#We know Ben vapes

[silverthelovebug]

Brooklyn and Ben definitely convinced Yaz to start smoking with them. Brooklyn pulls Yaz aside and is like “Bro. I think you would benefit from a bit of weed”. and Yaz is mad sus. she couldn't smoke in hs bc of track and just never got into it. but Brooklyn has her hit a joint and Yaz is like “Wow… I love… not being anxious for like five seconds ….”

(Sammy does the minimum dosage on edibles)

[jellybeanium124]

TUA 4x01 reaction

viktor hargreeves terrible immature bf 😂 lmaooo. on a more serious note he got T!! well obv elliot got T irl but like that makes it so he got T in the show too. good for him

of course the kid is named grace. mommy's boy to the end.

oh fuck he labeled the radio with his boss berating him dad 😂 😭 oh baby

BEN WAS IN JAIL!?!?!? LIKE FUCKING LEONARD??? bruh

LUTHER IS PICKING BEN UP AND IS ALL WAVY AND SMILEY ABOUT IT!!! he's taking ben right to grace's birthday lololol

FIVE IS A CIA AGENT??? HE'S A FED NOW???

oh he is so a double agent. please.

the feds seized ben's apartment?? so he's a federal criminal??

oh gd allison's vaping now?? not even a sexy classical cig??? vapes shouldn't exist in tua world. like cell phones

IT'S WEED!!!!! 3?? more like 420

I wonder why viktor said "I'd really like to see you try" to that guy who wanted to get him in the van. did he get himself some martial arts training like I predicted lol?

why does diego know so much about piñatas

oh man the mansion…

also it's super fucked luther can't leave :(

COMIC EIFFEL TOWER REFERENCE LET'S GOO!!

ben and diego's dynamic is killing me 😂 "how do we know that's not a jar of glow stick juice?" "why don't you take a sip of it, tough guy?" "…I will if you will"

klaus not wanting his powers back makes sense but viktor? idk. I mean he was a little torn up about being dangerous once upon a time but he's kinda past that

oh my gd ben's literally drugging them wtf man bruh you can't do that

[solar-halos]

i finished the umbrella academy s4. i am not amused. here are my thoughts (looong post incoming)

1. i don’t remember diego being so fucking annoying. actually that’s a lie he’s always been annoying but since he was hot i let it slide but now that he’s not treating lila right (how do u fumble a baddie THAT HARD) i think he should participate in the shut the fuck up challenge

2. “their uncle will pick them up” HUH? like obviously this timeline is different but you’re telling me lila has uncles (and parents! or someone! she was talking to some elderly couple before the party!). what does that mean for the others… were their mothers still killed in this timeline or did klaus live out his little amish dream, even if he wasn’t around to experience it? ykwim? like did they show up to this timeline and someone was like “omg where did u wander off to? i was looking all over for u!” and then it turns out it’s their sibling/uncle/whatever in that timeline and they just have to be like ah yes. i surely do know who u are

3. what they did to lila and diego was criminal!!! “she said she couldn’t get pregnant while breast feeding. but she could” dramatic ass reveal for no fucking reason. like get over yourself diego

4. ok i know they prob couldn’t get rays actor to come back but what the fuck do u mean he walked out. and how can allison afford that nice house when all she’s doing is being in commercials nobody wants. our girl has a BEAMER. also i thought they weren’t supposed to have phones or anything like that so why does allison have a vape lollll. not complaining bc that scene was funny to me but why and how

5. ughhh they were tryna set up lila and five SO BAD in the beginning. and even then they still gave off intense sibling vibes

6. ok maybe im just too american but the gun imagery was kinda not it for me. like idk i think the bit with santa claus coming out shooting at everything was supposed to be funny but idkk i think im just too sensitive bc i was like mkkk whatever not funny. also i know luther has super strength but even in s1 he still got majorly injured when that chandelier fell on him but now he’s fucking indestructible apparently?? like getting shot at and stuff?? what???

7. ok but that grandma loading her old timey gun while she turned to the siblings like O.O was funny i’ll give them that

8. speaking of guns wtf siblings are killing EVERYONE. like ik they started the apocalypse and everything but idek just the way they did it was so weird. like less detached/guilty and more like… triumphant? satisfied? idk but it had a different tone than even s3, i remember in s2 it was such an intense ordeal when allison made those two european brothers kill each other but this time they straight up mass murdered a bunch of ppl in a small town and were like B). like ok. like allsion mutilated that guy in front of her DAUGHTER and it was just chill. major tonal shift

9. “you just had to one up me” 1) you just killed a bunch of ppl diego!! 2) that is NOT the lila and diego i know. the real lila and diego would have started making out nasty style the moment lila killed that guy w her laser eyes. also wtf were the point of the laser eyes. she used them like twice and then that was it

10. with that being said all that affair stuff and recovery and addiction and relapse was getting so heavy. which ik is the point and the umbrella academy has always been heavy but like holy shit u GOTTA pick a struggle. is lila gonna groom five or is klaus gonna give claire trauma cos u can’t have both

11. speaking of claire… “would it help to remind u that we were just as shitty at her age” no u fucking weren’t. u could have breathed at ur british alien father wrong and he would have made u do drills until u puked. don’t play rn

12. why did they not trust the audience to pick up on the fact ben spiked their drinks. like we did not need a full on FLASHBACK. or like to be fully immersed in that scene, a tiny little flashback would have done

13. ok but why is this season so scary. like that train station made me paranoid

14. i will never forgive them for what they did to my girl lila. she used to serve CUNT

15. that british lady alien annoyed the fuck outta me

16. WHERE was pogo. and grace. they needed to find a way to bring them back. maybe they could have transported to a universe where the apocalypse happened and now the world was getting ruled by a planet of [gunshots]

17. why the fuck was diego acting like jennifer and ben weren’t linked in some way when all of s3 they alluded to the jennifer incident every other scene. i get it was supppsed to be so obvious even to someone who has ONLY watched s4 that jennifer and ben were linked so it was just a case of diego being stupid BUT that doesn’t work when it’s already been established that they all know jennifer played a part in ben’s death. hence calling it the Jennifer Incident

18. “they tried to address that in later scenes” they failed. they didn’t know how ben died, fine. but they knew jennifer had something to do w it. i’m tired of scenes that poke fun at diego for being stupid. he’s not stupid—he’s cocky

19. okay no but this season was SO gory. like. whatever they have guns this is a revolution but the guts? the intestines?? they wanted to be stranger things sooo bad

20. no but we need to talk about that. the monster thingie at the end was so stranger things and the guns and the military and everything it was like we were back in s3 (or whenever we met the russians)

21. LOL but that scene where diego finds out about five and lila was lowkey funny. this season was so meta in general

22. speaking of the holidays… i sure did love watching everyone sing christmas carols and walk around in the snow when it was hot asf in real time

23. i do like how many parallels there were to s1. like w viktor and reggie, it was very viktor and leonard in s1. and klaus getting kidnapped. although i was kinda tired of klaus getting abducted and his siblings not giving a fuck. i thought there was supposed to be growth there

24. okayyy but ben and jennifer were cute SORRY. “let’s get married” that would have worked on me. however being rude to me while i was at work WOULDNT have worked on me so maybe yall are right maybe we didn’t need a love interest this season

25. i did NOT expect them to actually drag out lila and five’s love story. other than the age gap (no matter how ur looking at it) you already knew it was gonna be bad as soon as they had their first kiss. i hate those multiple little open mouthed kisses that are literally just ALL lip and spit like that’s fucking gross if ur gonna stick ur tongue in my mouth u better do it by the third little :O we got going on there. and then five was giving boy. like literal boy. and lila is a literal goddess but a goddess that’s well into her 20s and the contrast was so sharp it rlly was giving mom and her caucasian child. i mean that bit about lila viewing it as survival vs five actually clinging onto it showed their different levels of maturity, but since it’s never specified if five is still a 50 year old man or just aging normally, his reaction rlly was such a teenage boy thing. “i’m gonna kill him” man shut the fuck up

26. ok no bc we need to talk about this. i think fives actor is my age—maybe even a little bit older—but i don’t see how anyone over the age of 18 is supposed to find him attractive. like idk it’s weird in the show but even creepier irl cos lila’s actor had to have known him when he was still a minor. why did anyone at the umbrella academy think we wanted this

27. anyway not to make this about myself but when i was writing the odesta longfic there were a lot of lore inconsistencies as we kept going bc i forgot some of the details and was too lazy to go back and read it sometimes, and i think that’s what happened this season. the most notable detail is when klaus covered his ears while everyone was shooting at each other. i was expecting some sort of vietnam flashback but like no. he was just there being normal about it, all things considered

28. “ex-squeeze me?” it wasn’t funny when klaus said it in s1. and it wasn’t funny here

29. alright i think that’s really all i wanted to say about the season tbh… like idk diego and lila starting a family made sense i guess and i know they were falling out of love (even tho they would never do that…) but i didn’t rlly feel any of the love w the kids. like even when lila stepped off the train at the last min and her daughter was banging at the glass it looked more like she was like “oh no :(“ and then just started poking at the glass. i don’t even think it matters that she didn’t fully know what was going on—if you’re a child and ur mom steps away in an unfamiliar situation, you’re gonna start to freak. especially w everything else that was going on

30. ok this is such a small thing to harp on but they abused the fuck outta that time skip font. like i don’t think they ever used it that much before now

31. now let’s get into the ending. this is how i would fix it:

we can keep jennifer. whatever. that thing they added at the very last second about her having a particle that causes the end of the world was… whatever. like i get it. they needed a way to explain the end of the world and that was the thing they used and even if it was very late to introduce such a (admittedly confusing) bombshell, at least it fits in with what we already know about this universe’s rules. magic and particles and marigold and whatever. jennifer is fine.

tbh when jennifer started feeling sick i was honestly thinking that they were gonna go the surprise pregnancy route even though they weren’t even fuckinf hinting at that i just have no media literacy. i wouldn’t have minded that tbh, like the monster transformation made more sense but imagine if we did a twilight ripoff for a second, except that jennifer and ben were both equally protective of the killer baby growing outside of jennifer’s womb (or in her womb… whatever. point is there’s a baby). i don’t think this is a good idea—if anything i think this is a shit idea. but something that’s always been so prominent in tua are the moral implications of what they’re doing, like with everyone wanting to kill harlan in s3 instead of letting the entire world die, and with everything that happened with viktor in s1. there was the whole “i can’t kill my brother” bit, sure, but everyone kinda didn’t rlly seem too enthusiastic about it.

