keep you in your place, Whitethorn.” 

“And is that you?” He asked, voice low as he took a drink from his cup. “The person that’s going to keep me in my place?”

Aelin’s eyes glittered as she took another drink. It was always easy with Rowan. They could talk for hours, that witty banter, back and forth. But, that’s all that had ever happened between them: simple conversation. 

From the way she caught him watching her legs as she took a drink, though, she thought tonight may just end up as she planned.

A hell of a lot more than simple conversation.

“Want to dance?” She asked.

His eyes slowly slid up her body to meet her gaze. “You know I don’t dance, Ace.”

She took a long, slow drink from her bottle. “Not even with me?”

“Not with anyone,” he said, crossing his arms and resting a hip against the bar.

It was a miracle no one had interrupted them, but the bulk of the drinks had been set up in the kitchen.

“That’s a shame,” Aelin sighed, finishing off her beer and tossing the empty bottle in the trash can. “I would love to dance, but I don’t have anyone to dance with.”

Rowan said, “I’m sure you can find someone, especially with how you’re dressed tonight.”

She raised an eyebrow and looked at him. “And how is that?”

“Don’t get me wrong, you look drop dead fucking sexy,” he replied, without missing a beat. “I just don’t get why.”

“What do you mean?” Aelin asked.

“Why try so hard?” He asked, head cocked to the side. “Who are you trying to impress?”

Cocky bastard. She could see it in his eyes, he knew what he was doing and she hated him for it.

Hated that she loved it, anyway.

“What need would I have to impress anyone?” Aelin asked, chin raised. “I think I’m naturally perfect in every way.”

Rowan chuckled. “Then you should’ve come in your sweatpants and a tank top.”

Aelin rose a brow.

Rowan shrugged. “I think that’s when you’re sexiest.”

With that, with his cup pressed to his lips, he turned and walked away.

Aelin blinked after him, not sure she was sure she heard him right. He made his way through the people and headed back to the door leading out onto the balcony, stopping to say something to Lorcan. He waved him off and then Rowan was slipping back outside, while Aelin just started after him.

She pushed her way through the crowd, which was easier said than done when you weren’t a six-foot-four giant who mildly scared the shit out of everyone by scowling at them, but she eventually made it to the door. Sliding it open, she stepped out into the balmy night air.

“You can’t say shit like that and then just disappear,” Aelin said, finding him exactly how she’d expected to.

Rowan was leaned against the wall, the sole of one booted foot pressed against it as well. A lit cigarette dangled from his fingers. She gave him shit about smoking all the time, but knew he only did it when he drank.

Or when he had something on his mind.

He held the cigarette out to her, but she gave him a look. “You know better than to offer me that.”

Rowan just grinned and put it back between his lips. “You’re missing the party.” 

“What did you mean?” Aelin asked, standing opposite of him, leaning against the railing. 

“When?” he asked, looking up at the sky.

“Don’t bullshit me, Rowan,” she snapped, and it got his attention. 

Blowing a puff of smoke into the cool night air, he met her gaze and slowly shook his head. He gestured to her outfit, to the heels that were making her feet ache. “What is this?”

“They’re clothes,” she said. “For a party.”

“They’re Lysandra’s,” he replied, simply. 

“I can’t wear my roommate’s clothes?” Aelin scoffed. “What the hell is wrong with you tonight-.”

“Why can’t you just admit that you’re just trying to impress someone?” he interrupted, watching her, that light in his eye fading. “You’ve never been not-confident a day in your life. Whoever it is that you’re trying to impress, he obviously isn’t worth it if it causes you to be someone you’re not.”

Aelin looked down at the cropped halter top, the skirt that hardly reached her thighs, the heels that she was certain would cause blisters. “This is someone I’m not?”

