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thewalrusespublicist · 13 hours ago

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"Tbh I was starting to feel a bit down about my blog and what I was putting out ( the eternal crisis on how to give full answers and opinions without being stupid, boring and annoying lol)"

OMG no way! Your blog is one of the best here! What i love the most is reading the analysis and meta from the users, there's always more information and good takes, and yours are always quite deep and insightful.

I would love if you share your opinions about Stuart as well. I feel like he is obviously more sanctified that he should be since he died young (like that insane quote from his mom saying that Brian told her that Stuart could have been the Beatles' manager, no way lol) and i feel his memory has been used to attack Paul, sometimes in a very unfair way. Like, i don't deny the teenage drama and jealousy that Paul felt about him but he *was* a shitty bass player and the band was Paul's future, he was allowed to criticized him not only for being John's new bestie. I also think John played with them both but i lack of your eloquence so i will love to read your take about it.

Hi anon! And the other anons!

Thank you again and to all the other messages I got, they were extremely sweet and really made my day. :)

From my inbox, it's clear you guys want to know about Stu and his role in the Beatles legacy. Well you asked for it and a novel you shall have. Be warned this might be the longest post I've done so grab like a drink or something.

A few disclaimers: I wish and had intended for this to be more of a deep dive into Stu as a whole person rather than just his relationship with John and Paul. Unfortunately I just didn't have the space to do it. If you want to know more about Stu I would highly recommend @eppysboys' blog which is the source for all things Stu Sutcliffe and where I got a lot of this info. Please check their stuff out. Also, I'm going to be a bit blunter on this than maybe I usually am because this topic has been irritating me for some time. Oh also I’m trying my best to answer a lot of asks in one post so please forgive if I don’t fully answer your specific ask about this!

Stu in a perfect world should be a fandom darling: an exciting cipher, a handsome artistic talent that died way too soon who had a major influence in the early Beatles style. It's like there’s this secret other James Dean looking mf Beatle hidden away to uncover, that's cool and he is cool! The problem is that he’s sort of becomes radioactive to talk about in a normal way due to how he's been portrayed and utilised in some biographies and fandom spaces, particularly those that have been infected by John Lennon aspirational boy bestie syndrome. As those types of spaces cannot seem to exist without tearing down Paul to prop John up as their special lil guy, Stu as John's other best friend has become the ideal heavy object to hit Paul McCartney over the head with. It's like a corrosive element, the minute Stu hits a Beatles bio, the biographer suddenly loses all training in objectivity and source work and starts waxing lyrical about 100 percent reliable never biased or wrong Saint Stu of Hamburg who died for our condom arson sins and that Paul McCartney should feel bad about every day of his life for not worshipping Stu and not accepting his own ‘place’ in life as John's just-some-guy placeholder best friend. I’ve personally seen so many posts and forums where Stu being mentioned leads to a legion of comments about how Paul could never have been Stu (correct both ways) and how John would never have even glanced at Paul for much longer if Stu had been alive. Sidenote: If you seriously think that the musical savant from down the road whom John went on to produce the most prolific song writing partnership in history with couldnt have kept his attention for long then I'm begging you on hands and knees to get your head out of the arse of your John Lennon body pillow and be serious. But anyway…

This boy bestie battle royale approach has in turn lead to a reflex reaction where Stu gets studiously ignored by other sections of the fandom as a precedent has been set that shining a light on him diminishes Paul and John's relationship with Paul. It's frustrating because if people weren't so keen to cut Paul out of his own story then we would get a much better nuanced view of every single person involved.

So let's put aside all of our defenses, cut the John Lennon loved one ranking system bullshit and lets look at the actual question here which is what was John and Stu's relationship really like and what did he mean to John?

John and Stu met at art college a year or so after Paul and John met. Up to that point John and Paul had their fun little codependant thing going on but Stu quickly became a huge fixture in John's life. Stu had things that Paul couldn't really offer at that point in time. John was at his heart a musician who aspired to be seen as an artist (he would later express surprise that he didn't become an artist). Stu was the passionate artist who knew tons about the art of the period that could teach and inspire John. Their creative leanings meant they could work on projects together and share art notebooks and poetry. (Including yes the one with anti-semitic story which I mention again as I believe it's an important thing to remember when it comes to both John and Stu and the culture of the time.) Stuart by the sounds of it was even writing a novel about John at the time of his death. They were fascinated and inspired by each other.

So, creatively they fired each other up but more importantly perhaps, Stu and John were peers. It's funny to think about when you see the Beatles later but at the time Paul and George were the kids in their school uniform coming to see their cool older friend at art school. That's an important divide. When Paul and George's parents insisted their kids do their homework and go to bed, John and Stu could stay up and talk all hours of the night, which they did. They also could rent a place together and spend long hours chatting (despite John moving out later after realising electricity cost money lol.) There's a different dynamic that the age similarity offered as well. Whilst Paul would later somewhat grow into this role, Stu could act as an authority figure to John as well as open up to John in a way you can really only do with your peers. Stu was the person John opened up to throughout Stu's life:

How long can one go on writing and writing like you. I now don’t really know who I’m writing to or why it’s quiet peculiar. I usually write like this and forget about it but if I put it in a little part of my [almost?] secret self in the hands of someone miles away who will wonder what the hell is going on or just pass it off as toilet paper. Anyway I don’t care really what happens because when I think about it, it’s so bloody unimportant – but what is important who has the right to say that this letter is not important and this is a something any way – anyway – anyway – yeah! I wonder what it would be like to be a cretin or something. I bet it’s gear. & how are you keepin Stuart old chap are you as ok – is life as good – bad shite, great – wonderful as it was or is it just a thousand years of nothing and coolness on and on and on. I think this is it Goodbye Stu don’t write out of – er what is it? well not because you think you ought to write when you feel like So goodbye (from John you know the one with glasses) ANYWAY BYE BYE see you soon I don’t know why I said that I remember a time when everyone I loved hated me because I hated them so what so what so fucking what I remember a time when belly buttons were knee high when only shitting was dirty and everything else clean + beautiful I can’t remember anything without a sadness So deep that it hardly becomes known to me so deep that its tears leave me a spectator of my own STUPIDITY + so I go rambling on with a hey nonny nonny nonny no

Extract from a letter to Stuart Sutcliffe from John Lennon, 1961

By lots of accounts Stu was gentle but firm when it came to telling John he'd gone too far. John references this aspect of Stu to Hunter Davies:

"I looked up to Stu. I depended on him to tell me the truth. Stu would tell me if something was good and I'd believe him."

The Beatles: The Authorised Biography (Hunter Davies)

In this way I kind of see Stu as a proto-Yoko. John was so insecure and uncertain about his grip on the world and reality that he relied on Stu to be his point of reference and guide. Paul did this too later and I think in Hunter Davies John mentions this, but not at this time period and not as much due to their competitiveness. This may be why some people saw Stu as the person that really understood John at this time period:

"During the turbulent adolescence that prefaced a turbulent manhood, hardly anyone knew Lennon as intimately as Stuart Sutcliffe. If they weren't exactly David and Jonathan, June Furlong, one of the life models at Liverpool's Regional College of Art, had "never seen two teenagers as close as those two."

The Gospel According To Lennon by Alan Clayson

Now this person likely never met John and Paul together but this is only one of many similar quotes and even Julia captain of John and Paul's friendship boat seems to agree there was a period where Stu dominated and Paul 'kept his distance' from the John-Cyn-Stu 'menage-a-trois'. But the friendship wasn't perfect and his position as John's ultimate best friend was never iron clad. This is best outlined by the shit they pulled when John convinced him to join on Bass for the Beatles.

Despite being John's best friend, Stu was teased and bullied:

"They argued as usual amongst themselves, but most of all they picked on Stu, the newest member of the group. John, George and Paul had been with each other long enough to know that rows and arguments and criticism didn't mean much. If it did, you just argued back. "We were terrible," says John. "We'd tell Stu he couldn't sit with us, or eat with us. We'd tell him to go away, and he did." At one hotel they stayed at, a variety show had just left. There had been a dwarf in the show and they found out which bed he had slept in and said that would have to be Stu's. They certainly weren't going to sleep in it. So Stu had to. "That was how he learned to be with us," says John. "It was all stupid, but that was what we were like."

The Beatles: The Authorised Biography (Hunter Davies)

Why John encouraged this I have no idea, maybe jealousy over Stu's looks and wanting to play people off each other? Things were tense in both Scotland and Hamburg, especially between Stu and Paul. As I said in my last post, the girls were fighting and it was mutual. Paul was mad for both fair and immature teenage-boy reasons. Stu could not be bothered with the bass most of the time and couldn't really play well and was only there as he was '(John's) best friend' (ouch for Paul). Paul conversely had given up higher education to be there and was sending lots of money back home. He also was dating the girl Paul fancied. Stu was popular with the new group and also did mean things like help John steal Paul's money when money was really tight for him. Paul in turn was a passive aggressive, jealous and mean. It all came to ahead in the punch up onstage which according to Spitz came about from Paul wanting money back and saying that Stu could borrow some from Astrid. Stu goes for him and reports vary from full-on bust up to embarrassing scuffle. Stu then goes to where Astrid and Paul's gf Dot are, demands Dot leaves and goes on a rant about Paul. Now all of this must be framed in the context of Stu receiving increasing brain damage from his condition that seemingly lead to mood swings and anger. Nevertheless, the mutual needling and anger, as well as John's refusal to do/say fuck all about it, especially given how protective John was of Stu, suggests that it wasn’t straightforward and/or John may have been playing some games to make both feel threatened. This would also make sense as to why we hear conflicting accounts of John and Stu being the centre of everything and everyone else in orbit AND John and Paul being the centre and everyone else playing catch-up, as well as John giving Paul the lead to take him round the Reeperbahn when John got dressed in the gorilla costume. (I know Paul may have just been the closest there but that always gave off bestie behaviour to me.)

(I did get an ask about how John and Paul's friendship survived it, I think it was damaged by Hamburg. When Paul got back home he got a job at a construction site and there's just a vibe of everything being a bit on tenterhooks. John also acts a bit weird at the period, not talking to anyone for a few weeks then making a lot of weird demands from Paul. I'm really not sure what to make of it.)

Even when he's back in Liverpool, John still writes long letters to Stu and vice-versa. I can't find it at all but I’ve read a really sad interview with John saying he missed his best mate and it's a shame that he's not with them. He had no idea at that point that Stu had already died of a brain hemorrhage at 21.

John is said to have gone into hysterics when he found out Stu had died. A lot of people who've spoken about this time (Aunt Mimi, his sister Julia, the Exsis) concur that at this point Stu was his best friend and the death shattered him. He even told Astrid he wished he could give his life for Stu’s. This is backed up by the fact that John never forgot Stu and his shadow lingered for the rest of John's life:

Stu was recalled in In My Life

Years later, after John composed the first of his truly poignant and heartfelt Beatles songs, "In My Life"—with its lines about "friends I still can recall/some are dead and some are living"—he revealed to me that the two people he had had uppermost in mind were myself and Stuart Sutcliffe. And then he stunned me with a statement that I'd never heard him address to anyone—least of all to another man. "You know, Pete," he said softly, "I do love you. But," he quickly added, "I loved Stuart as well."

