#LITERALLY I AM THAT ONE MEME WHERE THE DEEPER MEANING GOES OVER MY HEAD AND I'M JUST LIKE 'YO!! COOL THING!!' <-- NO LIE

[hollowsart]

confession time: I genuinely lack media literacy. It's something I genuinely struggle with. english class to me was not as bad as the other classes I've had in school, but it's one that infuriated me a lot growing up cuz for the life of me I could not understand and STILL do not understand where people are getting these deeper insightful dissections of the various media they consume. the books, the movies..

I don't know where the heck you're getting the symbolism and stuff from at all. I'm engaging with the same thing and it all looks like the same basic everyday things.

this probably also says a lot about my unintentional tendency to be oblivious a lot of the time to a lot of things.

[iliveforyouilongforyouvesuvia]

oh god you have foolishly provided me a chance to dump the contains of my soul and heart out in the open through throwing all my favorite songs to listen to and think of Muriel at you in this essay i WILL

ok first i know its on his official playlist already BUT i feel a need to emphasize just how much it is ABsoLUTEly HIS song most of any of them: drumroll please::: 👏Wolf👏 by 👏First Aid Kit👏 any muriel simp reading this right now i am pounding you with my brainwaves of intent to go listen to it Right Now and Read those Lyrics and just try to tell me its not literally about him god if could draw id be doing such a cool animatic about it but alas it dies with me anyway WAYWARD WINDS!!! A VOICE THAT SINGS!!!! OF A!! FORGOTTEN!!!! LAND!!!!!!! SEE IT FALL!!!! CHILD OF WAR!!!! OH LEND!!!! A MENDING HAND!!!!!!!!!!! i believe ive made myself clear kbgxkyhfhkvd

https://youtu.be/6PmuuiXgIZE

i dont know if links work on anon but i had to try gjzghfdtomfg our wedding song straight up this is in my language and also like. about a girl but the words are easy to switch around so it fits lol it basically just goes like "you just had to know (to do something? like in a you know how to work me way lmao linguistics hard), that i cant forget you at all/i forgot my mother and father/my sister and my brother but i cant goshdarn forget you" and i dont know i probably cant translate that so it hits right but god its absolutely perfect to me cause like I DIDNT! FORGET HIM!! MC REMEMBERS HIM AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT!!!! EVEN WITH THE CURSE I DONT KNOW LET ME HAVE THIS ITS TOO GD ROMANTIC I CANT BELIEVE HE GOT ME ACTING LIKE THIS AGHGF im sorry for yelling i got excited

NEXT a classic we gotta pepper some hozier on this thing so here goes Nothing Fucks With My Baby cause thats my ultimate serenade for him in my head especially the "if i was born/as a blackthorn tree/id wanna be held by you/felled by you/fuel the pyre of your enemies" part as it perfectly describes my sentiments towards my man: hes my bby i will kill for him👁️👁️

theres Always Forever by Cults, i dont have that much to rant about it i just always think of him when i play it lol theres hozier again It Will Come Back which is on his official playlist too but i play around with perspectives in this one cause i put myself in the "it" position, like. im chasing here bro👀 oh my god i have got to shut up this is entirely tmi

https://youtu.be/mLycEitwJCA

i made a whole post about this one its a whole thing lmao long story short muriel on a murderous revenge quest au MOVING ON

OH i remembered another folky one

https://youtu.be/NrgwIo8GWDI

its SUCH a banger and i love it and it goes like i saw a Wolf a Fox a Rabbit so i just imprinted on it with Muriel Asra and MC respectively cause i dont know i had a phase where i decided mcs spirit animal is a rabbit cause of that scrapped introduction chapter with the labyrinth thing i guess idk im scrambling here ngfsfugc anyway it slaps listen to it and imagine a bangin tavern party and maybe youll calm down /meme

ohh ok we're on a folksy roll thats probably because i just mostly associate old timey sounding songs with arcana in general lmao i mean its like middle ages over there right

https://youtu.be/t9PUlNQOZ8o

this ones in my language again i know annoying but i found a translated version look!!! AND theres a bunch of people correcting the mistakes in the comments too if you were wanting to get deeper into research hkdggjyecb and its white voice style so depending on your taste it might sound silly but yeah this ones got some fitting lines too tying up with Murmur and its so cute and so cheesy and hopeful and sappy and it cheers me up aw

oh my god i wonder if anyone gets this far reading this ever if youre seeing this its probably during a scroll roll slow just enough to make out the letters Hello godspeed you continue on your journey with my blessings cause im noT EVEN DONE YET HAHAHAHAHAA

Motha Motha! Problems! nuff said

https://youtu.be/artn9fErRp8

this ones gonna take explaining gjxgkhpgz but maybe not that much

https://youtu.be/_h9V94b4R2g

i just had a eureka moment one day and so another animatic concept to take to my grave was born lmao but mostly its just playing into Muriels & MCs "nO i cOULd hUrt YoU Go aWaY" + "ayo hold my flower ima kill them real quick" dynamic theyve got heehee like the whole "~Dangerous~ ooh that sounds good ya" bit and also yes im in your house no im not leaving jgdghkfhgd and like i just imagined the song fitting the vibe of the whole murder lucio quest road trip with MC all "yo we Getting this shit DONE dont fuck around w my crew" (The Crew: feral milf & bear with anxiety) AND LIKE i always get to the "party like we all gon die tonight" basedrop part with the whole visual montage of us finding khamgalai and then the graveyard fight and Absolutely Everything Going to Shit and the mood shifting to "well fuck maybe we do not in fact got this" but its good we kick lucio all the way to hell at the end we good💕

https://youtu.be/ZxWiG6UJr0w

MMMMMMM THIS ONEE AWW im literally just scrolling through my endless unsorted playlist to find these gdiyyfgfz this ones just cute it doesnt really relate to anything at all actually when i think about it but its nice so here

https://youtu.be/6FEDrU85FLE

.....nope i got nothing on this one just plop it right in here

oh my god. its over. weve done it. we're free

man i hope those links work. definitely not on mobile lol whatever

Hi! and oh, WOW, this was one of the most delightfully wild essays I've ever read for Muriel and I loved it. Especially describing the dynamic on the trip south as "feral milf & bear with anxiety" XD

I've found that links don't work in asks, even with the media option turned on, so I'll include them below. Thanks for your suggestions, anon, I'll put them on the tag! ^.^

[obsessive-ego]

Jack it to a jacket nsft

Masterbation, voyeurism, you know how I am

Musical beetlejuice x fem reader (reader has a vagina but uses they them pronouns)

Beetlejuice forgets his jacket and you use it while he's gone

Beetlejuice had announced to you he had to spend a few days in the netherworld for bio exorcist meeting or something, you really didnt get it, it's not like he actually had a job, all you knew is that he's been complaining about it since day one. That he had to leave the world of the living for a bit.

The day finally came for him to head out for his little business trip, you could tell the ghoul was less then thrilled to go, slight purple streaks graced his hair, you knew he wasnt too keen on being in the netherworld, the demon had such a fascination with the living, an adoration for living with you, going back to the netherworld, even for a few days was like heading back to work after a long period off, soul sucking.

"Alright Sugar" he starts adjusting his tie, his jacket resting on the arm of the couch "I'll be gone for a few days, try not to miss me too much~"

You give the ghoul a soft smile "itll be quieter for sure"  you try to joke

"Yeah..." he trails off, his playful teasing voice dropping along with his grin.

"I know this is gonna suck, but the sooner you get it started the sooner it's over with" you try to cheer him up giving the demon a light punch in the arm.

Beetlejuice's hue was now completely purple, you frown at the sight.

"You know doll, I'm being awfully selfish here, but, how bout ya give me a little sugar before I go?~"

You flinch at the suggestion, you wouldnt say you were shocked at this request, but you were.

"You're stalling"

"Come on babes, humor me, I gotta fill out paper work and deal with my mother, could REALLY use a pick me up~" he nudges you gently and gives a wink, hoping it'll soften you up, it does.

"Fine" you huff out, you grab the demon by the suspenders, yanking him to you level giving him a quick peck.

"No tongue on the first date?~" he snickers, as pink patches pop up in his mossy beard.

"...have a good trip" you utter trying to hide your embarrassment

"Oh doll I will, thinking about your soft lips~" the demon's voice drops to that low growl that never failed to make you warm in your lower areas

"Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Bee-"

You could NEVER make it to 3, the ghoul was always quick to slap a hand to your mouth, pulling you into a side hug.

"Trying to kick me out so soon sugar? So mean~" he chuckles, the ghoul pulls his hand from your mouth and you sigh.

Beetlejuice pauses holding you in this awkward side hug for a few minutes

"Bee?"

"I know" he grumbles, he begrudgingly pulls away

The ghoul makes his way to the empty wall and draws his entrance.

Knock

Knock

Knock

Your living room wall opens up to the netherworld, it was always a rare sight to you, a little anxiety inducing, you freeze for a moment, but as the demon steps into the world of the dead you shout

"Wait!"

Beetlejuice turns to you

"You forgot something"

The demon's eyes light up and in a flash he was infront of you, his hands cup your face as he slams his lips into yours, you jolt in surprise, as the ghoul pulls away he purrs "almost forgot my second goodbye kiss, thanks doll" and just like that he was gone, the netherworld was out of sight and you were alone.

"Your jacket" you whisper still alittle dizzy from his kiss.

...

The jacket he left behind spent a few hours folded neatly on the couch as you go about your alone time. Everytime beetlejuice was away you always took the opportunity to get some chores done, you liked the demon yeah, but he always got under foot, or he would be creepy while you tried to get things done. There were times where you were just doing the laundry, and the demon would just stare at you, no words, he just sat atop the dryer watching you like a hawk as you loaded the washer, it made your skin crawl and your stomach turn to have that much attention put on you, hell, you'd rather him be lewd and annoying then that.

As creepy as he was, that was just who he was, and you loved him, his awful charms, his terrible jokes, and his over all handsome, to you, look, wormed it's way into your heart and refused to let go.

Every kiss, every grope, every pet name he gave you dug you deeper into your affection. Though you were too terrified to confront him about your feelings, he was a literal demon, could he even share these feelings, let alone would he like you the same way, all in all you didnt want to ruin what the two of you had, friends, good friends.

You missed him, you really did, so what was the harm in wearing his coat, just around the house, and maybe smelling it every now and again, that wasnt too weird right? And it would be fine if you were to fall asleep wearing it right? There was no harm in it, but if beetlejuice was to pop in unexpectedly and if he say you wearing it casually youd never hear the end of it, and yet you never took it off.

It's been a few days since beetlejuice left for the netherworld, you were relaxing on your bed looking at memes trying to ignore how much you missed a certain undead bastard, hell you were wearing the jacket he left behind and stealing a small sniff here and there, beetlejuice never really gives you a time frame as to when he'd be back whenever he goes to the netherworld.

'Time moves differently when you're dead, and boy does it move, but it slows down when I'm with you babes' you shiver and try to swallow the lump in your throat that memory caused, the undead bastard was such a flirt.

You grew a tad lonely without your favorite dead guy, yes you used to live alone before beetlejuice barged his way into your home, but you have gotten used to him, you miss him when he's not with you, especially his no concept of personal space, how the ghoul's hands always found a home on your body, your hips, your waist, your shoulders.

You feel a familiar pulse between your legs, you try and ignore it, though your mind was reeling with old memories of beej touching you, you werent even scrolling through your phone anymore, just staring at the screen, thinking of the demon's strong callused hands running up and down your thighs.

"You win" you grumble sliding off your bed and crouching next to it, you pull out a little tool box. Opening the little box and revealing an average sized bright green vibrator brandishing a nice bulbous tip. You push the button on the toy's base and it buzzes to life, you smile, glad to see the barriers were still alive, it was too late for you to run out and get replacements.

You shimmy out of your pajama pants and panties before you hop back up on the bed. You remove the jacket giving it a deep inhale of its scent before placing it down next to you.

...

Your living room walls silently open up, letting in a thick fog of green reavling your demon friend, the ghoul knew it was late, late enough that his sweet little y/n should be dead asleep, as your living room rearranges itself back to normal the ghoul floats to your bedroom, excited to come snuggle up to your soft warm body after what felt like an eternity with dealing with his mother and newly deads with no sense of humor.

"Ah!"

The ghoul freezes at the sound, standing in front of your closed bedroom door, you could be? He presses an ear to the door, the faint sound of buzzing and muffled moans could be herd.

In a flash Beetlejuice's hair and moss on his face turns electric pink.

"A welcome home present? For me? Oh dolly~" he whispers before snapping his fingers and camouflaging himself. Beetlejuice fazed through the door and froze at the sight of you, yes he has seen you touch yourself before, but this?

There you were Laying on your bed, propped up by pillows, shirt pulled up exposing your breasts, bottom half completely bare, pumping the vibrator he got you (as an apology for messing with your old one) in and out of your leaking pussy, with your face buried in his jacket, muffling your whining.

The ghoul could have blown his load from the sight alone, yes he knew you liked him, and yes he knows you want him, but this? This was dirty, this was naughty, smelling his clothes and jerking off? You were just as horny as him, not really, no one is, but he'll take this.

"And here I thought only I had a scent fetish" he chuckles making his way to the end of the bed, plopping down to get a good view of your soaked vigina, he was fixated on the speed you pumped the toy in and out of you. Beetlejuice fumbled with his fly, pulling out his semi, the ghoul licks the palm of his hand, coding it is a nice layer of saliva before wrapping it around his cock. Beetlejuice starts off slowly, but it isnt long until his pace matches yours, imagining the toy between your legs was him, god slash satan he envied that peice of silicon.

"Beetlejuice" you whine bucking your hips up to meet the vibrator as it slid back in, you take another deep inhale of the jacket's scent and whine, beetlejuice groans in response.

"Such a dirty little thing, fuck- I expected to come home and see ya sleeping it in, ah- but this? Oh babes, I would have left it behind months ago to, oh god- to see you like this" the ghoul babbled, he really didnt want to finish before you, he wanted to enjoy this show for as long as possible.

You were absolutely lost in your little activity, using you non dominant hand to hold the demon's jacket to your nose, the scent drove you wild, you could imagine beetlejuice driving his cock into you over and over again, the idea of him fully dressed fucking you while you were completely naked made you tremble.

“Oh my god Bee, fuck, yes, please, fucking oh my god I want you to…Beetlejuice fuck…” you babble as you begin to pick up pace with the vibrator.

The ghoul drools at the show you oh so kindly are giving him, hearing you moan out his name, oh how he loved that sound, it wasnt the first time beetlejuice herd you moan out his name during your 'alone time' but it still made his toes curl as though it was.

Beetlejuice growls through his teeth, he was almost there, seeing you use his jacket in such a way was better than he ever could’ve imagined, yes he dreamed of you using his things for sexual satisfaction, he just thought he'd never see it.

Beetlejuice found that trying to keep the pace with you was growing too hard, he needed to finish, he needed you to finish. He didn’t want to cum before you, he needed to see you cum while using his jacket, he needed the image of you using his things to cum to be carved into his brain.

Thankfully, Beej is good at edging, this wasnt his first day being a peeping Tom, and it wont be the last, it wasnt easy, but he could do it, watching you whine and buck your hips because of him, sure made it a challenge though.

You were almost there, you stop pumping the toy, only for a second, to crank the vibrations to the higher setting, your hips jolt up as you press the jacket against your face muffling your screams, with the intensity up you were ready for the home stretch, you begin to move the toy again, in and out, imagining it was the ghoul you oh so loved. You could just imagine beetlejuice pressing you into the mattress with every thrust, all the dirty things he'd be saying to you, praising you for how well you take his fat cock, growling, biting, you couldn't take it anymore, you felt like you were gonna explode. God you wanted that smug bastard so badly, you loved him so much, you moved the hand holding the jacket against you face and brought it to your vagina, as one hand pumped the vibrator the other played with your clit. You groan through your teeth at the added simulation, if only you could see the demon infront of you.

Beetlejuice sat before you, jaw dropped, tongue hanging, drool dripping down his chin, panting. His cock was throbbing, leaking pre cum, he was ready to burst, honestly he surprised he hasn't yet, watching his y/n go to town on their pussy. Beetlejuice watched ad you hips bounced, and your toes curled, he could finally get a good look at your face, you were tearing up.

"Feels good doesnt babes? Wait till you get the real deal~"

"LAWRENCE!"  You shout as your hips buck upwards, just then, something new happened, you squirted, thought you didnt notice, you were too busy, head lulled back, panting, and using the soft buzzing of the vibrator to ride out your orgasm.

