#apologies for the inappropriately lengthy response

[scriv3lloirl]

mr scriv3lloirl do you have any tips on drawing chubby orin 🙏🙏🙏

"Mr Scriv3lloirl"? Heh. Y'ur funny. But y'all can jus call me Orin (or Sen, I s'pose. But Orin is really preferred.)

I'll be yappin a whole ton, so check under the cut fer' the lengthy response I'm boutta givin ya.

I ain't the best at givin art advice or tips, so bear wit me if I end up talkin bout random shit.

I have Aphantasia, look it up if ya don't know what it is, so references are my one true love. My phone gallery is constantly full of art pose, tips n things I find online cus the way an artist drew or explained somethin was/is super helpful.

The biggest tip I can give is references.

I also tend t' use m'self as reference for how I draw Orin too! Cus the way I draw Orin is near identical t' my own endomorph/pear body type so it's real easy t' throw on a tight shirt n snap a picture or two of the pose I wanna draw Orin in, instead of scourin the damn interweb for a pose that's somewhat similar instead of exact.

Lookin at fanart helps too! Ya might have t' go diggin round for some fat Orin art, but I've found plenty here on Tumblr so it isn't impossible.

Usin only circles, I find, gives the body a bloated appearance instead of jus fat. Fat sags! so give it that gravity.

Ovals are better than circles anyway, but that doesnt mean they aren't useful. Jus don't use circles ev'rywhere on a body when shapin it out cus usin jus plain circles can seem inappropriate n fatphobic in a way or make the character look off. There are plen'y of other shapes t' use when drawin fat, plus size, or chubby characters.

You don't jus have t' use round shapes, but the reason why they are used so often is t' give a softer appearance.

Fat can be distributed in bodies differently everywhere, so again, references help tons!

My Orin has wide hips, big thighs n arms, smaller shoulders, fat tits. He's not meant t' be perceived as thin in any way, shape, or form. He's not meant t'be perceived as young either.

Eve'ytime I draw Orin, he's always intended t' be older as when Steve Martin played Orin in the movie, he was in his 40s, so now my version is middle-aged (38-42.) His age also plays a big part in his body type n how I draw it. He has wrinkles near his eyes n deep eyebags plus a few other things that give him a more longer face. All these older features can also play a part in his larger build. Which they do.

The little details are important. Don't flake out on drawin the lil squishes n rolls when skin touches. But don't over do it with the folds, it'll look.. well. Not good.

But you also don't wanna add too much detail at the same time, y'know?

I have more difficulty drawin fat in the face than in the rest of the body as I'm still learnin n practicin, so apologies for not bein able t' give as good advice there for ev'rythin else. One thing I can say, however, is when you draw the neck? Draw it thicker than you normally would.

Yea, so. I think that's it? This is all the advice n such I could think of, hopefully I didn't jus go in circles. Hope this helped a lil, Anon!!

TL;DR - Use a lot of references for fat bodies, n practice makes perfect.

[ani-soup]

Genshin Impact VA Caught Amid Allegations

Yet another scandal has rocked the voice acting community. Elliot Gindi, best known as the English voice of Tighnari in Genshin Impact, is facing allegations of sexual misconduct with fans. Earlier yesterday (2/8/23), fans were taken aback to find a lengthy apology for inappropriate conduct with fans, and now, the whole story is emerging online thanks to victim statements.

For those not in the know, Twitter user FretCore posted an in-depth Google Document (linked below) including statements from Gindi's alleged victims. Another user, Phiotan, released personal DMs and now-deleted Discord messages of the conversations, depicting an unsettling image. The user, who was one of Gindi's Twitch and Discord moderators, shared the info with permission from those involved with the voice actor.

Phiotan on Twitter: "So apparently people want screen recordings to make sure we aren't faking it, which is completely fair! I can offer at least this much. https://t.co/9E3jDy3eUV" / Twitter

Elliot Gindi - Google Docs (Beware – contains strong language!)

In response, Gindi posted a long-form apology owning up to most of the messages. The note, which can be read here, acknowledges the behavior was inappropriate though with a caveat. Gindi stresses he did not "knowingly" do anything with anyone underage or disrespect anyone's chosen pronouns. Allegations of such were laid out in the Google Doc shared to social media.

Many of his fellow voice actors have expressed outrage and disgust with his actions. Zach Aguilar, the voice of Tanjiro Kamado from Demon Slayer and the Male Traveler (Aether) in Genshin, wrote: “Disappointed and angry. I have removed the stream with Elliot and will no longer be associating with him. I refuse to give someone like this a platform in any way. To use your power this way over fans is disgusting and shameful. My heart goes out for the victims of this situation.”

Erika Harlacher, the voice of Venti, gave us her two cents: "Furious. Elliot Gindi has been removed from all group streams/activities I have any part in organizing moving forward. I'm... this is really triggering for me..."

Erika Harlacher-Stone on Twitter: "Furious. Elliot Gindi has been removed from all group streams/activities I have any part in organizing moving forward. I’m… this is really triggering for me…" / Twitter

Ashley Biski, the voice of Layla, also threw her ring in the hat, saying that she’s “not retweeting no damn “apology”. You’re sorry you got CAUGHT. So please seek help.”

Ashely Biski = Layla❄️✨ on Twitter: "And I’m not retweeting no damn “apology”. You’re sorry you got CAUGHT. So please seek help." / Twitter

At this time, no word has been given on how this development may impact Gindi's roles.

[dankusner]

District clerk may be suspended

Effort to remove Anderson proceeding in state court

A judge is considering the “extraordinary” removal of Hays County District Clerk Avrey Anderson, who was accused in court Tuesday of professional incompetence, negligence of official duties and fostering a hostile work environment.

Considering whether to temporarily suspend Anderson during proceedings for his permanent removal from office continue, Hays County state District Judge Amy Clark Meachum did not issue a ruling Tuesday that would allow for Anderson’s immediate suspension, but she emphasized a sense of urgency to see the situation rectified.

“I want to move on this case,” Meachum said. “I think we have a job to move, whatever side you’re on, and move with some amount of pace here to make sure we sufficiently reach the conclusion to this trial.”

Meachum, who expects an October trial on Anderson’s permanent removal to remain on the docket, said she hopes to issue a ruling on the temporary suspension within the next two weeks.

Anderson, who was elected at age 19 after defeating longtime Republican incumbent Beverly Cowan Crumley in 2022, faces a bevy of complaints over a continuing pattern of negligence in processing various legal filings the office is required to record and disperse.

Specifically, subpoenas have failed to be delivered while other documents have simply gone unaccounted for, Gregg Cox, Hays County first assistant district attorney, testified.

Cox recounted the ebbs and flows of the working relationship with Anderson, both the procedural problems that have been born out of inexperience and Anderson’s seeming unwillingness at times to learn.

“Our prosecutors and our investigators have had to adjust their processes and the timing in which they do things to allow enough time to make sure that the district clerk’s office gets their role performed and that it doesn’t interfere with the case,” Cox told the court, “particularly our investigators when it comes to the processing of subpoenas.”

Jury summons notices were also not being processed for a time, Cox said, leaving defendants, judges and trials without juries.

“We hit a stretch where we didn’t have any juries showing up,” Cox said. “Mr. Anderson did not seem aware that he needed to be doing that.”

Maximiliano Hernandez, a deputy clerk who would lead the district clerk’s office if Anderson were temporarily suspended, described a tense work environment brought by Anderson’s erratic behavior.

During a lengthy and emotional testimony, Hernandez expressed frustration over Anderson’s approach to leading the office, bursts of profane and threatening language, and an overall absence from the daily workflow.

“It’s frustrating that this is the third time I’ve had to testify about this administration,” Hernandez said. “Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing to have this case filed against our office.”

Testifying at the end of the nearly four-hour hearing, Anderson apologized for comments directed toward employees in the office as well as Hays County District Attorney Kelly Higgins, saying the outbursts were brought by “extreme frustration.”

“I’m not very emotionally intelligent sometimes, and I don’t want to make anyone feel bad. I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable,” Anderson testified. “And the response about Mr. Higgins was inappropriate. I regret saying that as well.”

Anderson and Higgins had an early tiff after taking office, as both were elected during the 2022 election cycle.

Anderson filed a complaint, which has since been retracted, to remove Higgins from office under a law passed by the Legislature last year to target and remove progressive “rogue prosecutors.”

Meanwhile, Higgins has not protested any calls for Anderson’s removal.

Higgins watched the Tuesday proceeding from the back of the courtroom, quietly laughing when Anderson’s comment in question, in which he said he wished Higgins would be hit by a bus, was being discussed.

Higgins declined to comment on the ongoing litigation, but said he was optimistic about a future outcome in the proceeding.

Pretrial status conferences are scheduled in August and September ahead of the trial on Anderson’s permanent removal in October.

“This is a request for extraordinary removal,” Meachum said.

“Removing an elected official from office when the voters have elected them is an august power and is something that no one should do lightly.”

“It’s frustrating that this is the third time I’ve had to testify about this administration. Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing to have this case filed against our office.”

Maximiliano Hernandez Deputy clerk

Hays County clerk resigns amid lawsuit to remove him from office

Hays County District Clerk Avrey Anderson has resigned from office amid a lawsuit seeking his removal.

Anderson, pictured here shortly after he was elected at age 19, narrowly beat a long-time incumbent to win the seat in 2022.

Avrey Anderson, the Hays County district clerk who was elected as a teenager and last fall tried to oust the county’s district attorney, has resigned from office.

The 21-year-old was facing a lawsuit that sought to remove him from office.

The suit accused him of failing to fulfill the duties of the clerk’s office, including issuing jury summons and subpoenas, sending protective orders to law enforcement and processing cases declined for prosecution, among others.

In his resignation letter, published by KUT, Anderson said dealing with the lawsuit “has been incredibly stressful” and “has taken a toll on my life to where I do not enjoy hardly anything anymore.”

He could not immediately be reached for comment Monday.

“I do not believe it is good for justice and the courts for me to continue in my role currently,” Anderson wrote in the letter.

“Perhaps one day I will be able to get back into the government sector but for now I believe it is best for the people of Hays County to have someone who hopefully attracts less negative attention to themselves.”

Anderson, a Dripping Springs resident, ran as a Democrat in 2022, beating Republican incumbent Beverly Crumley by about 1,900 votes, a margin of 2 percentage points. He spent no money on the campaign, and had no experience in the clerk’s office. Democrats swept the Hays County races that year, winning most offices on the countywide ballot.

“I will not slack off in this job description, and I will not be immature in my election win,” Anderson told the Express-News after his victory.

“I’m going to serve them best regardless of if they voted for me or not.”

Within the first year of his term, he was embroiled in a political fight with District Attorney Kelly Higgins, who was also elected that November.

Last September, about nine months after the two took office, Anderson filed a lawsuit attempting to remove Higgins.

In the suit, he cited a new state law targeting prosecutors who refuse to pursue certain types of crimes.

He alleged Higgins said he wouldn’t prosecute simple drug possession offenses or simple cannabis possession offenses and that he wouldn’t prosecute cases related to medical transition care for transgender minors or cases related to medical providers performing abortions, all of which are prohibited by state law.

In an interview after he filed the lawsuit, Anderson made clear that the case was personal.

He said he wanted to oust Higgins “because of a lot of issues that we’ve had,” accusing Higgins of talking down to, threatening and degrading people, including Anderson.

“I feel like his badge of office is worn as a badge of ego,” he said in September.

“The dude fixates on things and he just degrades people, that’s just how he is.”

Anderson dropped the suit shortly after filing it, citing requests from the public and members of the county Democratic Party.

But by the end of that month, he was facing a removal suit of his own, filed by Austin attorney Chloe Love.

Love, whose website says she represents property owners' associations, accused Anderson of incompetence and official misconduct.

She said Anderson on multiple instances failed to issue jury summons, forcing trials to be postponed.

At a hearing in February, after trials were postponed twice in January due to lack of juries, “it was discovered that while the defendant had been physically present for the training on how to ensure that jury summons were sent out, the defendant had not learned how to do so because he was asleep,” the lawsuit said.

The suit also alleges that Anderson failed to deliver grand jury indictments as required, resulting in “depriving defendants of the right to a 10-day notice of new indictments prior to trial,” and that he filed to send copies of protective orders to law enforcement agencies.

In one case, an order was issued on March 7, 2023, but when the protected person reported a violation to the San Marcos Police Department weeks later, the agency had no record of the protective order, according to the lawsuit.

Similar accusations were made about orders of civil commitment, which are used to mandate mental health treatment.

The suit alleges one person, who was in custody in Hays County, waited 210 days for Anderson’s office to process the order and obtain inpatient treatment.

Love also accused Anderson of failing at least five times to provide trial records to the appellate court, resulting in delays.

She also alleged he failed to process and report case activities to the Office of Court Administration and failed to process “hundreds, maybe thousands” of cases that are declined for prosecution.

Those people, whose charges have been dropped, had to remain on bond or under bond conditions until the clerk’s office processed the cases, the suit alleged.

The suit asked a judge to suspend Anderson without pay, to hold a jury trial and ultimately remove him from office.

In his resignation letter, Anderson acknowledged making errors, but said he was being targeted because of his age, and said his office has served the courts similarly to other counties.

“I do not believe I am incompetent in executing specific statutory duties. I have made mistakes, but I do not believe leaving will prevent these mistakes from occurring,” he wrote.

“Hopefully someone older than me will be given the benefit of the doubt.”

Anderson also said he believes he has worked to improve the clerk’s office, including automating processes such as the appellate clerk’s records and saving of hearing notices to cases upon creation.

He said he also attempted to automate sending notifications to attorneys and parties.

“These efforts will be halted by my resignation,” Anderson wrote, “but I am sure that another clerk can figure these things out.”

[undergroundsky]

Where do you think Seidou fits into the current Akira + Amon thing? Considering his arc is unresolved with both characters?

If there is anything that has the capacity of revealing the fallacy of their romance, Takizawa’s absence is more than likely it. Whereas many readers take the Amon and Akira relationship as an ostensible parallel to that of Kaneki and Touka, I’ve always seen it as uniquely isolated in various aspects, primarily owing to the gravity of Takizawa’s existence to them.

Amon’s myopic definition of atonement and justice propelled him to seek out Takizawa on Rushima as if to protect himself from his own departure from moral integrity. To succeed in ripping Takizawa from the jaws of complete corruption is to grant himself security in his emptiness, to realize that the light in the world hadn’t faded after all.

With Takizawa now out of sight and Kurona apparently having regained stability, Amon rapidly shifts his attention to Akira instead of chasing after them to speak as he was wont to prior to his arrival at Goat’s hideout. Like Kaneki, he juggles in his hands the lives of the people he believes he should be held responsible for; in an ironic twist, he himself ended up being saved in the lab infiltration mini-arc by the two people he fruitlessly ran around to save for years following his transformation. He can ill afford to relinquish his role as the vigilant martyr, for only in the redemption of his former comrades can he find his own. Of course, that includes Akira.