Rowan slowly shook his head. “Last time we went out, you wore that little golden slip dress….” He shook his head, reminiscing on the memory. “That was you. You wore sneakers and you were still barefoot halfway through the night, dancing on the patio. What you’re wearing now - yeah, you look gorgeous - but I can tell you’re not comfortable in it.” 

“If I’m trying to get someone’s attention, maybe my usual isn’t best. Especially if it pushes me out of my comfort zone,” she snapped back, her hands on her hips. “And why is it such a problem if I’m trying to impress someone? Dorian was impressed.”

“Dorian doesn’t drool all over you like a dog in heat,” he replied. “He respects you, regardless of what you’re wearing, how much skin you’re showing off. But if you’re trying to impress some D bag who will only notice you if you’re dressed like that, you might want to reconsider.”

“And what if I was trying to impress you?” She asked, getting in his face, cigarette smoke and whiskey breath be damned. “What if I was trying to get your attention, Rowan?”

His jaw locked and his eyes searched hers, as if he was trying to find the underlying meaning in what she was saying, even if there wasn’t one. 

“Then you’d be wasting your time,” he said, at last.

It felt like a knife had been shoved into Aelin’s ribs with every word that had come out of his mouth. Begging herself not to cry in front of him, she went to take a step away, but Rowan grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to him.

Their chests were nearly touching, and his hand trailed from her wrist, into her hand, interlocking his fingers with hers.

He took the cigarette from his lips and said, “You’d be wasting your time because you impress me every time that I’m around you.”

“You never act like it,” she breathed, shaking her head. “You never do anything, and you’ve never tried to make a move. What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

He flicked the cigarette over the rail and let go of her hand, only to frame her face with both of his. “This.”

And then his lips were on hers, and Aelin didn’t care that she could taste residual smoke or stale beer. She knew she didn’t taste much better. All that mattered was that Rowan was kissing her and his hands were on her face and hers were tangled up in his shirt. His tongue slid against hers and she had to fight to stop the moan that threatened to slip out of her.

He pulled back, resting his forehead against hers. “That,” he said, breathlessly. “That is what you should have done to get my attention.”

Aelin swallowed, harshly. “Do it again.”

Rowan didn’t have to be convinced. His hands slid down her back as he brought his mouth to hers, and he pulled her body uptight against his. They stayed out there for a long time, for hours, uninterrupted. 

At one point, she saw Dorian come by and lock the balcony door, so everyone else would get the hint to stay the hell away.

Wingman of the year.

They stayed on the balcony, kissing and laughing and kissing some more, until the party wound down. Around two, Lorcan let them inside, and Aelin pulled Rowan out of the apartment and across campus to her own. 

True to Lysandra’s word, she was nowhere to be found.

The second Aelin stepped into her apartment, she kicked off her heels and was swept into Rowan’s arms. He carried her into her bedroom, where he stripped her down, out of her roommate’s clothes.

Rowan Whitethorn saw all of her.

She had his full attention. 

[quinn-mathison]

[ Jacob Dudman, Male, He/Him ] whatever you think you know about QUINN MATHISON, the 24 (26 ACTUAL) year old, BISEXUAL, LOCAL, it is likely time for you to start reconsidering. the rumored HELLHOUND is often described as KIND HEARTED + PROTECTIVE, but don’t let them fool you; they can also be NAIVE + RESERVED, which often has them regarded as the THE RELUCTANT. they are a CLERK at CLEAR CRYSTALS, but it’s also said they are a ROGUE within the HELLHOUNDS. whatever you hear, you can’t deny there’s more to them that meets the eye, and it’s time we start uncovering the truth. ( nate, 24, he/him, pacific )

Basics

Name: Quinn Isaiah Mathison

Nickname(s): Q, Pup

Age: 26 (eternally 24)

Title: The Reluctant

Sexual Orientation: Bisexual

Occupation: Store Clerk

Family: Selene (mother), Malcolm (father), Kol, Elisia, Lance  (siblings)

Appearance

Height: 5′11″

Hair Color: Black

Eye Color: Brown

Personality

Alignment: Neutral Good

Background

Quinn's family save himself and his father are all witches. Despite lacking the gift of magic, he has learned a few tricks and and methods from his witch family members even if it is more for the sake of knowledge than anything else. His family's background is the reason he has his current job.