But beetlejuice on the other hand saw, he saw you squirt when you called him, when you called him by his first name, a name you rarely used. The demon blew his load shortly after your little finale, an image that will always be treasured by him. Beetlejuice wipes the cum off his hand on his pant leg, and slides his now soft cock back into his pants. He watches you lay there for a moment before you gingerly sit up, reaching forward to turn off the vibrator and remove it from you, you flinch doing so, still tender. You give out a yawn and toss the toy on the floor mumble how you'll deal with it in the morning, adjusting your shirt to cover hour chest you slide under the covers, in minutes you were asleep, holding his jacket oh so tightly.

Beetlejuice envied the garment, and as much as the ghoul wanted to slide in next you now, he couldnt, you were naked from the waist down. But you did leave him a tasty snack, so he couldnt be mad at you. Beetlejuice snatches up the freshly used vibrator, still warm from your touch, and vanishes

"Good night y/n" his voice purrs in your ears,

"...Lawrence..."

[lumosandnoxwriting]

Call Me When You’re Sober - George Weasley

Title: Call Me When You’re Sober Pairing: George x Fem!Reader, George x Angelina Johnson (kinda, sorta, not really) Warning: mentions of drug use!! Also some mentions of sexual things like sexting/sending nudes and one mention of a boner. I also use the word tits a few times. Summary: George only seems to have the time for Y/N when he’s high, and that’s just not enough for her anymore. (This is also a modern au where they have cell phones and social media bc why not) A/N: this is for an anon that wanted a fic based off of a tiktok POV they saw and funnily enough that POV ended up on my fyp last week so you can find that here if you want. The only part I was inspired by was Angelina being present, but that part was specifically mentioned in the request everything else is purely from my own brain!! This also includes a bit of Angelina Johnson slander but it does not represent my actual views. Angelina slander is not welcome in this house. Feedback is always welcome and requests are open! Tags: @feltondarling​ @pandaxnienke​ @raerae27​

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

The first time it happens Y/N answers the phone right away.

“George? What’s wrong?” she asks frantically, already getting out of bed. It’s three am and George never calls even at a decent hour, so she assumes that something has gone wrong and he needs help.

“Hey, Y/N,” George drawls slowly, like his mouth is moving in slow motion.

Y/N pauses in the middle of her bedroom, her hand hovering above her car keys. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” George certainly sounds off, but he doesn’t necessarily sound like he’s in need of her rescuing. When all George does is giggle in response, Y/N groans. “Are you high?”

“High on life!” George responds, prompting Y/N to roll her eyes. She shuffles back over to her bed and climbs back in, snuggling under the covers. “And maybe a little bit of weed,” he adds with a laugh.

Y/N rolls her eyes, but there’s a small smile on her face. George is one of her favorite people in the world, and it’s hard for her to stay mad at him. “A little bit?” she teases. “You sound baked out of your mind.”

George lets out a throaty laugh, and Y/N closes her eyes, making it seem like he’s there in the room with her. They don’t get to see each other often now that they’re both out of school and busy with their lives, and George’s aversion to phone calls means all she has to get her through their periods of time apart are short text messages and stupid memes. Hearing his voice sends shivers down her spine, and if it wasn’t so late she’d be driving to wherever he is to climb into his arms.

“What can I say? Freddie got the good stuff now that we can afford it.” Y/N can hear some rustling, and she figures that he’s laying back onto his bed. “Not like back when we were at Hoggywarts. Remember those days?”

Y/N hums as she lets her mind wander back to their school days. It didn’t happen often, but every once in a while Fred or George would sneak out of the castle down to Hogsmeade to buy off of a guy that works at the Hogshead Inn. They would settle into their dorm along with Lee and after placing some spells on the room and throwing the windows open they’d light up and pass the joint around until nothing was left. The weed was cheap and burned their lungs, but none of them cared. It left them all feeling like they were floating, and they would talk for hours about nothing in particular.

George always got handsy when he was high, and Y/N supposes this is where her feelings for him started. Once the joint burned out George would pull her body close and let his hands roam all over it as he talked with the boys idly. Y/N would run her hands through his hair and scratch at his scalp, her face pressed tightly to his neck. They often ended up falling asleep together wherever they had landed, sometimes it was George’s bed, but it was usually the floor, swaddled in some random blankets and pillows from the common room. Y/N was always the first to wake up, and she’d hug George tightly for one more fleeting moment before sneaking out and back into her own dorm.

“You roll the best joints, Y/N,” George continues when Y/N doesn’t say anything. “Fred is so shit at it. No matter how many times you showed him how to do it.”

“Very sweet of you to say, Georgie,” Y/N laughs. She yawns a moment later, desperately trying to fight off sleep. “Though you were always more fond of smoking from a bowl if I remember correctly.

George yawns too and Y/N can hear him climbing under the covers of his bed. “I am. But smoking joints reminds me of you.”

“George,” Y/N says softly, sitting up in bed. She waits for him to say something, but all she’s met with are his light snores. She rolls her eyes, settling back down into her pillows. “Goodnight, George.” Y/N hangs up her phone and places it on her nightstand before letting memories of George lull her back to sleep.

-

The next time it happens Y/N doesn’t hear her phone the first time. She’s out of town for work, and after a long day she’d collapsed right onto the bed in her hotel room, formal clothes still on and everything. Y/N had ignored her phone the first time, hoping to fall back asleep. But when it started to ring again only seconds after it stopped she picks up her phone and answers the call without bothering to see who it is.

“Hullo?” she answers sleepily, her eyes barely open. She glances at the clock, noting that it’s only 10 pm and figures that it’s one of her coworkers inviting her to go out with them.

“You sound sleepy,” George responds softly, his voice deep and languid. “Did I wake you up?”

Y/N sits up in bed, rubbing some of the sleep from her eyes. “George?”

George laughs. “Who else would it be?”

“Considering the fact that this is literally the second time you’ve ever called me I figured it would be anyone else besides you,” Y/N teases, shrugging out of her suit jacket.

“Hey,” George whines, and Y/N can practically hear the pout on his face. “I called you on your birthday.”

Y/N rolls her eyes. “Oh, you’re right, my mistake.” She pauses as she walks over to the dresser in the room, starting to take off her jewelry. “How baked are you this time?” she asks playfully.

“What makes you think I’m high?” George laughs.

“For one the sound of your voice,” Y/N explains as she kicks off her heels. “And you only call me when you’re high. Oh, and on my birthday,” she adds when George makes a noise of disapproval.

Y/N hears George shuffle around, and she takes the opportunity to put him on speaker so she can put her phone down and start getting rid of the rest of her clothes. “You can tell by my voice?”

“Mhm,” Y/N hums, fumbling with the buttons of her shirt. “It gets deeper and slower.”

“Really?” George asks, sounding surprised. “Does it sound sexy?”

Y/N laughs as she heads over towards her suitcase, taking off her bra as she goes. She starts to dig through the mess, trying to find her pajamas. “Super sexy,” she responds, hoping George is too high to notice how serious she is.

“What are you doing? You sound too far away.”

Y/N chuckles at George’s dramatics as her hands finally land on her sleep shirt. It’s an old t-shirt of George’s that she stole sometime during their last year and never gave back. Whenever Y/N travels for work she brings it with her as a reminder of home. “I’m putting my pajamas on.”

“So, you’re naked right now?” George’s voice is rough, and it sends a shiver right down her spine.

“Practically,” Y/N responds, pulling the shirt over her head. It’s far too large for her so the hem barely brushes the tops of her thighs, but it reminds her of George, and that’s what matters.

George groans, and Y/N can feel her cheeks heating up as she crawls back into bed. “Wish I was there to see.” Y/N can feel butterflies erupt in her stomach and she has to clamp a hand over her mouth to conceal the noise that bubbles out of her throat. “Send me a pic of your tits,” he continues bluntly when Y/N doesn’t say anything.

“George!” Y/N says, the surprise in her tone evident. The butterflies in her stomach are going wild, and Y/N has to remind herself that it’s the weed talking, not George. “I’m not going to do that George.” Although Y/N would be lying if she said she wasn’t tempted to. “Besides I’m already dressed and in bed.”

“What a party pooper,” George grumbles. “Got me all hard for nothing.” Y/N’s heart feels like it’s going to beat out of her chest. George has never been this lewd with her in all the times they’ve been high together, and she wonders if it’s because of whatever he smoked or because this is one of the only times they’ve been alone while one of them was baked. “What are you wearing then? A sexy little nighty?”

Y/N has to take a few deep breaths, hardly able to believe what she’s hearing. Part of her wants to tell George to knock it off and hang up on him. But the other part has wanted to hear George talk to her like this since their Hogwarts days and she doesn’t know which part should win.

“One of your old t-shirts, actually,” Y/N responds quietly, giving in to her desires.

George groans, and it takes everything in Y/N’s power not to shove a hand down her panties. “That red one? That I let you borrow and never saw again?”

“You remember that?” Y/N asks softly.

“Of course,” George answers. His voice is slower now and Y/N can tell he’s going to fall asleep any second. Smoking always makes him tired and he was often the target of a few pranks since he would be the first to nod off. “That’s like a guys wet dream. Seeing a girl that’s as pretty and sexy as you are in his clothes.”

Y/N bites her tongue as to not say anything, just listening to George through the phone. His breathing starts to slow down, and within a few seconds Y/N can tell he’s fallen into a deep sleep. She listens to him breathe for a moment, before hanging up and tossing her phone down. She cuddles up in the unfamiliar bed, desperately trying to fall asleep.

-

Every few weeks George’s name pops up on Y/N’s phone usually late at night and he’s always baked out of his mind. Y/N finds it nice the first half dozen times, George’s voice is always calming to her and she basks in the opportunity to get to speak with him. They haven’t seen each other in months, despite the fact that Y/N has tried to catch up with him several times. But he’s always got an excuse ready. At first Y/N understood, the joke shop is his number one priority, but after a while it gets insulting. When George is sober he can barely be bothered to send her a text message but the second he lights up he’s dialing her phone number.

One night when he calls she asks him why he doesn’t just invite her over to smoke. Her flat is only 30 minutes outside of London and he knows that she’d drive to the ends of the earth to see him. But of course he has an excuse. He says that it’s something just for him and Fred, a way to wind down together after a hectic workday. Which makes sense to Y/N, and as much as she wants to push it she doesn’t. If it were any other person she would have given up on their friendship by now. But George isn’t just any average person. He’s the person she cares most about in this world, and Y/N doesn’t want to live without him. So as shitty as it makes her feel to just be someone he calls when he’s too baked to care who he talks to, she puts up with it.

That is until she reaches her breaking point.

-

The last time it happens Y/N doesn’t answer her phone the first time it rings. Or the second time. She’s just gotten home from having a few drinks with friends and the alcohol has made her brave. She puts her phone on vibrate mode and leaves it on her bed as she gets ready to go to sleep. It takes her 20 minutes to get ready and once she’s finally in bed under the covers she picks up her phone to assess the damage.

“What the fuck George?” she whispers to herself, scrolling through the notifications on her phone. She has 15 missed calls from him and a litany of text messages.

Answer ur phone Y/N Y/N I called again Pls Answer me Y R u ignoring me Need to hear your voice Baby Y/N Im gonna call until u pick up Ill keep txtin 2 Baby please Y/N I need to talk to you I miss u Pls

When George’s name and the stupid photo of him Y/N set as his contact picture pop again Y/N sighs and she reluctantly answers. “What?”

“Oh my god finally,” George groans in his usual slow voice. “Why didn’t you answer me?”

Y/N rolls her eyes. “Because, George. I was busy. I have a life outside of you and your stupid little phone calls.” Her tone is harsh, and George is so quiet for a moment that Y/N has to check to make sure that he hasn’t hung up on her.

“Why are you so angry?” he asks a second later, and Y/N can tell he’s upset. Normally she would just drop the subject, but there’s alcohol thrumming through her veins and she’s tired of keeping it all in.

“Because, George,” Y/N sneers. “You only call me when you’re high. You dodge every attempt I make at seeing you and you barely even text me anymore. I thought we were friends George. But in reality you treat me like dirt. You use me whenever you want and then you cast me aside without another thought until you’re high again.”

“Y/N,” George starts, but he gets distracted when someone in the background starts to giggle wildly.

Y/N’s blood runs cold, immediately recognizing that laugh. “I thought smoking was something for only you and Fred, George?” Y/N asks accusatorily, sadness and hurt starting to mix with her anger. “I can’t believe you. Not only did you lie to me, but you can find the time to hang out with Angelina Johnson and not your best friend?”

“I-I’m here all alone, Y/N. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” George stutters. But before Y/N can say anything, the same voice says something.

“Georgie,” Angelina whines. “You’re too far away, get back over here.”

“Y/N, I can explain,” George starts, but she cuts him off.

“Fuck you, George Weasley.” Y/N spits, before hanging up on him. She turns her phone off and slams it down, before burying her head in her pillow and crying herself to sleep.

-

When Y/N wakes up the next morning her head is pounding and her throat is dry, and it’s not just from the alcohol she drank. George broke her heart last night, and she has the dry tear tracks on her cheeks to prove it. Y/N avoids her phone, deciding she’s not quite ready for whatever is going to pop up when she turns it back on.

She gets ready for the day slowly, thankful that it’s still the weekend. Y/N stands in the shower for nearly an hour, just letting the hot water sting her skin. When she gets out she brushes her hair slowly, just looking at herself in the mirror. She can’t help but be as mad at herself as she is at George. George may have treated her like shit, but Y/N let him. She let herself become so desperate for his attention that she played right into his stupid game. And as much as Y/N hates to admit it, she doesn’t regret it for a second. All she’s ever craved was George’s undivided attention, and finally getting it felt so good, even if George was higher than a kite each time. Seeing his name pop up on her phone gave Y/N a thrill each time, even though she wanted more – deserved more. Y/N has always been there for George and all she wanted was for him to be there for her too.

Y/N picks out her comfiest lounging outfit, forcing herself not to automatically reach for the old shirt of George’s hanging in her closet. She’s been wearing it more often these days, craving the comfort of his embrace but settling for the cloth of his shirt instead. But now the sight of it makes her want to throw up.

She’s been up for nearly two hours when she settles back into bed, a hot cup of tea in her hands. Y/N’s not sure if she’s actually ready to face whatever mess George put them in last night, but sooner is better than later. She places her mug on her bedside table, reaching over to flip the framed photo she has of her and George over so she can’t see their smiling faces. When her phone finally boots up the screen shows just her background for a moment, before a barrage of texts, missed calls and voicemails show up. George has called nearly 100 times, with almost as many voicemails accompanying them and he’s texted over 200 times to boot.

Y/N scrolls through them, surprised to find that the most recent call and voicemail are from Fred. She can’t remember the last time Fred initiated a phone call with her, since he’s just as hard to get on the phone as George. Fred prefers to communicate through snapchats and tweets, so Y/N knows something big has gone on if Fred bothered to pick up his phone and make a call.

“Uh hey, Y/N. It’s me. Fred. But you probably already know that. Or maybe you don’t. Whatever, not important. I know this is probably the last thing you wanna hear since he’s left you like a thousand messages, but will you please call George? Or text him. Hell send him an email. He’s sorry for whatever it is he did. I’m not really sure what, he was crying a lot when he barged into my room and I was zooted as hell. But what matters is he’s sorry and he really wants to talk to you. So call him, please. Do it for me, at least even if you don’t do it for him. Okay anyway. Bye.”

Y/N sighs, running a hand through her hair. As pissed as she is, she hates to hear that George is upset. She chooses to ignore George’s voicemails for now, since they’re probably a mishmash of words and sobs considering how messy Fred said he was. She clicks on her text message app, scrolling through the messages George had sent, stopping every once and a while to read a few.

Y/N please Im srry Its sending me to voicemail Did u turn ur phone off Talk 2 me Pls y/n pls baby baby baby im sorry I need you to talk to me I need to hear ur voice Pls Let me explain I dnt care abt angie Not like how I care abt u Y/N please. Don’t do this I fucked up I knw I fucked up Let me make it right Please I love you, please

The last text message shocks Y/N, and she rereads it over and over again until its image is imprinted in her brain. George has only ever told her he loves her one other time. It was the last time they got high together, the night before he and Fred left to start the joke shop. Fred, George, Lee and her were all fairly baked, and after Fred and Lee left to sneak down to the kitchens for snacks, George had turned to Y/N and pulled her right into his lap. He had grabbed her face with both of his hands and looked deep into her eyes. I love you, you know that right? His tone was firm and when Y/N nodded he used his grip on her face to pull her into a kiss. It was uncoordinated and messy, but she didn’t care. He had mumbled the word ‘good’ when he pulled away and in a blink of an eye he’d drifted off to sleep. Y/N had snuck back into her own bed, figuring it was best to ignore it, since George surely wouldn’t remember it in the morning anyway.

