#acerbic humor but still

[hopesallwegotleft]

👏👏👏

[stevenbasic]

Growing into the Job, Post 408: Babysitting, p3

“So, how exactly are you going to pay for all of this?” Randi asked me, her eyes rising up from her laptop from where she sat on the couch, several cushions away, “You’re broke from the divorce, aren’t you?”

“She, um, gave me debit card,” I answered, not taking my eyes off my own screen - the big tv in Melissa’s mom’s great room. I’d figured out a way, with Randi’s help (and permission) to use the television to surf the web. I hadn’t been online in a while and at first Randi was reticent about letting me use it. I explained, though, that I just needed to do some shopping.,After some arguing, and, well pleading, she finally relented and said I could, as long as she could supervise. So, sitting here on a quiet Thursday afternoon after having endured not just one but, I think, three blow jobs while watching the first part of Melissa’s interview for Channel 5, I put another set of shoes into my Amazon cart. Yes, I was dependent on a woman’s money and being policed in my internet habits by a 20-something year-old.  At this point, though, I was nearly beyond the embarrassment and humiliation of the situation. Nearly. “She said I could use it for whatever I want.”

When I said ‘she’, there was no question of who I was talking about, and Randi’s eyes lit up with a smirk.

“Melissa’s got you sucking from her bank account already, huh?” Randi quipped, the bank account/teat analogy not lost on me but not rankling me quite as much as it should have. Quite. “How much did she give you?” 

“ I- she gave me two thousand dollars,” I answered. Maybe I was relaxed from the half-hour or so I’d spent in Randi’s mouth and the quick nap I’d taken after, but admitting my financial dependence on my girlfriend didn’t bother me much. Much. I’d kept an eye on my online cart; I still had a good cushion in my budget and moved on to looking for shirts…in the “Youth” section. “I’ll be careful not to run out.”

“Well, if you use it up I’m sure she’ll let down some more money for her needy little man,” Randi finished, “Melissa’s got very big…accounts.” Her smoky voice was still deliciously throaty from the blowjobs. 

Again, haha, with the boob analogy and a - fuck me - stirring in my sweatpants.

“Yeah,” I answered, this time finally feeling myself flush. Randi certainly had a way about her, a way to find my buttons, and she obviously loved to push them. I always thought of her as pushy, a little critical, and with a somewhat rough, randy (hey-oo) sense of humor. She had a penchant for deliberately pressuring me, and sometimes seducing me, way beyond my comfort zone. Today, in fact, was our third private tryst, and it was an unspoken fact that it came with her best friend’s nodding approval. I understood Randi’s seductions as mostly practical. They were calculated, mercenary, career-advancing moves designed to trap me in a corner and use my own weaknesses against me. She knew I didn’t have the strength of will to say no, and her advancements almost seemed like an amusement to her, practically a prank. On some level, though, both Randi and I knew there were heavier machinations at work. She’d never admit it but my cock down her throat filled some deeper instinct, some sort of connection that flowed through me, her, and all the girls.

Yeah, so Randi was maybe becoming more than just a brash prankster who liked making men horny and stupid, getting her kicks from pushing them to risky and humiliating sexual acts. Something important was quietly happening, surfacing in her - like it was in lots of the girls at the office. Randi was no doubt an acerbic, short-tempered young woman but she was smart, and given the context of her being overwhelmed with all of the new demands on her life I got the sense she knew she was moving upwards towards some greater role than just Social Media Director at a geriatrics practice in the Midwest. 

With Randi pestering me, I’d unconsciously found myself stroking the debit card Melissa had given me. I never told anyone, but  I nearly always kept it in my pocket. Weirdly, having it around made me feel safe. Now that I had it out next to me, I couldn’t help but hold it close. 

“Maybe I’ll buy something nice for her,” I muttered, not even realizing what I’d said out loud as I navigated my way toward the ‘Women’s Clothing’ section. Amazon had certainly started using curvier, more athletic models these days. Maybe they felt the need to start living up to their name haha. 

“Oh, you want to get Melissa something? I know she was talking about a dog collar,” Randi offered. 

“Really? Why?” I asked, “Is she thinking about getting a new pet?”

Speaking of, Melissa’s moms cat - ‘Tiger’, I think - sauntered across the room, between the television and where I sat. Had it been around here the whole time?

“Hey, cat, what’s up? Need your litterbox changed?” Randi teased. 

The thing paused, fixed Randi with a death stare, and moved on. 

Randi chuckled, and turned her attention back to me. “Anyway, no more tv,” said, putting her laptop aside, “you and I got some chores to do.”

Oh yeah, that. Laundry. 

Five minutes later, at Randi’s command, I found myself back upstairs gathering up not only my own dirty clothes from the bedroom but Melissa’s as well. Panties, bras, socks and athletic gear were all strewn haphazardly about the room. Most of the time I was a bit too distracted to notice, but she really was a mess and a half sometimes. Finally, with a bit of work, all the clothes found their way into the already half-full laundry basket sitting in the corner. Apparently not satisfied with the bra from which I’d still needed to breathe, I took the chance to surreptitiously sniff Melissa’s dirty clothes. Good god, the smell of her was like a drug. I just couldn’t get enough. This must be love, right? I was alone, and suddenly horny again and was considering rubbing one out right th-

“Hey, dude..!” came Randi’s voice, calling up to me from the bottom of the stairs, “What’s taking so long? Are you rubbing one out?”

Sigh. 

I was still strong enough to carry the now-overflowing basket down the steps and to the laundry room, where Randi supervised me separating out the delicates (mostly Melissa’s lingerie) from everything else. We’d started the load of regulars, some towels and a robe were already in the dryer, and Randi had - Whoah! - picked me up under the armpits to boost me to sit on the washer while she went through what looked like another pile of bras that had been set atop the dryer alongside me. 

My feet dangled off the edge as I watched Randi pick through them, looking at tags, setting some aside to go through the next load. 

I recognized a few of these bras. Old ones of Melissa’s, from months back.

“Uhh…” Anything to do with Melissa’s bras did seem to enthrall me. 

“These are ones she’s outgrown, she told me I could have them,” Randi explained, holding up a white underwire whose band and tag I recognized from an old Insta post of Melissa’s. 

“R-really?” I managed. 

Sidelong, Randi glanced at me and her smile curled into something a bit more predatory when she heard the crack in my voice. “Yeah. I’m basically as big as she was when you hired her.”

Randi’s tone suggested she knew exactly how captivated I was.  “Well, I’m taller now than she was then, so 34GG’s don’t look as ginormous on me as they did on her,”  she dryly explained, “But don’t worry I’m a growing girl.”

Though I’d been confronted with this before, the sheer absurdity of the fact that yes all the women around me seemed to be getting taller, stronger and bustier still boggled me. “h-how does this happen??” I asked with obvious futile impotence, sitting on the washer and eye-to-eye with Randi, who must be over six feet tall at this point. 

“Dude, haven’t you figured it out yet? The Melissssy Effect?” she snipped, white lace brassiere still in her hands, “Spend too much time around her and you start becoming what she needs you to be.”

Yes, right…wait, what?! I knew it, I felt it, this influence my new Office Manager was having over our staff… and over me <shiver>. I think I’d secretly known it all along. I could ‘feel’ it, but it was just too ludicrous to get my head around. “H-how..??”

“Plain and simple,” Randi answered sharply, “She’s magic.”

My brow furrowed. “T-there’s no s-such thing as magic,” I muttered, hearing for myself the uncertainty in my voice. 

To my reply, Randi cocked a dark, sculpted eyebrow. “I dunno. I wouldn’t be so sure.”

My throat caught, blood rushed behind my eyes. “C’mon…she’s not ‘magic’,” I insisted, again with the hesitation of a man whose worldview had been crumbling around him already. “Magic’s impossib-”

“Okay then she’s ‘science’,” Randi retorted, “You believe in science don’t you?”

“Yes but…” The science was even more unbelievable. 

“Or, maybe she’s ‘religion’. Or - I dunno -  maybe she’s all three,” Randi concluded a bit uncertain herself. Her tone seemed to signal that there were things about what was happening that she didn’t fully understand herself. “I honestly don’t fucking know.” Irritated, she obviously wanted to move onto something else. 

The washing machine vibrated underneath me, the dryer rumbling alongside. 

She held the big white bra in her hands, making a bit of a show of it. She wanted me to look up as she inspected its full satin cups. Despite knowing what she was doing, I couldn’t help but grow silent, my mind captivated by the sight. 

“Anyway, since we’re on the subject,” she began again, “now that I’m as big as she was when you hired her - and we all know you hired her for her tits - I want to make as much as she did.”

Wait. 

“Wh-what?” Now we’re talking salaries?

“I want a raise. A big one.”

“Y-y-you want to make as much as Melissa? Our Office Manager??” The shock of it pulled my attention out of Melissa’s bra cup and back to Randi’s crooked smile. 

“Well, not as much as she makes now of course…” Randi offered. 

Makes…now? Melissa’s pay should be the same as- 

“She gave herself a raise, didn’t you know?” 

My expression must have been one of shocked incredulousness, and I felt myself gaping, confused. 

Randi chuckled at my consternation, and her hand drifted down to find my erection alive and well in my sweatpants, clear for her to see. After a brief second of shock, my body tensing at her touch, I realized just how obviously turned on I was from this predicament I found myself in. With well-practiced proficiency, she slid her hand down the waistband of my pants, and pulled my hard shaft out into the open air. Fuck it was huge, startlingly so on my skinny, 4’7” frame. She smiled as she gave it a squeeze. 

I groaned, my eyes fluttered, but - passively - I didn’t complain. Suddenly I was distracted from the surprise of Melissa’s raise and the insult to my already-crumbling authority, and all my attention was centered right where Randi wanted it. On her.  

“Face it, buddy,” Randi said, as she took my cock and wrapped it into one of the white satin bra cups of Melissa’s bra, causing me to shudder and moan anew. My vision swam and already my loins sparked and clenched. “We’re all getting richer. We’re all getting more beautiful, taller, stronger.” She began to stroke the bra over my throbbing, nearly ten-inch shaft. Her voice was smoky and low. “All of us are getting bigger, all of us -  except you.”

“Oh godddddd….” I groaned, and - Jesus, that was f-fast - came into Melissa’s bra.. 

As the orgasm wracked me, I fell forward from where I sat. my face planted itself into Randi’s - my savior and tormenter’s - waiting bosom. “Shhh…deep breath,” I heard her chuckle, waiting until I inhaled before speaking again. She felt me melting. “I smell like her don’t I?” 

Nnngh…nnngh…nnngh….Melissa. Yes, she did. A sharper edge to it, perhaps, but Randi’s scent was all but exactly Melissa’s. 

“We’re all starting to get to be more like her,” Randi drawled as she milked me through my climax, into the satiny cup of her friend’s enormous bra, “and not just the tits.”

Nnngh, nnngh, nnngh. Into the bra I came, until my pulses waned. 

Still gripping my spent manhood and the bra with one hand, Randi pulled me back from her chest with the other. She took one of my hands into hers, and opened it up so we were palm-to-palm. We both marveled at the lopsided size comparison, how my fingers went just past the first joint of hers. She chuckled, and turned her narrowed eyes back onto me as she brought my hand up to her lips. Gently, she started kissing my fingers, looking into my eyes with a suddenly tender intimacy that was unusual for Randi.

“Being with me is kinda like being with her, hm?” she said, both of us aware of this weird energy - and Melissa’s unseen presence - in the room, “You can think about her when you’re with me. She’s your girlfriend, I don’t mind.”

Randi kissed my fingertip, sucked gently on my index finger to the first knuckle. She was still rubbing me, massaging me through the squishy bra, and she saw my eyes fluttering again. “C’mon I know you can do it,” she whispered. 

Astonishing even myself, I began to swell again. 

“Oooo there you go,” Randi chuckled, as her hand - assisted by the cup of the bra and now the lubrication of my last release - began to squeeze and stroke me anew. “Women really have so much power over you, don’t they?” she posited, feeling me hardening, “such amazing things we can do, Melissa, all us girls.”

“M-Melissa..?” I groaned. 

“Shhh remember, I’m getting to be just like her. And she’s not jealous. Being with me is like being with her, she’s told you herself,” she purred, sucking my index finger into her mouth and then out again, like she was sucking a dick, “But…there are still some special things of my own I can do. My own particular talents…”

I groaned. Was she actually going to do this to me again?

“Let me show you why they call me ‘The Mouth’.

At that she started feeding my fingers - two three four…five - in between her lips, and then slid them into her mouth. Her lips closed over them, and I felt the muscle of her tongue moving slowly underneath my fingers.

I shuddered in pleasure and she chuckled as I watched, eyes searching mine as I began to realize what she was about to do. 

She moved on to take in my entire hand. 

My eyes went wide. She had my whole right hand in her mouth, to the wrist.  She still grasped my forearm which, by god, was not much longer or thicker than my cock, between her fingers. Her glossy lips were closed in a tight seal around my scrawny wrist, and - drawing in her cheeks - she sucked on my hand powerfully. Her tongue continued its unseen gymnastics around my palm and fingers like an eel. I felt the sharp edges of her teeth bite delicately into my wrist, while all the while her eyes remained locked on mine, staring into my shuddering depths.

She hummed pleasantly, the vibrations of her vocal cords shivering all the way up my arm. I was beginning to groan again, in new pleasure. What was this girl capable of??

With another tug of suction, she began to show me. 

I gasped in disbelief as she took in the first few inches of my arm. My eyes stayed locked on hers as - oh my god - she didn’t stop.

She ate more of my arm, lips sliding up and up and up my thin limb as she still hummed into my bones. I felt my hand slide down into her throat and soon she had me to the elbow. 

“o-o-oh my god Randi…” I stammered, now staring down at the spectacle. She’d taken my entire forearm into her mouth, her lips closed around the joint of my elbow. I could feel my hand squeezed by the top part of her esophagus, and she swallowed several times on purpose, squeezing my hand and wrist in a muscular embrace of warm tightness….and drawing me in further. 

Deeper and deeper she fed me into her mouth, her lips inching forward slowly, gaining territory with each gentle swallow and pull. She was a snake, a she-cobra, devouring its prey and I watched her throat bulging with the thickness of my arm down inside it. The start of my withered bicep, then the middle. Randi kept going. 

My cock was throbbing hard now, fully back at erection and still being stroked by Randi now with both hands through Melissa’s bra. Though I couldn’t take my eyes off the horrid spectacle of my arm down this girl’s outrageously distended mouth, hers still bore into mine with insistence, unblinking, not wanting to miss a moment of my reaction.

