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calivide · 22 days ago
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Brain death worms are funny because it'll say things like "who would want to watch a speed paint followed by a video essay followed by a cosplay video? Nobody would do that, people want one consistent thing, you need to pick one if you want to start making long form videos as a hobby."
And then proceed to have you watch a speed paint followed by a video essay followed by a cosplay tutorial because those are all things that you personally enjoy.
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rememberwren · 4 months ago
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A Complete Set (Whatever That Means) || 2
A continuation of Skin Deep. Part one of this sequel is here.
About this: previous warnings apply, oral sex (f receiving), alcohol, gross imperfections, not a single nipple unfortunately, an eyebrow though. For @/moody-alcoholic, I hope this manages to quench even the tiniest portion of your thirst. 1 more part left. 7k
-
“Simon?” 
“Hm.” 
“Are you seeing anybody else?” 
Simon looks up at you. His hair is getting long, falling over his forehead and looking nearly brunet in the dim lighting. You don’t think he’s cut it since the two of you have started dating. 
He’s been drawing for half the night, hunched over with the sketchpad in his lap, doing terrible things to his own posture and blocking his own lighting all at once. When he answers you, it’s in that dry tone that lets you know he thinks you’ve said something funny or clever: “No.” 
A knot in your chest loosens. It’s hard to believe you worried over such a question for so long just to receive such a simple, earnest answer. He goes back to sketching. 
You content yourself with this and stretch your legs out until your toes touch his thigh at the other end of the sofa. His mouth twitches, but he keeps working. 
-
Six months pass, and how do you celebrate? You climb topless onto Simon’s lap, eager and anxious in equal measure. Your nipple piercing had stopped hurting months ago (save for the time you had snagged it on a cable knit sweater and nearly seen Jesus), but you had read online that piercings heal from the outside inward, and as such you had made every attempt possible to leave the thing alone even when all you wanted to do was play with it. 
In his own way of celebrating, Simon had bought you your first new barbell: a black one with black gemmed studs at each end. You couldn’t help but notice that it looked similar to his, only with a more delicate, feminine touch.
“Will you change it for me?” you ask him. Your hands are shaking.
“Alright. Let me wash my hands.” He shifts you off of his lap and disappears into the bathroom where you hear the faucet turn on. You cross your arms over your breasts, feeling silly being half naked without Simon in the room. Your foot bounces impatiently, but you know that if cleanliness were a love language, it would likely be Simon’s. 
Not that he had told you he loved you—nor had you told him. You had promised yourself that you would wait until he said it first (the only sure-fire way to avoid coming across as overeager and scaring him off). Still, there were a thousand ways in a day that Simon made you feel as if he loved you: the way he would go out to start your car in the wintery mornings when your remote start stopped working; the way he always offered you the first bite of his food if you weren’t sharing a meal; the way he’d crack open your drinks before handing them to you. Was it wrong of you to try to read between the lines? 
Simon comes back and tugs you onto his lap again. His hands look huge compared to the jewelry through your breast as he dexterously works the ball free from the barbell. He has the hands of a surgeon: steady and calm. You close your eyes in anticipation of pain, but there is none; it just feels alien, sensitive whenever his calloused fingers brush over your pebbled nipple, even as he removes the barbell itself. 
Taking the sanitized jewelry, he carefully puts it in and screws the stud in place. 
“That didn’t hurt at all,” you say, reaching down to tug softly on the barbell. Still, no pain. 
“Great,” he says, eyes on your breasts. He grips your hips. “Up, now. C’mon, up.” 
He tugs you up onto your knees so that you’re the perfect height for him to take your nipple into his burning mouth. You shiver, one hand gripping his shoulder and the other burying itself in his hair, gripping softly to keep his mouth in place. If you had worried that getting the piercing would make you less sensitive, you were wrong. He tugs on the jewelry gently with his fucking teeth and God, holy shit, fucking hell, definitely not less sensitive.
“Been waiting to do this,” he says, nuzzling the skin between your breasts as he gives you a moment to catch your breath. “Six months of hell.” 
“Yeah?” You pant lamely, chest heaving. 
He hums. His thumbs stroke beneath your breasts along the sternum tattoo he gave you—a favorite part of you for him to touch—as his lips find your nipple again, lashing softly with his tongue. His hands have begun to tremble where they slide down the curves of your sides and to your hips, touch soft and worshipful as he brings you down to rest your weight against the hard line of his cock still confined in his jeans. The shaking says more than a thousand of his words ever could. 
“I want you,” he mutters. “Say yes.” 
“Yes, God, yes.”
Simon guides you off of his lap, kneeling down into the space between the couch and the coffee table. He pushes the table backwards with a little more force than is necessary when there isn’t enough room for his long legs and accidentally sends a cup full of charcoal pencils tipping over onto the carpet. You snort with laughter. He peels your leggings and panties off and drags you to the edge of the couch, pressing your thighs open wide. 
Getting head from partners in the past had been a fraught, mostly unenjoyable experience. Even your first few times with Simon had been tense, with him quickly moving on to something else after noticing your inability to relax. A less eager man might have counted his blessings and moved on, but Simon’s gentle persistence had gone a long way toward reassuring you that he truly wanted to please you this way. It had gone a long way toward reassuring you that you could let him. 
He spreads you apart, thumbs slipping against your slick folds, heated gaze pinpointed on your most intimate parts before he leans in and licks a broad stripe over your entrance and up to your clit. You shut your eyes (and cover your face for good measure). His warm breath fans against your pussy as he laughs. He could be mean and pull your hands away, but he lets you hide this way and you are grateful for it. 
Simon takes his time mapping each part of you with his mouth, nose brushing your clit whenever he doesn’t have his lips sealed over it. Your thighs shake, toes curled, as he pulls whines and choked gasps from your throat. 
You peek through your fingers when you feel him shifting beneath you to find that he’s worked his cock from his jeans and is jerking off, only noticeable by the tell-tale rhythmic motion of his arm against your calf. 
“Jesus, Simon,” you whine. 
He makes a little sound of acknowledgement in the back of his throat, shifting on his knees to change the angle of his mouth against you. Something about him so unashamedly enjoying himself makes it easier for you to enjoy yourself too, to let your hands come away from your face and thread them through his hair. 
“Can we fuck?” you breathe, aching inside deep where his tongue can’t reach. 
He nods against you and kneels up to kiss you. You still aren’t used to the taste of yourself in his mouth, but it’s growing less foreign—and nothing could ever make you turn away from one of Simon’s kisses. 
He pulls you off the couch onto your knees, his legs spread to either side of your own. You arch your back, feeling his cock brush against the back of your thighs. Two of his thick fingers slip inside you, testing your give and your wetness. He twists them; turns to hook them against that soft, vulnerable spot inside you that makes your legs shake. Simon works a third finger into you, a stretch that your body struggled to take before but which it accepts eagerly now, the sting welcome and familiar.
“Fuck. I need a condom,” he rasps. 
“Just pull out,” you say. 
You can sense him rolling his eyes. Your fondness for the (dangerous) pull-out method had been formally noted by him and thus far rejected at every turn. 
“Don’t insult me,” he mutters. He grabs your hand and guides it between your own legs. “Be good and keep yourself warm. I’ll be right back.”
He’s barely gone long enough for you to stroke your fingers through your folds, but when he returns (flashing the intact condom package at you like he always does), he watches you for an endless, lingering moment.
“I like that,” he says at last, taking his spot behind you again, condom in place. 
“Like what?”
“Watching you touch yourself.” The head of his cock nudges your entrance. He finds the right angle and slips inside you, stretching your walls to make room for himself. You groan, your fingers digging into the couch cushion. It stings a little, right towards the end, but he just softly saws himself in and out of your pussy, soothing the ache with pleasure. His words go completely over your head. 
He reaches so deep inside you, like with his every thrust his cock bullies the air out of your lungs. The slick sounds are lewd, keeping time with your moans and sighs as his fingertips dig into the flesh of your hips, manhandling you further onto the couch to the perfect height for him to fuck into you, your knees barely skimming the carpet.  
Your hand ends up crushed between your pelvis and the couch. You let your fingers find your clit and the touch reminds your body of how close it is, that coil deep in your belly stretched tight and ready to release. Your fingers trail down to where his cock pistons in and out of you, and at your touch he groans, slows to a smooth drag, his length slippery with your own arousal. 
“Touch yourself, not me,” he chides, his voice rough. “I’m close enough.” 
“I’m close enough,” you say.
He flops against your back, nearly crushing you with his weight to hook his chin over your shoulder and ask: “Then what the fuck are we waiting for?”
You can barely draw in the breath to laugh, and it’s only worse when you cum. You bury your face into the couch cushions, giggling, fingers rubbing a gentle, hectic rhythm against your clit as your pussy spasms around him. He snorts at your laughter, a soft quiet exhale against the back of your neck. Then he cums, his thrusts sloppy and hard, turning his head at the last moment to bite your shoulder lazily. 
“Sex makes you so weird,” you pant. Your face hurts from smiling. 
“You like it?”
“Yeah. I do.”
He ties off the condom and throws it away. The two of you sit naked on the couch together, curled up. It’s a little alien to be this open about your body with someone and to have them be so open about their body in return, but it’s a good strangeness. So much about loving Simon is. 
“I need to get the other one pierced now,” you mention, toying with his unpierced nipple. “Have to complete the set.”
“I never did.”
“You’re incomplete. Don’t you know?” 
He snorts. “I feel quite fulfilled, thanks.” 
“Please Simon?” you ask. “I want to.”
“Don’t ever say please. I’ll text Soap in the morning,” Simon says, trailing his fingers up and down the length of your arm, making goosebumps appear. 
You hesitate. Should you tell him what you’d been thinking about for the last several months? Would it offend him to know that you didn’t want to go to Johnny for any more piercings? 
Whether it offended him or not, your pride couldn’t rest easily going back to the tiny room behind the curtain in Skin Deep. While there had been only a few other tense interactions between you and Johnny since Simon’s birthday (and usually he seemed to favor outright ignoring your existence), the situation had not improved. 
“Simon—I think I’d rather go somewhere else for my other nipple. To someone other than Johnny, I mean.” 
Simon frowns. “What’d Johnny do.” 
He phrases it like that—more of a statement and less of a question, immediately assuming that Johnny is at fault. 
“It’s just—it’s like I said on your birthday. He doesn’t like me much.” 
Simon turns to look you in the eye. When your gaze tries to skirt away, he lets out an irritated breath through his nose—but doesn’t fight you. Simon always lets you run. Maybe because he knows his legs are long enough to catch you. “You really feel like that?” 
“You’ve never noticed?” 
“Thought it was in my head,” he mutters. Then he says the most dreaded words he possibly could: “I’ll talk to him.” 
“No!” you nearly shout. You struggle to lower your voice to something more appropriate for indoors, your heart tap-dancing to an anxious beat inside your chest. Just trying to picture Johnny’s irritated expression at any of Simon’s potential efforts to talk to him made your stomach turn over. “I mean—don’t. Really. It’s fine.” 
“It’s not. I need you two to get along. You and Johnny—you’re the most important people in my life,” he says baldly. His honesty does something to your lungs—empties them, crushes them. You only just realize the position that you’re putting Simon in, and it makes you feel about two inches tall. How could you let your petty problems with Johnny potentially get in the way of their longtime friendship? Their brotherhood?
“I’m begging you, Simon,” you plead. “Promise me you won’t talk to him. Just, give me more time to get to know him or something.” 
