#and most are primed to implode

[starrblossom12]

Have you ever heard of that myth about lemmings? Yeah... so... it's not a really a myth with this team...

[project-changeling-zero]

but when does a comet become a meteor? when does a candle become a blaze? when does a boy man become a monster?

when does a ripple become a tidal wave? when does the reason become the blame? when does a boy man become a MONSTER?

forgive me... forgive me.... forgive me.....

i'm

just

a

boy

man... - Just A Man by Jorge Rivera-Herrans

[alpacaroni-and-cheese]

Leah and Fatin, A Journey of Forgiveness

Spoilers for The Wilds seasons 1 and 2 Trigger warning for brief mention of a canon suicide attempt. Be safe before you read <3

Throughout the first season of Amazon Prime's series, The Wilds, you could be forgiven for thinking that Leatin (or Latin, for the OGs) was a rarepair. A crackship, if you will.

They had some intensely homoerotic moments (wiping your own blood on your rival's face? I see you, Fatin) and some deeply important and emotional moments (see my previous essay), but for most watchers of the show, they weren't much more than semi-strangers to lowkey friends to bitter enemies to close friends.

But then season 2 came out.

Forgive me, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's go back to the beginning of the season.

Leah has pulled herself out of a man-made pit designed by the experimenters who are threatened by her. She's so desperately close to unravelling the whole sick and twisted game, she just has to show the others the pit, and then they'll believe her.

When she gets back to the beach, however, there's no time to go looking for the pit, triumphant and vindicated, because Rachel is dying. A large portion of her arm has been bitten off by a shark. She needs a hospital and trained professionals, but the best they have are antibiotics and an understanding that bleeding is bad. The open wound is cauterised and bandaged to within an inch of its life.

Did I mention all of this is happening while epiphany by Taylor Swift plays in the background? Soul destroying stuff.

Anyway, now that Rachel isn't actively dying, Leah can drag Fatin away to find the pit, but it's gone.

Leah can't believe it. She knows it was real, and she knows Nora put her in there. She knows she didn't imagine it, but the proof is all gone. The truth has once again slipped through her fingers.

Fatin, on the other hand, is only growing more and more concerned for Leah. For some context, Leah's near-drowning experience only happened just a couple of days prior, so from Fatin's perspective, this could easily be a worsening of Leah's mental state. If she's hallucinated this pit, then she's quickly going to become a greater danger to herself and to the others. Fatin now not only has to especially worry about Rachel, but Leah as well.

And Fatin is tired. She's exhausted, and her threads are pulled taut, ready to snap.

The episode jumps ahead a little, just a few days, and we see that Leah is still searching for the pit. She's disappearing for hours at a time, under the pretence of doing something vaguely useful (like gathering wood for the signal fire) but returning with little to no real progress made.

Fatin notices all this, because of course she does.

She tries to convince Leah it was just a mirage, but Leah doesn't budge. She can't budge, because finding the pit is her only real way of knowing she hasn't completely lost it.

The group is moving camp from outside on the beach to inside the forest, so everybody is gathering up their stuff and moving it in-land. Leah's helping, sort of, but she's still lost in her spiral.

Leah believes that she needs answers, and the person who can best give her those answers is lost to the waves, presumed dead. So she goes for the next best thing, too caught up in her own monsoon of guilt, paranoia and unflinching desire to find the truth to realise that the answers she's trying to find are not as important as protecting Rachel's fragile heart and mind.

Before anyone can step in and stop the inevitable fracturing, she prods, and Rachel implodes.

All of the girls rush forward to Rachel. Some, like Toni, stand guard, facing Leah and warning her not to come closer. Others, like Shelby and Martha gently soothe and comfort Rachel, whose grief and guilt is on full display.

Fatin, however, is furious.

She grabs Leah and drags her to the cliffs, shoving her up against the cliff-face.

She snarls, teeth bared in anger. Leah causing hurt to herself was bad enough, but the escalation to hurting Rachel was a step too far.

Fatin bites, tearing into the soft, exposed underbelly.

"You take your delusions, and you take your theories, and you fucking bury them, now! And if you ever take them within 100 feet of Rachel again, I'll fucking kill you."

These words will haunt her, but she has a point. Leah was wrong for interrogating Rachel.

Confronted with the fact that she hurt Rachel, and exhausted of the ceaseless noise bouncing around in her head that something is wrong, Leah makes a decision. A bad one.

She overdoses. Later, she'll say she didn't really want to die, she just wanted to stop feeling.

We don't see the immediate fallout, episode 2 picks up a couple of days later. Leah is near-catatonic, lying on a bed of bamboo. Rachel is nearby, in a similar state.

Fatin, Toni and Dot sit together close by, and Fatin is tearing strips off clothing to make new bandages for Rachel.

Fatin is scared. More scared than she's ever been before in her life. She's filled with guilt, and wishing she didn't have to deal with this reality.

So she pretends that she doesn't care, because that's easier than facing her fear and her guilt. She knows, deep down, that despite her anger being righteous, she went too far.

"What matters is, she's alive, and she's finally fucking quiet."

Rachel, who is sick of being babied, and likely just a bit pissed off at Fatin's insensitivity, resolves to get Leah up and moving herself. To the surprise of all present, it works. Leah breaks out of her catatonia and stumbles after her.

They spend some time together, sharing a real, honest conversation. They've spoken to each other before, obviously, but this is the first time each one is sharing their true selves. No more facades of being a better person than they are, no more ulterior motives. Just Leah and Rachel.

They forgive each other, and themselves, forging an unbreakable bond.

They bring out in each other the first real joy they've felt in days, maybe even weeks (just look at their faces!).

Fatin sees Leah healing, and shares in her joy. Although, maybe now she's starting to have some revelations...

2x03 sees Leah and Rachel spending more time together. Their bond deepens, and the two characters who have been the most tense for the entire duration of the show, finally get to be relaxed.

"Well if I had one that counted the number of hours since my last neurotic thought, I would be at like, a hundred."

They gather bamboo to make repairs for the beds at camp, when Leah realises something. They can make instruments out of the bamboo.

Multiple hours of practice later, they arrive back at camp, proudly holding their crudely-but-lovingly-made instruments.

They play Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. It's a little off-key ("She's flat, but fuck me.") but the heart is there, and soon everyone is singing along.

Martha is dancing, Rachel and Dot are singing their hearts out, and Toni and Shelby are busy making googly eyes at one another.

And Leah?

Well, she makes her way over to Fatin.

She sings, "Home is whenever I'm with you," while cradling Fatin's face in her hands. Fatin melts, understanding the message, and falling even further in love.

In a tumultuous, traumatic time of their lives, filled with misery, guilt, shame, fear, depression, anxiety, paranoia, and bone-deep exhaustion they'll probably never fully recover from, this one simple gesture says everything.

I heard all you said. I felt your teeth tear my weary flesh. I bled from your wounds, but that's over now. I understand why.

I forgive you.

[stormysunday9]

Some 18+ smut, mostly fun and fluff.

Nine to Five

Things had been challenging with Joe since the season started. Being able to come back after his injury had set him into a level of locked in focus that I was not previously familiar with. Despite being together for the last year, the last couple months had taken a toll. Most days I felt like an accessory in his life. He'd let me know when he needed me for something, but I knew better than to bother him without invitation. I admit, I wasn't at my happiest. But I hoped once he got comfortable being back in his groove, he'd turn back into the charming guy who had made great effort to win me over a year ago.

One thing we still did together were the bi-weekly O-Line dinners. Whoever was available from the Bengals offensive line would get together every other week for dinner and drinks and some social time where football wasn't the prime focus. It was good for the guys, and it was one of the few things that wives and girlfriends were included in during the season. If the guys were winning, we'd sometimes take it to a restaurant and rent out their party room. If they weren't, it was often better to avoid a public setting, and one of the players would host at their home. This week we were heading to Andrei's, and I was looking forward to it because his girlfriend Logan was the WAG I was closest to. She was super down to earth, and had her own vibe that wasn't just "girlfriend of football player". Her and Andrei had an amazingly strong and healthy relationship.

Joe came down the stairs right on time and asked if I was ready to go. I think those may have been the first words he'd said to me all day. We got in his car and headed to Andrei's. He told me about some of the tape he'd been watching that afternoon, and the way he thought it would be useful for Sunday's game. I could tell he wasn't really looking for me to participate in the conversation. He did look over at me and smile when we stopped at a red light. That was nice, I thought. Then immediately thought: wow the bar sure has lowered! as I internally rolled my eyes at myself.

The gang was already laughing and chatting when we arrived. It was a smaller group tonight. We took the empty chairs across from Tee and Ja'marr, and I quickly joined in the conversations. It was nice to have people to talk to. Supper was fantastic and I helped Logan serve dessert. "You good, babe?" She asked me when we were alone in the kitchen. "Ya, why?" I asked, confused by her sudden question. "I just haven't seen you and Joe say two words to each other all night." she clarified. "Oh that. Ya, that's just kind of how it is now, you know, football and all."

She gave me a questioning eyebrow raise. "No, I don't know I guess. Andrei plays football too. But he still talks to me during the season."

I laughed. "That's fair. I dunno, I guess Joe's just wired differently...". 

Andrei walked into the kitchen then, ending our conversation. "Where's my pie, mama?!" He asked Logan, wrapping his arms around her waist. She rolled her eyes, "it's coooming, and it'll be so much quicker if you grab some plates and help!"

I carried a few plates of pie back into the room and handed them out. I sat back down and let my eyes drift around the table at the cuddly couples, the happy faces, and started to think about how strange it felt to be feeling so lonely when I wasn't alone.

Joe's voice interrupted my thoughts. "I think I'm gonna head out." What? No! I'd been looking forward to this all week. 

"My guy," Ja'marr pleaded, "take a damn break, have a drink, relax. We will still play football on Sunday, I promise you." 

I took that as my opportunity to have an opinion. "I'm not ready to go yet, and Logan has a game planned for later..."

"You can stay." He said, like that should have been obvious.

"Well how am I gonna get home?" I asked, feeling my embarrassment rising with this very public display of Ways Your Relationship is Imploding. I panicked when I met Joe's eyes because I could tell he was on the verge of telling me he really didn't care.

"I'll get her home, Shiesty," Tee Higgins spoke up. I swung my head to face him at the sound of his voice. His eyes were warm and full of concern. Thank god for Tee. He was by far my favourite guy on the team. He'd been so kind to me since day one, and he and I shared the same sarcastic sense of humor. He was such an optimist, and just a constant ray of sunshine. He was one of those people who made you a better person just by being around him. We always seemed to be on the same page. 

Joe nodded in agreement, gave me a quick peck on the temple, waved goodbye to everyone else, and was gone.

I mouthed a thank you to Tee across the table and he gave me a wink in response. Logan slammed a drink down in front of me because I'm sure anyone within 10 miles could see I needed one, and no one said another thing about it for the rest of the evening. I finally relaxed and had some fun.

By the time Tee and I headed out to his blacked out Suburban, I had a bit of a buzz and a happily distracted mind. 

"Geezuz! Have you got a step stool?" I jokingly asked in reference to my 5'5 frame trying to climb into his massive truck. 

"No but i got these!" He bent down and laced his fingers together for me to step into.

I laughed. "Can you imagine telling Taylor you broke your hand lifting me into your vehicle?" 

"Girl you weigh a hundred pounds. I'd be impressed if you broke my nail." He chided. 