Randi sucked me in again and I heard the first real gag out of her. She had my upper bicep and then - my god - her jaw widened even further and her lips closed around my shoulder, and came to a stop. Her big head, her mane of straight black hair, was right there, her eyes staring deeply into mine. My jaw hung open and quivering, she’s swallowed my entire arm. My entire arm is inside her, down her throat. 

I felt the acid of her stomach burning my hand, threatening to eat away at it.

She hummed deeply again and jostled her head, shaking my whole torso like a panther with its prey. Then she growled, suddenly baring her teeth at me, showing me two rows of teeth clamped down over my shoulder. There was absolutely no doubt that, if Randi had wanted to, she could have bitten off my entire arm. She growled once more and - nnnnnngggguuugggghhh -  I felt myself orgasm again, unngh, unngh, unngh - into the already sodden bra. How did I have anything left in me?! Her tongue lapped under my armpit, and she sucked on my arm like one giant cock, her entire alimentary canal closing tightly around it and milking it in rhythm with my climax…

=============================================

Thanks to reader GrillFan for his insightful character analysis of Randi, much of which is included here, Joyce Julep for inspiring the arm-eating scene, and once again RiF for proofreading.

[bluebirdofbluebells]

What I would change on That '90s Show:

First, I just want to say that I think the writers wasted a lot of potential and the show could've been a successful spin-off like Frasier was to Cheers.

I strongly disagree with the decision to name Eric and Donna's daughter Leia. Donna would never allow Eric to name their child after a Star Wars character he had sexual fantasies about. Naming their son Luke would have been more believable. Instead, their daughter should have been named Stevie, after Steven Hyde, with a backstory explaining that Hyde died in an accident a few months before she was born. This would address Hyde's absence and honor his character, not the actor. I can separate actors from characters, and Hyde remains my favorite despite the actor's poor life choices.

For casting, a talented actress resembling Topher Grace and Laura Prepon would be ideal for playing their daughter. She should be tall with red hair. Stevie would be the same age as Leia but would be sent by Donna and Eric to stay with Red and Kitty in Point Place due to her rebellious behavior in Chicago. Eric is a professor and Donna is a writer, just as in the show, but Eric's teaching has nothing to do with Star Wars. Donna and Eric are happily married and good parents to their daughter; they're just at their wit's end when it comes to her recent behavior.

Stevie would resemble her mother but dress in all black, embodying the quintessential cynical, snarky '90s alt-girl similar to Daria or Darlene Conner. She would possess an emotionless, acerbic attitude, be highly intelligent, well-read, and a nonconformist, making her parents struggle to understand her. I envision Red and Stevie forming a bond over their shared sense of humor, cynicism, and tendency toward misanthropy, though Red would still be stern with her when necessary. Kitty, being the nurturing one, would have a hard time getting Stevie to open up but wouldn't be judgmental of her, reflecting her open-mindedness from "That '70s Show."

Kelso and Brooke's daughter Betsy should also be a main character and Stevie's friend. Betsy would be bubbly and free-spirited, dragging Stevie along on adventures. Intelligent and well-read due to her librarian mother, Betsy has more fun with her goofball father Kelso, who became a sergeant in the Point Place police department. Betsy and Stevie would become instant best friends, balancing each other out and finding common ground. Betsy would introduce Stevie to her friends, including a boy-next-door romance living in the Pinciotti's old house. Stevie wouldn't have a large group of friends (like Leia or Eric) she'd have Betsy, her neighbor, and maybe one or two of Betsy's friends.

Jackie would distance herself from the gang after losing Hyde and moved away. She'd have a job that requires constant traveling and even get married a few times. Donna is the only one Jackie had kept in touch with.

As for Fez, he can continue with whatever he's doing. I don't care.

Hyde's death would affect everyone to this day and be a major catalyst for why Donna and Eric are so over-protective of Stevie and afraid that her troublemaking could lead her down a tragic path.

[mammoneygirl]

When Mammon falls for you

I wrote my first Obey Me! fic today I want to share it with all of you because I crave for more Mammon content (I'm so obsessed with him).

The link of Ao3 is right here if you wanna leave some kudos ~

Like a lot of Mammon's stan I think my perfect boi didn't receive the love he deserved. While playing, Obey Me! I was always waiting the moment when we can stand on his side like the good fangirls we are, so I decide to create this moment myself. My boy deserved all the support ! T^T

(He's so cute, I'm dying!)

Mammon remembers the exact moment when he falls for y/n. Every detail was inscribed is his memory. The smell of wood crackling in the fire in the living room, the softness of the plaid on the sofa, the low luminosity of the lights that marked this end of the ordinary day… the voices of his bothers which resonated on some mean words, maybe deserved, maybe not, and the color of her eyes who roamed the page of an old century book… 

Mammon didn’t remember the subject of the argument he has with his brothers, neither why they were so mean against to him. “ Pain in the ass ”, “ Moron, capricious kid ”, “ Dumb ”... So many unpleasant nicknames to talk about his person. Mammon has the habit. He always responded to these acerbic jabs with humor and a casual, comic attitude. Still, it was frequent enough to be painful. Frequent enough for sometimes, alone in his room, he ends up believing that the words of his brothers had a basis of truth. Maybe he was stupid. Maybe he was horrible to live with. Maybe his brothers will be happier if he wasn’t here.

How long had his brothers' relentlessness lasted? Mammon didn’t know anymore. Time seemed to get distorted when this kind of moment happened. He was there without being there, he answered without really listening, staring at a fixed point in the room and plastering a stupid smile on his face. Letting his brothers see that even one of their words could reach him was out of the question. It was necessary to maintain confidence to safeguard a share of pride. 

Frequently, Mammon had hoped that someone would take his side. Just a phrase, an exclamation of someone. No need for a long monologue, only an " It's unfair " would have been enough... but no voice had ever come up… 

“ Maybe because they are all right. ” 

Suddenly, Mammon was brought back to reality by a book violently thrown between him and these brothers. Lucifer had almost taken it in the face. The projectile came from the sofa in front of which sat Lucifer, Asmo, Satan and Mammon. On the other, the twins and y/n. The sudden throwing movement of the young woman had suddenly awakened Belphie who was sleeping on her knees, and Beel jumped, almost choking on his handful of chips.

“ THAT’S ENOUGHT! ” y/n's voice resonated with a power that was uncharacteristic. As if she had pronounced a collective order, everyone looked at her without saying anything, their eyes wide open. Even Lucifer couldn't seem to compel himself to this angry summons. 

Everyone could only wait for the rest of her words and at the sight of the human's angry gaze, she seemed to have a lot to say. Mammon could feel the heat emanating from the mark of Satan the young woman wore in her left palm. In truth, they could all smell it. It was the first time that so much heat had come out of it. Alice seemed to be pumping the power of the Avatar of Anger at full speed. Burning ashes enveloped her body and swirled around her in irregular waves. Y/n embodied the expression “ Fulfilling with rage ” perfectly at this moment.

“ What high, unwarranted esteem of yourselves you can have to dare speak in this manner of your own brother? Are you stupid or just a huge bunch of pieces of trash? ! As far as I know, you are not exempt from all defaults. On the contrary, you are full of them, each with your own annoying and problematic little quirkiness! ” This first sentence had been transmitted with the top of her lungs. Her strong voice was drawn with rage and oscillated between depth and stridency.

Nobody says anything. It would have been easy to think it was because they had nothing to say, but it would have been known to them wrong. The reality is that they couldn't say anything. Y/n was an easy-going, teasing, but never mean person. Anger was not an emotion that often showed on her face. Even less when she looked at the seven brothers.

A few seconds passed, seconds where everyone understood that y/n was making a superhuman effort to contain an explosion of her powers. With the amount of power she was drawing from Satan to fuel her rage, the damage would have been expensive.

Once calm enough to not cause any damage, y/n pointed an accusing finger at Lucifer.

“ Lucifer, your closed-mindedness and your sadism make us suffer. Your way of protecting us is suffocating, and you expect too much of us. You fuel your pride with each of our successes, but you never take the time to tell us how proud of us you are! You said Mammon is a pain in the ass, but YOU are a pain in the ass for all of us, all the time! ” 

“Asmo, you are superficial and self-centered. For you, beauty matter more than anything. So ugly peoples did not deserve to be listened. You said Mammon is dumb, but you are the dumbest in this place! Life is not only about being the most popular or the most longed for! At least, Mammon see peoples for who they really are! ” 

“Satan, you like giving the impression you are calm and collected, but we all know you are capricious. How much furniture in this place you have destroyed with your incessant tantrum ? Living with you is like walking on eggs! You said Mammon is a moron, capricious kid, but at least HE controls his emotions better than you! And emotional control is a proof of intelligence, so watch your words when you talk to your older brother ! Calling him a moron while he can brainwash people for his own benefit is a huge proof of stupidity and disrespect ! ” 

Y/n was the kind of person who know how to hurt someone’s feelings. She also was too kind to not do it, but kindness has no place at this moment. 

She turned her attention to the twins watching the scene, dumbfounded.

“ You Belphie, you didn’t say anything this time, but you are not ousted of reproaches either. You know, I heard all the mean words you threw at Mammon’s face the rare moments you do not sleep. What was it the last time? “ A stupid, lazy ass ”? How cheeky! Did you know Mammon was the person who take notes for you in class? Just for you not being bother despite YOUR laziness! And you never say thank you! Learn how to be grateful and not project your defaults on others! ” 

“Beel, you are the most measured of all this piece of trash. However, you do not defend your brother the way he deserved it. If you were protective with Mammon like you are with Belphie, the others wouldn't allow themselves to be so comfortable. You say nothing, but your silence makes you a follower and that make you guilty just like everybody else! ” 

Her angry tirades had left her breathless, and she took a few seconds to catch her breath. Seconds when she glared at the assembly with a look that suggested that her rage was not extinguished at all and that she was far from finished. No retort would be tolerated. The fire that had formed in her hand was a clear and visible threat. At the first word, it would explode, and the mansion would be in a mess.

“ You know what all of you are? A bunch of ungrateful ! Without Mammon, you would still be just fallen angels in the eyes of all the Devildom. You would be no better than the most pathetic of lesser demons. You constantly mock and belittle Mammon's plans and ideas, but I remind you that it was one of those plans that gave you the position you all hold today. Learn to be grateful. There is an obvious line between joking and meanness. Don't tell me you're all too stupid to not recognize her? No, the truth is that you enjoy being mean to him! You don't deserve a thousandth of what Mammon gives you. He is far more deserving than any of you. ” 

She returns her attention again to each of them in turn.

“ Asmo, who is the person who stood in line for hours in the rain, in a line full of annoying and superficial demons, just to bring you back that limited edition makeup palette you love so much and bragged about for weeks on FabSnap? It's Mammon! "

“ Satan, who bought you, with all his savings, that curse book you still use to annoy Lucifer? It's Mammon! And he worked for months to get enough money to buy it for you. I know it, I was there! And I assure you that it’s cost more than any of his “ useless cars ” that you like to criticize so much for their flashy styles. ”

“Beel, who is the person who always give you his part at restaurant ? Who is the person who always planned an Akuber command for your midnight cravings? It’s Mammon ! And trust me, feed you cost A LOT !” 

“Belphie, beside the notes Mammon takes for you in class, he always makes sure nobody disturbs your sleep or wake you up. He also covers you among the teachers for you not being caught. Have you ever wondered why Lucifer didn't know how often you're unconscious in class? Because Mammon ensures your impunity! ”

She turned her gaze to Lucifer, her rage seemed to increase even more.

“And you, Lucifer, you are the most ungrateful ! When YOU decide to go against your Father, when YOU decide to cause the Celestial War, who was the person who was the first to go on your side? Who was the person who abandon all to go on your side? Without a second of doubt ? Ready to sacrifice his life, all his possessions, his rank and his magnificent wings? IT’S MAMMON! No matter how much money he spends with your bank card, it will never be a big enough reward for what he lost by placing his destiny in your hands!” 

Nobody said anything, everyone had lowered their heads in turn with flagrant shame plastered on their faces. Even the so proud Morning Star looked at the ground, on which he couldn't even find a crumb of repartee. Y/n's words had the effect of a club with which they had been knocked out without any ceremony. Seeing the effects of her words, y/n calmed down a bit, the surrounding fire was gone, but no regrets were visible on her face. Quite the contrary. Her gaze was still authoritative and accusatory.

“Yes, Mammon is greedy. He also is selfish, most of the time. He is materialist and ready to do the most awful things to obtain what he wants. His plans are ridiculous and foolish, most of the time. He always causes a lot of problems. Yes, he has defaults. But he also has a lot of qualities. Just like all of you. He is generous, kind, honest, determined, talented and loved all of you immensely. You will surely never be able to love him as much as he loves you. So the bare minimum you can do is to treat him with respect and be grateful for the things he does for you. No words or apologies can fix your pathetic behavior towards him and all the horrible things you may have said to him. I dare to hope for all of you that everything I have just told you will make you change your behavior. Because otherwise, I don't know if I will still be able to love you as I do now. Because in my eyes, you will no longer deserve my love.”

On his words, she started to leave the room and just before going through the door, stopped in the frame to add a last sentence, which had the effect of a punch in the face.

“ And before I hear anybody complain about how much I was hurtful, remember the pain I inflict you is just a firm of the pain Mammon’s feel when he heard you talk about him like you did. ”

With that, she slammed the door behind her and stomped out of her remaining anger to go to Levi's room and quell her remaining rage over some fighting games and surely lecture him too.

Mammon remembers everything about that special moment. The scent of wood crackling in the fire in the living room, the softness of the plaid on the sofa, the low luminosity of the lights that marked the end of this ordinary day... And all the emotions that had crossed him deep within himself : joy, euphoria, pride, gratitude… and this feeling, this very specific feeling that appeared to him clearer than any light he had ever seen when he was still an angel. 

“ Y/n was meant to be his. ”

It was a once-in-a-lifetime feeling, even for someone with an eternal life. The feeling that everything had lined up for this person to appear. From the moment Mammon had seen y/n for the very first time, a strange feeling had gripped his insides. He had never been able to put this feeling into words, but at this moment he knew. Y/n had been born to be his .

Lucifer turned his head towards his brother, anyone could have felt the guilt deep in his eyes. Yet the only thing his eyes met when looking at his brother was a bright smile.