“Can't promise that.” He stands up and stretches, joints popping as you stare at him, your stomach tearing itself to pieces at this knowledge. This is not how this conversation was meant to end. But he disappears into the bedroom before you can gather your wits enough to say another word.
-
There is nothing like sleeping beside Simon, his arm beneath your head, your body turned and cradled against his side, a leg thrown over his thighs. His heart is as slow and steady as his breaths, his calloused thumb tracing a line back and forth on your naked side, a line which grows slower and slower as he drifts closer to sleep. 
You ruin it like this: “Simon?” 
“Hm.” 
“Can I ask you something?” 
“If you got’a.” 
“On your birthday, you said that women meant for you sometimes ended up being Johnny’s. What did you mean?” 
He’s quiet for so long that you mistake him for falling asleep. You’ve resigned yourself to asking him another night when he speaks, his speech is slow and thoughtful, like it is hard to put it into words. 
“When Soap and I are in a room together with women, I’m like a ghost. He’s a fucking human being. Flesh and blood. Alive. People want to talk to him, to know him, to laugh with him, to have a drink with him. I’m not like that. I haven’t ever been like that. More than once Johnny would try to get me together with a woman who would end up falling for him instead. Eventually I convinced him to stop trying.” 
“Were you jealous?” 
He makes an ambiguous sound. “It’s hard to be jealous of Soap.” 
“Not impossible, though.” 
He rolls you over onto your back, coming to rest over you, your legs a tangled mess beneath the sheets. The darkness lengthens the shadows of his eyes, but you can still feel his gaze, tangible as any touch. He braces himself on his elbows over you and lets his forehead rest against your own. “I just wanted someone who was mine,” he says. 
It’s on the tip of your tongue, those words that are building inside of you and growing harder to withhold by the day. But you say it like this and hope he can translate: “I’m yours.” 
He ducks his head and kisses you. 
-
In the morning, Simon has slipped a piece of paper just beneath the edge of your mug of tea. When you look at it, written in charcoal pencil is DARCELINA: Dream City Tattoos and Piercings XXX-XXXX. 
-
It’s one for the record books: the rain. Thick pregnant clouds carry more than eight inches of rain to your city in the course of a day. The last time it rained so much was apparently during the Civil War era. The city floods, including the basement of your apartment building, which leads to a building-wide power outage. 
Simon has you pack a suitcase, junk the majority of your refrigerator and freezer, and come stay with him. You’re giddy, feeling like it’s a semi-permanent sleepover when he gets the call that Skin Deep has flooded as well. 
Then things take a turn for the worse. Simon is gone for nearly 36 hours straight making endless calls to attempt to clear the water and begin repairs, and sometime in the midst of that, the fight with Johnny happens. 
It’s an ugly one. 
Simon comes home in the foulest mood you’ve ever seen him in. It turns him positively stony as he moves around the apartment making himself a hasty meal, avoiding your eyes every chance he gets. After he eats, he sits heavily on the sofa, pulls out his sketchpad, and trashes no fewer than six entire pages before you get the nerve to ask him what’s wrong. 
“Soap,” he mutters, crumpling a paper in one strong, dextrous hand. He throws it toward the small garbage can beside the telly and misses. “He’s looking for other locations to pierce at.”
“Is the building that bad?” you ask. “You guys will have to find a new place?”
“Soap is looking for a new place. One without me.”
You gape, the shock of this news reaching all the way to the core of your being. 
“You don’t think it’s because of—?” Me. You can’t even finish the sentence, the thought upsets you so much. You tuck your legs beneath you on the couch, curling up, seeking to become small and harmless as grief and horror wash over you in wave after wave. 
“This is my fault. I tried to talk to him but he’s so fucking—he gets under my goddamn skin like he was born to do it.” Simon pauses heavily, before adding: “I need to tell you something about the night Soap pierced me.” 
Story time. Alright. You uncurl your legs, choosing to sit with them criss-crossed, your body turned toward him, giving Simon your entire attention. It’s been months since you found out that Johnny had been the one to pierce Simon, but you had been no closer to getting the story from either of them. Your curiosity was a dangerous, corrosive thing, eating away at your insides. 
“I’m listening,” you say, hoping you don’t look as eager as you feel. 
Simon looks to be at a loss for words, running his tongue along the sharp edge of his teeth. When he speaks, it’s hardly the lengthy story you had been anticipating: “We fucked.”
You blink. “You and—Johnny?”
Simon sighs and shrugs a shoulder. 
“I didn’t know you were…” Simon stares, waiting for you to finish your sentence. “…interested in men.”
“You are. Why can’t I be?”
You feel a chilly pang of horror, like someone has slipped a dagger between your ribs. You rush to assure him: “You can! You—“
Simon’s mouth twitches as he rubs at the crease of one eye, and your panic fades. He mumbles: “I’m just fucking with you.”
“So you’re bisexual.”
“I’m… I don’t fucking know. I’m attracted to who I’m attracted to. I never named it.”
“Okay,” you say gently. “We don’t have to. But what does that have to do with now?”
“The day after we—y’know. Fucked. I told him it was a one time thing. Maybe it’s in my head,” says Simon, frowning. “Maybe I’m crazy. But sometimes he looks at me or says something to me and it makes me think it’s not over. Not for him.”
“Is it really over,” you ask, “for you?”
Simon looks at you, quiet. He says: “I want you.”
And you are so relieved by the obvious honesty in his answer that it never crosses your mind to think that’s not what you asked. 
-
Simon is uptown at a café holding consultations while Johnny directs cleanup efforts at the shop, and you think that now’s the perfect chance. 
Your hands shake against the steering wheel the whole drive there, nerves less like butterflies and more like great winged moths in your belly. A part of you says that this is a mistake, you should turn back and let Simon and Johnny work it out on their own. But another part of you feels personally responsible—even if Simon says you aren’t. All your life you have taken things too personally, shouldered burdens which were not your own, bent over backwards to solve problems that weren’t yours to solve. If there was any chance that you could resolve this, you would put your pride on the line to do it. 
You park alongside the street and are thrilled to find the front door unlocked. The entire place smells musty, like a basement. The wooden floors have warped a little under your tentative steps, announcing your presence sooner than you’d like. 
Johnny sits in the chair where Simon tattoos clients. Sunlight streams in through the blinds and lights him up like some kind of punk-rock angel, his mohawk freshly clipped, dark finger nail polish chipping. Sometime between now and the last time you’ve seen him, he’s pierced his eyebrow: a black barbell with studs that reminds you a little too much of the one through your nipple (and Simon’s. Was that intentional? Did Johnny pick jewelry to match Simon’s? To match yours? For some reason just the thought makes your nipples tighten). In his hands is one of Simon’s sketchpads, and he’s flipping through it leisurely. 
He glances up toward the sound of your footsteps. 
“If you’re here about the water—“ his words die out on his pierced tongue as he stares at you, gobsmacked by your appearance. 
“Hey,” you say lamely. 
“Where’s Simon?” he asks, eyes flickering toward the protective spot where Simon usually hovers just over your shoulder. “He said he wouldn’t be in today.”  
“He’s not. It’s just me. I thought maybe we could talk.”
Johnny openly grimaces. He shuts Simon’s sketchpad and sets it down (hopefully where he found it). Standing from the chair, he takes a few casual steps away from you, clearly heading towards the curtain that leads to the back of the shop. “Really cannot think of anything we have to talk about.”
You square your shoulders, fighting down that instinctive urge to make yourself smaller, to give in and be manageable. “I think we do.” 
“You should go.” 
“Not until we work this out.” 
“There isn’t any this, alright, just—does Simon even know you’re here?” Something guilty must splash across your face because Johnny gives a mirthless laugh, reaching up to palm at his eyes. “Tha’s great. Just great. Could you be more incriminating?” 
“Incriminating—? Look, Simon told me about the night you pierced him.”
“Oh he did, did he?” Johnny says flippantly. 
“About how you two slept together.” 
Now that stops Johnny in his tracks. It’s clear that he didn’t expect Simon to really tell you about that night all those years ago. He looks at you with a fresh caution, waiting to see how exactly you’ve taken this news—what you plan to do with it. “Aye, then. I guess he did.” 
“I’m not trying to take him away from you.” 
Johnny makes a derisive sound. His words are well-rehearsed, like he has said them to himself a hundred-hundred times: “Cannot take what isn’t mine.” 
“He was your friend first,” you say, aiming for conciliatory and gentle the same way you might approach a feral animal. Johnny stares at you with flat, suspicious eyes. They’re so fucking blue—so different from Simon’s own dark ochre ones. “He told me that you’re one of the most important people in his life.” 
Johnny’s face softens. He says: “You shouldn’t tell me that. He wouldn’t.” 
“He’s not always good with words. Please don’t leave the shop, Johnny. I think it would break Simon’s heart.”
“I didn’t know he had a heart to break,” Johnny mutters. He leans against the wall beside the curtain and sighs, lips pressed into a thin line. “I’ll think about it. Now out. You shouldn’t be breathin’ in this air.” 
Johnny ushers you to the door, hand hovering just above your back, careful not to touch you. Once you’re out on the street, he shuts the door and locks it audibly. Then he leans in and huffs a heated breath beneath the “NO WALK INS” sign. In the fog, he adds: “No GFs!”
You flip him off. 
He flips you off. 
On the way back to your car, you find yourself smiling. You force yourself to scowl. It’s a more appropriate expression. Giving one last glance back toward Skin Deep, you find him still standing there, watching. 
Likely just to make sure you’re really leaving. 
-
Not long after you are moved back into your apartment, you find that Simon stops sleeping. 
You’re ashamed to say that it takes you a while to notice; nothing changes on your end of things. Anytime you are sleeping over, he lays down with you, tugs you up against his chest, and holds you for ages, his body still and breathing even. But one night you wake to a cool, empty bed. And later in the week, it happens again. Until more often than not you realize that any moment when you expect Simon to be sleeping, he isn’t. 
Usually you find him sketching, shadows like charcoal smudged beneath his eyes. He doesn’t meet your gaze and tells you to go back to bed, that he’ll be there soon. Sometimes he even does come to lay back down beside you—but only long enough for you to convince him that you have fallen asleep again. Then he is shifting away from you, disappearing into the other room, shutting the bedroom with the quietest click behind him. 
You know that he’s busy. His schedule has been booked—and with deposits nonrefundable, people more often than not kept their appointments. He’s been working with a client on mock ups for a sleeve, and the various pieces and the way they all come together around the contours of the person’s body are very delicate. Johnny’s threat to find a new job doesn’t help, either. Have they talked and resolved things yet? Simon never says so. 
You can’t imagine the stress that he is under, and you’d do anything to be able to shoulder a fraction of it for him. 
That’s how you end up with drunk Johnny in your car. 
It starts with Simon falling asleep before you—for once. You can tell he is well and truly asleep by the sheer weight of his arm over you, the soft snores that he gives out against the nape of your neck. After so many nights of sleeplessness, his body has finally given in. You’re about to slip off to sleep yourself when the buzzing of a phone startles you back into wakefulness. 
Not your phone—Simon’s phone. And it goes off again. And again. And again. Who the hell could be sending so many messages at midnight?
You know you should leave it alone—if it was urgent, they would likely call—but curiosity gets the better of you. Carefully you slip out from under Simon’s arm. It’s a testament to his sheer exhaustion that he doesn’t wake as you jostle him. In sleep, he looks painfully young and relaxed, and it makes you long to reach out and brush back his hair that has fallen onto his forehead. But not at the risk of waking him. 
Sure that all you are planning to do is shut Simon’s phone off so that he can get some restful sleep, you are surprised to see that Simon has his text notifications visible on the homescreen, so all it takes is a simple tap to open them up. 