Two years ago, Quinn was caught up in a backfired spell cast by one of his sibilings. Saving their life put his own in danger and for a couple of minutes, his heart stopped beating. It was during this time that he made his deal with the Hellhound that now inhibits his body.

Quinn has been living with the Hellhound for the past two years. Although he doesn't know much about it, he knows it is the polar opposite of him. Aggressive while he is timid, vicious while he is caring. Other than having a capable body, he has little knowledge why the hellhound came to him when he was dying. To this day, Quinn is still reluctant to acknowledge the creature within him however, a small bond is beginning to form between them from the few times the beast has protected him when he needed it to.

[spogo1]

TS4 Style Legacy Challenge

A challenge based on the clothing styles in CAS.

Gen 1: Basic

Traits: Loner, Paranoid, Family Oriented

Aspiration: Super Parent

Career: Freelance Writer

Skill: Parenting

You were raised in a conservative family with strict rules and guidelines, and so you always had a tough time breaking out from your shell. You try to be open-minded and try new things, but it’s not easy.

Marry and have at least three children. Middle child of your choice is heir.

Set curfews for your children and always discipline negative behavior.

Help children with homework and projects.

Work comes second, your children come first.

Gen 2: Country

Traits: Loves the Outdoors, Self Assured, Ambitious

Aspiration: Freelance Botanist

Career: Gardener

Skill: Gardening

You grew up not knowing much about other lifestyles, and so when you became a young adult you dove into the unknown. You moved out and started a farm! Growing up, you and your siblings had to share your parents’ attention. You decide to have only one child, and you absolutely spoil them.

Lot must have Off the Grid trait.

Marry someone “unconventional” (Someone your parent won’t entirely approve of) and have only one child. Give them whatever their heart desires.

Spouse must stay acquaintances with Sim from Gen 1.

 Gen 3:  Preppy

Traits: Romantic, Gloomy, Family Oriented

Aspiration: Soulmate

Career: Actress

Skill: Mixology

You never wanted for anything growing up, but you were never properly taught right from wrong either. Your parent doted on you to no end, and you became accustomed to doing whatever you pleased. You become pregnant in high school and marry your baby daddy, desperately wanting a perfect family. Your spouse didn’t intend to get stuck with you forever though, and constantly cheats on you. You find out, but don’t divorce him, clinging to the illusion of the perfect family you’ve created. Instead, you develop a serious drinking problem.

Date someone in high school, get pregnant, then get married to your baby daddy.

Baby daddy must have Noncommittal trait. Have him cheat on you with several different women, and have your Sim walk in on him once.

After you find out, buy a bar and make drink after drink. Drink everything you make, no matter the quality.

Never divorce your spouse.

 Gen 4: Rock

Traits: Music Lover, Loner, Dance Machine

Aspiration: Musical Genius

Career: Musician

Skill: Guitar or Piano

Your childhood was largely spent in your room, avoiding your alcoholic mother and your infidel father. You turned to music in times of sorrow, and got a part-time job in high school. You saved up every last penny and moved out immediately after graduation, into a tiny apartment in the city. At first it’s almost tougher than it was back home, until you get your big break. You sleep around a lot and become pregnant twice, to two different men. Then you find someone you want to spend your life with. You settle down with them.

Get a part-time job as a teen. Save to buy a guitar or keyboard, then save to move out.

Move into an apartment as soon as you become a young adult.

Only busk for tips until Music skill is level 5. Then you get discovered by a record label and join the Musician career.

Have two children to two different Sims. Don’t marry either baby daddy.

Marry someone with one trait in common with you, but don’t have children with them. Stop sleeping around after second child is born.