“ Mammon ? ” 

“ Mh? ” Mammon turned his attention to him, but even the heavy atmosphere of the room couldn't take away his smile and the joy in the back of his pupils.

“ Mammon, we are- ” He didn't give him time to finish, answering simply.

“ Oh this? Don’t worry! It’s not important ! I need to go! ” 

And he left like that. No one understood. His aura of happiness and bliss was the biggest anomaly of this evening rich in emotion. Probably the power of y/n's words had fried some neurons in his brain. Probably it was the backlash of having someone come to his defense for the first time. Or maybe, his brothers' remorse was far less important than the thing he’s feeling right now.

The happiness of knowing that he had the most fervent of admirers.

________________

I hope you enjoy it! Maybe I will do something more kinky the other time ~

[xianxia-if]

Reincarnated in a Xianxia World

is a fantasy interactive novel. It can be played on both pc and mobile, it’s entirely text-based, it's currently in development, and it will be released episodically.

GENRES: 

Fantasy, Romance, Chinese Historical, Xianxia, Portal Fantasy/Isekai

RATING:

Rated M, for Mature Audiences, 18+.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Violence, death, murder, and sexually suggestive themes.

SUMMARY

It’s been years since you remembered your past life and it took you even longer to realize that you had the tremendous misfortune to be reborn as a villain in the xianxia tv show you were watching before your sudden death.

You are reborn as a whelp of the Red Lantern District. Your mother died at your birth and you grew up assuming you’ll be just another courtesan, at first. When the courtesans start getting murdered, cultivators show up, suspecting the hand of spirits or demons. You catch the eye of a head cultivator. They are suspicious of you and fascinated by you. They unmask the fact that you aren’t human, not anymore, and convinces you into becoming their disciple.

Now as a disciple cultivator to a cultivation sect, you must do everything you can to keep your heritage a secret. Unfortunately, now there is someone besides just you that knows that you are not human and they are eager to make use of you. Once you are trained enough, that is.

Whatever long term plans your master now has for you, you want no part in. But that is no longer in your hands.

FEATURES:

Customize the main character. Choose their looks, gender, personality, and more.

Choose your heritage, whether you are a celestial spirit or a demon.

If you’re a celestial spirit, you can decide whether you are a nine-tailed fox spirit, water dragon spirit, peach blossom tree spirit, or moon rabbit spirit.

If you’re a demon, you can be a heavenly demon, moth demon, or a dream demon.

Become a cultivator!

Choose your cultivation style: physical cultivation, spiritual cultivation, musical cultivation, demonic cultivation, or medical cultivation.

Choose between five types of personality: (1) soft-spoken and diplomatic; (2) outspoken and acerbic and prickly, (3) humorous and playful and charming, (4) stoic and non-judgmental and aloof, or (5) blunt, awkward, and a bit tactless.

Romance 1 of 7 possible options or remain unattached.

Choose missions to undergo as a disciple cultivator and prove your worth!

Explore the Demon, Mortal, and Celestial Realms!

Your moral alignment is your choice. Be a villain or attempt to be a hero.

ROMANTIC OPTIONS:

Feiyu / Fang Hua | Your Shizun | Male/Female Human

A possible ex-lover of yours, they're the head of the demonic cultivation department and is renown for their unscrupulous, seedy ways. They are also the only one, besides yourself, that knows your true heritage.

Chenxing / Chenguang | The Unicorn | Male/Female Celestial Immortal - Unicorn Spirit

Here is the original protagonist of the tv drama you were watching. They are a unicorn spirit and a medical cultivator. Normally they are quite soft spoken and shy, a typical white lotus.

Ming Yu / Meixing | The 12th Prince/Princess | Male/Female Human

Ever since you competed in the tournament in the Alliance Conference, you have caught their eye. The sect is not powerful enough to turn down the requests of a Prince/Princess, so you’re stuck in arranged marriage with them.

Xuesong | Your Rival | Non-Binary Snake Demon

They extremely dislike you. They work for Shizune as their demon servant and they are completely loyal to him. They distrust you because they think you are going to betray him. Cold, icy, and calculating, they operate from the shadows and you are often teamed up with them for missions.

Ruoxuan | The Best Friend | Non-Binary Human

A possible best friend, they are friendly and easygoing. They would be more popular if they had befriended someone else. Still, they have loyally stuck to your side for years despite all the bad rumours about you.

Dong Yang / Dongmei | The Assassin | Male/Female Crow Demon

They intended to kill you. Unfortunately for them, you easily overpower them and now they owe you a debt for sparing their life.

Haoyu / Huiying | The Hermit | Male/Female Celestial Immortal - Star Spirit

A reclusive celestial immortal scholar and fortune-teller. They have lived a life of seclusion, far away from the Celestial court or Mortal world.

DEMO TBA

[ericdeggans]

When your job is explaining race and media, what happens when you find a situation you don't want to explain?

That moment came for me this week, as memes were rocketing around social media connected to the brawl in Montgomery, Ala., where a crowd of mostly-Black bystanders ran to help a Black ferry co-captain who was being assaulted by a group of white men.

Video filmed by a group of mostly-Black bystanders on a nearby boat captured it all: The co-captain throwing his hat in the air, once a white man pushed him harshly; an older Black man whaling on people with a folding chair, including a white woman who was just sitting on the ground by then; a young Black man on a boat close by who jumped into the water and swam with amazing speed to the scene, jumping up to throw hands.

And, in moments, Black Twitter jumped to life (I know he’s renamed it X, but we ain’t recognizing that, and the term refers to people being Black across social media anyway. Harrumph).

There was the quiz asking which folding chair are you? There was the graphic pointing out that an early version of the folding chair was invented by a Black man (seems to be true). The photoshopped picture showing glowing rings around Black folks rushing into the fight, mimicking the climax of Avengers Endgame, where superheroes rushed in to save the day. Images dubbing the young swimmer Black Aquaman, Aquamayne and Blaquaman.

And two of my personal faves: A photoshopped image of the Martin Luther King Jr. statue holding a folding chair. And a version of the brawl video remade as the opening to classic Black sitcom Good Times, with acerbic credits noting the show was “created by Consequences and Repercussions.”

I was blown away by how quickly Black folks across social media were converting horror over a narrowly averted, racialized beat down into funny memes celebrating the reflex of Black folks to stand up for one another, especially when we’re faced with danger from white people.

But when I posted the photo of MLK’s status with the folding chair on my social media feeds, I just added one word: Wow.

I wanted the image to speak for itself. And I wanted people who had questions about what it meant to jump into social media and find out for themselves. I felt the image and its implied humor – that the nation’s most revered civil rights leader might be hoisting a folding chair to defend Black folks in the modern age – was most powerful when not explained.

Unfortunately, some people on my social media platforms insisted on an explanation. One was pretty persistent about it. And I realized I just didn’t want to explain the image, for some reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Yeah, it’s sometimes tiring to always be asked to explain your cultural nuances to the world. But that’s the gig I signed up for, many years ago. And yes, the joking was hiding a fear that today’s climate has left racists emboldened enough to attack a Black man in broad daylight for doing his job. So explaining only resurfaces those darker feelings in ways I wasn’t quite ready to process.

Still, something else was also at play. I always say social media is often like a giant dinner party, where people forget they are sometimes listening in on conversations between other people. In this case, being asked to explain the folding chair memes felt like having someone barge into an ongoing conversation to ask for an explanation. This was a moment where Black folks could be hilariously Black online and we could all share that moment together, laughing and consoling each other in one viral, social media moment.

Sometimes, in situations like that, understanding comes best by sitting back, listening widely and learning. Even for me.

I don’t know if this reaction is fair – especially given how much I’ve encouraged discussion about race over the years. But its all I have left, in a world where I increasingly feel like a frog in pot of steadily heating water, wondering when the heat will begin to burn me, my loved ones, my family, my friends and my people.

[trixree]

They'd been in love as cadets, but a relationship is hard to maintain from half-a-galaxy and a war-front away. "In love" feels… too simplistic for what it was, for how badly it hurt when their deployments came down, for the distance that Cody never really stopped feeling, as prevalent as the ache in his skull along the lines of his scar. A grief carried around every second of every day like a missing limb doesn't fit inside the words "in love". But those are the only words that Cody has—clones don't say the riduurok.

What they did say, stolen between gasped breaths, crammed into spaces too small for two was: Fox, I want to force myself inside your chest and never leave; Kote, that's kriffing nasty, tell me again. They say, stolen when satellites connect, tucked under layer upon layer of encryption: CC-2224: I miss you; CC-1010: I know. 

They'd connected on Triple Zero only four times before the war's end. 

On the first, they'd met with such a combined fervor that it ignited between them like a wildfire, the kind that leaves a landscape devastated in its wake. They'd come together in Fox's private quarters in the GAR barracks— old and ugly, unremarkable and uncomfortable but for that it had a horizontal surface and a locked door, and that was all they really needed besides each other. 

Fox had made a sound like a sob when Cody pressed him down to the bed, licking deep, wet, and deeper into his mouth with months worth of wanting it and Cody had echoed the sound right back. They'd always been the same, matched from their scores throughout training down to their fucking personalities; their viciousness, their acerbic humor, and yeah, their weaknesses and comforts, too. Of course, Cody had needed it just as bad as Fox had—the animal comfort of it. The sheer relief of their proximity, finally. 

They’d brought each other to emotional, spine-melting, toe-curling orgasms—practiced hands on familiar bodies, racing down a well-known path—before collapsing into a damp heap, Fox spooned along the length of Cody’s spine, clutching him close. Cody held on equally as tight and felt grounded.

"They trained us so well for everything else about the fucking war," Cody would rasp in the afterglow, tracing mindless patterns on Fox's skin with his nails, scratching just enough to show faint red lines, "but they didn't bother to train us how to be apart from each other. Or how to die next to each other." 

It was morbid. He meant every word of it.

Cody would never share a thought like it with anyone but Fox. (His General would earn the honor later, but not now. He hadn't yet. This was early days, still.) 

"That's because we weren't meant to get attached," Fox muttered into the skin behind Cody's ear, slightly garbled from how tightly he was pressed up to Cody's back. He'd clung like the glue the medics use to sew men back together; like he was trying to fuse them into the whole entity they were supposed to be. 

"They were wrong, vod," Cody kissed the words into the top of Fox's bruised and battered hands. (He was taking and giving hard hits even through his gloves to have such marks, and Cody had wondered about it at the time but not enough.) 

"I'll keep coming back to you," Cody had eventually picked up the conversation's sentiment if not the exact thread, because Fox can hold a silence like no one else. "K'oyacyii, Cyare.” 

Their second meeting some months later had been... less ideal. It was the first real misstep of so, so fucking many in a campaign Cody didn’t know he was waging until it was too late.

Cody had arranged to be in Fox’s private quarters by the conclusion of his shift. He’d tapped Thorn for the intel ahead of time. It’d been so long since he and Fox had exchanged more than a quick check-in—Me'vaar ti gar? and an answering oyayc. K’oyacyii over comms—let alone had a moment to call. Cody had wanted to do something mischievous, something a little like the trouble they used to get into on Kamino together, but with a whole lot less risk—something to distract, because kriff knew he needed it; and they’d always, always been the same. 

Fox had been four hours late; Cody had been upset, and frustrated with Fox’s complete and uncharacteristic lack of a reaction. 

“I missed you,” Cody had said, frustrated, tired, wanting to say something much harsher. Why did I come here if you weren’t going to be here? If you were just going to ice me out, even when you bothered to show up?

“I know,” Fox had replied. It had sounded like an apology. Cody was too distracted by the smarting hurt of it—of the acute yearning for that something between them that neither of them quite had the opportunity to have anymore—to realize it was an apology. (It was the only one Fox knew how to give.)

They hadn’t done more than sleep beside each other that night—and Cody remembers clinging so, so tight and it still not feeling like enough to hold them together. They ate a quiet breakfast together in the GAR barracks before Cody had been called away to the Jedi Temple on urgent business.

The hurt was little, in the grand scheme of things, but their time together was so rare and the enormous distance between them let it smart. Let it turn into a bigger scab than needed grow at all. 

The third time Cody saw him, an even longer stretch of time had passed since the last interval between their infrequent visits. Time had grown a series of red flags around Fox, flags Cody didn’t want to see.

Fox was thinner than Cody had ever seen him with bags under his eyes like bruises and new, little silver hairs creeping out from his temples. Fox had done what Fox always did when hurting, when vulnerable, when he felt backed into a corner and on the defensive.

They'd fought bitterly. Fox was like a veritable land-mine of barbs, criticism, and cruelty; Cody gave it as good as he got. They’d always excelled at fighting each other—both of them stubborn, mean, overachieving bastards down to the marrow.

Fox had called him “Marshal Commander” like it was an indictment, like it was an insult, like he’d never say Cody (let alone the reverently-whispered, achingly tender Kote).

“Coruscant changed you,” Cody had said, low and serious, and perhaps it would have been better if he’d shouted, screamed, or otherwise been karking unreasonable about it. Maybe if he hadn’t said it like he believed it, like he wasn’t just fucking angry and hurting, needing comfort Fox couldn’t give—because Fox needed it too, needed it just as badly if not more, and Cody had missed it through his own pain—just to have spared himself the memory of the little flash of agony in Fox’s eyes when Cody’s words had registered. 

Fox had shut his face down fast, icing Cody out in a second flat. He’d said, “You’re right, Cody. It did." And then, "There’s the fucking door.” 

And Cody hadn’t left. He’d pounced instead, dragging Fox down to the rough carpet of his office, kissing him like he was laying a fist across his jaw. Fox had kissed him back with equal ferocity. They hadn’t spoken a word otherwise, just gasps, moans, and yes’s, more’s, please’s. 

They hadn’t held each other in the aftermath. Cody had reached for it, had reached out to hold him, and Fox had turned away.

There were so many scars on his back that Cody did not recognize. 

He’d dressed in silence. Murmured what they always did, even when they were furious, fighting, whatever.

K’oyaci. And then he’d left him. 

And the final time—the blood-thirsty, vengeful now of it all—had been about Fives.

Cody had—in all honesty, Cody wasn’t sure what he was intending to do. But Rex was insensate in the weeks after Fives' death, and it was Fox that had taken the shot—Fox who took a vod from Cody’s vod’ika.

Cody had come to Fox looking for blood. He’d found it alright, but he hadn’t had to work for it. 

Fox was deliriously feverish when Cody found him, slumped over his desk in a puddle of bloody vomit, murmuring nothing but nonsense, eyes bloodshot and rolling in unseeing circles. A fever of 103, the responding medics had told him. A bleed in the brain, the med scanners had said. 