actually the baby addition is actually a shit idea. i’m just keeping that part of the rant in bc we need SOME sort of moral dilemma that isn’t just viktor arguing w hargreeves and then his siblings dropping in later with opinions that don’t even seem that strong. everyone needs to have a strong opinion on SOME sort of moral issue that we wanna introduce—that, in a perfect world, we’d be building up to throughout the season—and then yeah whatever there can be an epic fight scene

i don’t watch/read a lot of time travel stuff, but from what i gathered, the timeline can never be restored once it’s fucked with. there has to be consequences, like with any story. and tua did address that—they tried restoring the timeline thousands of times—but i think they shot themselves in the foot there. time travel with a (somewhat) happy ending is possible—there just has to be something to lose, and it has to be something that isn’t nonnegotiable. claire was nonnegotiable, which is why i think they stayed in s3’s timeline for as long as they did

point is, i think they should have gone back to 2019. i mean i don’t think anyone really wanted them to die. i made a joke in s3’s rant that i would just give up, but lucky for me, i am not a fictional character in tua, so the fact they just die in the last five mins and we’re supposed to be ok w that makes the last three seasons pointless. like, actually pointless. what was the message here? why is the ending of the show painted as some sort of utopia just bc we got rid of the siblings? and why is five okay with that? i think him being on board w dying could have been an interesting route to take if they showed his relationship w his siblings consistently deteriorating (both on screen AND off screen) but they only rlly managed to do that with diego, and it was for something fucking stupid

ANYWAY. bring those fools back to 2019, but don’t make them totally happy. just give them something that makes them all just stay put, like how allison has claire (doesn’t matter which timeline. it could be from the fucked up timeline. i don’t think the cleanse would happen bc of that bc claire is only one person and not an entire fucking organization like tua or an assassination like jfk. so hell. might as well throw harlan and sissy in there for viktor. that makes lila and diego’s motivation really easy for staying put, cos then they have their kids. klaus is klaus and no offense to him but i think hes just gonna roll w the cards he’s dealt without trying to fight back, for better or for worse. then ben can have jennifer and since they love each other idk they just stick around. then five’s motivation for staying is that his family is alive and none of them want to leave and that’s good enough for him bc that’s why he time traveled in the first place

again… i don’t think what i came up with is any good. i just think it’s better than them all dying at the last fuckin second. i think this show relied on a lot of haha random xd humor at the beginning and they tried to keep that intact here but everything got so serious that i think them all dying rlly did seem like the only way out but.. it’s not. they could go back to the way things are as long as there were consequences. it would suck, and none of them would be as happy as they could be, but they know that’s as happy as they’re gonna get, so whatever. like, if we were gonna take the suicide route, we might as well gone the time loop route and gone back from the very beginning when five blinks back to 2019. i think that rly would have driven home the “this all would have happened anyway” point way better than them just being like guess ill die :) bc ughhh. no they wouldn’t. also they wouldn’t let lila leave bc she still had marigold in her but… what about her and diego’s kids?? they’re half marigold, and claire is a quarter, so… what’s up with that?

[wiff-waff]

Another new follower. Y elo.

This is supposed to be a blog about boating but as we aren't doing any at this present time posts are few and far between. But Nigel the boatyard manager came a calling to inform us that hopefully they will start our repairs by the end of this very week and that is the best news we've had in donkeys years and has lifted my sombre mood immeasurably.

He reckons said repairs will take 3 long weeks and as we will have no electric or water we have to move off the boat for that time which means basically that we will be homeless.

We have a plan. For the first week we are going to David's folks to decorate the dinning room, we could stay longer but tbh that isn't an option because we'd probably die of boredom. We toyed with the idea of jumping on a plane and laying on a sun-drenched beach for the duration but we have Ben to consider so after much thought and deliberation we've decided to buy a tent and go off camping in sun-drenched north Wales for the fortnight.

Shell Island here we come. Exciting or what!!

I am now smoke-free for 29 days and am well chuffed with my endeavours even though I'm vaping like a bastard. Consequently all I do is eat and eat and then eat some more and for the first time in my life I am starting to put on weight which isn't a bad thing because there is more fat on a chip. So in a bid to become more healthy and stop this sorry body turning into a mass of lard for the last 2 weeks I've been taking myself off to the local pool in Lichfield.

He swims like a fish. Not. I know I will never be a muscle Mary but I'm making an effort, I enjoy the exercise and it's all good fun. I considered taking up running but the towpath is too muddy and I run like a girlie, it's not happening.

Also to beat the boredom whilst waiting for the repairs to commence I've painted a table and planted all my seedlings out on the roof. All we need now is some bastard sunshine and they just might grow and prosper. I wish!!

[a-nice-egg-offering]

Found out one of my best friends wrote Ben 10 smut at some point and it’s just been out there on ao3 this whole time ???? He just became so much cooler. It was so funny we were out with his gf without him and she was like ugh L wrote a fanfic on ao3 and he won’t tell me what it was, then she went outside for a vape and our friend who has known L the longest called him and was like “look. I’m going to need the link to this fanfic” and L was like ffs how do u know about it now, it was Ben 10 and it was smut I’m not finding it for you” and me and the friend that called him just looked at each other and immediately ran outside screaming “IT WAS BEN TEN SMUT” L is a nerd so the fact he had written a fanfic was surprising only bc I don’t know any cis men that read let alone write fanfic but I literally could have had a thousand guesses on what fandom it involved and I would never ever have landed on Ben 10 smut wtf😭 I love him.

[krillest1]

Week 8: Zombies and Cannibals

ALPHA It's Halloween, a day I enjoy quite a bit. This week was, as per usual, a bit of a roller-coaster. I have found myself falling into old (bad? I'm trying not to moralize) habits. Generally, I find myself caught up in an economy of pleasure. I want to feel good in specific ways, even though I know this is uninteresting. The first example that comes to mind (and one that is more or less safe for posting...) is that I have had a couple of using dreams recently. In one I was using adderall and smoking a cigarette. In the other, I was vaping. I am craving nicotine, the stupidest of pleasures, and I can't stop. I've also been engaging more in daydreams etc. about falling in love, which is a desire and way of taking myself up that I'm trying to distance myself from. The fear and despair actually chasing these things causes me is crushing, so I don't see the point of daydreaming about them. I am trying to become something not quite human, grateful in its unknowing. We shall see. There's a lot of good that happened this week. My job is drawing to a close, I lined another job up, and I consumed all sorts of things. I am breaking Aristotle up with some Chesterton, but the pop-religious stuff is weird. I also, to orient myself towards the theme this week, watched "Night of the Living Dead" and "Cannibal Holocaust" this week. In honor of Halloween I thought I'd read these two together. Before jumping in, a note on 'Cannibal Holocaust'; this is not a fun movie. There's some pretty explicit rape scenes, actual killing of animals, and a spectacle-ness that's pretty rough. Still, it's an interesting movie, a cannibal movie par-excellence, and a bit of a cult classic. Maybe I spend too much time focusing on the ugly parts of life, but that 'Cannibal Holocaust' can and does exist makes it worth interpreting, in my opinion. Right. Without further ado:

RACE Race is a theme in both NOTLD and CH. The protagonist of NOTLD is a black man, who is [SPOILERS] ultimately killed by a militia after surviving the titular night of the living dead. CH, on the other hand, sets up a racial encounter with the other. The tribe(s) encountered throughout the movie are othered in all sorts of ways, and there's a sort of horror in the encounter. To flesh (har) things out a little further: NOTLD's themes are racial in their absence. The topsy-turvy night creates a sort of politics of necessity, in which debates (like the importance of the cellar as opposed to the first floor) take precedence over racial identity. I think reading NOTLD as political (not in message, but in structure) is really interesting. In one way, it can be read as a sort of Hobbesian will-as-strength thing. There's a scramble over a gun, Ben (the protagonist) punches people in the face all the time, and there are all sorts of self-interested decisions that get made. The end of the movie complicates this reading. Politics becomes not a banding together, but an impersonal assemblage. Ben is unceremoniously shot in the head, and the militia-machine keeps on marching and burning. What is politics, in NOTLD then? I'm not sure. I think it takes a sort of individualized approach, deconstructs the non-individualized identities of each character (e.g. race), then shows politics/the machine consumes us all in the end. Cannibal Holocaust, unlike NOTLD, has a journey out (not a drawing in). The racial themes are interesting, however, in that there are two encounters with the 'other', one of which is successful and one of which is not. The anthropologist in the movie strips down and experiences a sort of edenic moment with a bunch of naked natives, and is lead to the truth/acceptance through this movement. He also, incidentally, uses the tribes 'primitive' approach as a chance for power. The anthropologist uses a recording device to convince the natives he's a god. The second (first) group, on the other hand, encounters the other as something to be controlled. Maybe race is too broad a concept to use here, but they exploit the other as thing, not person. There are a couple of similarities between these two movies that I find very interesting. The first is that the "other", in both cases, is not something that can be reasoned with. Each movie has a different take on this, but I think both are responding to certain fears/ideas that are tied to race in this way. Whether it's a zombie or a cannibal, the main characters are met with an unthinking thing. Both movies also have a sort of Hobbes/survival of the fittest approach that ends up being deconstructed or called into question. Each project falls apart when placed into the context of 'society' as it actually exists. I like this failure, and I think it raises interesting questions about our representations of society etc.

FLESH The approach to race is not the only similarity between NOTLD and CH, though. There is also a shared fear/revulsion of flesh in both movies. This is unsurprising, as both zombies and cannibals eat their victims. The horror at this fact, and the focus on it, draw these two films together. There is a particularly striking scene in NOTLD, for example, where a couple gets caught in a fireball and partially cooked. The zombies then feast on the bodies. There's a nice montage of zombies playing with intestines, eating meat off of the bone, and distributing meat. There's a couple of scenes in CH that are similar. A group of cannibals, cut up by quick cuts or shaky cam, cut a body apart, split it between themselves, and consume it. I'm sure there are some interesting metaphors about consumption and movie-consumption. going on here, but I'm interested in the question of flesh-as-flesh. Flesh-as-flesh, i.e. as that pink thing we all become (are?) is really striking in both of these movies. My experience of both is discomfort. I hate (and love) body horror, so seeing flesh as something fragile is upsetting. I think there's a sort of politics going on here as well i.e. there is no story that the body is a part of, ultimately. It's not just that our culture is directed towards death; it's that, in the face of death, we become a 'thing.' We become, or recognize, our fleshiness. CH is particularly interesting here, as the tribes encountered in the movie have (what appears to be) a pretty interesting culture/way of marking bodies that stands over-and-against the American's approach to bodies-as-thing. Even in sex, the Americans have no larger cultural reference. In NOTLD, on the other hand, the politics of the time (both in the larger culture and in the movie itself) are ultimately subsumed by flesh-as-flesh. I think that both movies require a sort of post-modern approach to self, in that there is no reference to anything other than body, ultimately.