Weird that Paul isn't mentioned surely you think that he would be mentioned if Pete was there too okay, okay my tin hat is going away this isn't the time

Pete Shotton, Nicholas Schaffner, John Lennon: In My Life

In 1965 John drew Stu on a postcard

He apparently said this about Stu prior to sending the postcard, prompted by an article about Stuart.

The card had been sent from Genoa mid-way through the Beatles' Italian tour. [...] But the conversation had become maudlin when I reminded him that he was going to talk to me for an article about Stuart. [...] In that sad telephone conversation before they set off for Milan, I asked him if he was happy: 'I'd be a lot happier if Stuart was still part of us,' he said, 'The Beatles would be complete.' And before he rang off he said 'Ill send you something.'

He also appears on the cover of Sgt Pepper

As mentioned, Stu gets mentioned in Hunter Davies in terms of wistfulness and guilt AND he gets a mention in John's insane 'if I were a homosexual' ramblings in early 70s. According to Yoko, John also wanted Yoko to write letters to him and didn't think it would be strange because Stu wrote letters to him.

I have a pet theory that as with a lot of things for John, his unresolved grief over Stu really came to the fore in the late 60s now that he had actually had a chance to sit down and think about things. I believe it was partially why he wanted Yoko to write letters and why he gets mentioned in the early 70s as a collaborator/best friend and not in 1980 where John only gives that credit to Paul and Yoko. I think with the cracks with Paul, John had started to think back on his old friend and guide and what advice he would give.

Stuarts presence is still felt throughout the seventies:

“He told me everything. He loved to talk about Hamburg. There were no secrets. It was the kind of life I never knew…. It meant total freedom. At his side always was Stuart, sweet Stuart. There wasn’t a time in John’s life when he didn’t think about Stuart. He spoke always of his love and respect for Stuart.”

Yoko discussing Stu in When They Were Boys: The True Story of the Beatles’ Rise to the Top by Larry Kane

Coming to grips with his death is also present in Skywriting

SEAN O’HAIRE: What happened to Stuart Cliff? DR. FISCHY: What happened was a full exchange of energy where it was not needed within the expression of your own self or in the energies involved around and about you. We cannot call it a happening. We’ll say it is an awakening, for in that way it has served an expression from the past to the present and to the future to where there shall be more of that incomplete vibration expressed to you in a more fuller understanding.

Skywriting by Word of Mouth, John Lennon

This isn't exhaustive but I think from all this it's pretty clear that John adored Stu, John grieved Stu and kept grieving Stu. Stu had a specific place in his life as a confidant that he tried to recreate with Yoko. At the time of Stu's death, he was John's best friend, probably slightly over Paul. Stuart had been able to be both a friend and paternal presence, a confidant and an artistic collaborator. His presence and loss was one of the foundational points in John's life.

But as we've been asked to play this stupid game and so many bios like to make a hoopla about it, were they at their closest ever as close as John and Paul were at their height?

No.

How do we know? Because John told us so:

" He [Paul] still is the closest friend I've ever had, except for Yoko, so I'm still close to him whatever goes on."

John Lennon to an interviewer, 1971

But Walrus! John just says shit! How do we know he isn't leaving out Stu because the press don't know Stu. Well true John does just say shit but this is at a time where John isn't the most glowing about Paul and he's had no problem mentioning Stu in this time period ('one of my best friends ever' would have made a similar point).

But Walrus again! If John picked Stu over Paul when they were young why wouldn't he be the boy bestie of all time, and why would John say that he was closer to Paul? Well, because of the environment and timings. Stu's death happened near the beginning of John and Paul's major bonding moments. If you look at their personal timeline, Paris, the Nerk twins, and getting signed happened just before Stu died. That's missing the major years of Beatlemania, Key West, LSD, Paul growing more into being John's peer and a load of other huge moments in their lives. It's like how John writes to Cyn in 1962 about wanting the house to themselves and not have Paul around all the time. Would you say because he feels closer to Cyn then that John in his overall lifetime loved Cyn more than Paul? No, because relationships change over time and theirs were no exception. (One thing to consider as well is that we don't yet have many letters between John and Paul during their Beatles years and earlier, probably because they were spending so much time with each other. We know a couple exist that Paul considers too personal for publication but I'm sure there are others. It's easy to understand what John felt for Stu as we have the letters, I think we would also have an easier time understanding what John felt for Paul if we had the equivalent of those.)

At the end of the day Paul was the man he believed he had a psychic bond with, the man he couldn’t shut up about, the man whom he’d conquered the world with with their endless collaboration, the man with a twin personality to him and according to John spent more time with throughout the 60s than he had with Yoko ever. To be frank if Paul had died in 67' I don't think this would have been a conversation.

As mentioned early, in early 1970s John elevates his partnership with Stu to his collaborations with Paul and Yoko but by 1980 he’s pretty clear that Paul and Yoko are their own category.

"I was saying to somebody the other day, “There’s only two artists I’ve ever worked with for more than a one night stand, as it were. That’s Paul McCartney, and Yoko Ono.” And I think that’s a pretty damned good choice!!"

John Lennon interview with DJ Dave Sholin, 1980

There are of course the what ifs. Would Stu still being alive mean that John was not as close with Paul? Maybe, highly doubtful though as the Beatles experience was so intense. If Stu remained a Beatle would John be as close with Paul? If Stu remained a Beatle he wouldn't be Stu so no. At the same time who knows what it would have been like if Paul and John were peers from the off? I said this to @the62ndbugsfan when it comes to Stu vs Paul (hi girl sorry i've made our chat a whole ass post lol) but to go a bit Wuthering Heights, soulmates are made as much from the earth as they are of the stars. What binds us is our experiences just as much as our personalities. There may be a universe where Stu and John took on the art world together or became inseparable bffs again after the Beatles disbanded, but it is not our universe. In this universe Stu tragically died and John and Paul chose to become Lennon/McCartney and artistically unite themselves forever.

Even going back to Stu's lifetime, I've said it before and I'll say it again I find it interesting that not only did John choose to go to Paris with Paul rather than pay to meet up with Stu somewhere but that they arranged to meet up with Juergen and nobody told Stu until they'd already gone. Stu was shocked and didn't know if it meant the end of the Beatles which is a pretty big thing for him not to know about. Why didn't John tell him if they're apparently still writing long letters? Was it because he really wanted to do this with Paul and didn't want to hurt Stu's feelings? And that's really the point I want to make here. Due to his trauma John was preoccupied with reinforcing ranking of relationships within his life. But the thing is friendship rankings are made up guidelines and the reality is far more complicated. You can have a designated best friend but feel closer to another friend at times, you can want to do one thing specifically with one friend and not the other for various reasons. You can (as I do) have more than one equal best friend. Friendship as with most relationships are in a constant state of flux and each friendship you have will give and mean a different thing, even if they are of similar value to you.

Paul may have ended up closer to John than Stu had been, but that doesen't make John's relationship with Stu any less special. Nor does Stu negate the significance of Paul. Whilst both fit into John's pattern of intense relationships and demands related to that, both had unique positions and meaning to him. Considering what I've gone into about John's closeness to Stu, it actually says something deeply, borderline unnervingly, intense about John and Paul that Paul pipped Stu to the post. Maybe it's time Beatles bios accept the fact that John Lennon just wouldn't be into them like that, stop using a tragically prematurely deceased young man as a prop in their jealous psychological warfare against Paul McCartney, stop perpetuating one of the most damaging games that John did to his loved ones and allow both relationships the space to shine and showcase the amazing talent that was the Beatles and those that surrounded them.

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scintillyyy · 6 hours ago

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Hi. I love every second of your blog going "Fuck Chuck Dixon. All my homies hate Chuck Dixon." concurrent with "Dixon could often be remarkably competent as a writer with legit interesting ideas." Please never stop writing metas.

listennnnnn i hate dixon he's awful. he's also written stuff i really enjoy despite the many glaring faults.

the thing with dixon that i'm always trying to suss out tho. like, i think because current day dixon has been radicalized in a truly awful and horrendous way, there's a lot of desire to place his current day radical beliefs onto every aspect of his past works and blame everything on him and him alone as this one terrible writer who ruined all characters for ever and ever just because he's a conservative. but like. i think that because he's an awful person it's easy to place blame on him retroactively for some things that weren't necessarily solely a product of his conservatism or his fault alone.

and mmm. i never ever deny the conservatism present in his works. it's present in his robin book with tim, it's present in his nightwing book with dick, and it's present in his batman books with bruce. but people sometimes act as if he was working in a batoffice that had the current day issues it does where writers are given a carte blance to do whatever they want with all characters with little regards to continuity or character growth. that did not happen during his tim under denny in the 90s--denny o'neil was known for running a fairly tight ship (i can't find the interview but there's an interesting retrospective interview he does wrt jason where he talks about his failures as an editor and how he was too hands off and not firm enough allowing writers to do what they pleased which led him to become a much stricter and firm editor following jason's death because he learned from the experience). dixon in that interview i posted made it clear that o'neil wouldn't even let dixon touch the joker until dixon had demonstrated to o'neil he had a grasp on the character that o'neil approved of. dixon would not have been allowed to do whatever he wanted with characters like robin/tim. without o'neil putting a stop to it if he had gone too far. and for the record, o'neil was a big old bleeding heart liberal that, at the time at least, dixon is noted to have gotten along with very well despite their political opinion differences even at that time. dixon says he was an avid read of grant's work on batman. he's awful now, but at one point he was probably younger and a bit more willing to entertain ideas that weren't his own too.

so when i look back on his work as a historical work, i'm always trying to tease out the following - is this representive of dixon's brand of conservative views in particular or is it representative of a different, overall more conservative time era. and there's a lot of things that fall under the second umbrella that get attributed to the first tbh. listen i love no man's land and understand that despite my love it is full of copaganda and downright conservative ideals by today's standards. but NML wasn't written solely by dixon to push a uniquely conservative pro-cop view--o'neil approved of the story and was the editor of the office at the time. rucka was a huge player in helping tell this super pro-cop story (he even wrote the novelization!!) and nobody ever really puts blame on him for these things the way they do dixon afaik. NML being written in a 'democrats trying to be tough on crime' era absolutely means it's not solely the fault of dixon and his evil conservatism, but he often gets the flack as if it were despite the fact that he was getting these stories okayed by people on different ends of the political spectrum than him + these stories were not his evil conservative brainchild alone.

so these are the things i'm thinking when i read through his works. and maybe that gives me a rosier view than it should, but a lot of my thoughts come from "what can reasonably actually be attributed to showcasing what dixon's views actually are" vs "what might actually not be his fault and his fault alone".