But nothing spoke louder than the chip the surgical team had found in Fox's fucking head.

By the time Fox wakes from his brain-surgery and bacta-dunk combo, Cody has had plenty of time to process—and plan. About thirteen hours, to be exact. Cody can get a lot done in thirteen hours with a holopad and some intel. As soon as he talks to Fox, he’s going straight to his General.

When he does wake, it's all at once: breath hitching, hands twitching, eyes snapping open.

“I’ve got you,” Cody says, and gets to watch those eyes lock on his own. 

“What,” Fox rasps. His eyes say, don’t. Don’t tell me the truth, please, it’ll hurt too much. Don't say a word.

“I wasn’t paying attention. I am now,” Cody says, squeezing the hand sans-IV. With the other, Fox is gingerly touching the plast over his surgical site, eyes widening with something like horror, something like oh fuck, like dawning understanding.

“Cody,” Fox keens, an agonized sound, and Cody crawls in the fucking bed. 

He carefully straddles Fox’s lap as his vod scrambles to bury himself in Cody’s chest, claw his way under Cody’s ribs, and Cody would let him, would keep him there if he could.

“Mhi solus tome,” he presses into Fox’s hair, and Fox wails to hear it. The keening cry turns into full-body sobs, hands clinging to Cody bruise-tight, and Cody rocks him through to the lullaby of, “mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde."

“You can’t marry me, you piece of shit,” Fox says when he’s finally cried himself out (it could be an hour or an eternity later) limp and exhausted in Cody’s arms. 

“Fucking watch me,” Cody replies, unbothered. 

“Cody, you have no idea what I’ve done. You can’t.” 

“Let me be the judge of that, Fox.” 

“I won’t survive it,” Fox whispers. 

“Let me prove you wrong,” Cody says, and means please; I love you. 

--

For @flowerparrish! Thank you for the prompt, I had so much fun with them!!!! Support me on Ko-Fi! Reblogs are always welcome! Edit: posted to AO3

[jerzwriter]

High Seas (2/2)

And here is part two! Based on this ask from my bestie @icecoffee90 I hope you enjoy this, Z (and everyone else too!)

Book: Open Heart (Post Series)

Characters: Tobias Carrick, Ethan Ramsey

Category: Humorous fluff

Words: 2,500

Summary: Casey and Tobias have been looking forward to their vacation plans, a cruise on the high seas with some of his old friends from Hopkins. But when work got in the way, Casey convinced Ethan to join her husband instead. Now, out on the high seas, some confusion ensues. Will the friends turned frienemies now friends again survive?

A/N: There are author's notes at the end. Participating in @choicesflashfics Prompt 3 — “You like getting under my skin, don’t you?” and @choicesseptemberchallenge2023 Day 2 - Stars.

Part One

My Masterlist

It was impossible to miss Ethan’s annoyance as he waited impatiently by the baggage carousel. If his tapping foot and the vein protruding from his temple weren’t proof enough, his exasperated sighs would have given him away. He has his bag in hand. Bag. He had the common sense to bring one carry-on. But not his prima donna companion was still waiting for his third.

“Jesus, Carrick! We’re gone for a week! How much did you pack?”

“Sorry,” Tobias snapped, lifting his final suitcase from the carousel. “But being fashionable matters to some of us; we’re not all Neanderthals.”  

“You’ll be fashionable back in Boston when the ship sails without us!”

Tobias stopped dead in his tracks and shot Ethan an incredulous look. “It leaves in four freaking hours! Damn! I forgot how much of a pain in the ass you were to travel with.”

Ethan opened his mouth to launch an acerbic retort, but as his words formed, he couldn’t fight the smile tugging at his lips.    

“In fairness, it’s been over a decade... and at your age, memory isn’t what it used to be.”

“I’m a year younger than you!” Tobias laughed as Ethan lagged behind. Throwing his last suitcase in the taxi’s trunk, he turned around with a smirk. “Try to keep up, old man. We don’t want to miss the boat.”

~~~~~

Somehow, Tobias managed to convince Ethan to carry one of his suitcases, and he hadn’t stopped complaining since. Having effectively tuned his friend out as they moved through the halls in search of their cabin, Tobias was relieved to see they were almost there.

“The suite is right down here,” he pointed.

“Suite?” Ethan asked. “I thought Casey said she changed it to a room?”

“She was going to, but I told her I’ll need my space if I’m stuck with you for a week. A separate sitting room and a balcony will come in handy when I can’t take listening to you anymore.”

“I love you too, Tobias. But weren’t you two getting a honeymoon suite?”

“It’s just a name, Ethan,” he laughed as they neared the door. “Casey told them there was a change in plans, so you have nothing to worry about. They promised to remove the sex swing from the room before our arrival.”

Ethan ran a hand down his face, and Tobias delighted in seeing his friend so irritated. After all, aggravating him was the man’s second favorite hobby.

“You really like getting under my skin, don’t you?” Ethan grumbled.

“Come on, sweetheart, you know that’s not true,” Tobias winked as he flung the door open. “Honey, we’re ho...”

Now, Tobias was flabbergasted, and Ethan couldn’t wait to get him back.  

“What’s the matter, dear. Are the champagne and rose petals strewn across the bed distracting?”

“Casey told them to cancel all the extras! I was there when she called.”

Ethan lifted champagne from the bucket, nodding in approval. “Krug Grande Cuvee, not bad. If this is what we can expect, please leave the romance package in place.”

“Yeah, I’ll leave that in place,” Tobias mumbled while inspecting the bed. “And it looks like I’m leaving this in place, too. They told us the suite had two beds that could be combined into one, but this thing does not come apart.”

“Now that’s a problem.”

“Yeah, I’ll go talk to guest services. They must have something else available.”

Ethan patted his friend on the back. “You do that,” he grinned, happily popping the champagne open. “I’ll be here breaking in the chair on the balcony.”

Which was exactly where Tobias found him upon his return, ending Ethan’s brief tranquility.  

“Problem,” he muttered, pouring a huge glass of bubbly. “The ship’s completely booked. All the suites with twin beds are taken.”

“Surely there must be someone in a standard room who would be happy to switch.”

“Perhaps,” Tobias sighed. “But then I’m back to being stuck in a room with you. No offense, buddy, I’m not sure I’d survive, and my daughter needs her dad.”

“Possibly,” Ethan deadpanned. “I could argue that she’d fare much better without your influence.”

“Very funny! They offered to bring a rollaway bed, but then we’ll fight over who gets the plush, comfy mattress and who gets to feel like they’re on a college bender.”

“So, I have to share a bed with you instead!”

Tobias raised an eyebrow. “You want the rollaway?”

Ethan’s expression gave him the answer he needed. 

“It’s a king-size bed, Ethan. We practically have our own zip codes.”

Ethan shook his head as he downed the rest of his champagne.

“Casey did this on purpose. She’s probably back in Boston laughing as she imagines our misery.”  

“It’s possible,” Tobias smirked. “My girl has a great sense of humor. We can Facetime her from bed tonight.”

Ethan shook his head as he stood up to return inside the suite. “You do as you wish, but I’ll be safe in my zip code.”

~~~~~

Hours later, the tuxedo-clad men entered the after-dinner mixer for Hopkins alumni. Tobias smirked with delight when several heads turn their way. 

“You have to admit it,” he boasted. “I’ve still got it.”

“You?” Ethan spat. “What makes you think they’re not looking at me.”

“Common sense,” he smiled, tapping his friend’s shoulder. “What do you say we go mingle.”

“With whom? I don’t see anyone I recognize yet.”  

“They’ll be here soon enough. We can get a drink while we wait.”

Nearby, an elegantly dressed woman glanced inconspicuously in their direction.

“Peggy,” she whispered to her wife. “Is that Tobias Carrick and Ethan Ramsey all chummy over there?”

Peggy adjusted her glasses to look. “You are correct, love. That’s them.”  

“I didn’t realize they were on speaking terms again. After Vincenza-gate, I would have thought one of them landing in jail for the other’s murder would have been more likely than a reconciliation.”  

“Yeah,” Peggy shrugged. “But that’s a long time ago now.”

“True, but when I ran into Tobias at that conference a few years back, he was still referring to Ethan by that pet name.”

“Which one was that?” Peggy laughed.

“Peckerhead, I believe.”

“Well,” Peggy smiled. “It looks like they resolved that.”

“Who resolved what?” A dark-haired man asked as the two women greeted him.

“Joshua! I wasn’t sure you were coming!” Leah grinned.

“What, miss this chance to network and gossip? No way!”

“Then you’re in the right place,” Peggy smiled. “We were just commenting on Carrick and Ramsey being friends again. Who would have thought it?”

“Uhm, they’re not friends.”

“Josh,” Leah said, motioning in their direction. “Look at them. It’s clear as day. And I, for one, am happy to know they buried the hatchet.”

“Then you’ll be even happier to hear this... they’re married.”

“They’re what?” The women replied in unison.

“Get out of here!” Peggy nudged Joshua’s shoulder.

“Well...” Leah stalled, “I did hear Tobias got married... that alone shocked me, but no one mentioned he married Ethan. Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent,” Joshua said, crossing his heart. “Mallory and I are in the suite next to them.”

Peggy rolled her eyes. “So they’re sharing a room... and you assume they’re married?”

“No. But the walls are thin, and we heard Ethan was going on and on about their romance package. Not to mention they were calling each other dear and sweetheart.”

“And Carrick is definitely a newlywed,” Peggy added.

“And it’s too soon for him to have something on the side. At least, I hope it is,” Leah chided. “Wow. Ethan and Tobias married. I didn’t have that on my bingo card.”

“Let’s stop ogling them and go and say hello,” Peggy insisted. “We’re going to look downright rude.”

The trio approached them, and after greetings and pleasantries were exchanged, Tobias went right into being...Tobias.

“You ladies look gorgeous as always! How is it that you’ve been aging backward,” he smiled.

“Ah, I see married life hasn’t made you any less of a flirt,” Leah tittered.

“Nah, that’s genetic. But now I’m all bark and no bite.”

“And it better stay that way,” Ethan jumped in.

“As if that’s even a question,” Tobias smiled. “You know darn well I know how good I have it.”

“I have to admit,” Peggy injected. “I was shocked that you two made up much less...” she motioned between them. “This.”

“Yeah, I don’t think most saw this coming,” Tobias agreed. “But it’s a good thing. We wasted too many years.”

“Years we’ll never get back,” Ethan agreed.

“You know, Mallory and I are in the suite next to you,” Josh informed. “Perhaps we can join you on the balcony for a few drinks tonight.”

“That works,” Tobias smiled. “Ethan and I will supply the drinks.”

“Yeah,” Ethan laughed. “We have the top-shelf stuff in our suite.”

“I know,” Josh smiled. “The romance package... we got it, too. We’ll see you later.”

~~~~~

Late that night, Ethan showered while Tobias Facetimed Casey and Sammy. As much as Tobias was enjoying himself, he missed his girls, and seeing them reminded him how much. Still, he did his best to stay positive.

“That’s right, baby girl,” he beamed at his babbling daughter. “That’s right!”

Then, a groan, loud enough for Tobias to hear through his AirPods, came from the bathroom.

“Babe,” Tobias interrupted Casey. “Wait just a second.” Removing an earbud, he walked to the bathroom door. “Ethan? Are you OK?”

“I’m fine. I just slipped, this space is just too damned tight.”

“Is it now?” Tobias chuckled at his friend taking his third shower of the day. “It wasn’t a problem this morning or during round two this afternoon.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s because I’m exhausted.”

“I told you three times was a bit much,” Tobias replied. “But, as long as you’re all right, I’m returning to what I was doing. So, where are we?” he said, slipping his earbud back in place. “Look at you smiling for Daddy! You are such a good girl....”

Outside the door, Mallory stopped Joshua from knocking. She looked at her husband as they heard bits and pieces of the conversation inside Ethan and Tobias’s cabin.

 “You know, honey,” Mallory started. “They sound like they’re...busy...”

“They sure do. Three times today?”

“Well,” his wife shrugged, “they are newlyweds. Let’s allow them their privacy.”

“You’re right,” he said, wrapping his arm around her. “How about we go to the Lido Deck? The buffet will be open in fifteen minutes, and we can get a good seat.”

“Sounds like a plan!”

“Heh,” Josh chuckled with a shake of his head. “Ramsey and Carrick. Who would have ever thought?”

~~~~~

The following afternoon, Ethan and Tobias were poolside when Mallory, Joshua, Leah, and Peggy approached, floppy hats on their heads and towels under their arms.

“Hey,” Leah smiled, motioning to the empty deck chairs. “Are these seats taken?”

“Only by you,” Tobias smiled. He motioned for the waiter to order drinks for all. “And tell the bartender not to skim on the rum!” He hollered before turning to his old classmates. “So, how are you enjoying the cruise?”

“It’s been great!” Peggy enthused. “You know, work is so busy, it feels like Leah and I never get to see one another back home.”

“Yeah,” Tobias laughed. “We don’t have that problem, do we, Ethan?”

“Nope,” He said, leaving his dark Ray-Bans in place. “It feels like we’re together morning, noon, and night.”

“Aww, but that’s lovely!” Mallory grinned. 

“Yeah,” Ethan chuckled. “That’s one word.”

“Hey,” Tobias tapped Joshua’s shoulder. “I thought you and Mallory were going to pass by last night.”

“Uh... we were,” Joshua started. “But we figured you could use your... privacy.”

“Honestly, I appreciate that. I was Facetiming my daughter. I knew I’d miss her, but I didn’t know how much.”

“Your daughter?” Leah gasped. “I knew you got married, but I had no idea you had a baby, too!”

“Oh yeah,” Tobias beamed, pulling out his phone to show off Sammy’s picture. “I waited long enough, so I figured, go big or go home!”

“She’s beautiful!” Peggy gushed. “The two of you must be so proud!”

“We are!” Tobias smiled. “I wish Casey could have made this trip. She would have loved meeting you.”

“Casey?” Leah asked. “Is that your nanny?”

“My nanny? No,” Tobias laughed, thumbing through his phone to show them a wedding photo. “Casey’s my wife.”

“Your wife?” Mallory asked. “But, but... aren’t you two...?”

Ethan sat up and finally removed his sunglasses. “Aren’t we what?”

“You’re not married?” Josh asked.

“Me?” Ethan spat. “And Tobias?”

“Yes,” Mallory started. “We thought...”

“US?” Ethan asked with disgust.

