#Just because a couple gay guys were creepy towards you doesn’t mean they’re all like that

[csykora]

A thought about meaningful change

I don’t want to distract from the most recent thing Benn did. I’m going to be talking about several different things, and some might seem smaller than others: I know. I’m not saying that the newest thing isn’t important enough on its own or that everything’s on the same level. But I think patterns can be useful.

(I have also made myself sick with nerves a couple times so I’m posting this as is: sorry for typos, and while I’ll stand behind my ideas there may be some sentences that are a little long or awkwardly worded).

Back in 2015, Jame Benn and Tyler Seguin were doing a radio interview.

Some of you might be thinking, “You want to talk about THIS, AGAIN?” Yes. More of you are probably thinking, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Yeah, that’s what I want to talk about.

cw for discussions of sexual harassment, incest, homophobia, bullying, misogyny and transmisogyny, transphobia

So during this interview, one of the radio hosts asked Benn if he and his brother were ever road roommates. Benn said no, and the host commented that Henrik and Daniel Sedin probably roomed together.

“Well yeah…that’s the Sedins,” Seguin said.

“Who knows what else they do together?" Benn said. Everyone laughed.

“Seriously,” Seguin said.

"Dude, it's creepy," the radio hosts said, "In fact, it's a good example to future brothers in the NHL on how not to do things." Then they reassured Benn, “In no way am I implying that you have a Sedin-type vibe going about you.”

Benn and Seguin laughed. The conversation continued, calling the Sedins creepy for wearing similar facial hair, leaving nearby and spending too much time together.

When asked pointblank, “Are the Sedins weird?” Benn answered, “I don’t know. I can’t say.”

To finish the sentence he didn’t: he was implying that the Sedin brothers fuck each other.

Now, these were shock jockeys. They were almost certainly hoping Benn and Seguin would say something homophobic. That said, even shock jockeys pre-screen an interview. They’re not going to invite just anyone on the air and try this with them, because all it takes is someone saying, “I don’t know what you mean,” or “No, I actually respect Dan and Henke a lot as my colleagues” to ruin that set up. If a shock jockey thinks you’re a mark, you’ve probably said something off-air that made them think you’re a mark. And if they dug a pit in front of him, Benn is still the one who decided to stick his dick in it and make things overtly sexual.

After, the Stars stated that Benn had “reached out” the Sedins to apologize. Seguin did not reach out but was “included” in whatever Benn wrote or said. Neither of them gave a public explanation or apology. As far as I can tell the Sedins never commented on whether they received that message, what sort of apology it was, or whether they accepted it. Henrik Sedin’s only comment was, “I think it says more about them than it does about us.”

Ways that homophobia is working here:

-the idea that two men having any degree of physical or emotional closeness, even family members, is suspicious.

-Benn roomed with his brother. Course he did. The hosts spell out what he was afraid of: that the other men in the room might think he had the wrong vibe. He was so afraid of them thinking he had unmanly vulnerabilities like liking his own brother that he misrepresented the situation and pushed someone else forward.

-the idea that a man having any relationship to another man’s physical body or appearance, is suspicious.

Dressing or looking too similar to another man—which means you’ve paid attention to how another man’s body looks in order to copy him, like you’re trying to take ownership of his body, which = fucking him—is a really common accusation. Gay men are seen as lusting after and trying to copy other men’s real masculinity for themselves (but of course never quite succeeding). A man thinking that another man who he knows or suspects to be gay looks too similar to him, and so must have been watching and ‘copying’ him, is a common spark for homophobic attacks.

-the idea that any of this could have been a joke depends on the idea that two men having sex is wacky and unrealistic. Imagine if that happened, wouldn’t that be weird.

Now, someone might say, “It’s not that gay sex is wacky, it’s that the incest that is!” First, incest accounts for a lot of childhood sexual abuse, so I wouldn’t say it’s wacky either. And while it’s true that people can say awful things to different gender twins as well out of a combination of gender prejudices, in this case there were also homophobic ideas about men and masculinity at play.

Ways that power is working here:

-People forgot this fast. It was treated as settled because the Stars said it was settled. People gave “kudos” to Benn “doing the right thing” afterward, or for seeming to realize what was happening and not saying yes to the final question.

 I would argue that “I don’t know, I can’t say” is somehow a worse answer to a yes-or-no question, because it means that either you want to say yes but you’re scared of the consequences, or you sincerely don’t know what to say. All he had to do was say “No.” After he said “I don’t know,” Seguin continued and said, “They are weird.” If Benn had said, “No, actually they’ve been professional when I’ve worked with them and I won’t comment any more on their personal life,” Sequin might have noticed, and Benn might have encouraged him to change his behavior. Not saying “no” was a direct, demonstrable failure to show any kind of leadership.

-This counts as workplace sexual harassment. I’m not saying a case should have been pursued: that should have been at least partly up to the Sedins (although there should also be workplace rules about what is and isn’t acceptable without the victims having to ask for it). But that’s a word we can use for this, this could have been counted as that. Sexual harassment are actions based on a person’s gender, assigned sex, sexual activity, or other qualities related to sex, not just sexual attraction. I worry that often, conflicted feelings about putting people into the category of “Sexual Harasser” lead people to think that actions “aren’t bad enough” to be sexual harassment when they definitionally can be. In other lines of work, if you talk about your coworkers fucking their twins in the office, there are rules about that: at the very least, you’ll be getting a bunch of trainings and be moved to a part of the office where you won’t see them again.

In the NHL, it seems frighteningly clear that people don’t have recourse for sexual harassment. This was discussed and handled as a “childish insult”, not harassment against two coworkers/employees. Often, there’s a logic that something is just an insult, not a ‘real’ threat, because the person who did it couldn’t possibly be sexually attracted to the person they did it to.

-In 2015 Eric and Jordan Staal were living in identical houses outside Raleigh and ‘playing’ together every night. Seems super suspicious. Unless beefy Canadian boys’ behavior is normal, and European masculinity always has to be questioned as being softer-spoken, slimmer, more intellectual, scared of heavy hitting. There are a lot of reasons you might not call Eric Staal gay—maybe you know he’s bigger than you, more successful on Team Canada than you, more popular with the other Team Canada guys than you. Or maybe you just don’t look at him and think he could be gay. Or both. Eric is positioned so you’d have to punch up at him: Benn tried to position himself closer to that kind of social standing, by pushing someone else who already doesn’t quite fit in further out. This isn’t directly in the words, so I’m not all-out accusing them of xenophobia: what I mean is that it’s always worth asking if and how and why feminization is applied to Those Other People.

There’s the eating out thing. Which he sent to teammate Jason Demers, commenting “I feel like your (sic) the kind of guy who would”.

How misogyny is working here:

-the idea that this could have been funny or interesting or worth saying at all depends on the idea that vulvas are weird. Imagine if someone willing touched a cis woman with anything but their dick. Gosh.

-There’s no good explanation for what ‘the kind of guy who would’ was meant to mean. No one says, ‘Hey, do you do this widely mocked sex act? I don’t, but I think you would, and that’s cool and doesn’t affect your masculinity at all, bro, life is a rich tapestry.’

How power is working here:

-This counts as sexual harassment again. Even if asking a coworker (or really more like someone you shift-manage or who reports to you) ‘how do you fuck your partner?’ wasn’t, saying ‘you seem like you would do ___’ is. Again, I’m not saying that Demers has to feel that way about it, but he should have had options.

-Demers was also in a new relationship at the time, so this could be harassment to both him and his partner, who had no recourse when someone her partner has to work with/for comments on her body.

-I don’t think it was intended as sexual harassment. But there’s not really a nice explanation of what he meant to say. It seems like it was intended as an insult or a ‘warning’: ‘this is the way men are allowed and no allowed to be in our group, do you know your place?’

Around that time, the Stars shared a video of Benn, Seguin, and Valeri Nichushkin. Each were supposed to say a couple lines, including their name. Valeri pronounced his nickname ‘Vall’, with a native Russian accent, more like “Wall” in English. Each time Benn and Seguin laughed and questions him and the producer cut. After a couple takes Benn said, “I thought your name was ‘Val.’” 

Sequin physically turned away from Nichushkin and laughed. Nichushkin, not understanding the comment, and not laughing, turned to Benn for an explanation, but Benn only turned toward Seguin, both continuing to laugh.

It was part of a pattern of comments from observers: “If Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn are having a laugh in the locker room, Nichushkin can only guess what’s so funny.” They themselves commented on how “His English is really not good at all…A lot of times we find him just sitting there.” “(In) normal conversations, he doesn’t really know what’s going on.”

I’ll give them credit—they said they felt pity and “try to help” too. I just can’t find any examples of them doing it, compared to teammates like Sharp or Spezza who can more concretely describe spending time with him.

Nichushkin chose to burn contract time in the KHL rather than Dallas before being bought out, expressing that he no longer felt like he “belonged in the NHL.” He felt that the Stars didn’t “trust” in him, was “nervous” in the locker room, and said his family worried for his mental health because of the culture.

“There is a bit of it because I want to be part of the conversation when someone says something,” Nichushkin said. “But I don’t have enough words I know so I can join in.”

-Is it the worst xenophobia in the world? Nah. It’s not free from xenophobia, when the only joke is that someone speaks differently than you. It’s not Benn joking about his own misunderstanding to invite Nichushkin in. I often point to Tripp Tracy, who asks players to teach him words in their language and then sets up jokes about his accent so they can deliver the punchline and laugh with him.

-Is it bullying? It kind of came off like it, to make a joke about someone you know can’t understand. At least it was unnecessary, and unkind. It’s just reminding someone they don’t belong.

-It’s unimpressive. It’s deflecting. Oh, he doesn’t know what’s going on? What did you do to tell to him? My family communicate through a mix of finger-signing, Scrabble tiles, and interpretive dance: I guarantee you, if you can’t communicate concepts like “we’re going to get dinner now, you’re welcome here, we’re having fun!”, you’re not trying. Which is fine, I guess, you don’t have to talk to people, unless it’s like, your job to work with your teammates.

Wanting to ban trans*feminine athletes from competition is based on a complete misunderstanding of math, medicine, and athletics; it’s unnecessary, unethical, and unkind.

It’s an unsurprising continuation of the ideas that there’s a line between men and women and transgressing it is suspicious, that women are gross, that people who are different are shocking and funny, that social pressure can and should be used to remind people who are different that they don’t belong.

It’s a fascist use of power, which I don’t say to mean that “He is A Fascist in every sense,” but that those beliesf express a desire and a comfort with using power to control other people’s bodies, and which bodies have access to certain spaces, to maintain “purity”.

I’m not saying that anyone should have looked at any of these things and easily decided in that moment, “That’s it, he’s shouldn’t have a platform or power over other players, he’s irredeemable.” You might look at a couple of them and think, “That’s not even a problem at all.” I’ll agree to disagree on some of them, but my point is about a pattern of how this dude uses the power he’s given.

I have a phrase, or more a series of words I sometimes yell when I’m talking about subjects like this—“STRUCK A TIM HORTONS.” I shout this in commemoration of the time that Ryan O’Reilly got drunk and drove his pickup into the wall of a small town Ontario Timmies.

“Struck a Tim Hortons” is a very good phrase to read in a police report. And, also, I’m an ACoA. I’ve experienced impaired driving, I’m terrified to shaking of it, and I know that other people have experienced much worse consequences. This isn’t a perfect metaphor (it’s not an example of prejudice or violence against a class of people, etc) but my point is that I try to hold it in my heart because that’s one case where I know what it’s like to really, really want something to just be NBD. Where part of me wants to just think it was a funny mistake so I don’t have to really think about the serious implications of it, and part of me super doesn’t. I have an instinct to resolve those feelings, to come down and decide that it’s either insignificant enough that I don’t have to think about it, or significant enough that I can hate him and then also stop thinking about it, and then I can have the relief of feeling just one feeling at a time.

I don’t think it’s bad to feel conflicted learning something about someone. I think it’s important.

But the problem is that if one thing isn’t significant enough, and we decide to keep thinking someone is fundamentally Good, we often toss that thing out. So when another thing happens, we only look at the new thing, trying to decide: is this enough? And that next thing might not be enough either. So we can go on and on, until you add up to a lot of things that have each done some harm, but none of them have been enough to change how we see and talk about someone.

Now I, personally, decided that the Timmies wasn’t so bad that ROR couldn’t ever make it up to me. But I didn’t decide to feel fine about it: I tried to just put a pin in how conflicted I felt. It’s been years, and over the years I think his actions have showed meaningful change. He hasn’t struck a Starbucks, a Dunkin, or even a Caribou. There’s a pattern.

I think a lot of people who don’t really like the things Benn says or does or believes have given him a lot of chances to make up for them, because they don’t want him to really mean those things. By which I really mean that I know there are a lot of women and queer fans who liked the guy. I get it (I don’t actually get it get it, but I mean I can try to understand people coming from a very different place than I do about him). 

I’ve read a lot of ways that people who are themselves vulnerable in our society try to empathize with him by imagining him as vulnerable too--he’s also experienced fatphobia, homophobia, he wasn’t expected to succeed, etc! I think that’s a wonderfully human instinct. But often I think people have more empathy for those experiences than he expresses for himself--he agrees that it was Bad to be fat and he’s Worked Hard to fit into the masculine norm, he agrees that it’s Bad to be close with another man and works to avoid it--and certainly more than he has showed in his actions toward others. If you’re going to say I hate him for saying that, I don’t--I want him and everyone in our society not to feel and do this shit!

I see a lot of people starting from the idea he is a good leader trying really hard to spin his choices as a smart strategy when he plays dumb with media, when he doesn’t give specific action plans or give public statements or apologies. (I actually agree with the first one, I think it is a strategy for him to avoid transparency and not do a part of his job that he doesn’t want to do.) It just…it seems like a lot of work to reach a pre-determined goal. It’s okay to like someone and for them to still not be good at their jobs! When I say I think a guy’s not a good leader, that’s not always the same as saying he’s a bad person. And if we keep on promoting a guy as a good leader because we like them regardless of their demonstrated leadership skills…that’s how we end up with a lot of shitty policies in the NHL.

Over the years he has consistently avoided stepping up to his captaincy and using his personal power to say things like, “No,” “Tyler, cut it out,” “This is what I’m going to do to fix a problem,” or “I believe in…” anything, really. 

I really, really want to ask people to be mad as hell and advocate for the NHL to improve its code of conduct and harassment processes. I do. But I’m also tired. I don’t think, if I did ask you that, it would work. I don’t have an argument for why you should be mad at someone who’s mad at my existence. I’m not trying. I just want to encourage you, if you’re feeling the tug of feelings and just want to be able to simplify someone’s behavior and love them in simple terms, to put a pin in the more complicated parts, and remember them the next time, and look for patterns.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

So due to popular demand I watched episode 2 of Walker for you guys. Part 2 of 2

The pilot was more interesting and it wasn’t interesting. But let’s continue, maybe it’s gonna get better.

So my cookies are ready now! I ate the smallest one to check if they’re good. They are. At least I have my cookies.

Apparently now they have to take a horseriding test. Walker puts the saddle on a horse. But he gets emotional. The flashback music starts. If I see more of these I will develop rabies symptoms. I’m sorry this is what we’re talking about. This is Geneviève Padalecki’s role in this show.

Walker gets on the horse. He touches the bad and the flashback sound effect plays. Rabies. “Walker are you okay?” Ramirez asks. He nods. I’m Fine Lie #9000.

No, wait. He gets off the horse. Dude it’s called handling a loss badly and they have therapists for that. Please go to therapy. There are literal professionals trained to help you with that.

He takes off his hat, which lets you know this is serious.

He goes at the bar run by the lady who was with Emily when she died. He is no longer a ranger until he passes the test. We are happy about it because he is not in the psychological conditions to be a law enforcement officer. Oh, wait, we’re supposed not to be happy about it. Honestly, I’m not sure. Is he supposed to be relatable, or are we supposed to think that he’s screwed up and should not be a cop or a parent right now? Because he’s ostensibly the latter but maybe the intentions of the writers are the former.

He says that James thinks he’s “not quite right in the head”. Mmm… are we supposed to think James is being exaggerated? Because it’s true. He’s not in the conditions to do this job… he needs to get professional mental health support, period.

They reminisce about Emily and Walker repeats the same things that made him think there’s more to the case than it appears, like the way her eyes were closed. The bartender confesses she closed her eyes. Well. That was anticlimactic.

In the meanwhile, Liam the gay brother meets his partner for lunch. He’s attractive. Liam would also be if he weren’t dressed and hair-styled like that. I dunno. The partner wants them to move to New York. They joke about dying of queso.

Augustus goes to take pictures with his mother’s camera and has a glowy flashback of his own. “He’s sensitive. He keeps a lot inside, like his father” his grandma comments to her husband. They talk about Walker fixing the house. “He wants to pick up where he left off” she says. I am hurting inside. Did they write this with the Supernatural pilot script open on the desk!?

Ramirez keeps working the case. Turns out, the horse that died wasn’t the horse it was supposed to be (a famous racing horse). Someone swapped the horses? I don’t care, actually. I’m gonna skip the case details.

Walker eats tortilla chips with queso. And begs Ramirez to let him work on the case because that’s all he knows how to do. That’s stolen from a couple Supernatural episodes when they talk about hunting, but okay.

“You know how you can see a horse’s soul in its eyes?” …no, but okay.

They’ll need to find the mysteriously disappeared horse… which is loose! In the hospital! No, not in the hospital. Just on a road. Best shot in the show, big dark horse walking around Austin.

They need to go find the horse. Obviously Walker volunteers to get the horse. “Might not be a ranger, but I’m still a cowboy”. I’m crying this is so cliché.

You know Walker is cool because he gets out of the truck without using the little step.

It’s so deep.

Oh my god. He. He follows horse dung. It’s. It’s literally a plot point. He tracks the horse following horse poop.

He finds the horse, feeds him a lil sugar cube, puts the reins on him. It’s a beautiful horse. Can’t the show be about this horse?

Billionaire bad guy (owner of the horse, set the fire to pretend the horse was dead because lots of bets were placed on the horse, but the horse was lightly injured so couldn’t win) driving towards his plane to catch his plane to escape. James and Ramirez do a car chase.

Bad guy lackey shoots at their wheels so their car stops. But Walker arrives on the horse, gets Ramirez on the horse and they ride the horse to the bad guys’ car. Ramirez gets on the car and punches the bad guys unconscious.

For some reason (I mean, budget limitations) the fighting sequences are very quick. I would have watched more of Ramirez kicking billionaire bad guy’s ass on a moving car. But it’s fine, I mean, if this show had a bigger budget they’d spend it on more cowboy hats, so it’s fine.

Walker, James and Ramirez celebrate at the bar. Apparently the bad guy’s lackey that was supposed to get rid of the horse loved the horse too much and set him free in Austin. Mood.

There’s still a third of the episode still to go, though. Drama will ensue. Indeed Liam arrives and is super pissed off at Walker for missing lunch, which he forgot because he was busy with his lil tests.

Liam says Stella didn’t show up to the game. Walker says he know where she is and gets Ramirez to come with him.

Indeed she’s thrown a party at their house. Walker asks her what she’s doing. “Being a disappointment I guess” she answers. He asks her why she missed the game. She says that it shouldn’t be so easy to get a second chance after messing up - like him. He’s like, a second chance? It’s not like a stopped being your father. Except… you did? You disappeared from their lives entirely. He calls her out for damaging the house and she’s like, it’s not even our home anymore but I’m supposed to treat it like a museum? Honestly her scenes are the only interesting thing in this show. He says he’s back now, but she says that being back isn’t enough, what makes a parent is *doing parent things*, supporting the kids.

“I wish uncle Liam had gotten custody of us when he tried” she eventually drops the big bomb. Ouch.

He’s super pissed off, takes off the hat dramatically, and drives back to Liam. He gets off the drunk and immediately assaults Liam. “You tried to take my damn kids!”

I’m flabbergasted. They. They just wrote a plotline where a gay man tried to ~steal a straight man’s children~ like it was a good idea. I mean! Liam getting custody of the kids would have been a VERY GOOD IDEA but what, we’re supposed to think he was wrong? I am so confused because I can’t tell if we’re supposed to be on Walker’s side or not. He is NOT in the condition of being a parent. The kids SHOULD be under the custody of their grandparents and/or uncle. Not because he’s traumatized by loss, but because he’s not trying at all. He keeps saying he’s trying but he’s not. He gets aggressive too easily and it could be dangerous.

Anyway the brothers have this physical fight which isn’t by far the most embarrassing thing in this show so I’ll let it slide. “You had no right!” Walker says, to which Liam replies that he gets it was rough but “you went dark! That was negligence!” Which is absolutely right and he should have gotten the custody of the kids. Liam mentions that their parents also agreed on the thing, and Walker yells “these are MY kids!” which is appalling, because being the biological father of some kids doesn’t make it okay to disappear on them for months and being mad if someone else stepped up to be their parent in your absence. “I didn’t want them to be orphans, did you!?” Liam yells back.

“I would never _take_ them, I wanted to protect them,” Liam says, and says more very reasonable things. “Even now you’re not here.” Walker yells that he is here (again, being physically in Austin doesn’t make you a parent, like Stella said), Liam replies that he’s chasing ghosts.

He brings up the things that don’t add up again, like the poker chip. I’m afraid that the narrative will prove him right, that there WAS something there and he was right to follow through the case despite everyone else telling him he was being delusional and that he should let it go and focus on the family. It would be actually good if it turned out that there was nothing there, that it was all coincidence (like the friend closing her eyes) and that he just chased ghosts for real, but I’m afraid this isn’t that kind of show. I think they’re playing it straight, that they’ll make Walker be right, and it will suck.

A note: now that he’s fighting and yelling and being angry, Jared is actually acting properly, which I don’t know if it’s a good thing or creepy.

Actually Liam says something very reasonable now, that answers will not actually satisfy him, her being gone will never make sense emotionally. The poker chip isn’t going to bring her back. He will lose everything if he keeps searching for something that isn’t there.

Now that Walker has calmed down, Jared returns to doing Jared mouth things. Oh no! Augustus watched them fight.

Oooh. Augustus gives him the present Emily was going to give him for father’s day. Poker chips. “She kept a few of the chips so she could show people” (what? But okay). Another of the mysteries was actually not a weird conspiracy at all. I suspect the narrative will make us believe there was nothing there to just pull a twist afterwards. It would be interesting if Walker were indeed looking for nothing, but I doubt that’s what they’re doing. They’re playing the tropes too straight.

Meanwhile Ramirez comes home to her boyfriend preparing a homemade dinner. She says she’s happy he’s there, and that scares the crap out of her. She wants to get both the job and the relationship right. They’re really cute and I hope their relationship doesn’t get drama-fied for drama. A healthy relationship where two partners figure out how to navigate it together, with normal minor bumps along the way they face together, would really be a good thing for the show to portray.

The next morning, Walker is making breakfast when Stella enters the kitchen. She doesn’t speak to him but gets on her phone so he starts texting her. They have a moment. He was looking for him mug and she gets it out for him. She says it reminded her of him being gone so she’d put it away. They do a bonding activity (bringing a memento from their old house to their new one), she cries, he hugs her.

Back at the ranch, Walker’s father has made him a new saddle. Gramps Walker is rough around the edges but has a hidden wisdom.

The emotional moment is kinda broken for me by the big Texas flag they have inside the house. I suppose it’s just how Texas is but it’s still funny for that very reason.

Augustus for his school project has put together a video from old family footage. Lots of flashback, but this time with a regular song and not the rabies sound effect and with the soft lighting but not the most extreme glowy effect, so it’s kinda okay.

Jared makes emotional faces and the episode’s over.

Well, at least the dead guy having been to prison wasn’t really relevant and the bad guy was a billionaire. An improvement from the previous episode.

I’m not going to give views to the youtube trailers, but I’ve been told in the next episode a new character will be introduced that is a childhood friend that is ~the Han Solo to Walker’s Luke Skywalker. *single tear of sorrow* They’re trying SO HARD to be Supernatural and they’re managing to pick the least interesting concepts of Supernatural to do so. Can’t wait to see Fake Dean. Also we haven’t seen Walker lasso a person either. I suppose I’ll have to watch more of this.