and when i say that tim generally isn't the one who showcases his personal views, i'm not trying to minimize the fact that there is inherent conservatism baked in to his character along with everyone else written by dixon, i'm saying that we need to be realistic and realize that dixon did not have as much freedom to do with tim what he had freedom to do with tim's side characters. tim, after all, had to ultimately fit in o'neil's batbible framework of what he was supposed to be because tim was ultimately an IP character who was part of a batman and robin mythos that o'neil was very, very protective of in the 90s given his previous failures to maintain control of the ship. so when you consider dixon's particular conservatism in tim's books you need to consider that the vast majority of it came from the characters surrounding tim (such as his dad, dana, steph, etc) because dixon had more freedom with those sorts of characters, rather than tim himself who often doesn't have any particular opionion of his own--he's just reacting to all the different opinions being presented to him. and that's not to say that those character should be evil conservatives forever and ever--in fact, i personally think they shouldn't. but take the racist and classist inner city kids are bringing guns to school storyline in robin #25-26. as a whole it's a conservative story. o'neil allowed dixon to do the story in the first place when he could have said no. in the story tim wanders around not knowing what to do about karl bringing a gun to school--which is why he has to go to his dad and dana, who represent "go to the cops/don't be a narc options"--his dad is the one who tries to talk to karl's dad--karl is the conservative one who thinks that they need to protect themselves from inner city kids compared to tim who thinks that guns shouldn't be in school. but tim also thinks that they shouldn't go to the cops and wants his dad to handle it by himself, but eventually comes to the realization that he should have gone to school administration to begin with. in these issues, steph is also the one who dixon uses to link karl's shooting to the inner city kids who are getting bused in to the suburban schools--we talk about that panel of steph declaring herself the protector of the suburbs, but also that panel in context is within the confines of the story--steph is essentially saying "maybe the suburbs need a spoiler (to protect themselves from the inner city people coming to bring crime out to them)" which absolutely is a conservative dixonism that you can pinpoint to his particular kind politics in comparison to the milquetoast of tim's "i don't know what to do/talk to a trusted adult to get help before tragedy happens PSA/overall conservativeness" that happens. that the story itself that exists in tim's book is conservative, yes, and i won't deny that tim also has a few conservative dialogue here but to me the difference is that o'neil would not let dixon use tim drake to go on any overtly political rants or represent any specific ideology *himself* that could make him controversial with readers of the time given how protective o'neil was of not repeating his previous mistakes. you're generally going to find the more egregious dixonisms outside of tim. like "robin 1993 is a conservative book that has a pro-life storyline" (true) =/= "tim goes on an anti-abortion rant" (not true, literally never happened). tim shares blame because ultimately it is his book that presents a conservative worldview but tim as a character tends to exist as a more moderate (not completely, but more) character to have other characters present options and opinions to him rather than he himself saying he has those opinions. robin cannot take sides like that. o'neil wouldn't have let that happen.

and like. when discussing dixon my goal is never to completely absolve tim of dixon's writing. i just don't often see a need to completely rehash the tim-conservatism points because it's been discussed already over and over again to the point there's a pretty widespread misconception that tim is the ultimate dixon conservative mouthpiece who is solely at fault for all of robin 93's conservatism when actually there's a lot of other interesting places dixon's conservatism presents that are almost never discussed in comparison. my goal is not to be "tim's not at fault" or anything but it is to seriously consider and think about where i see dixon's personal opinions shining through more overtly based on what i know of the conservative mindset (as much as i don't agree with it). dissecting dixon and how he writes in consideration of his beliefs is fascinating and fun to me.

anyways he's awful.

#scintilly ask tag #mirrorfalls #anyways you will see dixon blamed for everything as if he was the sole arbiter of 90s comics #and like i blame him for so much #but to act if he's solely culpable for everything ignores who all else was involved in okay-ing the things he chose to write

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twig-tea · 6 hours ago

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Thank you for the tag in your post, @doublel27! This is a great example of why tagging is polite and vagueposting is rude (I'm going to use this as a teachable moment so bear with me): You've made reference to several stances that I don't hold and linked back to my post as evidence I do, but because you've tagged me, I can now clear the record. I might choose to ignore a tag sometimes, and tumblr can't be relied on to actually alert the person who was tagged reliably, but the point is the tag generally gives me the visibility and the choice; and the link lets people see for themselves what I said, so they can make the determination themselves even if I didn't bother to clarify. If you'd made this post without linking or tagging me, your readers would have to take your word for what my point was and I'd have no way to know you were misrepresenting my position. Whether or not I'd said on main to tag me, using my (or anyone's) words in a post critiquing them without attributing them or tagging the source is rude, and it feels awful to experience. I appreciate you taking the feedback in the original thread and tagging me directly so that I could see this.

You invoked my We Are post specifically as an example of criticism of We Are and Perfect 10 Liners (which, for the record, I haven't written anything about the latter, but I'm glad my post has you thinking about them both in conversation with each other and hopefully trends at large) that informed the perspectives of @lurkingshan and @waitmyturtles which you've represented as being: shows which don't meet their metric of good should not be engaged with or are ruining the genre. In fact, in my own post (which you've stated has informed their opinion), I started that post with the opposite statement:

I don’t begrudge anyone who enjoyed this show and I’m genuinely glad it brought comfort to people.

I went on to say:

...Shows are fully allowed to not be for me, I usually can differentiate between when a show is doing something I don’t like well, or when it’s failing at its own goals. And I don’t begrudge people with different taste getting catered to sometimes; my refrain is that most problems of representation are not solved by calling for less of something, and rather than wanting something not to be made, I’d rather champion for more and a greater variety of content.

I also am certain that both Shan and Jay know New Siwaj is a queer creator because I laid out in full New Siwaj's history creating shows as a gay creator (which you mentioned as a kind of 'gotcha' in your post) to get to the crux of my concern, which was this explicitly:

I wanted to lay out how I've watched New Siwaj’s career go from finding a way to tell incredibly poignant and healing queer narratives (by creating his own company, and fitting these moments into the GMMTV series he did work on) to stripping out queerness from the shows he’s creating in the last year or so.

I then brought in other examples. The point I make in this post is that there has been a pattern of shows from ~the last year adapting novels but not including specific aspects around queer conflict from the source material in the adaptation. I am judging these adaptations against the Thai novels they are based on, and looking at the active choices the adapters are making in the context of the markets in which they operate--which, for the record, is the opposite of ignoring their agency. I would say the same statement for Shan's and Turtles' posts (linked for convenience). And to assume Shan and Turtles only took away the critical aspect of my post or that they aren't making their own judgments of the BL scene at large seems like a disingenuous interpretation.

The part of your response and the original post by @maybe-boys-do-love that bothers me is that it implies that I think (I'm now assuming MBDL was responding to me among apparently several others, since you've invoked me in this response and suggested you've been speaking to him about it, but without having been referenced in the original post I have no way of knowing--just to again underscore my frustrations with vagueposting) that only my way of seeing shows is correct or valuable; that I conflate sex scenes with queerness; that I think BL romcoms are less valuable, less queer, or less good than more serious toned takes; or that these shows should not exist or be made in future. I would hope it's clear from my own writing that I don't think any of that, and that anyone reading @lurkingshan and @waitmyturtles's posts would understand they also do not think any of this. I'm not sure who either of you are actually mad at, but the ideas you're fighting are not written in any of the things I've said or anything I've reblogged from Shan or Turtles. And the insinuation that the criticism of the writing of these shows holds some kind of power to prevent others from enjoying or making series like this is frankly giving any of us too much credit.

Looks like while I was writing @wen-kexing-apologist wrote a great summary of the points made in the original posts by Shan and Turtles in the comments section of their post, so anyone reading can feel free to go there to read a 2-comment summary if you don't want to go back and read the full set of threads for yourselves.

It's not a good use of energy to argue about how someone chose to interpret my words or the words of others, so I'll stop there. I'm happy to discuss the points that I've made in my writing, but defending against bad faith interpretations of my or other people's posts is not what I want to spend any more time doing.

#fandom meta #typed so that I can stop thinking it

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guarddog-of-proendos · 1 day ago

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Image descriptions

- written by a visually impaired person

What is an image description?

an image description is exactly what it sounds like, a block of text describing the content of an image. this is important for many people but especially for blind and visually impaired people who cannot see the image (at least, not well enough to understand what's going on)

(people also cite that this helps people with slow internet, if you add that to this post I am hitting you on the head with a stick. our access to the internet is enough of a reason to add image descriptions, they don't have to help abled people as well.)

image descriptions serve the purpose of providing the same access to content and context in a post that you, a sighted person, have. the goal is to allow equal access for visually disabled people and other people who struggle to access images.

have you ever been stuck scrolling through Tumblr while images are refusing to load? was that frustrating? imagine how we feel every day, all the time.

How to write an image description

writing an image description is a skill. it's okay if you aren't great at it at first. not being great at it is not an excuse to not try. I'm tired of people telling me they can't be assed to try writing an image description because it might not be perfect. I would much rather read an imperfect image description than have no image description at all.

when you're describing an image the key point is to describe what's relevant, what you look at in an image. if the image is a tweet, describe what the tweet says. if the image is a picrew of an alter, describe what that alter looks like in the picrew.

You don't need to include every detail

a lot of guides will, with well intentions, tell you to describe a lot. sometimes, describing a lot is relevant. if you're describing a piece of art or photography then describing a lot is important because the point of the photo is to appreciate all of the photo. if you're taking a selfie, I truly do not care that your walls are blank and white. sometimes, more detail is less accessible. I don't want to scroll through paragraphs up on paragraphs for a photo that sighted people can just glance at and get the gist of.

take for example, this post divider I just used:

you could describe this as: a post divider with a large star in the center surrounded by a halo of the moon phase in gold. 2 horizontal lines come from it in the center with a pattern of alternating sun, moon, sun, and star symbols.

... that's really long. the point for sighted people is to break up the text with something pretty. it's not to admire all the intricacies of the image.

a more appropriate description would be: a star themed post divider

text, on the other hand, should always be transcribed in full. do not describe your DNI banner as "a DNI banner" that tells me nothing. put down all the text, all of it, because all of the text is relevant.

never use AI to write an image description! it's insulting and often inaccurate. problems with generative AI aside, throwing an image into chatGPT and then copy and pasting the sludge it spits out makes me feel like I'm not worth taking a minute to actually write an image description. AI generated image descriptions tend to be impersonal, inaccurate, and hard to follow because it just throws up all the random details it picks up on rather than describing the point of the image. with the editing required to fix a chatGPT image description you could have written your own and it would be better.

I truly cannot write an image description

ask for help. if you have no one you can directly ask, add a note to your post asking for help writing the description when you post it. when someone writes a description for you, copy and paste it into the original post. there is no such thing as image description theft, the point is accessibility. you can't steal accessibility. copy and pasting is not just okay it's encouraged!

on other people's posts (regardless of whether or not you can write an image description) you can often find image descriptions in the notes. taking a minute to check for image descriptions before reblogging an undescribed post is something fast and kind you can do for the people who need image descriptions. often you'll find a description and then hurray! that inaccessible post is now accessible!

....but I don't have any followers who need image descriptions!

yes you do.

if you truly don't it's probably because none of them can access your blog. fix that and suddenly you will have followers who need image descriptions

why is this in the pluralgang tag? none of you describe images.