 Gen 5: Hipster

Traits: Active, Vegetarian, Outgoing

Aspiration: Friend of the World

Career: Athlete

Skill: Wellness

You take a page from your parent’s book, and embrace who you are and what you want to become. You reclaim your great-grandparent’s farm and fix it up. You work on yourself, learning the art of yoga and meditation. Eventually you decide you want a child, and you call on your best friend to help you out. You happily raise the child together.

Move into the farm from Gen 2.

Set up a daily schedule. Decide when your Sim meditates and exercises and eats every day.

Make a best friend of the opposite sex. As Adults, make a baby together. When the kid is a toddler start sharing custody. It can be divided however you like, as long as it’s equal.

Lot must have Off the Grid trait. No technology.

Every meal is healthy and nutritious!

 Gen 6: Polished

Traits: Perfectionist, Neat, Ambitious

Aspiration: Mansion Baron

Career: Critic

Skill: Charisma

Your parents were hippies who never settled down, but you know exactly what you want. You want to be successful. You work hard in school and go to University, and then become a critic. Your home is immaculate; everything must always be in its place. You don’t like children, so you never have any.

Get A’s in grade and high school. Go to University of your choice. You may stay in a dorm, but your area must be kept spotless. You have OCD.

Work hard and graduate, then get a job straight away. Build up your house until you complete the Mansion Baron aspiration.

Never marry or have kids. If you want you can adopt one pet, but they must be spayed or neutered.

Welp, that’s it! Constructive criticism and feedback are appreciated!

[the-silentium]

In Emergency Only

Masterlist

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Reader

Words: 2120 words

Warnings: TUA season 1 and 2 spoilers, violence, blood, sexual innuendos. 

Requested by: Anon!

Your last fic about Five was so good!!  Loved your unique twist you added and the interactions were so believable. Definitely one of my fav fics! If requests are open, could you do one of the same reader reacting to Five fighting and kicking ass, would they fight too or just hang out in the back and wait? Big fan and I love your work

A/N: Still 30 years old Five here! Same Reader and Five as in Doppelganger! Sorry for the title, I really had no idea. Oups.

The music playing in the background brought a smile to your face. You loved to learn more about different cultures and their different people dancing the Polka almost made you regret the reason of your little visit. You swore that this woman, the Handler, had Five in the middle of her palm, enraging your boyfriend to no end, but he sucked up his ego and accepted her deal to save his family. 

You followed Five through the enormous cabin. The architecture was truly beautiful, catching your eyes quite easily. You were occupied by admiring an intriguing animal carved into the wood that you didn’t see Five stopping in front of a vending machine and slammed into his side. He was quick to get a hold of your arms before you fell to the ground and hurt your behind, pulling you into his chest with a seductive smile on his kissable lips. 

“Distracted?” 

You rolled your eyes at him before pecking his lips. “I just like slamming into you.” Five’s groan made you chuckle before you turned your attention to the assortment of snacks displayed behind the glass. 

“See something you want?” Five buried his face into your neck, tickling you with his warm breath. Giggling, you pushed him away and pointed to a chocolate bar in the middle of the display. It has been a while since you last ate some, so you figured why not? You knew that you were sitting this one out, so eating would not be a problem. 

“Please?” You offered him your best puppy eyes, although you knew that it wasn't necessary. He asked you first after all. 

“Sure.” He pecked your lips one last time, turned to the machine while digging some money in his pocket and inserted the coins into the slot. He pressed the letter and number assigned to the candy and karma decided to hit you by stopping the spiral metal thing before the sweet could fall down. 

Frustrated, Five tried typing in the code again, without success. You knew that at this point in time, Five was getting pretty impatient. The last days haven’t been easy on him, especially when you almost got shot by one of the Swedes and every one of his siblings was scattered around town and not listening to him, causing Five to get irritated pretty easily. 