He opened the door for me and I managed the scale the vehicle on my own while he went around to the drivers side. Once buckled in, he asked what I wanted to listen to.

"I'm easy," I told him, "whatever you've already got on!"

He turned the volume up and Kane Brown's voice filled the air. I knew Tee was a closet country fan, I'm sure it was his southern boy roots. He put the truck in gear and started driving while belting out the lyrics. His joy was so infectious that I couldn't help but join in. Halfway through the song when I knew Kane was about to hit the high note, I held an imaginary microphone in Tee's face and he gave it everything he had, and proceeded to miss the note by a mile.

I burst out laughing til I had tears in my eyes. I honestly couldn't remember the last time I had laughed that hard. Or felt free enough to do so. I let out a huge sigh when I had finally caught my breath, feeling as if a weight had been lifted, until I noticed we were about to get on the interchange toward home. I put my hand on Tee's bicep and he looked over at me. I looked into those kind eyes and the words rolled out of my mouth before I could stop them: "I don't want to go home yet."

Tee looked a bit fearful at first. "But I told the boss I'd bring ya home safe. You know I don't wanna piss off the boss."

"You will bring me home safe! Just not yet? I swear Tee, he hasn't even checked in with me since he left. He's probably been asleep for two hours already. He literally won't even care. Just one more stop?" I pleaded.

"Well that, that makes me sad. So I guess I must fix that by giving in to your demands. Where ya wanna go?" 

I had no idea, and my face must have said so.

"Arcade?" He suggested.

My face lit up. "YES!!" 

Tee smiled, "here we go!" And cranked the wheel away from the on ramp.

"But wait!", my thoughts interrupted, "is that a good idea? With so many people?"

He chuckled, " a) it's Wednesday so it probably won't be that busy and b) I don't attract a crowd like your boy Shiesty does. We good, girl!"

Ten minutes later we were in a chaotically loud game arcade, inundated with flashing lights and dinging games and loud music being played on shitty speakers. We started at the basketball game, and as we both sunk ball after ball, Tee finally spoke up.

"Soooo why's Joe being a dickhead?"

The little bit of alcohol still buzzing through my system all but evaporated.

I groaned, "can we not? I'm having fun for once."

"Nah, it's good if you don't wanna get into it. I was just trying to understand. You're like the best thing that ever happened to him, and now it seems like he's just shutting you out. Did something happen?"

I stopped taking shots and tucked the ball I was holding under my arm. "Ya Tee, something happened. Football happened." I turned and flicked the ball toward the hoop and it slid through effortlessly. I turned back to Tee, "and if you ask Joe, transferring from Ohio State to LSU was the best thing that ever happened to him. Not me."

I felt the happiness from the last few hours wash away, reality setting in heavily.

"You better get me home." 

Tee frowned. He bent down and grabbed the long string of tickets we'd been accumulating, then tapped a teenage looking kid on the shoulder and handed them all to him. I watched the kid look at the tickets, then look up at Tee, and his face fill with shock when he realized who he was looking at.

Tee jogged to catch up to me and put his hands on my shoulders as he followed me back to his truck. 

"That kid knew who you are," I informed him.

"And who am I?" He asked with a glint in his eye.

I spun around to face him, letting a mischievous grin spread across my face, and said "you're Tee fucking Higgins!!!!"

He let out a sound that was a mix between a laugh and a yeehaw and galloped back to the truck.

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

I slipped into the house quietly and was greeted at the door by my black cat, Sir Purr. Joe hated that I had named him that. I tried to explain that he's a black cat, and I didn't have the foresight to know I would one day be dating a Cincinnati Bengal while Sir Purr still lived. And I stand by the fact that it's a great name, regardless of its mascot implications. I went up the stairs to the bedroom to grab some pajamas before heading down the hall to wash up. Joe was sleeping soundly, as expected. He looked so perfect, and so peaceful, and I suddenly had a big pang of guilt in my stomach for having so much fun without him tonight. I promised myself to try harder tomorrow to be what he needed me to be. Even if I was having a really hard time figuring out what that was lately. I laid down on the couch and grabbed the big snuggly blanket off the back of it and tucked myself in. I didn't want to wake him, I know he takes his sleep seriously. I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep, the noise of the arcade still ringing in my ears. 

I woke up with a start to the unmistakable feeling of someone standing over me.

"Sorry," Joe said, realizing he'd startled me, "morning."

I sat up a bit and stretched. "Good morning, did you have a good sleep?"

"I did. How come you slept down here?"

"It was late, I didn't want to disturb you. You ready for Yoga later?"

The practice facility was hosting a yoga class for players and their families and Logan and Andrei had asked us to go with them. I could immediately tell by the look on Joe's face that he'd forgotten. He started apologizing, saying that coach had sent him some new tape. I told him it was fine. It was the norm at this point. I texted Logan to let her know Joe was bailing but to still come pick me up. 

When we got to the facility, Tee was waiting. 

"Fifth wheel reporting for duty!" He joked with a big smile on his face.

"Oh is that why you're number five?!" I playfully elbowed him in tthe ribs.

"Ha ha." 

"Not a fifth wheel today," Logan jumped in, "Joe bailed!" She added like it was the least surprising thing that could have happened.

Tee gave me a look of pity. 

I was happy to be pulled from the hot seat when Andrei walked up with a worried look.

"Sooo I guess I wasn't super clear on the details when I read about this and it tuuuuurns out," he paused, looking nervously at me, "that this is couples yoga....." He grimaced, waiting for the backlash.

I rolled my eyes, "you can't be serious!" I groaned.

"We're good, bestie!" Tee chimed in, "I got you."

"You literally don't have to do this," I assured him, "this clearly just was not meant to be."

"You're absolutely not getting out of this," he told me, "besides, ain't no way I'm missing Yoshi lose his yoga virginity."

I begrudgingly agreed, and the next 45 minutes made up the least serious yoga class that ever was. For a professional football player, Andrei was wildly uncoordinated. And Tee, well Tee was just too damn tall. 

Logan and I got changed in the girls locker room and met the boys in the players locker room. Before anyone could say anything, Logan said her and Andrei had to figure out some paper work with the front office and asked if Tee could drive me home. I was really starting to think Logan was up to something and she was definitely gonna hear from me about it later.

Tee was unphased by the request, "of course, my Passenger Princess," he said dramatically, while bowing to me like a goof. 

"Perfect!" Logan squealed a bit too excitedly, and then vanished out the door, leaving the two of us in the now empty room.

I leaned against the lockers while Tee tied his shoes. "I'm really so sorry you had to endure that. As soon as Yosh learns to read, man, I swear he's gonna be unstoppable!"

Tee laughed. "Nah, I had fun. I had no idea you were so damn flexible!" 

"Twelve years of ballet!" I said proudly, "I felt like I was rock climbing out there though. Apparently zero percent of your body is soft and squishy!"

I had meant to be funny, but realized the underlying innuendos as soon as it was out of my mouth. And so did Tee. In any other situation I feel like the whole thing would have gone unnoticed. But instead it seemed to catch on something already hanging in the air. Something that might be a result of our bodies bending with and against each other for the last 45 minutes...

"Well you're soft and squishy in all the right places.", he grinned, standing up so he was looking down on me,  "Ain't no way any part of me wouldn't be hard with that body all over mine."

I could see the fire brewing in his eyes, and felt my own heat growing in a flush through my body. Alarm bells were ringing in every inch of my brain. I ignored them. I couldn't look away from him, his eyes locked on mine. A million things were being said without either of us saying anything.

Suddenly Tee's arms were around me, lifting me up effortlessly, pinning me between him and the wall. My legs wrapped around his waist, seemingly without me permitting them to do so.

His face was right beside mine when the words "Tell me to stop" into my ear.

I didn't.

Instead I crashed my lips into his, my legs wrapped around him, hands desperately grasping his scalp and the back of his neck. I let out a moan as he moved his lips to my neck, soft and playful. I couldn't remember the last time I felt this level of need, and desire. Feeling his strong hands gripping my ass, his muscular body pressed so tightly to mine...

Suddenly, there were voices in the hall and reality came crashing back down around us. He immediately set me down on the floor and I slid the rest of the way down the wall into a crouch with my face in my hands. Tee was breathing heavily above me. 

"We better go", he advised. I nodded, grabbed my bag and followed him wordlessly to his car. Neither of us spoke until we were safely inside it, behind the shroud of his heavily tinted windows.

"I'm so sorry." He spoke first. "I don't know what the fuck I was thinking." He was shaking his head back and forth, scolding himself. He looked genuinely distraught.

"Its not all on you, Tee. I was there too. But obviously this can't happen," I said firmly, even tho in my heart it felt like there was nothing I wanted more. I could barely look at him without  desperately wanting to finish what we had just started. 

Tee turned back into himself for a split second, allowing himself to smile and said "well we know the defence already got that on lock!"

I took a few deep breaths, aggressively rubbing my hands on my temples, trying to pull myself together. "I'm just not looking to be solely responsible for the downfall of the Cincinnati Bengals, ya know?"

I laughed in spite of myself. 

I reached across and challenged my self control by taking one of his hands in mine, I used my other to turn his face toward me. "I love everything about you, Tee fucking Higgins. But there couldn't be a more obvious case of wrong place, wrong time. I'm so sorry."

His beautiful brown eyes looked so sad, but understanding. We were both adults, and neither of us were particularly keen to blow up our whole lives right now.

Tee held my hand the rest of the drive home. It felt like these were the last minutes of our lives that either of us were going to be able to live in this delusional bubble of what could have been. He gave my hand an extra squeeze as he pulled in the drive. I gave him a smile, and tried not to think about the fact this could very possibly be the last time I see him, knowing clearly for the first time exactly what I needed to do when I got inside. 

"Bye Tee. Thank you."

As soon as I was in the house, I called Joe out of his office and ended things with him. I knew I wasn't leaving him because of Tee, more because Tee showed me how little I'm feeling in this relationship, and how much more there could be. I wasn't happy, and I couldn't keep pretending to be. I wanted more for myself. And deserved to one day find someone I really connected with, who I could share friendship, passion, and life with. It went smoother than I expected. Joe admitted that when we met, and he was injured, he needed a distraction, and now that he's playing again he doesn't feel like he's in the right place to have a relationship because he can't share his focus. He almost seemed a bit relieved, which was kind of heartbreaking, but also a reminder of how I had always done all of the work in the relationship, I even had to initiate the break up. 

I told him I'd be out of his hair as soon as I found a place. He apologized for being a shitty boyfriend. I said I was sorry that we didn't become what we thought we might. It was all very amicable, and he talked more in that hour then I'd talked to him all week. I didn't mention Tee, of course, because that wasn't going to be helpful to anyone. And it also wasn't going to go anywhere.

But I knew that breaking up with Joe meant breaking up with the Bengals. That was the hardest part. I missed going to the games, the team, the girls. Logan kept in touch but it wasn't the same. Sir Purr and I found a condo downtown and I buried myself in work and found love for some new hobbies. One of those hobbies, ironically, being yoga. Joe checked in a couple times, which was sweet. He was still 120 percent locked in on the game, he told me he appreciated my friendship, and for putting up with him as long as I did. He wished me nothing but happiness, and I absolutely wished the same for him. 

TWO MONTHS LATER

My phone lit up with a text from Logan. I hadn't heard from her in a bit, so was curious to see what she had to say.

They let Tee's tag expire. Detroit picked him up immediately. Now's the time babe!

Oh no!! Poor Tee. He must be heartbroken... And now's the time for what?!