Questions are encouraged

(if you have any)

#pluralgang #endo safe #plural gang #pro endo #traumagenic system #cdd #osddid #actually did #actuallydid

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polo-drone-069 · 18 hours ago

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This is outside of the Golden Army or Polo Drones world. I've only been with this group for a little over a month and 1/2, and I found it's a community. In many ways, people like myself are here to help each other. Like many communities, we inspire each other, we help each other through thick and thin, and I believe we are a family at the end of the day. People all over the world, granted, we share this same belief and/or fetish, but at the end of the day, we are a mismatched family. Like a clothes hamper full of different socks, left and right socks, and various colors and sizes, but we work together. I post this without official permission, but as you are an everyday human, The way that I look, how I feel, my size, my orientation, and the things I'm into are moot points to this group. In roughly the month and 1/2 that I've been here, I have found this community more accepting than many others.

“True belonging doesn’t require that we change who we are. It requires that we be who we are.” — Dr. Brené Brown It's important to feel wanted and have a group of people who will understand you. When my grandfather passed away many, many years ago, he told me that “sometimes the best family you can have are not the ones you are born with.” I have made many friends over the years, but I'm sure to say that this group, this community of people, is on the short list of people that if I have a bad day or a bad week, I can speak out, I can get reassurance, that hope can be given to me.

Kara Thomas wrote, “Hope is the most dangerous thing you can give someone.” But hope is what feeds us, it allows us to get through the darkest points of our lives; hope can be given by a community, person, or one of the families that you create. Hope is a dangerous thing, and hopefully, it is a powerful one.

This message is an opening to a portal. We all deal with our lives differently and our feelings. It's important to have a community of people that you can rely on, but occasionally, it's more important to have a few friends; possibly, within that community, you can reach out to when you're not feeling your best.

If you don't have that community, contact your nearest mental health hotline. If you'd like to have a community where your fetishes are accepted, your body shape and personality are accepted, then join Team Gold If you want to be a part of this glorious gold family, a community of understanding people, then reach out to @brodygold @polo-drone-001 @goldenherc9 to become a golden bro today!

#golden army #golden team #suicideprevention #lgbtq community #ai generated

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gifsbysimplysonia · 3 hours ago

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Hola. Long rambling feedback behind the cut as well as

When he meets you, he hasn’t even thought of picking up a pencil in years. Ever since you’ve been at the mansion though, Logan’s fingertips twitch with the urge to start sketching your features every time he’s with you. It gets hard to ignore after a few days.

I think this is so beautiful. Anyone who is a creative knows how difficult it can be to find a muse. So for this person to inspire a twitch in Logan after YEARS? That's just a very beautiful thing.

He waits until he’s known you a few weeks, there’s no way in hell he’d ask if he could draw you. He’d probably embarrass you by asking, and embarrass himself by admitting he’s into fucking art. That’s not him. Except, well, sometimes it is, when he’s inspired. And you’re nothing if not inspiring.

And this is for BOTH 1) thinking it's not ok to be into art??? OK BUT CAVEMEN CARVED INTO WALLS, SIR and 2) "you're nothing if not inspiring" *screamingggggggggggggggggggg*

The first few drawings are shit, he feels like they’re almost an insult to you. It’s not that he’s accidentally drawing you ugly, it just doesn’t look like you. So he practises. Logan Howlett sits down at night to practise drawing.

I love that this fits with the Logan I know, the demand on self for perfectionism and the refusal to accept anything but. But it's especially important cuz he wants to do right by YOU/HER. *swoon*

And he totally knows that you’d never go for someone as rugged as him, that’s for sure. You deserve much more. So much more.

Sigh. Oh Logan. Always thinking he's not worthy while he holds everyone he cares about up on pedestals. I both adore him and wanna shake him for these habits.

He doesn’t know what you’re doing to him; you’ve got him using social media.

He gets Rogue to show him Instagram for reference photos. HOW CUTE!

Logan hates how drawing makes him overthink, but he loves how it feels to create something other than violence with his hands for once – something that may even be the opposite.

This is soooooooooooooooo beautiful. It is just a loud beacon of what Logan's heart really is. It's also really precious that he finally produces a drawing of her that he's satisfied with which then produces ANGST in him. Cuz he can't leave it out cuz what if people see? But he doesn't want to hide it cuz what if it smudges? Watching him go back and forth about it and the STRESS shows how much it means to him not to mess it up but ALSO, I think, how much it means to him to be back drawing. As a creative who goes through the longest dry patches, when a period of productivity comes up? OH DO I WANT TO HANG ONTO IT. And probably try so hard that I make it slip through my fingers.

He finally lets himself think the thought that’s politely been waiting to be allowed into his brain from the moment he decided he might take up drawing again. He could give it to you.

DO IT LOGANNNNNNNN!

Logan knows his drawing isn’t objectively a masterpiece, but if he’s proud of it he has to acknowledge that that probably means it’s at least decent. And you’re definitely the type of person to appreciate something like this. It’s weird admitting to himself that he’s even proud of what he’s drawn; he’s done so much in this world, who cares about a little drawing?

YOU care, sir! And people who love you will SEE that and care too!!! Don't we all wish he valued himself and his opinions more.

The only thing is that Logan isn’t sure if he’s ready for anyone to see this side of him.

It's so precious to me, how relatable this is. Anyone who is a creative can relate, I'm sure. How nervous creatives are before they publish or they post or they even just share with someone they are close to. I wanna hug him.

He knows it’s stupid to hide but he just can’t. He decides he’ll leave the drawing in your room in an envelope, maybe a pink one to show you it’s not a creepy threat but meant as a sign of adoration, from someone who couldn’t resist but try to recreate your beauty. He won’t write his name on it, he just wants you to have it. Sappy motherfucker.

Some day, someone needs to tell him he can give himself permission to BE sappy. Corny is part of life and it's a blessing.

He’d doubt himself even more if he pussied out – a grown man who can’t even slide an envelope under someone’s door. So Logan mans up and, like an idiot, kisses the fucking drawing before he puts it into the envelope. He licks the edges of it to close it and writes your name in the most anonymous handwriting he can muster and adds a little heart. It’s soo stupid.

It's annoying to read Logan's antiquated views on masculinity here. Completely understand that it fits with his character and how he has aged and evolved but omggggggggggg, it's just frustrating lol

You’re a friend and nothing more, and that’s fine. You probably don’t like him like that and he can deal with that.

The way we can convince ourselves of the worst possible outcome, eh? *smh*

You have one of those clear phone cases, filled with a bunch of tiny pictures and stickers (and is that your credit card?). But wedged in front of all of those is Logan’s drawing. You turn around, giggling, “No, I don’t draw. And anyway, I wouldn’t be drawing pictures of myself. I got it in an envelope under my door yesterday, photocopied it because I was scared it would bend in my phone case. I don’t know who drew it.”

SHE IMMEDIATELY TREATED IT AS SOMETHING PRECIOUS!!! SHE WANTED TO PROTECT IT JUST LIKE LOGAN WANTED TO PROTECT IT!!! BUT SHE LOVES IT TO THE POINT SHE MADE HERSELF A COPY TO CARRY IT AROUND WITH HER AT ALL TIMES!!!!!

“I don’t know, just, so beautiful. I’m not saying I’m not pretty or anything, but this looks… I don’t look like that. I wish I did. I can’t believe someone actually sees me like that. It’s stupid but I….” You trail off and, conveniently, the toast is done at the same time and you move on to that. But Logan won’t let you, “What’s stupid?” You turn towards him with a shy smile, “I’m embarrassed.”

To see the similarities in how they DON'T see themselves fully is kind of sweet and makes me root for them.

“I cried when I first saw it yesterday. It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten. And it’s the nicest compliment I’ve ever received, for someone to perceive me in such an artistic way.” The problem is that it makes him want to draw more, his stupid heart melting at your reaction to something he made– no, created.

He thinks he’s sappy for drawing it but he doesn’t think the same of you for enjoying the drawing.

This is HILARIOUS and KILLING ME because I also make rules for MYSELF that are different from the rules I have for EVERYONE ELSE lmao

He’s usually more of a silent carer but maybe that’s why he likes this. He’s not making it a grand gesture, not making it a thing that he’s the one drawing for you. It’s just for you to enjoy.

Logan being an Acts of Service person makes ALL the sense in the world to me.

But of course now that he knows it means something to you, he can’t get anything right. He draws your hair too curly, then not curly enough. He draws your nose too big, then too small. Your eyes end up crooked. He can’t erase too much because it’ll look sloppy, so even the drawing he gets almost perfect, he ruins with a few final additions at the end.

The curse of the sequel! I think a lot of creatives can relate to this type of self induced pressure which means nothing you produce is good enough.

“Good?” you take the frame from his hands defensively, “It’s beautiful.” He chuckles, “Sorry, I don’t know much about this type of thing. It is beautiful though.” He’s looking at you instead of his drawing.

She already has a frame for the new drawing cuz the frames came in packs of 2 and she will NOT STAND for someone not absolutely FAWNING over it and I love that from her. It's doing Logan's heart SO good to see how much she adores what he's created.

If there’s someone who’s worth it, it’s you. Seeing your pleased smile at something he made for you, he decides he’s never going to stop drawing you.

It was the stupidest joke of all that made you really laugh, some dumb comparison between Xavier and Caillou. You probably wouldn’t even giggle at it anymore now, but in the moment it was so funny you almost spat out your drink from the deep belly laugh he drew from you, holding onto his bicep so you wouldn’t fall over as tears formed in your eyes from how hard you were laughing. He wanted to engrave the image on his soul. At least he got your smile on paper.

Our man is S-M-I-T-T-E-N and I love that for him. Cuz look what it's brought back into his life?

“I didn’t know you draw”, you say without taking your eyes off it. “No one else knows.” You pretend to zip your lips, smiling, “It’s our secret.” Logan can tell that you like that. He likes it too. It feels much better to share a secret with you than to be keeping one from you.

This is so intimate. And he's finally comfortable all the way with her. She knows it's him and he's fine with her knowing it's him.

You don’t know how to put your feelings into words, so you’re kissing him instead. He pulls you down so that you’re not hovering over but sitting on his lap, and the mood immediately shifts to something different. Logan doesn’t want to overwhelm you, but if you’re ready then he’ll take anything he can get.

I appreciate that Logan is just the tiniest bit "selfish" here because this has been such an emotionally taxing ordeal for him. And she really really admires his talent and is THRILLED that it's him and that he sees her the way that he does.

From here the story slips into the Rated R portion of the story which is both hot and very sweet. The buildup means that I feel a genuine connection and intimacy between the 2 that feels "earned," if that's the right word. Cuz it doesn't feel forced or rushed or like we skipped a whole bunch of stuff to get here.

I also love that there's open dialogue. Often, the only talk between lovers is dirty - which I am a big fan of and absolutely fine with - but that here we have sweet confessions, constant check ins, and reassurances; these all fit with the journey we've been on with these two and I just really enjoy that aspect.

There's also good dirty talk, balanced give and take and praaaaaaaaaaaaise which I enjoy thoroughly. Logan also tends to take the possessive "my girl" over and over which just melts my butter!

@selfcarecap thank you so much for creating and sharing this! Thank you for following YOUR muse through to the end of this tale and then being brave enough to slip it under all our doors *bad dum tss* I really loved this look at Logan, his vulnerabilities, his abilities and desires beyond his powers / "job" and what allowing himself to create ultimately gifted him with. Well done smut that I also very much enjoyed too.