Honestly, it’s mostly boring with Stella being the only interesting part and Ramirez and her boyfriend being cute to watch. Walker is so unlikeable. You want him to get his shit together for the sake of the people around him, but not really for his sake. He should go to therapy but he is a manly cowboy man so obviously he won’t go (but I will be impressed if they actually have him see a therapist. It would be interesting to have a manly cowboy man see a therapist. But will they do it?) The idyllic flashbacks of Emily are so overdone and it’s only the second episode! Everything is cheesy.

This traditional Texan ranch aesthetic meets Austin city would be interesting if played in a way that genuinely questions the values of old, but the show doesn’t really, it uses the gay brother and the immigrant friend and the Latina cop and the Black boyfriend as props but the narrative itself doesn’t really do anything with the traditional Texan family thing. Unless they really pull the rug from under the audience’s feet and make some big twists regarding the way the narrative is presenting itself, there’s nothing really interesting or useful in the show. I’m afraid they will solve their problems by Wanting To Do Better and Sticking Together As A Family, which is just a conservative fantasy of how to fix problems.

By the way, the cookies were really good and my family loved them too.

[swearwolf-writes]

Sunset Curve not Sunset Straight (pt. 1)

It’s 1994. And things are weird.

Sunset Curve has been together for a couple of years now and they’re doing good- no, great - but things have been weird lately. They all know Alex is gay and it’s all good with them. Anyone says shit to Alex and they’ll end up in the ER. They’re family - brothers. Except not.

Luke has always been proud of Alex - he came out to the band before his parents and they’ve been with him every step of the way. When the disappointed looks got too much, Alex would crash with Luke in the studio and on more than one occasion, they’d end up asleep together. Alex loves hugs. That’s no secret. What is a little bit of a secret is that he will cuddle anyone or anything when he sleeps. A pillow? Great. Luke? Even better. And that’s how we get to now.

Luke lies on his back and Alex is basically a koala - his arms are wrapped around his waist, his head on Luke’s chest with one leg swung over Luke’s. You see, the only place to sleep is either the couch or the floor and if one of them sleeps on the floor, they both do. So they share the couch. Yeah, he’s kinda stuck. But he doesn’t mind.

He’s been doing a lot thinking these days about what he wants, who he wants. He doesn’t quite understand himself and he chuckles quietly at himself, stroking Alex’s hair as he stirs but thankfully doesn’t wake. ‘People are usually either gay or straight - not both. I know I like girls but I think I like guys too? If that makes any sense.’ He sighs and shakes his head, attempting to banish all thoughts from his mind as he closes his eyes and tries to sleep.

He opens his eyes. So that didn’t work. 10 minutes later and he’s still awake and, more importantly, still thinking. Still thinking about how he might like boys. Still thinking about how he could get used to sleeping next to Alex. Still thinking about how pretty he looks when he laughs. Still thinking about- ‘Holy shit I have a crush on Alex.’

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“Rise and shine sleepyheads.” Reggie shakes their shoulders, poking their cheeks fondly. Alex groans loudly and buries his face in Luke’s shoulder. “10 more minutes.” His voice comes through muffled by Luke’s shirt. “We already gave you 10 minutes.” Bobby kindly informs them, tossing an old shirt at them. “5 minutes then.” “Dude we have to rehearse.” Reggie picks up one of the pillows that fell on the floor and chaos ensues. He hits Alex with the pillow, shocking him back awake as he subsequently falls on the couch. He looks up, annoyed and tired but damn cute in Luke’s opinion, and asks for a hand. When Reggie moves to help him up, he pulls him down, whacking him with his own pillow in retaliation. “Argh-! Luke- a little help here?” “Nah.” Luke gets up and picks up the polaroid camera that they bought. “Say cheese!” He takes a picture of the pair, Alex happily beating Reggie who throws up a peace sign for the camera.

He takes the picture and moves to the loft, keeping the image in the dark to develop. He sets the polaroid next to the other on the desk in the corner. ‘Wait, the other-?’ He picks it up gently and can’t help but smile. It’s him and Alex asleep. “Hey Reggie, d’you take this?” He holds up the polaroid and raises his eyebrows. “Maybe. You looked peaceful and I wanted proof that Alex is a cuddle monster so....” “Hey, what is it?”, Alex asks, changing his shirt. Luke bluescreens for a moment before snapping out of it and clearing his throat. “Oh, uh- it’s us asleep.” “Well that’s kinda creepy but okay.” Alex chuckles, sweeping his hair back and putting his cap on. “Right?” Luke laughs awkwardly, turning around and busying himself with the contents of the loft, his cheeks heating up.

He notices the sleeping bags he’d tuck away into a corner and flushes at the memory. ‘If Alex found them he would have insisted on using them and frozen to death.’ He tries to reason with himself and fails.

Walking down the ladder, he looks for his friends and frowns. “Guys?” “They went to get pizza - figured we could use breakfast, y’know at 1 in the afternoon.” Alex. He sips water and sits on the coffee table, Luke joining him. A silence came over them, only interrupted by brief throat clearing as they tried to figure out what to say. In the end, it was Luke who broke the silence.

“I know we’ve been sharing the couch but I found some sleeping bags so I’ll just use those-” Alex blushes at the mention of the bags and opens his mouth as if to say something but quickly shuts it. “I may have already known they were there….?” Alex mentions slowly, carefully picking his words. “Wait what-” “I swear I’m not being creepy- God I’m totally wiggin’ you out-” The boy holds his head in his hands, laughing uncomfortably. “No nonono-!” Luke swallows his laughter as well as he can. “Thing is, I’m the one who hid the sleeping bags.” Alex looks up and grins. “For real?” “Yeah.”

They smile and Alex looks at his friend. “Why?” “Huh?” “Why hide them?” “I wanted to sleep with you.” The boys’ faces go bright pink as Luke stammers out denials. “I mean next to you-! I wanted to sleep next to you.” Alex smiles happily, rocking side to side slightly. “What about you? How come you didn’t mention the bags?” “Maybe I also wanted to sleep next to you-” “You mean on top of me.” Luke pokes the boy’s side, laughing as he squirms. “Okay but that couch is not meant for two people.” Luke heavily falls onto said couch and sighs happily. “Maybe not but this couch is the bomb.” Luke smiles and closes his eyes, Alex watching him. It’s almost strange to see him like this. He doesn’t usually smile for real - he’ll laugh and puts on a smile but they’ve all seen the smile slip when he thinks they’re not watching. He was living his dream but they all knew it was fractured without the support of his parents. ‘He’s freakin’ cute when he smiles.’

“For real though? What does this all mean?” Alex gestures vaguely around them, Luke covering his face, his red ears however giving away his embarrassment. “I think I like you?” He looks over his arm and almost immediately covers it again as Alex looks at him with amused confusion. “You ‘think’?” Luke sits up and leans forward on his knees, looking down, focusing on his hands as he toys with worn patches in his jeans. “Look, I- I know I like girls. But sometimes guys are very hot too. And I don’t know how to feel about that.... But I know I like you.” He looks up, surprised at how shocked Alex looks. A moment passes. “This is part where you say something.” Alex whacks his shoulder lightly. “I know that- I just....” “Just don’t like me like that. I get it - it’s all cool dude-” “No, I do! I mean I think?” Luke looks up at Alex, his face scrunched in confusion. “I thought you were supposed to know this stuff-!” “Hey just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I’ve had a boyfriend before.” Luke smirks, his tongue peaking out from behind his teeth. “So you wanna be boyfriends then?” It was Alex’s turn again to blush, his neck slowly going pink. “What, no- I mean, yes? Maybe? I don’t know-” “You know you literally gave me every possible answer to that, right?” The cocky boy tilts his head in confusion at his cute friend. “Yeah.” Alex looks at him and shifts before leaning forwards and kissing his cheek. “I wanna be boyfriends- I mean, y’know, if you want that is-” Luke grins and bumps his forehead against his, “Yes, I do.” He stands up and kisses his forehead, walking towards the garage doors, mumbling to himself. “I have a boyfriend! Awesome!” He opens the doors with a flourish, Reggie falling in while Bobby looks between the two of them.

“We can explain-”, Bobby begins. “We got the pizza.” Reggie points to the boxes in Bobby’s hands. “Don’t worry - we weren’t listening.” Bobby kicks his leg lightly, Reggie making offended noises in return. “Congratulations?” Bobby hands Luke the pizza, patting Alex’s shoulders as he takes a slice. The boys sit around the table, Alex and Reggie on the couch and Luke and Bobby on the floor.

“Okay,” Bobby swallows a bite of pizza, “one rule: no getting jiggy in the studio.” Luke sucks his finger and gives him a wet willy, Bobby whining and slapping his hand away. “We’re eating so that’s gross but I’m right and you know it.” Alex throws a pillow at him and reassures that there will be no ‘getting jiggy’ in their studio. “And in general?”, Reggie asks, wiggling his eyebrows at them, Alex sighing and shaking his head. “There will be no getting jiggy- God-” They laugh and finish their food.

----------

The rest of the day was spent rehearsing, Bobby and Reggie exchanging knowing looks at the way their lead singer and drummer stared at each other. It was another night of cuddles. It had been a good day. They were family - maybe not brothers - but they were family.

[omniswords]

Chronicles of a Parisian Dumbass 1

because we all really wanted smitten!Luka so I’m making it happen, PERIOD. slight AU? canon divergence? where Luka begins to frequent Tom & Sabine’s bakery when his sister needs a pick-me-up through her first year in university, and may or may not have a thing for the new girl at the register once summer vacation hits. and tweets about it.

(yes, i’m still working on La Joconde! only two parts left :( but i hadn’t posted any lukanette content in a Hot Minute and wanted to share a bit of what i’ve been working on. enjoy, loves!)

at T&S for mom and sister and oh god there’s a cute girl i’ve never seen at the register

Post.

i think she’s got flour on her nose, and she probably doesn’t even know it’s there, and she’s adorable

Post.

send help

Post.

That’s the magical thing about social media, isn’t it. The cool, casual, even bored expression you sport in a waiting room or on the subway is a master at hiding away every all-caps rant you swipe out with your thumb. At keeping every moment you want to scream, excited or outraged, under lock and key in your chest while your fingers do all the talking. At cementing the lines in your brow and your lips while you broadcast how much you’re Gay And Dyingggg—and yes, you really need the capitalization and those extra letters for the emphasis—over the image of a kitten falling asleep mid-meal. The viral-video echo of a child’s singing in a big-box store. The pretty girl in the coffee shop with the floral cloth headband, the nude lip, the grey eyes that stop you in your tracks and somehow always seem to meet yours whenever you Just So Happen to look up.

It’s those capital letters, you know. They really do wonders for emphasis. Emphasis.

In a city like Paris, the hundreds of thousands of people you could pass in a single day would never know the intimacies they could stumble upon by happenstance. The ones you choose to share with a few hundred strangers, friends across oceans or friends of friends who happened upon you or lovers of art the way you love art, because the distance and the screens make it safer.

In Paris, almost no one knows who Luka really is, aside from a blue-haired busker downtown who sometimes frequents coffee shop stages. Or some guy who delivers their evening meals when they don’t feel like cooking. No one has to know. And he’s been fine with that for as long as he’s had these accounts.

He wouldn’t call himself a stranger to the internet. He hardly could; he’s a product of it, raised by it, like most anyone else his age. Frankly, he could go so far as to call it his third best friend—third, because his sister and his mother might fight him for not putting them first, and because he values them enough to put them there. But on the metro, he’s near invisible, and online, he’s Sort Of Someone. A set of hands and a guitar and strings of notes to pull in a few hundred admirers, and even fewer friends he’s never met in person. He doesn’t have to, he’s decided, for them to mean something.

And he’s getting the keen sense that they’re all already hanging onto his last three tweets. Or will be, if they’re not already awake yet. (He’ll never understand that—his body almost never lets him sleep in past eight, no matter how late he goes to bed.)

He has to gather himself before he goes in—which is hilarious, because he must have been to Tom and Sabine’s bakery at least a hundred times by now. Or at least, enough times that they know him by name and to save him a napoleon or two whenever he’s in the area. Is it really that difficult this time because of a girl?

And then she… whoever she is, she smiles at a customer, and it looks like utter sunshine, and almost instantly he wishes she were smiling at him. Just for a few seconds.

Yep. It really is that difficult.

With a flip of his stomach and one last post—all right, prayer circle before i place this order—Luka pushes into the tiny bakery just as the customer is coming out. He shuffles among the racks and display cases as though he’s in a museum, and given the care that goes into these decorations, he might as well be. Usually it’s Mrs. Cheng who’s at the register, humming along to some classical piece they’re playing overhead—it fits her, being so traditional—and there’s a stack of finished cake or pastry orders beside her on the counter. The orders are still there this time, but the music sounds younger; it must be one of those study playlists he sometimes finds online or touches upon when he needs some extra inspiration for his own music.

And there is the girl, with her chin in her hand and the flour still on her nose, absently twirling her pencil as she stares down at a sketchbook like she’s about to get into a fight with it. She doesn’t look bored there. Actually, Luka isn’t sure he’s ever seen anyone so focused before, because even the bell over the door signaling his entrance apparently hasn’t gotten through to her. If anything, she looks like she’s toeing that impossibly thin line between mellow and frustrated, if the quirk in her lips or the pinch in her brow is anything to go by. Even from a distance, he can tell that her face is soft, that her lashes are beautifully long, and that she probably barely has to do anything with them. If it weren’t so weird, or showy, or even creepy, he’d probably stop in his tracks at the door and watch. Try to make up a song about her, for her, on the spot.

Luka takes a deep breath, readjusts his gig bag on his shoulder, and takes a few quiet steps up to the register, still keeping his distance. It isn’t until he clears his throat that she looks up, and he’d swear that he’s never seen eyes so… so blue, before.

He’s never played a song this color before, and he wants to. Instantly.

Before he can get a closer look at the sketches, one that would have been entirely inadvertent, the girl squeaks and snaps her book shut, immediately apologizing for not noticing him right away. Her fingers twitch a bit, but she smiles cordially in spite of them. There it is. That sunshine, just for him. “Welcome to Tom and Sabine’s. How can I help you?”

Luka wonders if that’s just her Customer Service Voice, or if she always sounds that sweet. Either way, somewhere inside him a cork pops, and warmth floods his insides, just for having heard it. Now that he’s this close, now that he’s really heard her, he’d think she’s only a couple of years younger than him. Nineteen or twenty, maybe. “Hi,” he says, as smooth as he can manage. Maybe it’s her first day; he knows some of the woes of customer service, even if most of his work experience has been in food delivery and not actually processing the orders. Maybe he can ease some of her nerves. “I was wondering if I could get something to go.”

“Oh! Sure thing.” The girl brushes some flyaway dark hair out of her eyes, twirls her pencil again, and taps a few colored squares on the tablet in front of her. “What can I get for you?”

“Let’s see…” He already knows the orders by heart, because in spite of their penchant for chaos and unpredictability, the Couffaines don’t mind anchoring themselves to some things. So much so, in fact, that if it were Mrs. Cheng at the register, she wouldn’t even have to ask. She’d already have the box ready. It’s just that he doesn’t want to overwhelm this girl right off the bat, even if he does have the feeling that she’d look even cuter with a blush. “An opera cake, a pear tart, a fraisier”—that’s for Rose, because he wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still over when he gets back. He goes slowly, gives the girl the chance to look for each item in the menu on her screen before punching it in, just in case she’s ever had customers who were less kind.

Yes, that’s definitely the only reason why, and it definitely isn’t because he wants to spend more time at the register, and has that liberty to do so since there aren’t any other customers in the shop and since he’s done with work for the day.

“Anything else?” the girl asks, her voice slightly more clipped now that she’s in the rhythm of it. She cocks her head, more at the register, and quirks the edge of her eyebrow. Maybe she’s more seasoned at this than he thought. Or maybe she just sinks into this mood when she sets to work.

He kind of likes it. Like, a lot.

But that would be incredibly weird to say, to her face or about her online, so he holds his tongue. “Yeah, um…” He looks around, narrowing his eyes at some of the display cases. “Has Mr. Dupain made any napoleons today?”

The girl’s eyes light up a bit, which makes him smile. “I’ll check,” she says—chirps, more like—and flits toward the room in the back like a hummingbird.

Oh, no.

She’s so cute. Too cute.

She’s back in seconds, before he has the time to agonize about it any further. “Yup, we have them. How many would you like?”

“Just the one.” Luka’s already fishing out his wallet from his back pocket. He holds his breath, card in hand, pushes it into the chip reader. “Say, is Mrs. Cheng… doing all right?”

The girl blinks a couple of times. Is it really that weird to ask? “Yes…? She’s fine. She’s just traveling—she went home for a bit to see her family. She’ll be back in… three weeks?” She trips on her words a bit, not in the way that she can’t recall, but in the way that she doesn’t want to be too forward in her speech.

Huh. Mrs. Cheng didn’t mention anything about a trip the last time he’d been here… “Sorry, it’s just that I’ve never seen you around here before.”

The girl smiles faintly, tearing away his receipt once it’s printed. “Well. I guess that makes two of us.”

Oh, she’s good. He doesn’t even know what to say to that.

She flits around the tiny bakery, different pairs of tongs in hand as she assembles his order, and Luka finds himself tapping out the melody of the current song against his thigh. “Nice music,” he says to make conversation. “You pick it out?”

“Uh huh.” There’s that clipped tone again. “Sorry, I know it’s kinda basic—”

“It’s cool.” He pauses. “Uh. I mean, the music is cool.”

The girl looks up from one of the display cases. It might be the lighting, or the distortion of the glass, but he thinks she might be blushing. “You… said that already?”

“Right—right.” Luka clears his throat, leans back against the wall with his arms folded, and resolves to keep his mouth shut and his eyes down. He knows he’s blushing; his face is too hot for him not to be. She’s working, he tells himself. He can’t bother her while she’s working. Still, he can’t help idly tapping the toe of his shoe, or pressing his fingertips into his arms, to that same rhythm, the same melody. At least that keeps him grounded. He only wishes there were lyrics he could mouth along to to make it easier.

He’s about to dip into his own mind, try to find a song that would do the trick, when he hears his name. “Luka?”

Instantly, his head snaps up. The girl is back at the register, a beige box with a gold sticker in her hands, and she holds it out to him. “Yeah,” he says, doing his best to stroll casually to the front and take it from her. “How’d you know my name?”

The girl looks at him, half-confused, before mutely holding up the receipt. On the bottom, along with the last four digits of his debit card number, is his name in tiny capital letters.

Oh. Duh. He heaves a nervous laugh, and on the inside, he’s looking away with wide, mortified eyes. He takes the box from her; the sooner he gets out of here, the sooner he can kick himself. “Thanks. Could you tell Mr. Dupain I said hi?” And also, could you tell him how dare you for hiring a girl who has no right making my heart stop on her first day working?

She nods, twirling her pencil one last time, and Luka’s off with a wave and a mutual exchange of, Thank you, have a nice day! And the instant the door closes behind him and he turns the corner, he sets the box aside, slides down to a squat, and rests his face in his hands, eyes wide and trained on the ground.

In Paris, no one knows that Luka Couffaine is even capable of being an anxious, smitten fool.

Once he’s churned out as many anxious, shaky feelings as he can—once he’s replayed her smile and the sound of his name in his head enough times—he pulls out his phone.

god, i hope she has a nice day. i hope she finds twenty euros on the ground.

Post.

[passiveinsane]

Fic Recs

two weeks of procrastination special!

Teen Wolf

Support by Epibreren | stiles isn’t in the loop au

In which Stiles and Derek are dating, and Stiles is under the impression that Derek is a furry.

Welcome to Rosie's Diner can I interest you in an eye-opener? by crossroadswrite | diner au

An entire diner is shipping sterek because they believe they’re a couple. Stiles and Derek, of course, are not (yet).

i wait for you like a lonely house by bleep0bleep | future au

“Derek isn’t sure why he buys the house.”

The (Figurative) Death of Destructo-Derek by newtypeshadow | Werewolf boyband au

“Derek Hale is a clumsy destruction magnet.

Except that he isn't. Unlike everyone else, Stiles can see the curse obstructing Derek's senses and tangling his limbs and causing increasingly destructive accidents. And now that the curse is turning deadly, Stiles is damn well gonna break it—whether Derek Hale believes it exists or not.”

Foundations by Spooks, thesuninside

“Spooks: Yanno, I can't believe that for a show set in California, they didn't do anything with natural disasters.”

Somewhere to Start by Lissadiane | fantasy au(???)

Beauty and the beast au where Stiles is half-fae, Derek is the heir to the Hales, and they’re both in the middle of a political ploy.

Special Order by bleep0bleep | stiles is a food critic au

Stiles, world-renowned food critic, wanders into the restaurant and life of Chef Hale.

dude, it's wednesday by stressingbisexual | series

Stiles is a twitch streamer, and other than that it’s canon-y.

adhd??? i think you mean GAYdhd amirite ladies by weeabooty

If the title isn’t convincing, there’s nothing to say.

Give Me Shelter by WonderWolf

Animal shelter volunteers au, where Derek gives punny names to cats and Stiles picks up more than one stray.

tie your napkin 'round your neck, cherie by magneticwave

“In the low light from Scott’s candles, Lydia is breathtaking. Jackson is still a butt-ugly lizard monster, but he looks like he’s having a religious experience with Stiles’ trifle, so that’s validating in a weird sort of way.” Please read this, it’s so good, cackling will happen.

Once Upon a Time by lady_ragnell

“Five fairy tales Stiles isn't the hero of, and one he might be.”

CSI: Beacon Hills by Jerakeen | restricted work, must have ao3 profile to access

“Back when Stiles was in high school Beacon Hills didn't have a crime lab, because they simply didn't need one. Those were the days.”

Werewolf Daycare by dinolaur

Stiles is forced to take care of the pack: toddler versions. Derek is not useful.

coffee housing by kellifer_fic

Superhero!pack au.

Kiss the Cook by idyll

“Derek's a professional chef, and Stiles is a blogger who butchers his recipes.”

At All Costs by forestofbabel | time-traveling stiles

“Stiles is sent on a mission in time to protect Derek Hale at all costs. He doesn’t know why Derek Hale is so important to the future, but Stiles takes his mission seriously.”

Stiles Stilinski and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Well Maybe It Wasn’t That Bad…) by thegirlgrey

Stiles has a very bad day, and then a very good one.

This is Ridiculous by zosofi | future au | Explicit

“There's a unicorn in Beacon Hills. A fricken' unicorn. In fricken' Beacon Hills, California. And it turns out that unicorns aren't drawn towards virgins in a happy-go-lucky let-me-lay-my-not-at-all-metaphorical-horn-in-your-lap way. No. They kill them. And guess who's the only virgin idiotic enough to get sucked into the Beacon Hills supernatural scene? Stiles, that's who.”

Hallowed Grounds by damnfancyscotch

“Everything in Beacon Hills is the same when Stiles comes home from college.

Well, except for the fact that he's a published author now, Scott is halfway across the world with a travelling circus, Erica's epilepsy has been cured, her boss offers him a job too, and there's this weird black dog that seems to be following him around just to judge him.

Oh, and the murders, of course.

But other than that stuff... totally the same old BH.”

Unofficial Stiles Stilinski by elliot_edison | series

“ "So you're the boy he was complaining about the first week of school." Derek tried to remember what she was talking about. When he did, he decided it was his turn to want the world to swallow him whole.

"What?" Stiles frowned.

"Oh, it's nothing bad, sweetie." His aunt Hazel (who has a weirdly calming affect on everyone, which he was grateful for) assured him. "Peter, dear, remind me, what were his exact words?"

"I believe they were something along the lines of 'he spent a whole hour yelling at me and covering me in hello kitty band-aids. I think I want to marry him.'" Peter gave him a look. "Right?” “

Half-hearted Contestant by LadyDrace | not!fic

Stiles is on Derek Hales’s bachelor TV show, but he’s mostly (mostly) there for the food.