I think the conversations between Akira and Kaneki as of late are very telling of how she perceives the few she entrusted with as much intimacy as she could allow herself, how this—

—can also be interpreted as a reverberation of her underlying muddled feelings in regard to the contrast between the human “Takizawa Seidou” she was attached to and the ghoul “Owl” he has devolved into. No matter the substance of Takizawa’s thoughts and memories as they may now be, Akira wants to convince herself that such a person can’t be in her future because the investigator as she knew him did not survive the raid mission, the investigator as she knew him was not a homicidal traitor who could desecrate their organization and murder the superior he respected.

However, this is the same Akira that clings steadfast to the name of “First-Class Amon” and moves to kiss him for his words of solace when she most needed to hear them. He sympathizes with her pain. In these moments, Amon is as much a ghoul to her as “Sasaki Haise” was before. That she is a product of her environment notwithstanding, Akira not only views Amon as a vessel in which she must invest her desires, but as a sanctuary from the dissonance of the outside world she is due to face as a result of her interaction with Touka and Hinami.

Despite her scene with Amon, she clearly mentions that her hapless reliance on Haise was born of emotional exigency upon her loss of both Amon and Takizawa. Of the two, Akira establishes the former as the lone safe connection that fulfills her selfish nostalgia because he never scorned her, never pushed her away. But that doesn’t erase her sacrificial act of shielding Takizawa and what she said to him, and the events in this chapter would have no doubt played out differently had he stayed.

What if…back then…I had stopped you?

It might very well have been the guilt talking, but there is a reason for that, why her last memory of him was him turning his back to her and leaving her alone, just as he remembered her doing on countless occasions. They wasted so long walking away in turnfrom one another without getting anywhere but closer to lost.

What’s uncanny is their identical approach to withdrawing from Goat, the “I’m done with you, so you’re none of my business anymore” rationale as though they’re channeling this sentiment using Kaneki as a conduit. Tragic, how they somehow invent ways to grow further apart even when they are not sharing a space.

While her question is a heavy one that will probably never be answered, if there is a chance, it’s too soon because it demands genuine self-reflection. In fact, I think your theory on the current moon arc folds nicely into the plot with Amon and Akira — they’re ensnared in their recycled delusions, feeding off each other with no one to wake them. Takizawa’s reintroduction would signify the point of divergence into the conceivabledeath of their fantasy.

The rosary is a relic of Amon’s blissfully ignorant childhood, a chain of penitence originally given to him by Donato. In ridding himself of it, he seems to have forgotten about his old friend, as well as his anger for his foster father; that was him symbolically shifting his burdens onto Takizawa and fettering him to lucid reality in his stead. So Takizawa chose to run from Amon and Akira like an owl deserting its roost because he had made his peace with his identity and purpose, and he could no longer call them “home” insofar as he is to remain what he is. To him, this is the afterlife of his own elaborate construction, liberation from and mockery of his true self to the utmost degree.

Except Takizawa isn’t dead, not really. He’s a wanderer with only his shadow and a prayer for company, and the Oggai are out for the harvest. What with his line from the original series that appeared to foreshadow some sort of involvement with the Clowns (“Shit…I’m definitely on the clown course…”) and his possession of the rosary, I almost expect him to cross paths with Donato, which would inevitably deliver Amon back within grasp. Ideally, his returning the beads to Amon directly would trigger a domino effect of them gaining solemn clarity one at a time.

For Amon, to confront the man who raised and betrayed him is to stop idling and begin to come to terms with the fear and self-contempt that consumed him, to understand that his morals are his own; for all the admiration he has for the people precious to him, their lives, deaths, and salvation are not things he has to shoulder in penance for every child he let die at the orphanage. There is the plausibility that he will succumb to his terror for a while; Amon never figured out how to restrain his berserk state, and if this arc is mirroring the Anteiku raid, it would be satisfying to see a predecessor–successor battle parallel between Juuzou and kakuja-Amon as seen with Shinohara and Yoshimura. He vows to serve as Akira’s guiding light through her darkness, and this is not so much a lie as it is a shade of truth foretelling his role in her epiphany. As the person fueling her illusions, his release is the preeminently necessary step toward hers.

Akira is a capable strategist who can aid in Kaneki’s quest for equilibrium, but she opts to escape, mind thrown into disarray and unwilling to accept her place in the struggle. Violent hatred was her weapon that she doesn’t have anymore, thus she can’t fight, thus she turns to devote all of her being to its sheer opposite — love—at the quickest opportunity. She has yet to comprehend that people are more than simple manifestations of hate, love, emptiness. When she learns that she doesn’t have to lean on Amon for emotional and existential validation, that her heart has always belonged to her, she will be free to pay the same favor to Takizawa, to breach his barrier and pull him from despair: You don’t need me as a reason to live your life, to be who you are. Hero or not, you’re still you even after everything.

Letting go is a three-way process for them. It is also their conclusion. They fall two paces back for every one in defiance of reuniting with their forsaken selves, their sense of self that is an indispensable part of opening their eyes to absolute awareness. Takizawa is the one among them who is most self-determined, therefore the catalyst to get the reaction going. I thoroughly enjoy this trio in spite of this, because of this, because they need each other in order to be free of each other. Once the veil of fog lifts and forces them into sobriety from the corrosive cycle of deceit and self-deception, they’ll be able to see their vital lies for what they were — lies.

[silent-sanctum]

Jojos 1-5 as a Boy Group

author's note: now listen, given how funky these men are combined with my deep love for music (and a certain group of 7 men in said music field), my brain had a blast and this is what came out. Might be an au in the future. Might not. Who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

➢ Jonathan Joestar

leader

eldest member and first to audition in Speedwagon Entertainment

main vocalist

a versatile singer whose preferred vocal range is his speaking voice or higher

but can sing low notes… at times

gentle giant who has clumsy tendencies

he's most often clumsy with equipment around him, accidentally breaks some of it because of his strength, and will most definitely apologize for doing so

can play the piano well

the spokesperson of the group in any occasion with the patience of a monk

will get distracted by the smallest of things like a butterfly, a small pet, the elderly, or anything smaller than him which is almost everything

will also join in on Joseph's bullshit for fun (as long as it's not hurting anyone)

chef no. 1 who specializes in European cuisine

loves his members with all his heart and will protect his babies with all his might

has a photo of everyone and keeps multiple collections of them

"this is Joseph and he's a wild fellow, this is Jotaro and he's a grouch but he's a great guy-"

➢ Joseph Joestar

main dancer who specializes in freestyling and street dancing

also main rapper with some sick bars up his sleeves

also also comes up with creative dance choreographies for the group

auditioned for fun and ended up enjoying his stay in the group

the most energetic member of the group

meaning he will create and choose chaos 90% of the time

flirty as fuck with the fans: He will wink, send kisses, hold hands, and participate in fanservice more than the others

but also the same person who will outright deny fans' marriage proposals to him

proclaims to be adonis incarnate 24/7

walks into a spooky situation with a confidence of a lion, only to slowly turn unnerved and spooked along the way

a man who's first response to a sudden jumpscare is to scream and "NIGERUNDAYOOOO"

the ice breaker when interviews become dull and tedious

will crack inappropriate jokes at random

person with the most memes made by fans

not a chef but will recommend eating some New York classics

will explode into a lengthy rant if anything upsets him

will find ways to cheat in any game variety shows will put him in

➢ Jotaro Kujo

leader 2

and yes, he had to play the role of vice because Joseph was too chaotic to be Jonathan's second

interchanges or shares the leadership role during more serious or formal interviews or events

but mostly lets Jonathan take the wheel because being a parent to grown men is exhausting

did not audition but was casted by the company, and joined because supportive mother Holly and musician father Sadao insisted

center of the group: Can sing using chest voice and slightly-higher speaking voice, can dance if required, and can sub as a rapper in case Joseph is unavailable

also visual of the group who draws in new fans and maintain old ones

definitely complained to Speedwagon why the hell he got so many roles

one of the more quiet ones of the bunch; helps build his mysterious aura among their fanbase

will try to calm down the members when chaos ensues but is often done with the group 80% of the time

chef no. 2 who specializes in Japanese cuisine

does not comply with fanservice… at all, but when he does a little bit, both the group and their fans scream and go ballistic

a cute sneeze, him removing his jacket, a smile = The ladies (and gents 'cause we're all equal) quaking in their panties/undies.

despite his resting bitch face, he's surprisingly soft and mild-mannered when talking to fans during fan meets; will show irritation with the more obsessive ones though

whenever he checks his feed, it's just full of "marry me" comments from the fans

during concerts, will see the same thing on the fan-made signs of the crowd

just accepted his fate at this point; but is very flattered though

➢ Josuke Higashitaka

lead dancer and lead rapper

essentially Joseph Jr. literally

but tamer

auditioned because he wanted some money; did not expect to be fully invested with the group

the most carefree member of the group and has slacking-off tendencies

has a skincare routine he refuses to share

"sorry I'm late, my hair was not cooperating with me today"

the most chatty and most friendly among the members when it comes to fan interactions

will also do the most fanservice with the fans and will engage in any requests as long it's harmless

the scaredy-cat of the group

the most jumpy in a scary supernatural situation- will scream the loudest and will astral project out of his body if spooked hard enough

can pull out an angry tantrum if someone in the group pokes fun of his awesome pompadour; will be pout and be grumpy if the fans do it

"you just broke my heart, you know that? you know my hair is cool, right?"

since he can get bored easy when not busy, he prefers to be in entertaining locations like amusement parks or gaming cafes

will engage with fans online and be on the forums all the time to respond to questions

➢ Giorno Giovanna

Lead singer who sings in italics

casted on the streets by the company when he was seen busking by one giant softie

is often seen hanging out with Jonathan as a result

but can sometimes be seen being dragged to places by Josuke

can play both the piano and the violin

relatively quiet and shy as the youngest of the group

though he does want the group to succeed so he does his best and learn from everyone

found the guy to be strangely wise so he seeks Jotaro for advice and mentoring; went home with good advice and lessons

lowkey mischievous and a bit of a klepto; will get the other member's stuff and only pay back when noticed

Josuke being the primary target and Joseph being the second

Can't steal from Jonathan

Doesn't dare steal from Jotaro

will participate in Joseph's and Josuke's shenanigans to some extent

seen as the pretty boy of the group

will talk to the fans with aristocratic mannerisms and a sweet voice; often watched by Jonathan or Jotaro to make sure he doesn't steal from their fans by accident

[funkymbtifiction]

hi charity, how are you? can i ask you a specific question about INFP and the enneagram 9? i’m still questioning my enneagram and i want to know what is the difference between an INFP 9w1 in te-grip and a healthy INFP 9w8 and their relationship with anger and confrontation with other people. for example being passive-aggressive after an argument (like: “i stop talking to you and start making some sarcastic comments against you when we are with other people until the anger passes and you apologize to me) is more of a 9w1 or 9w8 thing? and other things like that. i already read the type 9 and its wings in your blog and i see myself a lot in both so i would like to know if maybe being in te-grip could make a 9w1 look like a 9w8

Luckily, I know one of each and we've had lengthy discussions about INFP 9 from the "inside." Maybe some of this will be helpful. :)

The INFP 9w1 has a strong tendency toward super-ego 1-based thinking; she says that she often feels critical of herself and others, she struggles with perfectionism, she has a rigidity in terms of right/wrong, and if she loses her temper and lets someone have it, she feels guilt because doing that is bad behavior (her 1 is telling her that "good people don't get angry/show their anger" and as a 9w1, that means "suppressing my feelings for the good of everyone involved"). She is also more amenable to outside opinions; she says unless she goes away to be alone and self-consult, and puts some distance between other people and her responses, she's afraid that their opinion will over-influence hers, because 9w1 is more malleable than 9w8. She is very aware of being angry a lot, but feels like it's something she needs to overcome and 'grow out of' (again, 1 self-criticism -- anger is bad/undesirable, get rid of it!).

The INFP 9w8 is angry almost all the time, but has no super-ego telling her that anger is bad or inappropriate; it's how she feels, and she can sit with it. She honestly doesn't care what other people do with their lives, and has no 1ish tendency to criticize or judge them -- her attitude is 'what others do is none of my business, unless it impacts me, and then I am angry about that." IF/when she suppresses her anger, it's to avoid conflict and not because she sees anger as bad. To her, it's power, a way to assert herself and establish boundaries, and keep others from upsetting her. She has an instant, automatic tendency to shut down things she doesn't like, by saying the conversation is over, and clamming up. Nor does she feel as open to "maybe" as the 9w1 -- the 9w1 can see both sides, and will agree with things even if she isn't sure, the 9w8 won't see both sides (Fi/8 has a black and white "right or wrong according to me, no exceptions" mentality that shadows the 9) or agree if she disagrees.

Your stacking is also important -- if you are an social dom 9, you should see social 1 or social 8 behaviors in you as well, etc.

Regarding Te grips... an INFP in Te can be blunt, confrontational, authoritative, and angry about other people's incompetence, but a plain old 9w8 INFP is still making decisions with FiNeSiTe. All the functions are in play most of the time. In a grip, you've lost yourself.

[asubsdarkthoughts]

A note I’ll never send:

Day 1:

I just want to apologize for how I reacted. I overreacted, which was completely inappropriate.

Communication is what makes this work. Communication is a two-way street. You communicated you needed space, which I would like to point out that you did not provide a reason to why you needed your space. A family emergency is a completely valid reason to need space. But that was not communicated until this morning when you called me.

Since a reason to why you needed space was not communicated, I began to create reasons in my head as to why you needed your space. My minds a dark place. My anxiety causes my thoughts to spiral. So I spiraled out of control. It is something I am actively working on in therapy to control. I know I have a problem, and I’m working on fixing it so I can have healthy relationships moving forward in my life.

I have attachment issues and abandonment issues. I can attach myself to people very quickly, especially if I trust them. Then I become co-dependent on them to fulfill my needs. My emotional needs. I am fulfilled when I am of service to others, when I help others. I also need constant reassurance that I am needed, that I am wanted, that I am loved. As well as numerous other issues I can list out. That’s one of the reasons why a D/s relationship is appealing to me.

I’m a mess, I need structure. I’m out of control, I need someone to control me. Hold me down. Keep me sane. Calm my racing thoughts. And that’s what your dominance does for me. It calms me. I don’t have to think anymore. I don’t have to make decisions. You make the decisions. You tell me what to do. You take control so I don’t have to. Because let’s face it, I’m not the best at having control.

Because I have a tendency to be codependent I internalize other peoples behaviors and words. So when you stop responding to me, or tell me that you need space, what I begin to think is that you no longer need me. I think that I’m not good enough for you. I think that you’re ending things. I think that you don’t want to be in my life anymore. I think that there was something I did that made you need space. I think that I fucked up. I think that I opened up too much and I scared you away. I think that it’s all my fault.