🙄 To go after him, obvs! He's not under Joe's thumb anymore. You know you two were like two peas in a pod. You're also the two funniest people I've ever met. And I saw how he looked at you when Joe wasn't looking...

I gasped. She was up to something. I knew it. And it seemed she had seen more than I realized.

You're wild. There's no way. Thanks for telling me tho. I'll send him a text to say congrats. Miss you chick!

Miss you more, lemme know how your chat goes 😉😉😉

I sat with my thoughts for a minute. I hadn't talked to Tee. He hadn't reached out, and I was too scared to. I didn't know what was said or who knew what, after everyone would have found out Joe and I had split. It was just a text though, and this was such a big deal for him. He had been one of my best friends, I had to acknowledge it, offer my congratulations. Cincinnati had a tough season, I know he loves it here, but Detroit would honestly be a promotion for him.

I typed and re-typed ten times before deciding to keep it short and simple. 

Heard about your transfer. Cincy's loss 💯, you're gonna do amazing things in Detroit. They're so lucky to have you.

I set my phone face down beside me, too scared to watch for a response. Five minutes passed before I heard the familiar ring of a FaceTime call. I knew exactly who it would be. Tee hates texting. I sat up straighter and gave the messy pile of hair on my head a little tug and straighten before pressing accept.

A beaming Tee Higgins lit up phone screen. "Hey bestie!!" He grinned

"Hey you," I replied. I was overwhelmed by the degree of feelings I was having finally seeing and hearing him again. Love, pride, joy, giddiness, and most definitely a bit of desire.... "How are you doing? I'm so sorry they didn't fight for you."

"It's all good, mama," the ever optimistic Tee assured me, "I'm excited. My time in Cincy will never be replaced, but onward and upward, right?!"

"Of course! And Detroit! Wow! They're THE team right now, you're gonna be so amazing there. When do you have to leave?" I was dreading the answer to this question...

"Two weeks." Two weeks?! I wanted to cry. But before I could try and put on a happy face and tell him how proud I was of him, he followed up with two words that made my heart skip a beat. "Come over."

"Huh? Right now??"

"Pleeeeease," he begged. God he was adorable. "I miss you. I want to see you, in person. Hear that laugh, touch those lips, hold that body..."

"Tee..." I started, feeling both hesitant and ready to jump in my car and run every red light at the same time.

"Nah, don't gimme that. I heard your 'wrong place, wrong time', so now let me show you right place, right time. I know Burrow could have ended my career in an instant, and I know if he had even a hint that I had anything to do with you leaving he also would have messed up this beautiful face. But not now, now it's Tee time, and I want that to be me and you time."

I blushed, unable to disguise the goofy grin spreading across my face. I bit my lower lip. "it is a reeeeally nice face....give me 20 minutes."

"It'll be the longest 20 minutes of my life." 

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

Tee swung the door open wearing that thousand watt smile before I could even knock and wrapped me in the biggest bear hug. He seemed to squeeze every bit of hesitation and uncertainty right out of me. It was Tee, after all, and he felt like home. "Hi," I smiled up at him, completely overcome with just how much I had missed him and how happy I was to see him. 

“Come, sit,” he waved me toward his expansive sectional couch. I made myself comfortable. Tee sat down beside me. He looked into my eyes and smiled warmly. I had missed that smile so damn much. As if reading my mind, he spoke up. “I've missed you so much. And I don't wanna miss you anymore. I want you to come to Detroit with me.”

I was stunned. I couldn't speak. So Tee continued, “I know you think I'm crazy, but I'm just crazy about you. And this is a fresh start, for both of us, to be together away from here.” As he was talking, his fingers were tracing a path on my leg, as I sat cross-legged facing him. It was getting difficult to focus on what he was saying. He could see me losing focus, and I could tell he was loving the effect his touch was having. “Do you ever think about that time” he leaned in and kissed my neck, “in the locker room?” he whispered, his mouth right beside my ear. Every. Damn. Day. I thought to myself. Tee kept going, “sometimes I like to think about what would have happened next…” The heat between my legs was intensifying, I could feel my center beginning to throb with desire. I bit my bottom lip, trying to retain some self control. “Can I show you?” his voice was so smooth and sexy. 

I nodded, I'd been waiting two months to finish what we'd started. “C’mere then”, he pulled me off the couch and walked me to his bedroom. I laid down on his plush bed and he crawled in beside me. His long fingers traced circles around my belly button before he let them slip inside the waist of my panties. He quickly discovered how wet my entrance was, he looked up at me with a sly smile on his face, “so you have thought about it,” he smirked. His fingers slid inside me, and we both moaned. “You're even more perfect than I imagined,” he purred.

I kept my eyes on his gorgeous face as he watched his fingers go in and out of me. He used his thumb to massage my most sensitive spot, making me squirm. “Oh my god, Tee,” I moaned. He increased the depth of his fingers and the pressure of his thumb. I could feel my release getting closer, and it made me want him closer to me. “Kiss me”, I pleaded. He did, passionately, with his tongue exploring my mouth and his fingers exploring my insides, I felt myself give in to the ecstasy of the moment and released all over his hand. “Oh fuck ya baby,” he hummed against my lips. I pushed his shoulder toward the bed, directing him to lay on his back, slipped out of my clothes. Tee followed suit and slid his track pants off. I climbed on top of his strong body. I rubbed my soaking slit over his thick, hard shaft and watched him shift desperately underneath me. When I took him inside me, I could feel the pressure between my hips. “Fuck, Tee!” I cried out in a very arousing mix of pain and pleasure. “That's all for you, baby,” he said as he dug his fingers into my hips, rocking me back and forth to the rhythm he was setting. The sex was slow, and sensual at first. We'd both been waiting so long for this moment that neither of us wanted to rush it. As the desire began to hit it's peak, he pulled out of me, making me gasp. “Get on your knees for me baby, I wanna do this together”. I obeyed, and took position on my hands and knees as he settled in behind me. As he slipped back inside me, this new position filled me with all new sensations as his tip slammed into my g-spot. He used his tattooed arm to pull me back against his chest as he continued to drive into me. Reaching around with his other arm to firmly press circles onto my slippery clit. “oh god Tee, you're gonna make me come again.” I panted. I couldn't hold back any longer and felt the euphoria wash over me. He let go with the arm that was wrapped around me, causing me to collapse back onto my hands on the bed, as he slammed into me with intense force. He let out a feral cry as his own release took over him.

I slumped onto my side, our collective mess dripping out of me, every inch of my body tingling. He collapsed beside me, breathing heavily. Neither of us said anything, just staring at each other with satisfied smiles plastered across our sweaty faces.

I was tracing the lines of his chest tattoo while he was gently stroking my cheek when he said, "Come with me.", a pleading look on his face.

"I just did!" I joked, responding quicker than he expected. "My GOD!" He flung himself onto his back, feigning exasperation, while I giggled beside him. He rolled back to me when he had gathered himself. "All serious now? God you're trouble." He laughed. "I don't want to do this without you. I don't want to do anything without you ever again. My passenger Princess, my half sized sidekick, and I want you to be my girl," he almost begged. He was so sincere, even emotional.

I turned on my back and closed my eyes, trying to think clearly. I loved him in every way a person could love somebody. And more than anything, I loved how I felt and who I was when I was with him. The best and truest version of myself.

I opened my eyes to him hovering over me, he looked like a kid waiting to look under the tree on Christmas morning. I laughed, and finally said "I mean, I guess I would look pretty good in Honolulu blue..."

Tee jumped up onto his knees and threw his hands up in the air. "Yeeeessssss babyyyy!! You'll be a straight stunna!!!! Oh my god!!" He grabbed my hand and pulled me outta bed and scooped me into his arms and swung me around the room.  I tapped my finger on his nose and  started singing Miles On It, the same song from our night at the arcade. I was dancing around the room while Tee was rolling through every single touchdown celly in his repertoire. I stopped to take in the scene playing out before me: this gorgeous, talented, funny, sexy, perfect man dancing around his bedroom in his boxers with the biggest smile on his face. I couldn't believe this was going to be my life. All the joy. All the fun. All the love. It was absolutely worth the wait. 

Playlist:

[manic-sapphic]

~~absolutely love that adora kinda looks insulted when she demands prime let catra go and his response is "i'll give her to you - if you want her.."

i hear the look on her face saying "oooh you mf'er how dare you - ofc i want this btch why else would i be here ?? i want her and only her tbh - (i just don't know it yet but i will def doomslay ur entire flagship if u don't gimme this kitty fr")

- (every time i watch catra hold herself, just tryna keep from falling apart - i fall apart. just a teeny tiny bit. itty bitty shred of my jagged stone heart chips off, but idc tho - she's worth it <3)

( also - the way adora tries to stand but her legs give way beneath her is just another addition to the list of reasons it's all so heart breakingly gut wrenching [yee i combo'd the phrases - it feels warranted fr] cause the fact she can't stand tells the audience she's gotta be in a lot of pain too that is only healed after she suddenly transforms- and she's ignoring that pain, so focused on catra that we don't even see her react to it aside from being unable to stand.. damnit adora <3 )

~~sooo the promise moment really is just - ahhh. gets to me. i read it as this unspoken question that catra knows she doesn't need to explain - she just needs to say one word and knows adora will understand what she's truly asking -

"promise?" - i read this as catra not just asking if adora promises to take her home - but asking for a much deeper, broader hope of reinstating their first promise. to stick together and look out for each other.

a promise that was broken by both of them tbh but at this point catra decided to keep it for what she figured would be her last chance to do so in corridors, and then here in save the cat adora comes back and holds up her side of their promise as well.

after all that time apart as enemies, they each risked their lives and more and fulfilled a promise that seemed long forgotten. and i see catra here as putting forth a desperate, hopeful plea to agree on renewing that promise for good- and not just taking her home, but acknowledging that what home really means is the two of them staying together, no matter what.

and without hesitation, adora replies, "i promise."

she understands what catra's really asking; imo there are so many words that pass between them during and just after save the cat that are never actually said - thank you's and apologies and explanations that they mutually recognize and know the other feels and genuinely means w/o ever needing to make each other say it.

mistakes were made on both sides & they've both realized by then that sticking together was and always had been what they needed to do, cause they were finally starting to admit to themselves that what they both really needed all along, more than anything else, was each other. <3

ps i thought i'd tack on my previous rant about adora choosing to jump down after catra in save the cat cause that moment makes my heart implode every time~

(& cause when she does that - it's her keeping the promise that she had just restored. it's her determined refusal to ever, ever break it again - no matter what. even if it kills her - just like catra in the finale, fighting the monster and refusing to leave when adora tells her to. these lovelies would much rather die w each other than live without the other - and they definitely figure that out the hard way, but the only thing that really matters is that they do figure it out~~)

---jump in save the cat rant---

when adora chooses to jump down after catra, the fact that she is, innately, she-ra is still something adora has almost no clue of whatsoever. her expression lingers in the frame just before she throws herself down after catra, recalling the fixed look of equally determined resolve we see on catra’s own face in corridors when the decision to save glimmer (and, yes, most importantly to catra, save adora by extension) is cemented in her mind; a decision catra makes, mind you, not expecting to survive it. and imo, same goes for adora & this moment in save the cat.

adora chooses to follow catra into the darkness, despite her currently regarding her connection to she-ra as gone and having no expectation of manifesting the nearly invincible power she could rely on from being she-ra in the past (and therefore lacking any way to heal catra, even if she could get them both to safety, there’s no way she’s unaware that catra’s body is pretty much guaranteed to be broken beyond repair after the shock her nervous system got from prime when disabling the chip, coupled with the long fall.)

and to me - the most poignant thing this tells the audience about adora making this choice is that she didn’t leap down after catra because she was clinging to the hope that, somehow, she could still save her.

instead, she willingly fell to depths unknown, the landing completely obscured by shadows that she just watched consume catra, simply because she knew that catra would be down there all on her own, and there was absolutely no fucking way that adora wasn’t going to make damn sure she was there to hold her. even if that meant jumping after her and possibly dying down there together. it just meant that much to adora for catra not to have to face the end alone... i mean, wtf dude, it's jaw-dropping in the best way ever <3

[lunarleonardo]

how the flip do you write chapters so fast like it could be a day and theres already a new chapter WJAT.