Sparkly Pens by mm_coconut | Explicit

Journal entries by Stiles (and Derek.) NSFW

ATLA

Swear by naggeluide

“Toph grew up in the Earth Rumble, and Zuko went through adolescence at sea. Neither of them are shy about using profanity.”

NDRV3

Liar's Gift by booperbeanv3

Ouma gives a bento box, homemade, to Shuichi. They’re dumb and gay.

The Way to a Man's Heart (is through his stomach) by orphan_account

“Shuichi wishes he had at least an hour to think of a response to that, but he doesn't, so he just stares dumbly back at Kokichi. Then, there's a forkful of pancake and strawberry directly in his face. Does Kokichi really expect him to let himself be fed like that? On the same fork, even? When Shuichi doesn't bite, Kokichi frowns again. “Come on, one bite?” His bottom lip juts out, and Shuichi has to wonder if Kokichi can tell that he is hopelessly infatuated after a handful of interactions. It's so bizarre to him, the way he feels like the biggest idiot on the planet and the luckiest guy in the world to be the subject of Kokichi's attention.

And that is decidedly too much emotion for being offered a bite of pancakes, but Shuichi also hasn't ever been in a situation quite like this one before. Every word out of Kokichi's mouth feels like a test and Shuichi just wants to know the right answer. It's overwhelming.”

kokichi is gay and shit at cooking: the saga by hejustkeptonyoing

Crack, but also incredibly funny crack.

Marvel

Bring Your School to Work Day by notoneforreality

“Or yes. Clint waited all of ten seconds for everyone (tonight: Tony, Bruce, Steve, Bucky, Clint, Natasha, Pepper and Peter) to take their seats at the long dinner table before gleefully announcing that Peter had a field trip to the compound next Wednesday. Peter, sat between Bucky and Nat, opposite Tony, buried his face in his hands.

“Lord lend me patience or a handgun.”

Two separate guns were thrust into his field of vision by two separate hands, and Peter blinked. Bucky and Nat narrowed their eyes at each other and Tony snatched both guns away before Peter could touch either.

“Absolutely not. Creepy Russian sensibilities away please.”

Bucky tried to slip Peter a knife, but Steve caught him at it and confiscated the weapon.”

@pbparker by fromstarttofin | twitterfic

“peter parker @pbparker

what i was expecting when i woke up:

-to study for my finals -to eat some captain crunch -for mr stark to brief me on the press conference

what i was not expecting when i woke up:

-500 ??? thousand ??? followers ??????????”

[eyeslikefoxglove]

Episode 14 - WangXian are a (v soft) Battle Couple & Foxglove is hella mad

Hi! Welcome to episode 14. I should be studying. It’s day two of morning runs, so my soul has left my body already, send help. Yesterday I went to buy plants with my mum and got so excited I just whacked on a bunch of eyeshadow because I haven’t seen the outside in weeks, I’m also wearing makeup today, because I have nowhere to go, but I really need to finish this bb cream before it goes bad, so my parents are getting my full fresh faced “woke up like this and put on mascara” routine (which is a fucking lie because I’m wearing at least three blushes and two highlighters). I’m determined to get this bitch down in under five minutes so I can have another five to do eyeshadow, I have way too much eyeshadow to not wear it (I have way too much everything except maybe mascara and eyebrow stuff).

Yes, if y’all were wondering I am in fact a makeup magpie. ANYWAY BACK TO THE ACTUAL THING WE ALL CAME HERE FOR.

(Btw further down I discuss once again how shitty I think the Yunmeng sibs’ parents are if that causes an issue for you)

Ok ok ok, so I was talking with damnpoe-2187 here about how we found that sometimes WWX crossed from gremlin into asshole when he tried to get LWJ riled up. Like in the Cold Springs, putting our shippers hearts aside, that was a dick move and he should have stopped undressing the second LWJ went from annoyed to incredibly uncomfortable. I find this scene the complete opposite, a show of character development if you will. It is kind of similar in that they’re both hurt, and alone (although this time is much more serious) and there was some undressing going on; however WWX here behaves like a fool in love considerate person and knowing how uncomfortable LWJ already is tries to make it easier for him. They’re also super soft and I’m weak.

A brief interlude from my one track mind: That pond is full of corpses isn’t it? Or at least the remnants of the Murder Turtle’s meals I suppose. Damn right WWX should not have gone into the water with an open wound, but think no one should go swimming in there without a full hazmat suit tbh (I want to pump them full of antibiotics at this point ngl)

So I love this tiny montage (is it even a montage) of the, getting themselves ready to kill the Murder Turtle.

Teamwooooooork.

Listen, I have read a few fics in which their mind-meld stays in place due to reasons and I need me more of those.

Ok, turtles don’t work that way, but then again, giant murder snake-Trex-turtle so that’s low on my list of priorities. What’s not low is the fact that this guy is knee deep into pretty much a mass grave and I want to take a few showers just watching him.

Yeah, I know exactly what he’s smelling and suddenly I hope I don’t have meat for lunch today tbh.

The screaming sword has always been fucking creepy and does LWJ’s fist clench mean that he’s also hearing them?

BATTLE COUPLE! BATTLE COUPLE! BATTLE COUPLE!

So I know killing the thing took them something like six hours. And while it feels quite a long time in the show, I think that, if they cut the scene with idk, JC running towards Lotus Pier, then back to them, then back to JC, but now the sun is in a different position, back to them, but now the blood from LWJ’s hand has dripped down his arm; and so on a so forth it’d convey more clearly how long it took for the Murder Turtle to die. I know fuck all about cinematography tho so feel free to ignore all this if it is in fact an abomination.

Tiiiiiiny interlude here to say that Yiling Patriarch!WWX is probably one of my favourite character archetypes. He’s slightly creepy, slightly amoral (smiling while torturing and murdering bad guys is still amoral ok), more than a bit on the Dark Side, cocky, smirky, a bit of an asshole a BAMF, a rebel with cause and yet he will still do the right thing, not despite his nature, but because of it. He’s kind of like a Chipped Spike? But you know, he doesn’t need electroshock to behave.

I just want a fic where he’s this Dark Lord of Evil in everyone’s eyes however the ‘good guys’ take a break from trying to off him because a bigger threat just popped up and they have no choice but to ask for his help. He agrees, keeps being his charming self while also saving everyone’s asses, LWJ is smitten.

TL;DR: The Necromancer is hot. Oh and nobody dare deny LWJ has a Yiling Patriarch kink.

Oh my, this is the part when I always get teary eyed.

WUJI ON A CELLO? DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME?

“Why hasn’t Jiang Cheng shown up and rescued me yet?” THIS IS ALL THE PROOF I NEED THAT WWX IS THE BABY SIBLING.

“Lan Zhan sing me a song”

IT IS HAPPENING, STAY FUCKING CALM EVERYBODY (I’m crying)

That slideshow of their best moments set to WuJi is a masterpiece, and also, it kind of drives home the point of “how tf did we go from flirting during summer camp to this mess”?

(Btw if that’s YiBo humming he’s got one hell of a deep voice)

Ok ok ok, so this moment had me spitting up my tea the first time I watched it. Believe it or not my dumbass thought these people were actually serious with the censorship and we’d get scraps of their actual relationship. Lots of charged moments like in some other western tv shows I’ve seen when two dudes have chemistry but “they’re not gay”, no longing glances, no tender touches, no being unbelievably soft with each other; just you know, amped up, because if I’m not mistaken you can be arrested in China for “promoting the gay”. I mean, they changed the beginning when people insult MXY’s sexuality to insulting his mental health; no one would think “ah yes, the gays are good” when they hear it used as a slur, but they still erased it completely. One of the things I thought they’d fully take away was WangXian, I mean, the into/outro is named Wuji, which, you know, still a mishmash of their names, but not their ship name. It is such a significant part of the story with all the “what’s the song name? Figure it out yourself” that if something were going to give away that they’re married with a kid it would be that. I thought we’d get an artful fade to black BEFORE LWJ would say the name not after. And also, YiBo is enunciating it so clearly that, even with the sound muffled and the blurriness I, who don’t speak Chinese, can make out the two syllables. That’s deliberate, I can say “WangXian” loud and clear without moving my lips too much. At this point in time I must assume someone in charge of looking for censorship violations in the show is a fan and just ignored it.

Censorship person 1: dude, isn’t that a bit too gay, maybe you shouldn’t greenlight it.

Censorship person 2: shut the fuck up, sit here and watch.

*a full rundown of the whole of CQL later*

Censorship person 1: oh my god they’re so in love and they deserve to be happy.

Back to the commentary: I’m sorry but I have a mighty need of a WWX & Peacock friendship ok? This might be me just wanting WWX and LWJ to make other friends besides each other but I think that the Peacock is just bitchy enough to not take any of WWX’s bullshit.

And the Yunmeng bros timing for banter strikes yet again.

That’s terrible quality fake blood btw.

@ Yunmeng disciples: STOP SHOOTING FUCKING KITES PLEASE AND THANK YOU

Oooof even with a change of clothes our boy is still looking rough as hell.

MY LOVELY YUNMENG SIBS BEING SOFT AND HAPPY WITH EACH OTHER.

It hurts my soul that the second JFM starts praising WWX for surviving the Murder Turtle our boy’s knee-jerk reaction is to start praising JC in return. It is instinctive, how many times must this have happened for him to know his brother won’t even get scraps of praise? (Seriously fuck their parents)

It was going so well, I mean, JFM had a point warning him to not say things in anger. But I thought he was going to tell him that it is because sometimes he’ll hurt someone without wanting to, yet, this asshole decided to, once again, remind his kid he thinks he’s a failure.

And here comes Mme Yu who I can only assume had a servant posted at the door to warn her when WWX woke so she could throw some verbal abuse at him. I mean, she must have been missing it.

And JFM’s misogynistic bullshit strikes once again, because why defend ALL your kids when you can insult your wife.

(Every time someone berates WWX for “intervening” I want to scream. I mean, seeing this I can believe why the society as a whole thought genocide was a good idea.)

I love how they use their kids as props in their fight, I mean it’s not like they have feelings or anything. This woman is gaslight-y as hell too “you don’t love your kid because I gave birth to him”, you can’t tell me saying that in front of the son she’s supposed to love isn’t going to hurt him. And she knows it, I mean, besides the Wen attack I’ve never seen her hit the kids (although I very much doubt she hasn’t), so a good part of the abuse must be verbal. There’s no fucking way a person who regularly uses words that way won’t realise where she’s aiming those arrows. Which means to her (to both) the kids are collateral.

But FR, the barely-out-of-adolescence disaster bi necromancer PTSDing all over the place and living in a mass grave was a better parent than any of the current adults in this thing.

Which brings me to another point, Shijie is textbook “the oldest sibling is just another parent” and I’m making myself very angry.

[this is when I start frothing at the mouth and itching to write a modern-girl(and friends)-dropped-in-CQL because someone has to be a positive adult influence in these kids’ lives and it sure as shit ain’t the ones in the actual show.]

CAN WE STOP BRINGING PEOPLE’S DEAD PARENTS INTO THE FIGHT?

*deep breath*

I am going to feed JFM & Mme Yu each other’s spleens. Look, listen, look and listen, let’s first talk about how calmly they lay out the facts of their lives, one is only loved because he’s been brought up in the shadow of his dead parents, the other knows with certainty his father dislikes him and his mother uses him as leverage in marital disputes. When have these two not exploded their emotions all over the place? Fucking never. Yet here they are, talking about this bullshit like some bout of inconvenient weather. They’re used to it!

And now let’s talk about yet again siblings-are-just-extra-parents, with an added pile of WWX’s terrible self awareness that, to the man who brought him up, his worth is due to his dead parents. Again I’m extrapolating, but with the amount of times Mme Yu brings up his parents in such a negative light I refuse to believe JFM hasn’t made all the “you’re so much like your parents” comments to him every time WWX does something right. I mean, telling an orphan about their parents if they ask is a good thing, but WWX seems starved for stories about his them, which leads me to believe JFM refuses to talk about the topic except to make those little comments. What a fucking stellar way to give someone all the trauma if you ask me. May also explain a lot of WWX’s self worth issues if the biggest praise he’s ever heard is that he resembles dead people, yes, people who were loved, but they’re dead, and it doesn’t look like any adult has bothered to go and differentiate WWX from ZSSR&WCZ.

I’m just really mad, despite all the silly anecdotes I put in here my parents are fucking great at parenting, so I know what good parents should look like, and this ain’t it.

Ok, so I made myself angry and I don’t know if I should move onto the next episode now or wait till tomorrow but thanks for reading!

[purplesurveys]

1104

survey by kaybee-x18

What was the highlight of your day? I mean, Flowers for Vases came out earlier on Spotify Philippines and I had no idea, and I waited all morning thinking the release would be in sync with US timezones so I was in for a nice surprise of a whole goddamn tracklist when I casually checked my Spotify at around 11 this morning haha. The album is beautiful and I’m so excited to take it with me on my journey to healing.

Also got paid today, so that’s shweeeeet. As a reward to myself (since I’m doing a bit of OT tonight) I also recently ordered banh mi and Vietnamese iced coffee for delivery and it’s currently on its way to me :) All in all, pretty solid day!

Do you know anyone who is anorexic? Not that I am aware of, but it’s possible that I do.

Are you dating the person you texted last? No. That would be the delivery rider who’s bringing my sandwich to me, and that is just creepy to think about.

Who has hurt you the most this year? I don’t let Gabie hurt me anymore, directly or indirectly. Everybody else has been gentle with me so far in 2021, which I appreciate.

What's the last insult someone said to you? Ugh it’ll stress me out to think about it again, but last week my mom was asking for some money and I advised her that I might not be able to just for the meantime; she immediately got all condescending, asking me how much I make in a month and what I spend it on. I thought it very rude and tactless, and it ruined the rest of my evening. I know she knows she has a tendency to be tactless, so I don’t know why she never does anything to change that behavior.

Trigger warning on a few questions belowwwww.

Was it a boy or a girl to text you last? It was a boy. Man is more proper actually, but whatever.

Do you wish you were somewhere else right now? Dude, it’s a Friday night and I’m on the rooftop on a chilly night, I’ve laid out a mat with some pillows and a blanket and I’m surrounded by my banh mi and iced coffee while Hayley’s new songs are playing faintly in the background. I’m right where I want to be.

Have you ever given up on someone for good? Yes, and I had no idea how incredibly liberating it would feel :)

Who was the last person you talked to before you went to bed last night? I think it was my mom, since she briefly knocked on my door to say goodnight shortly before I passed out.

How much did your car cost? I’m not sure exactly how much, but it’s definitely in the six-figure range. It’s a hatchback and secondhand so there’s no way it’d be worth a million bucks.

Will you have a boyfriend/girlfriend in 6 months? No; I’ve ended up really liking being by myself. It’ll be a while before I open myself up to love again, if I ever do.

Who was the last person whose phone number you added to your contacts? One of our brand clients recently recruited a new guy to be a part of their team, so as we got acquainted I also got access to his contact details.

When was the last time you hugged someone? It was when Andi was leaving my car as we parted ways a few weeks ago.

What is the last picture you received on your phone of? Pretty sure it was work-related since my teammates share photos through Viber all the time. I can’t be bothered to check, though.

Are you better at remembering names or faces? Can easily spot familiar faces from a mile away, but I’m quite terrible at remembering names.

Have you ever tried your hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end? See: the entirety of my relationship that ultimately failed. I cherished and took care of that relationship as much as I could, but the effort I got was never the same and I ended up being hurt, too. It’s going to take a while before I gain my trust and confidence back when it comes to these things.

Have you ever let someone go because you thought they deserved better? This was Gab’s perspective and reasoning, not mine. I’m starting to believe it’s all bullshit though; that it’s an excuse she used so that I could feel better about myself. At this pont in time, I’m pretty sure she just wanted to be free from this “burden” of a relationship that she increasingly found “exhausting.”

Who did you last share a taxi with? God I have not been in one of those in a long time. My last ride in an actual taxi was with my family; but in the last ride-hailing service I took (like Uber), I was by myself since I was headed to school that day.

Is there anybody you're really disappointed in right now? No, no reason to feel that way towards anyone at the moment.

What do you hear right now? I can hear the faint engine of a motorcycle. I can also hear a couple of dogs barking.

Do you remember the first time you met the last person you kissed? Yes.

Do you like polka-dotted things? Not always, but sure. Sometimes the look can be tacky, but there are times that it looks cute.

Do you do anything to help the environment? In my own little ways, like dividing all my notebook pages into two columns to save up on paper; reusing paper and plastic bags, turn off my car engine when I have to idle somewhere, etc.

What do you think of people who complain about Valentine's Day? I don’t care lmao, it’s not my problem.

Have you ever had to get stitches? No.

When's the last time you did something you knew was wrong? Trigger warning: Self-harm. Last week when I grabbed a key in my room and did stuff to my wrist with it. A few months’ progress down the drain.

What was the last thing you wore that was black? The shirt I am currently wearing is black.

Is your tongue pierced? Nope.

Do you think that you have a pretty smile? Yes, I like the way I smile.

What month were you born in? April.

When's the last time you cried over a guy? Wow lmao, literally no idea. The only instance coming to mind is whenever I miss either my grandpa or Nacho, but I can’t pinpoint the last time I found myself in tears over either.

Are you keeping a secret that would shock people if they found out? I think so.

What pissed you off yesterday? The internet has been going on and off for the last few days.

The person you like at the moment finds someone new, what is your reaction? I don’t know if I like anyone at the moment, at least not anymore. But I think I would still get affected if the word ever gets to me that my ex is seeing someone new, should it happen in the near future. That’s why I’m one step ahead and just stopped talking to her and have muted her on all social media.

Are you scared to lose the person you fell the hardest for? I already did. I was definitely scared and devastated at first, and I was for a while. Once I came to terms with the fact that nothing was my fault and that it isn’t my loss, it became much easier to get over it.

Has anyone seen you in your underwear this month? Nah.

Is your life falling apart or coming together? Coming together.

Is there someone you wouldn't mind kissing right now? When it comes down to it, and considering my stupidity when it comes to love, yes.

Do you know anyone in the army? Yes but just vaguely. Angela’s uncle is a high-ranking...army person. Army official?? Idk how to refer to them but yeah he’s like a general or colonel or something like that.

Do you have any friends that actually model? I wouldn’t count any of them as friends but yeah, I went to high school and/or college with people who have since become influencers and have endorsement deals and stuff. Cheenie is probably the most notable one.

If you could go back in time and change something, would you? Probably.

Do you care about the last person you kissed? Again, when it comes down to it, yes.

Do they care about you? I have no idea but I don’t dwell on it anymore.

Are you for or against gay marriage? Of course I’m for.

Ever kissed someone whose name started with A, B, C, & D? No to all of these.

Is there someone you wish you were with right now? Mmm I don’t think so. I like spending this evening by myself.

Do you still talk to the person you liked 3 months ago? Nope. I don’t have a reason to.

When do you want to get married? I’d love to get married in my late 20s, but I don’t know if that’s still a possibility.

Do you know anyone who’s committed suicide? Yes.

Have you ever imagined how it would feel kissing a certain someone? I think about this with certain people sometimes, but most of the time they are annoying, unwelcome, invasive thoughts that I try to shake off immediately.

Would you fall apart if that last person you kissed died? What’s with some of these questions lmao??? Yeah absolutely. 

Is there anyone who doesn't like you? If there is, I don’t know anything about it and I doubt that I would care,

When was the last time you wanted to punch someone in their face? Yesterday when a client was being extra annoying.

What was the last thing you cried about? I stumbled upon an emotional scene from Grey’s Anatomy on Facebook this morning, and I let myself go while watching it haha. It was a great snippet.

Do you have nice eyes? I’m not particularly known for my eyes, like they’re nothing special. I’ve got nothing to complain about them, though.

What are the bad things you've heard people say about you? I’m not sure if I’ve caught anything bad. If I did it most definitely would have stuck and continued to stick with me.

Is there anyone that is jealous of you or anything that you have? Not that I know of.

How many true friends do you have? Right now, I would say two very close friends.

Does anyone disgust you? Sure.

Do you flirt a lot? Never.

Have you ever caught a friend cheating on their bf/gf? I have not, and I’m glad none of them have.

What phrase or saying do you use the most? I’ve said this on a recent survey but I say “Awesome!” a lot, but it’s a habit I picked up from my now-ex.

What mood are you in right now? I’mmmmmmm getting a little sleepy tbh, but I’m trying to keep myself up for a few more hours because it’s a Friday evening.

Have you ever kissed someone that was high? No.

Are you waiting for anything? Not really.

Do you have a good relationship with your mother? It’s civil at best. We don’t get at each other’s throats as often as we used to anymore but I don’t feel the need to improve our relationship, and I’d rather still keep a safe distance from her.

Do you think Jersey people are annoying? I don’t know any of them because I live on the other side of the world, so...

How many exes do you have? One.

Did anyone break up with you in the last 5 days? No. Last five months, sure.

Who was the last person that broke your heart? Cheesy phrase, but Gabie.

Do you love anyone? I love a lot of people.

Do you want to be single or with someone? Not looking for anything at this point in time. I mean I’d really rather be in a relationship when it comes down to it, but I wouldn’t force myself in one for the sake of being in one. If no one fits the mold, then I’d be just as happy being single, and this happens to be where I am right now. I’m okay with that.

What song are you listening to right now? No music.

Why did you kiss the last person you kissed? Because she was leaving and I wanted to say goodbye.

Does your mom think you’re a virgin? Yes.

Is there someone that wants you to give them a second chance? I think my brother, but my mind is set on never saying a word to him again.

Do you hate the last guy you had a conversation with? I don’t hate him; he’s just a particularly difficult client to deal with.

Would you rather get high or have sex right now? Getting high would be a brand new experience, so let’s go with that haha.

Do you know anyone with a star tattoo right by their hip bone? No, I don’t.

Did anyone give you anything last Valentine's Day? Last year, yes. This year, no.

Do you keep condoms in your room? No, I don’t need to.

What do you think about people who party a lot? Like, in 2021?? I would think they are highly insensitive and irresponsible and putting so many of their loved ones at risk. 

Have you ever been caught sneaking out of your house? Nopes.

How much time do you spend on AIM a day? I don’t.

Is there a secret you've never told your parents? I hold way more secrets than actual things they know about me.

Ever kissed someone over 30? No.

What size bra do you wear? Baby bra size, whatever the measurement for that is HAHA

Does the person you last kissed still like you? Lmfao no. She hasn’t for a while now.

Are your parents still together? Yes.

Was your first time good or bad? Good.

[abbyfreemansmind]

Let’s talk about Hazbin Hotel

So, I finally sat down and watched Hazbin Hotel. I’d heard so much about it and felt the need to launch myself headfirst into having my own opinions about it instead of just listening to other people talking about it. This is gonna be a long post, so I’m gonna put it behind a neat little read more. Please note that this is coming from someone who genuinely enjoys adult humour and edgy humour and themes. I’ve got no problem with something that’s all swearing and raunchy jokes. It just needs to be done right.

Point 1 - The Plot The plot is describes as the Princess of Hell trying to open a new hotel to rehabilitate sinners so they don’t get exterminated during the yearly heavenly extermination to deal with Hell’s overpopulation problems. This plot is quickly undone through a few things that anyone can notice during the first viewing. 1 - Overpopulation? WHAT population? The scenery is most often noticeably devoid of any signs of life, outside of when background characters are called for. The scene where Charlie’s doing her news presentation is the most notable example of background characters. After this scene, we see almost nobody outside of the main cast and those weird little egg things. There are a few throwaway demons but outside of that, the streets are devoid of people. There aren’t even the corpses we had just seen during that opening scene. 2 - Charlie may as well be a total nobody what with all the power being the Princess of Hell holds. Just look at how the other characters treat her. You’d think the Princess of Hell would have some kind of benefit that would sway people towards agreeing with this whole idea. Instead, she gets mocked by just about everyone for reasons I can only guess involve winning her sympathy points from the audience. 3 - At no point does she give any proof that redemption would work. She basically says, “Hey guys! I hate seeing you all die, so I have this idea that has no backing evidence, that may or may not work, to try and get you guys into Heaven! Let me sing a song about it where I insult you all!”