Johnny. All Johnny. 
Ghost. 
Ghost
Are you uo? 
Up* fuck my fingers 
I need a ride home
Simon
I’m at that bar on… The text is cut off. To see more, you would have to open his phone. So Johnny is stuck at some bar, drunk more than likely. Well good riddance, you think to yourself, the hurtful way he treated you still very much fresh in your brain. But then you remember your talk at Skin Deep, and your traitorous heart softens. Could you really just put the phone back now and pretend you hadn’t seen the messages?
Simon doesn’t even have a password; that’s how much he trusts you. Would he still trust you after this, if he knew that you had gone through his phone, even if it was for a good cause? 
Making a spur of the moment decision, you could only hope so. Your conscience wouldn’t let you wake Simon, and as much as you disliked him, it couldn’t let you leave Johnny stranded at some bar either. 
You open his phone as quickly as you can, swiping so that it goes straight to Johnny’s texts and nowhere else. The name of the bar is right there, and you scramble for your own phone to type it down in Google Maps. He’s not far. Probably would be within walking distance, if he weren’t drunk. You could be there and back before Simon ever knew you were gone—you hoped. 
As Simon, you send back to Johnny a simple OMW. 
There is no hint of spring in the frigid March air as you slip outside into your car. The parking lot is dim and quiet, and traffic is minimal as you follow the GPS on your phone to Johnny’s location. The pub nightlife spills out onto the pavement and you struggle to find a place to park, grimacing at the knowledge that you will have to get out of the car and go inside to find Johnny, considering you see him nowhere on the street. Leaving the warmth of your car is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, especially in just a thin tank-top and a pair of leggings. Gathering your coat more tightly around yourself, you rush out of the car and through the people on the sidewalk and into the warmth of the pub. 
You keep your eyes peeled for Johnny, but can’t spot his silly haircut anywhere. What if he’s gotten a ride home from someone else? What if he’s decided to walk, or found someone to go home with? You shift up onto your toes, looking over everyone in the bar when you spot him in the corner at a table with a few other men. 
Johnny doesn’t even recognize you at first—either a testament to how unexpected your sudden appearance is or how drunk he is based on how difficult it is for his eyes to focus on you. When he realizes who you are, his mouth drops. He points. 
“What are you doing here?” he asks, accent so thick and slurred that you can barely understand him. 
“Picking you up. You said you needed a ride.”
“Aye but not from—oh, Jesus make me still. Yer not wearing a bra, are you?” 
All the men at the table turn to gape. You snatch the sides of your jacket closed where they had loosely fallen open, your face flushing with warmth. The table roars with laughter, but Johnny in his drunkenness doesn’t seem to notice your embarrassment. 
“That was mine!” Johnny shouts, elbowing the man next to him. “Did you see that? That was my work!”
“We get it, bruv,” the guy says with a roll of his eyes. “She’s no ten.” 
“What’d you fuckin’ say?”
The table laughs. 
Johnny grabs a fistful of the guy’s shirt and drags him nearly clean out of his seat. “I said, What’d you fucking say about her?”
The table stops laughing. Johnny cuts an impressive figure even when drunk; he’s easily the largest guy of the group. Your stomach drops and lands somewhere between your shoes. This is not going to plan at all. Reaching out, you try to insert yourself physically between the two of them but can only wrap your fingers around Johnny’s wrist, feeling the strength poised in the tendons. 
“Johnny,” you say, loudly to be heard over the sounds of the pub. “Come on. Let’s go, yeah? Simon…Simon’s out in the car.” 
“Simon?” Johnny let’s go of the guy’s shirt, his bad mood evaporating as quickly as it had manifested. He nudges his way out from behind the table, all politeness. Once free, he stumbles into a woman in a slinky dress who gives him a look that could melt glass. 
“I’m so sorry,” you apologize to her, wrapping an arm around Johnny’s waist and doing your best to keep him steady. “He’s an idiot, and he’s drunk. You look amazing by the way—“
“Control your boyfriend,” she snaps. 
“I will,” you promise, guiding Johnny away from her and into the crowd. 
His nose brushes the shell of your ear, breath fanning across your neck as he says with a laugh in his voice: “I’m not yer boyfriend.” 
You flush. “Thanks for letting me know, Johnny. I had no clue.” 
He says something back, some Scottish phrase, his accent so thick you couldn’t understand the words even if you knew them. 
“English, please,” you mutter. 
“Je-sus,” he groans, dragging the words out into multiple syllables. He takes your chin in his hand and squeezes your cheeks a little. “You’re just like him. ‘English, MacTavish’. Ha!”
You bat his hand away. 
“He’s been rubbing off on you,” Johnny mutters, laughing a little. Beneath his breath (though far more loudly than he likely intends), he adds: “In more ways than one, I imagine.”
Your face goes hot. “Johnny, stop talking.” 
The two of you exit the pub out into the cool night air. It seems to sober Johnny some, as he takes in deep, gulping breaths. He walks a little steadier as the two of you cross the street, and by the time you’ve made it to your car, he has shrugged you off altogether (even if he is still a little unstable on his feet). He stands outside the car for a moment before opening one of the rear doors. 
“What are you doing?”
“Rather sit back here.” 
“I’m not your cabbie.”
“Strange manner of dress if you were,” he says snidely, slipping into the backseat. 
In the driver’s seat, you let yourself have a small breakdown. You grip the wheel tightly, taking a few deep breaths of your own, searching for inner peace. You thought that you and Johnny had a tentative truce after that day at Skin Deep, but clearly he is still holding some grudge. Your search for peace turns up empty. 
“Sorry I lied about Simon being here. I just really needed you to leave the pub,” you explain politely. 
“Knew you were lying,” Johnny says from the darkness of the backseat. He sounds remarkably like Simon: brooding and irritable. “He’s got no idea you’re here, does he? He’d never let you come alone.” 
You frown. “No. He doesn’t. He’s sleeping and I didn’t want to wake him.” 
“Nightmares?” 
“Huh?” 
Johnny leans forward. You glance at him in the rear view mirror. “I said, Has he been having more nightmares?” 
You didn’t know anything about Simon having nightmares. That sour feeling in your belly was back, the one that made you feel like you would never truly know Simon, not the way his friends did. 
“No,” you say, a little defensive. “He’s been working on this sleeve for a client. Staying up way too late to finish it on time.” 
“Aye. Nightmares. Anything else is just an excuse he’s telling himself—and you.” 
Done with the conversation, you turn the key in the ignition and pull out into the street. “What’s your address?” 
“Doesn’t matter.” 
“Why’s that?” 
“Left my keys at the bar.” 
“Goddamnit.” 
You turn towards Simon’s apartment. “Then you’re staying with us—with Simon. You can sleep on his couch and get your keys in the morning; I’m sure he won’t care.” 
“Are you staying there?” 
“Yes.” 
Johnny mutters something under his breath. You consider yourself lucky not to have heard it. For a while, the two of you drive in silence. Then Johnny says: 
“You never came for your second nipple.” 
“It’s only just been six months.” 
“So you’re due for an appointment then, aren’t you?” 
You steel yourself, gripping the wheel tightly at ten-and-two. “Actually, I’m going to someone else.”
Johnny’s seatbelt unclicks. He hovers at your shoulder bringing with him burning warmth and the scent of whisky. When he talks, his breath brushes your neck, fury tangible in every syllable. “Who is it? Who the hell is he taking you to? Darcelina? Astrid? Dusty? Whoever it is, consider the appointment canceled. No one is piercing you but me.”
“You don’t get that privilege,” you grit out between your teeth. “Not anymore, not after the way you’ve treated me!”
“Oh, did I offend you?” he breathes, clutching one hand at his breast. “Not falling down at your feet? Not worshippin’ the ground you walk on?” 
“Fuck you, Soap! I wanted to be friends.” Your voice cracks embarrassingly. Suddenly the road goes blurry. You blink rapidly, forcing yourself to calm down—you’re driving for fuck’s sake. You swallow past the lump in your throat, the silence interrupted by rustling as Johnny leans forward again in the backseat, trying to get a look at your face in the passing streetlights. 
“Fuck,” Johnny groans. “Are you crying?”
“No!”
“You are. Fuckin’—pull over, before you get us killed.” 
Keen embarrassment only has your eyes watering more, until you have no choice but to do as he asks, pulling over to hastily parallel park and throw on your hazard lights. You let your elbows rest against the steering wheel, face in your hands. His words echo in your head, said in that stupid Scottish brogue: not falling down at your feet? Not worshippin’ the ground you walk on? Are those really the things he thought you wanted? Is that the sort of impression you gave to Johnny, to Ghost’s other friends? 
The backseat door opens and Johnny climbs out. A small part of you hopes that he will walk himself home—and good riddance. But he horrifies you by walking all the way around to the driver’s side of the car and tugging on the door handle until you begrudgingly unlock the doors. 
“C’mon,” he says, trying to pull you out of the car with your seatbelt still on. 
“What’re you—?”
“Just—wouldya—so stubborn—“ he drunkenly leans over you and mashes his fingers against the button of your seatbelt until it releases. For that brief moment, he is a warm weight across your lap, bringing with him the scent of cologne and whisky. Then he pulls you out of the car—and into his arms. It’s a tight, full hug, chest-to-chest, not bone crushing per se, but all-encompassing. 
You don’t realize how badly you need it from him until you’re getting it. 
“You’re such a dick,” you groan against his shoulder, sniffling.
“Aye,” he says, swaying a little on his feet, like the two of you are dancing. “But I’m right. We cannot be friends. So you’ve got to let this go, alright? Just breathe out 'n let it go.”
“I don’t understand,” you mutter. “He wants us to be friends.” 
“He doesn’t know what he wants,'' Johnny says, one hand rubbing gently at your shoulder blades. “No more crying. It’s out of your hands. Aye?”
You shake your head, hands gripping his shirt. 
But your tears slow and eventually stop. Cars pass occasionally. One of them honks at the sight of you both entwined on the side of the road, rolls down their window to let their passenger yell something suggestive, and it makes your face go hot. Johnny pulls away, nearly stumbling out into the road to give the car both middle fingers as it peels away. He slips on the damp asphalt and goes down hard on his side, taking the skin off his elbow and palm. 
“Fuck, I’m hammered,” he laughs. 
“Clearly,” you say, struggling to help him up and into the backseat. 
Once in the driver’s seat again, you feel exhausted, emptied, like a washcloth wrung out and left to dry. The drive back to the apartment is silent, and when you’re in the parking lot, neither of you make a move to get out of the car. 
You warn Johnny: “Simon’s asleep, so be quiet inside.” 
Johnny warns you sleepily: “Ghost is right there.”
There’s a tap on the glass of your window. It nearly makes you shriek—but it is only Simon, half-smoked cigarette in his fingers, bundled up outside the car door. You roll down the window sheepishly. 
“Need a little help?” he asks, taking a drag and turning his head so the smoke doesn’t touch you. His eyes are on Johnny in the backseat. 
You hold up your fingers with just a smidge of space between them. 
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bengiyo · 1 year ago
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Why Do I Tag So Many Creators in My Posts? It’s About Respect
Earlier today I was talking with @sophsloveskpop in the notes of a post, and was asked about all of the interaction between blogs in the posts and essays about the shows. I’ve noticed an uptick in new names interacting with posts (and making great posts of their own!) and wanted to talk about why I do it and why I like fandom on Tumblr.
Fundamentally, I think it’s generally good courtesy to acknowledge when someone else has expressed a similar idea to your, or an idea that intrigues you. I think it’s best to tag that person and link to their post so that others can also experience it. It also opens you up to a dialogue with them and others.