MEDIA Finally (don't worry, I'm almost done) both of these movies are about Media in weird ways. CH is easier to interpret here, as it's found footage through and through. The question of how to present this footage, of what making footage means etc., all get raised. NOTLD, on the other hand, makes use of news reports and radio bulletins throughout the movie. I think the (probably true but more boring) read here is that framing things through media is a nice strategy for low-budget movies. The camera is accounted for, the inability to capture or explain everything becomes an artistic choice, and there can be a lot of exposition that feels semi-justified. As an aside, there is a way in which a lot of media today is 'found-footage', or something similar. We purposefully construct things all the time, and we are aware of them as constructed/presented. I don't think this captures all that goes into social media etc., but I like the contraposition with found footage. The alternate (though not contradictory) explanation is that both of these movies chose media as a theme purposefully. If that's the case, what theme would they share/be talking about? I think, again without justification, that both movies draw attention to media because the zombie and the cannibal are both represented things; they are encountered, which means they call our assumptions into question. Using media as a counterpoint and means to navigate those assumptions makes sense, and makes for an interesting movie. To illustrate a little further, consider a scene from a zombie movie not about media: World War Z. In this movie, there's a scene in Israel (already, kind of interesting) in which the Arabs are welcomed in with open arms (see, Israel is an inherently moral force), but because these Arabs are stupid and bad probably, they start making noise that draws the Zombies in to Israel. Israel is ultimately overrun. These zombies are not used to call our representations/approaches into question. They serve a dual function e.g. show that Israel is good but also justified in its cruelty/suspicion. Without a foil of normalcy/representation (i.e. the media) there's no interesting deconstruction or theme.

OMEGA Again, nothing new to close. I should have been more careful here. I really love movies though, and I thought interpreting these two together would be interesting. If I had more time/more care I would have tried to abstract 'the zombie' and 'the cannibal', and compared the two. As mentioned above, I have fallen back into some bad habits etc. recently. This week, I'd like to have more faith in the approach I've been cultivating i.e. interesting gratitude. I would like to read more, and watch less, and be funny and interesting. I am getting lonelier, and that's scary. I've been spending time with family, but that starts to feel a bit pathetic at a certain point. There's a lot of life, and I've got nothing going on. Still, there's a lot to be grateful for. Things remain so complex and interesting that I can't be mad all the time. Love ya, have a good Halloween, eat some goodies for me :)

[bllsbailey]

HOT TAKES: Hilarity Ensues When Dodger Blue Meets MAGA Red Hat

Welp, it was inevitable. California conservatives and MAGA supporters are becoming emboldened, flying Trump flags and <*clutch the pearls*> wearing Red MAGA hats in public. But to wear one on the first night of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees—that is beyond the pale.

This woman was spotted sitting behind home plate, and she had the unmitigated GALL to wear her MAGA hat to the game. Where does she think she is, Georgia?! 

Citizen Free Press spotted her first:

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) October 26, 2024

One TV producer called it out, and predicted a trend. He's a little late to the party.

— Bradford Broyles 🌴🐊🇺🇸 (@BradfordBroyles) October 26, 2024

Of course, left-leaning Dodger fans are being triggered, and some are losing their minds. Many took to X to post their displeasure, even tagging Magic Johnson (a Dodgers co-owner) and the Dodgers' X feed.

There's a woman wearing what *appears* to be a red MAGA hat right behind home plate at Dodgers Stadium. It's annoying and distracting.#WorldSeries— Barry+ 🖖🏼 🇺🇦 🏳️‍⚧️ 💉💉💉💉💉 #🟦 (@bmerer) October 26, 2024

Maybe pull out a vape to make yourself feel better—or has Gavin outlawed that too? Alex Timmons was next to raise a hissy fit.

WARNING: Language (sorry, these are leftist, after all)

Of course there’s some piece of shit sitting right behind home plate wearing a make America great again hat looking for attention at the World Series. Hey @Dodgers you gonna do anything about really divisive political statements on such an important world wide event like this? pic.twitter.com/B0GmT74Sd2— @a1extimmons.bsky.social & threads (@A1exTimmons) October 26, 2024

Timmons had to go to the WinRed website to prove his point. Maybe we need to check his or her credit card purchases.

Can’t even watch the World Series without the nastiness of MAGA— John Yazek (@john_yazek) October 26, 2024

Listening via radio comes to mind. But that's probably way above their heads.

Ben Whitehead wanted to see the woman forcibly removed for offending his sensibilities. If he's one of those "White Dude for Harris" then we know he's very sensitive.

Hey @Dodgers - The lady directly behind home plate with the MAGA hat… remove her ASAP.— Ben Whitehead (@thebenwhitehead) October 26, 2024

Another individual thought it had to be a paid psyop by the Trump campaign. After all, anyone who loves Trump cannot appreciate baseball... or something like that.

MAGA hat at the Dodgers game hasn’t watched one pitch. I want to smack that thing off this paid plant’s head so bad.— Chris Martin (@CPMartini) October 26, 2024

And one game watcher appealed to Kamala supporter Magic Johnson, mansplaining that having a red MAGA hat in the midst of Dodger Blue could really ruin the Dodgers' image.

@MagicJohnson The MAGA hat behind home plate is not a good look for @Dodgers.— WMJ (@wmjenkins3) October 26, 2024

And some "fans" decided that the Dodgers deserved to be cursed by this blatant display of fascism.

The Dodgers deserve to lose just for having that #MAGAmoron behind the plate. #BeatLA #WorldSeries— Adam Doctolero (@AdamDoctolero) October 26, 2024

One leftist complained that because someone got kicked out of an Oriole game for brandishing a Free Palestine flag, that this MAGA riff-raff should not be allowed to sit through the game. Well, someone paid for the seat, didn't they?

but dodger stadium has let a woman sit front and center behind home plate with a maga hat for 5 innings https://t.co/6VB172MB6o— Begrudging Yankees Fan Brennan 🍉 (@BayAreaBrennan) October 26, 2024

There were many other uses of profanity and curses lodged against this ballsy young lady, from hoping she chokes on a Dodger Dog to wishing a foul ball would hit her. The ever-tolerant Left on full display. 

But not everyone was upset, and many of them expressed their admiration. What did Orwell say? “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” 

— Will (@WillsWill1776) October 26, 2024

Shoutout to the fan behind home plate at Dodger stadium wearing a MaGA hat— Paul (@PaullyyM) October 26, 2024

— Duce (@Duce_iz_loose) October 26, 2024

— Ricky_Media 🫡🇵🇷🇺🇸 (@Ricky89841208) October 26, 2024

The meltdown has been hilarious, and it will no doubt make the evening news. Now L.A. MAGA needs to spread the word to ticket holders so that more numbers can show up for Game 2. Watching heads explode like in the movie "Mars Attacks" always makes for great entertainment.

[lizzygrantarchives]

Q Magazine, December 2019

Her 2011 breakthrough single Video Games is the most voted-for entry in Q’s Songs Of The Decade. But Lana Del Rey’s latest album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, is a strong candidate for album of the decade, too. Ted Kessler is granted an audience in Laurel Canyon to hear how the 2010s belonged to America’s finest modern singer-songwriter.

Here’s an address in Laurel Canyon. You’ll need to order an Uber to get there as there’s no parking, so press that button at 3.30 and head out into the Los Angeles traffic on Sunset and Vine. Lana Del Rey will be ready for you at 4pm.

Leave the transience of Hollywood Boulevard in the rearview and head north-west, following ever-more leafy lanes far into the hills. Life is good up here, a picture of moneyed, rustic bohemia, with pastel stoops, houses built on stilts and floor-to-ceiling views of the Hollywood Hills. But it doesn’t matter how nice your house is when the big one hits and everything tumbles into the fire and brimstone of the San Andreas Fault. Everyone knows that approaching fear here. It’s all they ever talk about.

Pull up at some steep, winding steps beneath a lofty, proud wooden residence. Climb them, shake two pairs of hands and walk through wide-open French doors into a high-ceilinged rented kitchen-diner lined by so much vinyl there’s a ladder on wheels to reach the top shelf. She’s sitting on a stool with her back to the kitchen as you enter, scrolling through her phone, and rises to greet you with a firm handshake and an open smile. Say hello to the resident voice in your head, Lana Del Rey. “Where would you like to sit,” she asks? You really don’t mind.

“Are you a Libra?” Del Rey asks, perceptively. It’s an incredible deduction based on four words and maybe 30 seconds’ interaction.

“I only think of star signs because it’s come up in my writing for the next thing I’m doing,” she says, with a chuckle, as we pull up two chairs to a round table with a bowl of tiny red apples at its centre. “I never cared before. I did get you right as a Libra, though. Typical Libra answer.”

Lana’s a Cancer. Born on 21 June, 1985, in New York City, as Elizabeth Woolridge Grant.

“All water. A little fire. Carry my home on my back, like a crab. Crybaby. Compatible with Scorpio and Pisces, which is funnily enough my sister and my brother. Kind of cute, huh? I’m on the cusp of Gemini, which takes care of my more theatrical side.”

She presses record on her phone. Don’t worry, it’s just a precaution. “I’ve never needed it since I started doing it.” But there was that one time she wished she had done it, so she always records.

Lana Del Rey pulls at her long, loose pony-tail and straightens her back. A small, square vape. A puff of mango smoke. You have exactly one hour with America’s greatest singer and songwriter of the era. What is it that you want to know?

First of all, you have to tell her some good news.

Video Games, Lana Del Rey’s breakthrough single from 2011, has been voted the Song Of The Decade by the writers and readers of Q magazine. It won by some distance, too.

“No fucking way!” she laughs, looking absolutely thrilled, and shocked, even though later we will discover that she knew this already. Her joy seems genuine. “I mean… the best song of the decade?! People really voted for that?”

They did.

“Wow. Come on!”

It is a good song.

“One of my favourites.”

Its conception took time. Video Games finally arrived after Lana Del Rey had spent two lonely years living in East London with her manager Ben Mawson, above a fish market on Kingsland Road in Dalston.

“I was at the tail-end of 600 days of writing in London, back-to-back days. With about 111 writers. I was writing for others too. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. I’d kind of exhausted my bigger sounds. I just worked every day. For two years, I had no friends.”

The night that Video Games was born, Del Rey was at the Sony studios in Mayfair, working with a young English writer, Justin Parker. “It was finally at the most casual point in our relationship. We’d already tried to write everything.”

On the piano, Parker started to pick out a melody in F minor. “Hmm,” thought Lana. “That’s good.” So she started to sing, in a much deeper register than she’d previously employed, “Swinging in the backyard, pull up in your fast car, whistling my name…” She knew immediately they had something serious.

“I wrote it very quickly, because it’s just that melody.” The song itself was a stately, melancholic ode to a formative boyfriend who liked to play World Of Warcraft as their happy domesticity slowly drifted off-course into a too-comfortable funk. It captures that moment when something is over before it actually officially ends. She knew it was right. She’d finally done it.

“So I sent it around to everybody and said, ‘This is it.’ And they were, like, ‘This is not it. This is six minutes long.’”

They were wrong. Coupled with a video she’d made using her own webcam segments and YouTube clips, Video Games became first a viral sensation, and then a bona-fide hit. “I’m really grateful to Fearne Cotton, too, for giving me a spin every week [on Radio 1] for four weeks. And Justin Parker is very good.”

In other words, Lana Del Rey is saying she did not do this on her own – but, really, in all the important ways, she did. She had a song that sounded how she felt at last, that represented her in a way that the music that she’d released independently earlier, both as Lana Del Rey and as Lizzy Grant hadn’t. “I wasn’t signed to anybody, but a couple of people had their eye on me. Everybody loved all the big stuff I was writing, but I was at the point where I had written in every style except my own. Now I had.”