Hence the lengthy emotionally charged, deeply insecure message I sent. I woke up, hungover from drinking way too much the night before. I went out and tried to find strength at the bottom of the bottle, but instead I found myself on the floor throwing up. I felt abandoned. My anxiety started building. All the questions in my head left unanswered. Why do you need space? What is going on? Why won’t you talk to me? Why can’t I help?

Then my insecurities kicked in and I was like why are you doing this to me? Because codependent people internalize others actions and self-criticize themselves which lowers our self-esteem. But you didn’t do any of that. That was all me, that was all in my head. And that’s what I am working on in therapy to stop doing. Stop internalizing. Stop blaming myself. Stop overthinking. Stop exaggerating. Stop turning small things into big things.

This relationship with you is helping me with all of that. Although you’re in control, I am becoming more independent - emotionally. Or at least I’m trying.

You’re unable to provide the emotional support I need, or rather what I want. I want more emotionally support than I need - because I’m codependent. I’m essentially trying to train myself to be less codependent on others to fulfill my emotional needs. You cannot fulfill them, therefore I am training myself to not need seek it from you. Now, that’s not to say I don’t want you to be there for me when I need you. Because your presence calms me. All you provide me with is all I need from you. Because it fills this other need. The subspace.

I should have respected your space. I shouldn’t have pushed. But my insecurities got the best of me. I kept trying to push them down but they slipped past my lips and through my fingertips where I expressed them in a very inappropriate manner. I am ashamed of the way I reacted when you communicated a need to me and I failed to respect that. I hope you can forgive me.

Typically when people tell me they need space, they leave me. I never understood why. I was always left trying to deal with my insecurities and emotions and I just never learned how to process those feelings in a healthy manner.

I stay with people I shouldn’t be with because I am afraid of being alone. I’ve been hurt and left so many times so I put up walls to protect myself. When I let those walls down, when I let people in, I become very vulnerable. When people I let it begin to drift, pull away, leave, etc. I freak out. Because my reasoning is: I let another person in and they hurt me. Everyone is just going to hurt me. Everyone is going to leave me. I get all these negative thought distortions. My therapist actually called me out on it. I told her everyone leaves me. Well, that’s not a truthful statement at all. Not everyone leaves. There’s a lot of people who are still in my life, people who Qi have been in my life for years. But because I was adopted, my birth parents “left me”. My dad “left” when my parents got divorced, but he never left me. My mom “left” for months at a time every year to go to Portugal. So I internalize that. So I create these thought distortions that everyone’s going to leave me. So when you said you needed space, the way I process information in my brain is “oh, he’s leaving me.” Then the spiral of negative thought distortions begin.

When you said you needed space without providing me with a reason, I’m left to make up my own. When I ask if you’re still my Dom and you don’t reply. I’m left to believe you no longer want to be my Dom. So I spiral, and I don’t stop. I tried to drown the thoughts out with alcohol. That didn’t work. I got so drunk I embarrassed myself. I had to have my best friend come pick me up and drive me home because I was so impaired I couldn’t make it home myself. And that’s MY fault. And I’m working on not resorting to coping that way. Next time I won’t react like that. Next time I won’t go out and get wasted. Next time I’ll stay home and journal, next time I’ll get really high and paint. Next time I’ll call my friends up. Next time I’ll utilize healthier coping strategies and also next time I will work harder to fight off these negative thought distortions.

Day 2:

My therapist gave me an assessment this morning. The results stated there is a high probability that I have borderline personality disorder. Fuck. It all makes sense now. Especially the way I reacted.

Day fuck yoou

I was vulnerable with you. I trusted you. The trust has been broken. You broke it. I don’t know what you will need to do to gain it back. Knowing myself you just need to say sorry and I will get down on my knees. Because you ensnared me in your trap. You reached into my chest and ripped out my soul. I presented it to you, and you tossed it on the ground, like it was garbage.

Change needs to occur for this to work. I don’t think you’ll be able to provide that. You wrapped me up in the mess that encapsulates your life.

Right now I need someone who I can give complete control to. If you cannot handle that responsibility then I can no longer call you my dom.

I will always care about you. You have a special place in my heart and I will probably always do anything you ask me to do for you, because I will always give you control. Because you mesmerize me. You always will.

But I need more. I’m hurting. I’m in so much pain. And I need to heal. I need to do what is best for me. If you can be a positive person in my life, if you can be supportive, than i can keep you. If you cannot provide any substance to my life than I can not keep you here. I need positive people. I am riding myself of all issues, anxiety.

Decide what you want. Communicate it. If you don’t want me then let’s be friends — in a couple months. Hahah, cuz I don’t like yoou right now. I need to hate you to get over you. Hating yoou is easier than heartbreak.

Day 3:

You can’t handle my submission. Or rather, should I ask you? Can you handle the gift of my submission?

You get the weekend you figure it out. After that I will make the decision.

I miss you so much I just want to hate you. Not talking to you is eating up inside

I just want to sit in your lap and have the whole world around me disappear. Because I’m your arms I am safe. In your presence no one will hurt me.

I would like to think that you’ll always care about me. I fantasize running into you at the bar. I’ll have moved on at that point. And you’ll be watching me, as I make my way across the room, and we’ll smile and maybe exchange words. I like to imagine the thoughts racing through your head at that moment. About how much you miss me, how much you want me. I like to imagine that inside you’re slowly dying because you realize you let the best thing ever just walk away. How you fucked it all up. Because honey, I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not my fault.

With love,

K.Sway

[stuckonstarker]

the importance of family

TW: Incest, Implied Underage (age unspecified),  Slight Dub-Con

@taestarker3000 this ones for u boo 😘

Tony figures it’s time to give his fresh-faced son the talk. Peter is fairly awkward and shy about anything he deems inappropriate, but apparently his curiosity trumps all because his first question is:

“What if I want to give my boyfriend a blowjob?”

Tony's mouth opens in pure shock. There's no way his little boy just asked him that. And there’s not a snowflake’s chance in hell Peter’s giving anyone a blowjob .

Tony shakes his head, “You’re too young.”

“Pretty hypocritical for you to tell me that,” Peter mumbles.

“Excuse me?” Tony says, eyes darkening. He will not have Peter disagree with him on this topic. 

Peter shakes his head, knowing a useless fight when he sees one, “Nothing, daddy.”

“No,” Tony says, “tell me what you think.”

“It’s really nothing, daddy,” Peter whispers, all his previous sass sapped away. He looks delectable with his thick-rimmed glasses and oversized sweater. God, the fabric swallows his lithe frame. The poor boy looks emaciated unless he devours a whole buffet.

Tony takes a moment to examine Peter - which is obviously making the younger Stark uncomfortable. Tony knows he should drop it. Peter’s old enough, and mature enough, to make responsible decisions. He isn’t a little kid Tony gets to boss around anymore, but when did Tony ever care about doing the ‘right’ thing?

Peter squirms under Tony’s harsh scrutiny. His face is getting hotter and hotter by the second along with his regret for asking about a blowjob of all things.

Tony laughs, a wolfish grin spread on his face, “You’re a little piece of jailbait, Pete. I know guys who’d eat you from the inside out.”

Peter gawks. He opens his mouth and flounders to find his voice: “...What?”

“Right,” Tony says with a taunting laugh, “like all the little-dicked boys at school don’t chase your twink ass twenty-four-seven.”

Tony shakes his head; it’s patronizing, like he’s talking to a child about something that’s obvious to everyone else. He presses a sickly soft kiss to Peter’s temple.

“You’re so sweet, Pete,” Tony whispers. Peter can feel his dad’s hot breath on his forehead.

He nods, unable to voice how he feels. There’s a rush of warm arousal traveling straight to his dick and he can hardly focus on anything. Every second his dick is trapped in his pants is another second he’s losing his mind.

Tony sighs, “Why did you ask about such a vulgar thing then?”

“I was just curious,” Peter whispers, averting eye contact like his life depends on it.

“So you expect me to believe that you asked about a blowjob because you were curious and not because you have some little boytoy waiting to get his fix of a dumb, young twink’s mouth?” Tony asks, like it’s the craziest thing in the world.

Peter flinches at the word dumb.

“All I’m saying, Pete,” Tony continues, “you’re asking a little too much from me.”

Peter hates the thought that his dad might think less of him. Hates the thought that he might not be good enough.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Peter says, trying to reassure his father, “I’ve never been kissed. And… I - uh - never… I’ve never been with-”

“You’ve never been fucked?” Tony asks.

Peter squeaks, “Yes.”

“Good,” Tony says.

He pushes his son onto the bed. A horrified realization seems to hit Peter as Tony towers above him.

“What’s happening?” He asks, gawking.

Tony says, “Take off your shirt.”

“What?” Peter asks.

“Take off your shirt, since you’re so fucking curious about sex,” Tony says.

Peter shakes his head, “I-I… I didn’t want this-”

“Too bad,” Tony cuts him off harshly, “this is the sex ed you’re getting, kiddo.”

Normally, Peter would tell his dad not to call him kiddo, but they’ve gone way past normality at this point.

“What if it hurts me?” Peter asks. There’s a meekness in his voice that tugs at Tony’s heart and even makes him consider stopping. Consider.

Tony sighs, “Do you really have such little faith in me?”

“Well, you are being really weird right now, daddy,” Peter says.

“I promise,” Tony says, “that my special boy will feel good.”

Peter pauses, “Promise?”

“Swear on it,” Tony confirms.

Peter takes a moment - like his decision will really matter to Tony in the end - and says, “Okay.”

Peter feels like he’s overheating while his stomach does flips. It really feels like he’s having an out-of-body experience. He must be hallucinating or something because there’s no way that this is happening right now. 

Peter slowly removes his shirt, eyeing Tony like prey staring in the eyes of a predator. His face is flushed soft pink and he can’t help but shiver as the air hits his suddenly bare torso. Luckily, his humiliation makes a good heater as his face, neck and shoulders begin warming. 

Tony yanks Peter’s loose jeans off, followed soon after by the young man’s boxers.

Peter goes to cover himself, only to be stopped by Tony. 

“Keep your hands here, unless you want to be punished,” Tony says.

Peter nods, allowing his wrists to rest above his head. He doesn’t want to make his dad more upset than he already is.

Tony smiles at Peter’s obedience. Such a trusting boy.

He takes a moment to admire Peter’s soft, porcelain skin that’s only marked by freckles. That’s going to change today. He leans down and presses soft kisses on Peter’s thighs to start.

Even the featherlight feeling of Tony’s lips makes Peter mewl. Every slight motion sends small sparks running up and down Peter’s body like pinpricks. Tony begins nipping and sucking on Peter’s inner thighs and it sends a rush of warm arousal flooding to Peter’s abdomen. 

Peter’s hips buck up, but Tony’s quick to hold them down.

“Dad,” Peter whispers.

Tony chides, “Don’t be a brat.”

Peter’s soft whimpers of want sends delicious delight through Tony’s veins. He can’t help how his calloused hands run along Peter’s hips and stomach. He loves groping every inch of Peter’s soft skin, memorizing every single detail for later.

Tony looks at his young son’s cock. It’s small - adorable, much like everything about his son - and flushed, perfect and exactly what Tony had imagined.

Peter's face heats up again. Tony nips gently at Peter's sides. Peter squeaks and pulls away. 

“That tickles,” Peter complains.

Tony smiles, “My apologies.”

Tony continues running his hands all along Peter’s perfectly sensitive body. Such a cute little virgin, he could be trained into the perfect cockslut with enough determination. Tony could probably spend all day groping Peter’s sweet body, but he has a bigger goal in mind.

Peter watches in awe as Tony frees his own cock. It’s considerably bigger than Peter’s and it's surrounded by a bush of thick, black pubic hair. Peter feels his face heat, suddenly aware of how his own size lacks.

“Have you ever seen another man’s cock before?” Tony asks.

Peter shakes his head.

“Don’t lie to me,” Tony snaps, “I see all the filthy shit you look up, Pete, all the porn you get off to. There’s some very questionable shit in there, hon, I didn’t think I raised you to be such a little slut, but I can work with it.”

Peter isn’t sure he can be more humiliated. All he can do is nod shakily and obey whatever his father says next. 

“Get on your knees,” Tony says.

Peter does as told, a sharp gasp jumping from his throat as he sees the thick, lengthy, veiny cock in all its glory. It has a heady musk. A loud voice in Peter’s head urges him to put his mouth on it. He wants to choke on the thick cock so intensely it actually scares him.

“Open your mouth.”

Tony barely gets the first syllable out before Peter’s eagerly opening his mouth like some whore. Tony groans, if he had known his son was such a little slut then he wouldn’t have waited this long.  

Tony begins, “Keep your throat relaxed. I know that might be hard for you. And watch the teeth.”

Peter nods, trying to follow his father’s advice to the best of his ability.

The tip of Tony’s cock slowly breaches Peter’s mouth. It feels indescribable for both parties. The warm, wet cavern of his son’s virgin mouth almost making Tony lose his self-control. Every slight movement sends a warm rush of lust through Tony and it takes every fraying piece of self-restraint not to brutally fuck his son’s mouth.

Peter can hardly even take the first few inches of his dad’s thick cock. It’s overwhelming, every single detail burning into his brain like an iron branding. The feeling of the dick twitching in his mouth, how it smells musky and overwhelmingly perfect. His mouth is just so stuffed with cock, it’s making his brain malfunction.

For a brief moment, he truly believes this is what he’s always been made for.

Tony admires how beautiful Peter looks. He is a virgin with no experience whatsoever, so it’s understandable that the poor boy can’t fit the whole length in his mouth yet. But the pitiful thing sure is trying.

There’s a soft pink flush that paints Peter’s face while tears prick at the corners of his eyes. There’s some drool leaking from the poor boy’s pretty pink lips. He looks absolutely debauched and Tony can’t get enough of it. 

“Do you realize how gorgeous you look?” Tony groans, “Mouth stuffed full of my cock… I know you love it. This is exactly what you’re slutty little body was made for.”

Peter moans around the dick stretching his jaw.

Tony smiles, “Good boy. You know what a dirty slut you are, don’t you?”

Peter gives the smallest nod.

Tony laughs and pets Peter’s hair encouragingly.

Peter begins bobbing his head on the cock that stuffs his mouth. He hollows out his cheeks as he slowly takes the whole dick. He can’t possibly take the whole cock, being his first time and all, but he’s certainly going to try.

Tony’s head lolls back, eyes screwing shut. He groans through gritted teeth. The warm, wet pleasure his son’s mouth provides is truly sinful. A salacious desire blooms throughout Tony’s abdomen. 