Point 2 - Presentation I applaud the animators. Must’ve been hard, especially for Charlie’s overly fast song that really didn’t need to be nightcored, or literally any time Angel Dust was on-screen. Frame by frame. No rigs. All those stripes. All those colours that blend if you stare at them too hard or squint even slightly while watching. All that unnecessarily constant movement. It’s no wonder the thing took four bloody years to animate. Outside of animation, there are too many unneeded details and not enough needed details. Seriously. 1 - The turf war. We didn’t need this. We didn’t need this at all. If you take out the entire opening to it and the entire actual fight scene here, the episode still flows smoothly and we get the same amount of information and worldbuilding. In a pilot/first episode, you should only give the audience necessary details. Leave them wanting more, yes, but make sure they actually know what they’re getting into from the first episode. Make every scene count. Make it mean something. Don’t just shove every detail you can think of together and call it a day, especially if you don’t actually give the audience much information from it. 2 - Why is Hell overpopulated? Why isn’t Heaven? Why can angels go from Heaven to Hell, but demons can’t go from Hell to Heaven? Why does nobody care about being redeemed if Hell is so overpopulated that Angels annually come down and kill people because of it? Why does everyone treat the Princess of Hell like she’s worthless? Why doesn’t Angel Dust know about Alastor if they got into hell within 10 years of each other? Where is this supposed overpopulation problem? Would redemption even work in the first place? Why should I care about most of these characters (who are mostly complete jerks with no redeeming qualities other than “PROTAGONIST”, especially when two of the fan favourites repeatedly sexually assault other characters and, in one case, is both sexist and racist at one point)? Why are there turf wars? I should not be having to ask these questions. Don’t hold the audience’s hand, but don’t leave every single question you present in the show unanswered. Some of the questions presented make absolute sense to leave unanswered. Why does Alastor want to help with the hotel? Why are characters like Vaggie and Niffty, who do nothing all that bad, in Hell? These are questions that make total sense to leave unanswered for now. 3 - What crime is too terrible to be redeemed for? Charlie seems to think that literally everyone can be redeemed. That means murderers, rapists, abusers, tormentors... Certainly her song holds some kind of key to figuring it out! “Inside of every creepy hatchet-wielding maniac” Hmm... Okay... “All of you cretins, sluts and losers, sexual deviants and boozers” Uh... “So, all your cartoon porn addictions, vegan rants, psychic predictions Ancient Roman crucifixions end right here All you monsters, thieves and crazies, cannibals and crying babies" Oh... Also, did she imply that mental illness, alcoholism, drug dependency, plant-based diets/lifestyles, rabies and enjoyment of sex were sins in that song?

Point 3 - Edgy for the sake of edgy Hazbin Hotel tries to be an adult cartoon, but comes off as something a mentally disturbed teenager wrote during their emo/scene phase. 1 - The swearing and sex jokes. Oh boy. I’ve worked with children under the age of 15 who swear and crack sex jokes better than the adults in this show. The swearing and sex jokes are the only reasons this show couldn’t be aired as a Cartoon Network show aimed at edgy teenagers. It’s so poorly done that it in and of itself takes away from the quality of the show itself. Also, we have a character who’s name is an actual sex joke itself. Vaggie, full name Vagatha - a lesbian sex worker, of course. Fun fact for those who don’t know, but all of her previous character drafts had her name as some form of joke on the word vagina. This isn’t an accident, this is blatant and intentional. Also, here’s a pro tip for you! You can make an adult-oriented show without having swearing, slurs and sex jokes taking up a solid third or more of your script. 2 - The... “Representation”. Yes, Hazbin Hotel has LGBT+ characters! Yes, it has biracial and Latina characters! Charlie is bi, Vaggie is a Latina lesbian, Angel Dust is a gay man, Alastor is ace and biracial, Husk is pan, Niffty is Japanese (YIKES). Except none of it actually matters. No, really. Vivziepop was all like, “btw you can ship w/e, idc! also, i rlly like the fanon version of human alastor (who is whiter than marshmallow fluff even though he’s supposed to be half black)! :)” and threw all that out the window because... Who knows at this point. Now, if you look at the connected series, Helluva Boss, you get Moxie and Millie - an extremely obvious and loving couple. In Hazbin Hotel, you get Charlie and Vaggie who you probably couldn’t tell were a couple without somebody telling you that in the first place, what with all the loveydovey-ness going on with them. In fact, the biggest hint we even get is literally one line. “Life ain’t a musical, hun.” But then again, I’d be more apt to believe Charlie and Vaggie are friends, or Vaggie is pining after Charlie. Also, Charlie is a really bad girlfriend! She lets Vaggie get abused by practically the entire cast without so much as a single word in her defense and ignores everything Vaggie says. It came as no surprise when I remembered hearing about how the only reason these two are a couple is because one of the people on the team thought they were during storyboarding and Vivziepop just went with it. Also, fun fact, Vaggie fits both the angry lesbian and fiery Latina stereotypes. Charlie fits the stereotype for the bisexual cheater, what with how she seems to actually like Alastor more than her own bloody girlfriend. Alastor is canonically ace because he’s too full of himself to be with anyone else. Speaking as somebody who’s ace... WHAT?! As much as I don’t like Charlastor, it’s partially more popular than Chaggie because Vivziepop actually made them act like a couple for an entire musical number. Also, he’s annoying. He not only kept telling Vaggie to smile (heck you dude), he also smacked her butt, which is a form of sexual assault, people. This was all played for laughs, along with Vaggie’s (actually very reasonable) anger. Niffty is Japanese. A yellow-skinned demon who’s boy crazy and obsessed with cleaning... Big yikes. Finally, Angel Dust. The kinky gay man porn star/drag queen/drug addict/prostitute who verbally sexually assaulted two guys. Where do I begin. When it came to this guy, Vivziepop must’ve been like, “Imma throw every stereotype for gay men on this guy and call it a character!” If you look a Helluva Boss again, you get Stolas, who verbally sexually assaults Blitzo over the phone and also cheated on his wife with him in the first place, so this isn’t a one-off. Also, he was originally AFAB, so that whole line about “Why are you all women?” is more than a little heinous and in extremely poor taste.

In conclusion, this show is terrible. Everything about it. It needs some serious reworking, because as it stands, it’s really truly not that great of a creation.

tl;dr: Needs a lot of work and “ThEy’Re In HeLl!!1!!one!!!eleven!!!11″ isn’t even remotely an excuse for the genuine problems in it. Remember, at least one actual human being on Earth, not in Hell, wrote this garbage fire. Also, the animators deserve a higher wage than whatever they’re getting to deal with these designs. I shudder just thinking about animating them, with or without a rig.

[olehistorian]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-interview-imelda-staunton-is-tight-lipped-on-playing-the-crowns-future-queen-pkzpb76b2

Have you watched Vera Drake lately? Obviously, you have to be in a certain Saturday-night mood to turn off The Masked Singer and choose to put on Mike Leigh’s tale of a big-hearted backstreet abortionist in the East End in 1950. But it’s worth another visit. It’s one of the great British films and turbo-boosted the careers of many a character actor. Leading the ensemble cast in the title role — in an Oscar-nominated, Bafta-winning performance — was Imelda Staunton, who would become queen of them all. And possibly even the Queen. We’ll come to that.

“Just the best, best, best job of my life,” is how Staunton reflects on Vera Drake now. “Yeah, it was very hard to continue after that.”

After Vera Drake, Staunton had the little-old-lady role pretty much sewn up. The “little” is unavoidable. She’s 5ft nothing. In the hotel sideroom in which we meet, she fidgets on the edge of an armchair, sipping a juice a similar shade of green to her blouse and trench coat, which she keeps on throughout the interview. The “old” is perhaps more unfair: she was in her forties when she played Drake. We meet the day before her 64th birthday. “I think a lot of women now don’t think about their age because it’s changed for women, hasn’t it?”

She did “harrowing” again last year in ITV’s true-crime A Confession, playing the mother of Sian O’Callaghan, the 22-year-old from Swindon who was murdered in 2011. But otherwise, of late, she’s been — in the nicest way possible — British cinema’s arch biddy: in the gay-rights drama Pride; in Nanny McPhee; in the Downton Abbey movie alongside her husband, Jim Carter, who plays the long-suffering butler Carson; and as Professor Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter films. It all comes back to Mike Leigh. “I wouldn’t have got Harry Potter if my profile hadn’t been upped with Vera Drake,” she says. “They might have wanted me, but I wasn’t, you know, hot enough.”

At the end of last year, it was reported that the ultimate little-old-lady part was coming Staunton’s way: succeeding Olivia Colman as the Queen in series five and six of The Crown. Netflix played it down as “speculation”. But at a charity event at the Ivy before Christmas, Grant Tucker, the Sunday Times entertainment correspondent, asked Staunton’s husband, Carter, what it was like being married to royalty. “Thankfully I don’t have to start bowing to her for another two years,” he replied, “so I have plenty of time to practise.” So it’s true? Staunton’s reply is immediate, polite and professional: “I can’t discuss anything to do with that.” Which isn’t, you’ll note, a no.

She tells me she woke up at 4am today, thinking about her next big gig — Hello, Dolly! at the Adelphi Theatre. It isn’t on until August. Rehearsals don’t start until June. But “to me, that’s 10 minutes”, she says. “I just know the process is beginning. As Jim said, ‘This is the rest of the year, is it?’ I think about it and think about it. ‘How the hell am I going to do that?’ [Past success] means nothing at all, because it’s the next challenge. The more people say, ‘Ooh, it’s going to be great,’ the more I just get so depressed.”

And what success. In the West End, she’s busted free of the twinsets to become a bona fide, big-lunged musical star — a pocket rocket with a trail of five-star reviews and awards in her wake. Her first Olivier was back in 1991, for Into the Woods. In 2013, she won one for Sweeney Todd, in which she appeared alongside Michael Ball. Stephen Sondheim saw her performance and told her she should take on a revival of Gypsy next. The 2016 Olivier followed for that.

Her dog, Molly, a terrier, appeared on stage with her in the early performances of Gypsy, at the Chichester Festival Theatre. One time, during the West End run, a mouse snuck into her costume. “I did the whole first 20 minutes with a mouse inside the sleeve of my coat, singing the song, carrying on the scene. It’s good what your head can cope with, isn’t it?” It’s not the sort of thing that should happen to a Harry Potter star, surely? “That’s what you want. That’s the reality of the glamour of the thing.”

Staunton grew up in Archway, north London, above her mum’s hairdressing shop. Her dad was a labourer. Her mum, a first-generation Irish immigrant, was a big fan of the Queen. She died just before her daughter received her Oscar nomination for Vera Drake, and before Staunton collected her OBE and later CBE from the palace. “She’d have bloody loved all that,” she says.

She went to a convent school — “a really nice one because we had a lot of lay teachers”. Her report cards read: “Imelda could try harder, but she was very good in the play.” Her elocution teacher, Mrs Stoker, pushed her towards Rada, where contemporaries included Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and Juliet Stevenson. When she got her first job in London, in 1982, it was in a musical: Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre. Staunton, by now used to lead roles, was only in the chorus. “I was thinking, ‘I just played Electra, what am I doing? Oh God.’” But Ian Charleson, Bob Hoskins, Julie Covington and Julia McKenzie were higher up the bill. “That’s what I was doing there: learning, really, really learning. That was wonderful.”

Also in the cast, seven years her senior, was Jim Carter. They married the following year. In 1986 they appeared together in Dennis Potter’s classic TV musical The Singing Detective. But, until the Downton movie, their working lives seldom intersected. “We don’t ever try not to work together — we just haven’t,” she says. “On the Downton film, we got completely overexcited, as we went to work for three days at the same time. What was lovely was doing the publicity together: travelling, just being in a hotel. We made sure we enjoyed ourselves.”

They have had a long-standing pact not to spend more than a couple of weeks apart, a rule Staunton broke to film Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock (no, me neither). “I think it was five weeks: I was in America and thought, ‘Yep, that’ll do.’”

She enjoyed last summer filming Flesh and Blood, a new four-part ITV drama, on the coast near Eastbourne. “The sea does do something different to you, doesn’t it? I do think it would be brilliant to have somewhere by the sea, but it’s not going to happen.” She’s happy at home in Hampstead with Carter, walking the dog, spending days at the Test match and doing the gardening: “That’s probably an older person’s thing to say. Well, f*** it, you know? It’s healing, really healing. Having a stable place to come back to is quite necessary for me and for Jim, I think. It nourishes us. It allows us to go into a place that isn’t comfortable because you know you can get back to a more comfortable place.”

Flesh and Blood is an example of good parts being written for older people, especially women. “I’m encouraged by it,” says Staunton. “Very encouraged.” It’s not so much a whodunnit as a whodunnwot. In its rather gripping first episode, there’s a mystery body on a beach and a recent widow (played by 74-year-old Francesca Annis) starting a new life with a new fella who has a whiff of the gigolo about him. Staunton is back as the little old lady, Mary, a creepy next-door neighbour with a pair of binoculars and penchant for opening other people’s mail. This primetime drama does contain scenes of pensioners smooching.

“It’s not just for the sake of it,” says Staunton. “This isn’t trying to be ‘Oh, we’re beautiful things having sex later in life.’ There’s a loving relationship developing. The fact that [in one of Annis’s scenes] the dressing gown slips off is not extraordinary.” Would Staunton ever want a crack at being the older woman getting the, ahem, action? “I don’t think that would be required,” she replies. “I don’t think so, no — not unless it was funny.”

We talk about the trial of the film producer Harvey Weinstein. What experience has Staunton had of that grim — and criminal — casting- couch culture? “None. Absolutely none,” she says. “I’m not surprised [that it goes on], but I’ve always been in situations where women are treated equally. In the rehearsal room, women behave as they wish to behave and are listened to, and that’s normal. I never thought, ‘Oh, isn’t this marvellous, somebody’s listening to me?’ I’ve never witnessed it, but I hope good will come out of this. The irony of that” — she pauses to choose the word carefully — “situation is that that man [Weinstein] has made good things happen now. Hurrah.”

It won’t come as too much of surprise that she voted Labour in last month’s election — her MP, Tulip Siddiq, has a 14,000-vote majority in Hampstead and Kilburn, Glenda Jackson’s old seat. Staunton voted for remain. She also featured in a video last year for Extinction Rebellion, organised by Richard Curtis. “It was a friend who said, ‘Could you come along, they’re just doing it today, this bit of filming.’ Well, I was doing nothing else. I’m not climbing up the side of a building, so I’ll go and do that. If I can help, I’ll do that. As much as we can all do, every little bit helps.”

Does she worry about putting her head above the parapet like that? “No, not at all. That’s the only bloody point of any slight fame: you’ve got to use it, to put it to good use.” She has also provided the voice for some polar bears for Greenpeace. “Trump is just an absolute … It’s just a nightmare, and the climate’s a nightmare and Brexit’s a nightmare. And yet I wake up thinking about Hello, Dolly!”

At 64, Staunton seems to recognise that a Vera Drake or Hello, Dolly! might not roll round again. Even Harry Potter was, she says, “a very serious piece of work, weirdly”. She feels lucky that an actor’s life goes on. So no plans to retire? “I don’t think people do, do they? Name me an actress! No, you won’t get bloody Maggie Smith retiring. It’s a very nice job, if you can get it.” Plus, she’s still hoping someone will cast her alongside her 26-year-old daughter, Bessie, also an actress. “I’d love that. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

I hope they do give her the Queen job. If there’s anyone who could add some plausibility and empathy to the madcap past 12 months of royal history, from Megxit to the sweat-free antics of Prince Andrew, it is Staunton. I would pay good money to watch her, in standard-issue HRH lemon-yellow frock and tight-curled wig, look up, fix her aide with a stare and utter the words: “A Pizza Express … in Woking?”

Flesh and Blood is on ITV in February

[heyyyharry]

Treasure

(from the Couple in Flat 102 Series)

…in which Y/N thinks they’re too busy to have a pet, and Harry brings home one anyway.

.

Sunday.

Who the hell works on Sunday? Y/N thought to herself as she took a sip from her coffee which had gotten cold since she got on the phone with her boss.

Harry had gone out early for his usual morning run, so she had to wait for him to get home so they could have breakfast together. In the meantime, Y/N had to finish her assigned tasks so she could work on the presentation for the meeting on Monday.

She really did miss university. Everything had been much easier back then.

The sound of doorbell echoed into the flat, sending Y/N straight out of her chair as she immediately ran from the kitchen to the front door. Ben had arrived. She hadn't seen him for nearly two months now because  both of them had been so busy.

Ben had just got back from Bristol a week ago and rang her as soon as he'd got off the plane to set up a date. At first, Y/N assumed that he missed her, but it turned out the main reason Ben wanted to meet up was because he needed help with making brownies for a colleague's birthday.

"Hey, girl!" Ben waved enthusiastically when he saw Y/N at the door, and the girl wasted no time to pull her old neighbor into a hug.

"I missed you so much! It's so good to see you again!"

Ben opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted when the lift door opened and one of Y/N's neighbors walked out, carrying a grocery bag with her. The girl was slightly older than her, she seemed reserved and quiet, the geeky type of person, yet the look she gave Y/N before pulling out her keys made Ben suspect his initial judgements had been all wrong.

Before he could even ask, Y/N said out loud, "he's gay, okay? I'm not cheating on my boyfriend!"

Her sudden change in attitude left both her friend and her neighbor in shock. Ignoring both of their reactions, she grabbed Ben by the wrist and pulled him inside, slamming the door shut behind them.

"Getting along with your new neighbors I see." Ben chuckled as he shrugged off his coat, watching Y/N pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration.

"Last week she told almost everyone she knew in the building that I invited a guy over when Harry was at work. But it was just Niall dropping off some stuff for Harry!"

"She's probably just jealous of you." Ben gave her a small shrug. "I mean, Harry is kind of everyone's type."

"True." She laughed. "I'm gonna force him to wear a shirt that says 'I'm taken' every time he goes out."

Ben laughed along then waited on the sofa as Y/N headed back to the kitchen to get him a drink.

"Tea or coffee?"

"Water please."

"Good choice!"

She returned a minute later with a glass of water, and sat down next to Ben. Just as the man was about to ask where Harry was, the front door flew open and Harry rushed inside with the biggest smile on his face despite being all sweaty from the run.

"Baby, I'm homeeee! Oh hi Ben! Didn't know you were coming!"

"Someone's in a good mood." Ben chuckled.

Y/N, on the other hand, furrowed her eyebrows as Harry leaned in to peck her on the lips.

"What are you hiding behind your back?" She asked cautiously, knowing he was up to something the moment she saw him beaming and biting his bottom lip to contain the excitement about whatever he was about to show her.

"Guess what I found outside our building!"

"Oh no..."

"A kitten!"

As soon as Harry revealed the little cat he'd been hiding behind his back the whole time, Ben shot himself up from the couch and dashed to Harry's side so he could pet the adorable little creature. "It looks like a snowball with blue eyes! Oh my God! You baby!"

Harry carefully handed the cat to his friend, smiling as he replied, "beautiful isn't she?"

While the two men were busy gushing over Harry's surprise, Y/N was looking at them with an eyebrow raised and both arms crossed. She let them have their moment, and then finally spoke up, "Harry, we should give the cat to our doorman. Her owner's probably living in this building and they must worry sick about her right now."

"If it's true then they must be a terrible owner for letting her wandering outside on her own," Harry said. "I say we're keeping her."

"We're not keeping her! We're giving her to the doorman so she can get back to her rightful owner," Y/N declared, pointing to the cat who stared at her with those big round eyes, which made her go soft for a moment.

But she soon snapped out of it, because she knew someone had to be the responsible adult and return the cat to her real family. Besides, they didn't even have much time to spend with each other anymore, let alone take care of a pet.

"Come to daddy, Princess."

"Harry! Ben is right here!" Y/N giggled yet it didn't take her more than two seconds to realize he wasn't referring to her as Princess. "He was talking to the cat, wasn't he?"

"Yup." Ben nodded, handing the kitty back to Harry, who carefully held the creature with both hands.

"I named her Princess," he said, grinning at his girlfriend.

"H, you can't."

"Oh, wait, you're right." He instantly looked a bit worried. "Then every time I call her you would answer."

Y/N rolled her eyes but she couldn't help but smile a little.

"Mummy doesn't like that name, what am I calling you now?"

"Baby, we are not—"

"How about Treasure?" Ben spoke up, lifting up his shoulders and sticking out his bottom lip. "You know, because you found her unexpectedly?"

"Ben, don't encourage him!"

"Treasure it is!" Harry lifted the kitten up in the air like the opening scene of The Lion King, causing Ben to crack up and Y/N facepalm herself.

"You're not naming her anything. You will get attached to her once you've given her a name, it only makes it harder to give her away!"

"We don't have to give her away." Harry pouted. But she wasn't gonna let him win her over by those puppy dog eyes this time.

"You and I are only free at weekends. We don't have time to take care of a pet."

"But we've discussed this!"

"We haven't!"

Ben sneaked in between the couple to steal the kitty from Harry, and brought her with him to the sofa, he said, while covering her little ears, "let's stay out of the family feud, shall we?"

"We said we would get a pet but this isn't a good time."

"Baby, please, we'll manage to take care of her, I'm sure we will!"

"No, not we, you!" She decided, poking his chest with her forefinger. "If you don't give her to Albert, you're on your own."

Just like that, Y/N returned to the kitchen, leaving a huge frown on her boyfriend's face.

"She'll change her mind," Ben comforted Harry before turning his attention back to the cat. Treasure had no idea why her new parents were arguing, but she did seem like she was enjoying her temporary new home already.

...

Y/N put the baking trays into the oven and at the same time kept an eye on her boyfriend, who was now on the living room floor with a book in his hands and the white fur ball on his lap.

"I can't believe him!" She grumbled, slamming both hands down on the marble counter as she stared at him with squinty eyes. "How does he think he's gonna do this? Bringing her with him to work?! Spending more money on a cat babysitter?"

"Honey, I think you're just overreacting," Ben said, taking the apron off. "Just let him keep Treasure."

"Don't call her by that name. The last thing I need is to grow attached to her!"

"Y/N, are you actually jealous of a cat!" Ben gasped before bursting into laughter, receiving an offended look from the girl.

"Are you mad? Why would I be jealous? She's a cat!"

"I think..." Ben placed his forefinger on his lips, smirking at his old neighbor. "As you and Harry are both busy, you have even lesser time to spend together, but now in his free time he'll have to take care of Treasure so you're afraid you'll be left aside. Am I right?"

"No! That sounds ridiculous!" Y/N snorted and nudged him with her elbow. "But enough with the cat! Let's talk about why we're baking brownies for your colleague?"

"Because I'm a good person?"

"But you've never baked for anyone." She leaned to a side and laid the hand on her other side on her hip. "Come on. Spill the beans. Are you seeing someone?"

"No! God no!" Ben snorted, but Y/N didn't give up that easily. She gave him this look as if she'd known all about it, until he felt so uncomfortable that he gave in and confided in her.

It actually worked.

"Maybe I do have a little crush on him."

"Ben!!!"

"It's not a big deal!"

"It is!" Y/N disagreed as she tugged on his arm. "I need to see this guy! Do you have a photo?!"

"Of course I don't! It's not like I saved his photos on my phone! Creepy!" Ben grimaces but it took him less than a second to put on a smile. "Actually, I did."

Y/N squealed, bouncing up and down, making the man crack up. He pulled out his phone and showed her a photo of a good-looking man wearing a nice suit. He seemed decent, but the more Y/N looked at the photo, the more familiar his face got.

Strange. Have I seen this man before? Y/N wonders. Probably not.

"Girl, it's been months since the last time I had some good dicking." Ben crossed his fingers and looked up at the ceiling, taking in a deep breath. "Please God let those brownies help me get laid tonight."

Y/N stared at him, letting out a snort and shaking her head slowly before turning back to look at Harry.

...

It was past midnight now.