“Yeah,” Leah replied, looking a little miffed herself. “Clearly, we got it wrong... Josh!”

“Me and Ethan... married,” Tobias laughed. “Now, wouldn’t that be something?”

“No!” Ethan shot back. “It would not! It would not be something at all!”

“All right, Ethan,” Peggy said, sounding offended. “I understand we were wrong, but are you that insulted we assumed you were married to a man?”  

“WHAT? No! Not at all. I’m insulted because you assumed I’d pick Carrick!”

“I love you, too, Ethan.”

“And see,” Ethan said. “That’s how rumors start.”

Tobias let out a weary sigh. “You seem a bit flustered. Should we go back to the room?”

“Again... how the rumors start.”

“Look,” Tobias laughed. “As adorable of a couple as we would make. It would never happen. I’m way out of Ramsey’s league.”

“You know I was saying that to Le...” Peggy said, stopping when Ethan glared her way. “I was saying you would be an adorable couple... that’s all.”

“Good save,” her wife whispered.

“Not good enough,” Ethan groused.

~~~~~ 

Ethan sat on the balcony, appreciating the total darkness that made every star in the sky feel within his reach. He closed his eyes and took the salty air, the sound of the surf as the ship clipped through the ocean waters. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this at peace when the sliding door opened.

“Yeah, I know, baby,” Tobias chuckled. “As if he could do better.”

“Are we still on this?” Ethan moaned. 

“You think I wasn’t going to tell Casey,” Tobias smiled before wrapping up their call. 

He handed Ethan a cold beer and popped the cap off his own before falling into his chair with a smile.

“You know... this is nice.”

“It really is,” Ethan agreed. “I never thought I’d enjoy a cruise, but this is so... peaceful. I’m glad Casey convinced us to do this.”

“Oh, the cruise is great, but that wasn’t what I was referring to.”

“Oh?”

“If I had imagined a Hopkins reunion when we graduated... hell, if I had imagined one three years ago, we would be on opposite ends of the room... glaring daggers at each other.”

“I would have pretended you weren’t there,” Ethan half-smiled.

“Yeah, well... this is better.”

Ethan raised his bottle to Tobias’s. “Yeah, this is better.”

“Look at us,” Tobias beamed. “And Casey was sure one of us would end up overboard.”

“The week is still young, Tobias... the week is still young.”

@openheartfanfics @choicesficwriterscreations

Other tags on Reblog

[bite-the-bloody-hand]

:3 Eros: 2, 5 Philia: 1, 4 Storge: 2, 4 Agape: 2, 5 Ludus: 1, 2 Pragma: 2, 4 Philautia: 1,5

Baby you SPOIL me!!!!

For the 7 Forms of Love ask game

Eros: 2, 5 How important is sex to them in a relationship? Do they see it as something essential to their happiness? Would they be able to remain in a monogamous relationship with someone they loved without sex?

I think Zell is best described as an allosexual demiromantic, so in short-term situations sex is the relationship whereas in a long-term situation the sex is secondary to the companionship with his partner. Sex is definitely fun for him, he enjoys it as recreation and as a way to deepen communication with his partner. If his lover wanted to be monogamous without sex, he's fine with that as long as they don't have a problem with him masturbating. If that was off the table, then they'd need to have a serious conversation.

How closely is their opinion of their own beauty (or lack thereof) linked to their confidence? Do they see themselves as more or less worthy of love or sex based on how attractive they feel?

He knows he's attractive and always has been, that's part and parcel with being a Dhampir. Not something he can really get away from without serious self harm that he isn't quite into, so he rolls with it without being particularly vain about his looks. 'Yeah yeah I'm super hot fine whatever did you know I also have A Personality?' is the vibe with him, he has ZERO patience for sycophants who are all about fluffing him up just because he's gorgeous*. He knows he can get laid regardless, so 'attractiveness' to him doesn't have as much to do with physical looks. As far as being worthy of love… he knows looks don't have much to do with real love, and often worries that he'd fall short of any other criteria.

Philia: 1, 4 Does your OC have a Best Friend? If they do then how long have they known each other and how did they meet? If they don't then do they have a close group of friends they love equally? Or are they more of a loner?

(You just want me to talk about Aslan I SEE YOUR GAME)

For a long time Zell's only friend was his horse Yanga, but then he met Aslan. After running away from Ustalav at 17, He signed on to a security gig for a fledgling merchant crew in the River Kingdoms, where the young Captain Aslan Ciardha (19) was still learning how to leverage his charisma to get things done. He immediately latched on to Zell's (at the time) acerbic but genuinely funny sense of humor and did everything in his power to dig through the layers of Zell's deflective hostility and self-deprecation to find the candy fluff center. Much to Zell's shock, it did not take Aslan long to barrel through his defenses and set up a little Best Friend shack in his heart. They stuck together for a few years until Zell went on his own to hunt a lead on some of his private research. They reconnected after Zell heard Aslan had become Baron in the Stolen Lands. He headed there immediately, figuring his friend would need all the help he could get keeping things in line. Zell stayed through the campaign until apparently falling in battle, not expecting to wake up in Kenabras half a decade later. He does slowly begin to grow close to his companions as Knight Commander, though it's difficult to find the space for friendship when he's supposed to also be their boss.

Is your OC able to build close friendships with people very different from themselves? Perhaps in terms of culture, age or personality?

Over time, yes! It can take a while to build that mutual trust, to be sure. It took less time with Aslan bullying him into best friendship pretty thoroughly. With Seelah and Woljif for example it took a while to really solidify the friendship. He had a shockingly easy time forming a respectful solidarity that could be called friendship with Regill. Ember and Daeran were easier to friend, Ember because he truly vibes with her cause and interests, and Daeran because they have complementary senses of humor. Zell ended up using similar tactics on Daeran that Aslan had used on him, which was especially helpful to strengthen their friendship after Daeran gets conscripted. Befriending Arueshalae was difficult in that he had to dodge around her hero worship puppy love but once that was resolved they became genuinely good friends. Lann… They get along in that 'friend you always fight with' kind of way. I'm still not sure how things go with them, but generally the vibe is 'he is my brother but I could be an only child again.' Unsurprisingly he had a much harder time befriending Ulbrig due to his whole being half undead and a sorcerer, and never ended up getting along with Camellia or Wenduag (though that may change with Wendu next playthrough, I feel like they'd come to an understanding.) Sosiel was the hardest to befriend because he reminds Zell too much of someone else; meanwhile befriending Trevor was incredibly easy, they have a kind of nonverbal vibe together that's very chill. Nenio is Nenio, he loves being her loyal assistant and doesn't mind that she's still getting a hang on the whole friends thing. He was surprised to learn that Greybor liked him, and really respects Greybor in turn. Zell maybe has too many complicated dadfeels to be truly close with him, though. Galfrey… It's unlikely they're ever going to be friends, but he does come to understand her better after a while. If nothing else he'd like to prove to her that he isn't a complete fuckup.** Anevia and Irabeth are his moms when Aslan's mom isn't around so they get along great, haha.

Storge: 2, 4 Does your OC have children? If so then how fiercely do they love them? If they have more than one then do they love them all equally? If they do not have children then is this part of their future plans?

Noooo he is. Abjectly against having children of his own, and unsure if he would be a good father, though he is firecely protective and supportive of all children. Especially little shithead ones, because they remind him of himself. There are so many awful what-if scenarios about his own shortcomings he agonizes about that the joyful parts of having and raising children of his own are a very distant consideration. However he will always try to be on hand to help rear his close friends' children, and generally has good Kid Energy so they come to him when there are problems anyway.*** He is also known as a favorite uncle of Aslan's children. (There are three, from different mothers. He makes sure they're taken care of and is on speaking terms with their moms, they just never got married or anything.) Ultimately, Zell would be an excellent parent if he could get over himself, but he probably won't without a lot of time and assistance.

Does your OC have any siblings? If so then did their parents have a favourite growing up? Has their relationship with their sibling changed in adulthood? If they don't have any siblings then do they perhaps feel they have missed out on an important relationship? Do they have any especially close friends who go some way towards filling that role?

As far as he knows he doesn't have any direct siblings, but he's certain he has several Dhampir half-siblings out there in the world. He's not entirely sure he'd want to meet any of them. There's also the matter of any Vampires sired by his father who he also would very much not want to meet. There were plenty of children his own age growing up in Hongli, but once he went to Ustalav he was isolated until his later teenage years put him in the Hellknight Military Academy on the Estate where his father is 'Interred.' He didn't get along with most of his classmates at that point, and the few he did get on with mostly befriended him for protection or clout. As far as he's concerned, Aslan is his brother, and the feeling is mutual. Woljif and Lann also step into the brother circle; Ember is his sister. He was hoping things might go that way with Seelah, but they aren't quite there yet. Give it time. Arue will get to the sister place when the crush finally dies in like 100 years. He sees Suture as something of a stepbrother… there's a complicated kind of kinship there he's not sure can be really defined any one way.

Agape: 2, 5 Does your OC feel a spiritual connection to the world around them? Do they have a particular love for nature or living things?

Being half undead gives Zell a really interesting perspective on the life-death cycle, and has turned that to really tuning in to the natural world. Coupled with having lived as a Nomad dependent on the land stewardship of generations past, he's got a long history of loving nature. He is deeply connected to the land, and tries very hard to maintain that no matter where he roams. He follows ancient traditions of greeting and working with land spirits, and is very keen to learn the customs of those spirits as soon as possible. As such he is something of a thorn in Ulbrig's side for a little bit because of this. For example, his way of greeting and revering spirits and ancestors is based on Hongli traditions, which can differ significantly from Sarkorian methods. They get in lots of debates about the proper methods of spirit work that often come to blows. (it's never really that serious they just both need to blow off steam.****) Zell is especially skilled with handling horses, but treats all beasts with respect and care, which means he also kind of. Adopts many creatures in his travels. He's not a healer as such, but he does know enough about rudimentary vetinary medicine to help most animals, and this ends in quite a few just following him or finding him. Besides, if he can't heal it, now he's travelling with a bunch of people who can! (Congratulations Daeran on being the unofficial horse doctor of the crusade)

Does your OC find it easy to empathise with their enemies? Or do they see it as important to dehumanise them in order to combat them with sufficient determination?

He empathises with his enemies just fine, and has no problem beating or killing them anyway. While he doesn't like to turn to violence as a first resort - negotiation is always first, followed by intimidation, then cunning, then violence - he's not shy about being really, extremely good at violent problem solving. He tries not to revel too much in combat; as a Bloodrager the risk of completely losing his head and harming a friend with spells or weapons does not appeal to him. But there are some foes, especially certain demons, that are literally too delicious for him not to go after. At that point, they're prey.

Ludus: 1, 2 Does your OC have any particular favourite chat up lines? If not for themselves then perhaps ones they have suggested to a friend? How effective do these tend to be?

Flirting is very situational for him; if he's interested in someone it's usually after he's listened to them talk for a while - at least long enough to get a decent cold read on their sense of humor. His opener will always be something lighthearted and funny to set an easy mood, and if he gets a positive response he keeps up the banter. He has a pretty decent success rate with this method.

Alternatively he goes the bratty body language route, by getting in someone's space and goading them into chasing him. He rarely goes this route unless he's really just down to fuck with no strings.

Is your OC particularly skilled at flirting? Have they had to practice this or does it just happen naturally?

Zell is usually pretty good at flirting, and even when he isn't he has enough charisma for a corny ass goofball line to flip right back around to charmingly effective. Part of it is looks, part of it is (much practiced, somewhat feigned) confidence, some of it is cool emotional reservation, and the rest is just genuinely wanting to have a fun time. He's not into using people or stringing them along and that comes through strongly in his demeanor. He did have to practice to get to this point. In his younger days he was more bratty and forceful, which got him into a lot of short-term, short-fuse situationships that weren't good for anyone.

Pragma: 2, 4 What is the biggest challenge that your OC has had to overcome in a long-term relationship or friendship? What helped them get through this?

It's always accepting that he's wanted, and not just being kept around. It's purely an internal, emotional reaction to a lifetime of displacement, and he knows that, but it's hard not to feel it. Getting past the fear that no one would want him around just for being him is hard enough as just a regular person; being an undead freak and (depending on who you ask) walking harbinger of death and pestilence doesn't make that any easier. With Aslan, he got hardcore bullied (affectionately) into accepting that not everyone saw his condition as a contagion, that his life was worthwhile, and that he had things to look forward to that weren't just sacrificing himself. It was relentless and merciless and Aslan simply would not allow him to live without having to do stupid shit like putting a gold piece in a special savings pouch every time he said a self-depricating joke. They are best friends your honor. Where romance is concerned… losing a chunk of his memories and then suddenly becoming a mythically, historically significant individual with a world-shattering responsibility and massive cultlike following makes keeping up the self-love way harder. It is a very good thing that Daeran isn't the type to get dazzled by power, or care overmuch about mythic status. The fact that he dismisses and jokes about it outright is something that draws in Zell's affection and devotion completely. If anyone is going to see him for himself, and not the overblown myth surrounding him, it's Daeran.

After the initial fires of passion cool to some degree, what would keep your OC engaged in a relationship? Shared goals? Similar values? Or contented companionship?

Contented Companionship definitely, and also a sense of shared goals, though they need not necessarily be grand ones. He wants very much to find and be around his person, to enjoy living and holding space with them. Being with someone who can stand to be together for long stretches of time is the ideal after all, because there will always be opportunities to travel.

Philautia: 1,5 Does your OC have a healthy sense of their own worth and value? Or do they see themselves as failing to live up to their original potential? Perhaps they are convinced of their own sinful or inadequate nature?