I just really, really like writing :P I write so much because it's FUN. Some parts I'll need to drag my feet through but most of the time it's one of my favorite things to do. If I don't feel like writing, I won't. I don't force myself to write and I think that's what plays a big part in it. I don't let it feel like a chore ^^

I write every night before I go to bed. That's my Prime Writing Time ^^ That and I'm also just,, really excited to write. All the time. I really like being able to put my stuff on ao3 because even if it is scary I've always enjoyed sharing things I make :3 it's also easier for me to reread later down the line without google docs imploding from this T_T

tldr i write fast because i like it and the danganronpa brain worms are eating me alive

[mariacallous]

If Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted defeat in June 2021, finally yielding the stage to a coalition of his opponents, he could have retired at the age of 71 with a decent claim to having been one of Israel’s more successful prime ministers.

He had already surpassed the time in office of Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, becoming the country’s longest-serving prime minister in 2019. His second stretch in office, from 2009 to 2021, coincided with perhaps the best 12 years Israel had known since its founding in 1948. The country enjoyed relative security, with no major wars or prolonged Intifadas. The period was one of uninterrupted economic growth and prosperity. Thanks to its early adoption of widespread vaccination, Israel was one of the first countries in the world to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. And toward the end of that span came three agreements establishing diplomatic relations with Arab countries; more were likely on the way.

Twelve years of Netanyahu’s leadership had seemingly made Israel more secure and prosperous, with deep trade and defense ties across the world. But this wasn’t enough to win him another term. A majority of Israelis had tired of him, and he had been tainted by charges of bribery and fraud in his dealings with billionaires and press barons. In the space of 24 months, Israel held four elections ending in stalemate, with neither Netanyahu nor his rivals winning a majority. Finally, an unlikely alliance of right-wing, centrist, left-wing, and Islamist parties managed to band together and replace him with his former aide Naftali Bennett in June 2021.

At that point, Netanyahu could have sealed his legacy. A plea bargain on offer from the attorney general would have ended his corruption trial with a conviction on reduced charges and no jail time. He would have had to leave politics, probably for good. Over the course of four decades in public life, including 15 years as prime minister and 22 as the Likud party’s leader, he had already left an indelible mark on Israel, dominating the second half of its history. But he couldn’t bear the thought of giving up power.

Within 18 months, he was back as prime minister for the third time. The unwieldy coalition that replaced him had imploded, and this time around, Netanyahu’s camp of far-right and religious parties ran a disciplined campaign, exploiting the weaknesses of their divided rivals to emerge with a small parliamentary majority, despite still being virtually tied in the vote count.

Nine months later, Netanyahu, the man who promised, above everything else, to deliver security for Israel’s citizens, presided over the darkest day in his country’s existence. A total breakdown of the Israeli military and intelligence structure allowed Hamas to breach Israel’s border and embark on a rampage of murder, kidnapping, and rape, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and taking more than 250 hostage. The calamities of that day, the failures of leadership leading up to it, and the traumas it caused will haunt Israel for generations. Even leaving completely aside the war he has prosecuted since that day and its yet-unknown end, October 7 means that Netanyahu will always be remembered as Israel’s worst-ever leader.

How does one measure a prime minister?

There is no broadly accepted ranking of the 13 men and one woman who have led Israel, but most lists would feature David Ben-Gurion at the top. Not only was he the George Washington of the Jewish state, proclaiming its independence just three years after a third of the Jewish people had been exterminated in the Holocaust, but his administration established many of the institutions and policies that define Israel to this day. Other favorites include Levi Eshkol, for his shrewd and prudent leadership in the tense weeks before the Six Day War, and Menachem Begin, for achieving the country’s first peace agreement with an Arab nation, Egypt.

All three of these men had mixed records and detractors, of course. Ben-Gurion had autocratic tendencies and was consumed by party infighting during his later years in office. After the Six Day War, Eshkol failed to deliver a coherent plan for what Israel should do with the new territories it occupied and the Palestinians who have remained under its rule ever since. In Begin’s second term, Israel entered a disastrous war in Lebanon, and his government nearly tanked the economy. But in most Israelis’ minds, these leaders’ positive legacies outweigh the negatives.

Who are the “worst prime ministers”? Until now, most Israelis regarded Golda Meir as the top candidate for that dismal title. The intelligence failure leading to the Yom Kippur War was on her watch. Before the war, she rejected Egyptian overtures toward peace (though some Israeli historians have recently argued that these were less than sincere). And when war was clearly imminent, her administration refrained from launching preemptive attacks that could have saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers.

Other “worst” candidates have included Ehud Olmert, for launching the second Lebanon war and becoming Israel’s first former prime minister to go to prison for corruption; Yitzhak Shamir, for kiboshing an agreement with Jordan’s King Hussein that many believe could have been a significant step toward resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict; and Ehud Barak, for spectacularly failing to fulfill his extravagant promises to bring peace with both the Palestinians and Syria.

But Benjamin Netanyahu now surpasses these contenders by orders of magnitude. He has brought far-right extremists into the mainstream of government and made himself, and the country, beholden to them. His corruption is flamboyant. And he has made terrible security decisions that brought existential danger to the country he pledged to lead and protect. Above all, his selfishness is without parallel: He has put his own interests ahead of Israel’s at every turn.

Netanyahu has the distinction of being the only Israeli prime minister to make a once reviled movement on the right fringe of the country’s politics into a government stakeholder.

Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of a Jewish-supremacist group called Kach, won a lone seat in the Knesset in 1984. He openly called for replacing Israeli democracy with a constitution based on the laws of the Torah and for denying Israel’s Arab citizens equal rights. During Kahane’s single legislative term, the entire Israeli political establishment shunned him. When he got up to speak in the Knesset, all of its members would leave the plenum.

In 1985, Likud joined other parties in changing election law so that those who denied Israel’s democratic identity, denied its Jewish identity, or incited racism could be barred from running for office. Under this provision, Kach was never allowed to compete in another election. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990. Four years later, a member of his movement killed 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron, and the Israeli government proscribed Kach as a terror organization and forced it to disband.

But the Kahanists didn’t go away. With each Israeli election, they tried to rename their movement and adjust its platform to conform with electoral law. They remained ostracized. Then, in 2019, Netanyahu saw a roadblock on his path to reelection that they could help him get around.

Several Israeli parties had pledged not to serve in a government led by an indicted prime minister—quite possibly, enough of them to shut Netanyahu out of power. To prevent that from happening, Netanyahu needed to eke out every possible right-wing and religious vote for his potential coalition. The polls were predicting that the latest Kahanist iteration, the Jewish Power party, which is led by the thuggish but media-savvy Itamar Ben-Gvir, would receive only about 10,000 votes, well below the threshold needed to make the party a player on its own; but Netanyahu believed that if he could persuade the Kahanists and other small right-wing parties to merge their candidates’ lists into a joint slate, together they could win a seat or two for his potential coalition—just what he needed for a majority.

Netanyahu began pressuring the leaders of the small right-wing parties to merge their lists. At first the larger of these were outraged. Netanyahu was meddling in their affairs and, worse, trying to coerce them to accept the Kahanist outcasts. Gradually, he wore down their resistance—employing rabbis to persuade politicians, orchestrating media campaigns in the nationalist press, and promising central roles in future administrations. Media figures close to Netanyahu accused Bezalel Smotrich, a fundamentalist settler and the new leader of the religious Zionist party, of “endangering” the nation by making it easier for the hated left to win the election. Soon enough, Smotrich’s old-school national-religious party merged not only with Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power but with an even more obscure, proudly homophobic party led by Avi Maoz.

Netanyahu did worry a bit about the optics. Throughout five stalemated election campaigns from 2019 to 2022, Likud coordinated closely with Jewish Power, but Netanyahu refused to be seen in public with Ben-Gvir. During the 2022 campaign, at a religious festival, he even waited backstage for Ben-Gvir to leave the premises before going up to make his speech.

Two weeks later, there was no longer any need to keep up the act. Netanyahu’s strategy succeeded: His coalition, merged into four lists, edged out its squabbling opponents with 64 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.

Netanyahu finally had the “right-wing in full” government he had often promised. But before he could return to the prime minister’s office, his allies demanded a division of the spoils. The ministries with the most influence on Israelis’ daily lives—health, housing, social services, and the interior—went to the ultra-Orthodox parties. Smotrich became finance minister; Maoz was appointed deputy minister in charge of a new “Agency for Jewish Identity,” with power to intervene in educational programs. And Ben-Gvir, the subject of numerous police investigations for violence and incitement over a period of three decades, was put in charge of a newly titled “Ministry of National Security,” with authority over Israel’s police and prison services.

As Netanyahu signed away power to the Kahanists, he told the international news media that he wasn’t forming a far-right government. The Kahanists were joining his government. He would be in control. But Netanyahu hadn’t just given Israel’s most extreme racists unprecedented power and legitimacy. He’d also insinuated them into his own formerly mainstream party: By March 2024, Likud’s candidates for local elections in a handful of towns had merged their slates with those of Jewish Power.

Likud long prided itself on combining staunch Jewish nationalism, even militarism, with a commitment to liberal democracy. But a more radical stream within the party eschewed those liberal values and championed chauvinistic and autocratic positions. For much of the past century, the liberal wing was dominant and provided most of the party’s leadership. Netanyahu himself espoused the values of the liberal wing—until he fell out with all the main liberal figures. By 2019, none was left to oppose the alliance with Ben-Gvir’s Kahanists.

Now more than a third of Likud’s representatives were religious, and those who weren’t preferred to call themselves “traditional” rather than secular. They didn’t object to cooperating with the Kahanists; indeed, many had already worked with them in the past. In fact, many Likud Knesset members by that point were indistinguishable from the Jewish Power ones. Israel’s worst prime minister didn’t just form an alliance of convenience with the country’s most irresponsible extremists; he made them integral to his party and the running of the state.

That Netanyahu is personally corrupt is not altogether novel in the history of the Israeli prime ministership. What makes him worse than others is his open contempt for the rule of law.

By 2018, Netanyahu was the subject of four simultaneous corruption investigations that had been in motion for more than a year. In one, known as Case 4000, Netanyahu stood accused of promising regulatory favors to the owner of Israel’s largest telecom corporation in return for favorable coverage on a popular news site. Three of the prime minister’s closest advisers had agreed to testify against him.

Investigations of prime ministers are not rare in Israel. Netanyahu was the subject of one during his first term. The three prime ministers who served in the decade between his first and second terms—Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert—had all been investigated as well. Only in Olmert’s case did police deem the evidence sufficient to mount a prosecution. At the time, in 2008, Netanyahu was the leader of the opposition.