Harry was still on the phone in the living room, discussing something with his boss, while Y/N was alone in bed, clicking another episode of Black Mirror on Netflix while waiting for him to finish the call and join her. Her eyelids were fluttering due to the lack of sleep. She struggled to stay awake despite her body fighting to shut down. As everything faded to black, a sudden loud 'Meow' at the end of the bed caused her eyes to fly open.

"Treasure! You scared me!" She put one hand on her chest, catching her breath, watching the car walking towards her and curling up into a ball on her lap.

"If you're trying to win my affection, it's not going to happen, my friend." Despite saying so, Y/N started stroking the kitty's head, scratching her chin with the other hand.

Treasure closed her eyes then wiggled her tail, apparently loving the way Y/N was caressing her fur. Watching the cat taking a nap on her lap made Y/N happy somehow, and it didn't take her too long to fall deep into sleep.

Harry entered their bedroom half an hour later to find his girlfriend sleeping in bed with the cat lying on her stomach, chilling while watching the Netflix show Y/N left on. Quietly, he sat down on the edge of the bed, leaning down to kiss Y/N's cheek, but the touch of his lips immediately woke her.

"Hey." She smiled at him, rubbing her eyes tiredly. "How long have I been asleep?"

"You can ask Treasure as she's been here with you the whole time." He laughed softly which made her eyes roll upward, the smile remained on her face.

"She's a very good girl," she said.

"You're a very good girl." Harry pressed his lips to hers, urging her to lie down so he can climb on the mattress, causing the surprised kitty to jump aside in fear of Harry crushing her.

"What took you so long?" Y/N asked, fingers combing through his hair, having him whimper against her mouth.

"Sorry. Work. Want me to make it up to you?"

His fingers were now toying with the waist of her PJ pants, but she stopped him before he can yank them down.

"We're not having sex in front of Treasure!"

"You called her by her name!"

Y/N released a soft chuckle, holding Harry's cheeks while stroking them with her thumbs.

"She can stay," she finally spoke.

Those three words resulted in a massive grin on the man's face. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Thank you." Harry leaned down, pecking the left corner of her lips. "I'm gonna take good care of her I promise."

"We're gonna taking good care of her."

"Right, we." He beamed at Y/N and takes no time to move off the bed as he picked up Treasure, leaving his girlfriend puzzled for a second.

"Where are you taking her?" She questioned.

"To the living room," he replied before bringing the cat to the door and repeating what she'd told him earlier, "we're not having sex in front of her."

...

It was Monday morning, Harry and Y/N both had to go to work. They didn't think it'd be a good idea to leave the kitty home alone, so Harry had found someone to look after Treasure.

"Does it have to be the weird girl across the hall?" Y/N asked while holding their baby cat so Harry could lock the door. "She's gonna use her cat-sitter excuse to get close to you. She's obsessed with you."

"Just because Sage hates you doesn't mean she's obsessed with me, love," he replied then pulled her face in for a kiss.

"So it's Sage now, no more 'weird girl across the hall'?" Y/N frowned, rolling her eyes.

"Baby, c'mon."

"Okay, if 'Sage' is not obsessed with you, then explain why she agreed to look after Treasure for free?"

"Because she works from home and she loves cats?"

"Bullshit. You're just too gullible. But don't worry, I'm here to make sure she keeps her hands off my man."

"Your man." Harry puckered up his lips, slowly nodding his head. "I like the sound of that."

So hand in hand, they brought Treasure to her new babysitter.

But before the couple could get to the flat across the hall, they ran into a woman who was walking about ten dogs at the same time, which really made them wonder how she managed to get away with having way more pets than they were allowed to in this building.

"Good morning!" She said to them and stopped immediately once she saw the cat Y/N was holding in her arms. "Oh, is that Lola?"

"Lola?" Y/N and Harry exchanged looks with each other.

"Yeah, that's the cat's name. Does Albert know you've found her?"

"Albert the doorman?" Harry raised an eyebrow at the stranger.

"Is this his cat?" Y/N asked, slightly disappointed even though she had always known Treasure (or Lola) had already got an owner.

"Well, she was my cat before she's his." The lady shrugged. "I adopted her last week, but as you can see, I've already got ten dogs and they didn't like Lola very much. So I gave her to Albert."

"So that was why you found her outside our building," Y/N said to Harry. "She must've walked out when Albert wasn't paying attention."

"You kids should give her back to him. He's been looking everywhere for her. That poor old man lives alone, and Lola's like his family."

Y/N turned to look at Harry whose wearing a sad frown on his face. So she slightly squeezed his shoulder and said, "it's alright, we'll get another pet."

Harry didn't respond, he simply pressed his lips into a smile then told her he was fine before turning back to the dog lady.

"Thank you, we're bringing her downstairs to Albert right now."

They said goodbye to the woman, who introduced herself as Felicia, then watched her walk away bringing her ten dogs with her into the lift. Once she was out of sight, Y/N turned to Harry and asked if he was really okay.

"Don't worry about me. I think Albert needs Treasure more than we do. He's got nobody. I've got you," he told her, leaning down to kiss her cheek, at the same time stroking the cat's head. "We're gonna bring you back to your real family, okay, Treasure?"

The creature purred in a way to agree with what Harry had just said then snuggled up into Y/N's chest as if she knew they were saying their goodbyes. Harry and Y/N exchanged smiles, then together they headed towards the lift.

...

A couple days later, Harry and Y/N were making dinner in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. It was Y/N who came to open the door.

The moment Harry heard his girlfriend call his name, he had to run out of the kitchen to see what it was that she needed. Outside their door stood a man he's never seen before in his life, and this person was holding a small white cat.

"Treasure!" Harry cried out when he saw the pet, who meowed back because she was just as happy to see him again.

"I came here on behalf of Mr. Walsh. I live next door to him," spoke the man.

"Albert Walsh?" Y/N furrowed her eyebrows at him. "Is everything alright?"

"He...passed away last night. Albert's been sick for a while now, I think he didn't mention it to anyone."

Harry widened his eyes when he receives the news. Y/N, on the other note, covered her mouth with both hands to hold back a gasp of shock. Both of them were too frightened to say anything at all.

"Before he passed away, he told me to give his cat to the couple in flat 102, that must be you two. He thought you'd take great care of her."

The stranger smiled and after that handed the little creature to Y/N, who instantly held her close to her chest. Harry and Y/N thanked the man for bringing the cat here, and told him how sorry they are about Albert's death.

The man left. Y/N walked back inside, followed by Harry as he shut the door. The couple were still in great shock about the news they had just received. Though they hadn't known their doorman for long, they had liked him very much.

"I'm having mixed-feelings," Y/N spoke up after a long moment of silence , looking at Treasure and then her boyfriend.

"Well, Albert trusted us with her, so we'll take great care of her," he replied, smiling softly and walked over to pet the cat in Y/N's arms. "What are we gonna call her, Treasure or Lola?"

"I'm already used to calling her Treasure," Y/N said, making Harry laugh.

"Okay, Treasure it is! God, I'm so excited that we're gonna raise her together!"

His enthusiasm made her throw her head back and laugh.

"Is she an excuse for you to feel like a dad?" She asked.

"Mummy knows daddy too well," he replied while holding her face, then lovingly pressed his lips to her forehead.

[star-anise]

T1J -  How Patience with People Makes the World Better

Summary: “People don't get "woke" overnight. Sometimes we have to be patient and help them get there.“

Transcript below:

Text on screen: Whenever you actually put together something that works, it’s always complicated. It’s always messy… it’s never what the little Twitter crowd is talking about.”  -Van Jones 

Sometimes it's hard to comprehend other people's ideas. We just can't imagine how and why some people believe the things they do. The correct view is so obvious to us and we either assume that people are just lost and will never change their mind or that we can somehow change their mind and convince them to do a complete mental 180. Both of these are possible, but neither really reflect how most people actually are people are. People are usually hesitant to flat-out admit that they were wrong but we can add nuance to someone's view by offering a different perspective. The problem is that we sometimes think people should naturally understand things in the same way that we do so, we're confused when they aren't very receptive to our ideas. If you're trying to teach your old racist grandma who grew up during Jim Crow about racial microaggressions, it's likely that she's not going to be eye to eye with you. (sarcastically:) Get it together grandma! 

It's possible that it's a lost cause, but maybe you can find an alternate route towards getting her to understand. The fact of the matter is sometimes you have to meet people where they are rather than demanding that they catch up to you. 

Hi, I'm T1J.

Speaking very generally, there are at least two types of social justice advocates on the internet. There are people who work with others to discuss effective solutions to the problems that society faces. And on the other hand there are people who don't seem to be really interested in actually solving problems, and just kind of want to express their frustration and call people out. Now in many ways that frustration is valid and justifiable, but in my opinion you shouldn't expect angry confrontation to lead to very much actual progress. But if you're just here to just sort of yell at people then carry on I guess. But this video isn't really for you. This video is for that first group: people that actually want to find solutions to both societal and personal conflicts. 

I think a lot of us have this delusion that we're gonna convince other people to just suddenly wake up, like they're gonna have a light switch flipped in their brain overnight and come to realize that we were right all along, and then they'll join us on the frontline marching for freedom. And then we have this principled stubbornness where it's like, “Well, if they can't understand that they're wrong then fuck ‘em, the people who are right will win in the end anyway, they'll just have to be on the wrong side of history.”­ And it's true that some people have no interest in being informed or expanding their perspective but it's also true that some people just haven't been engaged properly. And I believe that the world seems to slowly get more progressive over time, but I feel like proper advocacy involves doing our best to make our world a little bit better for this generation, not just future ones, and that's got to involve getting out there and touching people's hearts and minds. But everybody is on a different step in their journey towards enlightenment. Some people need just a little nudge in the right direction while others probably need to be tossed a larger bone. 

I'll toss YOU a larger bone. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

So for example a thing that you often hear is you should respect women because that woman is someone's mother or daughter or wife, etc and this is kind of obnoxious because it's like you should respect women because in addition to being wives and daughters and mothers they're also people and they don't deserve to be mistreated. Like, you shouldn't have to invoke familial relationship to a woman in order to understand why you shouldn't be shitty to them. And that is 100% true but if the goal is getting people to appreciate and respect women and an effective context in which we can convince people to do that is reminding them of their relationships with the women in their own family, I feel like you should take the small victory. Not everyone is going to gain a sophisticated insight overnight. Sometimes we have to let people use training wheels until they catch up and if we create this culture where anything less than perfection causes you to be dismissed and dragged regardless of your intentions, that just seems to be a very good way to alienate potential allies. Which, if your goal is progress is not what you want to be doing. 

A couple months ago there was a viral video on Twitter of this guy who was protesting outside of a Roy Moore rally. By the way, shoutout to my home state of Alabama for not electing that creepy douchebag. But anyway this guy was protesting Roy Moore's homophobic remarks in honor of his gay daughter who had committed suicide. In the video he implies that at one point he didn't accept his daughter's homosexuality. (Man in video:) “I was anti-gay myself. I said bad things to my daughter myself, which I regret.” The video is very moving, in my opinion, and I'm kind of even getting emotional thinking about it, and it got a very positive response. But I did see a bunch of comments talking about how shitty it is that a gay person had to die before they were recognized as legitimate, and I mean, that's a fair point, but first of all: this is a grieving father, like back up for a minute. Secondly this guy has probably lived his whole life in a homophobic environment and it took something tragic to get him to reconsider his views. It's terrible that he had to go through that but he's on the verge of a breakthrough. This is not the time to antagonize him. 

He's probably not going to be marching with rainbow flags anytime soon but he can share his story with his community and help bridge the gap. He could tell his friends to chill out when they're using homophobic slurs or making shitty jokes. He could be a friend to closeted people down at the farm in Wicksburg, Alabama. I don't know if he's gonna do any of these things; I'm just saying he's less likely to if we immediately dogpile him for not being woke enough. 

So here's my thing: I understand that a lot of this is just wacky people on social media being mean just for the sake of doing it. One of the biggest lessons that I've learned is that Twitter doesn't necessarily reflect the actual state of our society and our movement in reality. But I do think that there's a notable segment of activists both on and offline who claim to want progress and change, but seem to be more concerned with dismissing people they deemed to be not on their level than they are with actually trying to help people get there. And like I said, if that's what you want to do, I think that's unfortunate but it's not really my place to tell you not to. I just don't think it does anything. In fact, it's probably actively harmful to the movement. 

And again, some people clearly have no intention of engaging ideas in good faith or considering the possibility that they might be wrong about something, and it's actually important for us to develop the ability to identify when that's happening so we don't waste time arguing with brick walls. The willingness to open ourselves to new ideas is a step that we all have to take on our own. No one can force us to do that. But at the same time we can help people find their way to that door if we're a little more patient and take the time to meet them where they are in their path towards understanding.

Das jus me doe. What do you think? 

Thank you for watching my video. I'm currently selling these Das Just Me Doe wristbands to help me raise money to buy a new computer so that I can edit videos without my old computer almost blowing up. If you'd like to check them out head on over to the the1janitor.com/wristband and I thank you for your support.

[gascon-en-exil]

FE16 Black Eagles (Edelgard) Liveblogging

Chapters 15-16. The plot, among other things, explodes.

I was wondering where all the Eagles character paralogues were, and all of sudden come Chapter 15 three of them get dumped on you. Edelgard’s is a fight on the border against Nader and the Almyran remnant. Wyvern riders are unusually overpowered in this game, even as enemies. They’re not a unit type one expects to be so fast. Hubert goes back to the Sealed Forest to save Those Who Slither from their own failed creations. Both of these paralogues play up Hubert’s own talent for slithering in the dark: the first because it’s heavily implied that he poisoned Hilda’s brother so he’d have to rely on the Empire to push back the Almyrans, and the second because he’s been investigating Those Who Slither on the side all the while your army is being strong-armed into doing their bidding.

Petra and Bernadetta’s paralogue meanwhile has been the first map on this route that I haven’t seen before, a heavily forested section of Brigid. Bernadetta’s role there is almost completely random, but it comes together in the end in a way that feels satisfying. The chapter itself on the other hand features a cheap fakeout win condition, thankfully avoidable via Divine Pulse, and another appearance by the OP Catherine.

Playable kills: Flayn and Seteth from the church, Felix and Ingrid from the Lions. Now that the Alliance portion of the story is done I notice that Raphael and Lorenz skipped out on showing up this time, along with Marianne who doesn’t appear in the Lions’ Part 2 either. Actually, I’ve read that she’s the only playable character who doesn’t appear in Part 2 at all unless she’s in your army, with the implication that her depression and/or the dark story surrounding her Crest killed her or drove her to suicide in the timeskip. That’s...something.

I’ve also read that if you don’t recruit Shamir and Alois they show up in Chapter 15 to be killed...and that Manuela and Hanneman only do so on the Lions route in Dimitri’s paralogue for some reason. Weird.

I can confirm that the dark merchant does not sell Dark Seals. He’s only available in the second to last exploration month of Edelgard’s route, so you can’t get much use out of him anyway. Sucks for Hubert, but if I’m understanding correctly how you can buy classes with Renown the next time I use him I can just certify him for dark mage that way and get one seal for dark bishop. 

The brevity of this route sticks out more and more the closer I get to the end. Not so much for the story which is moving along at a brisk pace to match Edelgard’s resolve and concrete goal in contrast to Dimitri throwing everyone off with his unresolved personal issues, but for the gameplay. A bunch of my units aren’t going to make it master classes at this rate, and I’m tempted to not even touch Edelgard’s emperor class when it randomly becomes available after Chapter 15 (seriously, her armor just arrives from the capital? Are we timing lord promotions by the speed of parcel delivery now?) because there’s no timing and making her armored is kind of awful.

Story/Character observations

Chapter 15 opens with a bizarre interlude of Byleth coming upon Edelgard in her room at night, and an attempt at humanizing her by...telling us that she draws pictures of Byleth. That’s not even organic Avatar worship, come on. From what I remember her A support is more of the same, so I’m not holding out much hope for her big bi S rank.

Thankfully her two dorky subordinates salvage the character-based charm of this route. Ferdinand pokes a hole in the fourth wall and asks Byleth if they’ve thought about a world in which they chose another house or chose to side with the church, and while I can see the similarities with Conquest constantly dumping on Corrin’s choice this incident is isolated enough that I’m not feeling condescended to. Ferdinand’s A support with Byleth reveals that the first king of Faerghus - you know, the one with the very close *nudge nudge wink wink* friend akin to Felix - had a second very close friend who was just as indispensible but didn’t desire notoriety and so didn’t make it into many history books. Ferdinand compares this to what both he and Byleth are to Edelgard (I imagine this support is phrased very differently if gotten on any other route), but my mind went right to Kris, the shadow Avatar at Marth’s side who got left out of the original game historical accounts. While I believe that Byleth’s ending on Edelgard’s route actually is fairly out of the public eye, in other routes they’re either the archbishop or the ruler of the united continent. Byleth is very much not that type of Avatar who can just disappear at the end because how else could they sleep with the whole cast?

I can’t forget about Hubert either. Apparently he’s the one who gives Those Who Slither their infamously unwieldy name - thanks a lot, Hubie - during his investigations on how to out-evil them. When he’s not doing that he’s engaging in absurdly cute support conversations with Ferdinand where they’re both blushing and exchanging gifts with romantic music in the background. I also noted that they’re one of the couples who get special meal dialogue that evolves along with their supports. See, this is what I mean when I say that M/M and F/F subtext are on completely different playing fields. Dorothea will just come out and ask Manuela if they can live together and forget about finding men, or give Ingrid a ring and joke about owning her, etc. For the guys it’s watching them sputteringly make friendly gestures toward one another while blushing, or make promises to die together, or insist on the other using their given name (but in private!) to indicate that there’s going to be dick touching.

Nader dies during Edelgard’s paralogue. In combination with Judith’s death in Chapter 13 I think this is meant to indicate that this is the one non-Deer route that does not feature a large Almyran invasion after the credits roll. Even if you choose not to kill Claude as I did, without any of his close allies (who are also his parents, in the case of those two?) the implication is that he won’t have the strength to pursue his own dreams of continental conquest. Good on him to outright admit that he has them to Edelgard, though.

Speaking of the game admitting things that otherwise only go implied, let’s talk about those explosions. The Black Eagle Strike Force feints toward Fhirdiad but moves instead to conquer Arianrhod, with Edelgard and Hubert’s target being specifically Cornelia. Cornelia in this route hasn’t betrayed Faerghus to the Empire yet, but according to Arundel she was planning to as a member of Those Who Slither despite lacking their characteristic pallor. Arundel responds by using “pillars of light” - more likely those anachronistic ballistic missiles seen in a church route cutscene - to blast the fortress into oblivion and kill a bunch of people inside.I’m ignoring how petty it seems of Arundel/Thales to nuke a valuable military installation just to get revenge on Edelgard for killing a minion who was going to help Edelgard do what she’s about to do in the last two chapters anyway. No, what fascinates me about this situation is how Edelgard and Hubert immediately spin this for the rest of their army, saying it was Rhea’s doing and using it to motivate the Strike Force to conquer Fhirdiad as quickly as possible. Ever since I got her C support I’ve been curious as to why Edelgard harbors so much personal hatred for the church when Those Who Slither were the ones responsible for torturing her and her siblings for Crest research. Here she’s deliberately making that misdirection, which....doesn’t answer my question at all but does at least demonstrate that the writers are aware of it. How it will all play out, or if this is something that only makes sense when considering information learned from the church and/or Deer routes is yet to be determined.

Looking at this from the perspective of the Strike Force though I can see why they’d need some additional pushing to get invested in how evil Rhea is. She’s done very little so far to follow up on her creepy authoritarian vibes from Part 1, and the scene of her grieving Seteth and Flayn’s deaths only makes her regain some sympathy because of how personally she takes their loss. They have to be saving it all up for the finale. There will have to something to the antagonists we’re about to fight, because so far DImitri in this route has been even more of a non-entity. Of course I know that Chapter 17 brings not one but two flavors of gay tragedy, but in-universe I doubt anyone on the Strike force is squeeing over the Tempest King and his very devoted vassal.

[returnsandreturns]

Have one whole random chapter from the middle of the novel that I really want to start writing again but I don’t have TIME!!!! 

backstory: Andy’s writing the gay version of 50 Shades of Grey after stumbling into a dom/sub relationship. James and him are totally not in love at all. Laurel is my everything. I love them all so much, I wanna die.

“Are you watching porn at the dinner table?” Laurel asks.

“Well, it’s noon,” Andy says, not looking up from the screen, “so no. And it’s research.”

She bends down to look over his shoulder and whistles low.

“That’s quite a party,” she says.

“I knew sketchy sex clubs were a thing,” he says, pausing it and accepting the orange that she hands to him, “but this is the first time I’ve witnessed one. It’s—interesting.”

She sits across from him at the table and raises her eyebrows.

“You into it?” she asks.

“I think I would have a panic attack and die,” he says, shrugging, “but I can see the appeal.”

“Is your protagonist who definitely isn’t you at all into it?” she asks.

“He’s not,” he says, because he is not. Just because his main character, now generically named Tom, has certain similar characteristics and experiences doesn’t mean that it’s a memoir or something. He’s not writing a sex memoir.

“You might as well have named him Sandy,” Laurel says. Andy frowns at her.

“Anyway, I thought it would be an interesting thing to include, yeah,” he says. “I also thought about maybe—taking a field trip?”

She gasps.

“I wanna go!” she says.

“Seriously?” he asks.

“Strictly for tourism reasons,” she says, “but yes.”

“Okay, then,” Andy says, laughing. “You pull out the leather, I’ll keep talking to strangers on the internet about the best places to get weird in Queens.”

“You laugh but I have some cute leather pants,” she says. She’s been dutifully peeling her orange in one long peel and she sits it down on the table triumphantly. “I’m going to text Stef, we can double date.”

“Double date?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, like it’s obvious, splitting the orange in half. “Stef, me, you and your sexy lawyer friend.”

He could ask James. It wouldn’t actually be a date, obviously, because who goes on a date at a weird sex club, and he might like it. He marked that he was somewhat interested in exhibitionism on his checklist, at least—Andy wasn’t sure whether that meant screwing in Central Park after dark or just, like, holding hands on the sidewalk, but this might be somewhere in the middle of those two.

“Okay,” he says, digging his thumbnail into the skin of his orange. “I’ll text him.”

After two solid hours of research, he texts James the name of the nicest club he can find that you don’t need a special invitation for and three question marks. In reply, he gets a phone call, which he answers immediately with, “I’m allowed to remind you that you’re older than me if you actually call me on the phone.”

“I couldn’t possibly forget that you’re younger than me,” James says, dryly, but not unkind. Just five years, but James would probably be more notably mature even if they were the same age. “Are you asking me to go to a club with you?”

“For research, not recreation,” Andy says, then, almost hopefully, “Unless you—want to have some recreation.”

“Do you?”

“If you do.”

“Andy,” James says, with a little stern dominant sneaking into his voice.

“Okay, it’s a firm maybe,” Andy says. “I do want you to come with me, though.”

James hums softly.

“If you want it,” he says. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Laurel and Stef are also coming,” Andy says.

“Recreationally?” James asks.

“No, they’re just going to be creepy and watch,” Andy says. “How’s Saturday sound?”

“Saturday works,” he replies. “Your sister isn’t coming, is she? She’s amazing, but I don’t want to publicly spank you in front of her, if it comes to that.”

Andy suddenly has a vivid mental image of being naked and bent over the bar at the place he met James at, skin slick and a little sticky from spilled drinks, being spanked hard in front of a group of people who can talk but not touch. He’s not sure he’s into it.

He might be into it.

“Andy?”

“Sorry, my imagination just took a spin,” he says, weakly. “Sara headed back home to wait and hear about her interview, so it’ll be just us.”

“Okay,” James says. “Let’s do it.”

After he hangs up, Andy goes back to reading the message he got back from some guy on FetLife whose icon is just a mouth with a ballgag in it, going over the description of the place they’re going and realizes that it’s technically a dungeon. Cool.

He might have to buy something latex to wear.

*

Laurel’s leather pants are actually really cute, deep red and tight and kind of like something that Faith from Buffy would wear, which is a compliment that makes her really happy.