A knock at her door brings Y/N out of her thoughts and she tosses her phone on the bed to go and answer it. She’s been expecting a package, so when Y/N reaches the door she doesn’t bother to check to see who it is, and just throws it open.

“You look like hell,” Y/N says when her eyes land on George. She certainly wasn’t expecting it to be him, but she’s truly not surprised. His text messages had sounded desperate and it’s very like George to just show up at her doorstep when she doesn’t want him to after he refused to come over for months. Y/N looks him over as he fidgets, taking in his disheveled appearance. His eyes are sullen and dull, his hair is sticking out in a million directions and his skin is ever paler than normal.

“Suppose I deserve that,” George responds, his voice raspy. He lets his eyes rake over Y/N, dumbfounded by how beautiful she looks even in her lounge wear. It’s the first time he’s seen her in person in over half a year and even though he’s spent much of his free time staring at her Instagram photos, she still takes his breath away. “You look good though.”

Y/N rolls her eyes and goes to slam the door, but George puts his hand up to stop it. “What do you want, George?”

“Just let me explain,” he pleads. “Just let me explain everything and then if you want I’ll go. I’ll leave and you’ll never have to talk to me or see me again. You can delete me from your life. But I can’t let you go without explaining myself.”

“Fine,” Y/N resolves, stepping aside and opening the door so George can come in. She leads him over to her couch and motions for him to sit down. Y/N resists her urge to sit next to him, instead choosing to stand in front of him, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes narrowed. “Talk.”

George clears his throat and starts to fiddle with his thumbs. “I like calling you when I’m high because I say whatever comes to my mind. When I’m sober I think too much about what I’m going to say, and I never end up saying what I want. But when I’m high the words just fly out of my mouth without me thinking about the consequences and I like that. Because there’s so many things I want to say to you that I don’t have the balls to say when I’m sober.”

“Like asking me for tit pics?” Y/N asks with a curt laugh.

“Honestly, yes,” he answers, a blush forming on his cheeks. “But it’s more than that. Like telling you I smoke joints even though I despise them, and Fred can’t roll to save his life because it reminds me of you. Or that just the thought of you not wearing any clothes drives me wild. Or that I find you so ungodly beautiful and so damn sexy, Y/N. And that I love you.” George pauses for a moment so he can just watch Y/N. “Because I do love you, Y/N. So much more and in so many different ways than a best friend should.”

Y/N bites her lip to keep herself from sharing the same sentiment as George. Because holy hell does she love him with every fiber of her being, but he’s fucked up and hurt her in more ways than just his inability to admit his feelings. “Then why keep me at arm’s length, George? You avoid all my attempts to see you, you only ever bother talking to me when you’re baked out of your mind and you lie to me. Out of all the people in the world you had to smoke with it had to be her. You know how I feel about Angelina.”

Despite being roommates and pretty similar personality wise, Y/N and Angelina never really got along. They were always competing with each other, for the best grades in their year, for prefect and head girl, and Y/N is ashamed to admit that they’d fought over a boy or two in their early years at Hogwarts. But by far their biggest competition was for George’s attention. George couldn’t care less about girls during his time at Hogwarts, Fred didn’t either but at least he would sleep with some of the girls that threw themselves at him. George on the other hand didn’t seem to care. The only girl he ever bothered to spend meaningful time with was Y/N, and it drove Angelina up the wall. Angelina did everything she could to vie for George’s attention, including spreading a nasty rumor about Y/N during their 5th year. Much to Angelina’s disappointment it failed miserably, and they pretty much ignored each other from that day on.

“The Angelina thing is not my fault,” George insists. “She came into the shop just before we closed, and Fred invited her up and she accepted. What was I supposed to do?”

“Not let her in your room!” Y/N answers as if it’s obvious. “But this isn’t just about Angelina, I don’t want to talk about her. It’s about the fact that you’ve been treating me like shit, George. I’ve been trying so hard to get through to you and you stop me every time.”

“Because being around you and having to pretend that I don’t have feelings for you is too painful,” George admits honestly. “The only time I’m brave enough to be with you the way I want to is when I’m high. Why do you think I was always grabbing your ass after we smoked? Why I always made you cuddle me? Why I kissed you that night?”

“You remember that?” Y/N asks, clearly shocked. George had never mentioned it again and Y/N figured he was too high to remember what he said and did. It had upset her to no end that George returning her feelings was only a side effect of the weed, but she never brought it up to him in fear of ruining their relationship.

George scoffs. “Of course I do. When I woke up the next morning and you weren’t there I figured you didn’t feel the same way. So, I just never mentioned it, and when you didn’t either I figured you thought I was just being a high idiot like always and brushed it off. I never invited you to smoke after that because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off of you. And kissing you once is easy to explain away but kissing you every time we get high pretty obviously means something more. So, I would call you instead. And I’d lay in my bed high as hell pretending that you were there next to me until I fell asleep with you on the phone.”

“Oh, for fucks sake,” Y/N mutters. Before she has a chance to regret her actions, Y/N is throwing herself at George. She straddles his waist and kisses him hard, moaning when his hands land on her bum and give it a squeeze. “You’re such a fucking idiot,” she pants, starting to trail kisses across George’s jaw and down his neck. “But you’re my idiot.”

George chuckles before he grabs Y/N’s face so that he can kiss her again. Their lips move together slowly, and George starts to rub Y/N’s back lightly. “I love you,” he murmurs as their kiss breaks.

“I love you too,” Y/N responds, her head dizzy.

“Does this mean I get tit pics whenever I want?” George asks cheekily, laughing when Y/N slaps his chest.

“Only if you promise to only call me when you’re sober from now on,” Y/N bargains.

George grins at Y/N before leaning in to kiss her briefly. “Deal.”

[oneletteredwondered]

Wanna fight? Gunna smooch about it? Coward?

Prinxiety make out fic

Happy birthday @just-call-me-the-intrusive-thot !

--

It’s nearly midnight when they start fighting. 

Virgil had been on the couch just messing on his phone for the past few hours, had actually passed out at one point, but woke up at such a time that allowed him no hope of actually going to bed proper. He remained lounging on the couch even after most of the others went to sleep or hibernate or whatever. All except Roman who looks a little worse for wear as he trudges over, most likely overworking himself again, and plops himself right on the open cushion next to Virgil.

A silent wave of his hand and a pad of paper and multicolored pens appear next to Roman as he begins to draw the night away, too many thoughts in his head to fall asleep. Virgil enjoys the silent company for what it is, both doing their own thing without the threat of having to do anything.

They remain like that for an hour or so, every so often glancing at each other just to see if they are still there or awake. Sometimes Virgil will show Roman a random meme that earns him an exhaled puff of laughter, but it’s during one of those random glances that Virgil catches sight of what Roman is drawing so diligently in his sketchbook.

“What are you doing?” He asks with a single raised eyebrow. Roman jumps and stares at him as if not remembering that Virgil could speak.

“Drawing of course!” Roman boasts, awkwardly angling his sketchbook away from Virgil’s prying eyes. Virgil levels him with a deadpan look and quick as can be lurches forward and pulls the book from Roman’s hand. Roman screeches and lunges after him but Virgil is lankier and manages to hold the book away from his grabby hands.

His eyes didn’t deceive him. Roman is drawing kissing. 

To be fair, the sketches are rather good, sloppy in their speed but it makes them feel more emotional in a way with how some of the figures curl around each other.

“Something on your mind Princey?” Virgil teases and relinquishes the book back to it’s proper owner. Roman lets out a very undignified huff and snatches his book to his chest.

“As if it’s any of your misery business,” Roman starts, pauses, and then wails, “But YES.”

Virgil snorts into his hand as Roman throws himself across the arm of the couch, hand to his forehead dramatically.

“It has been ages since my last kiss conquest and I am loathing the time,” He recites as if he practiced the line in the mirror, which Virgil would almost bet money on that he has. He rolls his eyes and kicks Roman lightly.

“I would hardly call it a conquest,” He says with a smirk. Roman mock glares at him and sets aside his sketchbook with another huff, then, like a mature adult, sticks his tongue out at Virgil. Virgil kicks him again just a little harder.

“Besides,” He says with an air of innocence that quickly turns sour. “You’re probably not even that good.” The reaction is instant, Roman’s jaw drops and he lets out an outright offended gasp.

“You need a nap!” Roman chides him and Virgil snickers behind his phone at the reaction. Roman looks positively bristled, arms crossed over his chest.

“I'm a good kisser,” Roman mumbles to himself but Virgil hears it all the same.

“Sure you are,” He taunts. Roman puffs up his cheeks.

“I’m better than you!” He shouts and points an accusatory finger at Virgil. Virgil sneers playfully and smacks the hand away, sitting up a little more from his lazy position. Maybe if they had this conversation years ago, Virgil would be worried about arguing with Roman about anything, but he can see the threat of a smile on Roman's face and knows it’s fine to banter back.

“You doubt me?” Roman asks him then, a hand to his chest to feign distress.

“Hell yeah I do!” Virgil says back right away to goad him. Roman gasps loudly. 

“Fiend! As if you're any better!”

“Better than you!” Virgil echoes Roman’s previous words.

“Is that a challenge!”

“Fucking bring it Princey I'll kick your ass at kissing."

“I will beat you with all of my love!” Roman says back and he's on the edge of bursting into laughter just as Virgil is.

“You wanna fight about it? Gunna smooch me? Coward?”

They've steadily been getting closer and closer to each other, inching bit by bit on the couch until their knees touch, and though he was literally just egging Roman on, the quick kiss catches Virgil entirely off guard. It’s firm, a press of lips just to be there, and Roman pulls back nearly just as quick, both of them wide eyed.

Roman looks just as stunned as if he also didn't expect for him to do that. In the sudden silence Virgil can feel his heart pound hard in his ears. They stare at each other and then Virgil lets out a hysterical giggle he'd be embarrassed to make if Roman didn't make the same noise.

“I uh,” Roman starts but he's smiling. Virgil can feel something wild and fizzy in his chest, sort of like anxiety but more excited.

“Got caught up in the moment?” Roman asks as a way of explanation, giving a sheepish smile. Virgil snorts and turns his head down to hide the bewildered expression on his face, that slowly slips away as he wonders if he should say something, and then if he's waited too long to say something, and then if it's now awkward because he hasn't. He looks over to Roman who is just smiling to himself like a loon, and Virgil talks without thinking.

“It wasn't that good,” He says teasingly with a small smirk and the spark in Roman’s eyes tells him that Roman doesn't take it badly.

“Oh really?” Roman says challengingly, angling back into Virgil's space. Virgil shrugs and leans closer to him, gripping his hoodie to hide his shaking hands.

“I mean, you could do better,” Virgil says, trying to go for casual even if his heart is beating like crazy. He bites the inside of his lip and wonders if he looks as hopeful as he feels. Roman smirks something wicked at him.

“In that case-” and Virgil freezes as Roman puts a hand on his shoulder to push him into the back of the couch so he sits right. He barely registers what's happening when a leg swings over both of his, and Roman is settling on his lap proper. One hand goes to his cheek that warms him to his toes and an arm is thrown over his shoulder to draw him in.

Virgil is a little more prepared for the kiss this time, able to see Roman grin at him before he closes the gap between them. He closes his eyes and allows Roman to press him into the cushion behind him. His hands go to rest on the top of Roman’s legs simply to keep balance, feeling the warmth of Roman through his pants. He lets out a soft sigh into the kiss.

Their lips move together, slowly at first, testing the waters of each other. Gentle and easy, letting the initial nervousness melt away as they get more used to each other. Virgil finds himself relaxing into the couch at the touch.

Then Roman lifts himself a tiny bit and the hand on Virgil's cheek angles his head up to be able to kiss him deeper, lips moving with more urgency. Virgil follows along, heart feeling like it may burst in his chest as he digs his hands harder into Roman's legs. A hand curls into his hair and tugs just enough to send a thrill down his spine.

Roman sighs into the kiss, perhaps a little whiny, and presses into him more and Virgil snaps his hands up to Roman’s back and drags him down to bring them flush together. They can’t very well get much closer but they’re still going to try with the way Roman’s arms circle over his shoulders. Virgil grips at his shirt in return, wanting more but not knowing where to start because he wants to start everywhere.

He lets out a small groan when Roman ventures to poke at his lips with his tongue, asking if that's a more they can do. Virgil would be a fool to deny him in this moment, so he kisses harder, widening his mouth just that little bit that Roman needs to press their tongues together, groaning again when Roman goes right to sucking on it.

Virgil keeps pace with him, licking into Roman’s mouth just as much as his hands wander up and down the Prince’s back, feeling him move and arc into the touch while Roman focuses on stealing his breath away. Hands hold his face to keep him close, not that Virgil would want to go anywhere else. 

He's buzzing inside, feeling like he can run miles with the amount of passion Roman is pouring into him, continuing to press him into the couch. His chest lurches when Roman moans softly and he grips Roman's shirt like a lifeline to keep them both grounded.

It’s then Virgil notices the slight back and forth of Roman’s hips on his lap, almost unconsciously. Virgil trails his hands lower to rest on his waist, feeling the motion, then grabs Roman and guides him into a full rock.

“Shit,” Roman breaks away to curse breathlessly, face red and looking down at Virgil in a daze. Virgil knows he’s not fairing much better despite any possible foundation he wore. He gives a lopsided smile that is returned before Roman leans in for another kiss.

He feels Roman move to push him down into the cushions, but adrenaline kicks in and Virgil shoves off the back, shooting up from his semi slouched position and meets Roman over half way to the kiss, clashing their lips together and pressing their chests flush. Roman lets out a squeak that spurs Virgil further. He angles Roman back, causing both of them to latch their arms around each other so Roman doesn't fall. Roman’s hands are burning on his back where they are splayed out, twisting the fabric of his hoodie, and he can feel Roman's thighs squeeze around his.

There's no more nerves as they kiss, no trepidation or caution. They kiss more openly, allowing tongues to push against each other. Virgil gets Roman to let out a low groan when he sucks on his tongue boldly, the noise once more sending a thrill down his spine. He pulls Roman impossibly closer and moves their kiss towards heady. Virgil feels so alive.

Roman responds eagerly, tugging at Virgil's hair happily and moving his hips back and forth with renewed purpose, finally managing to sit up a bit more so he's not in danger of toppling. He tilts Virgil's head to deepen the kiss and Virgil whimpers. 

They can barely keep still, hands moving all over wherever they can reach. It's almost a jarring pause when Virgil drags Roman’s bottom lip between his teeth and pulls back tantalizingly slow. He feels Roman shudder under his hands and nips just that much harder at his lip in response.

They are both panting, lips red with the amount of force they put behind their kisses. Virgil can feel his heart so hard against his ribs he wonders if Roman can feel it too.

Roman swallows hard and Virgil zeros in on the way his throat bobs at the motion.

“Well?” Roman asks breathlessly. Virgil blinks at him trying to get the daze out his head.

“Well what?” He says smartly. Roman smirks infuriatingly, which he shouldn't be able to pull off with his face as red as it is.

“Was that better? You gunna admit I'm a better kisser?” He teases. Virgil snorts and playfully tosses Roman, causing him to stumble off his lap and into the seat next to him.

“You wish,” He says and lets out a very dignified noise of his own when Roman takes the fall to his advantage, grabbing Virgil by his jacket to haul him over and on top of him. Virgil lands with a huff, hands braced on either side of Roman’s head, eyes wide and worried that he might've hurt Roman in his fall. Roman grins cheekily at him though so Virgil glares with no anger at him and slots their legs together comfortably. Once settled Roman fists his jacket to yank him into another burning kiss.

Virgil presses him into the cushions now, one hand going to trail Roman’s side, feeling the muscle there as Roman breathes heavily and arcs into the touch, his other hand remains by Roman's head to keep steady. He grunts when Roman bites his lip, potentially in revenge, and Roman uses the surprise to his advantage, slipping his tongue into Virgil's mouth and maneuvering in such a way that if Virgil was any less proud, would have made him melt, and it partially does, letting himself fall to his elbow by Roman's head.

Two can play that game and he puts a hand on Roman’s hip right where his thigh meets the juncture, and presses him down with a roll of his hips. In the harsh gasp Roman let's out, he curls them tighter, moving his lips more passionately.

Roman throws his head back to breathe but Virgil doesn't care much for it, dipping his head to latch onto Roman’s neck. He pulls skin between his teeth and sucks hard. Roman lets out a whine and writhes under him, gripping at his shoulders and jerking his hips up for friction. Virgil presses down to give it to him and laps at the skin he’s captured.