You grabbed his arm to calm him down when he started to push the machine and pulled him along with you to the cake further down the hallway. The only way to calm down Five was to allow him to successfully grant your wishes of eating something and the cake would do just fine. 

You quickly dipped your pointer finger into the icing, turned to him and when he opened his mouth to voice his anger you shut him up by putting your finger into his mouth. His pissed-off expression soon morphed into a cocky one when he noticed the red coloring your cheeks, proceeding to see if the color could reach your neck by sucking harder on your finger. Embarrassed by his antics, you retrieved your hand and hid your face in his chest. 

“This icing is heavenly.” He chuckled before reaching for something behind your back. “Look up.” You reluctantly did as told, dreading what you would find. Instead of being hit square in the face by a hand full of icing like you feared, a single maraschino cherry dangled between Five’s fingers, two inches away from your mouth. Instantly, your mouth started to water, the sweet ingredient had always been your favorite part of a dessert. “Open up.”

You would have blushed if it wasn’t for your excitement of eating the prized cherry. You didn’t hesitate to tilt your head and open your mouth to the incoming sweet, a delighted moan filled Five’s ears when you grabbed the fruit between your teeth and chewed.

“Now that’s a sound I like to hear.” The bliss of the cherry moment now over, your blush came back full force at his innuendo. You weren’t used to his flirty attitude, he was gone for 17 years and as young teenagers, your relationship wasn’t really oriented in that direction. You had to remind yourself that he was, in fact, 58 years old regardless of his physical appearance. 

A kiss fell on your cheek and Five let go of you to make his way to the fire axe on the opposite wall. 

“Do you think preventing the end of the world is enough of an emergency?” 

You smiled at his question and nodded once in approbation. “Definitely.” 

He winked at you before grabbing the axe with both hands and walked into the room. He passed in front of you and you took care of closing the door after yourself, this time your job was to keep watch and stop anyone from entering the room. Because it was the Commission’s board that was targeted, Five had thought it wise to take the matter into his own hands and keep you out of it. 

You weren’t against it, the memory of the barrel of an automatic rifle pressed at the back of your head was still pretty vivid and every time you thought about it you had goosebumps. In other circumstances, you were sure that you would have participated in some kind of way. Maybe with a knife or something, the fire axe was definitely out of your mental capacity. 

You had helped Five in some of his fights before. Not every fight, but some of them. You were impressed by the amount of bloody fighting your boyfriend could be engaged in and were truly amazed that every time he would get out almost without a scratch. 

Back at Griddy’s, you had to hide behind the counter where Five teleported you and wait until he had neutralized every armed guy in the room. You knew how to defend yourself, having followed some training with the Hargreeves when you were kids, but your skills were useless when guns were involved. This was the very first time you had seen the extent of Five’s ability. Never would you have thought that his space-jumping would be that effective. 

Then there was the fight with the Swedes in the Mexican consulate. The absence of guns gave you the opportunity to land some punch to the tough Swedes hitting the shit out of your boyfriend, the perfect distraction for him to throw the white-haired out the window. You hissed out of empathy for the guy before fist-bumping with Five and space-jump outside. 

Screams erupted from the room Five recently entered. Curiously, you made your way to the open doors to assess what you were sure was a gory scene. In the 2 seconds it took you to reach the doors, Five had already neutralized 4 of the board members and was quickly axing his way further into the room. You’ve never feared blood, your uncle had a butcher shop and you helped sometimes to put the meat into packages, nothing too dangerous, and while you helped you had seen the carcass of different animals being emptied from their organs so you were certain that you could handle whatever was happening in the next room. 