“We’re talking about a prime minister who is up to his neck in investigations and has no public or moral mandate to make fateful decisions for Israel,” Netanyahu said of Olmert. “There is a concern, I have to say real, not without basis, that he will make decisions based on his personal interest of political survival and not on the national interest.”

Ten years later, Netanyahu would be the one snared in multiple investigations. Then he no longer spoke of corruption in high office but of a “witch hunt,” orchestrated by rogue police commanders and left-wing state prosecutors, and egged on by a hostile news media, all with the aim of toppling a right-wing leader.

Netanyahu was determined to politicize the legal procedure and pit his supporters against Israel’s law-enforcement agencies and judiciary. Never mind that the two previous prime ministers who had resigned because of corruption charges were from the center left. Nor did it matter that he had appointed the police commissioner and attorney general himself; both were deeply religious men with impeccable nationalist backgrounds, but he tarred them as perfidious tools of leftist conspiracy.

Rather than contemplate resignation, on May 24, 2020, Netanyahu became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to go on trial. He has denied all wrongdoing (the trial is still under way). In a courthouse corridor before one session, he gave a 15-minute televised speech accusing the legal establishment of “trying to topple me and the right-wing government. For over a decade, the left wing have failed to do this at the ballot box, and in recent years have come up with a new idea. Elements in the police and prosecutor’s office have joined left-wing journalists to concoct delusional charges.”

The law didn’t require Netanyahu to resign while fighting the charges against him in court. But doing so had seemed logical to his predecessors under similar circumstances—and to Israel’s lawmakers, who had never envisaged that a prime minister would so brazenly challenge the justice system, which he had a duty to uphold. For Netanyahu, however, remaining in power was an end in itself, one more important than preserving Israel’s most crucial institutions, to say nothing of Israelis’ trust in them.

Netanyahu placed extremists in positions of power, undermined confidence in the rule of law, and sacrificed principle to power. Little wonder, then, that last summer, tensions over the role of Israel’s judiciary became unmanageable. The crisis underlined all of these reasons that Netanyahu should go down as Israel’s worst prime minister.

For 34 of the past 47 years, Israel’s prime ministers have come from the Likud party. And yet many on the right still grumble that “Likud doesn’t know how to rule” and “you vote right and get left.” Likudniks complain about the lingering power of “the elites,” a left-wing minority that loses at the ballot box but still controls the civil service, the upper echelons of the security establishment, the universities, and the media. A growing anti-judicial wing within Likud demands constitutional change and a clamping-down on the supreme court’s “judicial activism.”

Netanyahu had once minimized these complaints, but his stance on the judiciary changed after he was indicted in 2019. Indeed, at the start of his current term, Likud’s partners demanded commitments to constitutional change, which they received. The ultra-Orthodox parties were anxious to pass a law exempting religious seminary students from military service. Such exemptions had already fallen afoul of the supreme court’s equality standards, so the religious parties wanted the law to include a “court bypass.” Netanyahu acceded to this. To pass the legislation in the Knesset, he appointed Simcha Rothman, a staunch critic of the court, as the chair of the Knesset’s Constitution Committee.

He also appointed Yariv Levin, another fierce critic of the court, as justice minister. Just six days after the new government was sworn in, Levin rolled out a “judicial reform” plan, prepared by a conservative think tank, that called for drastically limiting the court’s powers to review legislation and gave politicians control over the appointment of new justices.

Within days, an extremely efficient counter-campaign pointed out the dangers the plan posed, not just to Israel’s fragile and limited democracy, but to its economy and security. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested in the streets. Likud began to drop in the polls, and Netanyahu privately urged the leaders of the coalition parties to delay the vote. They refused to back down, and Levin threatened to resign over any delay.

Netanyahu’s motives, unlike those of his partners, were not ideological. His objective was political survival. He needed to keep his hard-won majority intact and the judges off-balance. But the protests were unrelenting. Netanyahu’s independent-minded defense minister, Yoav Gallant, pointed to the controversy’s dire implications for the Israel Defense Forces as hundreds of volunteer reserve officers threatened to suspend their service rather than “serve a dictatorship.”

Netanyahu wasn’t sure he wanted to go through with the judicial coup, but the idea of one of Likud’s senior ministers breaking ranks in public was unthinkable. On March 25 of last year, Gallant made a public statement that the constitutional legislation was a “clear and major threat to the security of Israel” and he would not be voting for it. The next evening, Netanyahu announced that he was firing Gallant.

In Jerusalem, protesters besieged Netanyahu’s home. In Tel Aviv, they blocked main highways. The next morning, the trade unions announced a general strike, and by that evening, Netanyahu backed down, announcing that he was suspending the legislation and would hold talks with the opposition on finding compromises. Gallant kept his post. The talks collapsed, protests started up again, and Netanyahu once again refused to listen to the warnings coming from the security establishment—not only of anger within the IDF, but that Israel’s enemies were planning to take advantage of the country’s disunity to launch an attack.

The debate over judicial reform pitted two visions of Israel against each other. On one side was a liberal and secular Israel that relied on the supreme court to defend its democratic values; on the other, a religious and conservative Israel that feared that unelected judges would impose incompatible ideas on their Jewish values.

Netanyahu’s government made no attempt to reconcile these two visions. The prime minister had spent too many years, and all those toxic electoral campaigns, exploiting and deepening the rift between them. Even when he belatedly and halfheartedly tried to rein in the radical and fundamentalist demons he had ridden back into office, he found that he could no longer control them.

Whether Netanyahu really meant to eviscerate Israel’s supreme court as part of a plot to weaken the judiciary and intimidate the judges in his own case, or whether he had no choice in the matter and was simply a hostage of his own coalition, is immaterial. What matters is that he appointed Levin as justice minister and permitted the crisis to happen. Ultimately, and despite his professed belief in liberal democracy, Netanyahu allowed Levin and his coalition partners to convince him that they were doing the right thing—because whatever kept him in office was right for Israel. Democracy would remain strong because he would remain in charge.

Trying to diminish the powers of the supreme court isn’t what makes Netanyahu Israel’s worst prime minister. The judicial reform failed anyway. Only one of its elements got through the Knesset before the war with Hamas began, and the court struck it down as unconstitutional six months later. The justices’ ruling to preserve their powers, despite the Knesset’s voting to limit them, could have caused a constitutional crisis if it had happened in peacetime. But by then Israel was facing a much bigger crisis.

Given Israel’s history, the ultimate yardstick of its leaders’ success is the security they deliver for their fellow citizens. In 2017, as I was finishing my unauthorized biography of Netanyahu, I commissioned a data analyst to calculate the average annual casualty rate (Israeli civilians and soldiers) of each prime minister since 1948. The results confirmed what I had already assumed. In the 11 years that Netanyahu had by then been prime minister, the average annual number of Israelis killed in war and terror attacks was lower, by a considerable margin, than under any previous prime minister.

My book on Netanyahu was not admiring. But I felt that it was only fair to include that data point in his favor in the epilogue and the very last footnote. Likud went on to use it in its 2019 campaigns without attributing the source.

The numbers were hard to argue with. Netanyahu was a hard-line prime minister who had done everything in his power to derail the Oslo peace process and prevent any move toward compromise with the Palestinians. Throughout much of his career, he encouraged military action by the West, first against Iraq after 9/11, and then against Iran. But in his years as prime minister, he balked at initiating or being dragged into wars of his own. His risk aversion and preference for covert operations or air strikes rather than ground operations had, in his first two stretches in power, from 1996 to 1999 and 2009 to 2021, kept Israelis relatively safe.

Netanyahu supporters on the right could also argue, on basis of the numbers, that those who brought bloodshed upon Israel, in the form of Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket attacks, were actually Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the architects of the Oslo Accords; Ehud Barak, with his rash attempts to bring peace; and Ariel Sharon, who withdrew Israeli soldiers and settlers unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, creating the conditions for Hamas’s electoral victory there the following year. That argument no longer holds.

If future biographers of Israeli prime ministers undertake a similar analysis, Netanyahu will no longer be able to claim the lowest casualty rate. His 16th year in office, 2023, was the third-bloodiest in Israel’s history, surpassed only by 1948 and 1973, Israel’s first year of independence and the year of the Yom Kippur War, respectively.

The first nine months of 2023 had already seen a rise in deadly violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as terrorist attacks within Israel’s borders. Then came the Hamas attack on October 7, in which at least 1,145 Israelis were massacred and 253 kidnapped and taken to Gaza. More than 30 hostages are now confirmed dead.

No matter how the war in Gaza ends, what happens in its aftermath, or when Netanyahu’s term finally ends, the prime minister will forever be associated above all with that day and the disastrous war that followed. He will go down as the worst prime minister because he has been catastrophic for Israeli security.

To understand how Netanyahu so drastically failed Israel’s security requires going back at least to 2015, the year his long-term strategic bungling of the Iranian threat came into view. His mishandling didn’t happen in isolation; it is also related to the deprioritization of other threats, including the catastrophe that materialized on October 7.

Netanyahu flew to Washington, D.C., in 2015 to implore U.S. lawmakers to obstruct President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Many view this gambit as extraordinarily damaging to Israel’s most crucial alliance—the relationship with the United States is the very bulwark of its security. Perhaps so; but the stunt didn’t make subsequent U.S. administrations less supportive of Israel. Even Obama would still go on to sign the largest 10-year package of military aid to Israel the year after Netanyahu’s speech. Rather, the damage Netanyahu caused by presuming too much of the United States wasn’t to the relationship, but to Israel itself.

Netanyahu’s strategy regarding Iran was based on his assumption that America would one day launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. We know this from his 2022 book, Bibi: My Story, in which he admits to arguing repeatedly with Obama “for an American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.” Senior Israeli officials have confirmed that he expected Donald Trump to launch such a strike as well. In fact, Netanyahu was so sure that Trump, unlike Obama, would give the order that he had no strategy in place for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program when Trump decided, at Netanyahu’s own urging, to withdraw from the Iran deal in May 2018.

Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs had been far from enamored with the Iran deal, but they’d seized the opportunity it presented to divert some of the intelligence resources that had been focused on Iran’s nuclear program to other threats, particularly Tehran’s network of proxies across the region. They were caught by surprise when the Trump administration ditched the Iran deal (Netanyahu knew it was coming but didn’t inform them). This unilateral withdrawal effectively removed the limitations on Iran’s nuclear development and required an abrupt reversal of Israeli priorities.

Senior Israeli officials I spoke with had to tread a wary path here. Those who were still in active service couldn’t challenge the prime minister’s strategy directly. But in private some were scathing about the lack of a coherent strategy on Iran. “It takes years to build intelligence capabilities. You can’t just change target priorities overnight,” one told me.

The result was a dissipation of Israeli efforts to stop Iran—which is committed to the destruction of Israel. Iran sped further than ever down the path of uranium enrichment, and its proxies, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border, grew ever more powerful.

In the months leading up to October 7, Israel’s intelligence community repeatedly warned Netanyahu that Iran and its proxies were plotting a major attack within Israel, though few envisaged something on the scale of October 7. By the fall of 2023, motives were legion: fear that an imminent Israeli diplomatic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia could change the geopolitics of the region; threats that Ben-Gvir would allow Jews greater access to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and worsen conditions for Palestinian prisoners; rumors that the deepening tensions within Israeli society would render any response to an attack slow and disjointed.