Oh indeed he does not. Zell is constantly at war with feelings of outrage, misplaced regret, sorrow, and despair over being born a Dhampir, as well as the Celestial lineage he taps into as a Bloodrager. As a Dhampir, and one of the very few related to His Majesty, there are many levels of self-loathing that only started coming at him once he was taken to Ustalav. In Hongli it was understood that he was a little more sensitive than usual to the sun, would have to hunt demons from time to time for extra nourishment, and would need extra special weapons training to reign his shit in. No problems. But in Ustalav? Social pariah. Blight on the face of Golarion, a Sin in the eyes of Pharasma, only kept alive by the pact between this specific group of really weirdly anti-Iomedaean Hellknights and his father. Forced to learn a new language, new etiquette, new rules (that were HIGHLY contradictory ALL THE TIME), wear new (terrible, uncomfortable) clothes, and constantly being told he should be grateful for the privilege really. Fucking. Sucked. He held on to what bits of self-worth he could with whimsy, mischief, and unhinged violence until he could get himself out of there, but the experience had left its mark. He wouldn't be the same after. As for his Celestial ancestry… he isn't sure entirely where it comes from as his mother is a complete unknown and his father is enigmatic and unavailable. All he knows is that it causes him pain when he uses his abilities that lingers in his body for days at a time, and that he feels nothing of the supposed holy ecstasy one is supposed to feel when thinking of literally any god. A complete atheist with a celestial heritage who also happens to be half-vampire sounds like a joke character from a pulp novel, but it's his life. He can't connect meaningfully to either of those parts of his heritage without potentially completely abandoning the other, or his sense of self, in the process. He never asked to be born into a bizarre legacy and fucked-up body but those were the cards he was dealt and he wishes he could truly forgive himself for not already having found a way to cheat the house and fold in a better hand for himself. He is slowly, very slowly, coming to accept his own worth again. It's a long road, but he'll get there.

Has your OC always had the same opinion of themselves or has this changed over time? Have they learned to love themselves - perhaps with the help of others - as their journey progressed? Or have the consequences of their actions only served to erode their sense of self-worth?

He certainly had a dip with the ol' teenage depression as you have previously read. Truly it was through being open enough to ask Aslan (and later others) for help that he's been able to start remembering what it's like to just be a person and not be completely consumed by anger and pain. Meeting and befriending Arueshalae was also inspiring for him. Arue's constant grappling with her own self-worth made him re-evaluate some of what he was doing to himself, and in turn help her as well.

*Woljif only got away with it because Zell could tell he was trying to pull a con and he's not immune to furthering mischief.

**He suspects, though he can't outright confirm, that Galfrey would appreciate knowing that he isn't just out for a fling with Daeran. If nothing else, he respects custom enough to be forthright about his intentions, even if he doesn't really get how Mendevians do things.

***[Minor act 4 spoiler] 'Adopting' Xorges doesn't do much in-game but in my head Zell takes full responsibility of ensuring Zorges gets set up for success. He doesn't want to be intrusive because clearly the kid can handle himself, but he also wants Xorges to know he has support. As a test-run for parenthood, he does all right.

****IF I HAD KNOWN HE WAS ROMANCEABLE like maaan Dae you would've had some competition for once.

[batrachised]

houston, we have liftoff

I would love to be coherent in analyzing this chapter, but despite its detailed examples and flashbacks, what impresses on me overall is its mood. It perfectly conveys the desperate misery of a 3AM hour, the rehashing and the rehashing and the rehashing of past wrongs. By now, we know that the toxicity of Valancy’s family is unparalleled, but I think this is where we really grasp the full extent of it.

Valancy wasn’t born a doormat – I know a theme of this chapter is her being stepped on, but what caught my attention is how often Valancy did stand up for herself (“she had not yet learned it was unladylike to have feelings”). She asks for her dust pile; she asks for a beautiful hat; she says Byron was the one to pinch her (HATE that boy); she mutters the truth when eleven; she throws her button string on the ground in protest. Repeatedly, she pushes back, and repeatedly, she’s shoved down. The dust pile (ah, another metaphor, Lucy Maud) encapsulates this. Valancy is shamed for wanting to keep her own work and then called jealous and selfish! “It is not ladylike to have feelings,” Cousin Stickles had once told her disapprovingly.

Something else that I’ve mentioned in previous posts is how her family is so blind to who Valancy really is. Unsurprising that her family is less than attuned to Valancy emotionally (understatement of the century), but along with standing up for herself, we see that Valancy was a high strung and sensitive child (she was afraid of the moon), who has an acerbic sense of humor/biting attitude (“But O God, you know I did speak the truth.”) Uncle Benjamin is described as thinking of passion as very foreign to Valancy, yet little Valancy repeatedly is passionate. (Is anyone else thinking of that rose bush that wouldn’t bloom? Anyone? Even as Valancy followed the instructions of her family on its care?)

We also have Olive in this chapter. I’m still musing over Olive, but in a way, she strikes me as one of the only people who sees Valancy for who she is – and is horribly cruel about it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Olive would guess at the existence of the Blue Castle, but she understands that Valancy wants beautiful things and wants to be included, and uses that to torment Valancy—see how she tells Valancy why she wasn’t included as a bridesmaid entirely unnecessarily.

Then – at last – in a glorious conclusion to the crescendo of misery – VALANCY SMASHES THE JAR! This chapter begins with a passive rebellion – valancy deciding not to tell others of her diagnosis (lmao at how sleeping in the same bed with cousin stickles is the last straw because real) – and ends with active revolution. I love the last two paragraphs because it’s a one-two punch. Valancy decides to tell the truth and no longer please people and then literally destroys a semblance of her old life. It’s an interior shift that’s backed up by hard and immediate action. (Almost literally a ka-BLAM). We immediately know that Valancy isn’t just going to be blunt; oh, no. Valancy is going to smash things, and smash things gloriously.  

[leebrontide]

WIP Intro: Names in Their Blood

Title: Names in Their Blood

Format: Novel

Series: Second Sentinels. This is book 2 in the series. Book 1 is currently free as an ebook, or for actual money in paper or audiobook.

Genre: Near future scifi/ low neon cyberpunk/ superheroes/ small town mystery/ little bit Midwest gothic?/ YA into NA. Trust me it all works together I swear.

Status: PUBLISHED AS OF TODAY!!!! WE MADE IT Y'ALL!!!!

Themes: Disability, bodily autonomy, identity, queerness, ethics

Tropes: Missing people, secret identities, found family, meetcute, meetugly, the monster within, dodgy government body, reunions

Synopsis Four queer teens on the fringes of the superheroing world head to a small town in Minnesota for what’s supposed to be a month off. Officially, they’re there for some stressful family reunions and to use the only full hospital for genetically altered people in the US. But, when they realize that the government beuro that gives the Sentinels their missions has been hiding the disappearances of missing alterds for years, it sets them in the path of a mission that has them questioning who they can trust.

Meet the characters under the cut, and/or leave any kind of comment to be tagged in future posts about this project!

Characters

(Age 18)

Opal hadn’t realized when she came to Chicago to join the Sentinels that she’d be joining an extremely complicated family. She certainty didn’t plan to start dating the former team leader’s fierce but fragile daughter. But how can she feel like she belongs here when she can’t pick a superhero name, every effort she makes to reform the corruption in superheroing blows up in her face, her superiors are mad at her, and her girlfreind is holding resentments Opal doesn’t understand? At least she finally gets to stay in a fancy, romantic Victorian manor house.

(Age 18)

As the non-superpowered oldest child of legendary hero LodeStar and medical technologies magnate Dr Melissa Tillman, Issac’s born the brunt of much of the worst of growing up embroiled in the world of superheroes. That’s included kidnapping, threats of torture, and losses he doesn’t know how to cope with. Now, he’s trying to set aside his resentment and focus on being a good adoptive dad to the world’s first feeling, sentient AI. But it’s hard to prove you deserve custody of such a powerful kid when you’re struggling to cope with a new disability and you technically have a felony hanging over your head for developing illegal brain-altering nanites.

(Age 17)

The middle child in Sentinel Plaza, xe may call a different superhero xyr father, but has always considered Issac and Jamie xyr siblings. Now that xe knows that some survivors of the genetic-engineering cultist that built xyr father’s first family are still alive, xe has to contend with the fears, connections, and obligations xe’s inherited. The worst injury of xyr life so far, and a growing fear that xe's a danger to the people around xyr isn’t making competing loyalties any easier to deal with.

(Age 17)

After years of very temporary fostercare placements it’s almost a relief to live full time in Coldwater Clinic Hospital, where nobody is paying that much attention to her anymore. When she met a retired superhero, and they saved each other, she counted herself lucky. But now that heroes old family are in town, with very mixed feelings about the new teenager in their lost family members life. Between the 7ft superhero trainee giving her palpitations and the potentially evil scientist suddenly hanging around her defacto home, her secrets- and her heart- might be in danger.

(Age 17)

Now that she’s no longer the youngest in the family thanks to her AI nibbling, Jamie wants to let go of her bitterness for all the ways she’s been left behind, and think about her future. It’s nobodies fault that she didn’t inherit her dad’s superpowers, even if she did get his temperament, and she knows that while Opal may appreciate her acerbic sense of humor, bitternes isn’t going to help her keep the girlfriend she doesn’t really think she deserves. When she gets an offer that would put dreams she gave up long ago within her reach, she has to choose. Will she follow in the other Sentinel's footsteps- all the way to her own self-destruction?

Comment to let me know if you'd like to be added to the tag list! Also, my askbox is always open to questions!

ADDED: Playlist on Spotify

[thee-morrigan]

sincerity is scary

character(s): Holland Townsend, plus a lil Verda at the beginning (technically, Nate's not in this but my god is he living rent-free in Holland's mind) wc/rating: 3.2k / T (swearing) warnings: so many spoilers for Book 3 (all below the cut ofc!) read on ao3 in case anyone’s wondering, Holland still thinks the scariest thing she’s up against is her own stupid heart.

“Come on, Verda, you have to have something for me. I want to do things. I need to do things.”

“You know, some research suggests that feeling the need to be busy all the time is a trauma response,” the pathologist responded mildly, not looking up from the tray of instruments he was busy sterilizing. “That it’s a fear-based compulsion to distract your brain from meaningfully processing traumatic events.”

“You wanna send me those citations, then, and I can distract myself with some light reading?” Holland snapped back, but there was no heat in it.

Verda paused his work then and turned, giving a huff of laughter whose lightness was somewhat diminished by the careful assessment in his eyes as they swept her face. Although they’d started out, as many good friends do, brought together not by fate or fortune but chance proximity, they had quickly discovered bright shared threads of themselves in each other beneath the veneer of professional courtesy and had found themselves fast companions ever since.

He respected her as a colleague, of course; more than he’d expected, if he was honest. She had a stronger background in his line of work than he’d dared to hope in such a small station, which made her a useful colleague to have when he found himself stymied by something. And — perhaps most importantly — she didn’t pester him with questions she didn’t even know were asinine when a case experienced delays. He’d liked Detective Reele more or less, but she’d been marginally tolerable when things didn’t move at the speed she decided appropriate, regardless of whether he could make degraded tissue spontaneously re-materialize when she decided she wanted clearer fingerprints. No, Detective Townsend was a better colleague, that was certain. 

More than just respecting her work, though, he liked Holland in general; she brought a borderline acerbic levity to the station that balanced against Tina’s more exuberant nature and his own tendency to forget to venture upstairs at least once a day. She wasn’t calmer than Tina, exactly — he wasn’t sure calm was a word that had ever been used to describe Holland Townsend. But if Tina was something in the neighborhood of bubbly, all iridescent soap shine and rounded edges, Holland was something sharper, something fizzing, like a live wire.

When he looked at her now, though, he saw less of the bright crackle of energy and more of the kind of nervous energy that led people to market abhorrent devices like fidget spinners. She looked restless. She looked tired.

—

Holland was tired. Goddamn exhausted, actually, if she was honest with herself, which seemed to be almost never these days. She didn’t let herself linger on the way that thought chafed any more than she let herself slow down enough for that bone-deep weariness to press its full weight against her.

It was better to keep moving.

“You know, you’re probably overdue for a vacation,” Verda’s voice, more tinged with concern than it had been a moment ago, cut through her reverie. “I’m pretty sure your promotion to detective didn’t entitle you to less PTO.”

The spark of wry humor in his comment didn’t fully mask the shade of careful observation in his eyes, but…it was an attempt. An easy out for her to muster her usual grinning nonchalance — the irreverent charm Adam had once snarked at her about relying on too heavily.

If it ain’t broke, I guess, she thought, swallowing the urge to sigh as she indeed summoned a half-smile, made herself look her friend in the eye as she tilted her head at him.

“There you go with that concern again, V,” she teased, rising from her perch on the edge of a spare lab bench.

“It’s almost like we’re friends,” he said dryly, although some of the tension in his face eased.

“Which is why I’m gonna let you get back to it and quit bugging you.” Holland moved toward the open lab door and paused, resting one hand against the door jamb as she flashed Verda a more genuine smile. “Thanks, though. For letting me bug you.”

He waved her comment off, though he returned her smile. “Anytime. Besides, I’m hoping things will finally start calming back down with those recent cases sorted. Then we’ll both probably relish any interruptions to the usual humdrum.”

It was all she could do to dredge up a hum of laughter in agreement before stepping back into the corridor, only letting her shoulders slump once she was safely ensconced in her office.

She hadn’t told any of them yet that she was leaving the station. She’d have to soon; she knew that, knew she’d been putting it off far too long already. And, as her mother had pointed out, it wasn’t as if she was never going to be able to see them again. Her friends would still be her friends. They just wouldn’t work together anymore.

Or mostly get to know what she even did for work anymore.

She wasn’t even entirely sure how much she could still keep Tina in the loop, as much as she might wish to. She didn’t have any reason to be particularly suspicious of Agent Pierson, the woman the Agency had sent to spy on Tina from within the station. But as much as she trusted Tina —with her secrets but also to take care of herself— she worried that the balm of having a confidant who was just hers was no longer truly available to her, at least not in the way it had been. Part of that fear, she knew, came from knowing she couldn’t reveal that the so-called new officer was not exactly who she seemed. In all likelihood, the whole arrangement probably really was for Tina’s safety, and probably nothing to worry about, but…Holland still felt like she was lying to her. And not the kind of lying she was comfortable with.

A liar and a coward, she thought as she sat at her desk, chin propped in her hands. She felt that constricting weight begin to settle against her, her skin too tight along her bones, and jerked to her feet again before that melancholia could curl catlike into her lap and trap her there.

She supposed it was useful that everyone had become so inured to her abrupt comings and goings from the station; no one bothered to look up as she walked out into the bright heat of the midday sun, its sticky warmth blanketing her body after a morning spent in the over-conditioned chill of the station’s air.

—

She ended up back in her apartment more out of habit than any real desire to be there. For a while, she found herself drifting, unmoored and aimless, between rooms. She should try to rest, she knew that, knew that if she could sleep she would feel better. 

These days, though, she too often found herself reaching for sleep only to close her fist around endless, empty time. 

She tried to read, to lose herself in another universe for a while, but gave up after she realized that while she’d technically read a whole chapter, she had no idea what had happened in it. 

She thought about playing guitar but figured if she couldn’t focus on reading, she probably wouldn’t fare much better at making anything that sounded like music instead of discordant strumming.

Plus she was already bored of sitting still in the empty quiet of her apartment.