People Like Getting Their Flowers
If someone posts an analysis or even a quirky idea that I felt the need to think about, I will mention them in my posts. None of the great content we get on here is necessarily quick to make. I absolutely love all of the gifmakers who fight against Photoshop, Tumblr, and God Himself to post snippets of shows on here for us. I wouldn’t be able to flesh out some of my posts, illustrates points, or otherwise breakup walls of text without @liyazaki, @wanderlust-in-my-soul, @pharawee, or @gabrielokun. Whenever I can’t find the gif I’m looking for through Tumblr’s terrible gif search, I reach out to one of them for permission to use their gifs directly.
Also, many of us just like being acknowledged that someone we wrote meant something to someone else. Every time I get tagged by someone in an essay I’m like:
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It’s a Conversation
I don’t think fandom is about being the smartest person or the most correct person. My basic framework I’m writing from is Black Gay Nerd Who Watches a Lot of Stuff. It’s what I’m most familiar with personally, and I find that people have really responded to that.
I’ve been around for a very long time, and have been seeing folks like @so-much-yet-to-learn around the entire time, who often has more specific information about fandom life during the airing of shows. @absolutebl and @heretherebedork have watched more BL than I have, and I’ve seen at least 250 productions. ABL has some of the most comprehensive posts collecting some of the history.
I made so many friends after diving into @shortpplfedup DMs to talk about sustainable urbanism and bonding over our shared geography. Now we run @the-conversation-pod together. Through them I befriended so many others, like @elnotwoods and @kyr-kun-chan.
I’m not a color theory expert, and so I love reading posts from @respectthepetty and others (I think @sliceduplife writes about color too).
We wouldn't even have my favorite show without @isaksbestpillow.
I know what shows are coming because of @clairificusrex.
I don’t know much about music theory, but @iguessitsjustme write some great stuff about the music in these shows.
I don’t always read the body language of hands as closely as someone like @wen-kexing-apologist might.
I am not Asian, and so I like reading from @waitmyturtles, @telomeke-bbs, and @neuroticbookworm. I know that @recentadultburnout and @airenyah offer useful perspective on Thai language.
Sometimes folks are going to narrow down on specific shows and consistently write about them for years on side blogs like @miscellar.
Some people have studied so much and bring specific academic lenses to the genre that I find compelling, like @emotionallychargedtowel.
In many cases, I just vibe with them really hard, like @ginnymoonbeam.
I actually didn’t always post as much as I do, but I try to keep up my Stray Thoughts project so that people can keep track of what I’m watching. I used to write less meta, but then I befriended @waitmyturtles and @lurkingshan. Any time I say anything remotely thoughtful Shan is like:
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Also, though, this is Tumblr! It’s easy to tag each other and link to each other’s posts! This is what makes us different from every
Isn’t It Just More Fun?
I don’t enjoy shows passively. I grew up in a family that watched things together. My mom, dad, sister, and I all have differing tastes from each other, but we watched a lot of different things together. My friends and I discussed the things we watched at school.
I’m a big fan of the water cooler approach to TV show distribution, which basically says you want your show to be the show people are talking about on their breaks at work. I always like Film Crit Hulk’s theory that movies (and our dramas) are the proverbial campfires around which we gather to share ourselves with each other.
This is all supposed to be fun, and I have more fun when we interact. I get tagged daily by @blmpff about updates from sets, or when we all need to rush to IG to make sure Fluke Pongsakorn doesn’t cut his hair. When @bl-bam-beyond makes a new set or post they let me know, and they recently rewatched Noah’s Arc! I made friends with @gillianthecat in the last year or so, and it’s been fun seeing her make her way through fandom. I always get excited with @troubled-mind pings me in a post because I know it’s going to give me something to chew on. I didn’t have a genuine appreciation for kink culture until I watched along with @lutawolf. If something funny is happening in fandom I know @benkaaoi is going to tag me. I still get excited when @heukheuk pops up in my mentions.
I know I’ve probably forgotten so many people alone the way here, and I’m sorry if I didn’t mention you.
Tag Because It’s the Right Thing to Do
So seriously, tag people and link to their posts. Try to use the giffmakers specific tags when you’re using the search feature. Fandom is better when we all interact respectfully and enthusiastically with each other. Tumblr is special because it lets us create goofy little essays like this and tag dozens of people just to get their attention.
If you have a cool thought about a show I’m watching, tag me. If you see something funny, tag me in the comments. If you wanna hash out an idea before posting it, DM me. This is Tumblr. Don’t be shy with your thoughts. It’s okay to be wrong on the internet. It’s actually fun to be wrong on the internet about show predictions!
Thank you as always for coming to my post.
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mehreenkhan · 10 months ago
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Hey. Can you please elaborate the meaning of your bio "bawajud e dil .... "
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In the workplace of existence, the asset of the tulip is its scar;
The lightning of the harvest of comfort is the hot blood of the farmer
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From bud to full bloom, it appears as the petal of contentment
Despite its collected heart, the dream of the rose is scattered.
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How would the sorrow of impatience be endured by us?
The wound shows weakness in earnest and the flame has a straw in its teeth.
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Bawajud-e-dil-jami khawab-e-gul pareshan hai
Is taken from the second verse of Colossus of Urdu literature — Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib’s Persian poem “کارگاہ ہستی میں ” where he describes the fate of the bud. [The following explanation is taken from various sources and none of it is mine.]
There are different explanations for the second verse and it is critical to read all of these to develop your own understanding of the verse.
Sarfraz K. Niazi from Ghalib.org explicates the verse as
The bud seems composed. Despite this composure, the rose is destined to a disturbed dream as it eventually withers away.
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Syed Noman-ul-Haq from Dawn describes it like this:
A bud has all its petals closed up, held tight together, fully collected. Naturally, its dream is to bloom, to become a flower. But then, there is a cosmic paradox waiting to manifest itself: as soon as the bud opens up to bloom, it loses its collectedness; now its petals have lost the firm embrace of one another, thrown thereby into disconcert. What was togetherness has, in the fulfilment of the dream, turned into a scatter. Winds will further scatter the split-open bud — now a flower — by blowing away its petals, and bees and worms will invade its integrity to destruction. Recall ‘The Sick Rose’ of William Blake here: “O Rose, thou art sick ...”
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As Francis Pritchett brings to our knowledge:
That is, as long as the bud openly shows its attainment of the 'provision of contentment'-- that is, its remaining happy through contentment-- how can this be known to happen? When this is the case, then the rose has, instead of 'heart-composure', 'anxiety'. And thus the bud has been used as a simile, and from that the aspect of 'heart-collectedness' is manifest. In the same way, the scattering of the petals of the opened rose makes manifest the aspect of 'disturbed'. And the rose's silence and prostration in fatigue show the state of sleep/dream. In short, since all these three states befall the rose, then despite its 'heart-collectedness', the sleep/dream of the rose remains disordered/scattered. And the cause of this disorder is that it broods, 'let's see whether in this realm of disaster the 'provision of contentment' is possible or not'.
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Josh:
In barg there is an īhām . The reason is that it means 'leaf', and also 'wealth, treasure' [toshah]. In connection with the rose, barg meaning 'leaf' is the most obvious meaning. But here he has taken the remote meaning.
“What I really love about this verse is the second line. It stuck in my mind the first time I ever heard it. It has that great sense of 'mood', and so much flowingness and resonance! You don't even need the first line, in order to enjoy the second one very fully. In fact it's almost better without the first line, for then you're left to imagine for yourself the nature of the rose's restlessness in its sleep/dream. Then it's a line full of mystery, with a powerful ominousness that evokes for us our own similar fate.”
It is impossible to explicate Ghalib's poetry in a single post as he enjoys setting up fine, lucid metaphorical equations, and then subvert them or tangle them up. You can read a more detailed analysis here.
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perseus-veil · 9 days ago
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my thoughts on the veilguard
i finally finished the game last night and my brain is a mess after a long week of work so none of this is gonna be concise and will take jabs at braindead takes but whatever this is my house <33
gonna do this in pros and cons and under the cut if anyone is remotely interested in reading it!!
pros
the writing/story - i don't have a problem with the writing at all. all three acts were banging, especially act 3 where everything becomes more urgent and fast paced. i felt like i was playing a dragon age game, and that didn't change the entire time. - only having three choices carry over didn't make me upset or angry (unlike like some of y'all), and expecting to be able to carry over every choice you made from inquisition was crazy. how many important choices from dragon age 2 carried over into inquisition? not many. i know what choices i made in the past and how it shaped thedas and that's enough for me, i didn't need to go through it all again just for the sake of getting a random codex page or character mention. - i really enjoyed solas and rook's dynamic, especially when it all comes to a head and he traps them in the fade. manipulating and moulding them into someone similar enough to himself to take his place in the prison of regret only for them to escape by themselves (and with varric's help) because unlike solas, they know how to move forward. insane to me. i'm chewing on live wires.
companions - every companion is wonderful and beautifully written. i love how most of the story is based around them, instead of each of them just having one throwaway companion quest that does jack shit for their development. - in my playthrough, i chose treviso over minrathous, so i ended up with a hardened neve. i love that rook has to work hard to prove that they really care about her and her home, and that earning her trust fully is no small feat. it's so cool that she doesn't simply follow rook blindly, and spends a good chunk of time trying to help back home before returning. - also i really loved how regardless of loyalty and depending on your choices, some of your companions can still die. choosing between harding and davrin took me back to mass effect 1 where you have to save either kaidan or ashley, and inquisition where you have to choose between hawke and a warden, which i thought was so cool. i ended up choosing harding, as she's been there since the beginning. it makes sense to me for her to be the first to fall. very fitting, loved it.
romance - i romanced lucanis for my first playthrough. not having much content didn't bother me, as it made sense story wise. he's been in an underwater prison for a year, tortured and tormented, so naturally he's gonna be slow to trust anyone, and like a hardened neve, you have to work to earn it. and in the end, it's so worth it.
animations/art style - i know i've said it before but the facial animations aren't that bad. even then, i don't really care because mass effect andromeda is one of my all time favourite games and the animations in that are still. not great. veilguard's animations don't have shit on the disaster that was andromeda when it came out lmaoo - bioware have a habit of reinventing the wheel and changing art styles with every dragon age game, but i do really like veilguard's style. it was never gonna look like inquisition, a game that's Ten Years Old, so idk what some of y'all were expecting. i don't care that it looks a lil cartoony, it's nice to look at.
environment/locations - we finally got to fuckigng go to kal sharok. i know it wasn't for long or that much but!! it was enough <33 - every location is visually stunning, i could've spent hours just wandering around aimlessly looking at everything and taking pretty pictures. next time i plan to turn most of the ui off to take it all in. - i also don't get the hate for that lil purple tinge to everything, especially in arlathan forest. it's pretty. what the fuck are you talking about.
combat - i LOVED the combat system in this one. i had to play on pc (which i don't normally do) and i chose the easiest difficulty because i'm mostly here for the story, but the combat was so fun and engaging, and i enjoyed having to actually pay attention to it as opposed to just holding down a button to attack and not needing to worry about much else. - also the combo opportunities with companions was s o cool to play around with. we blowin everyone up to absolute shit babeyy
cons
(i don't actually have many cons so i'm just gonna bang em all out here) - i really hated how they literally nuked the south. i'm not mad about the lack of choices carrying over, but i am a little mad about the fact that every decision i made over three games turned out to be all for nothing. why did they do that. hello. i'm ignoring it <33 - i do really love how they included the option of having a trans or non binary rook, but characters actually saying 'non-binary' in game sounded. strange?? like it just doesn't fit in a fantasy setting because it's a real-life modern thing?? idk this one isn't a big deal i don't mind so much. also my gender is Whatever so don't come at me - while i don't want my companions threatening to kill each other all the time, i do miss having more conflict. there were plenty of opportunities for that, like with bellara and taash's banter regarding artifacts and the lords' 'dalish advisor'. you can't have such a diverse group of people and not have some type of conflict, it just doesn't seem natural otherwise.
anyway that's it i'm not gonna say anything else because i don't want the deranged girlies coming after me <33
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princeescaluswords · 1 year ago
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I wanted to make a little thing about Teen Wolf teen as the Mystery Inc. Gang and my first thought was to make Scott Scooby because wolf - dog hehe (and I'd be using Stiles, Kira, Lydia and Allison so no other werewolves) and then I realised there are maybe some Implications(TM) to having the only Latino character depicted as a dog and I decided against it.