With Video Games, she found her bearings. “It showed me a lot about myself, an insight in terms of persistence. I love to exhaust every resource before I get to that right path. But once I settle into myself and learn to trust my own style, I fall naturally into the vein of a singer-songwriter type.”

Del Rey felt her major label debut album materialise. She quickly wrote its title track Born To Die, Blue Jeans and Million Dollar Man. “Then I was like, ‘Got it.’ Racked that album and left all the 167 other songs I’d written in London behind.”

Or so she thought. “Eventually they all got leaked through my Hotmail, which fucking sucked. Cos they weren’t good. And I knew it, objectively.”

A what-can-you-do shrug. Vape. Mango smoke curls upwards beyond her eyes. Then, a smile. “It’s incredible that Video Games won Song Of The Decade. Born To Die [the album] had to sound bigger, but it’s interesting that what was its most quiet moment has won Song Of The Decade. I loved that song.” A nod. “And I still love it.”

On the sleeve of Lana Del Rey’s most recent album, Norman Fucking Rockwell, she is clutching the waist of a handsome young man on board a sailboat decorated with a Stars and Stripes flag, holding out her hand towards the listener. In the background, the Californian skyline is ablaze, as if the big one has finally hit. Come to me, she’s saying, this is your best hope of sanctuary.

In those seven years since Video Games and its parent record Born To Die, Lana Del Rey had made a further three albums before NFR arrived in August, each trying to hone what she is musically, how she writes. But it wasn’t until she met Jack Antonoff, the producer who’s worked with Taylor Swift and Lorde amongst many others, that she teamed up with a writing partner able to work in perfect relief to her.

His virtuoso musicianship and sympathetic ear collided with Del Rey’s melodic flair and once-in-a-lifetime way with a killer line. Together they created a complex, beautiful masterpiece. NFR unfolds lyrically like a great American novel about freedom, identity and the wreckage of the battle of the sexes set in modern-day California, where the stench of pot drenches every street corner and where the thump of distant G-funk mingles with the ghosts of Joni Mitchell and the other Laurel Canyon ’70s soothsayers. All the while the Pacific rolls in, and out, and every day the news cycle nags incessantly about Trump, the climate crises and the big one which is just around the corner…

It establishes Lana Del Rey as one of the truly great American songwriters of the age, perhaps the only one who has managed to distil this decade across an entire album. She’s a galaxy brain of emotional intelligence and cultural insight, armed with a skeleton key for stately melody, and who now has a writing partner with just the right palate to make it explode into Technicolor. You should take that hand she offers on the sleeve.

“It’s an album about coming into one’s own,” she decides. “And choosing to laugh rather than cry.”

This intention is clear from the very first line, she says.

“Probably my favourite line on the album. [she starts to sing it] ‘God damn man child, you fucked me so good I almost said I love you.’ That’s a tough one to sing in front of your dad. And the album ends not on a laugh, but still on a lightness.”

On that final song, Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have, she sings of the many reasons why hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like her to have today, before a final echo where she softly insists three times, “But I have it…”

The motives behind these two songs, however, are not just what the album is about alone, clarifies Del Rey.

“Also, hard work. Craftsmanship. True craftsmanship. Eleven-minute songs. Fifteen chord progressions…”

Lana Del Rey raises her eyebrows.

She is already carving out the next chapter of this new imperial phase. In her 20s, she was always looking for songs to write. Now, she’ll write them when she can. Antonoff comes to Los Angeles every month and they’ll meet to see where it takes them. “Sometimes we don’t write, we just talk. And then, if I’m lucky, I’ll get a song a month.”

This next album may come in 2020, it may come in 2021, and it may be called White Hot Forever, or she may change her mind. But it will definitely have a first song and a last song decided before any others.

“I always say that if you have a closer and an opener then you know where you are going,” she explains.

She’d spent four years working on Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have before she met Antonoff.

“Not because it was special, but it wasn’t piecing together. So I sang that to Jack a cappella the day I met him and we did Norman the next day. Just a series of chords that he played that I freestyled over. And I thought, ‘I’ve got the first song and I’ve got the 13th song.’ And then I pretty much know what to do in-between, I just don’t know how long it’s going to take. I have the same thing for this next album but it’s actually going to take longer than I want if it’s going to be as good as this one…”

Most importantly, though, she has the outline of the words for the next album. Certainly, if she was a white man holding a guitar and writing words as potent and poetic as she does on NFR, she’d be put on a much higher pedestal.

“They’d say I was like Johnny Cash or something,” she agrees. “It’s the words that make me feel confident about the next one. Every now and then one long phrase will come to me. Like, Hope Is A Dangerous Thing For A Woman Like Me To Have, Will You Still Love Me When I’m No Longer Young And Beautiful… I have no idea where they’re going to go, but objectively I’m, like, ‘Oof, I want to fill it in.’ So I have three of those. One in particular, Let Me Love You Like A Woman, there’s just something about it. I feel like it’s going to be really important, but I don’t know why yet. That’s where the magic comes in.”

It’s during the filling in of these long phrases that Del Rey determines the song’s meaning. Hope Is A Dangerous Thing… was easy to determine. It’s about the toxic masculinity that she’d seen displayed on her journey through musical showbusiness, and her response to it.

“I think it’s dangerous for a woman who is too kind, I really do,” she says. “That’s what it’s about. Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman who is told to bend to whatever comes along because it’s the right thing to do. So it’s less dangerous if you never gave a fuck, but if you care it’s dangerous on seven different levels.” She stops. “Do you agree?”

Kindness is not normally a trait that bad men respect.

“I always say to my male friends that good guys don’t know anything about the bad side of truly bad men.”

This may be true. However, any man who has been on a stag do, or even regularly shared a locker room as part of a team sport, can attest to the fact that even the objectively “good” men can be much worse than one imagines.

Lana Del Rey’s face sets to stone. “Well, they’re the really bad ones. It’s rare to come across someone who’s truly wonderful.”

The room falls momentarily silent. What can we do?

“Write songs about it,” says Lana Del Rey solemnly.

Lana Del Rey spends a lot of time at the wheel of her black pick-up truck, trawling the highways of her adopted state of California out of her base in Los Angeles, heading north towards San Francisco, or south towards San Diego, where she has other nests. Not because she has to, but because she needs to.

“I have to do a lot to keep my feet on the ground,” she explains. “I need to leave to come back. It’s almost like toggling. I have to really get myself out, to get myself back in. I have to toggle myself.”

Practically, this means heavy road-time. “I’ll take a month at a time commuting to Newport. It’s an hour and 20 minutes, at least 80 miles every day. So I’ll drive to Newport and come back the next day. I’ll do yoga, I’ll swim. Then I’ll come back.”

This all leaves a lot of time alone in her car with herself. “I am quite a planner. I figure things out. I’m very much from here,” places one hand on her chest, “to here.” Puts the other hand on her head. She has feelings. She has thoughts. It’s why she needs the yoga and swimming: to stretch those feelings out beyond her chest, out into her toes and fingers.

But as she drives, those feelings and thoughts start to re-emerge and she once again begins to order them. She’ll dictate lyrics and ideas for hours on end, and then she’ll have to torturously unravel them at home. She also “free-writes” every morning and evening on her old typewriter, which requires a lot of untangling before she unearths any nuggets. It’s worth it, she says.

“Jung says that every character in your dream is you,” she explains. “So every morning I wake up and think, ‘Was I the killer and the spider?!’ I’ve heard that dream analysis upon free writing is the only way your psyche can communicate to your conscious self. So if you write, write, write and eventually look at it you think, ‘Why am I writing that?’ There’s definitely something to it.”

She’ll also think about the routing of upcoming tours in her car. She’ll chew over whether she’d like to do just a friends and family circuit, a tour that takes in theatres in unusual places. Alabama. Des Moines. Places that people with multiple worldwide Number 1 albums don’t typically play. But maybe she will. Maybe she will.

“Sometimes I think enough songs have been done. Enough tours. We toured constantly for four years. And we did at least 20 summer shows as well, and our own tours. So now, we can do what we like. We can do anything.”

So when she’s driving and she has an idea about this, or that, she can make it happen. For example, last weekend she did a “friends and family show” at Jones Beach, in New York, the site of the first concert she went to 20 years ago: Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. She invited two old friends who hadn’t seen each other for 21 years to join her, as well, just because she could and thought it would be beautiful. Sean Ono Lennon came on and sang their collaboration Tomorrow Never Came for the first time ever. And, on Leonard Cohen’s birthday, his son Adam sang Leonard’s Chelsea Hotel No 2 with Lana Del Rey. Not a dry eye on Long Island.

“Man, I got to say, that show at Jones Beach has got to be the best show I ever did.” Enthusiastic vape, mango smoke. “It was just a very gentle spirit.”

It got her thinking about who else she can have join her on this tour. Next week at the Hollywood Bowl, Weyes Blood will step up alongside her, as will ’80s heartthrob Chris Isaak “just because I like him.” Joan Baez has been invited to Berkeley. “I hope she comes. Diamonds And Rust is what we have planned to sing. She’s someone I think a lot about in terms of people I want to sing with.” She picks up one of the apples from the fruit bowl.

“It’s a very special time. I’m finally getting to enjoy the fruits of my labour.”

She bites into the apple.

“These are great apples, actually,” she decides. “You should take one for the ride home.”

Before we press that Uber icon again, Donald Trump shows up, as he so often does nowadays.

This August, in response to the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Del Rey wrote and swiftly released a single, Looking For America. In a landscape noticeably bereft of any protest singles, certainly from big, mainstream stars, Looking For America is powerfully direct. “I’m still looking for my own version of America,” runs the chorus, “One without the gun, where the flag can freely fly.” It signalled that Lana Del Rey is happy to step beneath a spotlight American pop stars tend to shun.

The day that we meet, the Trump impeachment festival is in full swing on all the news channels. Del Rey asks what the latest from CNN is. She’s happy that some legal norms still function.

“Nobody is above the law and you can’t obstruct justice,” she notes. “It’s not just because you’re an asshole.”

The Trump era has been helpfully revealing, she says.

“What I like about it is that it’s mirroring our tiny microcosms. It’s so-what culture. ‘I fucked you over? So what? I’m going to run away with your money anyway.’ Trump is reflective of that culture. I mean, he was elected. And it’s no coincidence that it is all happening at this late stage of our climate crises. Again, that’s why I like Hope Is A Dangerous Thing, because the people at the forefront of fighting climate change are so lovely. Do people listen to lovely voices? Yeah, yeah, we’ll cut emissions in 10, 20, 30 years’ time.”

And yet, she says, that the more unhinged the world becomes, the more creatively stimulated she feels. “It’s definitely no coincidence that I’m gaining clarity in the midst of crises. I think chaos brings that: lots of ‘good to know’ moments. Like, ‘Oh! That entire group of people feel the same way? I had no idea.’ It’s a time for concerted effort. If just the needle could shift, be it in terms of the climate crises or impeachment. Then, it’s a question of the damage done, culturally and environmentally.”