And thank you to K for putting it on my dash!

MUSE [L.H.]

Logan Howlett x reader

summary: Logan would never admit it to anyone, but over the course of his long life he has attempted to draw maybe once or twice. He hasn’t done it in years, maybe even decades, but he’s struck by inspiration when he meets you. Of course, no one can know that Wolverine draws, so he does it in the dead of night, sliding anonymous envelopes with the finished drawings of you under your door. When he sees how much you love them, he wonders if you could also love the person behind them.

warnings: smut 18+ but with an actual plot for once (brief m masturbation, oral f and m rec, unprotected piv sex, kind of accidental (but consensual obv) facial; pet names: bub, baby, good girl, princess), soft!Logan but he won’t admit it, also soft!reader, fluff (although the summary makes it sounds a bit more dramatic than it is tbh), implication that reader has curly hair, implied mutant/X-men!reader, (obviously the pic doesn’t represent the envelopes Logan uses lol he’s not doing all that)

word count: 7.3k

also i feel the need to say something about the fact that it’s Hugh Jackman’s birthday today lol so uh thanks for being huge jacked man and for giving us our Logan yay <3 | gorgeous divider by @plutism

It’s everything Logan is the opposite of – he would never tell a soul – but over the course of his long life, Logan has attempted to draw maybe once or twice. It’s not really him, but he did have a phase or two.

Except, well, sometimes it is, when he’s inspired. And you’re nothing if not inspiring.

He gives in to the urge to get out pencil and paper again, waiting until everyone else has gone to sleep. The first few drawings are shit, he feels like they’re almost an insult to you. It’s not that he’s accidentally drawing you ugly, it just doesn’t look like you. So he practises.

Logan Howlett sits down at night to practise drawing.

He picks out a few other things to draw then, to ease the pressure that comes with drawing the woman he… is friends with. Yeah, you’re a friend. And he totally knows that you’d never go for someone as rugged as him, that’s for sure. You deserve much more. So much more.

But after a few nights he feels more confident in his drawing skills again, but still, as much as he can picture you in his mind – he can do that absolutely perfectly – he’s not too sure he could really draw you accurately.

So he gets Rogue to show him how goddamn fucking Instagram works so that he can look at some of your pictures and use them as a model.

He doesn’t know what you’re doing to him; you’ve got him using social media.

He can’t believe it, but the first time he seriously attempts to draw you, it’s perfect. It’s a small drawing, not even as big as his palm, capturing your gorgeous face. He thinks of adding another few lines to your eyebrows, or to your hair or another small one to the outline of your lips, but he doesn’t want to mess with it.

Logan hates how drawing makes him overthink, but he loves how it feels to create something other than violence with his hands for once – something that may even be the opposite.

He hides the drawing in between the pages of a book, and hides the book under a pile of random clutter on his desk that not even he would normally spare a glance at. But when he lies down to go to sleep, he gets all the stuff out again and gets out the drawing. He wants to see it again. And he can’t leave it there anyway, what if the pressure from all the items on top of it smudges it?

But he doesn’t know what else to do with it. He can’t really have a drawing of you sitting in his room. What if someone sees? Then what is he gonna do with it instead?

He finally lets himself think the thought that’s politely been waiting to be allowed into his brain from the moment he decided he might take up drawing again.

He could give it to you.

The only thing is that Logan isn’t sure if he’s ready for anyone to see this side of him. To see the side that has him staying up until 3AM to finely trace the lines of someone’s eyelashes and cheekbones and lips, the side that makes him feel calm inside.

Sappy motherfucker.

He puts the small drawing back into the book and carefully pushes it between his mattress and the bedframe to protect it during the night. God, who even is he – protecting a tiny piece of paper? He groans at himself as he turns around to go to sleep.

He dreams of making a thousand drawings of you, with you as his live model. His muse.

You’re his girlfriend in his dream, he thinks.

He’s sitting in a chair in your room, drawing you as you tell him about your day. You’re lying on your bed on your tummy, elbows propped up to support your head. You’re gently kicking your feet in the air behind you, wearing nothing but a t-shirt of Logan’s, some silly graphic socks, panties with little cherries on them, and a bright, bashful smile as Logan attempts to capture your glowing features in a sketch block he’s dedicated to drawings of you.

He wakes up with morning wood.

Logan is no stranger to jerking off with you on his mind, so he spits in his hand and slips it beneath his boxers, stroking himself as he thinks of you. He imagines you on top of him as he jerks his cock, imagines you under him, or with your legs around his head, or you between his knees on the floor. He cums quickly and hard, leaving his boxers wet and sticky.

He goes for a run after he’s dealt with it and picks up an envelope on his way. He’s doubting himself but he knows he has to just do it. He’d doubt himself even more if he pussied out – a grown man who can’t even slide an envelope under someone’s door.

So Logan mans up and, like an idiot, kisses the fucking drawing before he puts it into the envelope. He licks the edges of it to close it and writes your name in the most anonymous handwriting he can muster and adds a little heart.

It’s soo stupid.

He makes sure no one is anywhere near your bedroom, walks up to your door, and slides the envelope underneath. Except he didn’t check if you were in your room. As soon as the envelope disappears beneath your door, he hears a short creak from your bed and your soft footsteps.

He hears the small and adorable noise of curiosity you let out – a confused hm? – and then he quickly and quietly makes his way down the hallway. He hears your voice about ten seconds later, an intrigued hello? as you open the door, but you don’t investigate further, closing the door behind you.

Logan’s heart is beating so fast. He’s never doing this shit again.

He’s antsy all day, waiting for some type of reaction from you. Except you don’t know that the drawing is from him so he’s probably not even getting one, and he can’t conspicuously come to your room the same day you receive an anonymous drawing of yourself.

It’s also when the insecurity settles in. Maybe he should have added a few more lines or started the entire drawing anew. Who does he think he is pretending to be an artist?

He shakes those thoughts off as he starts training with the punching bag in the gym. It’s not something that he necessarily needs to train, but it gets rid of some of that pointless energy. This isn’t him, worried about some lines he drew on a piece of paper – a scrap of a paper, really. Who cares about something like that? Certainly not him.

He sleeps dreamlessly and wakes up the next day disappointed that he didn’t get to dream about being your boyfriend again. God, what are you doing to him? Making him think about being boyfriend and girlfriend. He’s pathetic. You’re a friend and nothing more, and that’s fine. You probably don’t like him like that and he can deal with that.

He’s not even thinking of the drawing anymore, truly, when he walks into the kitchen the next morning. It only comes to mind when he sees you, alone in the kitchen, leaning over the counter to scroll on your phone, your weird green coffee (“it’s Matcha, Logan”) next to you as you stir it mindlessly with a metal straw.

“Hi,” you look up with one of those sweet smiles of yours, but redirect your attention to your phone.

At least you don’t immediately say something like hey, you know that drawing you slid under my door? It was so ugly I threw it away. Since when do you even draw?

Not that he was worried you would or anything. He hasn’t been thinking about it. Obviously. Why would he? And he knows you would never expect that it’s him; that’s the only reason he did it. He never would have given you the drawing if he thought you could have even the slightest inkling that Logan would be someone who draws. But he still wants to know what you think of it.

“You want some toast too?” You ask, putting your phone down and turning to get some bread. He sits down at the other side of the kitchen counter and as his eyes flicker to your green drink (he still doesn’t get it), he sees it.

“Is that–” my drawing, he almost said, “What is that?” He pretends to be confused, drawing his eyebrows together, trying his best to look inquisitive, “No toast by the way, thanks.”

You have one of those clear phone cases, filled with a bunch of tiny pictures and stickers (and is that your credit card?). But wedged in front of all of those is Logan’s drawing.

“Did you draw it?” He asks.

You turn around, giggling, “No, I don’t draw. And anyway, I wouldn’t be drawing pictures of myself. I got it in an envelope under my door yesterday, photocopied it because I was scared it would bend in my phone case. I don’t know who drew it.”

“Secret admirer?”

Smiling, you say, “I don’t know. I won’t get my hopes up. But the person must definitely be fond of me to draw me like that.”

“Like what?” He asks, unsure if he’s about to be offended.

But Logan won’t let you, “What’s stupid?”

You turn towards him with a shy smile, “I’m embarrassed.”

Logan stays silent. He can’t seem too pushy and draw attention to himself, but his silence makes you confess.

Logan makes a noise of satisfaction and smiles, asking you to pass your phone so he can look at it more – pretending it’s his first time seeing it. If you think that way about it, maybe the three more lines he was going to add aren’t that important after all.

The problem is that it makes him want to draw more, his stupid heart melting at your reaction to something he made– no, created.

After a week, he figures he has to give in. Drawing another picture of you is on his mind twenty-four seven.

It doesn’t help that he still catches you staring at the copy of it in your phone case lovingly more than once a day and you’ve put the original drawing in a special little frame on your nightstand. He thinks he’s sappy for drawing it but he doesn’t think the same of you for enjoying the drawing.

This is for you. It’s not about him. He’s not an artist or anything like that, he’s just doing something kind for someone he cares about (which is honestly sappy enough but he tries to ignore that). He’s usually more of a silent carer but maybe that’s why he likes this. He’s not making it a grand gesture, not making it a thing that he’s the one drawing for you. It’s just for you to enjoy.

He’ll just make this second drawing and silently put it in your room, and he’s the last person you’ll suspect.

It takes him an entire month for the next drawing, and it feels more like him that it’s been making him so angry that he couldn’t get it right at first. Maybe he had the wrong picture of artists. They’re always talking about pain, aren’t they, and that’s what he experiences too (over a drawing. Who is he?).

He takes another few days to keep track of your routine, to monitor when you’ll be in your room. He can’t have it be as close as last time.

He ends up doing it in the evening. There’s a time after dinner when most of the team stays together to watch tv, just talk, or play some games. It’s normal for some of you to wander off, come back or stick around a bit longer. It won’t be suspicious if he leaves for a few minutes and comes back.

Logan wants nothing more than to follow you when you say that you’re going to your room for the night; he wants to see your reaction. But he can’t. All he can do is go up to his own bedroom fifteen minutes later, lingering in the hallway longer than he needs to.

Just as he’s about to give up and go to sleep, you walk down the hallway, coming back from the bathroom.

“Logan!” you call all excitedly when you see him, and his heart skips a beat. Do you know the drawing is from him?

“Look,” you take his arm and pull him to your room, “I got another drawing!”

He breathes out in relief; you don’t know it’s from him. He smiles when you hold up the drawing, already framed.

“Were you expecting to get another drawing?” he teases.

“Noo, but the frames came in a pack of two. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

Logan looks at how your eyes sparkle, how proudly you’re showing him this drawing. All the work he put into it was definitely worth it. It’s another picture of your face, this time from a new angle, and with your hair styled differently, curls coiled another way from last time.

Logan clears his throat, remembering to keep up his act. “It looks good.”

“Good?” you take the frame from his hands defensively, “It’s beautiful.”