Netanyahu chose to ignore the warnings. The senior officers and intelligence chiefs who issued them were, to his mind, conspiring with the law-enforcement agencies and legal establishment that had put him on trial and were trying to obstruct his government’s legislation. None of them had his experience and knowledge of the real threats facing Israel. Hadn’t he been right in the past when he’d refused to listen to leftist officials and so-called experts?

Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 was the result of a colossal failure at all levels of Israel’s security and intelligence community. They had all seen the warning signals but continued to believe that the main threat came from Hezbollah, the larger and far better-equipped and trained enemy to the north. Israel’s security establishment believed that Hamas was isolated in Gaza, and that it and the other Palestinian organizations had been effectively deterred from attacking Israel.

Netanyahu was the originator of this assumption, and its biggest proponent. He believed that keeping Hamas in power in Gaza, as it had been for nearly two years when he returned to office in 2009, was in Israel’s interest. Periodic rocket attacks on Israeli communities in the south were a price worth paying to keep the Palestinian movement split between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank enclaves and Hamas in Gaza. Such division would push the troublesome two-state solution off the global agenda and allow Israel to focus on regional alliances with like-minded Arab autocracies that also feared Iran. The Palestinian issue would sink into irrelevance.

Netanyahu’s disastrous strategy regarding Gaza and Hamas is part of what makes him Israel’s worst prime minister, but it’s not the only factor. Previous Israeli prime ministers, too, blundered into bloody wars on the basis of misguided strategies and faulty advice from their military and intelligence advisers.

Netanyahu stands out from them for his refusal to accept responsibility, and for his political machinations and smear campaigns since October 7. He blames IDF generals and nourishes the conspiracy theory that they, in alliance with the protest movement, somehow allowed October 7 to happen.

Netanyahu believes that he is the ultimate victim of that tragic day. Convinced by his own campaign slogans, he argues that he is the only one who can deliver Israel from this valley of shadows to the sunlit uplands of “total victory.” He refuses to consider any advice about ending the war and continues to prioritize preserving his coalition, because he appears incapable of distinguishing between his own fate, now tainted by tragic failure, and that of Israel.

Many around the world assume that Israel’s war with Hamas has proceeded according to some plan of Netanyahu’s. This is a mistake. Netanyahu has the last word as prime minister and head of the emergency war cabinet, but he has used his power mainly to prevaricate, procrastinate, and obstruct. He delayed the initial ground offensive into Gaza, hesitated for weeks over the first truce and hostage-release agreement in November, and is now doing the same over another such deal with Hamas. For the past six months, he has prevented any meaningful cabinet discussion of Israel’s strategic goals. He has rejected the proposals of his own security establishment and the Biden administration. He presented vague principles for “the day after Hamas” to the cabinet only in late February, and they have yet to be debated.

However one views the war in Gaza—as a justified war of defense in which Hamas is responsible for the civilian casualties it has cynically hidden behind, or as an intentional genocide of the Palestinian people, or as anything in between—none of it is Netanyahu’s plan. That’s because Netanyahu has no plan for Gaza, only one for remaining in power. His obstructionism, his showdowns with generals, his confrontations with the Biden administration—all are focused on that end, which means preserving his far-right coalition and playing to his hard-core nationalist base.

Meanwhile, he’s doing what he has always done: wearing down and discrediting his political opponents in the hope of proving to an exhausted and traumatized public that he’s the only alternative. So far, he’s failing. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Israelis want him gone. But Netanyahu is fending off calls to hold an early election until he believes he is within striking distance of winning.

Netanyahu’s ambition has consumed both him and Israel. To regain and remain in office, he has sacrificed his own authority and parceled out power to the most extreme politicians. Since his reelection in 2022, Netanyahu is no longer the center of power but a vacuum, a black hole that has engulfed all of Israel’s political energy. His weakness has given the far right and religious fundamentalists extraordinary control over Israel’s affairs, while other segments of the population are left to pursue the never-ending quest to end his reign.

One man’s pursuit of power has diverted Israel from confronting its most urgent priorities: the threat from Iran, the conflict with the Palestinians, the desire to nurture a Westernized society and economy in the most contested corner of the Middle East, the internal contradictions between democracy and religion, the clash between tribal phobias and high-tech hopes. Netanyahu’s obsession with his own destiny as Israel’s protector has caused his country grievous damage.

Most Israelis already realize that Netanyahu is the worst of the 14 prime ministers their country has had in its 76 years of independence. But in the future, Jews might even remember him as the leader who inflicted the most harm on his people since the squabbling Hasmonean kings brought civil war and Roman occupation to Judea nearly 21 centuries ago. As long as he remains in power, he could yet surpass them.

[heliopauseentertainments]

In Memoriam

Part of MegOp Week 2024 Prompt - Day 7: Vulnerability/Acceptance

Continuity: IDW1

Rating: Teen

Relationships: Megatron & Optimus Prime

Characters: Megatron

Warnings: Vignette, Referenced Character Death, Grief, Mourning, Swearing

Summary: In which before being taken to have his sentence carried out, Megatron is granted a final request.

Crossposting: AO3 | Dreamwidth

Fic under cut. See AO3 for complete notes.

It had taken some finagling, but Ultra Magnus had gotten the Galactic Council to grant Megatron a final wish before he would be rendered insensate in isolation.

It might as well have been death; it was functionally death.

But he had been allowed this one indulgence. Even Prowl, in a rare display of mercy, had been in agreement that Megatron could have this.

It wasn’t the exact place that Optimus had met his end, but the Earth, a planet so fateful to their kind, was the closest solid ground Megatron could get to. Of course, the various governments of Earth had been against his visit, no matter how brief. However, on the condition that he was disarmed and squarely in the sights of more guns than could be considered reasonable, even the humans had allowed him to come to their world one last time.

Standing now in front of a monument erected in a joint effort by some of the few survivors of their species and the humans that did not detest all Cybertronians, Megatron could say farewell to his friend. In a strange way, they had been friends.

Ultra Magnus stood several paces away, having been allowed to accompany his “client” on this little journey. He kept his back respectfully turned, giving Megatron the dignity of a veneer of privacy, even if none of the soldiers ready to fire upon him could give him the same courtesy.

The monument, a large, polished white marble stele with the same dedication engraved in multiple languages. Neocybex, of course, but the remainder were several of Earth’s languages. His universal translator was able to decipher most of them in a sort of flat way, but he was sure much nuance was being lost.

“In memoriam of Optimus Prime of Iacon—“ Incorrect, Primes traditionally lost their city names upon ascension. “—our friend from the far off planet of Cybertron—“ No longer extant. “—who selflessly sacrificed himself—“ As he had been wont to do his entire life, yes. “—to protect Earth from destruction.”

An etching of Optimus’s face, in partial profile, had been placed in the center of the slab, surrounded in scrollwork and geometric shapes, a fusion of typical Iaconian styles with the more organic aesthetic of Optimus’s favorite mudball world—Megatron oughtn’t call it that.

Knowing that Optimus was dead and seeing the purported proof were vastly different things. An icy weight, a grief he had not borne since he had believed Terminus dead, tugged inward on his spark, compressing it until it seemed like it might implode.

In the grooves of the carved glyphs and artwork, Megatron could see traces of color, as though the monument had been the victim of graffiti. Forcibly bringing a previously sovereign world into consortium with alien governments tended to not be popular. Megatron ought to know, after all.

For all of the love and admiration and worship foisted upon Optimus, there would, of course, be those who wholeheartedly disagreed. Megatron could hardly blame them.

At least Optimus had had the luxury of actually dying.

Lucky bastard.

Megatron was to be punished with an endless undeath. Alone forever with his thoughts whenever the drive they would hook his spark up to would fluctuate, interrupting his senseless, slumbering void.

He reached out with his hands, his wrists awkwardly cuffed together. He could have broken the cuffs easily, but there was no need. It wouldn’t change anything.

Placing his palm on the etching of Optimus’s face, he smiled. A warm pressure bloomed in his spark, pushing through the cold grief.

“You finally did it, you foolish hero, you finally did it.”

There was a heavy sigh as he brushed his palm over the ridges in the marble.

“And, like usual, you didn’t bother to wait for me.”

[tricitymonsters]

You’re bed rotting, watching trash tv. Whatre the bois (side babes too) doing while you binge reality tv? Are they watching with us? Some other hobby?

Mori - likely to get drawn in to the tv, will definitely want to rustle around under your blanket while you veg out even if you forbid him from getting Too Frisky. Mori usually multitasks so he might also do stuff on his phone or doodle on something at the same time if there’s any hope of him being chill for 10 minutes.

Amir - absolutely gets drawn into whatever you’re watching especially if there’s drama. Unfortunately he wants to talk through a lot of it to give his take and how to either make the drama worse or more entertaining. Might ignore his clients to continue giving you his trash tv hot takes.

Akello - This is a prime excuse to nap. He’s not super big into most tv but akello enjoys sharing the same space with you even if he’s not doing the same activity. If he’s not using the opportunity to catch up on sleep, Akello has a really hard time being idle so he may bring a book or or some work with him to stay productive.

Raath - Complaining that you’re not using your energy to pay attention to him. You’ll need to maybe embellish the context of whatever you’re watching to get him distracted by it. Or put on a slasher movie to get him more engaged and prone to sitting with you the whole time. Otherwise he’ll pop in and out a lot to make sure the “perimeter is safe” while you’re “weak and vulnerable”.

Kazu - Cannot relax. Will probably spend time working in his garage and come up to check on you / doordash food several times during the day. He’s a creature of ritual and schedules and he cannot deviate from his regiment without feeling like the world is imploding so it will take a crisis to get his full attention unfortunately. He will, however, text to check in with your current status often enough to let you know he cares.

Marcel - This is the perfect excuse for him to ALSO rot in bed and ignore his obligations in favor of trash tv. I like to think he watches a lot of that anyway so he might be just as well versed as you in the show.

[rpfshippingpolls]

⚠️ DON’T START DISCOURSE ABOUT RPF IN THE NOTES!! YOU WILL BE BLOCKED IF YOU DO SO ⚠️

Do you ship it?

Reason under the cut

“These answers from Quora question "Why did Zhou Enlai promote Mao Zedong to the apex of power in the Communist Party instead of taking such role himself?"

// "In summary, Zhou was the ultimate diplomat, a smooth operator, handled people appropriately, organisationally immaculate with an eye on detail, and flexible in approach whereas Mao was a person with immense talent, militarily a genius, politically a maestro like puppet master and possessed of incredible guile. He was not interested in quotidian details of running an organisation and knew he had to rely on Zhou. Yet he always knew he had to look over the shoulder at Zhou because as the other CCP leaders told Zhou, Zhou was the only person ever who could take over from Mao. It was like a kind of love hate relationship between two brothers entrusted with the task of establishing and managing a country."

// "Back to the question itself, I have to say the peronality of Zhou En-lai was almost a saint. He didn’t raise, or just somehow got rid of any personal dislike and jealousy towards Mao. I feel that Zhou’s judgement is completely follows the objective fact. His eager for ideal overcame personal emotion. Since he found that Mao is the gifted one and his work could benefit the revolutionary ideal the most, Zhou simply put all other factors out of consideration and uttermostly supported the man he think could push the revolutionary career forward. Zhou En-lai was unusually humble, selfless and resolute. For more than half a century, he was the key adhesive of the Party. Zhou kept the walking god could stay with mortals, and he pacified the factional conflicts within the party in a wisdom and fair way. His work as prime minister and intelligence chief could be done by someone else, but the role as mediator was definately irreplaceable. CCP would be impossible to obtain victory without Mao’s lead. Without Zhou, well, the party may implode long ago. Using this traditional idiom is quite improper, for the metaphor violated their lifetime goal of equity. However, this is the best one to conclude their relationship. Mao Zedong and Zhou En-lai were exemplar of “君臣相得”, which literally means “A right correspondence of a right emperor and a right chancellor”. They happened to occur in that time, in same time. It’s one of the greatest grace of destiny for Chinese civilization."