The time has come to press that Uber app. Where are we headed, asks Del Rey. To a hotel called Dream, opposite a bar, Black Rabbit Rose, which makes a cameo on a song on Norman Fucking Rockwell, Happiness Is A Butterfly: “Hollywood and Vine, Black Rabbit in the alley/I just wanna hold you down the avenue…”

“Black Rabbit has a magic show every Wednesday,” she says, ruefully. “Been a while since I’ve been, but I do like Hollywood and Vine. I don’t get stopped there, unlike the younger areas.”

Her biggest foe are the paparazzi.

“I’ll have quiet months, then all of a sudden I’ll be at lunch and they’ll be there and I’ll be like [gasps]. It still surprises me. It’s like waking up from a dream. ‘What are we doing here again? I was just at a taco truck, and now what the fuck?’”

She says that when she feels uprooted by fame, either by paparazzi or just by fans coming too close while grocery shopping, she can call her friends, “Sarah, Jen or Anne, and be, like, ‘You are not going to believe what happened, and who I was with, and now they will never speak to me again.’ Because it’s unusual if you are with someone and they get surprised by it too. It’s slightly alarming.”

She shrugs, and laughs.

“Living the dream!”

No way out now.

“There’s a way out,” she says firmly. “Yes, there is. I know it. I see it. Out of the corner of my left eye, I have a rabbit hole. But you know what it entails is not working. No promoting. So it’s hard, but you could make a lifestyle change. I’ve seen people do it, sometimes not intentionally.”

We step out on to the verandah. Del Rey reveals she did actually know about the Song Of The Decade award: she was so touched, in fact, that she organised her own photo and video shoot for us to use this morning in this very house. We deserve it. “I mean, Song Of The Decade? Come on!”

As we stand admiring the view and the beautiful houses of Laurel Canyon, a woman appears at the window opposite. She is fresh from the shower and clearly naked. “Ooops,” says Lana Del Rey, almost involuntarily, and pulls back inside the house. “I saw boob! I do not want to get caught looking into strangers’ bathrooms.”

Oh look, there’s our ride. A handshake, a wave and away we go back down to the grime of Hollywood Boulevard.

A week later, an email arrives. A friend of a friend was just at an Afrobeat night at a club in San Francisco, the evening before Lana Del Rey’s big show in nearby Berkeley.

As the music and lights swirled on the dancefloor, our correspondent spotted a familiar face in a booth outside the floor. Emboldened by the night’s rush, she approached Lana Del Rey.

“I love your music,” she told her, and “I’m coming to see you perform tomorrow. I often listen to you before I go out,” she added. “I listened to you tonight even.”

“That’s so funny,” replied Lana. “The person I listen to before going out is here tonight with me too,” she said, pointing to the middle of floor. “We’re actually singing together tomorrow.”

There, frugging energetically in the midst of the throng on the dancefloor, was 78-year-old songwriting legend and activist Joan Baez.

And, in that booth, Lana Del Rey smiled joyfully. She’s living the dream. Finally enjoying the fruits of her labour.

Originally published in the December 2019 issue of Q Magazine with the headline Her Majesty.

[unknownjpegs]

rabbit

“Cute.” 

Maran blushes before he really knows what the subject of that observation is, because Ben’s got the tendency to level him flat with little compliments like that. He turns away from the coin machine, eyes dark-adjusted to the low light of the arcade. Further in towards the back, where all the machines and games wait, the screens will be nearly unbearable in their neon glow. Too much too bright. Flashing strobes, sudden cues of music; all of that had been so overwhelming the first time they’d come here. Nearly weeks ago, now. 

Weeks. Maran thinks, watching him sneak a pull from the vape and then duck it away with a sleazy, oh, you caught me grin. 

“You too,” Benny says, doing that dodgy gait closer that makes Maran feel like smiling every time. “S-So don’t get pouty.”

But Maran isn’t pouting because he’d like to be called cute, too. His brow is furrowed because he’s staring at Ben, all washed out and still somehow embarrassingly handsome in the shit light, and he’s thinking: weeks. He’s looking up at the white stuffed rabbit hanging from the top shelf of the prize counter, the thing that had rightly earned a gently amused cute from Benny, and thinking: weeks. 

Maran pockets the coins, but not before handing five over. One dark blond eyebrow lifts at him expectantly. 

“You shorting me on purpose?” He teases as he saunters closer, corners Maran up against the machine without any parts of their bodies touching. Seemingly looming despite their shared height. Maran’s breath always catches for things like this — the overt acts of affection, of teasing. 

Maran shares his head slowly, lip between his teeth as he stares up at Ben’s snarling, flirtatious grin. The red-tinted glasses pushing his hair back from his face flash with fairy-like illuminated dots, blurred reflections of arcade game screens. For a moment, Maran zones out in them.

A hand touches his shoulder, slides and tucks itself firmly to the curve where his neck meets it. The other cups his cheek, and Maran’s wrenched away from the misty barrage of thoughts he already can’t remember. 

“Hey.” Benny intones. The teasing expression has slid from his face entirely, leaving something worried in its place that makes Maran guilty to look at. “Too m-much today? We can —”

Fucking weeks, he thinks, and shakes his head. I’m going to win you that rabbit, Ben. Watch me. 

“Nah. M’here.” Maran says, mustering as much cheeriness as he can as he plucks that pale hand off his face and leaves it with a departing kiss. “So I hope you’re ready t’get smoked in that basketball game again.”

Now, shrewd blond eyes narrow. The devastating, dangerous grin doesn’t come back; instead, it’s replaced by something soft. 

That he, of course, immediately makes filthy by tucking their bodies close, close again. “Fuck you.” Ben says appreciatively, amusedly. “Loser gets their dick sucked.”

And Maran shocks them both by pushing away with a loud laugh, fingers wrapped around his tattooed wrist to lead Ben into the arcade.

*

Maran finds himself in the arcade almost every Wednesday night, after that. Ben doesn’t accompany him for any of those endeavors. He goes alone. Sometimes even pushes himself to open the front door, walk the four blocks, take the leap after a nasty panic attack. They aren’t as frequent as they used to be, or as bad. A lot of the absences in his life have filled with spectacular, wonderful things. He feels a bit more sturdy. Now, when that wave of fear and anxiety and memory crashes against him, he’s less hollow. Less easily slept away. He can weather it. 

Majority of the time. 

Occasionally, he needs to step outside for fresh air. Not the lights or sounds that do it, that get him; not even the memories. Just the knowledge that he’s out. Away from he safety of home. Out and alone. He hates being alone. 

On Wednesdays, he mostly is. Just he and the owner and the bored teenager behind the prize desk. Who has started giving him a little tilted head-nod when he comes by. On Maran’s third visit, he’d admitted his plans. And the next time he came in, the rabbit’s ticket price sign had been flipped around like it was no longer available.

Weeks, Maran thinks through their customary sharing of nods. Weeks, Maran’s thinking as he 

The rush of dopamine when he finally saves up enough, finally gets to point at the top shelf, finally earns that fucking rabbit, is intense. He probably looks mad walking home at eleven at night like that, carrying a plush under his arm and grinning down at the dirty toes of his trainers, but he doesn’t care.

Miss you x. Maran texts as he lets himself in, sets the rabbit on the kitchen table. He’s prepared not to receive a message back for some time, so it’s a pleasant surprise when he’s winding down for the night, tucked in bed wearing a pilfered baseball shirt that reads Queens Division League Champs, his phone pings.

Same.

Maran grins, and runs his hand up and down the front of the shirt — soothing.

*

He agonizes over the note he wants to send along with the rabbit. Long way for it to go, across the ocean. Has to be a good note. He writes it four times on a post it, runs out of space, fumbles the words, isn’t perfect. So he gets a piece of printer paper, writes the whole thing out only to realize there’s an old document on the back. Trashy. Finds another piece, blank, can’t properly find the words he’d like Ben to know, gives up. Goes back to it a few days later and uses a piece of resume paper he’d pilfered from Benji because it feels official.

Important things need to be on good paper. 

*

Benny is in the middle of retelling a story when it happens. Later, Maran will feel slightly guilty for starting the fight. Letting it kick off how it does. Not a slow production, the build-up of a snowball and an avalanche, but a landslide. It rushes. But how could Maran not let it overtake them both? Ben’s laughing, he’s telling a joke about a feral little thing in the company that gives him what sounds like incredibly amusing hell, but Ben’s laughing when he says: “So, I tell her no, tell her you’re actually —” 

The laughing stops. Maran’s own hitching, breathless almost-laugh does as well. Both of those sounds laying down and dying on the pavement together, baking melty in the heat. Becoming something messy and hard to clean. When Maran was little, he’d left crayons in his mum’s car. They’d fused to the back middle seat, and he’d spent weeks and weeks picking it off with a fingernail, trying to hide the clump of rainbow and muddy brown from her. Hadn’t worked in the end. Couldn’t ignore a mess like that.

You’re actually, Ben says, and snaps his mouth shut. His eyes flick up to gauge the energy, which has twisted and frayed ugly. Quiet. Maran is actually — Maran is — Maran —

Ben gets up to turn the bathroom light off, if it’s giving Maran trouble sleeping. Even if he doesn’t say a thing about it, he’ll do that. And they go places together, do things, just for the fuck of it. Dates. They kiss on those. Sometimes more. They go on dates and they come back to Maran’s and they share a meal or watch a movie or fuck, and sometimes it’s all three, and Benny has an emergency back of stuff wedged between an old pair of roller skates and the guitar in Maran’s closet,  and he’s been thinking lately that it might be nice to ask his mum to clear a weekend, because he’d like her to meet someone. 

“That I’m actually…what?”

Ben stares at him from the other side of the kitchen table. His eyes aren’t that shocked sort of wide yet, still their usual slightly-sleepy, slightly-suggestive heavy lid. But he looks uncomfortable in a way he doesn’t usually, existing in the soft bubble of Maran’s flat. When Ben shrugs one shoulder and glances away, arms crossing over his chest, something snaps and shatters in his own. Maran stands abruptly, the chair skittering back on the floor. One of its rickety legs taps that one water-damaged spot in the tile and starts to tip backwards, but he catches it. Doesn’t look away from Ben the whole time.

“Wh-whatever.”

Maran snorts. “Whatever? As in, ‘it’s whatever, drop it’, or I’m whatever I want, which also doesn’t answer the question, or…what, exactly?”

We’re about to have a kitchen-table fight. Maran is thinking, and for some reason there’s a wash of sweet possessiveness there along with the anger. Me and you, Ben, we’re about to have one of those. The kind of row people get into when they really care about each other, but aren’t seeing eye-to-eye do. The dating kind. His chest is already fluttering with rapid breaths, and they haven’t even kicked off yet. Weeks.

Benny glances up at him once more, but this time he scowls and snaps his gaze away. Almost as if he hadn’t meant to look again, regrets it. Maran is only incensed by that. That, and his silence. 