Anyway, I wish fanfic authors were capable of putting that much thought into their stories where Scott is written out or turned into a villain for no good reason
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There are indeed implications, and that's something that fanfiction writers have to come to terms with: there are always implications.
One of the worst aspects of fandom is that content creators try to exert absolute control how their work is received after it is made public. They have this in common with every artist who ever lived, so it's understandable, but it's also unachievable. The only answer I have found is to work as hard as I can to understand these implications and accommodate them into your work.
I'm not speaking from a position of moral purity. Earlier this year, I wrote a story that I thought was an exploration of Mason Hewitt's role in the Teen Wolf movie, and someone whose opinion I trust argued that I botched the implications of what I wrote in terms of racism. Things like that are going to happen, regardless of intent, and the best thing content creators can do is not only be aware of how their work will exist within a greater cultural context but be open to criticism about it. I am always willing to grapple with implications I didn't foresee, including accepting the responsibility to defend my own writing. (Including this post!)
So let's talk about your idea. Why is it precarious to emphasize the animal-like aspects of a Latino character, even if he is a werewolf? This.
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History cannot be erased, and it should not be ignored.
In the history of the United States, Latinos, among other disadvantaged groups, have been likened to animals in order to impose a social order that insists that they have to submit to white control. It's not arguable whether this has happened or not. When you write a story that emphasizes the animal-like traits of a Latino character (or any similar disadvantaged group), you must grapple with the historical and cultural context.
And the Teen Wolf fandom has not only failed to do that repeatedly, they've often doubled down on the implications. Think about how many times that Scott has been portrayed in fanfiction as having issues with self-control, more than any other beta, which serves as a condemnation for his refusal to submit to a white male character (either Derek or Stiles or even Peter). This requires a change to the original story, because the writers choose to ignore that other betas have problems with self-control as the adjust to the shift, and they choose to ignore multiple instances of Scott having significant self-control, such as Magic Bullet (1x04), Heart Monitor (1x06), Shapeshifted (2x02), and Party Guessed (2x09).
Think about how many times Scott has been given animalistic traits in fanfiction that he doesn't have in the show, especially traits which serve to emphasize his inferiority, and these traits are not shared by the other werewolves? He is a voracious eater! He can't cook, or clean, or take care of himself! He is oblivious to the sophisticated emotional and social states of his white peers. He's obsessed with sexual gratification and constantly indulges in sexual behavior in public. He's an indifferent student at best, frequently requiring assistance in even basic subjects. None of these are supported even remotely by the show. As an aside, many of these are also part of the same stereotypes given to Latinos: sexually voracious, passionately aggressive, lazy, uneducated, and ruled by appetite.
Now, a possible counterargument is that the show itself sometimes emphasized the animalistic traits that Scott gained through his transformation into a werewolf. The wolf run in Seasons 1 and 2. Sticking his head out the window to get Lydia's scent in Omega (2x01). Sleeping at the foot of his mother's bed to protect her in Currents (3x07). The dog bowl scene in Lunatic (1x08).
There is an important difference. In the show the white werewolves have scenes like that as well, such as the dog whistle Deaton uses on Derek in Fury (2x10) and the fact that Isaac, too, is sleeping at the foot of the bed. But the most important part is that these instances aren't used to position Scott or anyone else as inferior because they have the traits of an animal. They're not used to impose a racially-influenced social order. Even the scene in Lunatic (which, as a caveat, I personally do not like at all) is more about Stiles than about Scott being animal-like, demonstrating that Stiles's standard tactics of good-natured bullying and cruel sarcasm are no longer appropriate for his relationship with Scott, which Stiles must confront.
So my point is, if you want to create content for a Mystery Inc. AU, I don't think that there's any reason you absolutely cannot do it, but I feel you would have to pay very close attention to HOW you create that content. Are you ignoring the historical and cultural context of your work? Are you ignoring power dynamics inherent in your choices? What's the message you're sending by your changes? While I don't see the need or even the applicability of this AU, I'm relatively confident that it could be done, as long as you don't use your intent as a shield for the finished product. Intention does not guarantee freedom from offense, a concept that fandom has had trouble with again and again.
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ashpkat · 1 year ago
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can we talk about this cover? besides the fact that it’s my favorite cover of the series and gorgeous but also the contents of the cover
first off, WHERE ARE THEY? there’s not a place in the magisterium that looks like this, i suppose you could argue that it’s the elemental prison, but i don’t think it was described like that? and i remember in someone else’s post, don’t remember who, that it looks like european architecture (which. don’t fact check me.) and going with that at the very least this isn’t the magisterium and is somewhere else in the world entirely, does this potentially mean The Bronze Key we got was not the original concept at all?
to add onto this! let’s talk about the knife calls holding. it isn’t miri. i suppose you could attribute the odd design to the fact that none of them are consistent in the covers, but the one thing that throughout books has stayed the same is the design of Semiramis. it gets used several times for chapter headers and ALWAYS looks similar and or exactly the same. and at the very least, if the knife he’s holding was meant to be Semiramis, don’t you think they wouldn’t have curved the blade? kept it straight? here’s my conclusion, the knife he’s holding is The Cosmos Blade. the original title for The Bronze Key.
but.. why? why does the cover not align with the book? this is the ONLY book it happens in.
(with the sort of exception of The Golden Tower, my friend has a theory that it’s aaron on the dragon and not alex and they resorted to just making alex blond in the book but. whatever not the point because there’s not as much evidence)
and the original translated synopsis— which might be fake and i’ve never confirmed as real so take this with a grain of salt— does NOT match up with the book at all. could it be that more than midway through the book they completely scrapped the idea? opting to go with The Bronze Key to fit with the metal theme? could this explain why the cover took so long to come out? there’s more i want to say on this but i cannot find the words for this.
i don’t doubt that through the production of a book ideas will change, but let’s talk about when these changes occur. unlike with small changes like The Copper Gauntlets change from The Copper Mask, this change actually is huge. because in TCG, a mask IS mentioned, constantine’s mask. but in The Bronze Key, not even a passing mention on anything that could remotely be The Cosmos Blade is mentioned. and let’s talk about the under use of european mages, yeah it gets sort of explained why they hate makaris in The Golden Tower with maugris but let’s not forget! maugris was implied to be improvised by the authors.
there are tumblr posts from the authors mentioning the european mages, saying that yes they would get mentioned in the third book or at the very least the fourth one, posts that just BARELY predate The Bronze Key.
this post isn’t me being sour that aaron died in TBK, because let’s be honest here, he was always going to die. nor is this me being sour that calron was never canon, because i could care the fuck less if it was (my main issue with callmara is how underdeveloped it is and how it totally watered down tamara’s character to a love interest like they did with celia. im a callmara fan, but everytime i read it in the books I GAG).
this is me being sour at the AUTHORS for choosing to devote more time to their already established and more popular book series. they had too much on their plate. they chose to opt for a potentially more simple plot for time purposes with each book having less and less pages. they needed better time management skills. they are NYC best sellers and yet, and yet, these final three books are lack luster in quality as their own series thrive and continue to climb in popularity.
so yeah. justice for The Cosmos Blade.
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papirouge · 2 years ago
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I’ve had a hard time finding cute blogs or YouTube channels that are homemaking while also being chill? You know? I thought I found some but always ended up leaving because they’ll make comments against liberals - being political or go full on “I believe race mixing is unethical :) god bless!” - or something similar. I followed this one girl on youtube and at first she was cute about homemaking. I don’t care about “improving femininity” cause I think that’s a scam tbh. But while she did talk about, it was her homemaker stuff I loved. Then I found out that she was featured and like a lot of white supremacy/“save the white race” content online. A lot of it. I don’t k ow what makes domestic communities like homemaking/sewing/cooking/etc attract really awful hateful people and even fetishists
Yeah, that's something that I noticed. Many Western go to the trad lifestyle as some sort of political cope rather a genuine interest for a more simple authentic lifestyle.
Which is pretty weird because traditional lifestyle is the most.... politically neutral statement ever? Like, most people on this earth live traditionally regardless of their race. Trad lifestyle is pretty much the defaut. Sure people will have TV and electrical appliances, but they still go to the market everyday to do their grocery bc they hardly have a fridge, cultivate their own food/have their own cattle for subsistence, and have a very simple lifestyle circling around family and religion. My mom bought a fridge for my family in Congo and they hardly used it because they didn't see the point lol they preferred going to the market, and buy the food they needed for the day. It's a whole different mindset actually.
Back to White supremacists nationalists: they're really delusional to think that going trad is remotely going to have any impact politically. Since I'm from Europe, it's a well known thing that the European parliament (which is not elected by citizens lol) is now more powerful than our own president and they pretty much can do whatever they want. They're for example responsible for the encouraging mass immigration (regardless of what the citizens of countries want) so basically popping pure White™ babies and living recluse in a farm isn't going to help in any way to keep Europe White... That's why supremacists are bounded to fail.
And that's precisely why I've always said that stockpiling guns was stupid and pointless. Like, what's their end goal? Living their life in fear of having a darkie getting too close of them? There will be a war anyway, it's unavoidable. And as Christian we shouldn't be involved in that mess. Going trad is pointless if you're not spiritually yoked with God. Only God will grant you the serenity of feeling good in your life and peace of mind (despite trials and hardship).
Don't you find interesting that as removed from society (and darkies) they are, those people ALWAYS have a tip on their shoulder and seem always bothered and anxious about anything? (the survival of their race, of their culture, mass immigration, shoehorning their obsession with the Blacks/Muslim at any opportunity...) NONE OF THAT MATTERS IN THE EYES OF GOD. Actually God is very cheeky; He might actually Save a bunch of these "invaders" to make His point ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ (Nebuchadnezzar anyone?) That's what's so funny with Christian White supremacist, they somehow think they have the monopoly on Christianity....when Europe itself has been converted. Do they think Europeans woke up and suddenly accepted Christ? No, it happened through the migration of population (apostles traveled A LOT), and yes, race mixing (the apostle Timothy was mixed FYI, half Greek half Jew). Even in France churches are surviving thanks to the Christian subsaharian populations who are attending in masses. There are some Whites of course, but you'll notice most of the time they are friends or relatives of Black believers. In France, many White preachers are married with Black women.. it makes sense bc Christian subsaharian African communities are a HUGE driving force into Chrsitian conversion and fellowship in France. And I think God knows what He's doing by making it happen through this migration movement.
Meanwhile, where are the White Christians who have to protect the uwu Christian White Europe? NOWHERE. They talking about "preserving White culture" day and night when on the practical field they do nothing. They're only whining on the internet and thinking growing apples in their garden and selling merch makes them political activists. Give me a break.