He chuckles, “Sorry, I don’t know much about this type of thing. It is beautiful though.” He’s looking at you instead of his drawing.

“It is. And you don’t have to know much about art or drawing to see how pretty this is. I still can’t believe someone would take the time to make these for me.”

Logan remains silent instead of saying what he wants to tell you. Of course he would take that time for you – and you don’t even know how much time it really took him. If there’s someone who’s worth it, it’s you.

Seeing your pleased smile at something he made for you, he decides he’s never going to stop drawing you.

He’s on a roll for some time. He’s better at drawing again now that he’s getting in practice, and he makes five drawings of you within the next weeks. Logan watches the collection of them on your nightstand grow fuller, along with your smile that somehow gets bigger every time you tell him about a new drawing.

It’s a wonder you haven’t caught on yet, but you don’t seem particularly interested in snooping around to find out who it is. You respect the person’s privacy, but you’ve confessed to him that you’d still love to know.

“I won’t try to find out who it is. I won’t push it if they don’t want me to know… but, I mean, anyone would want to know, wouldn’t they?”

You’ve adopted the nickname of ‘secret admirer’ for this mysterious ‘they’, after Logan used the term about ten times. You were reluctant at first, because the person isn’t calling themself a secret admirer – you’d just be putting words in their mouth. But after seeing how much more beautiful the drawings get each time, you’ve accepted and admitted that, okay, yes, the person must be an admirer.

Your secret admirer Logan is particularly proud of his latest drawing, excited to bring it up to your room tonight.

But this time he’s sloppy. He’s stayed for a few post-dinner card games with the team, and it’s risky, because you’ve been saying that it’s your last game for the last two rounds. But he also knows that you always say that, and never mean it.

Logan gets up to leave, and he hears Scott convincing you to play just one more round.

It’s stupid, really, risking it like that. Even if he’s gone from your room in time before you come upstairs, you could easily guess that it’s Logan. He’s the first one leaving the round tonight, so your first assumption could be that it was him.

Maybe subconsciously he wants to get caught. He’s seen how you light up at every drawing, and no matter how much you respect your admirer’s anonymity, of course you want to know who’s dedicating so much time and work to drawings of you. Of course it’s crossed your mind that the person isn’t just doing this because they’re a good friend. They’re drawing your face because they think it’s beyond beautiful.

Logan doesn’t really know why he hasn’t told you yet that he likes you. He’s good at flirting, and he’s attractive – he’s not blind. But with you it’s different, there’s a bigger risk, for the both of you. The older he gets, the harder it is to open up to yet another person. You’re friends, and you talk about personal things, but confessing that he’s in love with you is different.

Not to mention this stupid recurring dream he keeps having, in which you find out it’s Logan who’s been drawing you, and suddenly your opinion of the drawings changes. You don’t like him back like that, and suddenly the drawings feel creepy if you think about him staying up late drawing your face.

He rolls his eyes at himself and gets the thought out of his head, taking the small envelope out of the back pocket of his jeans, smoothing his hand over it. He looks around, making sure no one sees him.

Logan bends down to slide the envelope under your door as usual, but one of the corners of the paper catches against the wall, and he quickly opens it to check the drawing isn’t damaged. His heart is beating so fast, he feels stupid.

He can hear footsteps, still far away, but he can hear them. Logan messily licks the edges of the envelope to close it back up, but it’s not sticking. He can’t decide between shoving it under the door like this or leaving now and bringing it back the next day. He can feel his heart hammering against his ribcage now.

Then he hears it. He miscalculated how far the footsteps were.

“Logan?”

He turns around slowly, and it feels like the world has frozen.

You come closer, looking at him and then at the letter that he must’ve dropped. It hasn’t made it under your door yet.

He says something before you can, “I’m delivering for someone else.”

“Who?” you ask, bending down to pick up the envelope. If he wasn’t petrified, he’d enjoy the view of you bent over in front of him.

He breathes. He can’t have anyone taking credit for his work, for his art (you called it that recently, he would never). But his heart is beating so fast he doesn’t know what the fuck to do or say.

This is exactly why he never wanted to do any of this. He’s making a fool out of himself and that doesn’t usually happen, especially not over a piece of paper. Logan is confident, cocky even, he can admit that, and has no idea how to deal with things like being nervous; he never has to. This really isn’t him.

You don’t wait for an answer and look at the envelope. You open it so carefully, gently taking the drawing out with your fingertips. You’re treating it with so much care he immediately feels better. Again, this isn’t for him, it’s for you. (Well, it’s for him too but it’ll take him a while to admit that).

He’s drawn your smile this time. You were happy in most of the drawings before, but he focussed more on the eyes, and your lips only ever tugged up in a slight smile.

This one is a full-toothed grin, mid-laugh.

You two were drinking last weekend. He barely felt it but your tipsy, giggly mood was contagious. He couldn’t imagine himself feeling any other way but blissful when you’re happy around him.

It started when Logan made a casual comment about something silly Scott was wearing that night, and he had you giggling. He wanted to immediately hear that angelic sound again, of course, and so he gave you every joke about your shared friends he could think of – all light-hearted, but he was still glad you two were alone.

You look up at him now, eyes filled with tears.

“You drew this?” you ask.

He nods softly. He can’t say it but he hopes the drawings convey how in love with you he is.

Suddenly, Logan feels like his heart has stopped beating.

You’re kissing him.

You’ve leaped up, wrapped your arms around the back of his neck, and now your lips are on his.

He feels your mouth falter, probably because he’s being a fucking idiot and not kissing you back. Logan places his hands on your waist to pull you further towards him. Then his brain finally catches up and he can do what he’s wanted to for so long.

He takes your chin with two fingers and angles you so you can kiss him easier. He closes his eyes and revels in the feeling of your soft, warm lips against him. You’re soft and warm all over. Your top has slipped up over his fingertips at your sides, and he slides his hands further around your back to support you against him even better.

Logan’s tongue pushes at your lower lip, and you let out the sexiest, tiny moan of surprise as you part your lips for him, granting him access.

His tongue touches the tip of yours and from then on your cravings intensify. You feel your way over his muscular shoulders, his big biceps and over the hard planes of his chest. When you’ve had a good feel there, your hands grip his shirt in desperation and Logan gets even hungrier for you. He gently bites at your lower lip, but then you shriek into his mouth and squirm out of his grasp. He opens his eyes wide.

You grip Logan’s forearm for support when you bend down in a panic, picking up the drawing you just dropped. You let out a big breath of relief when you see it hasn’t been damaged.

“You made me drop it!” You slap a hand to his chest; it doesn’t actually hurt and it’s not meant to, but it leaves a pleasant tingle behind instead.

“I didn’t do anything”, Logan laughs, and you shake your head at him with a smile.

You take him into your room where you make him sit on the bed while you stare at the new drawing in awe. “I didn’t know you draw”, you say without taking your eyes off it.

“No one else knows.”

You pretend to zip your lips, smiling, “It’s our secret.” Logan can tell that you like that. He likes it too. It feels much better to share a secret with you than to be keeping one from you.

“I’ll only draw for you anyway, so there’s no point in telling anyone else.”

“You’re really good. I love the drawings.”

Logan gives a satisfied hum at your words, “You inspired me. Can’t have you walking around all pretty and not expect me to try and recreate it.”

You straddle Logan and hover over his lap to hug him, “They’re the best thing anyone's ever given to me. Do I really look like that?” You say the last question more quietly, and Logan wraps his arms around your sides, careful not to bump your hand that’s still holding the drawing.

“You’re more gorgeous than anything I could ever capture, but I think it comes close. I didn’t change anything about you to make you more beautiful. I couldn’t if I tried. I just tried to draw you as accurately as possible, that’s why it’s so beautiful.”

“I really love it,” you say again, happily staring at the details of the drawing. Hearing you say the word love so much tempts Logan, but he doesn’t want to move too fast. He doesn’t want to overwhelm you. He does, however, want to kiss you again.

Logan carefully takes the framed drawing and puts it on your nightstand. You push your mouth against his before he can initiate the kiss, and he grins against your lips.

Your chest is pressed against Logan’s, and you can feel the rise and fall of his chest when he breathes. You may or may not be pressing your boobs against his body on purpose.

“God, baby, I’ve waited so long for this,” he says, already breathless, as his hands trail down your back, leaving goosebumps behind.

“You’ve waited long?” you raise your eyebrows, grinning, “I’ve wanted to fuck you since the day I met you.”

You see the look in Logan’s eyes changing as he bites his lip, “Who says I didn’t want the same?”

You giggle, “Why did it take us so long?”

Logan chuckles, readjusting you so that you’re even closer to him, “I was too busy to actually talk to you, just been starin’ at you so I could draw you.” His cheeks have the faintest red tint, and you kiss them, hugging him.

You whisper into his ear, “Then it was worth the wait. And anyway, it’s not talking that I’m interested in right now.”

He pulls you back to look into your eyes, then at your lips. “Where do you want me?” he asks. You giggle slightly helplessly; you weren’t entirely prepared to have a man like Logan at your mercy like this tonight.

“You can do whatever you want,” you say softly, kissing him.

Logan’s lips are hungry against yours, strings of spit falling between you two, but he pauses the kiss to lie you on your back. “Wanna eat you out,” he husks, “Been dying to know what you taste like forever, bub. Can I?” He reaches for the hem of your top, and you nod so that he can pull it off you, admiring what’s underneath.

“Sometimes I make myself cum imagining that I’m going down on you,” you confess somewhat shyly, but you figure he’s been so vulnerable for you that you can share a secret too.

Logan smirks, and pulls off his shirt, “Maybe we can make your dream come true then.”

You move to sit up, but he insists on eating you out first. You both take off all your clothes, staring at each other with huge smiles on your faces for a few moments. You’ve never seen Logan this happy.

“Look at you, baby. So pretty,” he leans down to kiss your lips, then down your neck, all the way to your legs. He spreads them, lying down between them as he all but drools at the sight of your wet pussy.

You get nervous all of a sudden. “It’s been a while,” you tell him. He looks up, taking your hand, enveloping it completely in his much bigger one.

“You sure about this? We can wait,” he gently kisses your knuckles, and a warmth spreads in your chest, slowing your heartbeat down a little.

“I’m sure,” you nod, and Logan comes up again to kiss you. The head of his hard cock catches against the space above your clit, and you both look down between your bodies. When Logan looks back up at you, his eyes are desperately begging you. You place your hand on his head, threading your fingers through his hair as he moves down your body.

“Such a pretty fucking pussy,” he mumbles into your thigh, kissing you there. You giggle, getting comfortable, your hand never leaving his hair.

Logan starts eating you out, his tongue gentle but determined against your clit.

“Taste so good, baby. Even better than I imagined.” You hum at Logan’s words, already feeling yourself come undone with his mouth on your wet pussy.

You sink further into the mattress when he starts sucking on your clit, licking into your pussy like a man starved every few moments, and your thighs squeeze around Logan’s head, and it’s even better than in his fantasies.

“Feels really good,” you tell him, pulling on his hair to stop yourself from moving too much, and Logan moans against your skin. Hearing your words motivates him even more, and he pushes two fingers into your wet pussy. He curls his fingers, rubbing up against that spot that makes you see stars.