“Shit Virgil, shit,” Roman manages to say and Virgil smirks into his neck, a thrill going through him at the reaction, and moves up to kiss hard at Roman's pulse point. He groans as Roman pulls his hair and pops off when tugged harder. Roman looks properly disheveled with his eyes hooded and the look he gives fills Virgil with wanting.

They crash their lips together again, arms circling around each other to bring the other as tight as they can. Whatever focus they had before is gone as their mouths move with each other, lips working seamlessly and little flicks on tongue spurring them on for more. It’s Virgil this time who eventually tilts his head to be able to lick into Roman’s mouth more so, whining when Roman sucks at his tongue with no reservation.

They shift their legs as best they can, Virgil bracing himself on his knees as Roman lifts his free leg over Virgil’s back to squeeze him down. With his body partially supported on Roman, Virgil's hands begin to wander. Down Roman’s sides where he can reach, then low across his back feeling some of the heated exposed skin there from where Roman's shirt rid up in their shifting that causes Roman to sigh deeply, and lower still across his rear and his thighs. Virgil grips it tight and bites Roman’s lip.

They're both panting when they pull apart, hips rolling gently just to feel some kind of friction that Virgil can feel the tingles of all along his spine. He dips once he feels less light headed, going to the other side of Roman’s neck and kissing at the skin closer to his jaw, Roman lets his head fall to give him access, digging at his shoulders to keep him there.

Virgil licks at the skin, nipping softly, teasingly, then sucking the skin in and biting down to hold it. Roman once again arcs into him, throwing his arms over Virgil's back and using his leg as leverage to rub at Virgil’s body where he can’t reach. Then the leg caught between Virgil's lifts until it can't anymore, giving Virgil some pressure he didn't have before. He rocks forward and bites harder, Roman giving a small shout at the action.

Virgil releases the now marked skin and moves quickly to kiss him and swallow the noise down. Roman grips and tugs at his clothes harder now, more desperate, kissing more harshly. There’s an ache and their lips will be swollen after this and neither can find the will to care. Not with Virgil's hands on Roman’s stomach warm and firm and Roman’s legs keeping them wrapped up. The pull apart and Roman’s chest heaves with the amount of air he’s taking in.

“You good?” Virgil croaks out cause he has to make sure. He's answered with a bright grin and another kiss that steals his breath away. Roman slows the pace, making their kisses more languid than heated. Carefully Virgil shifts his legs out so he's not kneeling but more so laying on top of Roman with his full weight. 

He’s worried about being heavy but Roman lets out a content sound so he stays there, he slides his hands around to spread across Roman’s back, not gripping any more but keeping him close, the hands now in his hair are not tugging but holding him gently. Even with the pace change it still makes Vigil warm inside.

He moves his lips with Roman’s letting him take the lead of the kiss this time around, and sighing himself when Roman gently brushes their tongues together. The hands in his hair move down his spine to rest on his waist. When they part again, Virgil drops to smush his face into Roman's chest, feeling him breath against his cheek.

“So now how is it?” Roman asks once he's regained energy to talk but still a little winded. Virgil still has enough energy to be a little shit.

“Mmm, I don't know," He lazily lifts to his knees and elbows to smirk at the incredulous expression on Roman's face. "Come back Thursday to try again.” He says. Roman stares dumbly at him and looks at the clock on the wall with a glare.

“That's in seven minutes!” He whisper hisses. Virgil just shrugs from his awkward, but very comfy, position.

“Guess you'll have to wait,” He lets out an exaggerated sigh. Roman growls and throws his arms up.

“Screw Thursday!” He yells and swings his arms over Virgil to haul him back in for another kiss. And Virgil would kiss him back but he’s laughing too hard.

[deuce-duce]

Am I...?? (Inwardly GASPS)!! Which Part...??

Today is March 2nd 2021 and I got my puter back and went to look at what I had last written on December 16th 2020. When I opened the file, it had been changed… dates had been obscured and certain things had been reworded… So… I have decided to go back through all of my previous posts to ensure the integrity of what I am writing stays that way! During this process I will be putting together a collection of my favorite quotes and post fragments. Which I will dub Rock and Roll’s Greatest Hits, if you live near me go buy airhorns Ill tell you why, When the greatest hits album comes out. What your about to read is primarily from Dec. 16th with a few changes or should I say… restorations?? Probably a little of both to be honest. Everything is still as it happened, I just add better descriptive words and fine tune the analogies so that they are easier to digest… My English teacher always told me that was what I was good at! Along with many others… who have said the same… not only do I understand it… I’m able to explain it in a way that others understand as well. ENJOY

On the seventh of December I woke up not too sure if something had occurred that night or not… as I have mentioned before they use a numbing agent that basically masks the pain until it wears off approximately 12 hours later… When I a woke on this day I was having moments of clarity and for some reason just couldn’t keep them to myself. talking to one of the staff members of the homeless shelter I expressed my destiny that I actually had one, that was going to bring me to greatness… then out of nowhere I just blurted out there is going to be a power shift!!!! And at that very moment I couldn’t believe what it was that had just come out of my mouth. I didn’t even believe it at first because the guy at the desk was like IDK… about… that… but when I went back into my room, the look on my roommate’s face said it all!! It seems as though those who pull strings and orchestrate a lot of this… put all of their eggs into one basket. I don’t know exactly what the terms of thee bet were but I’m assuming it had/has something to do with me not being able to control my compulsivity associated with my dissociation. Unfortunately for them I made a deal with God. It was while I was on quarantine and even though I was in a basement all by myself people kept F$%^&*!> with me. This is when I prayed stating that I would not falter, for my body his temple his craft and his glory. that I need to take care of myself and my destiny, for it is in his hands and I won’t let my selfishness or imperfections stop him from fulfilling his plan. Over and over again I have cried and cried about how fundamental and powerful this is all going to be. EFFIN CRAZY!! And now that I know without anyone telling me and it literally being given to me somehow is what is freaking everybody out. How do I know or how the hell did I figure it out!! I really couldn’t tell you and the only thing that is possible is that our Creator endowed me with such responsibility. Crazy!! (this was before I considered the probability of God being a woman, A mother, A Lover)

Low and behold one of my favorite artists Mr. Kid, Maniac, Rager, Wizard, Pursuer of Happiness Cudi dropped a new album entitled Man on the MOON Three. Ill have to say it’s a wonderfully made album! The album delves deep into who Scott is… I know the Fans are going to love it.

Rewind a little bit sorry for my hiatus just needed to stay focused and well as your aware have been led here not by accident and had some things that I needed to take care of before I started writing again. Not to mention I have been dealing with a lot only to know that I am who I am for a reason Rockstar Knights off MOTM3 has a lot to say concerning who I am and what I have realized as a result to my struggle. The Song is a collab with Trippie Redd and really encapsulates so much, that its hard to describe in words.

I had a very interesting conversation with my mother the other day and came to a pretty profound thought. 1st I was telling her how I was being told that I am too….!!! Smart!! Like WTF!! REALLY!! Is that even a thing?? But I didn’t let it get to me too much as it probably is the reason I face so much adversity, No matter the community I enter into. This is how I have explained it to her and a couple other people in the community as well as the Rasta Man in the PNW. The best analogy I could present is if a plant with a fire burning so big and so hot on one side of the plant, a fire so big and hot that it probably would kill most other plants, but not this plant. This plant had sooooo much drive and will to live that instead of giving up it grew in the opposite direction of the blaze. While the roots could withstand the blazing inferno becoming one with the heat and pain Upon the journey away from the fire (society) the plant developed different characteristics colors and attributes that no other plant had. Essentially that journey completely changed that plants physiology Psychology and possible its genetic makeup altogether. Now that the plant has grown so far from the fire (Society) that its all alone. Now theres a different kind of fire where he once thought was safe. But as he grows back towards the fire to escape the new blaze (tyranny) he realizes he will never be able to be the same as the fire he grew so far away from. Now the only option the plant has with death being imminent is to grow as big and bright as quickly as possible before it is engulfed on all sides.

All this taken into account along with factoring in the two major belief structures in the world one Being Creation or Evolution (The Big BANG) this plant which has defied all odds still shines brightly displaying its colors and unique characteristics no matter how dark the room may be it still continues to bloom! Is this a Divine will and plan or are we experiencing the next step of Evolution??? My honest opinion is its both! For the mere ability to adapt and change and prevail in situations others couldn’t dream of or even have nightmares about is truly remarkable and in my eyes is an act of GOD! Just as any evolutionary step would be. The crazier part is… he has no handle!! Nothing to grab on to leaving no way for anyone to grab hold and control! AYE….

I thought this all might just be me being stubborn or simply an idiot until for some reason I opened up my meme App. Something I never open or even look at and the first thing that popped up was a picture and quote saying that many told Marilyn Monroe that she was only beautiful because of the clothes and dresses she wore. It then concluded Marilyn Monroe did a photoshoot in nothing but a burlap potato sack. The photos and the message she sent were completely opposite of that which was being said by spectators. Now!! As scrolled to the second meme I was expecting something funny!! That wasn’t the case what I saw next was the upcoming alignment of the two largest planets in the solar system Jupiter and Saturn. Not only does their alignment happen only every 20 years but the proximity of this occurrence to the earth as well as the proximity to each other hasn’t been the same for close to 800 years… What does it all mean… IDK but The Christmas Star is what their calling the alignment and if your familiar with the bible is the star that the kings, from other lands followed  to bring gifts to baby JESUS! Who knows what this alignment could usher in.?

So profound thought comes to me on a daily basis now it’s so strange the way that it comes it will just be momentary thoughts that will pass through my conscience and as they go by I latch on to it delve a little deeper and experience an overwhelming amount of… IDK what to call it but it feels very powerful so much so that it brings me to tears… I don’t know exactly what the future holds but I think that is what makes this so great! I just keep my mind open Like apple IOS Systems letting everything come and go as it pleases when something goes by that strikes me, I latch on and don’t let go. Its weird how it all happens.

Steve Jobs once said that if he had never had an acid trip that he would have never of come up with the operating system for Apple and after explaining to you what I do as a spiritual and destiny seeking process I believe was his thought process as well. This in of itself is what I think they mean when they say to keep an open mind. Just so you know I didn’t come up with that little bit about the late Mr. Jobs by plan it just came to me when thinking about how to have, use and keep an open mind.

The reason I explained this to you was because this is how I Pray! After I pray I sit still with an open mind allowing multiple ideas thoughts and perspectives to pass through my brain… until like an IOS operating system, something speaks to me… when I latch on to it, focus on what it means and what it will mean… “I Get Those Goosebumps Everytime” (Goosebumps, Travis Scott, feat. Kendrick Lamar, Birds in the Trap Sing Mcknight, 2016). This is how you know! A little extra for ya, when I went to look up the info for my first Hip Hop citation it was 11:11 lol there they go again… its really a cool feeling!

Can someone tell me if that APA or MLA…?? Ya know what!! Eff IT!! None of my writing is orthodox, besides I kinda like the way I did it haha

Kid Cudi’s new video just dropped and I couldn’t be more amazed with all of the hidden messages that are in there. He is officially the man on the moon. Passion pain and demon slaying like a maniac on the pursuit of happiness. Love that DUDE!!

That’s all I got for 12-16-2020 Five More Days…

LOVE & PEACE

Songs

Heaven On Earth – Kid Cudi

Goosebumps – Travis Scott, feat. Kendrick Lamar

Dirty Heads – Sound Of Change

 Just so you know the only thing I added this time other the cleaning up what I had already written was the praying part. Although I originally remember that being the purpose as to why I wrote what I did looking at it today March 2nd 2021 it wasn’t there… have a great day everyone. Ill post this on 3/3/2021

I've added parts to the story on my business cards and will leave then random places, what you do with them is up to you but I think It would be cool for those who want to stop me to have to work extra hard just like they make me!!  

LOVE

[hookedontaronfics]

First Contact series - Part 7

Title: First Contact - Part 7 Read the previous installments here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 Rating: M Pairing: Taron x OC Warnings: Mild cursing A/N: Although Jess and Taron are officially dating now, will they have what it takes to survive a month apart? This chapter contains plenty of sweet fluffy moments. The series will eventually involve more mature themes as it develops, so be warned! Enjoy! x

I was startled awake by the sound of a large stack of papers hitting the top of my desk. I sat upright so quickly I nearly tipped over in my desk chair, and blinked a few times before gathering where I was. At work, at my desk. Right, just where I shouldn’t have been napping. I gazed up at my boss, who was tapping his foot impatiently.

“Sorry, what do you need?” I asked, wiping the corner of my mouth as surreptitiously as possible.

“Office, now,” he said, and strode off. Shit.

It’d been two weeks since Taron had left London for his work, and while I’d like to say I handled that time with complete calm and utter grace, that just wouldn’t be me. Most of the time he would be available to talk was the middle of the night for me, and sometimes our conversations would take up hours so I’d crawl into work after only having slept three or four.

I sighed and rearranged my clothes slightly, making sure I didn’t look as rumpled as I felt, and hurried off to my boss’ office, shutting the door behind me and trying to steel myself for the inevitable lecture.

“Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair. I perched on the edge of it, feeling ashamed and still exhausted.

“Is something going on that I should know about, Jess? I’ve noticed you’ve been exhausted and a bit scattered the past two weeks, and I just wanted to make sure everything in your home life is okay, and if not, if there’s anything I can do to help,” he said concernedly.

“I, uh, yes, everything’s fine. There’s just someone really important to me who’s been out of the country and so the only time we get to talk some days is late at night in my time zone. I’ve been trying to balance everything and not let it encroach on work but obviously I haven’t been perfect at that,” I admitted with a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, I’ll do better,” I said, figuring that’s what my boss wanted to hear.

“If we need to adjust your hours to give you a later starting time, I think that could be arranged,” he said sympathetically.

“Really?” I asked, surprised again.

“We’re not tyrants here, Jess. Maybe that’s how it was for you in America, but we don’t try to take over our employees’ lives, and you’re one of our hardest workers here. You put in extra hours and always go the extra mile and that hasn’t been lost on me. So if this helps you get more sleep and be more productive, then I’m willing to try it out,” he smiled at that.

“Just for a couple more weeks,” I nodded, still a bit surprised with the outcome. We worked out some later hours for me and even the possibility of working from home when I didn’t have a table read, and I felt much better about things once I returned to my desk.

I made it through the rest of the workday with a hefty amount of caffeine and was grateful when I finally made it home to the flat. I kicked off my heels and laid down in my bed, still just completely worn out. I don’t remember dozing off, but I must have because I was awoken by my phone ringing. I had to dig it out from the sheets and it took a second for me to register that it was a video chat from Taron. I accepted the call and sat up, probably looking like a hot mess.

“Heeeey babe!” Taron grinned cheerily. I checked the time quickly; it was already night for him so I assumed he was just in his hotel room.

“Oh, hey,” I smiled sleepily.

“Did I wake you?” he asked, giving me the most adorable grin.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t supposed to be sleeping, so it’s alright,” I laughed. “I just got home from work an hour ago.”

“I see that,” he grinned, looking over me as I was still dressed in my nice office clothes.

“You mean I’m not just chilling in my jammies for once?” I giggled, before telling him I’d gotten caught napping accidentally at work but that it was all alright because my boss was amazing and I respected him for it. “It sounds silly to say it, but things have been really different for me here in London. I feel respected as an actual professional, not just someone’s slave,” I said thoughtfully. “Not to mention, I met you and that wasn’t something I ever counted on,” I grinned.

“I am oh so grateful that we did, though,” he said sweetly, making that familiar ache grow in my chest.

“I miss you so much,” I whispered softly, wishing I could reach through the screen and touch his beautiful face.

“I miss you too, badly,” he said, the video screen shaking as he seemed to readjust his position. I had to look away so it wouldn’t make me feel dizzy. “But it’s only two more weeks until you get to see me again. We can make it.”

“Do I sound pathetic?” I laughed at that.

“No, of course not, Jess. We’ve literally talked every day because I can’t stand not seeing your face. So if you’ve got it bad, so have I,” he replied.

“Oh, T,” I laughed softly. Sometimes he said things like that, and I didn’t always know how to respond. Our relationship had certainly grown despite the distance between us, and he always made it a point to text me good morning and good night no matter the time of day it was, or leave me funny memes or pictures to make me laugh. I loved how caring and thoughtful he was. He’d done everything in his power to keep me from feeling lonely and I was trying hard to stay grateful.

“I wish I could have brought you out here but that just wasn’t going to work,” he frowned, wrinkling his brow.