He holds Peter’s brown curls in a knuckle-whitening grip. He’s fighting against his instincts, he wants so desperately to force fuck his babyboy’s throat. 

It’s quite obvious Peter’s inexperienced, but that doesn’t make him bad by any stretch of the imagination. His enthusiasm more than makes up for it. He desperately swallows Tony’s cock, gagging on it and taking it like the perfect little slut. 

Peter gags as the tip of the dick hits the back of his throat. Tony holds Peter so that he can’t pull away from the cock choking him.

Peter can’t say that he minds.

The cock is thick inside of his mouth, his jaw strains around it. It aches, he must admit, but he loves it either way. He looks up as he continues to take the cock in his mouth

The wet warmth of Peter’s mouth sends electric pleasure surging through Tony. Peter’s soft hand rubbing him to completion. There’s a tight knot forming in the bottom of Tony’s stomach; a harsh discomfort screaming at him to cum.

But, Tony has bigger plans than cumming on his son’s face. 

“Okay,” Tony exhales, “that’s enough, baby boy, get on the bed.”

Peter stays on his knees for a moment with wide, confused eyes. He looks so sweet. And so dumb.

Tony laughs, “I’m not feeding you my cum today, baby, we’ve got other things to do.”

 Peter nods and stands up. His legs are shaky like a newborn fawn. The bedsheets are cool to the touch and work to soothe Peter’s overheating body. 

Tony’s eyes are dark; nothing like the loving father he had been just an hour earlier. There’s a dangerous, predatory darkness that seems to lurk just beneath the surface of his soul. Something about the danger makes Peter reel with want.

“Daddy,” he whispers reverently.

 Tony smiles, it’s sharklike, “Yes, baby?”

Peter pauses. He isn’t sure why he called for his father in the first place. There’s a dim want buzzing underneath his skin. His eyes trickle down to Tony’s cock.

“Does my little slut want his daddy’s cock?” Tony asks.

Peter nods, “Yes.”

Tony laughs and gently caresses Peter’s face for a moment. Peter’s body is overrun with shivers, there’s something so intimate about what his father is doing that it almost makes Peter gag.

Tony’s wolfish smile doesn’t leave his face. He manhandles Peter, maneuvering him to be face down ass up.

A loud debate erupts within Peter. Two halves of the same coin; one yelling that this is wrong and the other arguing this is what they need. Peter himself is at a loss. Every inch of his body seems to be alight with want, but there’s also a sick nausea - he’s so exposed to his own father of all people.

Before he can fully make up his mind, Tony’s calloused hand is running down Peter’s spine, goosebumps trailing close behind. The buzzing want grows into pleasured pinpricks wherever his father’s hand lands.

“I’m scared…” Peter whispers so close to silently that he isn’t even sure if he said it or not.

Tony says, voice gentle, “You’ll be okay, baby. I promise. Your daddy would never hurt you, would he?”

Peter looks over his shoulder. Tony’s eyes are gentle, filled with sweet promises.

“My daddy would never hurt me,” Peter echos.

Tony smiles, “Good.”  

Peter’s dick is impossibly hard between his legs. He’s aching for some relief, no matter what kind. There’s a heavy want that rests in the pit of his stomach. The longer he goes without his father’s touch the more he realizes he depends on it.

Tony presses a lubed up finger against his boy’s tight entrance. Peter’s walls cling tightly to the finger. Tony could cum even from imagining shoving his cock into Peter’s tight ass. 

Slowly spreading Peter open only serves to rile Tony up more. Even can hardly even think past the fog of his lust. Peter’s ass looks perfect taking his daddy’s fingers, spreading his legs and arching his back like some whore. Peter’s always had a nice, firm ass.

Tony spanks him lightly with his other hand, just to watch the way his ass bounces.

Peter moans distantly. The fingers feel awkward, but they do send sparks of pleasure rushing through him occasionally.

After sufficiently prepping Peter - or, in other words, after Tony’s patience had fully snapped - Tony allows himself to rub his aching cock between the flushed cheeks of Peter’s bottom.

Peter mewls, looking back at his dad. His hips roll, desperate for more. He wants more, even if he can’t handle more - especially if he can’t handle more.

“You want me to fuck you, baby?” Tony asks, “Huh? You want this cock to ruin you?”

Peter makes an affirmative noise.

Tony smiles, “Too dumb to speak?”

Peter nods frantically. He spreads his legs. The low buzzing beneath his skin turning into a roaring wildfire. His body is overheating. He needs and he needs it now.

Tony pushes his tip in, not wanting to rush. The sight is one to behold. Peter flushed, already aching with want - ready to take anything his daddy is willing to give. His eyes go from being impossibly wide to screwed shut and his mouth is open in a perpetual ‘o’.

The tip stretches Peter nicely; his father’s impressive girth not disappointing. Tony pushes his cock deeper into Peter - watching in awe as his son’s tight body swallows his cock.

Pleasure rockets up Peter’s spine and he lets out a desperate cry. The thick cock rubs up against a perfectly sensitive spot and it refuses to relent. Peter can feel every vein in his body being bombarded with fiery lust, every inch of his body being covered in an unholy blanket of want.

“Please,” Peter whispers, tides of desire overtaking his mind, “please, daddy, please.”

Peter can feel every inch of the massive cock filling him up and taking his virginity. It’s making him sore in the best possible way. His mind and body spark alive with electric pleasure; it rockets up his spine and runs through his limbs. 

The sudden surge of pleasure makes Peter’s eyes water. It’s just too good. It feels like every inch of the cock that enters him only serves to push him further into his sinful desires. Tony’s cock rubs against every sensitive spot in Peter and stretches him so perfectly.

Peter moans and begins rolling his hips backward, trying to get more of that perfect dick deep inside him. He can feel Tony holding his hips, guiding him and allowing him to take every inch of that amazing cock.  

“Daddy,” Peter whines.

It’s too good to contain. Peter can feel it all, the way the cock stretches him and strains against his walls. He can feel how the tip of the cock relentlessly rubs against his sensitive spots, making him desperate for more.

The moment his father is fully sheathed inside him is one Peter will never forget.

Peter makes a strangled noise. There’s something so delightful about being spread open and taken. Something deep within him coming to light. An unexpected fulfillment. He feels so good that it aches. He never knew something could feel so right.

“Please,” he whispers through the fog of lust that’s overtaken his mind.

Tony groans. Peter’s walls cling around his cock so tightly… The feeling is indescribable. He pulls out and, with a sharp snap of his hips, thrusts back into Peter - provoking a yelp from his son. The pleasure is so overwhelming, he grits his teeth. 

Tony starts fucking Peter with a rough pace. His cock slams into Peter’s tight ass over and over again, ripping the boy’s innocence from him.

Peter moans. He feels detached from his body. Like he’s floating in the sky amongst the clouds. Bliss blooms in his abdomen, like a flower sprouting from the ground.

There’s a tight pressure that’s beginning to form in both of them. Peter can feel every slight movement of Tony’s cock rubbing against him. It’s too mind-numbing. It hurts… But Peter can’t say that he wants it to end.

Peter’s breath is being stolen from him. His body strains against the thick cock fucking into him. Every snap of Tony’s hips sends another wave of painful lust through Peter’s body.

Peter’s eyes are screwed shut. He bites his lip in a vain attempt to restrict his whorish moans for more.

Tony forces Peter to take every agonizing inch of his massive cock, stretching the poor boy beyond his limits. It hurts in a way that makes Peter’s body light up with pleasure, it screams under his skin and takes over his mind. His legs are spread open, his body presented to his dad like little more than a fuckhole.

Peter cries into the pillow. His hands cling to the bedspread. He looks a mess, hair clinging to his sweat-sodden forehead, his eyes watering with unwept tears, his lips red and soaked in saliva.

He can only focus on the dick slamming into him. It feels too perfect to be real, too good to be wrong. It’s all overwhelming. The head of Tony’s cock relentlessly rubs against every sensitive spot inside of Peter’s body. It sends lightning strikes of pleasure coursing through Peter’s veins. 

“You look so sweet-” Tony groans into Peter’s ear, “-so sweet and just for me.”

Peter can only nod as he barely registers the words.

Desperate pleasured cries are ripped from Peter’s throat. Liquid fire pools in his abdomen, pleasure blooming deep inside of him. He’s uncomfortably hot, his breath comes out in strangled moans and pained pants of pleasure.

Tony has a hand on Peter’s hip, holding onto him so tightly that it’ll surely leave a bruise. Fucking Peter feels like a religious experience. Tony’s never felt something so overwhelming. Peter’s so tight and wet and warm. He’s daddy’s perfect boy.

It’s all so much - too much. Tony’s thrusts are sharp and hard and they hit that perfect spot in Peter every single time. It’s mind-numbing. 

Peter spreads his legs, wholly unaware of what he’s actually doing. He claws at the sheets. He’s sent reeling forward with every rough thrust. His brows furrow, every muscle in his body tightens. He aches for his finish. He can feel his end so close yet so far away. It’s too good, so good. He cries loud and desperate.

“Please, please, please,” Peter repeats like it’s the only word he knows.

It’s so good he’s choking on it. The waves of lust inundate him, he feels like he’s drowning. His dad holds him in place - it’s cathartically rough. Peter whines, his vision is blurred and his words are slurred. He rolls his hips backward, deliriously trying to meet his father’s rough-paced fucking.  

Peter continues to beg, “Please, please, please.”

He can’t get enough of it, but he can’t handle more. The pleasure is gathering, tightening into a small ball of want deep in his stomach. His body aches, tightens, begs for release.

He’s losing his mind. When his hysterical pleas die down his mouth remains open in a silent scream. He tightens his grip on the blanket. Euphoria rushes throughout him, it’s hot and raw and real..

He’s so painfully hard, but he can hardly focus on that. There’s an endless onslaught of pleasure and pain assaulting him at every turn. Peter makes a strangled noise and screws his eyes shut again. He grits his teeth, every overwhelming sensation attacking him at once.

Peter’s convinced he’s in heaven. There’s no way anything could feel better than this. Than Tony’s cock fucking into him, spreading him open and taking him. Tony’s thrusts are rough and carelessly perfect, it sends Peter’s mind spinning.

It’s humiliating how satisfying it is to be used as little more than a sex doll. Peter tugs at the blankets, biting his lips in a desperate attempt to restrain his pleas for more. It’s all so overpowering, he can feel every movement, every single thing. It’s all so perfect.

Peter’s hips roll backward in a frenzied attempt to meet his dad’s cock. He doesn’t care how desperate he seems, he is desperate for his dad’s cock.

He can hear Tony’s groans of pleasure above him. It sends a flood of warmth throughout Peter’s body. He lets out an aborted plea for more as the coil of need in his abdomen tightens. He feels desperate for more, desperate for it to end.

More. More. More.

Peter cries, “Please!”

“I’m going to come inside you,” Tony says, voice husky, “make you all mine. Ruin you for anyone else.”

Peter nods frantically. That’s exactly what he wants. He can feel it. Being fucked harder and harder, making him dumber and dumber.

It’s all so much, all so little, all at the same time. He collapses fully into the sheets. His body tightens. He aches for more. He can feel his father pressing into him, stretching him and fucking him so perfectly, so roughly, it’s mind-numbing. It’s impossible to focus on anything besides his dad’s amazing, massive cock.

It all builds up and explodes. Peter lets out a scream as he feels himself cumming on his dad’s cock. His hands scramble to find purchase in something other than the endless pleasure. It’s impossibly good, it’s so good. His body tightens around the thick cock buried deep inside of him.

He lets out a string of overstimulated whines as Tony continues to fuck into him, eventually cumming inside of his son.

Peter’s whole mind is foggy. The afterglow of his orgasm has fully taken over. He feels like he’s floating on a bunch of clouds. He struggles to breathe or even think. He’s forgotten even the most basic functions. It’s like he’s gone through a factory reset.

He’s aflame. Sweat clings uncomfortably to his skin and his father’s cum deep inside of him is foreign feeling. Tony pulls out slowly, it’s weird and slightly painful. Mostly, though, Peter’s focused on the strangeness of what just happened.

“Daddy?” Peter asks softly.

Tony gives him an acknowledging noise.

Peter looks at him with wide, honey eyes.

Tony smiles, “So sweet. My baby boy, good boy.”

“Your good boy,” Peter repeats, “your good boy.”

[creepingsharia]

Arizona: Muslim Students Threaten to Kill Professor for Suggesting Islam is Violent

This will teach those Islamophobes that Islam is a religion of peace: a professor is facing death threats for suggesting otherwise. Nicholas Damask, Ph.D., has taught political science at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona for 24 years. But now he is facing a barrage of threats, and his family, including his 9-year-old grandson and 85-year-old parents, is in hiding, while College officials are demanding that he apologize – all for the crime of speaking the truth about the motivating ideology behind the threat of Islamic jihad worldwide.

Damask, who has an MA in International Relations from American University in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati, says he is “to my knowledge, the only tenured political science faculty currently teaching in Arizona to write a doctoral dissertation on terrorism.” He has taught Scottsdale Community College’s World Politics for each of the 24 years he has worked at the school.

Professor Damask’s troubles began during the current Spring semester, when a student took exception to three quiz questions. The questions were:

Who do terrorists strive to emulate? A. Mohammed

Where is terrorism encouraged in Islamic doctrine and law? A. The Medina verses [i.e., the portion of the Qur’an traditionally understood as having been revealed later in Muhammad’s prophetic career]

Terrorism is _______ in Islam. A. justified within the context of jihad.

Damask explained: “All quiz questions on each of my quizzes, including the ones in question here, are carefully sourced to the reading material. On this quiz, questions were sourced to the Qur’an, the hadiths, and the sira (biography) of Mohammed, and other reputable source material.” And indeed, the three questions reflect basic facts that are readily established by reference to Islamic texts and teachings and numerous statements of terrorists themselves.

Despite this, the student emailed Damask to complain that he was “offended” by these questions, as they were “in distaste of Islam.” Damask recounted: “Until this point, notably, the student had expressed no reservations about the course material and indeed he said he enjoyed the course.”

Damask sent two lengthy emails to the student responding to his complaints, but to no avail. A social media campaign began against Damask on the College’s Instagram account. Damask notes: “An unrelated school post about a school contest was hijacked, with supporters of the student posting angry, threatening, inflammatory and derogatory messages about the quiz, the school, and myself.”

At this point, College officials should have defended Professor Damask and the principle of free inquiry, but that would require a sane academic environment. Scottsdale Community College officials, Damask said, “stepped in to assert on a new Instagram post that the student was correct and that I was wrong – with no due process and actually no complaint even being filed – and that he would receive full credit for all the quiz questions related to Islam and terrorism.”