“That’s, like, my entire life goal,” she says.

They’re huddled up outside the club, all of them dressed slightly too scantily for how cold it is, waiting for James. Andy’s just wearing tight jeans and a black t-shirt because he doesn’t have enough clothing to have actual outfits and Stef is wearing a little black dress that’s killer.

“If I get drunk enough,” Laurel says, looking Stef up and down for the tenth time tonight, “I might engage in some of that exhibitionism we were talking about.”

“Oh, there’s a one drink maximum,” Andy says. He forgot to mention that. They give him identical looks of horror.

“What kind of place is this?” Stef asks.

“A dungeon,” he says. “Do you really want to be in a room full of drunk people with paddles?”

“I certainly don’t,” James says, and Andy jumps a little and turns around to smile at him.

“You’re here,” he says. “At the dungeon.”

“I’m here,” James repeats, grinning. “At the dungeon. You ready?”

Andy takes a second to look at him, because he looks nice. Dark blue collared shirt with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, a couple more buttons unbuttoned than is necessarily appropriate for polite society. Andy kind of wants to rip the rest of them off, too.

James raises his eyebrows when Andy makes it back to his eyes again.

“Yeah,” Andy says, nodding. “I’m ready.”

“I’m not sure I am,” Laurel whispers, to Stef, as they go inside and immediately head down a large flight of stairs.

“We can leave,” Stef says. “I’ll take you out for ice cream instead.”

“. . .let’s see what it’s like first,” Laurel says, a little more firmly.

At the door, they have to fill out forms about liability and privacy and leave their cellphones, carefully marked so they can give a ticket back and retrieve it. It’s accompanied with a lecture about safety and consent and confidentiality, which makes Andy significantly less nervous about what’s going to happen inside. It seems like an extremely civilized weird public bondage dungeon.

When they step inside, it’s dark but in a mood lighting way, and there’s definitely—a mood. It doesn’t exactly look like a dungeon classically, but there are shackles involved. It’s kind of like a lounge but with a lot of very specific furniture—more specifically, things to be tied to.

There is a bar to the side, and James immediately nods at it and leads them there while they take in the scene.

There’s a woman tied up spread-eagled on the far wall, dressed in pretty black lingerie. She looks like she might be forty or so, and she has her head thrown back laughing while another woman runs a feather across her stomach. Andy waits to see how she reacts when she’s not laughing, when the feather isn’t touching her—she’s grinning. They’re both having fun.

Everyone is milling around in various states of either costume or undress. A guy’s getting flogged over a bench that he’s tied to with pink rope, counting the hits and asking for more. There are a couple of people on leashes, which does something to Andy that he’s not willing to contemplate too much, because he’s not sure he wants to be the kind of person who likes wearing a collar anywhere but the privacy of his own home.

(They haven’t actually done that yet, officially. He might’ve underlined it on his checklist a few times.)

“Okay, I think maybe I’ve seen enough,” Laurel says. She’s blushing bright red when Andy glances back at her, and Stef automatically slips an arm through hers and kisses her cheek. “I’m sorry, we’ve been here two seconds. That’s so lame.”

“It’s not,” Andy says, smiling at her. “I’m a little freaked out, too, honestly.”

“Do you want to leave?” James asks, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Absolutely not,” Andy says, turning to him quickly, and James laughs softly and tightens his fingers.

“We’re going to go get ice cream,” Stef says. “I would say we’ll see you later, but I assume you’ll be busy tonight.”

James’ fingers tighten even more and Andy’s eyes go wide.

“We’ll be busy tonight,” James says.

“Well, have fun!” Laurel says, voice going kind of squeaky, looking up at the ceiling so she doesn’t have to look around her.

“Just shut your eyes, sweetheart, I’ll guide you out,” Stef says, affectionately, wrapping an arm around her instead and leading her back towards the door. Andy suspects that this isn’t the firm time someone has walked in and immediately turned heel and left, and he has those suspicions confirmed by a tall, willowy blonde guy who approaches him with a sweet smile.

“First time?” he asks.

He can feel James go stiff behind him, hand sliding down to hold onto Andy’s elbow instead, and he glances back before he smiles and says, “Yeah. My friends decided it wasn’t for them.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell until you actually see it all happening at once,” the guys confirms, then extends a hand. “I’m Gabe.”

“Andy,” Andy says. “This is James.”

James openly ignores Gabe’s hand when it’s offered and Gabe smiles, dropping his arm.

“You two are cute together,” he says. “I’m guessing tall, dark and handsome here’s your dom?”

“Well, we’re just—” Andy starts, because they’re friends, because they haven’t phrased it in such clear terms. They really aren’t each other’s anything, if they’re being technical, and in the middle of a dungeon full of people who are two steps away from fucking each other just seems like the kind of time to be technical.

“Friends,” James offers, sounding pained.

Gabe looks between them for a moment before he hums softly.

“So, Andy, you wouldn’t mind if I steal you for a dance?” he asks.

“Oh, uhm—” Andy says, glancing back at James whose face has suddenly gotten tight.

“Go ahead,” he says, and Andy feels all of his internal organs sink for a moment—he knows they’re not dating, but he’s just going to let him go off with another guy? He doesn’t look happy about it but he’s willing to, like he doesn’t want Andy to himself enough to put aside the stupid unwritten rules of sex friends and just enjoy this weird sex dungeon together.

“Cool,” Andy says, keeping eye contact with him and smiling before offering a hand to Gabe, who looks amused as he takes it. Maybe not much hand-holding goes on in the weird sex dungeon.

Gabe pulls him over to a small dance floor on the other side of the room, with low jazz music and low lights so he feels like some type of ingenue or something when Gabe circles an arm around him and squeezes his hand.

They move in an unsteady rhythm—Gabe’s clearly good at leading and Andy, for all that he’s apparently extremely submissive, is terrible at being led—and Gabe moves in close to almost rest their cheeks together, practically crouching to do it because Andy’s like child-sized compared to him.

“Don’t look back,” Gabe says, softly, in his ear, “but I think your handsome friend might fight me later.”

“Are you into that?” Andy asks, almost serious.

“I’m strictly a lover,” Gabe says, laughing. “What’s the story here? What are we working with?”

Andy wonders if he should keep all of this to himself but he’s kind of mad and very sober and this guy seems confusingly wise, so he tells him basically everything, wraps his arms around his neck during a slow R&B song and spills all of his feelings—from the night they hooked up to right now, when he thought James would claim him.

“Let’s see if he’s—yep, death glare,” Gabe says, grinning down at Andy. “Want to make him jealous?”

“. . .tell me more,” Andy says.

This leads to Gabe leading him over to a dark corner with a couch and a few chairs, saying low, “I’m gonna sit down and you’re gonna get on your knees for me, okay?”

Andy hesitates for a moment before he murmurs, “Christ,” and sinks to his knees.

Gabe strokes his fingers through Andy’s hair before grinning down at him and saying, “Jackpot.”

“Can we talk?” James asks, from behind him, hands on his hips like a disapproving mother when Andy turns around to look at him.

“I’m kind of busy,” Andy says, raising his eyebrows.

“Andy.”

Gabe laughs and ruffles Andy’s hair, saying, “I think he means business, kid.”

Andy sighs and stands up, throwing a smile at Gabe over his shoulder as James leads him away, to a quiet corner where he surprises Andy by pushing him up against a wall and kissing him.

“What’s that for?” Andy asks, breathlessly.

“Did you want to go with that guy?”

“No, I wanted you to tell him to fuck off,” Andy says, laughing, “but I could. Isn’t that the arrangement? No rules, just right?”

“. . .that’s the Outback Steakhouse motto,” James says, faintly, “but yes.”

“You’re jealous,” Andy says. He was kind of pissed off for a second, but James has this look on his face like he’s been caught in the act and it makes Andy so happy. He’s normally the flustered one. Finally, the upperhand. “You don’t want anybody else to touch me, do you?”

“Not where I can see them,” James mutters, rolling his eyes.

“You want me all to yourself,” Andy says, grinning up at him and stepping in close. “You basically just pissed on me to mark your territory.”

“We both marked no to that on the checklist,” James says, and Andy laughs and pushes up into a kiss, curling a hand around the back of his neck. James looks slightly dazed when he steps back again, and Andy feels something stirring inside of him that he doesn’t want to hide. He doesn’t want to hide.

“Why don’t you show everyone who I belong to?” he asks, dropping his voice but keeping his chin tipped up, watching James’ expression slip from shocked to something sweet and dark. He lets out a shuddering breath before he lifts his hand to run fingers through Andy’s hair.

“What did you have in mind?”

*

They awkwardly talk to one of the employees just to make sure of the rules here because they’re both the least cool people in the world, but now Andy’s standing next to the bench the guy was getting flogged on earlier and trying to get the nerve up to take off most of his clothes in this room full of people. He could do it dressed, but somehow this seems important—being vulnerable and bare. To be looked at but not touched by anyone but James.

It sounds nice.

James sits down on a chair next to it and looks at him, just a little bit out of his element.

“Light?” he asks, when Andy shifts on his feet and smiles at him.

“Green,” Andy says. “Light?”

Andy’s never asked for one before. James actually takes a second to think about it before he says, “Green. Strip.”

The order helps, makes Andy shiver as he immediately takes his t-shirt off. Only a few people are watching them, and Gabe is one of them, draped over a couch and smiling. He looks like he’d probably like to take Andy apart, and Andy probably wouldn’t hate that, but—for this moment, at least, he belongs to someone.

When he’s down to his boxer briefs—thankfully tight and black and not something embarrassing—he steps up so he’s standing in front of James, who looks like he’d either like to fuck him right now in front of everybody or re-dress him and kiss him and go hold hands somewhere where nobody else can see them. It’s a weird look. Andy likes it a lot.

They ask each other for lights again and they’re both still green.

Andy lies across the bench, built with two levels so his chest is pressed up against the higher one and his knees rest on the lower one, putting his ass clearly on display if you’re standing in the right place. There are cuffs for his hands and feet, softly padded, and James puts them on him carefully before he leans down and tips Andy’s chin up, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth.

“Count for me, okay?” he asks. “We’ll do ten.”

Andy nods. This is one of those speechless moments, but he’s pretty sure that he can manage numbers at least. He lifts his head enough to see that more people are watching and he feels himself blush, pretty sure that his whole body’s going a little pink at least.

“Tell me you want it,” James asks, standing behind of him, smoothing a hand over the curve of his ass. It’s loud enough that the people close to them can probably hear.

“Please,” Andy says, and his voice is—shattered, like he hasn’t spoken all day, loud and shaking apart when he continues, “Please, spank me.”

He means it. He wants it, wants to feel what he feels when they’re alone, see how it changes when they’re showing off.

“Good boy,” James says, softly, just for him, and then he pulls back and hits Andy hard.

Andy makes a completely unmanly yelping noise but manages to gasp out, “One!”

With every hit, harder every time, he has no control over what noises he makes and he’s constantly caught between two thoughts, between this is so fucking hot and this is so fucking weird. The first one seems to dominate, though; he’s hard, dick pressed up against the bench and rubbing painfully every time he jerks forward and pushes back to take more.  

Right before James hits him one last time, he looks up to see that people are watching them with undisguised interest and his breath catches, breaking off into a pained sob of, “Ten, ten, ten,” when James hits him again.

When James immediately moves to kneel in front of him and kiss him, when it’s obvious that they’re done, there’s a light scatter of applause which is—somewhere between the fucking hot and fucking weird spectrum, but closer to the weird. He’s got tears running down his face that he didn’t even notice and James asks, “Are you okay?” while he’s already quickly uncuffing him.

“Fine,” Andy says, standing up slowly, leaning all of his weight on James when he wraps his arms around him. “Great, actually, just—wow.”

“Good fodder for your novel?” James asks, wiping the tears off his face and pressing a kiss to his forehead that makes Andy ache faintly. He wants James to take him home and curl up around him so they can fall asleep together almost as much as he wants to grind against him right now until he ruins his underwear. There’s no actual sex allowed in the building, but does it even count if your clothes don’t come off?

“Yeah, really good,” he says, laughing wetly. “My readers will love it. Can we go?”

“Had enough?”

“I would let you fuck me right here if you wanted to,” Andy says, eyes wide and serious. “So let’s not get in trouble and go back to your—my place, actually, my place is closer, c’mon.”

“You have to wear clothes to leave,” James says, amused but gently, like he’s concerned about him. It’s not undeserved. The last time Andy felt this wired and intense, he was in the middle of a manic episode, but—it’s all overeager brain chemicals, in the end.

“Obviously,” he says, laughing breathlessly. He gets dressed quickly and James immediately wraps an arm around his shoulders and leads him toward the door.

“Hey, kid!” Gabe says, approaching them. “Good show.”

Andy’s in no state to talk to anyone right now, anyway, nevertheless someone who just watched him get spanked and clearly love it, so he just smiles at the way James holds him closer and says, “Thanks. We’re headed out.”

“I’m giving you my number,” Gabe says, holding out a receipt with a number scrawled out on it. “I was going to do it just to make your friend jealous because he’s cute when he looks like he’s about to kill someone but I also try to make friends with all the baby kinksters.”

“Friends?” James asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Friends,” Gabe repeats, seriously. “I’ve been around the block and I’m actually not a creep, so—hit me up if you have questions about the scene or whatever.”

“You don’t look that much older than me,” Andy says.

“Started young,” Gabe says, winking. “Have fun, boys.”

As soon as Gabe walks away, James says, “I don’t like him.”

Andy laughs and tugs him towards the door.

“Take me home, sailor.”

*

The next morning, Andy wakes up in his bed alone and immediately makes a sad noise before he hears noise from the living room. He puts on a clean pair of boxers and a t-shirt before he heads out to find Laurel and James sitting at the kitchen table together, talking over big cups of coffee.

“Oh, hi,” Laurel says, when she sees him. “We were just talking about you.”

“. . .why?” he asks, suspiciously, bypassing them to get his own coffee.

“I think I just got the shotgun speech,” James says, sounding like he’s actually uncomfortable, and Andy groans.

“You’re not my real dad,” he says, pointing at Laurel as he sits down with them.

“I thought it needed to be said,” Laurel says, simply, “that if he hurts you in any way that you don’t specifically ask for, then I will physically fight him to the death.”

Andy sighs, turning to smile at James and say, “I apologize for her. She’d probably win, though.”

“I don’t doubt it,” James says, smiling back weakly. “I should probably walk of shame my way back to my place, though.”

“I could make you breakfast,” Andy says, while he’s trying to figure out if they have any food to actually accomplish that. He thinks that they have one single egg left, which could work in a pinch.

“It’s okay,” James says, getting up and reaching over to ruffle his hair. “I’ll talk to you later. Last night was fun.”

“Yeah,” Andy says, lamely, as James immediately heads for the front door. “Later.”

As soon as the door shuts, he turns to Laurel.

“What the fuck?” he asks.

“Geez, calm down,” she says, looking genuinely angry. “That’s a prerequisite best friend speech.”

“For someone you’re dating,” Andy says.

“Oh my god, you might as well be,” she says. “You fell in love with him the first time you slept with him.”

“I didn’t fall—maybe I fell in love with his dick, but that’s it,” he says, firmly.

“Bullshit,” Laurel says. Her voice is flat, a little softer than it was. “You don’t have to lie to me. You know that.”

“I’m not lying. I like him a lot,” Andy says, “but I’m okay with what we are. I mean, shit, we can’t all U-Haul with the first girl we date freshman year like you did.”

Laurel’s lips, once set in a thin angry line, wobble just a little. Andy feels bad because that’s a sore spot between them—once, when he got in a tift with Stef, he said something about how Laurel settled for her and it fucked them all up for a week or two. He shouldn’t have brought it up again.

“You look at him like I look at her,” she says, after a long stretch of silence, “and I’m in love. I just don’t want you to get your heart broken because he’s too much of a dick to realize that you’re worth more than casual sex.”

“We both agreed that it was just—no, you know what, just stay out of it, Laurel,” Andy says, standing up and turning to go back to his room before turning back to grab his coffee. “I didn’t ask you to get involved.”

Laurel’s face gets distinctly more wobbly and he immediately feels terrible, but he’s also mad at her and worried that James is going to back out of this because it’s getting too serious and, also, he’s way hungrier than one egg could possibly satisfy.

“Sorry,” she says, softly, like it hurts to get out. She gets up and leaves her coffee behind, shutting her door behind her, leaving him there to think about how he’s the worst person in the entire world.

When he goes back to his room, he writes two thousand words about how amazing his protagonist’s best friend is. He might email it to her later. He also texts James to apologize and gets back: you’ve got great friends. you should thank her for watching out for you.

God, he’s mature. It’s infuriating.

Andy grabs his laptop and heads to Laurel’s room to read the best friend description aloud to her instead of emailing it.

After that, he might make her muffins or something.

*

They’re sitting on James’ bed, both of them on their laptops working—James on something legal and official and Andy on a scene where his two main characters talk about gangbangs for three pages but no gangbangs actually happen, because the mechanics would have to be difficult.

“How hard do you think it is to choreograph a gangbang?” he asks, without looking up.

“. . .uhm,” James says.

“I’m writing porn,” Andy reminds him, flicking his eyes up, and James huffs out a laugh.

“Oh, right,” he says. “Good. And—well, it depends on how many people are involved, but that’s—a lot of limbs.”

“Yeah,” Andy says, nodding aimlessly. “Too many tabs, too many slots.”

“It’s so hot when you talk about sex like it’s IKEA furniture,” James says. He finishes up what he’s doing and shuts his laptop, putting it on his bedside table before he sprawls out on his back. “Ready whenever you are.”

Andy snorts and finishes his sentence before he follows suit, crawling on top of James to straddle his hips. James smiles up at him.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“. . .uhm, do you think we could go shopping together sometime?” Andy asks.

“For. . .?”

“A collar,” Andy says.

He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about wearing a collar for him—a real one, one that they pick out together. And a leash. And nothing else.

“Oh, wow,” James says, softly. “That’s really hot, Andy.”

“. . .but?” He’s pretty sure there’s a but, because James’ face is doing a thing, kind of hesitant and nervous. James reaches up to brush hair away from his face before sits up with Andy in his lap, steadying them and then kissing him on the mouth.

“Is this about the other night?” he asks.

“. . .I mean, seeing people on leashes did increase my interest, yeah,” Andy says.

“No, I mean—when that guy flirted with you,” James says, then, carefully, “When you said you belonged to me.”

“Oh,” Andy says. “That.”

He’d been a little drunk on the situation at the time, but. He still kind of meant it. It’s not very casual, though. Can you casually belong to someone?

“I wanted to talk about that, too, actually,” he says. “Why were you so jealous?”

“. . .I wasn’t jealous, really,” James says. “I just didn’t want you to go off with somebody you didn’t know, when you’d never been somewhere like that before. It’s not safe.”

“You were just concerned for my safety,” Andy says, humming softly, “and you wouldn’t have been jealous at all if I’d let him take my clothes off and bend me over something and make me cry.”

“No,” James says, unconvincingly.

“You wouldn’t have been jealous,” Andy says, because he knows exactly what’s happening here—or at least half of what’s happening here, “if I’d left you there and took him home and let him do whatever he wanted to me?”

“Not at all,” James says, and Andy grins at him and pushes him down, bending to kiss him.

“I’ll just go do that then,” he says, starting to get up, and James basically growls and drags him back down to flip him over and get on top of him.

“Okay, I don’t like the idea of anybody else touching you,” he admits, “but I wouldn’t stop you.”

“Good to know,” Andy says, even though he really wants to tell him that he doesn’t want anyone else to touch him. That saying he belonged to James made something dark and pleased shoot through him and seeing the look on James’ face made it even stronger.

He wishes there was some way to ask him if they could be monogamous sex friends without actually using the phrase monogamous sex friends. Or sounding like he’s actually proposing.

“What if,” he says, slowly, “when we’re alone, though—we act like I belong to you? Casually?”

“Casually,” James repeats.

“You can own me just for fun,” Andy says, smiling. “Be my dom, not my boyfriend.”

“And we’d buy you a collar,” James says, brushing fingers over Andy’s throat before he circles it lightly, squeezing enough that Andy’s breath catches and he squirms underneath him.

“And a leash,” he agrees, breathlessly.

James leans down to press a kiss to his forehead.

“Want to go now?” he asks, softly, thumb pressed into Andy’s throat.

“After,” Andy says.

“After?”

“After,” Andy repeats, significantly, going for completely unsubtle and wrapping his legs around his waist.

[rwbyremnants]

WARNING: A little Weiss/Neon. Rape threat (not carried out), some mild violence, (implied) minor character death.

Whoooooo... so THIS was a big one. Hope you guys enjoy the reunion!

=Chapter 35

"Focus, focus…"

No matter how often Weiss muttered the word to herself as she paced around her dressing room, glancing at her reflection to make sure she still looked pristine, it didn’t quite take. She could hear the thumping bass even this far away from the opening act – Sky Lark, some newly-famous guy whom she didn't particularly care about - and it was making it marginally more difficult to concentrate, to run through her usual pre-show prep in her head.

It mattered so much more tonight, since Neon and Neptune were going to follow her; she had to give the audience something to remember. Convert them all to being her fans, and not just remembering her as "that girl we put up with because she was there". She wasn’t delusional; she knew not all of them would wind up digging her. And that was okay. But if she didn’t go out and give 110%, she would stand no chance of winning them over at all.

But that pre-show meditation was interrupted by a knock at her dressing room door, only to have whoever was there immediately burst in, shutting the door behind them. Thankfully, it wasn't anyone to worry about if they were going to see her undressed.

It was Neon, dressed in the usual raver outfit that Weiss was so used to seeing before she got to know her, along with her signature pony tails and long “tail” hanging from her belt. Today's show she had added a special surprise: roller blades on her feet to incorporate into her dance moves. But she was more concerned about the ever-quiet Weiss who had been MIA for the past week, with no news other than “I'm at Berkeley for a while”. While Neon didn't mind that, she was worried her mood hadn't picked up yet.

Maybe she needed a pep talk. "So, you excited?!"

"H-hey," Weiss sighed with a weary smile. Just looking at Neon looking her best made her pace forward and wrap her arms around her, kissing her softly and enjoying the now-familiar sensation. "Yeah, if you mean 'terrified'. Oh, why did I agree to do this?! There's so many people out there!"

Even though she cuddled her back, she let a smirk pull at her lips. "Yeah, duh. But think about what that means: you're moving up in the world. Means you're amazing."

"No, you." One more kiss, and then she pulled back and ducked her head. "By the way… I'm really sorry about running off the way I did. I should have called you first."

Seemed they were going to talk about this after all. Letting her out of her grasp, she instead held her hands, idly swaying them side to side. "What'cha sorry for? Doesn't matter to me. I just assumed it was family shit or whatever."

"Well…" Weiss came very close to chickening out. After all, Neon didn't care, wasn't pushing. She wouldn't be a bad person for letting the topic drop, especially given how busy they were that day.

But she owed her more than that. "Close enough to family. You know my friend, Ruby?"

"Vaguely?" She tilted her head. The name was very familiar, but it took her a while to realise why. But then she suddenly lit up. "Oh yeah! The girl with the glasses, likes hoodies a lot, right?"

"Right, right," she laughed. "Well… I don't think I ever made it clear, but she's my ex's sister. You know… the, um…" Her voice dropped into a whisper. "The video."

"Which one? 'Changes come' or the sexy…" But as soon as that slipped out her mouth, she began to blush, and also look to one side. "Right, they're both the same girl. Sorry, that was dumb. But yeah, what about it?"

A smirk pulled at Weiss's mouth. "You want a copy of that, don't you?"

"Look, just because I thought your ex was hot doesn't mean I wanna get off while watching her porn. That's kinda… creepy territory for me." Even though she was completely red while saying that entire sentence, she shook her head to try and get herself out of the daze, immediately returning to the topic. "Anyway, you didn't answer my question; what about it? I thought she fucked off and left you."

Then Weiss's smile fell. "Well… she really did almost fuck off… forever."

“What?”