“It’s okay. I don’t want to distract you from your work. You know, work I’m completely and utterly going to fangirl over when I get to see it,” I teased lightly. “Don’t forget, Taron Egerton, I may be your girlfriend but I’m also your Number One fan,” I added, giggling.

“Oh boy,” he just chuckled. “Well I hope you’re ready for the VIP experience, because my girlfriend gets a very special place at my side,” he said sweetly.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” I smiled, as I heard the front door open. Mary must have just arrived home from work, and Jules wouldn’t be far behind.

“Roomies home?” Taron asked, having seen me look away at something. I nodded at that and yawned again.

“Shit, I need more coffee or something,” I whined.

“Or sleep,” Taron chuckled softly. “I decided it was my turn to stay up late and talk to you at a more normal time for you. I hate that I’ve gone and made you exhausted.”

“Oh please, talking every night has been the best part of every day,” I grinned at that. “I’ll take the exhaustion over not getting to see you. I just wish I could be with you right now. But, I know there will be more days like this ahead. I love what you do for a living and this might just be how it goes for us at times. I promise I can handle that.”

“I’m not so worried about you, love,” Taron said with a tired smile. “I’ve just gotten quite attached, you know. When I fall, I tend to fall hard,” he admitted.

Fallen for me? I thought to myself giddily. It still seemed hardly true at times that I was dating someone I’d long been a fan of, but it also just felt normal too. I’d met him on his level, as just another person living their life in London, and that our lives had intersected and started twining themselves around each other seemed almost meant to happen. We ended up having a lot of things in common, same musical tastes and interests in books and films. We could carry on conversations for hours about the deeper things in life. He was always thoughtful and introspective and unafraid to be emotional. Our personalities meshed so well, the more I got to know of the person he was when the cameras weren’t on. And I was beginning to deeply love that person.

“Hey, what are you thinking?” he asked, after I realized I’d been silent for a moment or two with my thoughts.

“How well we get on with each other,” I mused.

“Almost like it was meant to be,” Taron smirked back at me, his eyes dancing a bit.

“If that sudden storm hadn’t chased us into Tesco’s, and I hadn’t really needed brown sauce that day, then who knows if we’d ever have talked,” I laughed at that. “So yeah, it’s feeling a bit fated, isn’t it?”

“The brown sauce really did the trick,” Taron laughed heartily.

“I’m a bit obsessed, I know,” I giggled, pretending to hide my embarrassment behind my hands. 

“But really, I can’t imagine I wouldn’t have somehow noticed a woman as beautiful as you walking about London.”

“Taaaron, you’re too kind,” I whined slightly. “Tell me again why we have to be apart right now?”

He just chuckled at that, and looked about to fall asleep. “You should go get some rest, babe,” I replied gently.

“Before I drop my phone on my face,” he smirked lightly. “Talk to you soon,” he promised sweetly, waving at the camera, and I tried to remember everything about his precious face in the moment. We took our good-byes and I at once found myself having to combat the feeling of loneliness that washed over me.

I got up and changed out of my work clothes into just a simple pair of jeans and a shirt I’d dumped on the floor that was still at least half-clean before heading out of my room to find Mary, nearly tripping over Tim stretched out in the hallway. “Damnit, Tim!” I said, laughing and hopping on one leg after stubbing my toe on the hardwood floor in an effort to avoid him. He just meowed at me indignantly and didn’t move. That cat had more sass than most adults, I giggled to myself before flopping on the couch.

“So, how’s the day?” I asked Mary.

“Oh! Good!” she grinned over at me, flipping through channels on the telly a bit idly. “Might have a date with my co-worker,” she said off-handedly.

“What!” I shrieked loudly. “No way! Tell me details, come on!” I giggled.

“Well, I took your advice and finally just asked Emmett if he were available and wanted to maybe get a coffee sometime and he actually said yes!” she grinned.

“Maaarreeeee!” I laughed. “I’m so happy for you,” I giggled. “And what did I say, huh?”

“Yeah, yeah, you told me so, I know,” she rolled her eyes at me. “It’s just scary! I don’t want to mess anything up.”

“You’ve just got to let it flow naturally, I guess. Try not to try too hard. When it forces things is when it gets awkward,” I tried to advise.

“What about you and Taron? How are things?” she asked curiously.

“Really good, I think. I miss him like mad. But we talk a lot, about a lot of stupid shit, really. And sometimes we fall asleep on each other and that’s always cute. But we’re becoming best friends first and that’s really important, I think. I’ve only kissed him a couple of times!” I giggled. “I want nothing more than to just be able to hug him again. But we’ve managed the first two weeks already and we’ll manage the next two weeks and then you can bet I’m going to tackle his ass at the airport!” I grinned, making Mary laugh.

“Well I think you two are couples goals,” she smiled. “It’s way too cute.”

“Well thanks, babes, I appreciate it. I really think I’m falling for him, head over heels,” I sighed softly. We talked a bit longer until Jules came home, pissed off about something at work, so we spent the next hour or so dishing on her idiot co-workers and making dinner together. It felt really good to just be there with my friends, allowing myself to be distracted from missing Taron so much. The evening ended relatively anticlimactically, and I fell asleep totally exhausted but at least happy.

The next week passed much the same, and I ended up grateful for my later hours, which meant I was much more refreshed and able to focus on work, and still get my late-night chats in with Taron. He was even sweet enough to have flowers ordered and sent to my work, and I loved looking at them at my desk and being reminded that I had someone who really cared about me. Our relationship was so much more than just what I could do for him; he returned that in kind and sometimes, even more than I felt I could.

“Mail!” Jules called out, breaking into my train of thought as I was perched on the couch, laptop on my lap, typing away at a script I was working on. She held the envelope in front of my face until I grabbed it. “What is this?” I asked, noticing it was from a travel agency.

“Hell if I know, but it’s got your name on it,” she shrugged, sitting on the couch and waiting for me to open it, nosy as she was.

“I never sent away for anything from this agency,” I commented as I slid my finger under the flap to open it. I pulled out what was inside, a plane ticket nestled inside a letter that simply read “Pack your bags and meet me in a week. I promise to make up for this month apart. -T”

Jules shrieked so loudly I nearly upset my laptop onto the ground. “Oh my god! That’s like the most romantic thing ever!”

“Jesus, Jules,” I laughed, a bit stunned as I tried to focus on the ticket’s destination. Dubrovnik? I thought, having to Google where that even was. Apparently it was a seaside town in Croatia; I had no idea, but I was sure Taron had chosen it for a particular reason.

“I don’t even know if I can go, Jules. I have work, I can’t just leave in a week. That’s insane,” I laughed softly.

“I’m sure Taron already cleared that with your boss. He seems the kind of guy to have planned all of that out,” Jules giggled. She had a fair point, I thought, finally giggling over it also.

“Holy shit. I’m going to Dubrovnik in a week,” I said, still not even sure how to process that. 

I’m pretty sure I fairly floated through the next week, after confirming that Taron had indeed cleared my vacation with my boss a month ago, which surprised me that he’d already been thinking so far ahead. It also suddenly made so much sense as to why my boss had been kind to me about my exhaustion; he’d already known about Taron and my relationship and hadn’t been surprised in the least about it.

Jules had insisted that we go shopping and she persuaded me to choose some cute dresses and bathing suits and, even though I tried to get out of it, she conned me into the lingerie store too, much to my chagrin. I felt there was no way Taron would want to see my body in some lacy racy thing, but Jules promised to pay for it so I had a hard time saying no to the black sheer babydoll she convinced me to pick out.

I ended up shoving the lingerie on the bottom of the suitcase as I packed, leaving the tags on because I couldn’t really stomach the thought of myself in it. I tried to be practical also, and packed a pair of jeans and some leggings along with some cute blouses and tees. I figured we would mostly be comfortable; he’d seen me in my after-work clothes or pajamas so often now that it hardly seemed to matter. Plus, even if I’d fantasized about it more than once, I wasn’t exactly sure we’d end up sleeping together. We were closer than ever now, yes, but we had barely been physical. 

I awoke the morning of my flight feeling both excited and nervous. Taron and I had talked briefly just before I’d gone to bed, and he had seemed so happy to finally see me. He told me he’d arrive in Dubrovnik a couple hours before me, and would be awaiting my arrival impatiently. He was just far too sweet for his own good, I thought as I dressed quickly. I did my hair and makeup and finished putting my toiletries together, nestling them in the space I’d reserved in my suitcase and latching it shut. I already had my carryon ready to go, and lugged both of those out to the main room before summoning an Uber to arrive in a half-hour.

Mary and Jules were eating breakfast but I felt a bit sick to my stomach thanks to nerves, so I just grabbed a protein bar and some coffee and made small talk with them until I got the notification that my Uber had arrived.

“Alright, ladies,” I grinned. “This is it. I’ll see you lovelies in a week!” I grinned as they both got up off the couch to hug me.

“You will have so much fun!” Jules squealed, happy for me.

“And come back all tanned, I bet,” Mary joked, and I laughed at that.

“Yeah, we’ll see. It’s gonna take a miracle to make me not blinding white,” I laughed, hoisting the carryon strap over my shoulder.

“Oh please,” Mary just grinned as Jules snapped her fingers and yelled “Hold on a sec!” as she ran off to her room. Mary just shrugged at me, but the look on her face told me she knew exactly what Jules was up to. Mary was a terrible liar.

Jules came back holding something behind her back. I tried to get a glimpse but she dodged my attempts and unzipped my suitcase, shoving something in there and zipping it back up. It was a box of some kind, but I couldn’t tell what. “What the hell did you just sneak into my suitcase?” I laughed at my roomies’ antics.

“Just something we figure you’ll need and wouldn’t have thought of yourself. Just trust us,” Jules said with a smirk.

“If those are condoms, so help me,” I said with mock severity.

“Oh for bloody’s sake, Jess. You’ve been flirting with Taron for three months now. Don’t you think it’s time?” Jules giggled, as I rolled my eyes but also blushed.

“Yeah, well, I can’t go into this expecting that, you know,” I shrugged. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. Bye!” I said, grabbing my suitcase and pulling it along with me, figuring I could toss the box later if I needed to. No sense in giving myself needless hopes.

“Have fun, but not too much fun!” Jules called out the door as I playfully flipped her off and hurried to the waiting Uber. I tossed my suitcase and bag in the back seat and soon we were heading off to the airport. My Uber driver had a decent playlist playing and didn’t seem one for conversation, and that was fine with me. I thanked him once we arrived at Heathrow and got myself through security and customs before feeling like I could finally relax a little.

<Just waiting to board! I can’t wait!> I texted Taron. I had no idea if he was already in the air or not, but almost immediately a text pinged through.

<I can’t wait to kiss your lovely face again. It’s been too long!> he wrote, making me swoon a bit.

<Same, T. Same> I texted back with a smile.

<I really think you’ll love it there. There were many things I wanted to see or do when I was filming but I was far too busy to do so, so I thought some day I’d like to go back and this felt like the perfect opportunity. And even better to have such lovely company. You deserve a break too, your boss told me you hadn’t taken any vacation time since you started working there over a year ago.>

<I’ve just enjoyed the job so much and truthfully had no where I really wanted to go. London has suited me just fine> I texted back.

<Yes, well, you had vacation days to burn. With me> Taron really could be so cheeky sometimes, I thought as I heard the attendant begin the boarding process. We texted until I was seated comfortably in my first class seat; I’d never flown first class so this was an experience I intended to savor. The flight was smooth as could be, which made me happy. I watched a movie, read some, and mostly daydreamed about being in Taron’s arms again. I was incredibly impatient to deplane once we had landed in Dubrovnik; the process felt like it took forever but was probably no longer than normal.

<We’re here! We’ve landed safely! Just waiting to get off this plane!> I texted.

<I’ll be waiting, love> came the reply.

I made a pit stop in the bathroom on my way to baggage claim, mostly because I had to pee really badly but also because I wanted to make sure I looked put together. I exchanged my leggings for a skirt I had stashed in my carryon and ran my fingers through my hair, nodding to my reflection in the mirror. That would just have to do.

I had to make myself walk at a normal pace as I followed the signs to baggage claim, but probably dashed the final bit, trying not to knock into people rudely. I slowed as I neared the carousels, searching for my boyfriend (I was still so giddy over that word) in the crowd, and spotted him easily enough. He was holding two coffees and looking extra fit in tight jeans, a black shirt and a silken patterned button-down over that. But he could have been wearing a trash bag and he still would have stood out. His bright eyes and chiseled jaw were things I would never get tired of admiring. When he finally spotted me, the way his smile grew on his face made something in my chest ache, and soon we were crossing the space between us at the same time, meeting in the middle.

I dropped my carryon to the ground and Taron somehow managed to set the coffees down on top of his own suitcase without spilling a drop before enveloping me in his hug, burying his face against my shoulder as I hugged him tightly back. We stayed like that for a couple of minutes, before finally pulling away just long enough to gaze adoringly at each other. “I know I’ve said this 80 times before, but I’ve missed you so much,” he said softly, tearing up slightly.

“Oh god, stop, you’ll make me cry too,” I laughed, having to wipe at my eyes a bit. “I’ve missed you like crazy also. Funny how that works, even if you talk every day, it’s just not the same.”

“You certainly can’t do this over the phone,” he said, tilting my chin up and leaning in, kissing me sweetly. It was even better than I remembered, the taste of caramel latte still on his lips. I relished it, letting him pull me to him; if anyone gave us looks, we couldn’t care at all. When we broke apart again he hugged me one more time for good measure, before scooping our coffees back up and handing me one. I grabbed my carryon again and we went to find the right carousel.

We chatted excitedly while waiting on my luggage to appear, Taron filling me in on how lovely the place was. I felt a thrill of excitement travel through me; I really was on a full week of vacation, alone with this man. I had no idea what he had planned, but I was so ready to discover it all with him. Taron grabbed my suitcase when it arrived, and for some reason my brain chose that moment to remind me that Jules had slipped a box of condoms inside; I ended up giggling like a lunatic, and Taron looked over at me, his eyebrow raised.

“Nothing, just thought of something funny Jules did is all,” I tried to explain.

“Why am I not surprised?” Taron chuckled as we headed toward the exit, stepping out into the bright sunshine and blue sky. Taron hailed a cab and gave the driver the name and address of the hotel we’d be staying at after we’d loaded in our luggage and clambered in. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t thought this all through. Oh, right, all alone, in the same room, in the same bed, with Taron, I thought, feeling something seize in my chest. Was I ready for that? Were we? He seemed to sense my tension and reached over to squeeze my hand.

“Alright, love?” he asked me concernedly.

“Yeah, of course,” I said, a bit faintly.

“No, what’s wrong, be honest with me please,” he said, turning my head so I was looking at him.

“I just don’t think we discussed our sleeping arrangements yet,” I managed to stammer out.

“Oh sweetheart,” he said gently. “I booked us a room with two beds, so you wouldn’t be anxious over that,” he replied. He really did know me too well. “I promise you, this isn’t some setup. I wanted you here to enjoy yourself, to relax and have fun with me. Nothing will happen unless you want it to, understand?” he said, almost as if he was reading my mind. I nodded and tried to not feel ashamed of my anxiety. Any other girl would probably jump at the chance and not look back, but overcoming what I’d been through was going to take some time. Taron seemed to understand that and I was so grateful for him.

As we left the airport I couldn’t help but look out the windows around me, taking in the place, especially the historic district of the old city. I took in the stunning architecture and the people in it, baking under the sun. We drove a little bit of a ways out, to the other side of the bay, stopping in front of the Hotel Bellevue. We disembarked from the taxi, Taron paying our fare and then unloading our luggage. We walked inside and I had to gasp. The place screamed luxury and expense, sleek and modern with an unparalleled view of the Adriatic Sea. It was more than I honestly could have hoped for.

“Taron, this is too much,” I said softly after he had checked us in and was leading us up to our room. “I feel like I should be helping you pay for some of this,” I said, but he waved off my concern.

“Nonsense. I invited you here. I chose where I wanted to stay, but I asked you to come along with me. And you deserve the best,” he winked. “Besides, all I do is work. I’m finally taking a moment to rest. I should be able to enjoy what I’ve worked so hard for.”

“Yes you should,” I agreed. “I’m just not a freeloader.”

“Jess,” he said, turning to stop me in my tracks. “I try really hard not to judge people I don’t know but whoever you’ve been with before certainly didn’t know how to treat you well or right. And maybe this is a grand gesture, sure, but who would want to vacation by themselves anyway? This isn’t just for me, it’s for us, and that has nothing to do with money. I don’t care about that. I just want time with you, and that’s not something I’d ever expect you to pay for, alright?” he said, his expression so genuine I could only nod in agreement. “Now, you’re just going to have to get used to a bit of pampering,” he grinned, as we continued on our way to our room.