“Listen,” Maran starts that way not because he thinks he doesn’t have Benny’s attention, but because he’s got no clue how else he’s meant to go about these sorts of arguments. “I know you’re not playin’ at something with me. I know you care.” He chews at his lip to bite back the at least a little bit, right? that threatens to pour out of him at the end, there. “You’ve got to, or you wouldn’t keep coming ‘round.” He laughs then, a high and pitchy nervous sort of giggle. “I mean, can’t just be, you know, for the -- well it can’t be that good, considering. And if it’s ‘cuz of that, right, because I’ve got less…because I’ve been with less people like —” he flaps a hand between them, trying to communicate without words. “The experience is lacking, okay. I know that. But if it’s this, yeah? That’s shit, Ben. That’s proper shit behavior on your end, if that’s the case. And I know you’re not like that. So.”

Benny’s properly staring now. In the Benny way; eyes big and wide, jaw tight, eyebrow raised in a slight curve. He always looks confused that way, like he’s just been bludgeoned and all of the spare bits are on the ground, knocked out of them. Like he’s not sure which pile to start reorganizing. 

“Mar,” he starts after a moment oof silence where Maran catches his breath, “I would never —”

Maran waves both of his hands in the air then laces his fingers together behind his head, tilting to look at the ceiling. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, and Benny quiets to offer the space to do so. I fucking love you, is a thought so fierce and intense in his skull at that moment that it pours from his mouth, too. Does nothing to help that bludgeoned confusion. 

“I mean that.” Maran doubles down, although his cheeks feel as though they’re on fire, although he can’t look down into Ben’s eyes to say it. “I do. And I think that maybe gettin’ to see each other every so often? That’s…I mean that’s nice. That’s not a lot of time, but I always —” the breath who’s out of him and Maran stumbles back towards his chair to plop into it. “I always want it to be more. But more is, like, more. More is together. I think maybe you know that, right?”

The silence extends a beat, and then Ben nods.

“Okay.” Maran agrees, matching the bob with his own definitive one. “So do you want — I mean. Is it going to be every so often —” he fiddles with his fingers, pulling them and bending and tucking them together anxiously. “When our schedules align, or some corporate shit like that? Or is it going to be the other thing?”

When Benny pause before beckoning him over, the addition of another bout of silence is nearly enough to make Maran stomp petulantly from his own flat. Instead, he goes with a sigh. Allows several fingers to slip into the waistband of his sweats and pull him back in. Reeled, like a worm on a hook. Except there’s no bait, not sting of a puncture through his cheek or rush of unbreathable air. Maran allows himself to be guided into a warm lap, allows an arm to tuck around his waist, allows Benny to fist in the middle of his shirt and pull him down for a firm, chaste touch of their mouths together. He’s been gone a bit, so his beard has grown out. Suits him, but then with his face how it is, Maran thinks any amount would suit him. The hairs scratch Maran’s jaw, his chin, his throat as they kiss. 

Maran is almost mad about it, the fact that the conversation has been shorted in favor of this. As good as it is to come together after a fight, it’s not a resolution. A distraction to his anger, a way to deflect —

“The other thing.” Ben whispers when they break for air, and that’s all it takes for Maran to fucking beam, the stretch of disused muscles making him worry briefly that his face will split apart. 

*

It’s different that time in a way that feels significant. So good that it seems silly to call it significant. Reductive. 

And the whole reason it happens with the frantic, wild, messy energy it does is because of that fucking rabbit.

Maran’s out of lube, which is a funny precursor to the night’s activities that has them both snickering and pausing for air, to take stock of the moment, to figure out what next. And Ben goes to retrieve his bag from where he’d dropped it on the couch. He’s rifling through it with a nasty, sleazy grin, eyes glued to Maran on the bed while he fishes blindly through his belongings for the spare bottle, when the rabbit falls to the ground. 

One, two, three seconds pass. Benny stares down at it. Maran’s eyes can find no other place in the room to be other than his face. It starts to go delightfully pink, splotches of color under his tired, purple-ringed eyes. 

“Oooh,” Maran coos, pushing up on his elbows. He feels his grin widen the longer the other man simply stands there, glaring down at it. Like it’s gone and done him history’s worst betrayal Finally he kicks a foot out, knocking Ben firmly in the hip. He goes back a step with a comical stumble. “Who’s that, then?” 

“Curie.” He responds immediately, and then goes absolutely fucking red. 

Maran crunches up from his repose on the bed, hand drifting out to flatten over Ben’s bare stomach. His fingertips dance over the spider, tap a few times. Maran holds his gaze as they drift lower, teasingly slow. Lower still, enough to dip into the waistband of his sweats, enough to wrap carefully around his half-hard cock and make him groan. 

Maran licks his lips and tilts his head, thinking weeks, thinking the other thing, thinking Ben, and says: 

“Cute.”

*

Ben talks him through it, providing commentary that isn’t always squarely in the realm of educational, supportive preparation advice. In fact, it lacks quite a lot of the explanatory helpfulness that Maran had been banking on — that his nerves needed. But he discovers, though, that when it happens like this, when Ben becomes easy to read and mouthy, when he makes noise and nods his head or asks, in a way that will certainly shoot Maran’s ego, for more? It’s easy to follow along. It’s easy to settle into a comfortable space where he thinks cute, I want to see more of that, I can do this, I can make you do more of that.

The first press of him inside is fantastic for reasons other than tactile, other than feel, other than warmth and tightness and exciting, new intimacy. It’s fantastic because Maran has never experienced such a wave of hot, possessive mine then when Ben tosses his head back into the pillow and cums on that initial stroke. 

Maran watches raptly as it spills over his flexing stomach. His ears ring when Ben whimpers and tells him to keep going, feels cotton fuzzy between the ears when the next few thrusts seem to push more from him, dragging the orgasm out. It’s filthy and incredible, everything about the press of their bodies and the moan he earns by dragging Benny’s legs around his hips. He’s as mindful as he can be, completely out of his own. Tries to be careful, tries to make it good — thinks, suddenly, about how Ben’s definitely gotten it good before, and somehow musters the fucking sense to make it the best. 

The truth is that Maran likes it this way. Maybe a little too much. Likes having someone holding onto him, likes watching their reactions, likes the swell of pride when his efforts have their intended effect. Ben’s face twists and loosens in beautiful ways, glazed eyes eventually shuttering. The flirtatious and often nasty chattering encouragement falls off completely. Which, to Maran, is very cute. 

“Good?” He pants, pausing to sit upright and gather pale, limp arms up around his neck. He slips close, bringing their sweat-tacky chests together and not minding the slightly uncomfortable pull of skin. Everything else is too…too —

 “You feel so good. Fuck. Is it —?” 

Ben’s ragged, stomach-deep groan is punctuated by a desperately quick nod. His arms squeeze Maran tighter, bring him in more until they can kiss. The driving power behind his thrusts tapers off into rolling pushes of his hips, grinding motions that make Ben arch beneath him and gasp like he can’t take in air. 

“Oh, fuck. Ben. Fuckin’ love you,” Maran moans into his neck, face hot at the volume of that noise. He means it though, won’t take that back. And it’s out there again, something he’ll double down on until the number becomes exponential. Ben seems to like hearing it, anyway. If his throttled reaction is any clue. His noises become more staccato; hot, instinctual punches out of him as Maran increases the pace. Drives into him with more force, determined and chasing his own churning orgasm as it pulls sweetly at his guts. The walls are thin and their bodies are noisy, Ben’s encouraging sounds climbing breathless and loud. His flat’s walls are thin — he won’t be able to look his neighbor in the eye tomorrow morning when he gets the mail.

When Maran pushes him onto his side and guides a bent leg upwards, Ben whines. That makes him rougher, more purposeful, even a bit loud. He watches the twist of slick skin and muscle, watches his fingers indent flesh, watches the distant, glossy roll of blue eyes up into his skull. 

Loser gets their dick sucked, Maran remembers suddenly, and the crack of his laugh is way too loud in the tiny bedroom. He’s breathlessly recovering from it when he cums. He lets spit fall off his tongue onto Ben’s cock to tug him through the rest, the second, Maran thinks proudly, but Ben doesn’t laugh like Maran does. In fact, the next few noises can’t be classified anywhere near humor, though they’ve got Maran pleased like he’s told a successful joke anyway.

“You don’t have to say it back,” Maran explains between pants as they lay side-by-side afterwards. “Or you can.” He demures with a playful, glinting look that has Benny groaning and pushing up for one more kiss before sleep takes them both.

*

The plush rabbit becomes an occasional roommate. Some days, it rests thousands of miles away in a New York flat. It travels in a checked bag, it lives for a week nestled in Maran’s bed, it sits on the couch, limp where Maran had chucked it at him after a filthy joke. It’s fought over as an extra pillow, is used to prop Ben up on the couch once when he gets airport sick the day after arriving, accidentally loses an ear after a sneak attack from Anika (an incident Maran is teased for being weepy over). When Ben inevitably takes long jobs, the rabbit is a temporary resident of Liverpool. He sends pictures of it on the beach, sends pictures of Xavier holding it, of it sitting in the chair on his back patio that Benny takes his smoke breaks in. The rabbit is cute, and it grows to infest both their spaces, and it becomes, to Maran, a symbol of theother thing.

[the-firebird69]

List of largest banks - Wikipedia

They have interest in China and it is dwarfing the China Bank and it is JP Morgan Stanley Dean witter and it is a few people and Ben Arnold have some of it but not much 5% each and that's a lot now son says that's a lot and it is they used to have a little bit more but not much and it's extreme wealth but they can't really use it that much the other one the other 70% are Mac proper and people are going after them all of the other banks on Earth comprise 35% of the market this is a huge Bank company and investment firm in about 90% of our son's money is in their Banks even though we're buying out the subsidiaries they still insist we keep the money there and our son says you can keep the paper but I need the bank account. So our son says like they are goofballs hold on to everything then and we get that. And it is a lot of money and a lot of investments in a lot of people depending on it and we are backing it up and we are infiltrating now they're threatening like madness they're a bunch of idiots like these winners.