On May 1, Damask had a conference call with Kathleen Iudicello, Scottsdale Community College’s Dean of Instruction, and Eric Sells, the College’s Public Relations Marketing Manager. Damask recalls: “I was not offered to write any part of the school’s response, and there was no discussion of academic freedom or whether the College was even supportive of me to teach about Islamic terrorism. The very first point I made with them on the call (and virtually the only input I had) is that I insisted that the College’s release was to have no mention of any actions to be required to be taken by me personally, I was very clear about that.”

Predictably, Iudicello and Sells ignored that. They issued an apology to the student and to the “Islamic community,” and stated on the College’s Instagram page that Damask would be “required” to apologize to the student for the quiz questions, as the questions were “inappropriate” and “inaccurate,” and would be permanently removed from Damask’s exams.

Damask also had three phone calls with Iudicello, who gave him a bracing introduction into today’s academic funhouse world, where if someone is offended by the truth, it’s the truth that has to be deep-sixed. “During one call with Iudicello,” Damask recounts, “she stated that my quiz questions were ‘Islamophobic,’ that before continuing to have any further class content on Islamic terrorism I would likely need to meet with an Islamic religious leader to go over the content, and that I would likely need to take a class (perhaps at Arizona State) taught by a Muslim before teaching about Islamic terrorism.”

“The irony here,” says Damask, “is that literally during this phone call, I and my wife were tossing socks and jammies and our nine-year-old grandson’s toys into a suitcase to get the hell out of the house because of the death threats made by Islamic commenters on the College’s Instagram page.”

College officials took no public notice of the fact, but the posts on its Instagram page discussing the incident had begun to fill up with threats against Damask, including these statements: “if he is still around I suggest the students take action to make sure he isn’t”; “drop the professor’s address I just wanna talk”; “what’s the instructor’s name and address, I just want to say ‘hi’”; “I wish everything bad on these kuffar” [unbelievers]; “I hope he suffers.”

According to Damask, “there are literally hundreds of posts like this. There have been death threats, at least one call for a school shooting, and at least one call to burn down the school. Again, all of these threats are still on the College’s Instagram page.” When he asked school police to shut down the social media posts in light of these threats, they told him the posts were being monitored. Yet the threats were not taken down.

On Sunday night, the school sent Damask the apology that he was to make to the offended student. It is full of the expected embarrassing groveling: “I know,” Damask is supposed to inform the student, “a simple apology may not be enough to address the harm that I caused but I want to try to make amends.” He promises the student: “I will be reviewing all of my material to ensure there’s no additional insensitivities.” (Apparently politically correct academics cannot be bothered to internalize basic rules of grammar.)

“It goes without saying,” says Damask, “that I will not apologize for anything, that it is perfectly appropriate to discuss Islam, Muhammad, the Quran, the hadiths and any other matter related to Islamic terrorism. Incidentally: there has been no official complaint, no due process for me, just a mad scramble by the school to appease Islam.”

Damask’s introduction to the new Leftist academic world in which identity trumps truth has been bitter. “The College,” he says, “has displayed an appalling lack of respect toward my rights; it has essentially engaged in defamation by terming my course material inaccurate, insensitive and that I have violated the College’s values; has denied my civil rights through waiving any and all due process procedures; violated my First Amendment rights by demanding I make an apology to the student; and violated my First Amendment and civil rights by demanding I alter my course material. Further and perhaps worse, I believe the school has effectively encouraged and permitted these threats to be made against me when the school could have immediately put a stop to them, which is tantamount to allowing mob threats against me.”

It’s a terrible story, but there is one silver lining: at least we all know now that Islam is a religion of peace.

[sweetbyte]

Title: Patronus pt.2 ((pt1)

Pairing(s): TodoMomo | BakuMomo (Friendship)

Rating: T

Summary: ((Apart of the Lessons in Magic Series/HP AU. Yaoyorozu finds a way to deal with failure, Bakugou tries to help, Todoroki is exceedingly distracting and he doesn’t even know…..)) Momo finds that for every two steps forward, she ends up 3 steps back.

------

Momo feels particularly tired after their session and rubs her temples while making her way through the corridors by her lonesome.

‘I’d escort you, but detention calls princess.’ Bakugou had smirked causing her to roll her eyes and wonder how he ever got the position of Head Boy.

The walk to the Head common rooms from the Room of Requirements is lengthy but she doesn’t mind the exercise. The silence of the long halls brings her peace and allows her to meditate on her thoughts. Her steps are light and poised so when she hears what sounds like scrapes from the end of the corridor, she stops to look in curiosity. She frowns when its nothing and she proceeds down her path hesitantly.

Momo isn’t one to be scared, but in the words of the last DADA professor, one must have constant vigilance. With her mind preoccupied, she doesn’t notice she’s bumped into someone until she’s falling. She doesn’t know she’s falling until the someone manages to catch her elbows keeping her from the unforgiving floor.

She slowly opens her eyes, having closed them when bracing for the impact, ready to spew apologies when they die in her throat.

“I can’t say I rather enjoy running into you like this, but at least I was able to catch you this time.” Todoroki breathes and she suddenly becomes hypersensitive to the warmth from his hands on her elbows. ‘Is this where I should build walls?’ She thinks as she feels the blood rush to her face so quickly, it’s disorienting. She’s too tired from training with Bakugou, but he is going to have a field day if she cannot strengthen her occlumency. ‘Maybe I should stare into Todoroki’s eyes just to spite him.’

“I..” She finds that she’s lost for words as he steadies her back to her feet.

“The cat?” He questions and she’s sure he is teasing.

“Not this time. I’m afraid it was all my paranoia.” She admits cautiously moving away from his grasp, and instantly regrets the loss of contact.

“Paranoia?” He questions with a slight frown and it’s all she can do to keep from chewing on her bottom lip from the nerves.

“Yes. Just hearing strange sounds from the hall. Most likely nothing, but I can’t help but wonder about it. It makes me realize just how wild of an imagination I have.” She explains and he nods, seemingly content with her explanation but then raises and eyebrow in amusement. “You have a wild imagination? I would have never guessed.”

“Regardless,” She begins to huff while smoothening out the kink her skirt, refusing to let herself stare at him longer than appropriate. “I do apologize. It’s not like me to be this oblivious to my surroundings.”  

“It happens to the best of us.” Todoroki shrugs

“Right, well I’ll let you continue on your way.” She briefly wonders where he is headed to but remembers that its none of her business. It doesn’t stop him from answering, and now she’s wondering if she’s that transparent, or maybe he is a legilimens as well. “The library.”

“Oh? I’m starting to think you’re the real Ravenclaw among us.” She jokes and laughs lightly, more out of nervousness than anything.

“Hardly. There is a project I am working on that requires extensive research. I do quite enjoy the quietness of the library as well. It’s peaceful.” She wonders if he knows that her heart rate is increasing and he’s the cause. Him and his alluring eyes, his elegant jaw line, his dauntless aurora, his apparent academic commitment. She claps her hands behind her back in effort to hide the goosebumps that are surely forming on the surface of her skin.

“I agree, I have not been able to enjoy it as much this year with my Head Girl responsibilities, but I cannot deny the fact that I do enjoy having my own common room.” She comments and he tilts his head slightly down before questioning her. It’s adorable, really. “Is that where you are heading?”

“Yes.” She all but gasps, feeling a little breathless. ‘What is wrong with me?’

“I’ll walk with you then.” He nods lightly, and her eyes widen. “I would hate to make you go out of your way!”

“To my understanding” He begins to walk ahead, ignoring her considerate protests. “they are not at all far from each other.” The comment catches her off guard and keeps her rooted for a second before she has to jog the first couple of paces to reach him.  “You know where the common rooms are?”

“Yes, the position was offered to me.” He comes across nonchalant, but she picks up the slight makes of a frown on his face before it is gone back to the neutral façade the world is used to.

“You turned it down?” She blurts incredulously, but it might as well have been a squawk.  “I’m sorry, that was inappropriate, insensitive and, of course, none of my business.”

“I was being rebellious at the time and didn’t want to live up to my father’s expectations.” She lets her eyes drift to the corridor floor knowing the constricts of expectations. “I’m sorry.”

Her apology is soft and she doesn’t truly know why it slips out of her to begin with. “You have nothing to apologize for. In fact, it looks like a dodged a hex.” Shouto jokes lightly and she feels a hint of a smile appear on her face as she keeps her eyes trained ahead. “It’s truly not as demanding as I make it seem. I just wish my cohort was more involved at times.”

“Does he not help you?”

“Oh, he does his part. However, many find that he isn’t the most pleasant to be around. Not to mention, he finds me to be a bit of a…” ‘over-achieving, intolerable, swotty-‘

“Perfectionist?” He offers helpfully causing her to chuckle in efforts to cover up a snort that would have her mother absolutely fuming. “Yes, let’s use that!”

“I assumed it would be advantageous for you both, seeing you two are well acquainted. Correct?” It’s an innocent inquiry, but it makes her heart race nonetheless as she nods in affirmation.

“Correct. We have been acquainted since early childhood, practically birth. Our parents found that a union would be beneficial for both families.” She explains clearly, hoping not to misguide the nature of her relationship with Bakugou. It doesn’t make a difference, she argues with herself bitterly. Whatever feels she harbors for the boy walking next to her won’t make a difference at all.

“Does it bother you?” He questions and the possibility of him being legilimens resurfaces in her mind again as she tries not to trip over herself like a fool.

“As archaic as the whole notion is,” She begins after a moment to recollect her thoughts hoping to sound nonchalant. “it is what I was raised for, it’s the tradition I must uphold as.. “

“A pureblood?” He interjects dryly, causing her to face him, eyebrow arched before continuing. “the heir of my bloodline. However, it is a rather pureblood notion, is it not?”

His face starts to mildly flush in what she can assume is embarrassment and she stores the sight of him when looks at her. The rosy shade suits him quite handsomely, then again, he just handsome in general. “I’m sorry, while pureblood customs don’t sit well with me, I was probably out of line.”

“No need to apologize. Even I can recognize just how primitive pureblood customs and views are. I’m not exactly proud of it, if I’m being honest.” She admits, letting her clasped hands loosen behind her back in attempted to hide any tension.

“So, it does bother you.” He picks up astutely, and she returns to staring straight ahead in disappointment at being so easily made. It’s not surprising that he read her small movement. He is one of the top duelists in their year. Reading and interpreting sudden body movements is probably second nature to him by now.

“There would be no point in me denying it, however, there is also no point in me dwelling on the matter. I accepted this to be my future ever since I learned my own name. I just hope to be able to make a change so my own children will not be exposed to the same bigoted views I have.” She honestly explains and tries not to squirm under the intensity of his gaze she feels on her.

“That’s extremely noble of you.” He replies before finally looking away from her and she wants to sigh in relief at the weight she feels was lifted off her shoulders. “Does Bakugou agree?”

“It’s rather complicated.” She snorts softly before she can stop herself and she can hear him huff in amusement. “Conflicting morals?”

“Not quite.” She sighs. “Bakugou’s aggressive and combative nature successfully allows him to play a bigoted pureblood elitist, but I can assure you that is not the case. As the only male heir of his line and soon to take head of mine, he is scrutinized much more than outsiders to our traditions can even begin to realize. If anything, our conflicts revolve around our martial arrangement. While I strive for making a change in the future, he wishes to fight for change now beginning with our betrothal.”

“That’s rather hard to believe.” He replies dubiously and she lets herself frown at the floor. “He may have many flaws in his character but being a puppet is not one, I can assure you.”

Shouto is quiet and comes to a stop. She begins to think she said something wrong, but when she looks up, she takes note of the portrait in front of them. The entrance of the Head common rooms.

“You have a lot of faith in him.” He finally comments, and Momo spins in his direction before shrugging. “It’s only natural, given our history.”

“Thank you for the escort.” She allows herself to smile sardonically. “And thank you for listening to the convoluted pureblood ways.”

He only shakes his head and offers a small sad smile of his own. “No, thank you for confiding in me, it was quite enlightening. It seems we have much more in common than I originally thought.” Her brows furrow in confusion and before she can question anything, his smile turns genuine and she’s caught off guard. “I’ll see you class, Yaoyorozu.”

She has the mind to rush into the common room ignoring the portraits cooing in the hallway. Once inside, she braces herself with her back against the wall and takes deep breaths. She starts to compartmentalize him in her mind, trying to lock him away, but his words keep ringing in her head and her blasted curiosity clutches onto it.

‘It seems we have much more in common than I originally thought.’

A/N:  Just a continuation of the last chapter. i know this chapter doesn't have anything in specific that deals with casting a patronus, but it does connect the last chapter and the next chapter which will be the little end of the the patronus area. I'm so confusing i know. Thank you!

[minttoy]

Daylight (Ch 3)

CHAPTER THREE

Summary: “She spent so much time counting her days. Finally, she sees her future clear as daylight.” - Linhardt helps Lysithea survive more than the war.

Pairings: Linhardt/Lysithea

Click here to read on FF.net.

Click here to read on AO3.

----------

Weeks later, she’s still flipping through the days. Some passages are easier to read and few of them trigger difficult memories. It’s a blessing she cannot recall most of the things written in these pages.

Lysithea must look particularly haggard this morning, because Professor Hanneman waltzes into the room and starts the day with a peculiar joke.

“Are you and Linhardt married, by any chance?” he asks, a smirk dancing on his lips.

She’s tired and has no energy to vehemently deny it. “No.”

He’s hardly fazed. “Engaged, perhaps? Promised to one another?”

She shakes her head. “Neither.”

“Oh, but there’s something there, correct? The two of you seem to enjoy each other’s company.”

She does not remember Hanneman being this nosy. Perhaps Professor Manuela has been rubbing off him. “There is nothing between us,” she says, the words rolling lazily off her tongue. “We are not married, nor engaged, nor promised. We don’t talk about kids, or money, or growing old together. None of that.”

Poor logic at its finest, but she’s willing to admit it escapes her temporarily.

“Can I safely assume you two are not sleeping together?”

She startles, spilling a portion of her teacup as she brings it to her lips. “Excuse me?”

“Hmm.” He scratches his beard. “I suppose not.”

Lysithea hisses as she registers the burn from the still-hot tea water.

“Is there a point to this?” she inquires, holding back none of her irritation. With a sleeve, she wipes off a stain from the front of her shirt.

He shrugs loosely. “Perhaps.”

His response incites a harsh glare from the girl, but it does not last long. She reaches for her handkerchief across the table to pat down her skirt.

“This is highly inappropriate, especially from a man of your stature. I would appreciate if you were more respectful and unassuming of my relationships,” she says distractedly. “We share common goals and interests. There’s nothing beyond that.”

The suggestion was never meant to sound romantic, but she realizes in hindsight how it can be interpreted as such. Hanneman knows it too and raises her a brow.

“Linhardt is my apprentice and I know him very well,” he starts. “Believe me when I say I have never seen him more committed to anything than he is to you, my dear.”

She peers up at him briefly, and then back down to the soiled handkerchief in her hands. It’s easier to focus on other things when her face is flushed pink.