He let us in and I could only shake my head at how cozy and lovely it was, and the view out the windows and our private balcony were to die for. I couldn’t resist pushing open the doors and stepping outside to take in the view and the sea salt air. I breathed in deeply, resting my hands on the railing and leaning out slightly.

“Like what you see?” Taron grinned, coming up behind me and placing his hands on either side of me on the railing.

“Very much so,” I replied, smiling to myself. It definitely wasn’t so bad to feel him so close to me.

He leaned in close, slowly brushing my hair to one side and placing a couple of sweet kisses on my neck, drawing shivers down my spine as I felt his breath on my skin. “Welcome to Dubrovnik, love.”

Join Taron and Jess on their Dubrovnik adventure and see how their relationship unfolds in Part 8. Read it HERE!

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Mahou Shoujo Ore 5 | Yotsuiro Biyori 4 | Lupin III Pt 5 5 | Hinamatsuri 5 | BnHA 43 | Boueibu HK 5

Mahou Shoujo Ore 5

Hey hey hey, this is the second show I’ve seen ape Osomatsu-san this year. Seriously, no show is safe in a parody as a target for humour’s sake…Note Osomatsu-san is also by Pierrot, though, so they’re attacking themselves to some extent.

Now that they’ve pointed the Osomatsu-san reference though, I can’t believe I didn’t see the scarf colours last time! But…this is episode 5…

Oh, I kind of noticed it, but I’m probably too used to it since I watched the first season of Osomatsu-san – the blue lines are part of that show’s signature style.

Muscovado is apparently a substitute for sugar. It literally translates to “black sugar” though…

Sagami is…a former place in Japan…?

Tama River. I’m terrible at Japanese geography, so I don’t think you should be asking me about this…

Dang, apparently Pierrot is based in Mitaka, Tokyo so whatever joke I was chasing there fell flat.

Wow, they got really self-referential this episode…yikes.

So this is the rumoured Chiba-san? Uhh…

Oh my…I do not see the word “Japanimation” get much mileage at all these days, but I cringe every time I see it.

It’s Pokémon Go! Wow, that’s another level of meta for sure. My hopes for resolving all the stray plot threads while maintaining that wacky sense of humour (or however I phrased it) definitely went out the window…Notice the footage is dated April 24th 20X8, which is about a week before the episode went to air if the X actually hides “2018”.

Suginami. Apparently, Bones, Sunrise and other studios are stationed there…but Pierrot isn’t.

If there’s one thing I didn’t expect in MSO, it’s the fact this show became Shirobako in a sense. I still need to get around to Shirobako, by the way…

Ey, wait a second! Astral, you got your wish! We get to see…Fujimoto’s face!

Whoa! They went all out on the CGI fire effects! What is this show, Golden Kamuy?! (LOL)

Comichiya’s probably Comiket. The katakana (chi -> tsu, to -> ya) look kinda similar if mangled.

Dangit! I missed my mark on the guesswork again! Tokyo Big Sight isn’t in Suginami.

Basically, this is just a long road to admitting they couldn’t do a recap episode, but they don’t have enough content to pad this ep either. Ah, sweet revelations (sarcastic).

Is it just me, or does the bottom of Fujimoto (1)’s face look kind of like…Mohiro??? Wagh??? Update: No, the hair colour’s off.

The “on the train” technically says “on the NEXT train” (emphasis mine).

Wow, they namedropped Ishikawa (probably Kaito)! Ishikawa voices male!Saki, so it makes sense.

Oh my gosh, Mahoutsukai Watashi! What a bold move this show’s taken – it’s telling its own meta-narrative. Which means when I cover it for the collab post…it’ll be meta of meta…that’ll put my head in a spin for sure.

You can see Fujimoto and Sakuyo character designs if you pause for one scene (the one with “staff working from home”).

You can see the name Masayuki Ito (伊藤雅之) on that list with the downward arrows, but I don’t know what significance that name has unless they’re an animator or something...

Mensore is explained here.Basically it’s youkoso in Okinawan.

Jimami Tofu…isn’t tofu, as weird as that sounds. It’s an Okinawan-sponsored drama.

Well, at least this time I got a big epic battle (no matter how short it is). Nothing better than that!

They got Akira Ishida, Tomokazu Seki, Koichi Yamadera and some other guys to voice the Fujimotos this time. Notice there’s no crossover between the Osomatsu-san voices and the Fujimotos, which was probably intentional.

I thought there’d be a real Shinzo Chiba, but there doesn’t seem to be one…

There was a shot of Fujimoto (before the manager)! Wah! Was that there in previous episodes???

Every time people promise wardrobe malfunctions, they tend to…uh, deliver on that…

The Monokubo illustration this time is creepy…I like it!

Yotsuiro Biyori 4

Is this a zombie movie (LOL)?

Wow, Sui really loves cats, doesn’t…he…? (LOL)

Oh, so that weird zombie movie in medias res opening was actually one of those fakeouts…DN Angel’s anime did that, I remember…

Wow, they make Tokitaka so epic in this scene! A determined man is more handsome than one in an ordinary state, don’tcha think?

You can even see rice flying! Amazing! Tokitaka’s got such skill.

I am so spoilt for smol boys this season, between this and Boueibu HK…

Ooh! My eyes have been blessed with the hotness of Tokitaka!

There’s more chicken than usual this ep, eh?

Shiratama anmitsu.

I never thought we’d need a backstory for the resident cat, but okay. It was hilarious and fun while it lasted and now it’s almost over…huh.

Denzou? Eh? (I kinda get why the name’s badass with the kanji involved, but it’s hard to explain to a non-Japanese speaker…)

Agedama.

The next ep title translates to roughly “A Loving Hand for the Lost Lamb”…as in, to extend a hand to it.

Lupin 3 Pt 5 5

Okay, part 5 episode 5 is confusing when it’s just “5 5”, isn’t it?

I think the guy in the green jacket will be important later…? He’s in a key visual for this show, at least.

“This pasta called soba’s pretty good!” – LOL, soba ain’t pasta, y’know…

I’ve learnt about the stack before. Here you go.

IP camera. Hey, I’ve done something on IP cameras before, but normally Detective Conan (and most other mystery shows of the modern day) seem to be reliant on CCTV…

Chicken game…? Sounds tasty!...Not.

Ami doesn’t seem too pleased about all the shooting, LOL.

Even Ami knows bowing is a sign of Japanese respect. Just like how dragons understand the meaning of “Hatori Chise” involves birds…(i.e. I’m kind of skeptical that a real French girl would learn to bow to her Japanese friends when her life is always on the line, a la Ami.)

Episode…1? Y’mean, there’s more adventures, but no Ami? Aw, I was enjoying having her in the fray.

Hinamatsuri 5

A TV? $30??? Wow, I would fight a psychic girl for that! That’s friggin’ cheap!

“Toshibu” (sic), LOL.

Bikkuri means “surprise”, LOL.

“A teacher and a student walk into a bar…” – it sounds like a joke. Not that that could be conveyed accurately in Japanese, though. The fact it even works as an English joke must be a coincidence…

Hitomi’s such a terrible liar! Wahaha!

Nitta’s just like “I’ve given up on this girl”. Either that, or he has a hangover…(LOL)

Sayo looks kind of like Hina. If it weren’t for the hair colours I would’ve mistaken the two.

BnHA 43

Carrying a gun to a fistfight…yep, bad. Plain bad, Mustard, ol’ boy.

Sorry, there was a lot of fighting this ep and nothing much to say!

Boueibu HK 5

LOL, the bald bodyguard…he looks kinda grumpy.

Notice Kyotaro goes “ore kyoumi nai” (I have no interest in it), but the subs missed the subject of the sentence! CR, you weirdoes!

Echire butter…exists!

“You know about genetic testing?” - Irina! I think this is your department!

Ryoma’s the end of the evolutionary line!

Hmm…if there was no Ice Age in Honyara Land…might there have been something else that caused the Furanui/Karurusu conflict? There’s only animosity from one side, after all.

Bunbuku Chagama. Magozaemon was fat, so he would make a perfect teapot/tanuki…

Wait, if Maasa = Ichiro in the age department (roughly 16), that would add up. He went abroad for 4 years and held off on carbs the entire time…yikes.

“The people of this world envy those who represent the opposite of what they fear for themselves, so they criticise and attack them.” – Ooh, Ata makes a lot of sense here…! It’s a quote for the collection.

Asobukoto = It’s not really “fun” per se, but “playing” or “hanging out”. That is, if you translate rather literally.

They’re all underage (roughly 16 – 18), of course they wouldn’t drink! Of course, this is coming from a person who doesn’t drink…the only samples of alcohol I’ve had are few and far in between…

Hey, I studied this stuff in the past, you don’t have to regurgitate this info (about needing food to better absorb alcohol). Lemmee tell you, alcohol ads are weird…

They didn’t make the “glasses fogging up” a weird plot hole. Phew.

Wow, to think I’d be getting a science lesson of things I already know in my Boueibu…I never thought I’d see the day where that happened.

According to this page, one of the things the ramen shop serves is gomoku soba. Wait…that’s right! Ramen’s appeared in this show before! In the Chri-pa episode! Sorry Astral, I gotta spoil s2 for you!

Wow, this chicken carcass is even less of a threat than anything else so far! Wow-hee.

Taishi only seems vaguely fazed about the fact he’s being made to fight monsters. Interesting. I never think about the perspective of the non-red boys regarding fighting monsters until they’re pointed out, really.

So wait, the magic knight of space…makes bubbles? Uh, Astral, you might wanna learn from this…?

Hey hey, I found a page on tonkotsu ramens (sic from the Hakata anime) and paitan ramen.

Kyotaro on stairs = basically my mood when I want to imitate the “draw me like one of yor French girls” meme. (Very badly.)

So…when I said I missed individualised attacks, I never saw this coming. Sorry about that, people. (Even if that was only Ichiro’s bubble attack.)

Kyotaro makes a lot of sense here. But seriously, I think I need Astral’s easy button right now. That was easy.

Notice Karurusu is acting as a pelt…weren’t otters hunted for their pelts?

Oh, Sujikawa’s a first year, huh?

*Sujikawa picks up the boulder* - *round of applause from me* Wow!

Both Maasa and Dougo have such supportive friends, it almost makes me jealous.

The English! It’s…correct! (thinks back to a magazine article with “Difence” (sic) written on it in pink letters)

I, for one, am happy they’re tackling relationships aside from “brothers” this time. Finally, here’s something that stacks up against its competition in regards to deeper themes, even if it is a comedy!

Dougo and Maasa (Magozaemon) were in class 2, if you pause at the right time. Notably, the members of class 2 were all boys, LOL. Even with the boy to the left of Magozaemon, I think that name might be pronounced “Ai” (due to this page), but it’s in manly kanji.

[serendipitousoracle]

Mixtape n wardrobe for like... ALL the ocs?

[♡ OC ask meme ♡]

i will give you six (6) ocs.

Egeire Mahariel:

mixtape: 5 songs that describe your OC(s) or songs they themselves would like

1. “Love Love Love” - Of Monsters And Men (basically The song for Egeire/Zevran tbh. love and reluctance and duty and fear and pining, which eventually breaks down as despite it all they keep getting in deeper and deeper until Egeire finally goes fuck this and for once decides not to sacrifice everything he wants to hold onto)

2. “Rather Be” - Clean Bandit (happy fluffy love song for Eg’s sweet, loyal attachment to various love interests. he is devoted and adoring and when he is with the one he loves he would never want to be anywhere else)

3. “Wolves Without Teeth” - Of Monsters And Men (wqieujb?? devotion and consumption and non-physical wounds idk how to explain)

4. idk. something emo? and then instead insert “Not Gonna Die” - Skillet bc it’s really the message Egeire should be taking home

5. and then as throwback to something he’d like maybe smth Gorillaz or Disturbed just for “smth that would probably be on Egeire’s music playlists somewhere“

wardrobe:what’s your OC’s style like?                                  

In DA-centric universes Egeire ends up becoming fairly all-or-nothing re: clothing. at the end of the Blight, into Warden-Commanderdom, and to some extent post-Wardenhood, he is either in full armor and weaponry (with some extra flash and ideally some small piece of elfiness in the Awakening period), or when he is completely alone and not paranoid and with people he trusts in a space he feels safe in, he is wearing like comfortable loose-fitting pants and that’s about it.

In more modern AUs Egeire wears more like… practical clothes, probably? flannel and open button-ups over tank tops with sturdy pants and tough boots, whatever clothes have been Gifted to him over the years, annnnnd at-home muscly shirtlessness with loose sweatpants

Also he looks so great in lace

Under Cut: Egeria Surana, Flytter the Junior Historian, Cyrron Mirevas, Soveliss Liadon, Grey Surana

Egeria Surana

mixtape: 5 songs that describe your OC(s) or songs they themselves would like

1. “Arms” - Christina Perri (still p much the First and Most Egeria/Alistair song. being Wardens is one rough thing and then the elven mage and the bastard prince is harder still. it works out in the end, but���.)

2. “Retrograde” - James Blake (ouch that isolation and your friends are gone, and your friends won’t come, so show me where you fit. i’ll wait, so show me why you’re strong– i’ll wait, we’re alone now)

3. “You May Be Right” - Billy Joel (whoops it’s The DenRia Song)

4. “Beth’s Theme” (Broadchurch OST) - Ólafur Arnalds(Ria’s canon is just so like…. sad. unintentionally sad. quietly, wordlessly sad.)

5. “Stolen Dance” - Milky Chance / “Budapest” - Georga Ezra / “Break Stuff” - Limp Bizkit (just kind of misc songs for Ria Chilling Around The House)

wardrobe:what’s your OC’s style like?

DA: a mix of aesthetic robes and practical ones, some with long flowing pieces and embroidered flowers that gradually transition to black dust, wearing her mage blood and magic specialties quite literally on her sleeve, some that are more armor than robe (bc spellsword/arcane warrior) but with elements of robes nonetheless. Dresses more lightly in private for ease of movement, with fur shawls and fine shoes and all. may be talked into some sort of short top + long skirt look by her fawning husband. in private.

Modern: light blouses and either loose-ish pants or long skirts, fond of flower motifs, plenty of like cardigans and soft jackets and things that generally perfect that sweet and trustworthy and caring outward demeanor she wields like empathy made tangible and precise. also has regular graphic tees and jeans for gardening.

Flytter

mixtape: 5 songs that describe your OC(s) or songs they themselves would like

1. “Little Talks” - Of Monsters And Men (grief is what drives Flytter from home to wrap themself up entirely in their work… for better or worse, despite the best wishes of those who cared about them)

2. “Non-Stop”, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story”, … - Hamilton the Musical (um excuse me if somebody made a musical about Egeire Mahariel/WAWsquad/The Fifth Blight Hero you fucking know Flytter would be all over that)

3. “Radioactive” - Imagine Dragons (radioactivity… lingering Blight corruption… same difference, right?)

4. “Heavy In Your Arms” - Florence + the Machine (not entirely happy with this pick but struggling to find something for just– that kind of background gnawing of the slow, slow, painful death seeping into their being, the constant pain and the losing fight to the ebb of the corruption and their inability to keep it effectively treated or soothed or just. nesdfds.)

5. “Beyond the Veil” - Lindsey Stirling (trippy instrumentals for recording things and remembering dreams? sure why not. clear Veil joke? woo!)

wardrobe:what’s your OC’s style like?

.DA: robes, again. robes with a focus on complete head-to-toe coverage and not irritating rough patches of skin or what not too much. Something comfortable enough to sleep in. Not really much variety once they lock themself away in Kinloch Hold rebuilt.

Modern: light shirts tied up and semi-professional vests and the ability to quickly create a skirt in any situation when they need to really move in a hurry

Cyrron Mirevas

mixtape: 5 songs that describe your OC(s) or songs they themselves would like

1. “Enemies” - Shinedown (i didn’t even have to think about this one everyone hates Cyrron except like…. you jay. only you. everyone else goes ‘ew’ or ‘why are his eyes sockets not full of sharp/sharp-ish utensils’ when i bring him up. only you cheer when he shows up or hand him over to tentacle monsters but)

2. “Simple Man” - Lynyrd Skynyrd (and the complete flipside– a simple kind of man, not rushing, revering the gods, settling down with a bondmate and having children… it was the life Cyrron intended to live, not exactly a soft or warm or gentle man by any means, but a simple man. Then he lost everything, and survived Vir Banal’ras, and we have present day Cyrron.)