*there's a few more things besides banks in the financial institutions which are the investment firms we have the stock markets and they're worth a lot of money not as much people think but they are worth a lot they're probably 10% of the world's wealth which is ridiculous and all they're doing is moving money around but they try and secure it and they can't do it and the max are going bust on it too and we're going to take it over and they think it's foreigners and it's not it's their own people and Dave's computer and we're going to wreck those. So we have to because we have to there's other stuff going on

*it is a matter of timing that this comes to us tobacco alcohol firearms and explosives for construction explosives for holidays and things that explode for demolition we are going to take possession of that due to request for us to control the companies 50% huge huge companies like acme, and huge wine company is huge beer companies almost all of them and mac and Ben know it's macon's Budweiser about 90% And he's holding on to it and then owns Miller, almost all these companies are coming to us right now for some reason they can't keep the company going and we're wondering what it is people trying to tamper their stuff Non-Stop and it's the warlocks doing 15%, no 50% of it and the max are doing 20%, no they're doing about 80%. Yeah they're doing most of it they need a help in their soliciting it in this fashion and think it'll be temporary and we'll lose the whole game they thought it in world war II did not happen it was our son saying it cuz he's watching the movies and videos. But these are big companies corona, Coors, Schlitz, Pabst Blue ribbon, Michelob, old milwaukee, some of the new brands that you see inexpensive Stella Ortiz even Heineken I want 50% deals, and we are going to do it tobacco and we will not go to the Carolinas and they don't want us to now they said too and we're not we're going to send people there though. My son says Jim Carrey and close enough some other people that think they're God Gartj. Is several other people that really no we don't go there but they do want us to take over there's several other things but really tobacco is a dangerous product not really tobacco producers but the world needs it and they call for it and they're addicted without it they turn into assholes they make the vape and they make cigarettes cigars and more and we would be making all that stuff and we can't just hand it off to Mac although he might buy a portion of it in places we don't want to work and he gets that anything she's nephew. Huge huge alcohol companies and Jack Daniels is gigantic it is gigantic do you think these beer companies are big this company is gigantic and rum companies and Morgan company is huge and there's a company that is named rum no our son used to drink it it doesn't recall it is a very fine room it's clear and there's several vodkas sky vodka and Smirnoff giant giant company and boy their vodka needs a lot of help it tastes like crap that son said it too I can't drink it anymore and we're going to fix it. There's about 20 companies that are top level including the beer companies and they're huge Bush beer that's coming to us almost everything but Bud and we're making deals mostly 50%. There's other companies camper companies and more their associated with the automobile company any order chassis and they can't get the chassis and we're supposed to fix it somehow. Chevy and Ford want to sign 10% and we can use that and we're not in the truck division no we are and we'll just expand it rapidly the demand is humongous for a truck chassis humongous there's nothing like it they build semis and we're going to modify them humongous the demand is so far beyond it that not even one more luck more or less as a trucking job anymore the demand is too high and the trucks they're too few they're going to have to build their own trucks and they found their chassis it's not a tractor and it's not a dozer it's from like a trailer it's a certain type of trailer and they're for like tractors and stuff and the steel's right size they're pretty hefty it's for smaller tractors and it's almost configured correctly and it's straight and true for the most part and they're building these monstrous looking trucks like 8 ft wide and almost 50 ft long with huge motors and we'd like to join them but it's not necessary so he says he says we should pick it back it and get the work done and we're going to go ahead so good idea he needs to shower and get some rest and then we're going to push some more rain but a little later

Thor Freya

Olympus

We've had a great evening we're going to thank our father and mother Thor and Freya for their lovely work this is a very stressful time and we're all working together and pulling for you and doing our jobs and getting it done

Hera Zues

[biglisbonnews]

The Raw Humanity of 'Sad' Ben Affleck Ever since the birth of the “Sad Affleck” meme in 2016, Ben Affleck has been considered as the personification of pure ennui, and almost every paparazzi photo only serves to solidify this projection. Many see Affleck as the patron saint of apathy and alienation, because of how many pictures of him taking deep drags of his cigarette (or vape) exist on the internet, with his shoulders a little slumped and a look of glassy-eyed exhaustion on his face — the vibe Twitter said he also brought to the Grammys. However, what made the memes different this time was that they didn't feel as mean-spirited as older jabs, which appeared to celebrate his apparent depression amidst a divorce, some career stumbles and a perceived midlife crisis. Instead, the memes from the Grammys were more about how posters could relate to Ben’s blasé expression, whether it pertained to a night out or just feeling energetically drained. (Jennifer Lopez, for her part, said on Instagram that she had "the best time" there with Affleck.) \u201cBen Affleck is every introvert everywhere. You can see his batteries draining in real time. Man is already at 23% \ud83e\udeab #GRAMMYs #SaveBen \nhttps://t.co/Yv5zmzbPhr\u201d — Dr. Kinda Decent Human (@Dr. Kinda Decent Human) 1675651480 I’ve always had a soft spot for “Sad Affleck” memes, especially as someone who often feels like the dad dissociating on a mall bench outside of an Abercrombie & Fitch. Maybe it’s because I feel seen by his thousand-yard stare; or because I’m a clinically depressed person with an inner 15-year-old boy I’ve named “Pierre” or because I know we’re both people whose struggle with substance abuse started as a way to cope with social anxiety. So even though Ben may be a movie star with a gorgeous triple-threat of a wife and the good kind of zeros in his bank account, it’s nice to see more people approach any apparent expression of emotion and vulnerability with a little more empathy and less toxic masculinity, especially if it’s been met with widespread ridicule in the past. The power of ��Sad Affleck” can mostly be chalked up to its realness and relatability factor, which we all know is the secret ingredient for any good meme. Plus, who amongst us hasn’t thought that existing is hard and kind of sucks? That the future is bleak and everything is a chore and a half? Because as a Twitter user wrote, “Ben Affleck at the Grammys is me any time I have to be on a Zoom call,” and it’s nice to know that some of us have started to recognize a little bit of ourselves within Ben’s world-weary expressions.Most memes are quite dehumanizing, and while this is especially true if you’re not a rich, famous white guy, a part of me is still glad to see something on the internet that isn’t outright mockery of a certain individual. And while I do feel a little bad for potentially adding to any past negativity with my previous coverage of “Sad Affleck,” it’s important that the meme is more about embracing a kindred spirit this time around. So, like the other people who see themselves in Affleck's disenchantment, I’m just going to leave it at “same” and take some comfort in the fact that someone else can also feel complete apathy, even if you think they should be the happiest person in the world. Welcome to "Internet Explorer," a column by Sandra Song about everything Internet. From meme histories to joke format explainers to collections of some of Twitter's finest roasts, "Internet Explorer" is here to keep you up-to-date with the web's current obsessions — no matter how nonsensical or nihilistic.Photos via Getty https://www.papermag.com/sad-affleck-grammys-2659384575.html

[lovingchopshopbarbarian]

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[bowtied-pasta]

Another callout post? On my blog? Yes.

If you simp for…

Slenderman

You have a suit kink

You absolutely have daddy issues and it’s terminal

Do I have to say anything about the tendrils or can we just all agree to not say anything about the tendrils?

Splendorman

You have a thing for that one trope where the characters are living in bliss until someone fucks with one of the characters and the other ones flips a switch and goes batshit trying to save them

How’s it feel to simp for a man that like 4% of the fandom recognizes enough to write about of their own free will?

You either headcanon he has a “normal” voice or that he has the silliest fucking clown shit going on, no in between

‘Fenderman

Much like Slender simps, I don’t believe I have to say anything about the very obvious attraction to tendrils that you have

How’s it feel to simp for a man that like 4% of the fandom recognizes enough to write about of their own free will?

You have your own version of him in your head and much like me, you have completely trashed the og scummy version of him and made him absolutely dateable

Kagekao

You probably hate wine

You have a thing for bullies that would absolutely be mean to you, regardless if that means they like you or not

You probably haven’t seen the art where his talon like toe nails actually fucking stick out of his stereotypical converse black shoes

Dark Link

You had a crush on Peter Pan when you were a kid

How’s it feel to like a character that 90% of the fandom doesn’t even know is a creepypasta?

Can I hear a “Ben is too much of a twink, so I became attracted to his goth twunk version instead.”

Zalgo

You want to be a prince/princess/royalty of some kind

You are a monster fucker and I cant explain enough how attracted to mouths you must be

You suffered through so many y/n fics that painted him as the bad guy, looking for a fic that would finally allow you to fuck him

Jeff

You absolutely read those y/n fics on quotev and wattpad and you were somehow smitten from the moment he cursed you out

You prolly have commitment issues or just emotional issues in general

You attempted an sfx version of his smile at least once. You cant lie to me

Jane

You are punk or you think punk is hot

You definitely have mommy issues

Tim

You have daddy issues

You tried smoking at some point because of this man, and if you decided you didn’t like it, you immediately moved on to try vaping

You probably like pink drinks from starbucks

Brian

Something something you like kidnapping tropes

In addition to that, you probably also like this man as a yandere

Dont even get me started on your mask kink, you cant deny it

Toby

You probably have adhd

You very likely believed his favorite food was waffles at some point, no matter how long you thought so

You like found family fics

Ben

You dont communicate very well at all

You like to call yourself a gamer. Wether or not that’s true is up for debate and I quite frankly don’t care enough to have said debate

You either despised the canon green hair picture of BEN that came out or you like it. There is no in between

E Jack

You would trust this man to patch your wounds and I can’t tell you enough how wrong you are for that

You have never tried to actually taste what kidneys are like, but growing up, you would answer those y/n quizzes as if you had eaten many organs in your short life

You, for some reason, think this man would smell good… and I’m sorry you think that

L Jack

I said this last time, but you fuck clowns

You like to say you don’t have a favorite candy, but if this man happened to give you something you didn’t like then you would be incredibly disgusted… but we both know you would eat it anyway

You don’t know if you prefer his monotone lack of color or if you think his rainbow self is nicer, but stripes… my guys, stripes just does it for ya, huh?

Helen Otis

You either are an art major or you make the mistake of over romanticizing the major by thinking it’s sexy

You can’t draw to save your life

Therapy sessions probably sound like a good date idea to you

The Puppeteer

You listened to Discord by Mandopony a lot when you were growing up

You have a bondage thing and refuse to admit it

You hate dolls because their creepy, but hell if you dont wanna be this mans “doll” for some reason

[imaginesbymonika]

It all tastes like poison.

Part 6.

previous chapter

Pairing: Homelander x fem!reader / Solider Boy x fem!reader

Plot: based on this request: “can you please write an imagine about someone who use to be with soldier boy before he "died» which left her broken, but she still worked with vought for years because she ages slower than normal and she meets homelander who she kinda falls for, but when ben comes back she gets mixed emotions till he tries to kill homelander and then she'll have to work with everyone else to get him back into the box, which she doesn't want to do. LIKE ANGST?”

warning: f-bombs, mentions of death and murder, mentions of torture, mentions of nacked people and sex, mentions of nudes being published with consent

"Lord of the Seven Seas. Wow!", Tommy says as soon as he opens the door:" My man, I am such an incredible fan."

His sister only rolls her eyes, before she brings the black vape back up to her mouth:" Jesus, Tommy. Slather his balls in peanut butter, why don't you?" " Sorry, my sister's a goddamn bitch."

"And, uh, TNT. Right, I 'm a big fan of yours, too.", the Deep lies, while he points at the in golden clothes dressed siblings:" Cool outfits."

"Always felt like you got railroaded with that Starlight thing, by the way. You know, like what? Nowadays, you can't even pay a lady a compliment." A delicate smile arises on the Deeps face before he merely nods his head in agreement:" I know, right?"

"You're disgusting!"

Tommy turns to peek at his sister for a second before facing the Supe again:" Anyway, we are so pleased, you know, have a big star such as yourself grace our humble soiree."

"You guys are having a party?"

The two Supe's in front of him chuckle, as if they are eager to show the member of the seven what's going on behind their closed doors. Tommy takes a step to the side to let Kevin pass, only for him to stop dead in his tracks as soon as he comprehends what he is watching.