// These passages from a Zhou biography:

// "Tsunyi was the watershed, the great divide. Here began Mao Dzedong's supremacy. Here too began the bond between Zhou Enlai and Mao Dzedong, an indissoluble linkage, until their deaths. Not an easy alliance. Deep entente, and profound discord. Devotion and loyalty, but also resentment. The two men exercised upon each other a mutual fascination, because they were so utterly different, in character, mentality, physical build. [...] Greatness, in China, not only lies in personal achievement but is also organically linked to the discovery of talent and genius in others. Zhou had discovered Mao Dzedong. Discovered genius, an amplitude, a breadth of vision, in which his own passion for China could recognize itself. The tragedy of this bond would come later, much later. When Mao, betrayed by the power lust of all around him, feared and envied Zhou Enlai, the only man who had never betrayed him, who had never wanted to wrest power from him, because he had never needed power to assert himself. Robert Frost has a line of poetry: "The heart knows no devotion, greater than the shore for the ocean." Zhou was the shore to Mao's ocean, forever stemming the transcending waves, yet inseparable from them. A Chinese scholar has another view. "Zhou Enlai knew Mao was a tiger. He, Zhou, thought he could ride that tiger.""

// "Zhou as usual walked briskly about, inspecting the rooms that were to be used. He spoke to the cooks. "Remember the Chairman likes his food with red chili." It had become second nature to Zhou to care for Mao's bodily comforts, as he cared for his wife's, for his friends'. But he was also exhibiting his affection for the Chairman, possibly to make Mao feel he was revered and loved, for he sensed how mortified, how heartsick Mao must be, now that his grandiose scheme had broken down."”

[lycankeyy]

treat yourself

Apparently "waiting until I get the brotherly fluff itch" meant two total minutes. Surprise back at it again with the slice-of-life snippets HDKWHDJ also I didn't really proofread this because I fucking hate . Proofreading so all typos are made out of hubris /silly

BFs in this one-shot: boyf (fc!bf, mine), ys (yourself/silly billy, @ochrearia); beef (wyd!bf, @gemharvest) offhandedly mentioned

-

There comes a point in the winter season, somewhere right between Thanksgiving and the typical gift-giving season, where a person who's been having a rough time up until that point decides fuck it. This was a mentality that had gotten Boyf through most of his life, to be fair, but it was hitting especially hard now, going into next year. He looked at all the time he'd spent struggling to get out of bed or working himself into the ground or worrying people and decided it was high time to throw his hands up and declare what the fuck ever. I'm gonna treat myself. Who cares.

This is, of course, an infinitely more appealing philosophy, regardless of how it might manifest, with a fellow victim to drag into the torment nexus of holiday cheer with you. And honestly, there was no one who quite fit the bill like Yourself.

Boyf had been relying on him a lot as of late. Emotional support, mostly, though there had been a couple times in there where his older brother had seen him in, well, less than prime physical condition, possibly of his own hubris. But anyway, it was hard to do that for so long without feeling a bit guilty. He supposed that went for anyone, but YS hit hard in particular.

It was not a secret whatsoever that YS was an extremely miserable person, just on a day-to-day basis. If you opened a DSM-V to the diagnostic criteria for major depression, you'd find a picture of YS as figure a. The guy had enough going on on his own without Boyf giving him a heart attack once every two weeks and all the support he sometimes-wordlessly-but-sometimes-very-openly asked for. YS never asked for any sort of reward or anything, honestly he seemed like he might implode if he even considered the idea, but that wasn't about to stop one Boyfriend Quire. Because he wanted to get silly with it. And nobody was quite deserving of Ambiguous Silly like Mr. Silly Billy himself.

And what do you know, it just so happened that his partners were going to be out of the house for a few hours today. Perfect excuse to invite him over instead of nonchalantly dragging a fuckton of random shit to an alternate reality to satiate his innane urges.

He didn't even stop to consider the fact that Yourself was, on average, a little bit awkward about visiting Boyf's world. He had some weird guilt complex or whatever that Boyf didn't like to humor enough to even acknowledge half the time. He just wanted him here. For his weird mental zoomies.

And so a plan was set in motion. It usually took a little bit for YS to get back to him when he invited him over - even if he wanted to, Boyf could easily understand the lack of inertia that kept him in bed for a good while after he read the message - so Boyf was already taking action before he even arrived. It had been a hot minute since he'd made this recipe, actually, and he barely remembered the circumstances, just that he still had it saved. And now seemed like a perfect time to drag it out and dust it off.

He didn't exactly have all the garnishes on hand, but he didn't bake enough to use the other ingredients for other stuff, so he still had a bunch laying around. Easily enough to serve two people. Maybe make some more, if it turned out that good.

So by the time YS finally told him he was ready to come over, the concoction in his pot was already about halfway done. He quickly went to retrieve his big brother from the mirror, with a degree of excitement said brother immediately picked up on.

"Oh, no. You have that look Beef gets," he complained without any actual disapproval behind his tone. Continuing in a completely flat voice, without a hint of even a rhetorical question to it, he said, "what are you going to do to me."

It's self-care day, Boyf informed him eagerly with the sort of extreme confidence of someone declaring a national holiday.

YS quirked an eyebrow at him. It was obvious from the look in his eye that he probably hadn't slept and was only half-comprehending what was even going on. "O... kay," he said, confusion muffled by the tiredness. "What does that have to do with me?"

Boyf didn't even respond to that one. Simply grabbed YS' wrist and dragged him to the kitchen - to be fair, he wasn't really supposed to stop stirring the chocolate milk.

Still trying desperately to piece together what the goal of bringing him here was, YS lazily looked over his shoulder to see what exactly he was walking in on. Mostly the smattering of ingredients on the counter and the pot Boyf was once again looming over. "You're melting chocolate chips," he observed.

Into milk, Boyf supplemented, which to be fair, did add a little context, though it far from explained anything.

YS blinked slowly, standing back a bit as the kitchen timer let out its shrill sound and Boyf moved to adding the rest of his hoard - cocoa powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, a little vanilla extract... "... you invited me over for cocoa?"

For self-care day, he restated. Maybe this was a bit of a weird sticking point, but to be fair, YS was one of those people who wouldn't know how to accept a present if it was something he literally asked you for.

"Right," he said, confusion not alleviated even slightly, though now it was manifesting as some form of fond bewilderment. "Well, thanks, I guess. I'll be, uh, on the couch. If you need me."

With a hum of acknowledgment, Boyf didn't even take his eyes off his pot as YS slunk off to make himself (figuratively) small somewhere in the other room. It wasn't like he'd been expecting him to match his energy this far into winter, after all.

Luckily, there was very little to this other than a couple more minutes stirring, pouring the contents into some mugs, adding some whipped cream and serving. Like he'd expected, YS was curled up on his couch, visibly cold and looking like an animal that had been woken in the middle of hibernation.

His face lit up a little bit though as he was handed his cup, cradling it in his hands like it was precious to him. "Thanks," he mumbled.

With no further comment, Boyf picked up his remote, turned on the TV and collapsed next to YS - something the man woke up just a little bit to lightly scold him for - they were both holding cups full of steaming hot milk, man - but ultimately relaxed when Boyf nuzzled up against him like a needy cat.

The older man huffed, and his eyes smiled more than his face did. "So your plan was just to use me as a sentient pillow. I see how it is."

YS peered into the mug with mild skepticism, though it had nothing to do with the potential taste. "Isn't it too hot to drink, still? It was just boiling."

For the millionth time, Boyf reiterated his motivations - self-care day, to which YS rolled his eyes playfully. Is it good?

At that, Boyf gave his own a brief scrutizing look, before taking a sip with zero hesitation, flinching a little as it burned his tongue. Yeah, he thought to him. Not as bad as cocoa from a coffee shop would though.

YS looked like he wasn't sure if he should laugh or be mildly horrified. "That's not. How you test that," he said, trying desperately to keep his voice even. Boyf looked up at him with completely clueless eyes, though, and shortly, YS' expression softened. Then got a little more devious. "You know what, fuck it."

His reaction to burning his tongue was slightly stronger than Boyf's, which either of them could have expected. Temperature difference and all. Still, BFs were BFs.

Good? Boyf reiterated as YS awkwardly scrubbed at his mouth like that would make the sensation in his lips go away.

After taking a moment to regain his composure, YS sighed, nodded, and after disregarding the urge to make a mildly snarky comment about how it was hard to taste anything when his tongue was on fire, he just nodded. "Yeah, it's nice. It's really nice."

Good. Boyf said, thoroughly pleased with himself. He leaned back against his guardian angel, pressing himself into his shoulder, cradling his hot chocolate in his hands. Taking a deep breath in his contentment, he sighed out, "bee love you."

YS blinked down at him, long fingers curling around the relatively small cup he'd been offered. He still couldn't really grasp what the whole deal here was, and a part of him told him there had to be more to this than was being let on, but even then, it wasn't like he could just let that comment go unanswered. He smiled softly.

"Love you too, little man."

[prismaticpichu]

In honor of it being Friday, what kind of stuff would Zack and Sephiroth get up to on Friday nights?

Yesss!!! The beans on Fridayyyyyyy! 💙💚 Excellent question!!!!

~

Zack’s Recorded List of Seph-i-Rocking Things He & Seph Have Done on Fridays!

• Movie Theater Theatrics - Aka, Zack really wanted his bud to experience an epic flick on the big screen, and so he took Sephiroth to the local Midgar cinema with the persuasion of popcorn and icees. What neither didn’t realize was that it was a local Silver Elite get together, that just so happened to be having their fun at the same exact showing time. This resulted in every seat of the auditorium being taken by a raging fanatic - four of whom tried to steal Seph’s popcorn to sell it, eight of whom tried to steal Seph’s icee straw, and 30 of whom tried to steal Zack’s seat to sit next to him. When one ended up spilling Zack’s candy amid the mayhem, Sephiroth proceeded to cast a mastered Sleep on the entire room (minus Zack). They then enjoyed the film in peace <3

• Laser Tag Tumult - Aka, Zack wanted his bud to experience the thrilling rush of adrenaline that was a game of lasar tag, and so he took Seph to the local laser attack arena for some fun. What neither didn’t realize was that it was that a birthday party for an eight year old had also been booked there at the same exact night. This resulted in Zack & Seph being put on separate teams, each armed with a platoon of vicious, cake-fueled third graders on their side. Only problem was that the kids on Zack’s side were so petrified to play against Sephiroth that they wouldn’t leave the safety spot of their home base. In a moment of quick and compassionate thinking, Zack got his little team into a huddle, proceeding to whisper to him all the adorable things he had seen Sephiroth do: fall asleep on the couch wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, slurping up ramen, and the way he gave the warmest and most loving hugs when you needed one. The squad was so touched and amused that they proceeded to storm Sephiroth’s team - and the game was ON - Zack’s little battalion intoning “General Squishy” all the while.