3. “The Dalish Elves Encampment” - Dragon Age: Origins OST, or something (this is basically a placeholder to state: what do you think super traditional Dalish elf music sounds like? for Ferelden Dalish if you want to get specific maybe. Basically, whatever Traditional Dalish Music is, that is all Cyrron himself cares to listen to. That’s it. He hoards it. maybe even plays an instrument. the world will never know.)

4. i swear to god i’m not putting “Closer” on this list SO HOW ABOUT THAT BODIES SONG HUH IT’S SUPER MURDERY N STUFF

5. “Indestructible” - Disturbed (fitting, since it was on Egeire’s list, and he definitely got that from somewhere. really, Cyrron is indestructible to a point that even upsets himself until all the venom he sank into others finally comes back to flood his veins)

wardrobe:what’s your OC’s style like?

DA: Armor. Sturdy Dalish armor, long updated and cycled through with parts, blades on hand at all times, each meticulously well-kept and menacingly. The only time he’s not in armor is if he’s for some reason in disguise to get closer to someone to kill them.

Modern: ranges from business semi-casual to business ultra-formal and nowhere below that range, at least not for wearing out in the daylight. Cyrron mostly has his crisp dress shirts and pressed black slacks and all that easy “I am wealthy and important and you don’t need to know what I do for a living” class, even despite the clear vallaslin, but he also has a variety of tougher garb and more lowkey clothing for when his real line of work comes calling in the night for a slit throat or a poisoned drink.

Soveliss Liadon

mixtape: 5 songs that describe your OC or songs they themselves would like

1. “Addicted to Love” - Florence + the Machine (possibly the earliest defining song for my vague thoughts of ‘Soveliss and his feylock patron’. Soveliss insists he knows what he’s doing! He just has to keep his wits around him! … gods, though, he is so lonely.)

2. “Carousel” - Melanie Martinez (have I mentioned Sov is really super doomed? And it’s all fun and games/‘Til somebody falls in love/But you’ve already bought a ticket/And there’s no turning back now)

3. “Believer” - Imagine Dragons, & “Whispers in the Dark” - Skillet (the main brain-chewing songs for fiendlock!au Soveliss)

4. “Dust Bowl Dance” and “Broken Crown” - Mumford & Sons (hypothetical #mood for potential Angry parts of potential Soveliss character/story arc “You haven’t met me, I am the only son.”)

5. “A Martyr for My Love for You” - The White Stripes (i’m just saying if anybody else dies before we finish this adventure Sov is gonna start getting real antsy about forming attachments to normal, mortal people)

Bonus 6. Welp. (a ghost monk floats through Soveliss’ room as Sov puts up a bard band poster up in his room in the monastery like “soooooovelllllissssss whaaaat isssss thissss” and teenage Sov is just Instantly Teenage Annoyed “MUSIC, JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE, IS CHANGING, DAD” (all the monks in the monastery are Dad sov has like 2 dozen dads it’s a time))

BONUS 2 EDIT EDITION: i forgot “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” - Florence + the Machine was also a Sov inspiration song whoops

wardrobe:what’s your OC’s style like?

D&D: Soveliss at the moment generally has his greyscale Acolyte of Kelemvor robes/garb, some dark leather armor, maybe some shiny beads or baubles, and his gorgeous blond hair (it is probably literally enchanted t b h), buuuut he has no real exposure to like….. choice of clothing let alone fashion. idk we’ll see if aub ever gets us somewhere cool where I can get him a truly art-worthy outfit or if he dies first i guess.

Modern: ????????????

Grey Surana

mixtape: 5 songs that describe your OC(s) or songs they themselves would like

1. “Stray Italian Greyhound” - Vienna Teng (whoops first song is a Grey/Tamaris song. but: Grey is every bit the tongue-tied hopeless romantic that Egeire is, except he somehow works himself up about it even harder bc in a way Grey can be summed up as Eg But Extra (i love this song tho))

2. “I of the Storm” - Of Monsters And Men (wh o o ps it’s another Grey/Tam song. but it is also a good sort of song for Grey’s general insecurities, still carried over if reflected differently from Egeire’s. not measuring up. not being loved. feeling trapped. are you really gonna love me when i’m gone? are you really gonna need me when i’m gone? i fear you won’t; i fear you don’t)

3. “In My Sleep” - Mystery Skulls (can’t find a good video but you can’t do this like i do/i fucking wrote this in my sleep is just. 1. it mostly inspired an au. 2. take Egeire’s mild peacock tendencies and turn them up to fucking 11 and you might start to approach Grey levels of pride and showboating. tempted to put “Magic” on this list but just. it’s so great. just go look it up.)

4. “Through Glass” - Stone Sour (something quieter. bringing back that feeling of isolation from Ria, but a bit more self-imposed– putting up walls of glass to keep a distance from everything and ending up sitting alone inside his own head, which really could account for a lot of his doubts. a negative feedback loop of sorts. but he is so used to it.)

5. “Work Song” - Hozier / “Iris” - Goo Goo Dolls / “Rather Be” - Clean Bandit (just some more love songs for the hopeless romantic bc I’m p sure I’ve spent like 8 hours on this ask and I’m dead now)

wardrobe:what’s your OC’s style like?

DA: so fashionable. whether he’s the Circle Ambassador or the Warden-Commander, Grey is dedicated to keeping up with trends and edging out ahead of them where he can. It’s a careful balance to keep, neither being so compliant as to be invisible or stepping so far out of line that he’s branded “outsider“ again, but he loves it. Grey is all about politics, wealth, luxury, prestige– whatever the Circle and the Chantry wanted to deny him, he will take, one way or another.

Modern: so fashionable. if it’s In he is at least looking into getting his hands on it, if he doesn’t already have it. as the Circle is traded out for more like…. slicksharp white collar big business laddering-climbing type ambition, so too are robes traded for suits, and so some manner of dress shirt + jacket/blazer/etc + slacks/dress pants/etc becomes his norm. Whether he’s climbing or charming or sleeping his way to the top, he enjoys surrounding himself with luxury and learning how to take advantage of it.Is still a sweetheart who looks nice in lace though.

[theinvinciblenoob]

I dig on my employer Oath, and then Tencent Music notes and a major loss for the NYC ecosystem and what it means for open source.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

My three word Oath? I’m with stupid

It goes without saying that this piece about my employer is my work alone, doesn’t reflect management’s views, and is done under the auspices of TechCrunch’s independent editorial voice. No usage of internal information is assumed or implied.

This is a piece about TechCrunch’s parent company, formerly known as “Oath:” (okay just Oath, but who am I to flout a mandatory colon?) and now ReBranded as Verizon Media Group / Oath (See what they did there? They literally slashed Oath. Poetic).

Oath is essentially the creature of Frankenstein, a middle-school corporate alchemy experiment to fuse the properties of the companies formerly known as AOL and Yahoo into the larger behemoth known as Verizon. You can feel the terrible synergy emanating from the multiple firewalls it takes to get to our corporate resources.

Oath has a problem:* it needs to grow for Wall Street to be happy and for Verizon not to neuter it, but it has an incredible penchant for making product decisions that basically tell users to fuck off. Oath’s year over year revenues last quarter were down 6.9%, driven by extreme competition from digital ad leaders Google and Facebook.

The solution apparently? Drive page views down. If that logic doesn’t make sense, well then, maybe you should fill out a job application.

The kerfuffle is over Tumblr, which is among Oath’s most important brands, in that people actually know what it is and kind of still like it. Tumblr, which Yahoo notably acquired under Marissa Mayer back in 2013, has been something of a product orphan — one of the few true software platforms left in a world filled with editorial content like TechCrunch and HuffPost (Oath sold off Flickr earlier this year to SmugMug — which also seems to be going through its own boneheaded product decision phase).

All was well and good — well, at least quiet — in the Tumblr world until Apple pulled the plug on Tumblr’s app in the App Store a few weeks ago over claims of child porn. Now let’s be absolutely clear: child porn is abhorrent, and filtering it out of online photo sharing sites is a prime directive (and legally mandated).

But Oath has decided to do something equally obnoxious: it intends to ban anything that might be considered “adult content” starting December 17th, just in time for the holidays when purity around family gatherings is key.

In Tumblr’s policy, “Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” You’ll notice the written legerdemain — “primarily” doesn’t exclude the wider world of adult-oriented content that almost invariably is going to be subsumed under this policy.

Obviously, adults (and presumably teens as well) are pissed. As users are starting to see what photos are getting flagged (hint: not the ones with porn in them), that’s only making them more angry.

Oath is attempting to compress the content moderation engineering and testing of Facebook down to a span of a few weeks. And Facebook hasn’t even figured this one out yet, which is why people are still being murdered across the world from viral messages and memes it hosts that incite ethnic hatred and genocide.

I get the pressure from Apple. I get the safety of saying “just ban all the images” à la Renaissance pope. I get the business decision of trying to maintain Tumblr’s clean image. These points are all reasonable, but they all are just useless without Tumblr’s core and long-time users.

What flummoxes me from a product perspective is that it’s not as if banning all adult content is the singular solution to the problem. There is an entire spectrum of product, policy, legal, and product cultural ingredients that could be drawn upon. There could be more age verification, better separation of “safe for children” and “meant for adults content,” and more focus on messaging to users that moderation was meant to help the product and focus audiences rather than to puritanically filter.

Or you can just kill the photos, the somehow still loyal core user base, a safe space for expression via nudity and sexuality and, well, traffic along with it. And then you look at -6.9% growth and think: huh, I wonder if there is a connection.

*Mandatory colon

Tencent Music reintroduces its IPO

Tencent Music. Photo by Zhan Min/VCG via Getty Images

Maybe the IPO markets are thawing a bit after the crash of the last few weeks and…tariffs. From my colleague Catherine Shu:

Tencent Music Entertainment’s initial public offering is back in motion, two months after the company reportedly postponed it amid a global selloff. In a regulatory filing today, the company, China’s largest streaming music service, said it plans to offer 82 million American depositary shares (ADS), representing 164 million Class A ordinary shares, for between $13 to $15 each. That means the IPO will potentially raise up to $1.23 billion.

My colleague Eric Peckham wrote a deeper dive behind the lessons of Tencent Music for the broader music industry:

At its heart, Tencent Music is an interactive media company. Its business isn’t merely providing music, it’s getting people to engage around music. Given its parent company Tencent has become the leading force in global gaming—with control of League of Legends maker Riot Games and Clash of Clans maker Supercell, plus a 40 percent stake in Fortnite creator Epic Games, and role as the top mobile games publisher in China—its team is well-versed in the dynamics of in-game purchasing.

Tencent Music has staked out a very differentiated business model from Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, etc. It has used an engagement-based product model to make live-streaming and virtual gifts huge business lines, without dealing with the product marketing logistics of subscription. Where the West always asks you to pay for access, Tencent is asking you essentially to pay to have fun and be part of an experience.

Eric asks I think a deep question: why hasn’t this model (which seems particularly obvious in music given the overall events component of that business) been back-ported from China to the Western world? He sees a world where Facebook buys Spotify (I don’t) but I think there is absolutely a gap in the market for a music platform to really own this model.

NYC loses an open-source superstar

Photo: Amanda Hall / robertharding / Getty Images

Wes McKinney is a major open-source star and the engineer behind pandas, which is one of the fundamental Python data libraries, as well as a founding engineer of Apache Arrow, which is an in-memory data structure specification.

So it is big news that he has decided to decamp from New York City, where has has lived for ten years, to Nashville. Writing on his personal blog:

I’ve increasingly felt that open source development is at odds with the values that are driving a large portion of the corporate world, particularly in the United States. Many companies won’t fund open source work because there is no “return on investment”. This is deeply frustrating, and being surrounded by people whose actions align with profit-motive can be pretty discouraging. It’s not necessarily that people who work in NYC or SF are greedy or amorally concerned with making money. In many cases they are just responding to incentives coming from pretty low on the hierarchy of needs.

And

Full-time open source developers in many cases will make less money than their peers who work at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, or another major tech company. If we are to enable more people to do open source development as a full-time vocation, we need to grow supportive tech communities in places that are more affordable. (emphasis his).

I think this is a very interesting trend to watch in the coming years. It’s not just the small business and art types who want to move to lower cost locales to match their lifestyle spending to the (economic) value of their work. Software developers who want to work on more meaningful projects outside of advertising and finance will also increasingly need to consider these sorts of geographical adjustments.

As I wrote a few months ago about digital nomads:

From cryptocurrency millionaires in Puerto Rico to digital nomads in hotspots like Thailand, Indonesia, and Colombia, there is increasingly a view that there is a marketplace for governance, and we hold the power as consumers. Much like choosing a cereal from the breakfast department of a supermarket, highly-skilled professionals are now comparing governments online — and making clear-headed choices based on which ones are most convenient and have the greatest amenities available.

Economic migration — whether from cost-of-living, ecosystem or governance culture, or just for new horizons — is the watchword of this century. It’s a huge loss for NYC that people like McKinney can no longer find their work compatible with the city.

What’s next

I am still obsessing about next-gen semiconductors. If you have thoughts there, give me a ring: danny@techcrunch.com.

Thoughts on Articles

Imagined Communities – a major classic book of social science thought, it’s amazing how well it has held up, and the lessons it holds for us in the cyber age. Intending to write a review of it for this weekend, so expect more notes later.

Quietly, Japan has established itself as a power in the aerospace industry – I love industrial policy and national economic development, and Eric Berger has done a great job on both fronts with his dispatch in Ars Technica. Japan is roaring back into space, increasing its launch capabilities and also preparing to deploy its own GPS infrastructure. An important contextual read for those who follow SpaceX.

Why we stopped trusting elites — a compelling deep dive by William Davies in The Guardian into how populism is animated by the failures of elites. Couldn’t agree more that elites have lost significant trust over the last few decades, mostly from hubris, corruption, and outright fraud (the financial crisis being just the largest). Elites need to hold themselves to much higher standards if we want to ask our fellow citizens for their support.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

Huge long list of articles on next-gen semiconductors. More to come shortly.

via TechCrunch

[fmservers]

Why Oath keeps Tumblring

I dig on my employer Oath, and then Tencent Music notes and a major loss for the NYC ecosystem and what it means for open source.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

My three word Oath? I’m with stupid

It goes without saying that this piece about my employer is my work alone, doesn’t reflect management’s views, and is done under the auspices of TechCrunch’s independent editorial voice. No usage of internal information is assumed or implied.

This is a piece about TechCrunch’s parent company, formerly known as “Oath:” (okay just Oath, but who am I to flout a mandatory colon?) and now ReBranded as Verizon Media Group / Oath (See what they did there? They literally slashed Oath. Poetic).

Oath is essentially the creature of Frankenstein, a middle-school corporate alchemy experiment to fuse the properties of the companies formerly known as AOL and Yahoo into the larger behemoth known as Verizon. You can feel the terrible synergy emanating from the multiple firewalls it takes to get to our corporate resources.

Oath has a problem:* it needs to grow for Wall Street to be happy and for Verizon not to neuter it, but it has an incredible penchant for making product decisions that basically tell users to fuck off. Oath’s year over year revenues last quarter were down 6.9%, driven by extreme competition from digital ad leaders Google and Facebook.

The solution apparently? Drive page views down. If that logic doesn’t make sense, well then, maybe you should fill out a job application.

The kerfuffle is over Tumblr, which is among Oath’s most important brands, in that people actually know what it is and kind of still like it. Tumblr, which Yahoo notably acquired under Marissa Mayer back in 2013, has been something of a product orphan — one of the few true software platforms left in a world filled with editorial content like TechCrunch and HuffPost (Oath sold off Flickr earlier this year to SmugMug — which also seems to be going through its own boneheaded product decision phase).

All was well and good — well, at least quiet — in the Tumblr world until Apple pulled the plug on Tumblr’s app in the App Store a few weeks ago over claims of child porn. Now let’s be absolutely clear: child porn is abhorrent, and filtering it out of online photo sharing sites is a prime directive (and legally mandated).

But Oath has decided to do something equally obnoxious: it intends to ban anything that might be considered “adult content” starting December 17th, just in time for the holidays when purity around family gatherings is key.

In Tumblr’s policy, “Adult content primarily includes photos, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples, and any content—including photos, videos, GIFs and illustrations—that depicts sex acts.” You’ll notice the written legerdemain — “primarily” doesn’t exclude the wider world of adult-oriented content that almost invariably is going to be subsumed under this policy.

Obviously, adults (and presumably teens as well) are pissed. As users are starting to see what photos are getting flagged (hint: not the ones with porn in them), that’s only making them more angry.