Hanneman continues, “I know what it takes to renounce one’s nobility – I’ve committed the act myself a long time ago. You give up almost everything. The people you call family, inheritance, prestige and status, the place you consider home, even a bit of yourself...” He shakes his head solemnly. “…it’s unfortunate. Despite all of that, at the end of the day, you are still the selfish one.”

Her gaze is trained to the wooden table, but she’s listening.

“My point is, I am certain Linhardt sacrificed much to be here.”

She blinks twice and looks up. “What are you insinuating?”

Her inquiry is blunt, but it’s not meant to accuse or invoke tension. The entire exchange has her squirming in her seat, even if he’s only protecting him.

“I am simply curious of his motivations,” the older man explains, meeting her gaze. “That boy is difficult to inspire and persuade, and I’ve seen it firsthand. I thought maybe you’ve done something to fuel his sudden ambition.”

She narrows her eyes. “I always assumed he took this up on his own volition, but I’m also willing to admit it’s a little far-fetched. If you’re wondering about monetary incentives, I’m not paying him or doing him any favours.”

“I never even wondered such a thing.”

She considers the idea once more. “…is it something I should be thinking about?”

“Heavens I hope not, or I would be sorely disappointed,” he scoffs.

“So what is it then?”

“You tell me.” Hanneman arches a single brow and presses further, “You said yourself the nature of your relationship is strictly business. Nothing personal beyond your collegiate partnership. Isn’t that right?”

Lysithea processes the complicated thought and attempts understanding for herself, wondering why this conversation keeps circling back on itself. The reason she keeps finding herself here.

Why do I feel like running.

She crumbles underneath his sharper gaze. “…that’s right.”

He leans back in his seat. “What’s your take on it?”

The question lingers.

“I don’t know,” she tells honestly, after a pause.

Silence envelopes them briefly.

“My apologies, child. I don’t mean to push you.” His gloved hand goes to her shoulder, and when she chances a second glance, his gaze is visibly softer. “It just warms this old man’s heart to see two of his students here at the monastery. There hasn’t been this much excitement since…well, a long time.”

She sighs, “Do you have to be so meddlesome?”

He feigns an affronted expression. “Can you blame a researcher for inquiring? I was simply…stating my observations, if you will. Did it come off as imposing? Forgive me.” His lips tug to a small smirk under his moustache. Unapologetic, despite what he says. “I admit. Occasionally I delight in wishful thinking. You see, Linhardt reminds me of my younger self. Fascinated with crestology, how it shapes the world’s foundation and transforms the individuals within it. Regrettably, I missed things because of it. The more I devoted myself to research, the more other dreams slipped further from my reach.”

Lysithea frowns and raises a brow.

“Before I pass from this world, it would give me great gratification to know he pursued such dreams. This applies for you as well, actually. Chase your ambitions, but don’t skip on life. You should get married, take care of each other, and have children. Research is its own reward, but I believe there are greater, more joyful things in life. Take this as advice from your old teacher and mentor.”

“Your advice is oddly specific,” she points out.

He laughs, characteristically barky, but jolly nonetheless. “I expect an invitation to your wedding when it comes.”

She breathes a lengthy exhale and loses her patience. Hasty, she downs the remainder of the hot tea and gathers her papers in her arms.

“That’s enough. I am done indulging in your strange and improbable fantasies–”

“Improbable? I beg to differ.”

“–I have little time as it is! We need to get back to work.”

He smirks at her attempt at scolding. Young, impulsive and puppy-like. A coping mechanism, he realizes. He indulges her anyway, gathering a portion of her file and adjusting his monocle.

“As you wish, my dear.”

----------

Lysithea is in the middle of bookmarking old texts when she hears it. A small gasp, barely even an audible breath, in the midst of the crest analyzer’s machinal sounds. She peers to the side to investigate the small commotion, observing the subtleties in Linhardt’s bare expression.

“What is it?”

He swallows hard and stares with furrowed brows. “This sample, it’s…crestless.”

His lack of energy casts a measure of doubt, but she strides over anyway. Wordlessly, he hands her the glass slide containing a drop of her blood and she runs it through the analyzer herself.

She waits.

Nothing.

No symbols appears before her.

No Charon.

No Gloucester.

No crest.

The blood is pure.

She feels her stomach drop. Her knees grow weak. She pans over to green-haired man, who jots down notes with a nonchalant flair. For someone who just reached his first real breakthrough, he is severely lacking in enthusiasm. Perhaps it’s the exhaustion.

“What does this mean?” she asks.

“It means we’re moving in the right direction,” he says blandly, not looking up.

She blinks at his aloofness, wondering what goes on in that tired and brilliant mind.

Linhardt finishes writing, flips the book shut and yawns into his hand. He finds her muddled expression.

“I’m not satisfied just yet,” he explains quietly. “On the bright side, it seems the formula I used on this particular sample yields promising results. I’m willing to test it on others to ensure it has the same effectiveness.”

He’s withholding himself, it seems. Saving the joy until the work is finished.

“I could draw more blood,” she offers, matching his tone.

He gives her a sheepish frown. She hides bruised arms under her sleeves.

“Please and thank you.”

She turns on her heel, and he catches her wrist when he realizes what she’s doing.

“It can wait until later. You’re tired,” he says. “I have to compound the serum again anyway, which will take time.”

He offers her a smile and she returns it.

----------

The three of them continue to work on this breakthrough. Linhardt, after studying the entirety of her file, is approaching the research with a medical lens. It’s apparent her crests were introduced like toxins to the bloodstream. She either rejected the virus and died, or survived the implants, forcing her crests to co-exist in one body. He intends to remove it the same way, coming up with a formula to dissolve her crests, akin to an antibiotic treating bacteria and disease.

Hanneman almost forgets he’s a proficient healer, well-versed in medicine and its properties.

That’s how they got here. Linhardt sitting on a chair, visibly pale and nauseous, hesitating to offer his arm. He was the one who suggested it – he and Hanneman offering their own blood to the cause, and hoping the recipe can eliminate their crests as well.

“I’m ready. Give me your arm,” she says.

“Please be gentle. The sight of blood makes me uncomfortable.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’ve been working with blood for several months now.”

“That’s different. I dislike watching it spill from the body, especially my own. I should add that needles are frightening as well.”

She gives him an annoyed look, hoping it’s enough to get her message across.

“Do you want the sample or not?”

“I do.”

“Then get over it. It would have been done by now if you stopped whining.”

He takes another deep breath, closes his eyes and finally stretches his arm. As she rolls his sleeves up, another thought flashes and he whips back the limb.

“Linhardt!”

“I’m sorry. Please don’t poke hard. I’m lightheaded as it is.”

He’s pouting, the most childish he’s become as of late.

“If you stay still, it won’t hurt as much.”

He gives her a suspicious eye.

She decides to change tack, softens her gaze and bends down so they’re at eye level. “Hey, I’m good at this, remember? It’ll be quick. You can trust me. I’ve done it on myself several times already.”

The reminder is stinging and leaves with him little choice and room to complain. This time, he offers his arm without another word.

The process is seamless and efficient, just as she promised. His veins stand out against his pale skin and he doesn’t tense when she rubs alcohol on it. He looks away and holds his breath when she punctures his skin. For him, it seems like an eternity until the needle is finally removed, and replaced with the pressure of her fingers. He lets out a long sigh of relief, and sinks down in his seat as if he’s been through a terrible ordeal.

He finally has the courage to look up and finds a smirk on her face.

“What?” he asks.

She removes her gloves and pats his head like she’s proud of him. “Such a good boy. I knew you could do it.”

He scoffs, “I am not a child.”

She laughs, and tips her head to a box on the nearby table. “I got you sweet pastries from town as a reward. Do you want it or not?”

He lights up, betraying himself. He doesn’t think he’s enjoyed her company more. “Yes, please.”

----------

The next step is obvious: a trial.

They’ve agreed to everything so far, but now there are three branches of thought.

Linhardt prefers to experiment with other crest-containing blood samples, reasoning they lack a sample size worthy of definite conclusion.

Hanneman insists on keeping the research between the three of them. This experiment will not be approved in the eyes of people in power, except maybe Edelgard herself.

Lysithea is growing increasingly impatient. Many months have passed since she’s made the monastery her second home and she pushes for the trial herself.

After much hesitation and few heated debates, they agree to one trial. The infirmary is turned upside down. It takes an entire day to prepare the room and concoct the mixture. Beds are moved, shelves restocked and the space is nearly emptied. A plan is devised if things go awry and her body rejects the serum. They don’t have the luxury of test subjects, Lysithea being the only one.

For all the irony in the world, the procedure is alike to blood reconstruction surgery itself. Linhardt admits he took inspiration from the mages to devise the method.

“If you have discomfort, I need to know. You have a penchant for acting stronger than you feel,” he says rather bitterly.

She stops poking around her arm for a vein and glances at the green-haired scholar. Unusually tight-lipped, rigid features on his face and posture incredibly stiff. He’s handling his instruments with a chaotic energy, revealing a side of him that hardly surfaces. He’s irritable and exasperated, which is far from his usually lax demeanor. She’s only seen it a handful of times.

“You agreed to this,” she reminds, matching his tone.

He still cannot look her in the eye. “Not willingly.”

“Don’t start with me,” she warns, keeping her voice low. “We fought about this already.”

He shrugs with nonchalance, and from her perspective, it’s kind of infuriating.

“Hmm. I still think we should wait,” he says, just for the sake of reminding her.

She tries to smile, but it comes off sarcastic and phony. She wonders how apparent it is how much she wants to pull her hair out right now.

“Too late,” she says, knowing how petty it sounds. “It’s happening today.”

“You can still back down. I won’t blame you,” he offers again.

She shakes her head and counters with a firm and decisive, “No. I won’t do that.”

He heaves with frustration and finally looks down at her. She meets his intense blue glare with as much defiance she can muster.

“You’re being impossible. I’m starting wonder if you’re doing this to spite me,” he delivers harshly, in a way he’ll probably regret later. Afterwards, he mutters some excuse about retrieving something from the lab and leaves the room in a matter of seconds.

In the deafening silence that follows, she stares down at the floor, heart suddenly weak and eyes glassy. Her breath is shaky as it comes out. Just as she expects, the feeling of scorn quickly fades into nothing, leaving a pained and bleak disposition in its place. She rubs her eyes before she crumples into a sobbing mess. These recent spats all end the same way. Her coming up empty, instead of angry.

“This will mean nothing later,” Hanneman reassures, suddenly beside her. “Both of you are stubborn. You only fight because you care for each other. If it helps, try to remember what got you here in the first place.”

Her breaths even out slowly. “…I don’t want to fight anymore.”

He shrugs. “You have to work it out somehow. Waiting is safe, but there’s no use dallying and delaying progress either.”

“Am I being unreasonable?” she asks in a whisper.

Hanneman sucks in a breath, and contemplates for a moment.

“It’s…difficult to say. I’m sorry, child. I don’t have all the answers.”

They resume in silence. She tries to pretend it never happened and connects herself to the machine. Linhardt returns a few minutes later, all traces of hardness on his face gone.

She tries not to look his way, except when he stands in front of her.

Their expressions mirror each other; remorseful and apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers first.

She shakes her head. “It’s my fault. I’m the one pushing you.”

He dismisses it with a shrug. “We’re in this together.”

It eases few of her worries, enough to breathe easy. He gestures for her to take a seat so he can prime the infusion. She obliges without complaint.

“Tell me if you feel anything.”

“I will.”

After what seems like an eternity, it finally starts running. Linhardt gives her a quick onceover before taking the seat beside the professor, opening his book for notetaking.

Somehow, it feels like her last day on earth. She’s waited and dreamed of this since being told her days were numbered. Lysithea shakes her head, tries to throw off the memories.

Fifteen minutes in, there’s a sting in her arm where the needle is located. She tries not to hiss at the pain, but it becomes difficult to hide.

Hanneman sits up, the first to notice. “What’s wrong?”

She grits her teeth. “My arm is sore, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Linhardt stands, puts away his notebook. “We should stop it.”

“No! I can take it. This is–”

She stops as an abrupt, sharp pain sears the nerves up to her shoulder. It’s burning all of a sudden, and flaring with heat and spasm. Lysithea doesn’t scream, just a gasp and a choked-off cry, but somehow that makes it worse. She winces and folds in on herself.

He stops the machine and disconnects the tubing. That alone eliminates the sharp edge of the burn, but leaves a throbbing cramp in its wake. She collapses backwards in her seat, arm splayed limp beside her.

He’s giving her a look or reprimand, but as far as admonishments go, it’s a gentle one.

“Lysithea. This isn’t about being brave or strong. We only have one shot. If something happens to you, all of this would be for nothing,” he lectures softly, bending down to inspect for bruising or damage.

Hanneman hums in agreement and rises to stretch his arms. “The boy is right. Do not feel inclined to work beyond your limits. Our situation is risky enough as it is.”

She has no reason to get defensive. As far as she’s concerned, this is what she needs to hear. Beside her, she spies the faint glow of light. His magic is familiar to her now. She knows the feel of it: languid, light and listless. It induces a drowsy aftermath and she’s passed out from it before. It’s the work of his crest. Before she succumbs to its effects, she peers down at her partner.

“I really thought it would work,” she whispers, fighting the wave of exhaustion casted by the spell.

His gaze is surprisingly soft. “We’ll have to rework the formula,” he says quietly. Biting his lip, he casts his gaze down to her arm. “There’s a caustic burn on your skin. I’ll heal the nerves as best as I can, but I’m not sure about the scarring…”

She shrugs loosely. “It doesn’t matter.”

He says nothing back, watching as she enters a trance, wilting and slowly yielding to slumber.

“Can you be here when I wake up?” she asks, fighting off another yawn and blinking heavy eyelids.

He tilts his head to one side at the inquiry.

“Okay.”

It’s the last thing she hears before her vision goes blank.

----------

She’s plagued by nightmares, not waking until she’s seeing red and a silent scream is somehow working its way up her throat.

She lunges up from her bed, clutches the material in front of her chest and finds herself breathless. Her back is drenched with sweat and her hands are shaking. She stares blank at the window pane, catching sight of clouds filtering the light of the stars and moon. It casts a dark shadow upon the monastery and the surrounding forests. Slowly, the nightmare leaves her.

After that, she sighs. Lysithea looks down at her arms, one of them sporting an ugly reddened bruise and the other hooked up to a tube. Her gaze lazily flits upwards, finding herself linked to an assortment of fluids. Her head throbs wildly, more so than the fresh burn she acquired from the trial.

She’s alone, but hears the soft whirring of machinery across the hall. Mustering the strength to go, she drags the pole along with her and stops at the front of Hanneman’s office.

“You shouldn’t read in the dark,” she pipes up quietly. “It hurts your eyes.”