• Night Club Clatter - Aka, Zack wanted his bud to experience the classic weekend experience when he was in his prime, and so he took Seph to Midgar’s local night club - The Bombed Squad. Zack promised to never leave his friend’s side, sitting next to him at the bar as music exploded all around them, for one unbothered by swarming fanatics as Sephiroth had the foresight to dress up this time. But what couldn’t plague Seph with autograph requests and photos was instead replaced by the erupting music and flashing lights. He sat at the bar, shaking in his arms, enhanced hearing making everything all the more potent. Seeing this, Zack asked his friend if they wanted to leave, rubbing his pal’s back in a gesture of comfort. Seph said yes. HOWEVER—as they were about to dip, Sephiroth’s all-time favorite song came on, and the anxiety melted away into amusement and fun as Zack pulled him to the dance floor to have one of the best night of their lives. (It was also the first time Zack ever saw Seph get the least bit tipsy.)

• Bowling Bash - Aka, Zack wanted his bud to experience the thrill of sporty completion, and so he took a disguised Seph to the local bowling alley for some good-hearted rivalry. All was going well as they got their shoes and picked their lane, the establishment bustling with the perfect blend of energy and breathability. Zack decided to go first; he picked up a ball, raced across the lane, and bowled the thing with all his might. A clean 9/10! Zack cheered as he turned back to his clapping friend, playfully teasing for him to do better. Sephiroth happily accepted the challenge. Stepping up to the lane, his own shiny sphere in hand, he wound his arm back as the man prepared to bowl; aiming, focusing, releaSING—SMASSHHHHHH! And there went the bowling lane, gone in an instant, the floor having imploded from the sheer weight of the warrior’s alien-jacked strength. The rest of the night was spent at a local pizza parlors, hopping from one place to the next as they continued to run away from the manager. The duo couldn’t stop laughing when they returned home - the hardest Zack had ever seen his best friend laugh <3

• The Classic - Aka, Zack wanted his bud to do what he wanted to do one Friday night, and so the two SOLDIERs found themselves on Sephiroth’s couch amidst a peaceful and personal quiet. Nothing but talking; nothing but sharing stories, ordering in food, laughing, playing board games, and rocking at multiplayer video games Zack had long brought over from his apartment. He may have fun outside, but nothing really meant more to Sephiroth than being able to spend relaxing time with Zack <333

[jaggedjot]

"THERE CAN BE a huge range of reasons why a show in 2024—this one or any other—doesn’t have the reach it deserves; endless pixels have been spilled on streamer fatigue and fractured audiences in the past few years. AMC, a darling of the prestige-TV-on-cable era, is in an especially strange position: Even when Interview’s first season was a hit on its streaming service, AMC+, it was still held up as an example of a troubled industry in transition. Two years and two Hollywood strikes later, the situation is even more complicated. As the industry restructures and changes who can watch what where, a disconnect has emerged between what viewers like and what critics do. At the same time, social media platforms—the loci of 21st-century word of mouth—continue to implode, fracturing the conversation of an already dispersed audience. Amidst this, IWTV faces specific hurdles due to the nature of the show. An adaptation of Anne Rice’s 1976 novel that pulls heavily from the many Vampire Chronicles books that followed, the show racebends many of its leads—its titular vampire, Louis de Pointe du Lac, is now Black—and goes all in on the queerness of the books. And it is, of course, about vampires—specifically, vampires who do terrible things. “IWTV has so much that a modern audience could want from a series but, unfortunately, some people won’t receive it solely because it’s a queer horror show with majority BIPOC leads,” says Bobbi Miller, a culture critic who recaps the show on her YouTube channel. “Genre TV is always going to have to jump through more hoops for success than a standard drama.” For the converted, the idea that more people aren’t watching Interview is maddening. One could certainly argue that the show, with its dark, twisted Gothicness and emotional maximalism, isn’t for everyone. But in an era of unceremonious cancellations—even of shows that execs touted as hits—and with an absence of information about the show’s future, it’s understandable that its most dedicated fans would be pushing for more viewers. Interview isn’t the only show whose fans question its marketing efforts; it’s a common accusation leveled at streamers of all sorts, especially when a show is canceled. But in this conversation, Interview fans pointed at specific decisions made by the network that many feel have made this season’s rollout feel so much more muted than the last. “It’s been a conversation that fans have been talking about for a while now, but I think what really set them off was the comment made by Film Updates,” says Rei Gorrei, a fan who dubs herself the “Unofficial Vampire Chronicles Spokesperson.” A pop-culture aggregation account with nearly a million followers, Film Updates revealed they had been denied interview requests with the show’s talent—and since fans were worried no one was hearing about IWTV, they couldn’t understand why that reach wasn’t being capitalized on. “I think the combination of these things along with little marketing leaves fans in a word-of-mouth scenario where we now feel like it’s up to us to campaign for the season three renewal,” Gorrei says. Many questioned the promotion the network had been implementing, too, like the decision to never have Anderson and Assad Zaman, whose characters’ romance is one of the main focuses of the season, interviewed together. Episode five in particular, with its explosive fight scene between the two, would have been a prime opportunity. (AMC did not respond to emails seeking comment for this story.) Other fans raised concerns about the unceremonious cancelation of the widely admired official podcast, whose Black female host, Naomi Ekperigin, felt like the perfect interviewer for a show with Black leads and nuanced racial storylines. Then there was the fact that too few episodes would air in time for Emmy consideration—not the fault of marketing, but yet one more source of fan worry."

Interview With the Vampire Fans Say the Stakes Have Never Been Higher by Elizabeth Minkel

[cakepoppresent]

Consider This an Early Retirement

The day is finally here. The dreaded shareholders meeting. Gideon is seated with the other members of the board. His father and grandfather are seated across from him looking smug and proud. It's only a matter of minutes. "We'll get things started"

Viktor: The most important part of this meeting is to discuss my grandson Gideon who is expected to be next in line. He will take over with the expectation that he marries Miss Wagner bringing both families together, which will benefit everyone's pockets

There is silence in the boardroom. The Wagner family is small but they have access to a lot of prime land in Windenburg. Being able to have access to those lands would lead to fatter wallets for everyone involved. Everyone has their own thoughts.

Viktor: If everyone agrees for Gideon to take over his father say aye so we can continue with the meeting.

Of the 6 people seated in the boardroom, only 1 voiced their agreement. Victor's jaw tenses in anger and glares at the remaining members whose silence infuriates Viktor

Viktor: What's the meaning of this? I thought we all want the same thing?

The silence is deafening, no one answers or looks directly at Victor there is nothing to say. They know what the real issue is. Viktor heart drops, something isn't right and he looks straight at Gideon.

Gideon stares right back at him, cold and confident. That little shit did something and Victor has no idea what is happening. Gideon finally speaks up

Gideon: I'm going to have to disagree. I'm not a pawn that can be used and what gives you the ability to make that decision?

Viktor: I'm your grandfather and a major shareholder of course I have the power to do what needs to be done

Gideon: I don't think that statement is accurate"

At that moment Ren steps in and places a file in front of Viktor. "According to that file, you don't have the majority of the shares"

Viktor: What are you talking about?? Our family built this company from the ground up. What did you do?"

Gideon stays silent and Ren sends out a message, in a moment Daisuke steps into the boardroom. Viktor eyes snap up to Daisuke and barks out "Who the hell are you?"

Gideon gets up from his seat and Daisuke takes over and adjusts his suit, once comfortable he addresses Viktor

Daisuke: If you read the file in front of you, my name is listed as a board member with the most shares

Viktor: What the hell did you say?

Daisuke: Ren please explain

Ren: Mr. Takahashi has accumulated the shares of Gideon, his mother and a few members of the board have also sold their shares to Mr. Takahashi. meaning he has a total of 52% of the shares, making him have controlling power

Viktor's head is buzzing, ears ringing "Gideon?"

Gideon: We don't have controlling power anymore, if we combine all the remaining shares in the Williams name it's nothing. Daisuke has a few changes he plans on making

Daisuke: Gideon is right, whatever merger with the Wanger family is dissolved. We won't be needing their assistance. Secondly, your obsession with your grandson's marriage partner along with your son's (Emerson) inability to make any impact makes me question if you still need your positions. With that being said my first suggestion would be to remove you and Mr. Emerson from your positions effectively immediately and Gideon will be your replacement. All in favour say please raise your hands"

The remaining members in the board room silently raise their hands

Daisuke: Perfect. I appreciate all the effort you have put into the company so far. I will make sure to take it even further. If anyone has any questions please direct them to Ren as we get everything in order. This meeting is over" Dasiuke adjusts his suit and leaves the meeting.

The boardroom is left in an awkward silence the Williams family imploded in such a quick and ruthless manner. There are no words of comfort or assurance for Emerson and Viktor, as everyone slowly leaves the meeting.

Viktor: Gideon you little shit, how dare you

Gideon: I made it clear to drop your obsession with my marriage. I told you if you keep pushing there will be consequences

Emerson: Is Grayson worth all this? You ruined us, what are we going to do now

Gideon: Mom and I will be fine. I hope you and Grandad can figure something out. Consider this an early retirement, maybe you can enjoy your final days in Tomorang.

Gideon leaves them alone in the boardroom still in shock about what happened. They were fired?

Previous - Next

[thecoolerliauditore]

For those of you uninitiated, Talon League of Legends was my prime blorbo from back when I was 14 and played League the most which is bad because Talon is not a good character. Well actually he's very good and his E is ridiculous but there are champs that essentially do what he does but better. No one plays Talon. I'm pretty sure Riot barely remembers they made Talon.

Enter Yamikaze, high elo Talon main and YouTuber. I watched Yami alot when he was at the height of his popularity because there is literally no one else who willingly plays Talon.

Yami is a good player. And identified Talons weakness that other assassins just assassinate better than him. So he introduced what was at the time a very radical concept: play Talon as a bruiser. Prioritise healing and tankiness over burst damage. Play to survive and out damage with your base stats in fights instead of sniping the squishies and then imploding on the spot.

Bruiser Talon was Good. And that was a problem for me, because I find bruiser Talon fucking boring as fuck. But whatever it got popular. It got really popular. Talon even saw proplay for the first time in years. Everyone played Talon and I hated it I hated it so much genuinely. YouTuber Yamikaze was right in that bruiser Talon was just objectively more viable but holyyyy fuck I wanted to put a hit out on him for what he singlehandedly did to Talons meta.

And to top it all off, Yami fucks off of the face of the planet. Actually I should be kinder here. Yami was playing on Korean servers at the time that are known for being notoriously toxic -- and that's by League of Legends standards. It was bad in there. And after a period of time where a bunch of his "rage clips" went viral he just vanished. And it SUCKED cus now I had to deal with my streamer being GONE and the Talon meta being in shambles. Like I can't even be mad at Yami cus Yami wasn't making shit anymore. His thumbnail artist (who is also the only Talon artist I know) even moved onto other characters.

Eventually as League goes everyone moved on from Talon as the meta shifted and I got to be a bit more comfortable again with my comfort pick, knowing that weird era of bruiser Talon was over at least, and hoping that Yami was doing well after quitting a game he clearly wasn't enjoying anymore (and really had nothing left to prove in)

Anyway it's been three years since Yami left.

Now look at what fucking turned up in my notifications yesterday

[blorbocedes]

Ferrari is going to imploded on each other and I'm going to sit with my sunglasses lean back and eat my popcorn as the two most "toxish" fanbases destroy each other (also think Ferrari would pick Lewis over Charles frfr)

i can see the reasoning to choose charles since he's been with their team longer and been primed for this moment, but you don't spend 100 mil on a driver who has won 7 championships for Nothing