A blue spot flashed before your eyes and Five appeared at the same time a man hit a wall and fell down with a lamp. You rolled your eyes when Five took the time to take a sip from a glass, the next thing you knew a guy was hanging from the ceiling and three more board members were dead in a pool of blood. As much as you hated the view of dismembered bodies, you had to admit that Five was pretty efficient in his work. You managed to make eye contact with your boyfriend when he stopped for a second behind the last Commissioner, Five shooed you with one hand so you obeyed. If he thought that you couldn’t handle it, then you couldn’t. End of story. You had to admit that the sound of the axe hitting the bones was pretty disturbing, the sound occasionally made you shiver in disgust. 

You had your back pressed to the closed doors separating the bloody scene worthy of a horror movie and the welcoming Polka party, patiently waiting for your boyfriend to return victorious when a man with a fish tank as head stopped running when he saw you. If possible, you were as stunned as he was. You weren’t prepared to face a non-human person and he clearly wasn't prepared to see someone guarding the exit. 

However, he was faster than you to regain his senses and try to push past you. His sudden movements made you jump, his hands were almost on your arm when Five appeared in front of you and pushed the weird robot-man-fish away from you. 

“Surely we can come to some form of agreement that benefits both parties.” Your eyes widen at the voice, not expecting the fish to be able to talk. You tilted your head to the side so that you were able to see over Five’s shoulder and take a second look at the panicking talking goldfish. “Quid pro quo? What do you say?” Oh. His hope was cute. 

“Why not? Here’s your quid.” Five hit the human body’s leg with what you noted wasn’t the fire axe but something that looked like a cricket bat. “Here’s your pro.” He hit him again on the opposite leg. “Here’s your quo.” Five charged his hit as much as he could without hitting you with the bat, the fish’s pleas reaching your ears, then Five smashed the tank as hard as he could. The glass exploded, water got everywhere, the body fell to the ground in a thud and the goldfish dropped to the ground. 

As Five took a deep breath, you carefully stroked his back in a soothing manner before crouching to retrieve the gasping fish. You already had a bag ready for it, looking around you found a vase proudly showing off its beautiful purple flowers. You disposed of the flowers and poured the vase’s water into your plastic bag. Turning around you met your boyfriend with the fish’s tail trapped between his fingers, its head facing the ground. Hurriedly, you made your way toward them as you felt bad for the little thing convulsing out of the water.

“Poor little fishy! Put it quickly in the water!” You couldn’t help yourself and enveloped Five’s hand with the bag so the fish could be in his appropriate environment. 

“It’s far from being a ‘poor little fishy’ you know? It planned for the apocalypse to happen and ordered hundreds of people’s death.” He said letting go of the fish’s tail. 

You closed the bag so it wouldn’t escape and smiled sheepishly. “I guess I still can’t accept that a fish can talk. Or be at the head of an organization of killers.” You brought the bag at eye level to analyze the goldfish closer and sure enough, the fish was staring right at you. “I guess it does seem intelligent-” You paused as the fish nodded at your words. You controlled your surprise and smiled sweetly at him. “Can we name him sushi?”

The fish started to swim in circles, hitting the bag from time to time making you laugh at his apparent anger. A hand got a hold of the bag, taking the little burden out of your hands. At this moment you noticed that Five’s eyes were dull, their bright spark gone with every life he took. Worry etched your features, you reached for his empty hand and squeezed lightly hoping to give him some sort of comfort. He shot a small smile your way despite his eyes still being emotionless. 

Your heart broke for him, all this time he was forced to kill against his will and it ate at his soul. Oh how you wished you had a special ability like him and had the capacity to remove all of the darkness hurting his mind. Without warning, Five pulled you to his chest and jumped to an alley. The unexpected spacial-travel made you dizzy for a few seconds. You had done it enough time before to be used to it and be spared of the once usual wave of nausea following a jump. 

You knew that the Handler would come here sooner than later, so you engulfed your boyfriend in a hug regardless of the blood covering his clothes. Deposing a light kiss on his less stained cheek, you smiled lovingly at him. 

“It’s almost over. Then we’ll be only the two of us.” 

His forehead met yours and a sincere smile stretched his lips. “I can’t wait.”