Your back arches as you cum, Logan’s lips wrapped around your clit as your legs push harder against his head, and all he does is moan, revelling in the feeling.

Logan doesn’t stop licking your pussy until you’re tugging his head away by his hair, and he comes up for air with a grin on his face. You smile back, pulling him up to kiss him. You give yourself only a few seconds of recovery time before you make him sit down. You know you’d never have enough strength to actually make him get into a different position, but he lets you.

You push him onto his back, getting between his legs. You’re blinking up at him all prettily when you ask, “Can I suck your dick? Please?”

Logan huffs to himself because he can’t believe how hot you are, can’t believe that this is really finally happening. He tells you yes – he has no more words to describe how badly he wants this – and he watches you wrap your pretty lips around his cock.

It’s hard to grasp that it’s really you doing this right now – the woman he’s been into for so long. His cock is in your mouth and you look so gorgeous with spit running down from your lips, and all he can think of is all the dirty drawings he can now make of you, if you’ll let him.

He closes his eyes when you take him deeper, enveloping him with your warm, wet mouth. “Good girl,” he whispers absent-mindedly, too gone to say much more.

You’re not using your hands as you suck his cock, your spit trailing down on him, and you’re so eager. But it’s also late, and he sees you getting tired, eyes blinking slower as you pause to catch your breath every few moments. He also sees the determination in your eyes, and the absolute want, but he doesn’t want you to exhaust yourself.

You look so sexy all fucked out, strings of spit connecting your mouth to his cock as you pull away another time, giggling up at him shyly when you realise that he’s noticing you getting tired.

“Just need a second,” you wipe your mouth, out of breath, and it’s not that you’re not incredibly hot like this, but he still wants to fuck you tonight and he’s not sure that will happen if you keep going.

“C’mere, baby,” he says, reaching out his hand.

“Huh?” you ask, taking his hand nevertheless.

“Get back here, baby. I’m gonna fuck you now, alright? Don’t want you tiring yourself out.”

You let him lift you and put you on your back, but you pout, “Wanna taste you.”

Logan grins, “I’ll cum in your mouth, princess. Promise.”

You smile at his answer, satisfied, so you lie back down, pulling your legs up to your chest. His cock looks huge as he jerks himself off between your legs, rubbing the tip against your clit, making you squirm.

“Don’t know if I can take you,” you bite your lip. You’re not entirely sure if you mean it or not. You definitely want to try.

“We’ll make it fit, baby, we’ll make it fit,” Logan assures you, leaning down to press a kiss to your mouth, a mix of your wetness and his precum between your mouths. You feel his cock at your pussy, “You ready?”

“I’m ready,” you nod desperately, letting him push his cock into your pussy. He pauses after a few inches, but you wrap your legs around his waist more tightly, and he goes deeper.

“Y’okay, baby? You can take it, right?”

You nod, unable to form words with your pussy stretched like this, a combination of pleasure and pain between your legs – but it’s infinitely more pleasure.

“That’s right. You’re my good girl, hm?” He kisses along your neck as he bottoms out, and you both moan when he’s got his cock fully stuffed inside you for the first time. He pulls out slightly when you whine at the stretch, but you scratch down his back to get his attention.

“I can take it,” you tell him, and you watch the look in his eyes darken.

He begins to fuck you, the pain subsiding more with every thrust into your wet pussy. You can barely take him, but it feels good. With your slight tiredness, you feel like you’re floating on cloud nine.

You can’t believe that Logan – your super hot friend Logan who you’ve been fantasising about for so long – is fucking you. He not only feels the same way about you, but he’s been your secret admirer this entire time, taking hours and hours out of his day to make you smile. You’re the only one he wants.

And now he’s fucking you, fucking you well, and you feel so warm inside, not just from the sex but you feel warm in your heart, because of Logan’s care.

“You okay?” he asks, stroking a hand down your face when he notices you’re not entirely present. You nod happily, smiling up at him, and you can’t talk because you feel so good.

“Good, that’s good, bub, but let me know if it gets too much,” he says as he starts rubbing your clit, watches you nod while he’s fucking you so well, and he’s so big and so deep inside of you, “Squeezing me so tight, baby, feel so fucking good.”

You cum suddenly, letting the warm pleasure flow through your body as Logan keeps fucking you through it, rubbing your clit in just the right rhythm.

“That’s my girl, taking it so well,” he moans, breaths stuttering. You slump against the pillow after a few moments, with a soft smile on your face, and Logan pulls out.

“Gonna make me cum, baby,” he jerks his cock, and you sit up on your elbows immediately, looking him in the eyes with a smile as you stick out your tongue for him. He promised.

Logan moans when he cums, painting your face in his release, jerking himself off. He holds your head in place with his other hand, aiming for your mouth but you’re making no effort to catch his cum there.

“Such a pretty fucking face, princess, ’m cumming all over it,” he rasps, shooting more ropes of his cum all over your cheeks, jacking off onto your face.

You open your eyes when he’s done and breathing heavily, and you smile up at him. You open your mouth, taking the head of his cock between your lips to suck off the last drops of cum.

“Look at you, baby. Look so fucking pretty with my cum all over your gorgeous face.”

You hum, pulling your mouth off him and licking your lips, tasting his salty release. You brush a finger over your cheek, sucking it into your mouth to taste him more. Logan kisses you then, the flavour of himself mixing between your mouths.

He cleans you up gently, carefully wiping your face with a baby wipe and kissing every inch of your cheeks afterwards. You take his face to kiss him properly, and if you didn’t seem so tired Logan would be ready for round two immediately.

“Next time you could try to actually cum in my mouth,” you tease, making Logan grin.

“Sorry, baby. Got too excited. Couldn’t focus on asking you again if it was okay.” He presses an open-mouthed kiss to your lips.

“It’s okay,” you tell him, “I liked it.”

Logan grins, “Oh I could tell you liked it, baby.” You lightly slap his chest as you giggle, pulling him in for another kiss.

You cuddle for a while, not saying much because you don’t have to. You’ve both waited for this for so long that you’re just enjoying the moment, enjoying that it finally happened.

You slip out of his arms to sit on top of him. You’re in nothing but panties, the blanket bunching around your hips. You lean your hands against his chest as you tell him more about how much the drawings delighted you. And Logan cares, of course he cares to hear that, but he’s also just a man seeing the woman he’s into naked for the first time still.

You become quiet when you realise that he’s not listening, and you giggle, “Distracted?”

Logan grins, “Just a little fucking bit, baby.” His eyes don’t leave your body, and you laugh as you bend down to kiss him. He grabs your ass, kneading the flesh. When you slightly sit up again, your tits are near his face, and he can’t help himself. He cups your breasts, playing with your nipples, making you hum.

“I should draw these,” he looks up at you, “Should draw every perfect fucking inch of you.”

“You wanna?” You adjust how you’re seated in his lap, and you feel that he’s already half hard under you again.

“Maybe after I’ve fucked you again.”

You smile, feeling yourself growing wetter on top of him.

“Tomorrow,” he continues, and your smile drops.

“But you’ve got to get more familiar with the inspiration, right? If you’re going to draw me.”

“That’s true, baby. But I think you’re too tired.”

You smile bashfully, ignoring how your eyelids were drooping shut just a few seconds ago, “Okay, but then I’ll have more energy for tomorrow.”

“That’s my girl,” he smiles, pulling you off him to cuddle you again. He tucks you in and kisses your head.

You turn to your side, taking one of the framed drawings and looking at it for a while.

Logan watches you looking at it, and the sparkle in your eyes never fails to make him feel all warm inside. “Now that you actually know about it, I don’t have to draw you from memory anymore. I can study my muse in peace.”

“Aww, I’m your muse?” you beam.

“Of course you are, princess. You’re the only reason I’m drawing again.”

“I love your drawings so much.”

Logan clears his throat, and looks at you. “Well, I love you. So, I think that went into them.”

You look at him, pouting and then kissing him. “I love you too,” you say into his mouth. He grins against your lips, pulling you closer to kiss you some more. He can barely grasp that you just said that, but he’ll have enough time soon to comprehend how lucky he is.

For now, he takes your hand, and asks, “The question might be redundant now, but do you wanna be mine? Be my girlfriend?”

“I’m already yours.”

Logan grins, takes you in his arms, and you’re still cuddling when you’re both drifting off to a peaceful sleep.

P.S. reblog with a comment and let me know your favourite moment/what you liked to get a drawing from Logan under your door tonight and a facial <33

gorgeous divider by @pommecita

#feedback #marvel #logan howlett #wolverine

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mohntilyet · 2 months ago

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okay this is actually just bias now so before you read what i have to say i did warn you. yes illario would never be able to beat lucanis at being a crow or an assassin but you know what he would beat him at. being a lord of fortune. hold my hand as i take you through my mind palace and introduce to you my ideal post-game vision for illario dellamorte

#ONLY HALF A JOKE. I THINK HE HAS MANY QUALITIES THAT WOULD ENDEAR THE LORDS TO HIM #like literally. finally people who would not give a shit that its lucanis and prefer illario for who he is #'i did try to kill my cousin and nearly caused catastrophe for treviso.' (the lord of fortune twirling their hair) 'and then what'#isabela caused a qunari invasion guys. it just happens sometimes. if he looks good and talks great and enjoys gold and glory. well.#also it would be funny for me if tyche gains a weird respect for him for being surprisingly good at this and lucanis is a little baffled #illario dellamorte #txt #veilguard spoilers #sorry that last post had neurons firing. i also think they fired incorrectly but i was allowed to think for too long #edit: i also like the idea of illario disappearing first (picture the melodramatic note)#('i cant stay here' 'your last act of kindness' 'dont look for me' 'i'm sorry' 'take care of the house for me' etc etc)#so when lucanis shows up in rivain. and illario is already there.#both of them r staring at each other like no fucking way we had the same stupid idea.

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stupid-elf · 8 months ago

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Growing up with strict, neurodivergent parents while neurodivergent yourself will have you as an adult acting like you've recently escaped the feywild. What are the tricky rules? Is everything accounted for? How do I ensure I don't accidentally step over the line into Impoliteness. You know the consequences aren't death and dismemberment but you might look down one day and find you've lost your shadow and all of your friends if you're not careful

#this post motivated by getting frozen yogurt with friends #and they tried to pay for me and I said I thought I was paying for myself #because I didn't know the acceptable amount and couldn't see their cups #so instead of risking having gotten too much and stepping over the invisible boundary of what it was okay to let them pay for #I played it safe and paid for myself #which is sometimes a risky play because it's rude to refuse a gift #but I said I thought I was paying for myself #implying I didn't know it was a gift and therefore am not refusing but rather not in a position to accept #because I'm a scared little child inside who wasn't allowed to get a small but was still hungry after having a baby size #or am I a refugee of the faewilds trying to lawyer my way through all of these rules nobody else talks about lmao #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #fae #fey #feywilds #socially awkward #social rules #politeness #idk how to tag things and I've been here like five years now send help

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kyliafanfiction · 1 year ago

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I’m just gonna reblog this for the late morning/afternoon crowd because I did post this pretty late last night, and I’m very proud of this review, so there.