As casually as she could, and trying not to be too specific or make the story longer than needed, Weiss explained what had happened to Yang, from her sister's interference up through the phone call they had accidentally shared in Ruby's dorm room. All the while, it left Neon entirely speechless. At the beginning, she didn't seem to quite grasp what she meant, but as it went on, she grew even more worried and questioning by the minute. For more reasons other than Weiss's story. Piecing things together, Neon had managed to grasp the important factors; Yang was forced away, there was no break up.

Not only that, but the feelings Weiss still had for Yang were probably mirrored in Yang herself. Where Neon had just thought she was dealing with a dumped Weiss on the rebound, it was fast becoming a danger of losing her completely; that Neon really was just a rebound girl to fill the gaping hole in Weiss’s heart for a while. But that was selfish to think at this time, and she quickly shook off such thoughts. Weiss clearly needed her, and she was going to put her own feelings last.

But still, as she leant against Weiss's dressing table, she stared out in awe. "I can't believe your own sister would do that to you… It's just… just-"

"Just disgusting." Shaking her head bitterly, she growled, "And she'd better not come after you next, or she is going to get a real earful. Honestly, who does she think she is?!"

"Oh she'll catch hell from me, too, don't you worry! I get enough shit from Adam, don't think I'll let myself be bullied by her that way." Despite being angry toward Winter, she started to realise what she just said, and backtracked. "I-I mean… I'm not implying Yang’s a coward for leaving, that's not what I meant! Just, like… outing someone as trans is even more damaging than outing someone as gay, I guess, and I wouldn’t let her get away with it. I dunno."

"You're fine," Weiss reassured her with a weak laugh. "But I don't really think I'll be getting much grief from her anymore. I disowned her. She can be judgemental to someone else now."

"Don't blame you. But shit… I'm glad Yang's okay…" She continued to stare out blankly, tapping her fingertips against the wall to try and distract herself.

That brought a louder sigh from Weiss. "I just… can't believe it. I've never had anybody in my life who almost… who even thought about…" Frowning at the girl by her vanity, she said, "I feel like I failed her, Neon. I should have known, I should have figured it out, it's… how stupid am I?"

"Don't even go there, babe," she told her firmly. "How could you know? Winter manipulated you into thinking she had just… just ran away. That's an abuse of trust in your sister, not you messing up."

"You know what's really messed up? She seemed to think that just because she told me, a couple of months later, that somehow that made everything okay! Just because she had a guilty conscience when she found out she almost-" Again, Weiss cut off. Seemed she couldn't directly mention it so easily, even after a few days.

But Neon knew anyway. Pacing away from the wall to stand back by Weiss's side instead, she held the back of her chair. "You're way better off. And Yang's okay… obviously it could have been way worse, so it's a bittersweet ending, right? Sucks it came to this, but at least she’s alive."

Weiss's hand reached over her shoulder to one of Neon's on the back of her chair, holding it tenderly. "You're pretty awesome if you can be glad my ex is okay, with our history and all." Then she looked up at her with an oddly contemplative expression. "I… did think about calling you, asking if you'd go with me… but since the whole thing was about Yang, it seemed weird. Did I make the right decision?"

For a moment, she hesitated. That was the question that was haunting her. If Weiss was being secretive about Yang already, what was it going to be like further on in their relationship? What if she and Yang were to arrange to meet up, start ffresh? She couldn't compete with all that history. Maybe she wanted to fight for her hand, but their relationship was still in its infancy; she barely had a toehold to start from. Her prospects were grim.

Still, not telling Weiss of her worries just yet, she sighed. "I think it would'a made that phone call even weirder if she knew you had a girlfriend, babe."

"Well, the phone call wasn't something planned, but… you're probably right." She turned around in the chair, knees bracing herself up as she touched Neon's neck gently. "Thanks for understanding. I'm so lucky."

Starting to smile lightly, she pressed a small kiss up against Weiss's cheek. Even if Weiss's words meant well, it didn't particularly fill her with much confidence about her worries. The worries that no matter what, she would come in second place to Yang. Even if she didn't show it on the outside.

"Just feel glad it worked out okay, and sorry something so fucked up happened."

But their conversation was interrupted by a knock at Weiss's door, a voice calling up. "Five minutes, Weiss!"

"OKAY!" she yelled back. "I'll be out in a minute!"

Then she turned to Neon and pressed their lips heatedly together, quickly teasing Neon's with the tip of her tongue. There was a slight squeal of joy in the middle of that kiss as she pulled away, finally leaving with a more self-assured grin. Even if she was worried, that didn't stop her flirting – and it quelled some of her fears. At least temporarily.

"Save some for after the show, sweet cheeks. How about a quickie during the intermission?"

"What?! Don't be disgusting!" But Weiss was grinning and blushing. "I prefer to take my time with you. However… we'll see." As she got out of the chair, she gave Neon a quick swat on the backside as she asked, "Is my makeup still okay?"

"Nope. Ruined, start over," she teased. But the giddy grin was enough to give away that she meant the opposite. Finally heading toward the door, she winked back at her. "And I'll get you back for that little swat on stage in the overlap."

"Will you? How are you planning to-" But she cut herself off. The whole insane situation had depleted her of her ability to worry about her future, to give much credence to other people's opinions of her. She still wanted to be respected, but respected for being herself rather than just a statuette of "the perfect good girl."

"You know what? Surprise me." Then she joined Neon at the door and grabbed her ass again - really grabbed it and held on, fingers digging into the flesh. "Go ahead; open it."

Another delighted squeal followed, as her rear was deliberately groped and squeezed, making her turn around and smirk at the 'purer' if the two of them. Barely. "You better be glad you gotta go on in five minutes, otherwise I'd be making sure you can't walk, Schnee."

"Open the door, Katt. Or are you scared they'll notice I have a handful of your booty?"

Glaring right back at her, she started to turn the doorknob, raising one eyebrow as she slowly began to bring it backward to open it, testing both her own and Weiss's bravery at the same time. And the wider open it was getting, the more she smirked. Not that she expected their notions to be viewed.

"Good kitty," Weiss goaded very slightly, still flexing her hand, still teasing. "Nice kitty."

"You… are so getting… a million and one hickeys when today's ove-"

The clearing of someone's throat was enough to stop that dialogue in its tracks. Neon suddenly propelled herself forward, away from the offending hand – and for good reason. Stood before them was the same man that Weiss had encountered the first time she went to Neon's. In fact, the scratch across his face was still there.

"Am I interrupting?"

"Oh…" Recovering from her shock, Weiss's voice dropped into a lower register. "Oh. It's you."

"Aren't you supposed to be on stage?" Adam snapped toward Weiss, barely giving her any attention and immediately looking back to his own star instead, not even waiting for an answer before he asked, "A word? I have a solution that'll benefit us both, in regards to your contract."

"You don't have to talk to him alone," Weiss told Neon without mincing words. "Come backstage with me; you can watch my show until time for you to go on."

"Oh, I think I will. I'm ready to go on, anyway; no need to go back to my dressing room." Neon began to smirk instead, folding her arms. "And I think Adam and I should keep our conversations to public spaces from now on."

"You're making a huge mistake." He lowered his voice, hands clearly balling into fists as he glared at the two of them. "Trust me, a recording contract will be the last thing you need to worry about if you cross me. Just do what I tell you, and we’ll both be rich and happy, and I can quit having to put up with your annoying ass soon enough."

That was far enough; Weiss no longer felt any need to be kind to him. She stepped closer and glared up into his smug face. "Listen to me. You had better let go of the idea that you have any right to control what either of us do, you… thug! Neon might talk to you after the show, and she might not. Don't worry about it for now. But stop threatening her, or I will make your life hell. Do you understand me?"

He only glared straight back at her, not saying another word, moving another muscle. The two stared one another off for what felt like forever, until eventually Neon tugged at Weiss's arm, gesturing down the hallway. "Come on, Weiss. We'd better get going."

"You're right." But as she followed Neon, she glanced over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at the jerk. She'd had enough of men thinking they could dictate people's lives, were entitled to women's bodies. It was disgusting to her.

"God, that asshole," she went on in a quieter tone once they were out of earshot. "Do you want to come with me afterward and avoid him completely? I'd be happy to wait for you."

"Please."

But as they turned the corner to head to the stage, eavesdropping was the last of their worries. Adam remained still for a moment longer as he glanced around the hallway. No one present, no cameras. Perfect. No one noticed as he walked down the hallway, nor when he entered the girl he was intimidating's dressing room…

This was it. The moment of truth.

Four days of mental preparation and practice had lead them to “the master plan,” as Winter had put it. Ruby and Penny were already there, having watched the few stars at the beginning of the concert before they withdrew at the back end of Sky Lark's act, giving them enough time to meet Yang outside the venue and exchange Penny for her instead. A hug good luck from Blake, Sun, and even Winter later, and she was heading into the crowd with her little sister.

She was dressed in the best way Weiss could notice her; the same outfit she'd bought for her on the first date of the tour. The brown leather jacket, yellow tank top, and black short shorts. The only thing missing was the completing feature, the snood which was in Weiss's possession. And if that wasn't enough, she made sure to carry her guitar on her back, on the off chance she could get backstage and play the same song to her. It was a vague chance, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

Not that security was crazy about the guitar, but once they had checked it for anything dangerous they let her through – on warning that she not play it at random. The disturbance would get her thrown out. Ruby whispered that they probably were assuming she wanted to get it signed by one of the acts, which did make more sense than the truth.

Yang allowed Ruby to drag her on through the crowds, back toward their designated seats. And already she could hear the middle of one of Weiss's later hits. That was when she was starting to breathe heavier. Fear was creeping in.

"Don't act so nervous, sis," Ruby urged her, squeezing her hand in support as they got closer to the stage. They truly were incredible seats; Weiss had not skimped in the slightest. "Even if this doesn't work today, we'll have a couple more days to try something!"

"I know, I know! I'm just… What if she doesn't wanna see me? What if it hurts her too much? Oh geeze what a dumb idea this whole thing was!" she squeaked, having to raise her voice the closer they got toward the stage. But by now, it was all coming into view…

The Weiss herself was just leading into a Madonna cover, strutting confidently from one side of the stage to the other and singing her heart out into the mic leading out from her headset. Today's outfit was a knee-length sparkling silver dress with a slit halfway up the thigh and a train of lace leading down from the sash around her waist and fluttering behind her, feather-light. Matching platform sandals and three little silver stars on each cheek completed the look, along with her trademark side-ponytail.

"Oooohhh god she's right there…" In a turn of events, it was Yang who was the one feeling faint now that she realised who she was about to see, and possibly about to talk to. She swore her heart would jump out of her ribcage with how fast it was beating, how much faster and deeper her breathing was becoming. Even as Ruby continued to pull, she felt herself slowing down, quickly reaching her spare hand into her hair and pulling. "I-I can't do this. I'm still… I-I-"

"You're my big, strong, awesome sister, and you're not gonna let the girl you love get away just because… because of some flashy lights!" Ruby could feel her still resisting, so she stomped around behind her and began shoving into the small of her back, hoping to get her the rest of the way.

Biting her lip again, she continued to gaze out as Weiss's song was coming to a close. Between each number, she was taking a moment to talk to the audience, even if it was something as little as telling them it was a great crowd, or that she was happy to bet there. But hearing her voice again spoke volumes to her. The Weiss. Her Weiss… she missed her, missed her voice so much. All she wanted was to hear it at a reasonable volume again, speaking to her as they were cuddled on a sofa, about to fall asleep at night. In the end, that desire was enough to power through her fear.

"Okay." She finally nodded. "Okay!" And as she heard Weiss introducing the next act for their double performance together, a dubsteppy cover of Katy Perry's 'I Kissed a Girl', Yang finally began to walk forward willingly, pulling Ruby along so she could guide them to their seats.

"This was never the way I planned," Weiss began singing, bending slightly at the waist to let her hand trail through the wake of fans and besotted preteens, touching them all very briefly and thereby exciting them to no end. Of course, not all of them were that enthused; some were only there for Neon, or else Neptune at the end of the concert. But they still seemed at least vaguely pleased to be so close to a beautiful, talented woman such as she.

Even if Yang and Ruby weren't to be right at the very front, among them to be touched, it didn't matter. The seats they had gave them a good vantage point. From there, they could easily be spotted from Weiss's eye level, for when she stopped to speak to the crowd again. Neither of them took their seats, only watched as Weiss continued to belt out her notes, and occasionally interact with Neon, who skated across the stage with ease.

Each of them shared half the verse each, teaming up to sing the chorus together. In fact, said chorus also had various planned dance moves together, both mirroring one another. Apart from something that certainly didn't seem like it was a part of the dance at all: in the gap between the chorus and the next verse, when Neon leant right in and pressed a kiss against Weiss's cheek, along with clearly placing her hand on another cheek a little lower to give a firm squeeze of its own. Live in front of everyone. What gall!

And the crowd went crazy, not sure what to expect from the prim and proper diva — but instead of gasping in shock or slapping Neon, she only raised her hand to cover her mouth as if she were a 1950's pinup girl, arching her back to press her rear even more firmly against the errant grope.

"No, I don't even know your name," Neon continued as if it was nothing, casually skating away from Weiss once that action was done, even flicking one of her knees up as if she were a ballerina skating away. Clearly her mischievous nature was showing again, the typical flirty visage of Neon that everyone knew.

But for Yang, it was something that twigged a small nerve of jealousy. Even when it shouldn't. Of course, she had no clue as to Neon and Weiss's situation; Ruby hadn't the heart to tell her in the brief time they had been together, and the others thought it best to keep silent, as well. However, she did turn to Ruby.

"Well damn, they're really going all out for the song, huh?"

"Uhhhhhh yeah," Ruby half-laughed back, scratching her head. "You know Weiss! Always trying her best!"

"It's not what, good girls do," Weiss sang pointedly, winking at the crowd. She knew that was an important line for her to say, given her image when contrasted with this particular performance. "Not how they should behave!"

Then, as Neon went whizzing past her again, she timed it perfectly to flash her hand out and smack her just below the tail.

As Yang continued to watch their performance, the movements and dances seemed to get more and more suggestive. "Just… a bit…" More occasional spanking, more winks and exaggerated swaying of hips, even Weiss being the one to kiss on the cheek on another chance. The two were close. They'd either rehearsed this a lot, or something deeper was going on.

But on the last note, both of them harmonized the last note together, and raised an arm in the air to encourage a loud cheer from the audience. In the midst of that cheer, Neon even chanced one more movement, grasping Weiss's chin and pulling her in for a quick kiss on the lips. Instant, but enough to make the already loud screams even louder. Once that died down however, she gave a quick wink toward one of the cameras, speaking clearly into the mic.

"Well, I liked it."

Again, Weiss affected the exaggerated image of a suburban housewife from seventy years ago as she giggled and let out a "Well, golly!" and began fanning her face with her hand. "Neon, you're supposed to buy a girl dinner first! Oh, that's right… you did!"

"Well, that's the first time I'd consider McDonald’s a date, but whatever floats your boat." And the audience laughed. Of course, on stage she was still in the closet, at least despite the flirting with anyone that moved. As much as the comment was an actual reference to one of their dates, they still needed to keep it hidden from the public. For the sake of both of their reputations, Weiss's father, and Neon's contract.

At least, she thought that was the plan. But Weiss seemed to have something else in mind for the rest of this little interlude.

"Speaking of boats floating," Weiss began, and the crowd calmed very slightly when they realized she had more to say instead of just leading into Neon's next song before she left the stage. "Some people have been asking a lot of questions about me lately. About what kind of boats I like to float. And it's really none of their business, but here's my thing.

"It doesn't matter, does it? However you choose to love, whoever you choose to love. That's all you. And you shouldn't let anybody boss you around, tell you that any love between two consenting adults is 'wrong' or 'offensive', or 'sin.' Even just the little kiss I shared with Neon; some Bible-thumper in the Midwest is going to throw away my album because that happened. One little kiss! So what?"

As most of the crowd cheered wildly for what Weiss was saying, she scanned them… and her eyes alighted on Yang.

And Yang noticed. How could she not? She'd been watching her like a hawk after all, just waiting for that brief moment where she was spotted. It felt like her heart stopped, or that time had slowed in that brief moment as she looked back at her. The time was right to prove it was really her, give her a gesture to show her it had to be. Which came in the form of her slipping the guitar off her back, and instead holding it in front of her instead, like she would play her a song if she could.

"If you ask me, someone like that doesn't deserve your album," Neon joined in, oblivious to what she must have just seen as she stared at the audience instead. "But you guys out there, in our audience today… Whether you're gay, bi, ace, pan – otherkin, or whatever the hell you identify as, don't you let anyone tell you what to do. Because you are you, and if you feel like no one loves you, I can tell you now that we do! We love you for who you are!"

"We really do," Weiss echoed quietly, smiling warmly down at Yang. Her Yang, the beautiful, perfect person that she was — she had made it! Come all this way, just to show that they weren't completely broken forever, that they could see each other again.

And she had the guitar. There was only one thing she wanted to do… one stupid, ridiculous thing, but the moment she thought of it, she knew it had to happen.

"And now, without further delay… I think we have something for you up next that a lot of Snow Bunnies and bloggers will probably be excited about, and I hope Neon will try and join me for the chorus… if she's game?"

"What?" Ruby breathed, squinting up at her. "Bloggers? That's me! But… but I don't know what she's talking about!"

But Yang was drawing the guitar closer toward herself, beginning to grow nervous once again. Not enough to completely run, but the hints Weiss had dropped were enough for her to begin piecing together what Weiss was trying to do, and she knew it would make people recognise her.

"If I'm game for what?" Neon asked with a grin. The audience laughed; but that prompted her to quickly cover the microphone with her hand, mouthing to her. "Seriously, what thing is this? I don’t remember it from rehearsal."

Weiss did Neon the same courtesy, covering her mic to say, "That video from the blog, the acoustic song? All over the news?" Then she glanced down at Yang. "I want to sing it with her. She brought the guitar; it's…" There was some remorse in her eyes when she looked back at Neon. "Are you gonna be okay with it if we do? Like, I want you with me, and the chorus is pretty simple, but if it's too sudden-"

"Yang is here?!" she nearly shouted, struggling to keep the volume low enough for the microphone to pick up.

But when she glanced toward the audience to where Weiss was looking, and only just spotted the messy blonde hair in the audience, she grew quiet, only able to nod. This was everything she feared… and yet, everything Weiss wanted. It would be a crime to ruin that. Maybe her own feelings were in turmoil but if she cockblocked Weiss just because she was jealous, it would make her worse than Adam.

"No yeah, go for it. If I forget a line, I can fake it with like, humming or whatever."

"I'll make it up to you later, with my tongue," she whispered back, clearly still in the mindset that she was with Neon. Not ‘ditching’ her just because her old girlfriend was in the arena. It helped Neon feel way less like an afterthought.

Then Weiss lowered her hand and walked forward a couple more paces, calling out to the audience, "Everybody, we have a special guest, and she needs a little encouragement. Can you give it up for my guitar-playing friend here?" Instantly, the audience grew more deafening, cheering and stamping their feet, clapping tremendously. Even the ones who had no idea what was going on were out of their minds with excitement, merely catching it from their neighbours who had cottoned on.

"OH! Oh my God, she wants you to go up there!" Ruby was squealing, actually jumping up and down like a little girl. "Yang, you have to do it! This is your chance - for them to know how good you can play the guitar AND for you to win Weiss back! It's so perfect, you can’t NOT go!"

"Oh… oh fuck…" Yet again, her heart was beating faster and faster, even more so when one of the lights pivoted in her direction, shining directly onto her as she held the guitar. No doubt now the cameras would be on her, and the four-gathered outside would be hearing everything in the radio. She could hear now the ridiculous voices of Winter and Blake telling her to go in her head.

Swallowing the last of her fear, she took a deep breath. And giving a brief nod to Ruby, she finally moved from her seating area with the guitar in her hand. She didn't just walk, she ran. Ran as fast as she could past the other audience members, past the security. In this case they allowed it, seeing as one of the stars herself invited her up there. The standing was reasonable enough to let her by, some even patting her back and wishing her luck.

"Come on, Yang," Weiss was saying into her microphone, eyes watering. She was really alright. The shock of her suddenly being there, in the last place she expected to see her, had finally worn off enough for her to be overjoyed that she was apparently alive and intact. Hearing it over the phone was enough to help her stop beating herself up every other second, but seeing her in person? She couldn't describe it.

There was a loud, piercing "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!" from where Yang had been sitting, and Weiss winced and spared Ruby a little wave before turning back to where the staff were helping Yang onto the stage, guitar and all. Her heart thudded in her throat. They were really going to do this; going to sing their song in front of God and everyone, and her new girlfriend was even going to join in! Could this be any more perfect?

But just as she was lifted up, and when Yang's hand was inches away from Weiss's as she was about to help her onto the stage… everything took a horrifying turn.

There was a deafening boom. One that came from two different directions: behind them, in the general area of the dressing rooms off the stage; and more worryingly, above. One of the fireworks holsters had exploded incorrectly, causing huge damage to the lighting rig above them both, and completely destroyed its secure anchors to the ceiling above.

Thankfully when it fell, it narrowly missed the diva who was leaning out to try and pull Yang up. It had decimated the stage, destroyed the trap door in the middle that Neptune was going to use for his big entrance, and caused panic among the crowds. The security staff had dropped Yang back to the ground as they went to do their bit instead, guide everyone to safely.

"SHIT!" Weiss let out, hearing her voice echo over the entire stadium. How had all of that insanity and destruction not cut the feed from her microphone? "Everyone, please, just- just remain calm and exit the building!" She didn't know how she knew exactly what to say, but it sounded correct. "Follow the authorities!"

Then she looked wildly around for Neon and Yang; neither were in sight. Glancing down into the crowd, she saw Ruby's red hoodie was already moving far off toward the nearest exit. That was good, she was safe. Now… where should she go?!

"WEISS!"

There was the panicked call of Yang below, who seemed to be attempting to jump at the stage despite the obvious fact she wouldn't be able to get up on her own. She needed to get up there, fast. That was her job, right? Looking around frantically for a moment, she spotted one of the camera towers at the side of the stage. It wasn't the most stable of things, but given the situation, it would do. Just before she sprinted toward it, she dropped the guitar to the ground, and shouted as loud as she could.

"Stay there! I'm coming up!!!"

With all the sparks showering outward from the fallen lighting rig, Weiss wasn't inclined to argue; she wasn't sure which way to go to escape the worst of it, and didn't want to try to run only to find herself scarred and burning. "O-okay!" she called back in a shaky, shrill voice — still broadcast all over the place. "I'm right here, waiting!"

Sprinting as fast as she could toward the camera rig, Yang leapt up onto it, attempting to shimmy herself up the scaffolding as best as she possibly could, despite how much she could feel it tilt and rock. She had no time to worry about that, not when Weiss was in danger. She lost her once, and wasn't about to do it again.

Not knowing what powered her, once she was high enough, she managed to launch herself toward the stage, able to hear the camera collapsing in her wake. That was an exit route gone. But still, she quickly ran toward Weiss as fast as she could, immediately putting herself between the principal and any incoming sparks. It was part of her job previously, of course, but she knew she had to protect Weiss, protect her from anything. Even if she wasn’t technically employed by the Schnees anymore.

"Where's Neon?!"

Startled out of her gratitude that Yang was standing in front of her again, she lowered the hand that had been raising to touch her, to somehow reconnect. "I… I don't know, I didn't see her fall over the side! She must be backstage!" When she heard her own voice echoing, she angrily ripped off the headset and threw it out into the seats. "ENOUGH! I can’t think with that thing on!"

"Shit… Okay, that might be our exit, we gotta get there." But how was another question. Half of the stage was partitioned off with the huge lighting rig in the middle of it, which even though it appeared stable at the moment, didn't seem like a fun option to climb through. But they had no choice.

Grasping Weiss's wrist, she said “Follow me!” as she headed to the side away from any fireworks. Managing to lift one of the lights up out the way to create a path for her, she grunted, "You… First…!"