Oath is attempting to compress the content moderation engineering and testing of Facebook down to a span of a few weeks. And Facebook hasn’t even figured this one out yet, which is why people are still being murdered across the world from viral messages and memes it hosts that incite ethnic hatred and genocide.

I get the pressure from Apple. I get the safety of saying “just ban all the images” à la Renaissance pope. I get the business decision of trying to maintain Tumblr’s clean image. These points are all reasonable, but they all are just useless without Tumblr’s core and long-time users.

What flummoxes me from a product perspective is that it’s not as if banning all adult content is the singular solution to the problem. There is an entire spectrum of product, policy, legal, and product cultural ingredients that could be drawn upon. There could be more age verification, better separation of “safe for children” and “meant for adults content,” and more focus on messaging to users that moderation was meant to help the product and focus audiences rather than to puritanically filter.

Or you can just kill the photos, the somehow still loyal core user base, a safe space for expression via nudity and sexuality and, well, traffic along with it. And then you look at -6.9% growth and think: huh, I wonder if there is a connection.

*Mandatory colon

Tencent Music reintroduces its IPO

Tencent Music. Photo by Zhan Min/VCG via Getty Images

Maybe the IPO markets are thawing a bit after the crash of the last few weeks and…tariffs. From my colleague Catherine Shu:

Tencent Music Entertainment’s initial public offering is back in motion, two months after the company reportedly postponed it amid a global selloff. In a regulatory filing today, the company, China’s largest streaming music service, said it plans to offer 82 million American depositary shares (ADS), representing 164 million Class A ordinary shares, for between $13 to $15 each. That means the IPO will potentially raise up to $1.23 billion.

My colleague Eric Peckham wrote a deeper dive behind the lessons of Tencent Music for the broader music industry:

At its heart, Tencent Music is an interactive media company. Its business isn’t merely providing music, it’s getting people to engage around music. Given its parent company Tencent has become the leading force in global gaming—with control of League of Legends maker Riot Games and Clash of Clans maker Supercell, plus a 40 percent stake in Fortnite creator Epic Games, and role as the top mobile games publisher in China—its team is well-versed in the dynamics of in-game purchasing.

Tencent Music has staked out a very differentiated business model from Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, etc. It has used an engagement-based product model to make live-streaming and virtual gifts huge business lines, without dealing with the product marketing logistics of subscription. Where the West always asks you to pay for access, Tencent is asking you essentially to pay to have fun and be part of an experience.

Eric asks I think a deep question: why hasn’t this model (which seems particularly obvious in music given the overall events component of that business) been back-ported from China to the Western world? He sees a world where Facebook buys Spotify (I don’t) but I think there is absolutely a gap in the market for a music platform to really own this model.

NYC loses an open-source superstar

Photo: Amanda Hall / robertharding / Getty Images

Wes McKinney is a major open-source star and the engineer behind pandas, which is one of the fundamental Python data libraries, as well as a founding engineer of Apache Arrow, which is an in-memory data structure specification.

So it is big news that he has decided to decamp from New York City, where has has lived for ten years, to Nashville. Writing on his personal blog:

I’ve increasingly felt that open source development is at odds with the values that are driving a large portion of the corporate world, particularly in the United States. Many companies won’t fund open source work because there is no “return on investment”. This is deeply frustrating, and being surrounded by people whose actions align with profit-motive can be pretty discouraging. It’s not necessarily that people who work in NYC or SF are greedy or amorally concerned with making money. In many cases they are just responding to incentives coming from pretty low on the hierarchy of needs.

And

Full-time open source developers in many cases will make less money than their peers who work at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, or another major tech company. If we are to enable more people to do open source development as a full-time vocation, we need to grow supportive tech communities in places that are more affordable. (emphasis his).

I think this is a very interesting trend to watch in the coming years. It’s not just the small business and art types who want to move to lower cost locales to match their lifestyle spending to the (economic) value of their work. Software developers who want to work on more meaningful projects outside of advertising and finance will also increasingly need to consider these sorts of geographical adjustments.

As I wrote a few months ago about digital nomads:

From cryptocurrency millionaires in Puerto Rico to digital nomads in hotspots like Thailand, Indonesia, and Colombia, there is increasingly a view that there is a marketplace for governance, and we hold the power as consumers. Much like choosing a cereal from the breakfast department of a supermarket, highly-skilled professionals are now comparing governments online — and making clear-headed choices based on which ones are most convenient and have the greatest amenities available.

Economic migration — whether from cost-of-living, ecosystem or governance culture, or just for new horizons — is the watchword of this century. It’s a huge loss for NYC that people like McKinney can no longer find their work compatible with the city.

What’s next

I am still obsessing about next-gen semiconductors. If you have thoughts there, give me a ring: danny@techcrunch.com.

Thoughts on Articles

Imagined Communities – a major classic book of social science thought, it’s amazing how well it has held up, and the lessons it holds for us in the cyber age. Intending to write a review of it for this weekend, so expect more notes later.

Quietly, Japan has established itself as a power in the aerospace industry – I love industrial policy and national economic development, and Eric Berger has done a great job on both fronts with his dispatch in Ars Technica. Japan is roaring back into space, increasing its launch capabilities and also preparing to deploy its own GPS infrastructure. An important contextual read for those who follow SpaceX.

Why we stopped trusting elites — a compelling deep dive by William Davies in The Guardian into how populism is animated by the failures of elites. Couldn’t agree more that elites have lost significant trust over the last few decades, mostly from hubris, corruption, and outright fraud (the financial crisis being just the largest). Elites need to hold themselves to much higher standards if we want to ask our fellow citizens for their support.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

Huge long list of articles on next-gen semiconductors. More to come shortly.

Via Danny Crichton https://techcrunch.com

[matsitle]

#ArtLivesHere

It all starts with an inquisitive child, eyes wide open, held tilted forward, right on the edge of the frame. The problem with children – or at least mine own biggest problem with them – is that they always ask the difficult questions. It is no surprise that in some of our cultures children are usually discouraged, sometimes violently, from asking too many questions. It is even worse, I found out on Wednesday evening at the Blend Restaurant and Bar, when the question is a silent one. A stare. That is, when one is tasked with interpreting a child’s silent stare. Which is exactly what Mo Matli’s lens burdened us with at her maiden exhibition “Intrinsic Melanin” for Bloem First Fridays. The photograph of the boy is one of many adorning the Blend’s meshed wall. The boy with the menacing poser is staring down at us as we ask Rashid Vries, the main model of this exhibition, if as a person living with albinism feels black, or black “enough”. What is blackness vele? And what are the degrees to blackness – how much of it is enough? Is it the melanin perhaps? I choose to go with the photographer on this last one; ‘Intrinsic melanin’. Blackness in not just – to correct Biko’s formulation – a question of pigmentation. It is intrinsic in the centuries of dispossession (of land, labour and sense of being) that mark us all. No amount of pigmentation variations – be it natural as in the case of albinism or cosmetic as in bleaching – can alleviate blackness. Try as you might! (And I secretly root for those who try; who wouldn’t wanna escape?). I hear the boy whisper Fanon’s sagacious words to my ears; “I am over-determined from without. I am a slave not of the “idea” that others have of me but of my own appearance.” Kids and their bloody questions! I panic; can we move past the albinism of Rashid? Is he not a beautiful man – of course he is! That is the reason Mo shot him. Did he not just say he’s an engineering student? How did he manage to make the transition to being a model? And would he be doing more of this modelling thing? Can. We. Just. Not. Make. Him. A. Slave. Of. His. Appearance? We all know what that is like – it is our collective pain. We enter and nervousness engulfs the room. We attract security escorts in shops. We don’t get served in restaurants. Then why do we do it to him! But we were enslaved by his appearance – do albinos make albino babies? The boy in the top right corner of the wire mesh quizzically, even whimsically, asks a question that would’ve saved us four centuries of msunery had we knew the power to pose the question when the three ships docked at the cape; ‘aninyi perhaps?’ A question Ayanda Mabulu asks of white patrons of the #Amandla![Re]form,Debate,[Re]dress? exhibition catalogue book launch at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum the very next evening. The exhibition has been running from December last year, and it is one of the few that is decidedly black – in both the artists and the subject matter. Also curated by a black woman – another “milestone” in the museum’s history. Laughable really, the whole thing, were it not so painful. And indeed the artwork was painful. On opening night in December I thanked my imposed masculinity for not breaking down in tears when I confronted Reatile Moalusi’s photograph – titled #FMF III – of protesting students holding a placard with the words “police we are your children”. I was, in the words of Ayanda, paining. And this pain permeated through most of the artwork on display. This was, after all, ‘resistance art’. On the Thursday however, as I walked up to the Museum, I was joyously singing Makeba’s version of ‘Bahlelibonke etironkweni’. I was dancing even. Not one iota of my being told me there was something intrinsically wrong about finding joy in a song – a lamentation really – about black people (someone’s parent, child, lover) languishing in jail for daring to be. Enter Ayanda! I got to the museum and like a dog wishing to mark territory headed straight to the loo. The song still ringing in my head. I went straight for Moalusi’s photograph afterwards – it elicited fokol in me. I moved right along. All the artworks were quite. Boring even. So I gave them all a cursory look just to maintain my lie as a cultured person (we are responsible for the upkeep of our lies). One oil painting did manage to insult me though; Martin Steyn’s ‘Die land is ons land.’ A white man laying languorously on a large expanse of land. But only enough for a ‘Nxa!’ I went and took a seat and waited for the show – for that’s what it was, pre-Ayanda, a show – to get started. Sooner it ends, sooner I can check-in and say something banal like “what a lit time we had at Oliewenhuis” and live another day known as the patron of the arts. But Ayanda wasn’t about that life. When asked to introduce himself, after the flurry of self-congratulatory speeches from those involved for doing something so “radical” and other artists had literally just stood at the podium and said “Hi my name is….” and left, Ayanda recited ithakazelo zakhe. At their tale end he excused the ‘unsophisticated juvenile tongues’ of our paler counterparts and gave them a pass to just call him Ayanda. It got uncomfortable; but the kind of discomfort that makes things ‘lit’, that will have us tweet ‘bars!’, but threatens very little. He too must have noticed he was playing into the masochism (we seem to enjoy performing our pain) of the zeitgeist; a candidate for a meme. He went further. “We are not entertainers…we are not going to dance for you.” Some uncomfortable laughter could be discerned. Loso logolo ditshego akere? But how long will we hide behind laughter? He goes deeper. “You are worthy to be protested.” He tells the 1652s. We are now lodged in Fanon’s black abyss. There is no way we could laugh our way out of this one. Someone attempts to clap him off the podium. “Wait I am not done!” He must have heard IceBound on how applause kills. “This is not art…this is our pain!” He stands in front of Asanda Kupa’s “Situation right now.” A painting that painfully reminds one of the haunting line “the children are flying, bullets are dying” in Makeba’s ‘Soweto Blues’. Indeed this is our pain, it is not something to pretty up some dining room in Woodlands. “Fuck that! And fuck you.” He leaves the mic and walks away. “Thank you,” the curator, Tshegofatso Seoka, walks calmly to the stage, smiling away all that just happened. Time for the formalities is over, we hear, now let’s go mingle. But clearly her smile and infectious charm are not enough, she comes back after leaving the podium to disclaim that “Ayanda’s views” (not our collective pain, our immutable truth; just one man’s views in the melee of our wonderful freedom of competing ‘views’) do not represent the museum nor anyone who cares to distance themselves from such ‘anti-nation building’ sentiments. So much for encouraging debate! On Friday though at Pacofs “Lipstick” was looking to entertain and dance for us. But the perennial party-pooper I am (what with my constant search for meaning), what was meant to excite my baser instincts, led me to some very uncomfortable questions regarding black sensuality and femininity – the later a topic any black man must avoid like a plague in these perilous times. (Hotep policing alert!). It would seem to me, from the show and elsewhere, that black South African sensuality and femininity (I point out femininity specifically as it has been assigned by patriarchal determinism as the bastion of sensuality) is couched in white femininity on one extreme and black American sensuality at the other. It was quite telling that the women on stage all wore blond silky weaves, and displayed the Monroesque damsel in distress and non-patriarchy threatening feme fatale type of femininity. One that is very white in character. In this instance they looked to the music that'd be churned at a Mystic Boer karaoke night. All not local – important point this. When they got sensual, seductive, they looked to the Trace playlist; of course your girl B! led the pack. Again – all American. Femininity – white . Black – hypersexuality. This dichotomy is worth annals of literature. But let us not digress, the question here is where is our organic femininity and sensuality – one rooted in the soil of you will. The music says it all as to how the writer and director imagine femininity and sensuality. It is here that we need the wisdom of king Hlaudi's 90%. Music (and culture in general) influences how people imagine themselves. Music in particular speaks specifically to how we imagine ourselves in the libidinal economy. It is worth noting that when Hlaudi took the logical decision to play 90% local music on public radio, the loudest critics where Metro FM’s Sunday’s ‘love movement’ listeners. They begged profusely that 90% not apply here; as there simply weren’t enough romantic songs locally. Dare not ask what is more romantic than Masekela’s ‘Marketplace’ or Mahlasela’s ‘Kuyobanjani’. It became apparent then that South Africans don’t deem ourselves capable loving – being romantic – on our own terms (not that we do much on our own terms, the colony we are). This is especially surprising from a people that (admittedly mostly when selling ourselves to tourists) describe ourselves as ‘musical’. We can compose a struggle song one time! – as Tatz Nkonzo ably demonstrated – but to express the love in our heart, we need to cross the sea and search for our dictionaries and twangs (the current Lesedi FM TV advert is a welcomed deviation from this abnormality). This is highly disturbing. It also explains why Babes Wodumo blew up so big; despite a largely mediocre album. She represented something that has been absent from South Africa’s popular imagination for a long time; authentic township black female sensuality. Lipstick though stuck to the colonial script; no “I love Hansa and fucking” Brendaesque ‘bad girl’ sensuality, or cheesegirl fragile femininity was invoked. Never mind a new kind of black femininity or sensuality outside the confines (be it submission or rejection) of patriarchy being imagined anew. But because God is a lesbian and o hana ka seatla, there was another happening not too far (listen to me lie!) from Pacofs where we could surely not suffer the dearth of local music. Protential Inc. was hosting ‘Love & Hip Hop’ at Club Zanadu. The people were beautiful; all seemed to be genuinely happy to see us. We were home. We were happy. The line-up was packed, the stage was never lonely – Mafia Code especially owned that space, their energy and fresh sound (christened Koriana-Trap) puts them miles apart of most upcoming and established artists. The bar too. Conversation centred around there – a few pleasantries were exchanged, not enough insults, and mild curves all fought for space on that counter. The pool tables too had plenty of company. It was a Dostoyevsky paradise – everyone had somewhere to turn to. Local music too aplenty – but the incorrigible amongst us insisted that the DJ must play local local music, from Bloemfontein, from the Free State. “Don’t all these rappers dotting the place have EPs? Play those!” But they were sad to learn that rappers were begged to submit music for the playlist but dololo. ‘So what to can must happen?’ the organisers asked. These people and their bloody questions! We thus failed dismally to Hlaudirise that set. CJ though – still very much part of Simple Stories! – heeded Hlaudi’s leadership somewhat on Saturday evening at the Blend. His set, an eclectic mix of original compositions and covers, had a healthy dose of South African covers. One novel thing he did was to cover a living and still active South African artist – Zahara. This was refreshing as our local artists, on the rare occasion that they do cover local songs (ironic this), stick with the dead – the “legends” (another word Rampolokeng warns us about). I guess this gives credence somewhat to Mosoeu’s gripe that all black people are good for is dying. CJ and his girlfriend also set the bar high, and simultaneously cut wings of unsupportive lovers, by Skyping throughout his performance – twas the romantic thing ever! So long as there is an IP address no lovers should be apart on such occasions. He dedicated a song to the three of us sitting in the front row, about women who bluetick us kanti they’re curving the greatest experience they could ever have. He was right, as least in my case (coz vele mna yhu ndiGreat, ndiWow, in this thing of loving), and for that I will give him a pass for (correctly, we must concede) assuming our sexuality and relationship status. We were all shocked when he confessed, on a Beyoncé classic, to having a big dick – aaram skepsel. But artist are known for revealing a bit too much of themselves. We just sang along; sans the confession. He led us through a medley of emotions and genres. We travelled from RSA to UK to USA and back home. All the time, like a good captain, he kept us in the loop. And landed us safely into the comfortable bosom of the night. A lovely cloudy cool night. We were free to do the things that made the pots disappear. When all was said and done, all that could be done the Sunday after the Saturday was braai meat, recount our failures and plan for more so that we can fail better next time, all because #ArtLivesHere.