Linhardt startles and jerks lightly in the dim candlelight. He inhales deeply, and snaps his book shut.

“You should go back to sleep.”

She shakes her head. “Maybe later.”

He eyes her curiously, a long blue stare. “A nightmare, then.”

She shudders, and then absently presses her fingers against her throat where there’s a pulse. A cold shiver runs up her spine. Linhardt watches idly, staring into her eyes with question.

“It’s odd. I used to have nightmares about ghosts in my room, showing up late for class, or losing my teeth,” Lysithea starts softly, ignoring the constant thrumming in her head. “Nowadays, they’re more about feeling lonely, or losing control, or dying.”

He raises a brow. “Are you scared of dying?”

“I guess so,” she says, mild annoyance seeping through. She purses her lips, then shifts her gaze to the bookshelves. “It’s strange. I was going to die in those dungeons, and the only reason I didn’t was because I was so determined to see what life I could have outside of it, even if it meant surviving my crests. Gosh, I wanted to live so much, and still ended up dying.”

She says it with a hollow lightness, as if the whole thing can be a laughing matter. And then she’s shaking her head and rubbing her face.

“I’ve been counting my days ever since, and I’m sick of it. I’m so hopeless, and bitter, and lonely, and yet…I am still so, so terribly scared.”

Linhardt gazes with a rare tenderness. No words come to mind, so he says nothing.

Inevitably, there’s a long pause.

She drops her arms and unclenches her fists. Her expression is weary. “Do you have nightmares?”

He nods. “Occasionally. Mostly they are bloody visions of war – I wake up thinking I’m still in the throes of battle. To cheer myself up, I imagine myself lying down on a field of grass, in a place where I’m free to sleep, fish, or eat sweets whenever I please.”

She chuckles softly, “That sounds just like you.”

“Does your head hurt? I can help.”

“No, not right now. That magic of yours is like a sedative, and I…” She inhales and picks at her fingers, unsure how to say it. “I’d rather we just…stay, even for a short time.”

The air is so quiet and delicate she wants to bask in it. The lighting is dark, atmosphere thick but not stilted, and the whirring machinery drums like white noise. It’s just the two of them, but the silence is easy and comforting. They’ve let go of their posturing a long time ago. This is the most peace she’s felt in months.

This is what she means to say, even if he doesn’t get it.

He nods, and she’s grateful. Moving her metal pole in front of the sofa, she settles herself comfortably beside him and curls her legs underneath. He brushes off her earlier protest and picks up his book again, reading against the dim candlelight. Eventually she caves and tugs at his sleeve. Wordlessly, he settles the book in the middle so she can read for herself. The rest of the night is filled with silence.

He understands enough.

----------

[tmarie82]

Prove It

Pairing: Damien x MC (Camille Park)

Book: Perfect Match

Word Count: ~1,700

Rating:  PG-13

Author’s Note:   It’s been over 3 weeks since I’ve done a fic with Damien and Cami, and I did not realize how much I missed him them until I started writing.  So here is the final one of my requests from last round, incorporating @confessionsofabrokegirl's request for smut prompt #15 “Are you sure? Once we start, I might not be able to stop.” and angst prompt #23 “Look me in the eye and tell me you love me.”  Happy reading Friends! 📚👍🏻💋

Please let me know if you would like to be added to my tag list.  You can find all of my fics here - MASTERLIST

~~~~~~~~~~

“So, this guy with a strange accent kept following me around the museum, asking me all these really odd questions about the art in the exhibit ... “ Nadia continued her lengthy story, not noticing the waning interest of her companions. “He dropped a couple of references to exotic animals, specifically hippos, peacocks and pandas, so I figured he must be a veterinarian.  Anyway, he was pretty good-looking and very well-dressed so I decided to give him a chance ... but it turns out he’s not a vet after all.”  Nadia emitted a small disappointed sigh, eyes downcast as she reflected on the events.

“This is a fascinating story, really ...” Damien spoke in a monotone voice, a half-assed attempt to hide his disinterest.  Camille swatted his leg with her hand under the table, giving him the ‘stop it’ glare when they met eyes.  ‘What?’ he mouthed sarcastically and grinned, causing Cami to have to muffle a laugh with her hand.

“So after we finally started talking, I find out he’s some rich noble from Cordonia.  Apparently his family has this huge estate over there and he’s actually in New York for a bachelor party with the future king!  Can you believe that?!?”

“What’s his name?” Sloan asked curiously as Hayden nodded in mutual interest beside her.

“Maxwell Beaumont!  Isn’t that a dreamy name too?!?”  Nadia was beaming.

“Never heard of him.” Damien replied curtly.

Cami swatted him again under the table as she leaned forward to reassure her cousin.  “Well I think he sounds like an interesting prospect, Nadia!”

Nadia blushed, an optimistic gleam in her eyes. “Thanks, me too.  We’re actually meeting tomorrow for boba tea and then a walk in Central Park.”

The small group was huddled around the high-top table for their standing Taco Tuesday meeting at La Hacienda.  They chatted animatedly about their weekends and jobs, a routine catch up session that was now an unofficially mandated weekly occurrence.  Ever since Camille and Damien had started dating and practically moved in together, Cami had initiated the tradition of Taco Tuesday in a hopeful attempt to keep the group together.

“Well look who it is ...” a gruff female voice spoke from behind Sloan.  The friends turned to study the instigator and Damien, just having taken a drink of his margarita, proceeded to choke on his beverage.  He was coughing into his napkin trying to regain his breath, the tall red headed woman watching him amusedly.  “Hello Damien.”  

Camille observed Damien’s internal struggle as he tried to formulate a response.  “Um, hi, uh ...” he fumbled as he tried to recall her name.

“Katie.”  She quirked an eyebrow.  “My name is Katie.”

“Right ... so, uh, how have you been?”  Damien attempted to make friendly small talk, but Cami could see he was visibly starting to sweat.

Katie chuckled.  “Don’t worry, Big D, I wasn’t coming over here to chat.”  Her gaze turned to Cami beside him.  “I just came over to get a closer look at your lady friend.  She’s very pretty.”  Cami squirmed uncomfortably as Katie’s eyes scanned her up and down before leaning over to get closer.  She spoke in a low whisper, a cocky grin on her lips.  “Watch out for this one, Honey.”  She nodded subtly towards Damien.  “He’s a lot of fun but he’s trouble.”

Cami’s jaw dropped in initial shock at the forward woman’s inappropriate comment, but quickly her  eyes narrowed and nostrils flared with anger.  She gripped Damien’s thigh tightly, fighting to bite her tongue.  Damien cleared his throat uncomfortably, placing his hand on top of Cami’s and patting it reassuringly.  He stared at her until she finally glanced over to him, her eyes softening as she met his sympathetic gaze and subtle smile on his lips.  She inhaled deeply and nodded her head in understanding, then exhaled slowly as she turned back to the redheaded she-devil.

“Hi Katie, I’m Damien’s girlfriend Camille.  Nice to meet you.”  She tilted her head and lifted her brow.  “Although I’ve been friends with Damien for years now ... how odd that he’s never mentioned you?  You seem to know him so well.”  

Katie’s expression altered from smug to surprised as she absorbed Cami's backhanded compliment.  “Yes well, it was a long time ago ...”  She quickly straightened up in a belated attempt to mask her defeat.  “Anyway I should get going.   Nice to meet you.”  Her eyes quickly flitted from Cami back to Damien, a glimpse of pain hidden beneath the surface.  “Damien.”  She nodded her farewell before swiftly turning and marching towards the exit.

The group of friends sat in silence at first, unsure of how to move on from the awkward interaction.  Finally Nadia, never one to scare easily from a dialogue, spoke first.  “So, yeah, that was ...”

“Awkward?” Sloan jumped in.  

Cami snorted at the statement, trying not to get upset.  “Hey, well played, Camille ...” Hayden comforted her, noticing the tears forming in the corners of her eyes.  “You handled yourself so well, yet still managed to throw in a quick jab.”  Damien was staring at the margarita in front of him, avoiding eye contact with the others.

Cami smiled gratefully at her friend, but couldn’t hold back the flood of emotions any longer.  “Excuse me for a minute, guys.”  She sniffled quietly as she pushed away from the table and quickly escaped to the ladies room.  

After she had cried her frustrations out and pulled herself back together as well as she could, Cami exited the ladies room.  She found Damien waiting outside patiently, a look of remorse on his face.  “I’m sorry about that, Cami.  That was horrible and I’m sorry that it’s because of me.”

Camille steadied herself and nodded slightly, eyes downcast.  “Who was she?”

Damien shifted nervously before responding.  “She’s no one.  Just some girl I met at a bar and went home with.”  He paused, studying her face as she listened.  “I was pretty drunk I guess, I barely remember how it happened.  It was back when I was still trying to drink away my thoughts about you.”  Cami looked up into his eyes at his last statement, filled with regret and affection.  “I’m sorry.” He whispered, reaching up to trace  her cheekbone with a finger.

Cami nuzzled against his hand, a faint smile appearing on her lips.  “I know what you were like before we got together.  Don’t forget I was friends with you.”  She smirked as Damien rolled his eyes.  “It’s just not something I want to see.  Or worse, have thrown in my face.”

Damien leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead, pulling her tight against his chest and wrapping his arms around her.  “Are you going to be okay?  What can I do?”

Cami chuckled against his shirt, her anger and frustration slowly fading away.  “I will be.  But you can do something.”  She leaned back to beam up at the thoughtful man before her.  He may have some (skanky) skeletons in his closet and he definitely had some flaws, but she knew they were perfect for each other.  It only took them four years to figure it out.  

“Anything baby.”  He peered down at her, desperate to make everything better.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you love me.”  She smiled as she met his stare, a look of relief flooding his face.  His hands reached up to touch her face and bring her forehead to his.  

“Camille Park, I love you more than I ever thought possible.  I’m the luckiest man in the world.”  He tilted his head back, cocking it as if he were deep in thought.  “Well, at least the luckiest man in this bar.”

Cami giggled, shoving his shoulder playfully.  “Oh, you sweet-talker you!”  

Damien laughed out loud, that deep resonating laugh that made Camille’s stomach do flips while her heart filled with joy.  He bent down and pressed her mouth to his, grinning against her lips.  “My god I love you.”  He whispered contentedly into her mouth, Camille unwilling to let him go.  They lost themselves in the moment, a lustful apology in the form of tangled lips and hot breath.  

“Ahem.”  They both jumped at the interruption behind, turning to find a middle-aged man observing them judgementally.  “Excuse me, you’re blocking the restroom.”

Camille blushed and giggled, hiding her face in Damien’s shoulder as he shifted them out of the way.  “Pardon us, sir.  We were just, uh, a little distracted.”  He motioned to the clear path leading to the men’s room.  “Please ... proceed.”

“Hmmph.” The man brushed past them, apparently not amused by the lovebirds’ public display of affection.  Damien looked back down to Cami, quirking his brow as she pressed her lips together to stifle a laugh.  As soon as the door clicked close behind the older man, they both burst out in laughter, grasping at each other to steady themselves.

“I think we may have scarred him.”  Damien chuckled.  As the humor faded and they quieted, he gave her another apologetic stare.  “I really am sorry about tonight, Cami.”

“Oh yeah?”  Camille smirked wickedly.  “Prove it.”  She stepped up on her tip toes and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth, tugging his lower lip with her teeth as she pulled away.  Damien released a low groan as she gripped him by the lapels of his jacket, pulling him with her towards the door of the ladies room.  

Damien's eyes widened as it dawned on him what she meant.  “What, here?  Really?”

“The door locks and you have a lot of making up to do, Detective.  You should get working on that.”  She pushed the door open and slipped inside, holding it open as she waited.  

Damien growled under his breath, tentatively taking one step forward as he looked around for any witnesses. “Are you sure? Once we start, I might not be able to stop.”

“You better not stop, Nazario.  Now get in here and lock the door.”  Her eyes danced with desire but a playful smirk remained on her lips.

With one last glimpse around, Damien took the last step, plunging through the door - “Yes Ma’am” he murmured in a husky tone - and locked it behind him.

END

~~~~~~~~~~

Tagging: @simplyaiden-blog @mfackenthal @lizeboredom @walkerismychoice @boneandfur @laniquelove @choices-fanatic @liam-rhys @mariamatsuo @the-everlasting-dream @client327 @kamybelen-blog @butindeed @enmchoices @drakelover78 @kamilah-sayeed-xoxo @parkerattano @asprankle @innerpostmentality @jadedpixiescribbles @crookedslimecreatorpasta @choiceswreckedme @debramcg1106 @mymandrake @alesana45 @flynnomalleys @eileendannie @diavolosprincess @lazychic28 @clarissafics @blackcatkita @bella-ca @writtenbycandy @stopforamoment @mind-reader1

[wiseabsol]

WA Reviews “Dominion” by Aurelia le, Chapter 7: Redirecting Lightning

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/7/Dominion

Summary: For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula’s defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister’s plans answer this, or only destroy them both?

Content Warnings: This story contains discussions and depictions of child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest. This story also explores the idea that Zuko’s redemption arc (and his unlearning of abuse) is not as complete as the show suggested, and that Azula is not a sociopath (with the story having a lot of sympathy for her). If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I would strongly recommend steering clear of this story and my reviews of it.  

Note: Because these were originally posted as chapter reviews/commentaries, I will often be talking to the author in them (though sometimes I will also snarkily address the characters). While I’ve also tried not to spoil later events in the story in these reviews, I would strongly recommend reading through chapter 28 before reading these, just to be safe.

Now on to chapter 7!