Heart pounding in her throat for about a thousand reasons, Weiss obeyed, ducking underneath what her ex-bodyguard had lifted and trying not to argue even though she was terrified of what might happen next. Why had this happened? Was it merely a technical failure, or was someone out to get her? Or get Neon? It might even have been Winter, given how horrible she had been of late. But she tried not to concentrate on that as she found the path offstage and followed it.

But just in her range of hearing, there was a loud scream from someone she had come to know oh so well over the past few weeks. Just to the side of the doorways to backstage, Neon was trying to shuffle herself away and out from some of the cables she'd managed to get herself tangled in. And trying in turn to shuffle away from the haunting man above her, the very same who had interrogated her earlier.

"What did I tell you?!" Adam shouted. "I told you I'd make you pay! None of this had to happen, and it's now all your fault! How do you feel now, miss high-and-mighty?!"

"No…" Her hands were frantically scrabbling at the cables, trying to free herself. “Y-you stay back! I’m sorry, okay? I’ll… just don’t do anything crazy!”

Weiss raised a hand to cover her mouth as she watched Neon retreating from her intimidator, and she felt her pulse quicken. This was terrible. The man was at least six feet tall, and would squash her like a grape if he was given half a chance. And she knew what she had to do.

"You get away from her, you fucking JERK!" she shouted, picking up the nearest thing she could reach — a folding chair, as it turned out — and hurling it in Adam's direction.

By the time he'd turned to face her and see what she was doing, the chair was striking him right across the face, impacting hard enough that when he fell to the ground, he didn't get back up. Only remained there as he lowly groaned out. It was totally a lucky shot, but Weiss knew it was only because he was so completely focused on Neon. In a fair fight, neither of them would stand a chance against a guy like that.

Maybe that should change. ‘Self defense classes,’ she told herself firmly. ‘Gotta sign up for those. Soon.’

But by then, Yang had managed to shift her way through, rejoining Weiss again. That was until she noticed Neon still down on the ground, tangled up in the wires. Pulling Weiss to come with her, the two ran as quickly as possible to her side, and tried to get her untangled.

But when Yang touched Neon's foot, she immediately winced. "My ankle… I think I twisted it, really really badly…"

"You get her out of here," she told Yang bravely, eyes full of fear for her costar and girlfriend, whose shoulder she touched affectionately. "I'll go see if Neptune and everybody else is clear and then I'll join you."

Nodding, she leant down and took Neon into her arms, lifting her easily and starting to pace toward the exits. But before she ran at full speed, she turned back for a moment longer, just enough time to shout out, "I'll be right back!"

But as Yang fled from backstage, avoiding the destroyed dressing rooms and heading straight to the fire exits, the groaning of Adam had only gotten louder. To Weiss's terror, he had started to fetch himself to his feet, slowly bringing his knees up as he pushed up to stand. A bloody nose seemed to be the only damage, along with the odd sway as he walked toward her.

"Weeks of meticulous planning," he growled out, wiping away some of the blood as best she could. "Weeks! And paying off security not to check bags, sneaking around and planting the explosives! And I'm not about to let some bible-fucking dyke ruin this for me!"

"Well, too bad – you already failed, you reject!" she snapped at him as she darted to and fro, trying to see if anybody else was back there. Every room seemed to be empty. At the last second, she ran into her own and grabbed her snood, tugging it over her head. That was probably a horrible use of her time, but she absolutely refused to leave it behind. Not ever.

But as she made her way back toward the stage, Adam was continuing to limp toward her, continuing to laugh to himself. "You know… This works out better." He grinned, and it was not the grin of a sane man. "Now the tragic accident that's taken the life of the darling Weiss is gonna be something Neon has caused. I wonder how she'll react to that… that's way better than letting her off with just dying. She can suffer first this way!"

But Weiss was already laughing at him. Hands on her hips, she walked right up to him and glared upward, face set and eyes steely. "Really? You're going to kill me just because I'm more important to her than you are? So pathetic! You are literally the most pathetic waste of space I've ever known if you can't handle life without Neon - whom you abused repeatedly, you- you complete jerk! I just don't understand why you can't let it go!"

"Shut your little MOUTH!"

He exaggerated such a word as he swung his hand around at full force, backhanding the side of her cheek as powerfully as he could. It was far more than enough force to have her on the ground, where he paced around menacingly.

"O-ohhhh…" She was a bit dazed from having the stuffing knocked out of her, so she didn't have much of an ability to respond. But she knew she wouldn't have to; in seconds, her knight in shining armour was going to swoop in and save her from the raging dragon. That she hadn't got there in time to stop him from landing a single blow was of no consequence to her; she would take a thousand slaps to the face if it meant being reunited with her. She had to have faith.

"Maybe you wanna take her place, huh?! Maybe I should take you back into the dressing room, instead! Is that what you want, you stupid little slut? God, all you starlets are all the same – you want to be sluts, but want to be treated with respect, and you don’t seem to fucking understand those two things don’t fucking go together! Why are you all so stupid?!"

But as he began to rant and rave at her, the bodyguard had returned. Hands empty, only curled into tight fists as she moved forward as quietly as she could. Cold fury burned in her eyes. Weiss had never seen her in such a state ever before. And an almost bloodthirsty smile crept onto her own face when she realised what would happen next.

"J-just try it!" she screamed up at him, desperate to keep his attention fixated on her just long enough for Yang to close that distance. "You filthy pervert, just you try and touch me! You'll be sorry!"

"You want me to try?! Because I will, darling! I'll screw the gay out of y-"

Before he could continue the disturbing monologue, or take another step closer, Yang managed to suddenly pick him up by his hips. Similar to the very first action she did to Weiss when they first ever met. Only this time, she didn’t bother resting him on her shoulder, or to restrain him; frankly Yang no longer cared what happened to the human scum. She threw him hard toward the open trap doors leading to the area beneath the stage, watching as he bounced on the floor once, before a panicked scream followed while he fell down.

And though Weiss was not at all sad to see him go, she did notice something fall from his open hand as he plummeted. Something glinting and metallic, with glowing buttons on it.

"Yang, we have to go!" she shouted as she scrabbled at the floor with her platform heels; they weren't exactly made for running but there wasn't time to take them off. "NOW!"

Everything in the next few seconds happened in what seemed like slow motion.

All Adam could do was watch as the small glowing device was landing elsewhere, and then look at the multiple rigged fireworks cases he'd set up under the stage. Even though he was in extreme pain, and no condition to move, he spared two words:

"Oh fuck."

But for Yang, she'd just managed to catch a glimpse of the metal as it fell to the ground. There was just enough time to either save herself, or do her job as Weiss's bodyguard. And it was no contest. Dashing forward, she managed to grab Weiss into her grip, pull her into her body as tightly as possible, arcing her back in an attempt to shield her with her own body as she stood with her back to the doors.

That turned out to be the right choice. There was a louder, even more deafening boom than the first that originated from below and the centre of the stage, sending the two girls flying. The entire time, Yang didn't let go. Even with all the shrapnel in the air that ripped her clothes and cut her skin, even as they were thrown against one of the on-stage camera rigs, her head and arm colliding with it incredibly hard. All that while, she shielded Weiss from the worst of it. Needing to save her, even if the cost was her own life.

Definitely the most shocking finale to a Beach Fest anyone had ever seen.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

The First Purge review

The Purge is such a fascinating series to me in that it goes through the reverse of what you might expect a series to go through. The first film had an interesting concept - a night of legalized crime in which society indulges in its most base desires and goes about murdering - but instead of exploring or even SHOWING us this, instead we get a s0-so home invasion film where a rich white couple fights off masked intruders. Yawn.

But then came the sequels, and with them the director seemed to realize all of the social and political commentary that could be mined from such a subject as the Purge, and by god did they run with it. This is a series that ascended in quality, with the sequels just getting better and better, and while you can debate which film is the best in the series, no one will ever say it’s the first one.

Because of all this, I think I can safely say at this point I love The Purge series. Its lack of subtlety in its social commentary and political criticisms combined with its over-the-top violence and sinister government conspiracies makes me incredibly endeared to it; I think we all too often forget subtlety is not always the best, and in the current political climate I think The Purge series is kinda the hot cup of tea we need to be served. And out of all the movies in the series, The First Purge may be the hottest cup of tea of all.

So you know that criticism the films get, where “Oh, everyone goes out to kill? That’s so unrealistic, people would probably just vandalize or do drugs or whatever, why is it murder?” Well, this movie, in showing the test run for what became the Purge, shows us… exactly that. Despite the government offering money to poor, disenfranchised, and struggling people on Staten Island, the testing grounds for this new system… they record one murder done by a man named Skeletor, who was an insane, frothing-at-the-mouth violent lunatic before any of this. Everyone else? They’re having block parties, fucking in public, or just messing with people. The worst crimes in the early hours are the murders Skeletor commits and some robberies committed by people who were already drug-dealing gangsters. There’s also a creepy guy wearing a crying baby doll on his face who set up a trap so he can grab women and drag them into the sewer so he can grab their pussies, but that’s neither here nor there; the point is, the Purge isn’t doing what the evil political party the New Founding Fathers want. So what do they do? They decide to fudge the results of this test by flying in mercenaries, Klansmen, just real fucking evil and violent people, to massacre the poor so that they can get the numbers up. This isn’t really a spoiler - this is all stuff proudly displayed in the sequels - but seeing how even early on the government twisted a social experiment so they could sell legalized murder of the poor to the public is truly disturbing.

Our heroes are gangster Dmitri, his ex girlfriend and anti-Purge protestor Nya, and her little brother Isaiah who has decided to go out so he can kill Skeletor. Can they survive this night? I mean, we know the Purge is gonna be going on for another couple of decades at least, but will these guys be ok?

So the film is about as subtle as a brick to the face, as I’m sure you can tell from what I described, but I think that’s what makes me say this is the smartest film in the series. Our country NEEDS a lack of subtlety right now. And I think we forget that sometimes a lack of subtlety helps make a compelling narrative; look at American History X, for example. That movie is entirely unsubtle, but it is effective and well done. Now, I’m not saying this film is as good as American History X, but I do think this movie’s lack of subtlety helps it along. Every major character in the film is a minority of some kind - our main characters are all black, and we see Asians, Latinos, even an older gay couple. Pretty much everyone in this film is struggling or poverty-stricken. And the villains? An evil group of sadistic government assholes who think slaughtering the poor is the best way to help the public, and when people don’t wanna buy into it, they create a false flag operation to sell the idea of legalized killing. There’s really no good white people in this movie, save for, interestingly enough, the woman who came up with the idea of the Purge in the first place. While at first she seems as evil and politically motivated as any other person working for the NFFA, as soon as she notices things getting ultra violent she becomes suspicious and finds out her test’s data is being fudged by mercs being flown in to kill the poor. She gets shipped off to Staten Island and killed for her trouble. Like I said, UNSUBTLE. But it is pretty effective.

The most fascinating character in this film is probably Skeletor, an absolutely insane black man who signed up for this night so he could get paid for indiscriminately killing people. He’s the kind of utterly fanatical murderer you’d expect from this series, and his actor Rotimi Paul steals every single scene he’s in. It makes it all the more of a letdown when he doesn’t get the honor of a final fight with the protagonists, despite being set up as a major villain, but even his anti-climactic ending is pretty cool as he manages to sneak up on and kill armed soldiers while being nearly naked.

And of course it wouldn’t be a Purge film without a bunch of creeps in masks. We have the baby-doll pussy grabber, we have a creepy rag face guy who just walks down a hallway creepily, we have this insane butcher guy in what looks like a welding mask, and best of all, in the final battle, we have what I can only describe as… a Gimp Nazi. For some more general mooks we also have truckloads of Klansmen as well as some masked cops who beat down a black man in… well do I REALLY need to explain what they’re going for there? Unsubtle, remember. Of course, with all these nasty folk out and about, it becomes extremely cathartic to watch them get stabbed, neck snapped, and gunned down by our heroes. Let me tell you, seeing Klansmen murdered is always a good time.

Honestly, this movie is an excellent example of a modern Blaxploitation film; it has pretty much all the trappings of the genre, as it’s set in a poor neighborhood, has a majority black cast, features the protagonists fighting against The Man and the oppression of evil white folk… all that’s missing is some kung-fu and some more funk in the soundtrack. And that just makes me love the film all the more, because boy do I love me some blaxploitation.

I highly recommend this movie. It’s really great; unsubtle, yes, definitely, but great. Sadly, I think this movie is not going to do quite as well as I think it deserves to. The way our society is right now, people get really hostile at any sort of indictment of modern politics; any criticism of our dumbass president is met with angry people getting offended that someone dares to criticize a soulless politician (a redundant phrase, I know). We just live in a time and place where people are just really hostile towards any sort of social or political commentary, and I sadly think this movie will be a victim of it due to its indictment of conservative ideology, racism, and Trump-era politics. It’s not a shock to me that most of the reviews of this on IMDB are all colored with some sort of anger that this film has the AUDACITY to try and be intelligent, with a good chunk of reviews calling it “biased” and “political propaganda”… oh well. I pray this movie finds its audience, either now or in the future. Because boy oh boy do I believe it deserves it.

Long live The Purge.

BUT WAIT! Just to prove my point… take a look at some of these excerpts from a few absolutely ridiculous IMDB user reviews! We’ve got it all here folks!

Accusations of being written by children combined with whining about how this film is made to “Divide” while also throwing in potshots at Star Wars and Get Out? CHECK!

Accusations of race baiting? CHECK!

Complaining about criticisms of Trump? CHECK! As an added bonus, this guy cancelled his ticket - hey buddy, how’d you review this film opening day if you didn’t go?

Crying about how the film is propaganda? Cheeeeeeeeeeeck!

Whining about BLM? Oh boy do we got a big old check!

And hey let’s just have one more whiny little bitch before we go:

[wendynerdwrites]

Random Rant about Princess Diana, Prince Charles, and Camilla

Okay, so despite being a gauche, socially progressive American who really doesn’t get why monarchies exist anymore, I am kind of a low-key royal watcher/follower. I was a HUGE fan of/admirer of Princess Diana when I was a little girl and am still a fan of hers in many ways.

But I’m also a fan of Charles and Camilla.

“But how???? Charles and Camilla ruined Diana’s life! They are eeeevil!!!!”

First of all, NO.

Diana Spencer had intense issues way before she hooked up with Charles, for one thing. Her parents had a bitter divorce and custody battle that basically ravaged her childhood. Seriously, at one point her dad was practically holding her hostage away from her mother during Christmas. You think the Wales divorce was messy?... It was. But it was basically just a sequel to Spencer family drama.

By Diana’s own words, she struggled with bulimia from her adolescent years and had severe abandonment issues.

Ever wonder why William’s pet cause is mental health? DIANA IS WHY.

She also grew up among a very specific “set” that included the royal family. She and her sister were playmates to Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. She grew up with the same weirdo aristocratic approach to marriage as them as well which was: pop out an heir and spare, then do whatever.

While she was young and naive and apparently did have a HUGE crush on Charles that resulted in her buying into the fairy tale narrative, she wasn’t the total shrinking violet/know-nothing people sometimes make her out to be. Diana thought she’d be the exception. She was wrong. But she DID enter that marriage with a shit-ton of pre-installed baggage that CHARLES HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH.

Second of all, ALSO NO.

God... This engagement and marriage was made of such crazy fuckery. But Diana was all in, hook, line, and sinker.

Charles, less so. And the situation was just... so fucked, you guys. And, no, sorry, it wasn’t all Charles’s fault. Or Diana’s fault. Or Prince Philip’s fault. But it went like this:

Basically, Chuck was pushing 30, was heir, and had yet to further the royal line, so to speak. It had been nearly a decade since he was formally invested as Prince of Wales. And the issue of him getting hitched had always been... there, but it really got serious as he neared the big 3-0. Especially since his younger sister, Anne, was already married and had a kid. But over the years, he’d had Richard Nixon try to set him up with his daughter and had been geared towards various COUSINS by no less than his “Uncle Dickie” AKA Lord Mountbatten AKA the guy who hooked Prince Philip up with Queen Elizabeth, who was basically Charles’s second Father.

Things got serious as Charles got older, though. Rumors were getting out that he might be gay (remember, this was the late 70′s/early 80′s and Charles is HEIR TO THE THRONE. One factor is/was that Charles is/was a surprisingly progressive dude even then and didn’t bat an eye at employing men who were OPENLY GAY IN THE 70′s. But the thing was, whether or not Charles was gay, if the public believed that, it could have potentially caused a CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS BECAUSE ROYALTY IS ALL OF THE EXTRA)

Charles was into aristocratic blonds... Fine. Perfect... Except for the part where the aristocratic blonds he tended to go for were non-virgins (and therefore completely unsuitable according to his beloved Uncle Dickie)... also married.

...That’s not Camilla, BTW. Camilla was already married to Andrew Parker-Bowles at this point. The lady in the picture there is Lady Dale “Kanga” Tryon, a fashion designer and Charles’s other mistress who actually lived a really interesting life culminating in a super tragic death. We’ll come back to her later.

But basically, Charles had to marry a virginal aristocrat, and fast. So he entered into a sort of courting pool of eligible ladies, at one point dating Lady Sarah Spencer, Diana’s older sister. But Lady Sarah went, “Nah, my sister is WAAAY more into you anyways. Date her.”

Now, if this sounds SUPER CREEPY, ANTIQUATED, AND MESSED UP, EVEN FOR THE 70′S AND 80′S, THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS. THIS IS THE WORLD THESE PEOPLE OPERATED IN, HOWEVER. AND THE ONLY THING MORE INSANE THAN ARISTOCRATS WERE ARISTOCRATS IN THE 70′S AND 80′S. THE ONLY THING MORE INSANE THAN ARISTOCRATS IN THE 70′S AND 80′S WERE THE ONES IN THE 60′S. JUST ASK PRINCESS MARGARET. THIS SHIT IS TAME COMPARED TO THE SHIT CHARLES UNCLE TONY GOT UP TO. POINT IS, THIS WAS WEIRD FROM THE BEGINNING.

Anyways, the two seemed to hit it off, but they were only dating a couple months when the press moved in and started making everything a hundred times crazier. Diana found herself hounded by the press, culminating in the papers slut-shaming her for LITERALLY TAKING AN OVERNIGHT TRIP ON A TRAIN.

This prompted Charles dad, Prince Philip, notorious for choosing his words poorly, basically sending a letter to his son telling him to basically shit or get off the pot before he ruined Diana’s life and reputation. Charles, emotionally stunted and basically terrified of his dad, took this to mean that he HAD to marry her, or he WOULD ruin her life. Keep in mind Diana was SUPER SUPER into him.

WHICH LED TO THIS DISASTER:

Charles went into this marriage feeling bound by duty, figuring Diana was game, that he could make her happy, that he was doing the right thing, and that she’d be along for the ride --- which included the model of marriages they were both used to.

He was VERY WRONG.

Diana went into her marriage completely in love, knowing that Charles had girlfriends, knowing adultery was the norm, believing she’d be a game-changer.

She was technically right, but NOT in the way she imagined. She fell for the fairy-tale Charles thought they were merely selling to the public. She was an emotionally unstable 19-year-old with severe family baggage, and Charles was an emotionally stunted prince with his head shoved right up his royal butt.

What a winner.

THIRD OF ALL, NO.

Remember that Kanga lady from the picture above? Lady Tryon was a business woman and fashion designer. And one of Charles’s mistresses.

She was Camilla’s rival. NOT Diana’s.

See that dress Diana is wearing at Live Aid? Designed by Kanga, Charles’s mistress. Yes, Diana knew who Kanga was and the nature of her relationship with Charles. At this point, Diana was cured of her delusions and was onto her own affairs. She and Kanga became friends and basically allied against Camilla.

At this point, Diana accepted that she and her husband would not be faithful to one another (it’s worth noting that during the early years of their marriage, both of them WERE supposedly faithful. Charles had his last run-in with Camilla the night before the wedding and kept away from both her and Kanga at least until Harry was conceived. But he also basically told Diana at that point that eventually, he’d be bed-hopping again. Basically, he knew Diana would have to be faithful until an heir and spare were produced and seemed to consider it fair play that he not indulge while she couldn’t. If that sounds completely fucked up THAT’S BECAUSE IT WAS). She gradually stopped caring about Charles cheating. She just hated that it was with Camilla. She very quickly embarked on a string of affairs of her own.

----And yes, Charles was a douche. He was also dealing with a wife he did NOT understand who had severe mental health issues.

Diana did things like call Camilla late at night to tell her that there was a man waiting outside, hired to kill her. She would also sometimes abscond with Baby Harry and William without telling Charles or anyone. Not a big deal in a normal family. But they’re royalty. So basically, she was happy to let her husband go into a panic about his sons possibly being kidnapped because he had no idea where the fuck they were. Keep in mind that Charles’s own sister was nearly abducted in 1974 by a gunman and that in 1982, THE VERY YEAR WILLIAM WAS BORN, a man had snuck into the Queen’s bed in the middle of the night carrying a shard of broken glass. So, yeah, Diana grabbing the boys and taking them to Windsor Castle without telling anyone, including her husband? SUPER SHITTY.

Charles tried to get Diana help, but she didn’t trust him whatsoever (because of course she fucking didn’t, no one would). Diana didn’t start getting proper help for her mental health issues until the separation. But she was prone to fits of extreme paranoia and rage, at one point culminating in her physically attacking Charles while he was praying.

Point is, she had a lot of troubles and instabilities. While Charles and Camilla certainly did not HELP, this was shit that went back years and years. Granted, that WAS exacerbated by royal life, but much of that was the strain of royal work --- constant travel, unending media scrutiny, a ton of fame all at once --- and the intense workload she was given when she became Princess of Wales did not help, either. Diana was young, troubled, and had a ton of issues.

BUT

Charles did not ruin her life. Nor did Camilla. Especially since Diana was kind of a badass.

(Pictured: Badass Diana badassing through her badass post-divorce life like a badass)

She wasn’t a Rhodes Scholar, but she was a freaking genius at handling the press and an unparalleled activist. And she got some terrific revenge on her cheating husband, too. She nearly bankrupted him in the divorce (Charles had to borrow money from the queen) and turned him into a villain in the eyes of the press.

Once out of royal life, she felt comfortable enough to get help. She got joint custody of the kids. She found great fulfillment in her activism and did some really fantastic things for causes like AIDS and land mines. She had a string of hot, rich boyfriends who spoiled the crap out of her and she was adored the world over by almost EVERYONE. That even included her ex-father-in-law, Prince Philip, who still signed his letters to her as “Pa.”

Charles nor Camilla could NEVER have hoped to ruin her life. She had too much of it. Diana’s life was ruined by a drunk driver, some paparazzi, and a traffic accident.

(And to those who want to claim that the royal family had her killed: kindly fuck off. Mohammed Fayed has had his case dismissed repeatedly despite numerous appeals and investigations. The only way Prince Philip would have had Diana killed would be if he REALLY REALLY wanted to end the monarchy. Somehow I don’t think an exiled prince-turned-royal-consort wants that. There was nothing the royal family wanted more than to see Diana married off to some rich guy and fade into the background. The LAST thing they would want is for Willam and Harry’s mother to die tragically young and cement herself as an eternal legend. Diana’s death was a fucking nightmare for the BRF personally as well as professionally).

Charles and Camilla, meanwhile?

Camilla kept her head down and did quiet work for osteoperosis research after her mother was afflicted with it. Since becoming Duchess of Cornwall, she’s done extensive work on behalf of rape and sexual assault survivors. Among her initiatives was developing “wash bags” consisting of soaps and towels for victims to use after undergoing their rape kits.

Charles spent years being decried as a complete kook for being all worked up over stupid non-issues you might have heard of --- things like “climate change”, “sustainable farming”, “organic foods”, “the ozone layer” and a supposed “housing crisis” in Britain. Oh, and his lifelong project, The Prince’s Trust, is only one of the most important charitable organizations in the Western World.

So yeah, if I have to hear one more comment about EEEEEEVIL Charles and Camilla ruining poor, wilting flower Diana’s life again, I’ll see red. It’s insulting to all three of them.

(Once again, for the record, I think monarchy is outdated and dumb, But if you are going to have one, your heir to the throne should be a Charles. Or a Victoria. But if you can’t have a Victoria, you should have a Charles.)