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addictedtostorytelling · 3 months ago
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Hey AJ! I hope you’re having a good Monday :)
I have a question for you, or an ask I suppose. So I know you love the Sara/Grissom relationship dynamic as much as I do (and your content has kept me endlessly entertained for what I think has been 9 years now ((I just realized this wowwwww — 19 y/o to 28 😵‍💫)) I mean, you’re basically my favorite writer, too!!! ☺️) anyway, I wondered if you’ve ever felt somewhat similar about a relationship dynamic in a book. I’m craving something like it, and I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump so anything sort of similar would be ideal - though I understand a show that’s spanned 20+ years had more time to explore said dynamic lol. I’ve read the classics and stuff but wondered if you had any recs! And if not, any book recs would do. Like I said, I’ve been in a bit of a slump :/
And again, if you have none that’s fine too! Just wanted to ask!! Thank you 😊
hi, anon!
thank you for your kind words! you've been following my content for nine years? wow! i'm honored, truly. thank you for being part of my little corner of the internet! ❤
as for your question, i can't say i've ever felt similarly about any literary dynamic as i have about gsr.
albeit gsr is my otp to end otps, so they're kind of in a class of their own for me, regardless of medium—especially because, as you mention, they are pretty unique in their construction, as a 20+-year primetime tv romance slow burn. there's just nothing really like them out there!
while there are a few literary dynamics that evince particular aspects of gsr for me, almost all of them come from classic literature, so you're probably already familiar with the texts (e.g., odysseus & penelope from the odyssey by homer, hamlet & ophelia from hamlet by william shakespeare, just the general vibes of a lot of regency and victorian-era romantic pairings as in the works of jane austen and the brontë sisters, etc.)—and none of them is really a full match anyhow.
meanwhile, i don't tend to read a lot of contemporary fiction where romance features heavily in the plot.
all of the above so, i can't really think of any "similar to gsr" book recs for you.
the best i can do is just something more general.
i don't know what type of books you usually tend to read, but one book i do enjoy that does feature romance—not at all like gsr in its particulars, except that the two characters involved do start out both doubting their own lovability and come to find acceptance and affirmation in each other—is the shipping news by annie proulx.
it's a realistic fiction novel about a single american father who, after a family tragedy, moves to a remote fishing community in newfoundland, canada with his two young daughters and takes a job with a local newspaper.
though the romantic plot isn't the main one (i.e., it isn't a romance novel, just a novel that happens to feature a romance), it is ultimately quite sweet, and the book itself is well-written. for me, it was a highly enjoyable read.
of course, i should probably say something here about how because i am in my life outside of the internet a creative writing professor, the things that make a story enjoyable to me tend to have more to do with the author's craft practices than anything else. i don't really have any preferences when it comes to genres or settings in fiction; i just want the author to do what i would consider to be cool shit with their language, and i'm good to go. your mileage may (and probably will) vary, depending on your tastes.
anyway, since i struck out on offering you anything even remotely gsr-like with my rec, i will put your question out to anyone else who cares to chime in:
does anyone know of any books with gsr-esque dynamics in them for my dear anon? if so, could you share them in the replies?
please and thank you!
good luck, anon! i hope you're able to find something enjoyable to read to get you out of your slump. ❤
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gtamobile · 6 months ago
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Don't get fooled by scammers! Grand Theft Auto 5 cant be play on Mobile devices
There has been lots of phishing going on the internet in this Millennials/Generation Z regagrding GTA 5 Mobile. It has been rumoured that Grand Theft Auto V is available on the mobile devices, but beware of that because it may turn into somekind of malware or scams. Guess what! we have tried it and it turned out to be fake, so we researched different ways to play GTA V on mobile. Voila! We have found different simple ways to play this game on mobile devices. But first you have to own GTA 5 on other platforms too.
Remote Play
One of the easiest method is none other than Remote Play. First you have to own GTA 5 on other consoles ie PS4, PS5, Xbox and PC. You can simply stream it on your consoles and connect it your mobile devices by downloading remote play apps.
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Emulator
This can be your best method to download GTA 5 on mobile. It might be hassle at first but if you tried it once then you can be able to play this game on mobile easily. But it is mainly based on PC version because you have to install the PC emulator such as Winulator or Moblox on your android devices. There's the great news for iOS users too because Apple has recently made emulator friendly for mobile devices too.
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Cloud Gaming Services
Cloud Gaming Services can be much more easy way but you have to pay a lot for the cloud subscription. It may be expensive for some of the gamers. Anyways Its provides quick access to the game on your mobile devices. There is no guarantee on FPS in this services.
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Mods
There are lots of mods available which help to make older Grand Theft Auto series lookalike GTA 5. For example Mods can help to make GTA Sandreas similar to Grand Theft Auto V. There might be downgrade in the graphics of the game, but this is also not bad idea to play GTA 5 on Mobile devices.
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Fan Made Games
Since Grand Theft Auto Series is one of the popular among the people because of its immersive gameplay and its hooking story with its realistic graphics and control mechanics. Because of that there are fans who want to developed this game on the mobile devices since the game engine used on GTA 5 Consoles and PC version are made with RAGE game engine which is game engine that develops games for mobile devices. But fans tried to developed this game using Unity and Unreal Engine 5 so this can be your favourite method to play GTA 5 on Mobile devices.
So these are some simple ways to play Grand Theft Auto 5 and Grand Theft Auto 6 on mobile devices but there are lots of gaming community that has made similar game as GTA 5/GTA 6 like Gangster Vegas, Dude Theft War and many more. This can help for the developer as we support them to create Masterpiece game like Grand Theft Auto 5.
Join our Discord Channel for more Grand Theft Auto 5 contents and Information.
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makorays · 11 months ago
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Hi mako
I just wana say firstly that I love your content and hope for you to get out of your slum of depression soon thank you for helping me learn that you can be feminine without being a girl outright you opened up the idea a lot
Secondly what would you say as a response to people who say that being or identifying with femboy type things are "primary a fetish or sexual thing" I know Its not remotely sexual for me and I heard you're similar
I'm still working on figuring myself out but I know I wana be sort of girly but still like "one of the boys" if that makes sense
I hope I don't come across as a complete weirdo I'm still figuring myself out
And I live in an extremely Christian area
ask them if they think girls wearing panties is a fetish thing, if not then ask them what the difference is. none of the differences they give you will be logical enough to justify their position.
i was also raised christian and consider myself a more boyish tomboy so it's good to hear i was able to help someone similar
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blue-jester · 7 months ago
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Hello I was there when the thing from last year happened, and I can confirm that Opal didn't groom anyone.
Grooming, because you obviously didn't look for the actual definition and are just using it as a buzzword, is when an adult tries to get a child in a romantic and sexual relationship with them through methods of isolating them from their peers, sending them suggestive dms, content, and asking explicitly sexual content of the minor, from videos to nude images and sexting.
None of this happened there. Nobody was isolated. Nobody was dmed with gross things. We were all just reacting to something that admitably Opal shouldn't have posted where minors could see it, but it was never aimed at anyone. It was, in all regards, a joke that went too far. I think we all forgot our ages, which is easy when you're online and can't actually see the person in front of you. And Opal has long since changed her behavior and hasn't done anything REMOTELY like it ever again, it she has it was in adult chats where only adults could see, as she should have done in the beginning.
None of this happened in the magoverse server, most of all. It was over long before Giygas ever came to the Magoverse. And as for the Magoverse..
I'm gonna be honest, as someone who was there through everything, nobody knew that you were supposedly feeling bad until you left with that guilt trippy ass message. Want to know why? Because you never told anyone. And now you're here making accusations with words you don't understand.
You were 12. You kept making mistakes that made everyone uncomfortable. You would apologize and do something similar again later. You kept saying the most guilt trippy thing and honestly I can recall [and find] more times I was calling you out on it then Opal or Blaze did- they usually came in after I called you out. So if you should be mad at anyone it should've been me- but you can't find any reason to call *me*, a fellow kid at the time a groomer, could you?
Also harassment is constantly and violently hurtling abuse of some kind at someone a lot. That also never happened. Opal and Blaze were both incredibly respectful and kind to you. I can't find a moment of them being otherwise
I believe you are a highly immature individual, you are 13 after all and you joined Magoverse and tumblr at 12, so I don't expect you to be all that mature- but this is going too far. You're just mad you felt bad and wanted to attack the people you thought were responsible.
I don't even need to add anything, everything I've said was brought up and supported with screenshots by Opal already.
I understand that you are very young, and as so, even though at 13 you're allowed on tumblr and discord.. The best advice I can give you is to just. Log off. Go do your homework. Go play video games, go be a kid. Don't waste your time trying to ruin someone's image just because you don't like them- I know at this age you think you've got it all down but as a former 13 year old on the Internet you're gonna feel real silly and real embarrassed about all this when you're older.
Tldr: Calling out bad behavior and doing your job as a mod is *not* harassment.
Gonna be interrupting the ongoing Neo3 saga for a bit, because something serious needs to be addressed.
Its come to my attention that there have been some serious allegations against me and another member of the Magoverse server. The posts were brought to us by someone in said server and that’s how we all found out.
Im here to provide proof against them.
TLDR: There has been a person lying about some very serious matters. I will discuss and provide proof against their claims below.
A former member of our server, giyagas-strikes-back, has claimed that I have been generally harassing them while they were there. They have stated that they have no proof of their accusations. There is no evidence of this because it did not happen at all.
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I did not abuse or harass them. All I did was address the behavior that was making other members of the server uncomfortable. We were not once rude to this individual. We had spoken with them regarding their disruptive behavior multiple times, including their disrespect towards our members when they had asked them to tone things down and failed to regard such wishes.
 Seen below:
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For this next series of screenshots, they were involved in an rp involving sudden angst/violence that made members in the server uncomfortable. I was not the one who addressed the concern, but I did agree with the point of the one who did.
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Another event where they commented something negative about something and someone else talked to them about it. Again, I was only agreeing with someone else, I did not speak harshly to them at all:
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We never held a grudge against them, and only spoke to them in this way when they made someone uncomfortable.
Additionally, they told us that they were at least 13 (minimum age for joining the server) when we talked to them. We all thought we were speaking to an individual who would handle criticism we gave them seriously. We found out later that they were lying about their age:
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Because we weren't notified, it only came to our attention much later into their membership, as is shown here. (Edited Discord notifications do not provide an "unread message" tag, and with a massive influx of members coming in at that time, this message was quickly buried.) We do not accept members under the age of 13 in our server. Every member under the age of 18 must inform us that they are a minor (no specific number required, just that they're under 18), and they are given a tag indicating that they are a minor. Additionally, we have multiple guidelines in place regarding minors and VC manners. We all mind our distance. To note: Before we could confront giyagas-strikes-back they left the server. We are unsure if they left because they caught wind we knew about them lying about their age, or if they left because of the multiple times that members of the mod staff had been forced to step in to handle behaviors or statements made by them that made other members uncomfortable.
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An extra note to add, giyagas-strikes-back claimed that all this happened in a server where the “mod was always away”. We are the mods, and they were fully aware of this. The status of our mods is very apparent and in no way shape or form secret. Even our nicknames are given a specific color to indicate that we are the mods of the server. We only ever interacted with them on the specific server that we mod, so I am unsure if this is another lie, or if they legitimately didn’t realize we were mods and that is why we kept addressing their behaviors with them.
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They also mentioned that I associate with Blaze, who they claim said weird stuff to them/is grooming them. But doing a quick search on a statement they made proves otherwise:
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I believe these allegations are an immature act of retaliation due to our addressing their ill behaviors.