"Wait, is this...", he begins and clenches his jaw:" This is Herogasm."

----

"Oh, okay. So this- this is an actual orgy. That's what this is."

"Fucking Herogasm.", Butcher shakes his head in disbelief while a small smile emerges on his lips:" Still a thing, eh."

"It's my thing, I founded it. in '52. ", Soldier Boy explains, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees that Y/N is rolling with her eyes. He clears his throat:" But I well, you know... abandoned it when I met Y/N."

"Frenchie's gonna be heartbroken he missed this."

Hughie nervously shifts his weight from one foot to the other, while he looks at the huge house in front of them: "There are a lot of people in there." Y/N turns to glance at him:" As long as they stay out of our way, they'll be fine."

---

"I said, no cameras in the toilets, Tommy!", Tessa declares angrily while she makes her way towards the TV. "Give it back."

"You're pathetic."

Y/N who is standing a few meters away watches the two. She opens her mouth to say something but gets interrupted when some random guy accidentally bumps into her. A little cry escapes his lips followed by horny laughter:" Gosh, you're as hot as you look." She turns to stare at him and her eyes shine bright green for a moment. Luckily for him, her attention is once again on the siblings when she senses their eyes on her form.

"Y/N?", Tommy asks and squints his eyes, unsure if the woman in front of him is truly their old colleague. "Holy shit!", Tessa answers and slowly walks up to her:" It's so good to see you."

But her smile quickly fades away when Y/N doesn't react. "Is everything all right, my dear?", the chuckle that leaves her lips is beyond worried, while Y/N's stare is not getting any softer.

"Is this about the photos?", Tommy who stands a couple of meters away from the two women lets out a weak breath and his sister turns around. She tilts her head, while she stares at him in confusion: "W- What photos?"

"Yeah, Tommy.", Y/N asks, while a fake smile emerges on her lips. She nudges the brown-haired woman to the side, before unhurriedly making her way towards him: "What photos?"

"W-We were beyond broke.", he begins, while stumbling backwards: "You have to understand the situation we were in!" Y/N lets out high-pitched laughter, while her steps are slowly getting faster.

"Gosh, Tommy.", he hears Tessa mumble: "What did you do?"

"Yeah.", Y/N hisses through gritted teeth:" What the fuck did you do?!" She snatches him by the shoulders and throws him to the ground, a groan escapes him when his body makes contact with the hardwood floor. Tessa instantly rushes towards him, but when Y/N puts her foot on his chest she takes a step back. "Tell her, Tommy.", Y/N starts to put pressure on him, to the point where she can listen to how his bones crack.

"Okay, okay, okay. I sold the nudes.", he confesses:" I sold them to the media four years ago." Tessa's hand flies up to cover her mouth in panic:" Oh god."

They were the reason why Y/N's and Soldier boy's relationship became public in the first place. "They were all over the news!", Y/N tells loudly, while she pulls her foot away. She leans down:" I should have come here the day those pictures were leaked. I am going to burn your skin...the way those Russians tried to burn Ben's."

As soon as that name leaves her lips his eyes widen, and he peeks towards his sister. "Did you say B-Ben?", Tessa asks: "As- As in Soldier Boy?"

Y/N nods:" Daddy's home."

[harrypotterhogwartshitpost]

My antipsychotics make me have really weird dreams sometimes- the last two nights have featured Hogwarts Mystery characters, but last nights stood out the most. So I'll try to describe it the best I can.

Warning- you're in for a wild ride.

There is no set up, we simply spawn in this environment.

First, all of this is ice/snow themed. Think the Ice Vault x Celestial Ball from Hogwarts Mystery. We're on a dance floor of some kind. Like the celestial ball, but Ice Vault themed. The camera pans over the dance floor. Penny Haywood's dancing with her snow themed dress. Ben Copper is in the corner. There's various other students filling out the dance floor. Bill Weasley is notably by the refreshment's table. Dressed in actual ball attire this time, instead of his usual button down and khaki pants.

Suddenly we're looking through my eyes. The end of the dance hall starts morphing into a open concept conference room type deal. That goes on to morph into my bathroom. (a half bath in a master bedroom.) While we're in this section, a new in game event has been dropped! It appears in front of everyone, like we are characters in an actual video game and it's popping up on the player's screen. It's a collect stars event! and the prize is a blueberry flavored kang vape oonestick. My sectionleader from my senior year on drumline looks at the event pop-up and comments that that's his favorite flavor. (I don't know if that's true or not).

(All of this is real life context) In my bathroom is my bathroom mirror, which opens up to reveal a little medicine cabinet. inside that medicine cabinet is my "vape graveyard". Aka an old tampon box full of a years worth of dead vapes. Because I know you're not really supposed to just throw them away because they contain batteries. But I also don't really know what to do with them. And yeah everyone else just throws their disposables away, but its conflicting for me. There's also a three tier shelf above my toilet. It's "baker's rack" style with translucent plastic on each shelf rack.

So we're all super confused about this event. Understandably. Because what the hell? After a few minutes of general confusion someone announces that that vape has been recalled due to cancer. So I and Ben go spreading the word, telling people we see- who are either being really confused by or finding ways to win the vape. The event pop-up is now sitting on my bathroom shelf. My section leader is commenting that he doesn't care it's been recalled for cancer and wants to win it anyway, as he's reaching out, trying to snatch it straight out of the event screen.

Cut from that! We're now back on the dance floor. It's a little cold, from being ice themed. Instead of walls there's hills of snow. Behind that is a starry sky with a big, bright full moon! For unknown reasons, we seem rather discouraged.

The camera switches. We are now looking into the situation from a camera. we continue to be to be discouraged. We're in a red velvet dress. It kinda gives Christmas vibes. The neckline is a V-neck. It has sleeves that hit our wrist. The fabric has a V shape cut into it on both sleeves. Both tied off with small, loose bows. Not made of ribbon, but more of a shoestring material, but thinner, and still matching the color of the velvet. That same type of string cinches the dress at our waist with another long, loose bow. The dress still has a loose silhouette, but that adds a little definition. the skirt of the dress hangs loosely at our knees. We're standing by the refreshments table.

Bill see's us being discouraged and approaches us. He's in an indigo velvet suit (velvet was a common theme in everyone's outfits during the "Ice Ball" portions). Paired with a brown belt and brown shoes. (Do indigo and brown really look good together?)

I know everyone imagines colors differently. So when I say indigo, I mean a bit more on the purple side than the blue side. Like an even mix of midnight blue and royal purple.

The light from the stars and moon in the background makes both of our outfits seem to glow. There are words exchanged between us and Bill (indistinguishable dream dialogue) until he asks "Well then can I dance with you?" It seems to be implied that whoever was supposed to, or we thought was going to be there with us was not there, and that is what we were discouraged about.

We accept. And this thing goes full cinematic mode. like 4k rendered 120fps professionally shot type shit. It starts lightly snowing. He takes our hand and pulls us in close, wrapping his other are around our waist. It pauses on this image, perfectly framed in the center of the full moon in the background. It's that pose where the girl is kinda leaning back with the guy's arm supporting her. After this beautiful picture is captured for what feels like about ten seconds, the camera pans out, showing a birds eye view of the dance floor. It has a big, icy snowflake on it, like the door of the Ice Vault. There's still no walls. Just hills of snow and thousands upon thousands of stars.

We begin dancing. Except instead of the "traditional dancing" you'd expect to see at a ball, we're skating. Except instead of iceskating- like you would expect on this icy dance floor in the middle of snowy hills, we're on roller skates (maybe it was because I never learned how to ice skate, but am really good at rollerskating). It's what you'd expect to see from figure skaters, very flowy and smooth movements. We do some spins periodically. The one where you spin under his arm. Where you spin into his arms. All those good, classic moves.

That goes on until we decide it's time for the dance to end yeet off into the hills. (I swear it's the funniest thing how it happened in my head.) Apparently after the dancing we went sledding. But the camera didn't show us that. All it showed was us flying over a hill, one again perfectly framed in the full moon, where we lose hold of the sled and fall. We don't see us land. It's like a Wiley Coyote falling into a canyon where we just fall out of frame. But it's somehow implied via the feeling of the moment that we landed safely, and had a good laugh about it.

And then it's just that beautifully cinematic sequence of the close-ups and the dancing and the falling on repeat until we wake up.

TLDR; At a Ice Vault themed ball there's a collect stars event for a blueberry vape. After it's recalled for cancer we spend the rest of the ball dancing with Bill Weasley until we Wiley Coyote style fall off of our sled into the snow.

(If you liked that- ask me about the dream where I was working with Skye Parkin and Spencer Reid to solve some very unconnected mysteries. Learn a new game called "banana ball" and then later catapult jump onto powerlines? also part of the cast of Friends was there??)

I could make the whole antipsychotic dreams thing a series.

[zamgoods]

3 Stages of Alchemy: Nigredo, Albedo, Rubedo coded words to Make a Stone for Midas Touch

Friday October 29  10.29/ 29.10

The stages of Alchemy can be coded in our everyday media and events.  I am a novice to this science but over the many years of exposure, I’m savoring the flavors of it more than ever.  I can see how it is being used around us.

Nigredo, Albedo, Rubedo.  Colors reveal a process toward a goal of a STONE to make GOLD.  One that can turn base metals into GOLD.  Heal any illness and bring you to become IMMORTAL like a god.  

Associations with each word can reveal that alchemy is being done.  Once you identify these associations perhaps you’ll have a handle on how to deal better.

Secrets are usually hidden in code, Names, riddle, translations, ciphers, etc.  

Primary stage to reach is Nigredo.  The Color is Black as we know it.  Words associated with black is darkness, Black goo,  going black, Black mass, Negro, Nigger, Shadow, Evil, left hand, sinister, Dark crystal, Saud, Sud, South, Left, etc.  IN the news we hear Black Lives Matter, Crow, corvus, covine, black cat, Chem, kemmet, hemmet, ham, mel, melania, melanie, Mor, mal, fermentation, alcohol, wine, decompose,vaping

2ndary stage Albedo is the color White. Think of Albino, Alba, Jessica Alba, Idris Elba, Albania, Scotland is called Kingdom of Alba, Scot, Scotia, Luke, Luca, Leuko, Albert, Shine, Bright, Glow, 

3rdly Rubedo is the color Red.  Russo, Rust, Ruse, Roho, rojo, blood, rose, lotus, ruby, Rudy, ruddy, Go Red, Red Room, Redrum, The Reds, Red China, Crimson, vaping

Stone of the Philosopher, Rock, Ben, Pebble, Lapis, Calc, Chalk, Calculus, Stein, Lapsit,  Lupita, Cure all, Panacea, remedy, nostrum, elixir, wonder drug, crystal, gem, rolling stone, jewel of the nile, vaccine, magic bullet, catholicon, panpharmacon, tooth

Perhaps why Isaac Newton named it calculus.  The say he invented it to describe the motion of an apple falling from a tree.  Be it’s no secret that he practiced alchemy,

The Emerald Tablet is a poem filled with Alchemical information