Pushing herself off her window seat, Holland strode to her dresser and tugged out shorts and a sports bra. Experience had taught her long ago that she couldn’t outrun her own brain, but at least she could tire her body enough that she was forced to sleep, at least a little.

—

Because she was already tired, it took longer than usual to find her pace, especially without any music to give her a cadence she could match. In deference to safety, she’d decided against headphones; probably a wise choice   — definitely a wise choice, she reminded herself, hardly a choice at all unless she decided to start actively courting disaster — but one that did nothing to lessen the weight of that heaviness that kept pulling at her, brutal and swift as a rip current. Still, after three miles, she felt some of the tension in her body ebb, some of that near-constant tightness in her chest yielding its grip enough for breathing to come easier, deep and steady draughts of air filling her lungs. 

For a long while, there was only the blessed gentle warmth of summer air, the quiet scraping thump of her sneakers against the sidewalk, and the pleasant ache of her muscles stretching and contracting. Slowly, mile after mile, she felt her body become less foreign, each pounding step bringing it closer to the skin and bones and thudding heart that she recognized as her own. Felt each clenching beat of that too-human muscle in her chest insisting it was where it belonged, safe within its cage of bone and flesh. Felt the reassurance that her heart hadn’t been torn from her chest and left, raw and bleeding, outside her body. 

No matter how it might feel lately. 

A liar and a coward. 

The sharp dig of a knife between her ribs, the claws of that familiar tightness latching into her chest again, and—

Breathe. 

She sucked in air with a sharp gasp, forced her lungs to expand, to draw air in and in and in until she could feel those claws retract.

Until she felt the thought she’d almost had, the one she still hadn’t let herself articulate even within her own mind, retract with them.

Another kind of lie. Another thing she was too much of a coward to confront.

Holland sucked in another breath, letting the sultry weight of that summer air fill her, fill all the cold, empty spaces that lurked within her. Let the warmth of it incinerate the other unarticulated thoughts and shadows of memory before they could turn their baleful, accusatory eyes back toward her. 

Turning her own gaze outward once more, she scanned her surroundings, squinting at a nearby street sign as she passed and trying to decide how much further until she really would need to loop back. Holland’s run had taken her well into the outskirts of town. It wasn’t her preferred route, which snaked through the woods near the Cornerstones and eventually toward the marina, but at least this route hadn’t taken her through Wayhaven proper. Or required her to skirt the station, as her usual path would have. Even if she was leaving — even if no one seemed to really notice or care whether she was, at any given moment, in her office these days — she still didn’t think running directly past the station in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon was necessarily appropriate. 

So Holland found herself instead approaching the winding series of long hills that would eventually lead her toward the hospital. Her knees ached just thinking about those hills. None were particularly steep, but they stretched further than was typically noticeable in a car. On foot, though…no, it was probably past time for her to begin finding her way back home. 

It had been a while since she’d been on a long run. A long while, actually, and she knew her legs would likely ache come morning, even with the shorter maintenance runs she tried to squeeze in whenever she could. Which had been no chance at all these past weeks, between work and what felt like an endless cycle of injury and suffocatingly long recovery. Indeed, she felt the muscles in her thighs protest as she crested one hill before veering right, toward the streets leading back into town. Oh, she would certainly feel the cost of this impromptu long run in the morning.

Although it might be a nice change, she supposed, if her body ached from something other than having the shit kicked out of her by Trappers. Or crumbling buildings. Or winged giants who caused said buildings to end up in pieces on top of her. And those were only some of the most recent aches.

She rolled her shoulders, shaking her arms to diffuse the pressing tension of that memory, her breath a sharp scrape against her throat. 

Fine. She was fine. Despite the strain of these past months, she continued to be perfectly fine. Had gotten through everything that’d been thrown at her. Not entirely smoothly, certainly not effortlessly, but…she had gotten through it. Would continue to do so, perhaps with greater ease than before if her new role indeed provided increased training. She could handle it. She would handle it.

It was the same argument she’d given Nate after the auction, almost two weeks ago now. As to whether she believed it any more now than she had then…another thought she wasn’t ready to have yet. 

I am in love with you, Holland.

Another familiar ache in her chest, one more bruise on her already battered heart. She shut down that train of thought, almost stumbling as she worked to redirect that particular train of thought. To shut out the image that flashed across her mind’s eye, of how Nate’s face had looked in that conversation. The way he’d looked at her, the agony that had streaked across his beautiful face, and how neatly and thoroughly it had eviscerated her. 

That pain. That pain that she had caused.

I don’t know how this is going to work.

She’d had to remind herself how to breathe. Had to remind herself to breathe through the lashing pain of how much she’d hated herself for putting that look on his face. And for knowing that it would likely be far from the last time. 

Because she didn’t know either.

She didn’t know how to avoid it, this hurting him. Didn’t know how to be an easier person to love. 

And as for what she did know, what she’d suspected and quietly fretted over for weeks now…

That hideous weight tugged beneath her ribs and Holland sped up, pushing past the bleating tremor in her thighs, the burning ache in her chest. Pushed that thought out, out, out—

“Fuck!” The word was little more than a hiss as the world tipped and roiled and Holland went flying, elbows skidding and knees barking as she hit the pavement.

Between the subsequent string of violent curses and what remained of her pride, she supposed she was relieved to still be closer to the outskirts than the town center. If running past the station in the middle of a Tuesday was arguably inappropriate, the selection of words that flew out of her mouth as she eased to a seat on the ground was indisputably so. 

She winced as she examined the shredded skin on her forearms, her knees. She hadn’t even fallen well: the most she’d done before splaying gracelessly on the street had been to land more on her arms than her hands. Not her first choice, or at least it shouldn’t have been, but at least she hadn’t broken her wrists. Or anything else, as far as she could tell, looking her latest batch of wounds over as she rose to her feet.

Holland hissed again as she gingerly flexed her left leg, which had borne the brunt of the impact and now sported angry red scrapes along her knee and halfway up her thigh. Just scrapes, but ones that stretched painfully when she bent her leg. 

Swallowing another mouthful of curses, she pulled free the water bottle attached to her running belt, unstoppering it with her teeth before she squeezed a stream of water along first one leg, then the other, and then the smaller scrapes on her arms and elbows. They stung like all hell, but at least they looked slightly better with most of the dirt and grime rinsed away. Naturally, she’d forgotten to bother checking if she’d needed to restock the handful of bandages she usually kept in one of the belt’s pockets; naturally, she only unearthed one after fumbling through every goddamned pocket, the lone bandage too small to be of much use unless she fancied ripping adhesive off part of an open wound later.

She exhaled, sharp and impatient, and raked a hand over the sweat-dampened strands of hair that had broken free of her stubby ponytail and now lay plastered to her forehead. 

No new scars indeed. She snorted as she recalled Nate’s words in that forest clearing, back before they’d even known what manner of myth hunted her. She doubted it had occurred to him that she’d likely continue to rack up scars earned through her own sheer stupidity. God, but that felt like a lifetime ago.

She drained the remains of her water bottle before slotting it back in its elastic holster at her hip. She toed the ground, wincing at her protesting kneecap, and considered. Depending on the route she took, she wasn’t that far from her apartment. The circuitous route she’d intended to follow was obviously out, but she could take a more direct one and be back relatively quickly. Walking, it would take…she did the math, frowning. Walking back, assuming she kept her regular pace, would likely take her the better part of two hours. She stretched her legs again, shifting experimentally from one foot to the other. She was hurt, yes, but it was definitely only superficial, and not so bad she couldn’t probably run home as well as she could walk. Running would be faster, even with what would certainly be a much slower pace. Would likely cut the return time in half, actually, though she knew it would hurt. Of course, it would hurt to walk home, too. 

Holland’s shoulders sagged. Since she’d stopped moving, her body had started to register physical exhaustion, had begun to grow heavy with it, and she wanted to be home. Wanted a shower and her bed and a different kind of silence than the kind that felt like a scream.

She did have another option, some small part of her mind pointed out before she shut that thought out, too. Technically, the warehouse, where she had a bed and a shower and certainly less silence, was a bit closer to her current location than her own apartment. However begrudgingly, Holland had to admit the thought tempted her. Tempted her more when she thought of the magic-imbued salve, leftover from what had been her most recent batch of injuries, stashed in a bathroom cabinet. To say nothing of the vampire whose mere presence soothed her more than any medicine.

Her frown deepened. She was tired of showing up at the warehouse battered and bloody. Really goddamned tired of it. 

She straightened, rolling her shoulders and breathing deep. Her apartment wasn’t that far, and it was only a skinned knee. Well, two skinned knees, actually, and her elbows, but…

Holland released that deep breath and set off,  a tentative jog while she found her new pace, toward the town center and her apartment beyond.

She didn’t much feel like reminding anyone how easily she broke apart.

[toongrrl-blog]

My Style Analysis: Devi in Ben's Dream Part 2

Alright folks we are gonna take another ring around the rosy everything Ben got thinking of this dream.

One thing I kick myself for despite the fact that both Stranger Things and NHIE are Netflix productions is why I didn't see it sooner.

Devi is likely dressed in an updated version of Princess Daphne from the classic arcade game Dragon's Lair, a Don Bluth production.

Yes the archetypal Damsel In Distress whose character design was based on Playboy pinups, who looks like she'd fall out of her lingerie (lots of fashion tape must be used) and part of the Dumb Blonde stereotype that was used do demean conventionally attractive women AND women who didn't fit the mold regardless of physical appeal. And her Knight In Shining Armor? Dirk.

Despite fitting the archetypal notion of the Knight, Dirk is not drawn as desirably as Daphne, part of the reasons many feminists found the games to be sexist (with Space Ace being a marginal improvement given that Kimberly, a redheaded Daphne, is sassy and spunky and is able to take initiative in saving the day) and Daphne is a passive figure in all this.

Now what about ST2 and NHIE? Well....

In the opener to the 2nd Season of the highly popular sci-fi period piece, the boys (Will Byers, Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, and Lucas Sinclair) head over to a 1984 perfect arcade where Dustin tries to best Lucas's high score at the game only to have Dirk killed by the dragon and Lucas gloat about being able to save the blonde beauty. Why is this important?

Because New Girl in Town Max Mayfield ("Mad Max") beat Dustin's high score on Dig Dug and soon Lucas and Dustin are both in competition for the acerbic tomboy's feelings, thus marking a foreshadowing of who gets the girl.

It's Lucas, of course. But despite time zones, episode by episode conflicts, and decades separating the couples, Lumax and Benvi do have a lot in common. Buckle up because we will be talking about how Western Society treats difference in ethnicity, heritage, race, and appearance and gender.

One thing to make clear that the image of the Knight in Shining Armor and the helpless Princess is often obnoxiously Eurocentric, especially of the Gallic or Anglo persuasion. Princess Daphne is tall, leggy, slim and curvaceous with long, blonde hair and blue eyes with a voice high on helium and a babylike demeanor, a kind of innocence attributed to respectable European women that Karens have exploited for generations often to damaging effects; Dirk is meant to stand in as traditionally masculine but hapless enough to be relatable to the (assumed) male players of the game, all he has to do is save the girl to have any shot with her leading to the unfortunate implication that young men are entitled to the opposite gender, especially the ones considered the most desirable but he isn't classically handsome, historically men have been able to get away with not living up to beauty standards by being able to be identified with their talent, intelligence, heroics, finances, economic savvy, work ethic, virility, strong character, sense of humor, or being a decent person. And of course it's been said (and proved) that white men can get away with being mediocre and still scale the ladder of society, whereas his conditionally white and racialized counterparts have to work harder to even take their steps on an often more perilous ladder.

Historically in our society, both members of the Black and Jewish Diaspora have had a....hard time of it: often as targets of derision, fear, violence, and disdain for the jobs they were sentenced to do (often in less "respectable" areas) and this also affected how (and this is not to take away from how insidious anti-Black and anti-Semite misogyny is, go ask Meghan Thee Stallion and Elana Steinberg) men of these groups were depicted: either desexualized and non-threatening to the point of being humiliated or over-sexualized and "out to take our wimmin" and scapegoated because won't someone please think of the children?

Sometimes if they were "lucky", they got to be "the best friend" to the less ethnic white guy who presents as WASPy. They could be attractive (if not more) or charming (if not more) or compelling to watch (if not more) as the hero but don't get the leading man treatment or are the replaceable awesome love interest who are moved aside for the more flawed and relatable white character (look at Courtney B. Vance in Sex and the City); there is also ugggh beauty standards that favor Eurocentric gentile features over non-European features. Dirk is drawn in that classic homely cartoon guy style while both Lucas and Ben are more conventionally desirable to their girlfriends (and many fans of their respective shows) but while Dirk is entitled to Daphne's affections (and by implication, her body), both Lucas and Ben (who are both younger than Dirk) have to not only save the girl but they also have to gentle their way (a term I learned as a kid) by being more emotionally available and being there for their girlfriend's vulnerabilities and be willing to risk heartbreak. Both @urspopinionsareshit (on masculinity and anti-Semitic tropes) and u/absentminded88 on Reddit (on Lucas Sinclair and tropes focusing on African American masculinity) have wrote extensively on these topics but my point still stands that often men of both diasporas were often overlooked as paragons of ideal masculinity.

Now it's one for the ladies!

I picked these because Max and Devi have something that poor Daphne lacks: illuminating friendships with other women and looks like I will have to toss a wet mildew blanket into the party.

Let's talk feminine stereotypes and difference! *dodges tomatoes*

It's quite a stretch to suggest that both Max and Devi don't fit a conventional eurocentric blonde beauty as both Sadie Sink (who's also a model) and Maitreyi Ramikrishnan are both pretty girls with expressive eyes with slim figures but yet many women of color and redheaded women were often not considered paragons of beauty (if they weren't being over-sexualized as homewreckers and temptresses) and often not considered feminine due to depictions of their "fiery" tempers at best or being seen as castrating harpies. Max and Devi both struggle with their society's view of how girls should behave, have dealt with trauma, not taking shit from boys or authority figures or even other girls, chafing against certain expectations put on them while trying to navigate femininity away from their mothers (who they have strained relationships with) and with the help of mass media (eep). But ultimately both girls find empowerment in their relationships with other women, finding out how capable they really are even with threatening a man with a weapon or destroying his skateboard, and in their own self-expression and put-upon uniqueness. Whereas Daphne existed to look pretty and adore Dirk (and by extension the assumed cis male player), Max and Devi have agency and ideas with formidable personalities that intimidate their peers and do-nothing adult authority figures. If they need saving, they at least try to resist and are capable of it.