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Theres one more thing I need to address. It was also brought to my attention that someone is claiming I stole an AU. I was never approached about this, neither has Blue as far as I am aware, and honestly have no idea what AU they're referring to, so I'm going to assume it is CtyH (Close to Your Heart, the au where Mags marries a god). We first discussed this au last January 26, 2023 -- here are screenshots of the first discussions about it. This AU started off as an offshoot to my interp and evolved from there. If anyone ever felt I had stolen something, it was never brought up with me or Blue, and I never wrote this AU with anyone elses in mind.
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In closing: A healthy reminder. When people are accusing others of something, never take just their word as fact. Always look into it before making your own decision about the person in question, even if it comes from someone you trust. Never let anyone's opinion be your opinion. Always, ALWAYS, find the facts and discern for yourself! Make your own choice. Don't allow others to choose for you. Take this evidence as you will, but please, if you know those responsible for damning our names and making these baseless claims, we ask that you do not harass them on our behalf. We will not tolerate anyone speaking ill of them in my name. Yes, what they are doing is bad, but would any of us be better if we reciprocate in the same manner? That helps no one. Instead, simply inform and educate others. Be peaceful, be respectful. Be polite. Do not attack these people under any circumstances.
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say-al0e · 2 years ago
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Future
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Rating: PG - Pretty tame!
Summary: The only future you see involves Steve Harrington, even if moving in with him proves to be a challenge.
Warnings: Brief mention of the events of the show but everyone lives and gets a happy ending. This is soft bullshit.
Pairing: Steve x fem!reader (actually might be GN but just in case)
Word Count: 1.9k
Stranger Things Taglist | Stranger Things Masterlist 
“I know I labeled the box. I just… don’t remember what I labeled it.”
Steve stood, brows furrowed and hands pressed to his hips, in the middle of the living room. Large brown boxes surrounded him, nearly eclipsed his figure from your position in the kitchen, with only a flash of brown hair and the blue of his sweatshirt remaining visible.
The boxes were all labeled - the ones you packed with a neat scribble and a brief description of the contents, his with a room written in barely legible hand and mostly taped over - but that did little to help as you wandered from the kitchen and its similar state to join him.
There was supposed to be a system in place to prevent this, a way of organizing the boxes devised by your mother and put into action by the ragtag bunch of children - teenagers, nearly adults, now - that helped you pack. Steve had been left in charge of packing the kitchen utensils with Dustin but none of the boxes he’d haphazardly labeled ‘kitchen’ contained anything remotely useful in your pursuit of making dinner.
“D’you label them before or after you packed them?”
At the sound of your voice, much closer than it had been only moments before, Steve lifted his head. His expression softened as he held out an arm, wrapped it around your shoulders without caring very much that you were both still covered in a thin sheen of sweat and in desperate need of a shower, and sighed. When you arm wrapped around his waist, he leaned into your side and allowed his frown to deepen as he glanced around the living room.
“What d’you mean?”
Stacks of books - yellowed paperbacks you picked up from thrift shops, textbooks you paid too much for and could never resell, a handful of favorites from Steve’s childhood bedroom - and a few piles of knickknacks poked out of the tops of open boxes. Others looked well-filled, stuffed to the brim with things plucked from your old apartment, and you were fairly sure none of them contained the pans you were searching for.
“Like, did you write on the box and then put stuff in it or did you put stuff in the box, tape it shut, and then write on it later?”
Steve took a moment to think, his brows furrowing even as his body relaxed against yours, and you took the time to study him.
The exertion of the day had taken its toll on him. The soft fabric of his sweatshirt was rumpled, sleeves shoved up around his elbows and hem hitched to the waistband of his jeans, and there were a few stains on his jeans - rust from a railing, dust due to the lack of occupants in your new place - and you weren’t surprised. He’d left Hawkins at first light, children and a handful of last minute boxes stuffed into his car, and headed straight to your old place to help pack the pieces of your old place into the rented truck.
His infamous hair had been the first casualty of the day, damp with sweat and curling around his ears as he lugged box after box, and there was a soft purple bloom beneath his eyes. His shoulders relaxed at the weight of your arm around his waist and the set of his features was as easy as you’d ever seen it. Though his mouth was set into a frown, it was contemplative and soft, still relaxed despite it all.
The silence passed syrup slow before Steve grimaced and tipped his head to glance at you. “The second one, I think.”
You’d gathered as much from the piles of stuff littered around the living room, yanked from boxes labeled ‘living room' and ‘kitchen’, and bit back your laughter as you trailed your fingers down Steve’s side. He melted into the touch and you could feel the weight of his arm growing heavier around your shoulders as he pressed himself closer.
“What else were you packing when you packed the kitchen?”
Another moment passed as Steve recalled the hectic events of the morning - packing boxes with the kids, attempting to wrangle them all as you ogled at this item or crowed at that one - before he smiled sheepishly. “The bedroom, maybe? Think Will had the bookshelf while Max and Robin took the closet.”
Steve sighed as he tipped his head to rest his chin on your shoulder. He nuzzled his face into the crook of your neck, warm breath fanning across your skin in a way that pulled a content from deep within your chest, as you bit back your laughter. “So, theoretically, that box labeled ‘books’ could actually contain all of our cookware?”
An agreeable hum escaped him as his lips pressed to the sliver of shoulder exposed by your t-shirt collar. “Theoretically,” he admitted, if only a little begrudgingly. “But it’s absolutely Henderson’s fault. He wouldn’t shut up about their last Hellfire campaign. Can’t believe those little shits are fucking graduating.”
Before Steve could spiral - he’d done it a handful of times already, going on about how time had passed and how the pair of you were getting old, even at barely twenty-four - you lifted a hand to drag it through the soft locks of his disheveled hair. As your fingers worked through the silk strands, he deflated and tipped his head to press a soft kiss just beneath your ear in an effort to distract you. “Steve, honey, focus. The cookware in the book box. D’you wanna open it and see or…?”
Steve blew a raspberry against your neck, easily pulling a quiet giggle from you as his lips pressed to your heated skin, before stepping away from you. “You know what,” he huffed as he placed his hands on his hips, pausing a moment to glare at the mess barely contained in your living room. “Forget that box. I think we should just order pizza. First night in a new place, we shouldn’t have to cook. It can be, like, a tradition, or something.” His brows furrowed then, as if an idea had just occurred to him, before he pointed at you. “A housewarming! It could be like a housewarming. We didn’t get one at the old place, I just kinda moved in with you. This is our first real place together.”
“As sweet as that is, a housewarming usually includes more people, honey. It’s like a party,” you corrected gently, arms folding over your chest as you watched him plant his hands on his hips and frown. “‘Sides, I’m sure the kids and Robin would want to be included.”
The exaggerated roll of his eyes made you grin, pulled a snicker from you even as he shot you an unimpressed look, but his own smile followed soon. While you remained rooted to your spot, Steve took a half-step closer - slotted himself back into your personal space - and reached for your arms. When he lifted them, wrapped them around his neck before wrapping his own around your waist, you raised an eyebrow at him.
“A housewarming can be whatever we want it to be. It’s our house,” he declared, grinning at the reminder that after a handful of years together - partially long distance, with you in Indianapolis and him in Hawkins for the most part, save for the odd days off Steve spent sharing your bed - you were finally really living together. “And I think I’d like it to be pizza and cuddling with my girl.”
“You’re telling me you’re tired of manual labor?”
Steve rolled his eyes at your question, brows and lips pulled into an unimpressed line, before he scoffed. “If I have to do anymore work tonight, I might just go back to Hawkins.”
When you grimaced, Steve tossed his head back with a groan. “Hate to break it to you, Stevie,” you teased, laughter lacing your words, “but we still have to put together the bed frame.”
“We could just sleep on the mattress tonight,” Steve offered, eyes wide as he tipped his head back to look at you. “I really don’t want to dig through boxes for tools right now.”
“Steve, honey, I don’t think we own any tools.” Steve hummed, acknowledging your statement to be true, and laughed quietly as you rolled your eyes fondly. “But Eddie said he’d drop by in the morning and bring his toolbox. So, I guess one night of sleeping on the mattress isn’t a big deal.”
“It feels weird,” he hummed, laughing slightly as you raised a brow. “We’ll all be in the same place again. Us, Robin, Eddie, the kids; it kind of feels like home. Minus the supernatural bullshit beneath our feet.”
The exaggerated, thoughtful frown that tugged at your lips made Steve laugh. “I don’t know,” you hummed, badly concealed grin as Steve squeezed your hip. “Weird shit tends to follow us when we gather.”
Steve looked less than impressed, lips pulled into a thin line as he tripped his head to meet your eyes, but the easy set of his features never tensed. There would always be a lingering fear, a reminder of the years you spent fighting for your lives, but it was a distant memory now. The fight was over, won, and Steve reminded you of that as his hands drifted beneath the hem of your - once his - t-shirt.
“Right now, the only weird shit I’m worried about is whatever science experiments Henderson will be up to. The kid’s going to end up making himself a key and we’re going to walk in to serious weirdness in our living room.” Steve looked fondly exasperated, eyes rolling, but you could see the hint of a smile at the thought that you would all be close enough to gather once more.
“As opposed to you just giving him one? C’mon, Stevie. We both know this place will be filled to the brim with teenagers in about a week.” 
“Like you haven’t missed it.” Steve grinned when you rolled your eyes, laughing when you tugged lightly at the soft strands of hair between your fingers.
“I have. I’ve missed the kids and the noise and the weird conversations I can’t follow. I’m excited to have them all back. But I know we’ll never have another moment alone in this place,” you teased, grinning as Steve’s brows lifted as your fingers trailed down his neck, brushing at the heated skin. “Maybe we should make the most of it.”
Steve grinned as he shifted away, hands falling from your waist to intertwine his fingers with yours. “That pizza place delivers until midnight,” he pointed out, grinning as he began walking backward, glancing at his feet to avoid boxes. “We should totally make the most of our time alone.”
As Steve wandered down the hall, narrowly avoiding tripping over boxes, you watched him. The fall of his hair over his eyes, the flush of his cheeks, the warmth of his eyes; there were a million little pieces that made Steve beautiful, a million little things that made you love him, and you were grateful that the future you were piecing together included Steve.
Meanwhile, Steve was grateful that you’d left the boxes alone for the time being. Hidden away in one of them - not lost, only somewhat misplaced - was a little velvet box. It was what he’d been searching for instead of cookware, a more pressing need than a set of pots and pans, and he knew that he would continue rummaging after you’d fallen asleep.
The future you were piecing together was bright and, when Steve managed to find the little black box, that bright future would begin anew. It would be the two of you, ready to take on the world with your ragtag bunch of friends by your side, and neither of you could wait.
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Author’s Note: I dunno, man. Promise your regularly scheduled Eddie bullshit is returning. This one was just 98% done.