Contract Bound by Elle Mae

Tl;dr

Contract Bound by Elle Mae is a lesbian vampire x vampire hunter enemies to lovers romance.

It is an good read, though obviously if one isn't interested in a dark, toxic - to varying degrees - f/f romance involving vampires, it may not be for you.

Personally? I very much enjoyed it, and while I have too many books on my too read-pile to spend the money on the sequel now, I will almost certainly be getting the sequel (Lost Clause) sooner or later. Whether or not you will like it depends on you. Perhaps the longer review below the readmore will help you decide. (see the bottom of the post for a non-exhaustive list of links on where to get it, as well as details on potential triggers the story contains)

The Premise

The book centers on two characters - Silva, a Hunter for The Order, which is the organization that polices vampires and hunts ones that break the law. They also can be contracted by vampires (law-abiding ones) to protect them against other vampires, or 'Rebels' (humans that want to kill all vampires, even ones that don't kill or who can't be proven to have broken the laws) Her parents were hunters, and she came home one day to find them killed by vampires. (This is all shown in the prologue). She signs up with the Order, and devotes her life to killing vampires. She hates vampires.

The other character is Keir, the heir to the most powerful vampire clan in the world, or so we are told, and a child who acts out to piss off her father. She is due to inherit the clan soon, due to laws imposed by the order that put limits on how long clan heads may remain clan heads. her father, Raphael, is not happy about it, and does everything he can to try and control and restrict her, including contracting with the Order to get her a bodyguard/babysitter to keep her from going out to clubs, picking up girls, seducing them, drinking from them, taking them home, fucking them, wash rinse repeat. Keir, not wanting a bodyguard/babysitter, has gone out of her way to seduce, tempt or otherwise convince every hunter she's gotten assigned to her to break the contract or the rules hunters must abide by. As the back of the book says "whether it was sex, money or power, none of them could resist the temptation."

Obviously, you can see where this is going - the Order sends Silva to be the latest guard, trusting in the fact that she hates vampires so much, and the fact that if she completes the contract her entire debt to the order will be paid off (more on that later) to make sure she stays in line. it's only a few months, and then Keir will be clan head after the power transfer.

And of course, Keir immediately sets out to seduce Silva, only to find out that it isn't quite as simple as she thought it would be - and then, as tensions between them rise, and things happen, they're both faced with a reality they quickly want to deny, each for their own reasons.

It is, about what you'd expect - mostly. In terms of basic tropes and premises, it is an enemies to lovers story involving a vampire and a vampire hunter. It manages to be more than just the tropes, but if you don't like the tropes, you won't like the book.

I will warn that the ending is far, far from happy - it isn't unhappy, this story is not a Dead Lesbian Trope story, but bear that in mind. If you want your queer, toxic vampire drama to end on a fairly positive note, this book is not for you. Admittedly, I do hold out hope that the sequel will provide at least a bittersweet ending, but I was content with the ending for this book, knowing a sequel existed.

The Pros

The two characters have strong voices, and you will find yourself enjoying their POVs, and rooting for their romance as it starts to take hold. It has just the right notes of spiciness in all the right places.

It is indeed very hot, and the humor, dark though it often is, hits quite well. It has a fairly engaging cast of secondary characters operating around the main couple, and it presents Silvia with several moral challenges about her role as a Hunter and the Order, and equally, forces Keir to consider things in ways she never had before. Keir finds herself quickly fascinated by this hunter she can't break, who so clearly wants her, and of course, once Silvia starts to give in, she has that hatred for Keir mixed with the fact she hates herself for not hating Keir as much as she should.

The plot manages to have a number of satisfying twists, that while I didn't see coming - or at least not in the way they did, in some cases - they feel earned, rather than unearned or out of nowhere.

It is exactly what I was looking for involving lesbians, vampires, and enemies to lovers. It hit all the right notes in every way - I've said it several times, but if you are looking for what this story is, then it is very good, and you likely will enjoy it.

The ending was intensely emotionally satisfying despite being not happy. In a 'wreck the reader' sort of way.

The Neutral

The story lacks a strong sense of place, at least to me - the action mostly happens in and around Seattle, by all accounts, but for all that that is relevant, the story could be happening anywhere in America. There's tantalizing hints as to why so many vampires are in America, including the leader of the most powerful clan, a vampire who has been around for many centuries (or more, his exact age is never provided), but they are not really followed up on. (More on this later) This isn't necessarily bad, but it is worth noting.

The story treats vampirism as more an infection than a supernatural state happening to dead bodies, although one does have to die first to be a vampire, and being turned into a vampire is a way to not die if you are dying from some sort of injury. This - the vampirism being an infection rather than supernatural - is generally not a version of the vampire as a concept I personally care for, but that's a question of personal taste rather than a knock against the book.

In connection with the above, it also has vampires as something that can be born - two vampires can have a vampire kid, a vampire and a human can have a vampire kid - not a dhampir, or anything like that, an actual vampire (though half-human vampires need sleep and food, but they still need blood and are very much considered vampires in-universe). Again, this isn't something I really care for, but again, it's a question of personal taste.

The Cons

The biggest con, and arguably this is subjective, but it bugged me enough that I'm going to put it here, is the thin worldbuilding. We are given hints, about the emergency of vampires being this big deal that created mass chaos until the Order was established, but the details are left vague, at best, and it kept bothering me.

The Order appears to be a private organization, but also a government one, filling both functions, but none of this is laid out.

The reasons for why vampire clans work the way they do, why all vampires are largely so much in awe of Raphael (Keir's father) and his clan are implied, and not well explored.

The Order is presented as an intensely controlling, dickish organization that uses its Hunters and spits them back out - which is not exactly an uncommon trope, and some of it makes sense in-universe, but other parts - very much do not. Their controlling, jerk behavior to their own people, let alone their hilarious disregard for civilian casualties (and their apparent license to commit them) as well as some of their more absurd or draconian rules, seems to be there mainly to create conflict for Silva, but the problem is, these rules and behaviors make the Order's job much harder, to a rather nonsensical degree, as far as I can tell. Yes, people and institutions can be jerks, massive, giant jerks, but when that jerkishness undermines their ability to fulfill their function, especially in fiction, a little more explanation is needed.

Another issue is that the Order apparently keeps all it's hunters in debt, like indentured servants, as a means of controlling them. Being trained as a hunter costs money as do your room and board at Hunter HQ, which is still cheaper than living outside of it. They provide some meals free, but only two a day. And the only way to get money to pay off your debt is working missions to kill vampires, or trying to find other ways to make money (the main character alludes to a period early on in her career where she and her friends started doing chores for a high-ranking member of the Order). Since it seems that many Hunters join the Order because of personal tragedy at the hands of vampires, it seems very odd that this would be necessary. Though the Order is so cruel and controlling that even though Silva hates vampires, she does leap at the chance to have her debt covered entirely. In terms of the story, the debt does seem to serve as a necessary plot device to get Silvia to take the mission and then stay long enough for the 'to lovers' part to start to kick in, but it feels like a choice with less implications for the larger worldbuilding would have been better and done the job just as well. Because again, the seeming incoherence of it all bugged me throughout the book, even as I enjoyed it.

Which is really my issue with the worldbuilding in general - it is very thin, and yet keeps hinting at and teasing at implications. I don't know if the author intends to provide answers in the sequel, or if there never will be much followup. I didn't pick up the book with worldbuilding as a major draw, so the lack of it isn't a major detraction (though I am talking about it at length here, it didn't stop me from enjoying the book at all, it's just takes more words to say and I am, by nature, not prone to gushing in great detail about what I like about something), but it did bug me throughout the story.

I don't mind a story not doing a lot of worldbuilding, but when a story hints at greater worldbuilding just beyond the scope of the story, and doesn't follow through, that does bother me. If the author wanted to just focus on the romance over the worldbuilding, then I think they shouldn't have provided so many tantalizing hints and teases and implications, and then not followed up on them to any significant degree, if at all.

Conclusion

Though the thin worldbuilding was a distraction and a negative, overall, the story is excellent at being what it sets out to be, and for that, I did love it. I wanted an f/f vampire x vampire hunter dark romance, and I got that in spades, and a few more things I didn't expect.

But, if you are the kind of reader that needs the worldbuilding to hang together or be good, or seeks out worldbuilding in your vampire stories, this may not be it for you.

Trigger Warnings For The Story

The book actually does have some surprisingly good trigger warnings before you actually get to the story, in the first few pages. But of course, you have to buy the book first to see those. From the Author's website, we have this accurate list of warnings

The themes can include but are not limited to; sexual assault mention, death, gore, parental abuse, nonconsensual biting, off and slight on page SA, trafficking mention, dubious consent, blood play, biting, self harm, tourture, violence.

Of those, I think bloodplay, gore, death and the two biting ones should be pretty obvious - it's a vampire story. Still, better to list them. Of the rest, dubious consent, violence and torture were the ones that really stood out to me as worth drawing attention to. If any of those are significant issues for you, you may want to be careful about the book - that doesn't mean don't buy it or read it if it is otherwise interesting, obviously how or if you engage with what squicks or triggers you is up to you, but always keep that in mind.

How To Get

Full disclosure, there are all on US versions of these websites, I don't know availability outside the US or prices or anything like that, but one would assume the ebook is available through amazon in other countries if nothing else. In principle some of these options should also be available in other countries, but in practice, I don't know. I apologize for my US centrism.

If you want an ebook copy, there appears to be only one way to get it, Amazon. On principle, I'm not going to provide a link to Amazon, but googling 'Contract Bound by Elle Mae' should turn up the amazon page in the first few results. The price there is $4.99.

It appears to be the case, but I am not 100% sure, so please, be careful, that you may be able to get an ebook copy of this book and the author's other books through her Patreon. But like I said, I'm not sure.

You can order a physical copy online, but is of course substantively more expensive. Through Amazon it is $15.99, through Barnes & Noble's website it is $16.99, and on Books A Million it is also $16.99, though it appears shipping is significantly more expensive through them. I think the best option would be Bookshop.org, as buying through them does support independent bookstores (affiliated independent bookstores get a small portion of all sales that aren't done through a specific store's affiliate link. You can also choose to use a specific store's affiliate link to search for the book and then buy it for them to get more directly), but it is the most expensive option, running at $19.54

You may be able to request that your local library buy it, if they haven't already gotten it

Depending on if you have a local independent bookstore or another bookstore that is willing to do special orders to get a book delivered to the store and then you come pick them up (I believe Books A Million Does This), you may be able to request they order it. Procedures for this can be simple or complex. Some bookstores may not want to do this, or may charge you more than it would cost online, as the cost to bookstores through Ingram (one of the main channels for small bookstores to get books) is fairly high relative to the price it costs through larger retailers. If you have more questions, you can ask me, and I'll try to elaborate further.

I don't know of any other ways to obtain the book at this time, but if anyone else does know of others, or has specific details on how one can get it in other countries, please let me know and I'll try to add them to this post or in a reblog.

If you do get the book, I hope you enjoy it!

#shameless self-promotion #Sometimes I'm allowed to like what I post #also this book is good and more people who like these tropes should read it

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