This initiative is reflected in the dream: Devi declares her academic accomplishments and capability are superior to Ben's and that is a turn on for him, she manages to Jedi mind-trick his shirt off, and declares she will take charge of their lovemaking. Perfect combo of sensuality, brains, beauty, and gumption.

Both Lumax and Benvi prove that there is an appeal towards seeing couples not fall into strict gender roles where one is more capable than the other and one has work hard to meet a trophy wife standard and about thirty years after Daphne and Kimberly of Space Ace, we have seen the sassy, vocal, independent love interest role evolve from love interest to being the protagonist/main character of her story.

[thebroccolination]

[Content Warning: sexual assault of minors]

There’s a documentary airing tomorrow on BBC2 about the late Johnny Kitagawa and the very open secret of the many sexual assault allegations against him.

For the uninitiated, Johnny was the founder and CEO of what I believe has been the most powerful music agency in Japan’s history. After founding the agency in 1962, Johnny and his sister Mary are known to have pulled a lot of questionable and downright abusive tactics to gain the amount of power J&A has enjoyed over the Japanese media industry.

Since their influence has been waning over the past decade or so, it’s difficult to explain concisely how strong they were, especially in the nineties and early aughts.

Like, companies were forbidden from using the idols’ images without express permission, so magazines would need to publish previews for upcoming issues featuring blacked-out silhouettes of the idols.

The point was to make J&A idols seem more exclusive and distant to augment their appeal, so only when the magazine was officially released were their images uncensored.

And of course, forever looming in the background were the ever-present allegations of sexual abuse by Johnny himself.

This isn’t in question, either. When detailed testaments from teenage boys were gathered and published in a massive expose by a well-known tabloid back in 1999, Johnny sued for defamation of character. Some of the charges—that J&A supplied minors with alcohol and drugs—were dropped. But the court found legitimacy in the sexual abuse charges. (The transcript is available in Japanese online somewhere, but I can’t remember where off the top of my head. I don’t remember if it was ever translated into English, but I’ll come back with a link if I find it.)

[Variety] Johnny Kitagawa: Power, Abuse, and the Japanese Omerta by Mark Schilling

Regardless, an official charge was never made, the public and fandom overlooked this open secret, and Johnny himself continued to live a wealthy and relatively secretive life behind the wall of his talents’ fame until his death in 2019 at the age of 87.

If you’re getting cult vibes from this, you’re drawing some sound conclusions

As an American fan who was once deep in the J&A fandoms of Tackey & Tsubasa, NEWS, Kanjani8, V6, KinKi Kids, etc.…this was a wild place to be in many ways.

From the outside, it’s probably simple enough to look at the facts and understand how clear-cut this is. Fans weren’t ignorant, either, and there was a persistent moral issue in supporting beloved idols while knowing that it led to a known abuser at the top.

And of course, not everyone believed or believes the allegations. Even if tomorrow’s documentary proves without doubt that Johnny Kitagawa sexually assaulted the children and teenagers under his power, there will always be defenders among the fanbase. At the lowest tier of morality, there will always be people whose personal comfort comes first, and rape is a big ole sad face threatening to ruin the flawless facade of Silly Handsome Rainbow Concert Land.

That said, I think what complicated things for a wide swath of the fanbase who did believe the allegations was how affectionately the idols themselves used to and still talk about Johnny. The man’s image for most fans was of an eccentric old man who had an acerbic sense of humor and spoke in random English snippets. “Did you see him?” an idol once asked the audience during a concert. “He was visiting backstage and said, ‘It’s hot out there today. They must be hot, those poor fans outside.’ So he took a box of bottled water and went to hand out waters to people.” Some fans exclaimed in recognition, and the idol laughed and said, “Someone remembers!” Because Johnny himself rarely appeared for interviews and released photos of himself only once every thousand years, the ongoing joke was that hardly anyone among the general public would have recognized this random old man as the mighty mogul of the music world. And because the idols themselves told such quirky stories, many fans chose to take the word of the idols they admired rather than confront the reality in newspapers.

While I lived in Japan, I rarely heard the allegations discussed, and whenever I brought it up among Japanese fans, the atmosphere got awkward and quiet until someone changed the subject. Worse was when I discussed it with members of the general public, many of whom seemed overwhelmingly aware but dismissive. “He’s a weird guy,” an older man once told me wryly. “Everyone knows he’s gay. That’s what they do.”

The subject of Johnny Kitagawa’s abuse is such a wide-reaching and nuanced subject, there’s no way the BBC documentary will be able to introduce Japan’s media culture, the entire J&A system, and the depth of Johnny’s abuse in an hour. But I’m relieved that it’s happening at all because for so, so long, the Japanese media has been unwilling to lose the money-making factory that is J&A by shining a spotlight on Johnny’s crimes, and so the victims of his abuse have been either ignored or reviled.

The thing to remember, I think, is the thing I keep coming back to. The vast majority of these idols joined J&A very young, and many of the older members in their twenties, thirties, and up have no other job experience to this day. Most have no university degree, and some never graduated or even attended high school. This is all some of them have, all they’ve ever had, and the sheer fear of needing to go into the job market at sixteen with nothing on your resume but junior high and “danced behind famous people for three years” in a country as stringent as Japan is unimaginable to me.

(TV Guide’s June 2000 cover featuring the Golden Era of Johnny’s Juniors, most of whom worked so extensively that they were unable to graduate high school or university. In more recent years, the agency has put stronger emphasis on Juniors pursuing their education.)

I don’t follow J&A idols anymore, but I imagine it’s less common today for someone to casually explain that he joined the agency at twelve to help support his struggling single mother and siblings. One of the saddest things I’ve ever heard Takizawa Hideaki say was how happy he was at fourteen when he realized he was among other boys whose fathers had abandoned their families. He grew up in poverty and joined J&A at thirteen, and if I start talking about his history with the agency I’ll never stop. (Thankfully, he and most of his generation have left the agency since Johnny’s death and are pursuing their own paths—though none that I’m aware of have spoken ill of their former boss.)

In the nineties, Juniors slept in two dormitories. Dormitory A was where the Juniors guaranteed to debut slept, and boys in Dormitory B knew it. The most famous boys living in the Kanto region—Takki, Tsubasa, Arashi, Yamapi, etc.—all lived in Dormitory A. After Shukan Bunshun published their expose, the dormitories were permanently closed down.

There’s no way to know what the silenced survivors have been through psychologically. Johnny himself is dead, so closure has to come from allowing the survivors heal however they need to. Japan is notoriously lacking in mental healthcare or awareness let alone compassion for sexual abuse survivors, so perhaps addressing that is the first step so they can find that closure privately.

In any case, the documentary airs tomorrow on BBC2, and I’ll be watching and hoping this is the first step in exposing the crimes committed and opening compassion for the survivors.

[sunsage]

🕯️ sup

send me 🕯️to hear my character's inner thoughts about your character.

He really doesn't get it.

Sun Wukong isn't new to forgiveness, having granted it many times and occasionally (though not very often) being offered it in turn. And he's not... new to the concept of forgiving someone you loved who hurt you greatly either.

(But there is a wide gap between being forgiven and having what they once had.)

But he just can't see why Macaque keeps coming back to him. Back in their world, he could always assume it was mostly because of MK, since the kid was first to make an offer of friendship. Amidst the constant threats to the realm's stability, the safest place to be is among the people you could trust to protect you.

(And if Macaque can trust MK but not him, that's fine.)

But why does he still cling to Monkey King's side here? In this place that seems to thrive on change and new experiences, where none of their (his, mostly) enemies were trying to end the world and death was temporary, why would Macaque need to trail him all over the city, spend so much time in his house and sleep in his bed?

That's what he doesn't get.

Macaque is strong, smart and capable. He is handsome and charming and, once you get used to his acerbic sense of humor, quite funny. He can dazzle any audience and get himself out of any situation, death included. He is (despite whatever image he is trying to project) a kind, brave and extremely loyal person. He doesn't need to be anyone's shadow anymore. He can be anywhere he wanted, doing anything he wanted.

So why would he want to be here? With him?..

Wukong doesn't know if Macaque wants to be friends (he doesn't even dare to wish for anything more, not in a thousand years at least). He doesn't know if he just wants to pretend none of that ever happened (they are not going to do that). He doesn't know what he can say or do or give to make things between them better.

...He does know that they need to talk about it. All of it. Except every time he opens his mouth he says something wrong and Macaque scowls at him or fires back with one of his favourite cutting remarks or leaves. So he backs down (like a coward), because Wukong would rather keep them in this weird neither here nor there place than risk actually hurting Macaque again.

(It scares him to think that maybe he just doesn't know how to not hurt him again. Sometimes he wishes Macaque would really just leave so he doesn't have this hope that maybe-)

...

It's not his place to push or to rush things, not this time. Sun Wukong is a patient man, these days. If there is one thing he can do it's to let Macaque figure it out on his own terms. And if he needs to stay close while he does that, that's fine too. He can wait for Macaque to make up his mind even if takes another five hundred years. And he will. He will be right here, always, waiting for it.

Because someone you love is always worth waiting for.

[deadpresidents]

You read a lot non-fiction what I call "colon books" ("Title: Longer Subtitle"). What are some of your favourite or latest fiction books that you've read?

Even if it’s not your ideal genre, there has to be a more pleasant way of talking about non-fiction titles than calling them “colon books”, right? That sounds like a pretty gross section of the library.

I must admit that I’ve never been a big reader of fiction. I read a lot of books, but fiction has always been a pretty small percentage of them. I don’t have anything against fiction books and, quite frankly, I wish I had more of an interest in them because I believe reading from a broader, more diverse group of genres opens up your mind to a wider array of viewpoints. But I just can’t lose myself in fiction as easily as I do in non-fiction — and I know that not only sounds ridiculous but kind of proves how important it probably is for me to actually read more fiction in order to expand my horizons and build a healthier imagination.

When I do read fiction, it usually is because I like the work of specific authors and don’t want to miss whatever they write. One odd thing is that while I very rarely (almost never, in fact) re-read non-fiction books, when it comes to fiction, I usually stick with the same small collection of favorite authors and often re-read their work.

And if I’m not reading non-fiction, there’s a pretty good chance that I’m reading poetry instead of a novel or some sort of traditional prose fiction. Like I said, it’s probably more of a failure of imagination than anything, but while I respect and appreciate great literature and creative fiction, I just prefer reading stuff that feels more realistic. I couldn’t even guess what the last science fiction book I read was. I have several thousand books in my personal library, but I’m willing to bet that I have less than a half-dozen sci-fi books. My taste in movies or TV shows is pretty similar; I rarely watch sci-fi or fantasy. Even as a kid I was never able to get into them.

So what type of fiction books do I read whenever I actually do pick up something other than non-fiction?

I’ve been pretty vocal over the years about my appreciation/admiration/awe for the work of Sam Shepard. Everything he wrote — from his plays to his prose to poetry to his short story collections — amazes me as a reader and makes me insanely jealous as a writer. I have every book he ever published and just about every play or collection of plays, and I re-read him more than anybody else.

I’m also a huge fan of John Steinbeck and Joan Didion. I think I have just about everything that Steinbeck ever published and I have phases when I fall into a Steinbeck rabbit hole and just tunnel through my Library of America collection of his work, which are treasures. I didn’t get into Joan Didion’s writing until later, so I’m still reading some of her stuff for the first time. I think the fact that I’m from Northern California like Steinbeck (from Salinas) and Didion (who was from Sacramento originally, just like me) helps me put myself in their work in a more intimate way than when I’m trying to read most other writers of fiction. I need that kind of connection to lock on to fiction in the way that I’m able to do with non-fiction. Plus, Steinbeck and Didion also wrote some great non-fiction, so I can get the best of both worlds. Two other authors that I’ve read and re-read many times are Cuba’s heroic founding father, freedom fighter, and martyred revolutionary José Martí and the ingenious, acerbic Ambrose Bierce whose satirical The Devil's Dictionary (BOOK | KINDLE) has miraculously maintained its edginess and razor-sharp humor despite being originally written over 125 years ago.

There’s really not a lot of contemporary fiction that I read. I’m sure I’d find some great stuff if I gave it the chance, but there’s only so many hours in the day that I have to read, so I do tend to give it over to non-fiction, as you might notice when I answer the questions about the books I’ve been recently reading! So, if I am reading fiction, it’s almost always older stuff that I’m finally getting around to reading. During the pandemic, I got lost in the work of Jorge Luis Borges, who I had not spent much time with previously, but I pored through his fiction and poetry. Two more books that I also frequently re-read or pull of the shelves to read pieces of are Baltasar Garcián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom (BOOK | KINDLE), which was first published in 1647 but still feels fresh 375 years later, and Fernando Pessoa’s brilliant, posthumously published The Book of Disquiet (BOOK | AUDIO | KINDLE).

As for the poets you’ll find on my shelves, it’s probably who you’d expect: Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Hafiz, Matthew Arnold, William Blake, and Federico García Lorca. Like I mentioned earlier, Sam Shepard and José Martí are two of my favorites for their prose and poetry. I’d especially recommend Shepard’s 1973 book Hawk Moon: Short Stories, Poems, Monologues and Motel Chronicles (BOOK | KINDLE), published in 1982 by the legendary Lawrence Ferlinghetti at San Francisco’s iconic City Lights Books. José Martí’s greatest work is Versos Sencillos (BOOK | KINDLE), originally published in Spanish 1891 but I recommend the excellent dual-language edition translated by Anne Fountain and published by McFarland & Company in 2005. One other poetry book that is always pretty close to my desk is Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s wonderful The Collected Poems, 1952-1990.

And last but not least — but certainly the least surprising — is William Shakespeare. I love Shakespeare. I don’t think that this is a controversial opinion, but Shakespeare is fucking amazing. You guys can share that secret with other people if you feel the need to do so. If someone put a gun to my head and told me I had to pick only three books to read for the rest of my life, the first thing I would do would be to choose Shakespeare’s Complete Works. Actually…the first thing I would do would be to ask why that person felt the need to put a gun to my head just to choose three books to read. That seems unnecessarily aggressive and wildly inappropriate for the task at hand. But after chastising them for their needlessly dangerous tactics, I would choose Shakespeare’s Complete Works — specifically the latest Norton edition with Stephen Greenblatt as general editor (BOOK | DIGITAL).