Taglist: @x-avantgarde-x, @thisisparadisemylove, @eddiesprincess, @slvdsjjk, @munsonlover, @tasmbestspdrman, @urofficial-cyberslut, @jxngwhore, @hopelesslylosttheway, @meaganjm, @lazuli-leenabride, @deiondraaa, @piscesmesss, @glowyskiess, @kiszkathecook, @missryerye, @solarrexplosion, @ofherscarlettwitchways, @lovedandleft-haunted, @trappedinlimbo15, @sweetiekitten, @bookfrog242, @gwendolynmary, @sage-bun, @zealouslibrariesparadiselight, @castiels-lilass, @tojis-little-brat, @emmah787, @theworldsendxx, @asuperconfusedgirl, @flores-and-sunshine, @passi0np1t, @laurathefahrradsattel, @hellf1reclub, @slut4yourmom, @niko-04, @hannirose-loves-you, @mrs-eddie-munson, @screambabe, @vllowe, @ryswritingrecord, @cheriebondy, @ryswritingrecord, @thewitchofthewilds140, @bootlegmothman420, @maruushkka, @honeymoonpython, @keenesbeans, @jess-bonn, @sammysinger04, @khaoticken21, @denkis-slut, @spiderman-berries, @lotus-es, @amortiff, @stardust-galaxies, @ure-a-sunflower, @1-800-ch3rry, @ladybeewritethings, @ynbutbetter, @hunnybunimdun, @breathinfive, @s-u-t, @s4ntacarlal0stk1d, @rae-iin, @pennamesgame, @stefans-wife, @voldieshorts, @frankie-mercury, @bbymochi1, @serendiipty, @saturnsworld01, @eddiemunson1sstuff​, @valthevalkyrie-main​, @crying-caro​, @inglourious-imagines​
If you’re not tagged, it’s because Tumblr wouldn’t let me!
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duchessonfire · 3 years ago
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On problematic content in fandoms
Look, I get that a lot of people see fandoms/fanart/fanfics as a form of escapism to get a few minutes break from the shitstorm that is reality. And for plenty of people, escapism means looking at cute fanart, wholesome fanfics and generally entering a pastel-colored world full of beloved tropes where everyone is woke af and nothing problematic ever happens. I get it.
But remember that escapism comes in as many different shade as there are different people. Escapism for one person can mean delving into a super dark/violent/twisted work that will act as a catharsis for the viewer and creator. Maybe it's looking at seriously f-up p*rn of their favorite characters as a way to remember that different (and sometimes scary!) forms of physical intimacy can be enjoyed safely and vicariously in a fantasy world of their choosing. Maybe it's about seeing a really racist/homophobic/toxic/hateful character getting the living shit beat out of them. But none of these forms of escapism can exist if we try to bleach fandoms of everything that looks remotely problematic or even (gasp) R-rated. That's why tags and trigger warnings exist.
"But OP, sometimes fanworks are improperly tagged and people see stuff that can trigger/shock them. Why shouldn't we just make all fanart PG-13 by default?"
Glad you asked, because there is already a solution to your problem, without having to hide everything R-rated under the rug like it's something shameful when it's not. The comment button. Just use the comment button and gently tell the author/content creator that they should add the proper tags for their work. I don't know why, some people seem convinced that content creators are malicious in their tagging. In most cases they're not, they simply aren't aware of how extensive the tagging system is! When I arrived on AO3, I had no idea you should put tag or tw for things such as "eating disorder" or "gaslighting" or "toxic characters". I don't live in America, in my country, trigger warnings are barely a thing. How am I supposed to know these things if no one takes the time to tell me about them, and tell me about them politely? No one wants their works to traumatize their audience, most of the time people create content they think will appeal to a specific audience that shares similar interests. We're all learning, so don't come guns blazing at someone who is probably already anxious about having put something precious they work hard on out into the world.
And guess what? Sometimes, no matter how well-tagged a work is, someone will find it that is obviously not the intended audience. What do you do in that case? Just scroll past. Screen. Use the block button. Curate your experience. But don't go harrassing people because they had the audacity to co-exist in the same space as you. When you see someone on the street dressed in an attire that makes you want to scratch your eyes out, do you harass that person by saying they should change before going out into society? Or do you just turn your head the other way and ignore them? (I hope for you it's the second one, otherwise, spoiler alert, you're an a**hole). Same thing for fanworks. The internet/AO3/Twitter/Tumblr is made for everyone, not just under 18s and people who want nothing to do with s*x/problematic/disturbing content. Stop bullying people into the shadows and think of yourself as some sort of righteous angel preserving the delicate eyes of like-minded innocents.
Don't erase other people's forms of escapism just because they're different from yours.
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verecunda · 2 years ago
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Thinking about Aegnor and Andreth, and one thing that strikes me is how much their relationship seems rooted in the landscape around them.
Finrod tells Andreth that Aegnor will always remember “the morning in the hills of Dorthonion” - presumably a reference to their first meeting. More poignantly, he talks about their last encounter by Tarn Aeluin. This is the same Aeluin described in the Silmarillion: “with wild heaths about it, and all that land was pathless and untamed, for even in the days of the Long Peace none had dwelt there.” It’s a remote place, wild and rugged enough for Barahir and his men to hide out successfully for several years (and in fact, their hideout is only discovered because Sauron torments/tricks poor old Gorlim into giving it away). It’s an unlikely place for a lovers’ tryst, even a parting. It’s clearly a place well off the beaten track, yet it’s a key location in Aegnor and Andreth’s story. You’re left with the impression that their relationship, which seems to have been relatively secret, flourished in these remote, wild places, away from the eyes of their kin.
For me, this idea is reinforced by the impression given in the Athrabeth of Andreth being an active, even athletic woman. Finrod describes the young Andreth as a “maiden, brave and eager” (he describes Aegnor in similar terms - “swift and eager”), and though the forty-eight-year-old Andreth sees herself despondently as “old and lost”, one of the footnotes describes her as being “in full vigour” at the time of the Athrabeth. This idea of physical health and activeness also comes across when she speaks of her relationship with Aegnor: “I would not have troubled him, when my short youth was spent. I would not have hobbled as a hag after his bright feet, when I could no longer run beside him!” She’s speaking figuratively, of course, but the image it conjures up in my mind is of the two of them running together across those moors and highlands of Dorthonion.
And the physical landscape also has a role to play in the end of their relationship. Finrod claims that Aegnor ended it because he has no faith that the Siege of Angband will last indefinitely, and that in times of war “the Elves do not wed or bear child.” I’ve seen Aegnor get some flack for this, with people pointing out that other Elves seem to have no problem marrying and having children during the war-torn First Age. 
However, to return to the Silmarillion, we’re told that as the Siege of Angband rolls on and Noldor and Men alike establish themselves in Beleriand, Fingolfin ponders another assault upon Angband: “But because the land was fair and their kingdoms wide, most of the Noldor were content with things as they were [...] Among the chieftains of the Noldor Angrod and Aegnor alone were of like mind with the King; for they dwelt in regions whence Thangorodrim could be descried, and the threat of Morgoth was present to their thought.”
That passage alone makes sense of Aegnor’s motives. Most of the Noldor have actually grown complacent during the siege, but he’s one of the very few who hasn’t. He can’t - his fortresses are actually within sight of Thangorodrim, and the northern slopes of Dorthonion that he and Angrod rule are regarded as a key bulwark against any attack from Angband. It’s constantly there in his mind. Even setting aside the mortal/immortal divide, it’s only too easy to imagine what a shadow that would cast across his relationship with Andreth. Finrod reckons that Aegnor is too duty-bound to imagine abandoning his post and fleeing south to safer lands with Andreth; but equally, I think he’s too duty-bound to countenance the idea of marrying her and bringing her north to face the danger of the front line. (And the danger, as it turns out, is real - after all, he and Angrod are among the first casualties of the Bragollach.) Again, the landscape, and his awareness of their place in it, that influence Aegnor’s decision to call things off. 
Taken altogether, Aegnor and Andreth and their story seem inextricably tied to the landscape they inhabit. So it is for the reader, and so it is for the characters themselves. Finrod suggests that Aegnor’s predominant memory is of “the morning in the hills of Dorthonion”, while Andreth conjures up an image of Aegnor, “bright and tall, with the wind in his hair,” suggesting that her abiding image of him, too, is set outside, with the wild hills of Dorthonion as a backdrop.
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thedoctorisinlove · 2 years ago
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eddie munson ; taking care of you while you're sick headcanons
genre : fluff
pairing : eddie munson x gender neutral reader
disclaimer : none
author's note : established relationship!
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⋆ honestly doesn't give a shit if he, himself, is sick. but you? that's another thing. he'll be skipping school to take care of you before a word of protest can even come out of your lips.
⋆ he'll be by your side 24/7 and i mean every single second until you're finally back on your feet. eddie doesn't give a shit if he gets sick from you, his immune system is extremely high he's only gotten sick twice his entire life.
⋆ since eddie never had to take care of himsef (or quite anyone else) when sick, he doesn't know how to take care of you. he just knows you have to eat porridge and drink medicine (that looks far from medicine to him) every 4 hours.
⋆ now, this man does not know how to cook anything like at all. so we can assume he has never tried to ever make porridge his entire life since he's seen no reason to. so he finds a quaker's box in the far back of his cupboard and is like "fuck it", dump some oats on a small bowl and fill it with hot water and prays for himself that he did it right.
⋆ he'll watch you eat all of the porridge and medicine, he doesn't trust you alone just in case you end up pouring the contents away 😭. if you're throwing a pouty fit, he'll playfully tease if you wanted him to spoon feed you (most of the times he does end up spoon feeding you). totally the type to count down from 10 until you drink the medicine.
⋆ despite eddie's lack of knowledge on how to recover from flus and colds, he does know the general basics of it (in which you just literally need a lot of rest and sleep). so most of the time while you're recovering in eddie's trailer (in which you were already staying at until you succumbed to sickness), he'll be making you take multiple naps a day (he always wake you up when it's the time to drink medicine). would totally kiss your forehead while you're unconscious and readjusting your blanket if you shuffled it out of your way. there will always be a cold glass of water beside the bedside as well in which eddie refills every 1 hour.
⋆ if you throw a fit back at him, he'll remind you how you need to stay in bed while promising he'll take care of you.
⋆ eddie will always be the one starting your bath, checking every second to make sure the water is perfectly lukewarm. he'll literally be using those thermometers that he bought at a nearby convenience store just for you 😭. he wants you to have a speedy recovery so he's obsessed with having everything perfect and made out for you.
⋆ whenver you are awake though, you'll be on his lap a lot of times, no exceptions. his hand stroking the back of yours and cradling you like an infant. he'll be spoiling you with lots of forehead kisses and whispers and murmurs of how much he loves you. he peckers your entire face with kisses everywhere. more kisses evident on your ear and cheek.
⋆ if you get tired from being on his bed the entire day, eddie'll offer to make a pillow fort for you. he'll refuse for you to help him though, telling you to stay put and rest some more. he plants a quick kiss on your forehead before setting out to his living room to begin his new quest.
⋆ he'll be filling the pillow fort with a dozen of pillows (fluffing them out to check if they're hard by literally repeatedly hitting on it until it literally dissolves your head in), gathering your favorite plushies that you sometimes bring to his house in previous occasions in which he'd adopt them.
⋆ once he's finished with his work, he'll step back and admire his work for some time before going back into his bedroom for you. he'll be lifting you off the bed (bridal style yes really) and plopping you inside the pillow fort.
⋆ he'll disappear for some time in the kitchen and then return with a bowl of oatmeal (if it can even be considered oatmeal 😭) and a shot glass filled 3/4s of the way with medicine (shot glasses are the only thing eddie has that is remotely similar to medicine cups 😭). after a lot of bickering and thrashing between you two, he convinces you to eat all of the oatmeal and medicine.
⋆ he's humming to you and kissing your forehead once more, telling how good you're doing. he'll be humming your favorite song softly and clearly so you can catch every sound of it. sometimes he'll make a tune right on the spot that's dedicated and inspired by and for you. his thumb would be soothingly stroke your cheek, his hands will find its' way on your hair, playing with it.
⋆ it'll all be a repeated routine until your symptoms are frequently getting better and you're on your feet once again. until then, expect your boyfriend to be pampering you the entirety of your journey.
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