CHAPTER 7: REDIRECTING LIGHTNING

Alright, this is it. I have hit chapter seven. I have hit the first benchmark chapter in this story; the one that makes or breaks “Dominion” for readers. Because this is the chapter where Zuko rapes Azula. And I am going to stand by and defend that interpretation, because regardless of how ambiguous the situation seemed to Zuko, I think the authorial intent here is clear if the reader is paying attention. So expect this to be a lengthy review, because I plan to go into depth with that. As for the rating of this story—you upped it to an M rating a long time ago, which I think was appropriate, given that “Dominion,” due to what it’s exploring, really is more of a story for adults than for young teenagers. And you’re completely right about the decision to depict what happens in this chapter, rather than tell us what happened later. No one would have believed it otherwise. Also, I’m curious, but what tropes specifically are you deconstructing where Azula redemption fics are concerned? I haven’t read enough of them to be knowledgeable about that. But onwards with the chapter itself. So Zuko and Azula are facing each other after four years of separation. Zuko notices that Azula has grown up to look like Ursa, which I love, even though this passage is incredibly creepy: “It was that resemblance that struck him most, to see Azula standing there in his mother’s robe. He recognized the elegant swirls embroidered at the neck, the hem she was too short to keep from dragging in the dust. And even if she inherited their father’s sharp chin and slanted eyes, she had Ursa’s hair and painted mouth, and lined her eyes with kohl. It barely occurred to him to wonder where she found cosmetics, when Azula hadn’t stayed here since she was a little girl. His mother’s robe, his mother’s paints…. How in eight years had he never noticed, that she tinted her lips the very same shade?” Let’s unpack that. So the least creepy interpretation of Azula using the same makeup as her mother is that their hair/skin/eye colors are the same, so Ursa’s paints are the ideal shades for Azula to use as well. However, this is clearly meant to unsettle readers, so I do have to wonder if Azula was encouraged to use the same makeup as Ursa by Ozai (or perhaps by Lo and Li) to make her a mini-Ursa in appearance. That or Azula did it unconsciously to emulate her mother/to appeal to her father’s tastes (gags). On the flip side of this, Zuko’s…interest…in Azula looking like Ursa feels Oedipal, which makes something already disturbing even worse. “‘You…came to see me?’ she spoke slower, almost tentatively. ‘Why?’”—Oh baby you’re so hopeful that Zuko came to visit you because he cares about you. “‘I hardly think that /matters/ now, after what you’ve /done/!’ Zuko reproached her, angry not just at her escape anymore, but something he couldn’t even name….”—I don’t know, is it maybe because she grew up to look like your mom and you’re weirdly turned on by that? “‘It matters to me,’ she said simply. And looked sincere as she always did, when she lied.”—Maybe because she’s not lying to you, dumdum. They argue about whether he was helping her or not by putting her into the asylum (he wasn’t), and she definitely wouldn’t have left there if not for her own cunning. Zuko liked having her under his control too much. Zuko then starts patronizing her, telling her she’s dangerous to herself and to other people, which he really isn’t in any position to be saying, since he didn’t see her for years and has no idea what kind of progress she’s made. “He blinked once at her defiance, reminded uncomfortably of another confrontation, one he stood on the other side of.”—You’re more like Ozai than you know, Zuko. Okay, it’s amazing that Azula “banished” her hallucinations. I love how you borrow dialogue from the show and use the repetition for effect like this. I noticed it in “The Road” and in the most recent chapter of “Dominion,” too, where Iroh was concerned. “And suddenly, her letters made a little more sense. Not much, but a little more. ‘You really think,’ he said slowly [ . . . ] ‘I’d keep her from you?’”—You’ve given her no evidence to the contrary, Zuko. “‘You’ll see what you want to see. You always have.’”—Azula’s got your measure, Zuko. Then Azula reveals that she wants to find Ursa, because she thinks that will help her get better (there are strategic reasons for this, too, which we’ll learn later), to which Zuko thinks in response, “And [he] had to make a conscious effort to crush the hope that surged like fire in his veins. The tiny voice of truth that said if anyone could do the impossible, it was Azula.”—Just let her go, Zuko. What do you have to lose from this plan besides Azula? Oh wait. “‘You /hated/ her! You didn’t even /care/ when Dad sent her away!’”—Zuko, did you ever ask how your sister felt about your missing mom? Or did you get so caught up in your own grief that you didn’t? I’d bet money that the latter option is what happened. “Zuko advanced on her in growing anger, but she held her ground. ‘You’re in no position to make demands!’ he reminded her, with a sweep of his hand for added emphasis. ‘A /disgraced/ princess with nothing but an /empty/ title to her name! No money, no power, no friends—’”—Be more of an ass, Zuko, why don’t you? Also Ty Lee exists, in case you’ve forgotten. Azula has a friend in her, even if she has nothing else. “‘It doesn’t /work/ like that anymore!’ he said hotly, fists clenched to match her own. Zuko was nearly close enough to lay hands on her now, and two steps away from trying it. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, /I’m/ not the one who landed in an /asylum/!”—Zuko’s hostility is starting to edge uncomfortably close to violence, in part because he feels like he’s losing his control over the situation. “But the thought of apologizing to Azula was as foreign to him as bending water. He didn’t owe her anything.”—Given later events, this may be the crux of Zuko’s character development: learning to tell Azula that he’s sorry for how he’s treated her and thanking her for the things she’s done for him over the years. Because she has helped him, at risk to herself. “‘So much better to be cruel than crazy, isn’t it?’ she whispered, close enough that Zuko could just glimpse something sad and secret behind her eyes. ‘I should know.’”—Oh baby, you need so many hugs from Ty Lee. So Azula makes a break for it and Zuko thinks, “He made a promise to Mai. And he was a father now, he forced himself to recall.”—It’s interesting to me how detached Zuko is from Lu Ten emotionally at points, while he later desires to have a certain child with him. It occurs to me that his feelings aren’t dissimilar to Ozai’s in that respect. “‘That’s not what you came here for,’ she chided, a familiar promise written in the arch of her brows.”—Well that’s not creepy at all. “‘You never should have turned you back on me.”—Channel Scar more, Azula, why don’t you? Also, I think Zuko misinterprets what she said here—he takes it as more of a threat than it probably is. Azula then asks him why he’s here. “‘To bring you to justice,’ Zuko replied automatically, because he’d said it to himself and other people enough times that that must make it true.”—That’s not how the truth works, Zuko. “‘You need to be tried for your crimes in the war,’ he insisted, ignoring how her teeth ground at the suggestion that what she’d done was wrong. ‘And as soon as you’re sane, you will be.’” Alright, so I looked up what our society defines as war crimes for this. Azula has done the following: “Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial,” “Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer,” and “taking hostages” where the Kyoshi Warriors and the head of Dai Li are concerned. Now here’s what Zuko has done: “Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property,” “directing attacks against civilians,” and “taking hostages.” Azula’s crimes probably wouldn’t be considered unlawful during the time that ATLA takes place—capturing and imprisoning enemy combatants happened on both sides of the war. In addition to this, none of her victims died (presumably the Kyoshi Warriors were hurt, but that happened in combat). Zuko, on the other hand, destroyed peoples’ homes and probably did hurt civilians in the process. It’s little wonder that Azula grits her teeth when Zuko suggests that what she did was worse than what he did. “‘Well if /that/ isn’t an incentive to recover, I don’t know what is.’”—I laughed. “‘Our nation owes it to the world to hold people like /you/ to account.’ ‘People like me….’”—Yeah, I’d be disappointed in my brother, too, if I was Azula. “her voice low and silky”—Azula, this is what people mean about you talking to men in an inappropriate way. I realize you don’t know any better, but this is dangerous for you to be doing, especially to someone who is being aggressive towards you. “And Azula smiled. It was not a nice smile. ‘Five points for good parenting, Zuzu,’ she condescended, turning quite casually to leave. ‘Kids are scared enough of imaginary monsters at that age.’ Her voice fell as she moved off down the hall. ‘How soundly would he sleep, if he knew about /me/?”—So I think she actually felt hurt that Zuko hadn’t told Lu Ten about her yet. His decision to do so probably makes her feel even more isolated from their family. Her trotting out the comparison of herself to a monster is also something Azula tends to do when she’s having moments of insecurity and self-hatred. “her back to him like an invitation”—An invitation to what? Hit her? You’re so gross, Zuko. “‘So why don’t we make a deal? [ . . . ] Leave me alone to find Mother, and I will have nothing more to do with you. Or yours.’”—Take that deal, Zuko. It’s the best offer from her you’re going to get, and at this point, it’s probably the healthiest option for both of you psychologically.

"'If the best I can expect from you is /neglect/'"—It's telling that Azula uses the word "if" here, because it suggests that she would be open to having a better relationship with him, if he was willing to be a better brother to her. "'the best you can expect from me is neglect. Not quite as nice as having me under your /thumb/, to be sure [ . . . ] but don't pretend you wouldn't rather I was gone.'"—She both understands his desires here and doesn't. Zuko wants her close, but he wants her close on his terms. Zuko, in any case, shuts this conversation down by calling her crazy and rejecting her offer, which sets off the fighting between them. "Zuko had the advantage here. And the black look Azula gave him said she knew that he knew."—Let's keep this in mind as we get farther into this altercation. "Azula tumbled painfully end over end through the dust, her short, sharp cries punctuated by the dull thuds of her repeatedly striking the gray stone floor."—And Zuko claims that he doesn't want to hurt her? You'd think the pained noises she's making would pull him up short if that was the case. "'Of course you do'"—See, Azula agrees with me. "'You just don't want to admit that you /can't/!'"—Azula, I get that you're trying to get him to slip up, but if you goad him like this, he could seriously hurt you. "She wanted to knock him unconscious? he considered."—Her plans don't work if you're dead, Zuko. And I don't think she actually wants you dead, either. "Could she mean to take him hostage? [ . . . ] She had to know he would never go along with that."—Because hostages totally get a say in their captivity. Zuko thinks that Azula has a "near-perfect memory," which may be true when she's lucid, but I can't imagine it's true when she's not. "[He] thought back to that one time he'd searched her room"—for hints to where their mother had gone? Then they collide. This is where their fight starts to go off the rails. First, we get the "hug" that isn't a hug, keying us into the fact that something isn't right about the physical contact between them. Then it keeps buildings: "lifting her head so the tip of her nose just brushed his chin." "He stiffened at her closeness. Her body was pressed right against him, leaving little to the imagination. He was probably about to die. So he really should be thinking of anything other than how very thin her robe was." "Her voice was low and almost seductive, her breath hot in his ear."—In short, Zuko is very turned on by this. Random note: Azula is left-handed. I love it. "And Zuko struck her hard across the face."*—Remember when I said I had a theory I was going to get into in this chapter? This is a part of it. Also, Zuko, you are a terrible human being. "Zuko stared in horror first at her and then at the hand he still held before him, as if he suspected it of acting against his will. He hadn't meant to do—How could he—/Why couldn't she just be/ normal? the old resentment drowned out his shock."—Zuko deflects the blame for his violence towards Azula onto her, with the implication being that she deserves this for not being exactly what he wants her to be. This is classic victim-blaming from the abuser. "Zuko grabbed her wrist to jerk her back, and didn't know he burned her until he felt the heat beneath his fingers [ . . . ] and Azula fell against him with a sharp cry that choked off too quickly, as if she were afraid to make a sound."*—We're starting to get hints here at how Azula has been conditioned to respond to abuse. "He barely had time to register this, his hand still gripped her hot and blistered skin"—OUCH!—"when Azula pressed a soft kiss against the side of his neck"*—(Horrified moan.) "His stomach lurched like he stepped off the edge of a precipice, fallen into the gap between who he was before she did this, and now."—Great line. "He still stood in that attitude when her free hand slid under the crossed collar of his crimson shirt. Her fingertips on his skin were electric, and Zuko exhaled a shuddering breath when he remembered to breathe again. She was—Why was she—/What/? [ . . . ] he leaned into her next kiss, and her teeth pulled at the soft skin where his neck joined his shoulder. Her nails began to scratch, he could feel her tense against him…."—She's being physically intimate with him, but her body is tense and she isn't making any verbal indications that she wants this. "/No./ The word cut like morning light through the fog that settled on his mind. He gripped her arms hard to throw her off."—Zuko could have asked her what she was doing here. He doesn't. "If he could catch her gaze, he would know why—He would know what to do. But her eyes were tightly closed as a child's who pretends to be invisible, just because she cannot see. Tears struggled at the corners of them, and she turned her face away when Zuko brought his mouth too close to hers."—SHE IS NOT INTO THIS. SHE IS IN DISTRESS. STOP! But Zuko doesn't stop. "/Such a fucking tease,/ the ugly thought burst into his mind like a damn breaking."—Please excuse me while I throw up at how disgusting that is. "There was nothing she could hide from him, whatever she thought."—Zuko thinks this as he strips her, and I can't help but think that he's never sounded more like Ozai. "Her fingers grasped his collar, and she pressed closer, as if to hide herself against him"*—Again, she's not into this. She's scared. "But Zuko refused her, tore the shirt impatiently from his shoulders and cast it to the gray stone floor, like throwing down a gauntlet."—Another great line. Zuko demands that she look at him (probably like his father has) and this happens: "But Zuko stopped at the face she showed him. Her dark brows drew low over amber eyes that were impenetrable as two stones. The curve of her mouth was as fixed as a painted smile on a porcelain face. She didn't feel anything. /She never did/."—Azula is deep into a dissociative episode at this point. Instead of realizing that something is wrong with her mental state, though, Zuko persists in his belief that something is fundamentally wrong with Azula /as a person/, which dehumanizes her. His lack of empathy for her contributes to what he does next. "Zuko hated that smirk at once, wanted nothing so much as to see it gone. It was wrong, as wrong as everything about her. That was the only motive he could think of to explain why he pressed his mouth to hers."—No. You're doing it because you're turned on. "But the only thought that broke through his haste was that she tasted like blood."—This adds to the association of violence with their intimacy. "He grabbed her arm reflexively and pulled her along, vowing she would not escape him."—We see possessiveness on Zuko's part again. When they actually start to have sex, we also get Zuko's creepy line, "to hold so much power in his hands…," which adds to that feeling of possessiveness and to his objectification of Azula. "He felt her whole body tense up around him, her arms closed about his neck to pull him into the closest thing to a hug they'd shared since there were children."—First, this body language is still screaming that she's not okay with this. Second, that is so, /so wrong/! "Something coiled in his chest and threatened to break, when her breath came so hard and fast he thought she might be having a panic attack."—It's interesting to me that while you noticed this, Zuko, you still didn't STOP OR SAY ANYTHING TO HER! You could have done both of those things, and probably would if you were with anyone but Azula.

"Azula looked over his shoulder, her face turned into the headboard so he couldn't see the awful concentration in it, her breathing strictly controlled. As if she were performing some complicated kata. Her eyes were closed, her mouth set in a pained grimace."—Ugh, "performing some complicated kata" is right. That /is/ how she would think of it. But again, what we're getting here is a conditioned response from her, rather than something she genuinely wants to be doing. Also, as far as her…"performance"…goes, I feel like most people would realize that she's forcing herself through this. She's not acting like she's enjoying it, which I feel would be necessary for Ozai's "honeypot" plan to work. I'm surprised he wouldn't have been more critical of her lack of "passion"…or maybe he was. Azula does think that he was "demanding" in their "training," so maybe he was trying to make her more convincing in the act. That definitely isn't coming across here, though, since she's clearly in pain. "He thought he saw his own anguish in her mouth drawn tight."—What are you talking about, "your anguish," Zuko? "They were the same. They were the same…."—No you are fucking not, Zuko! "'Now you've taken everything from me,' she whispered harshly. 'Is it enough? Will it ever be?'"—So she's snapped out the disassociation for the time being. "'Never,' Zuko breathed."—God, he's such a terrible person. They start struggling again, and we get this incredibly telling passage: "He moved hastily to pin her down, grabbing her arms to restrain her [ . . . ] Without time even for conscious thought, he crushed his mouth against hers, and stole her breath before she could ignite. Azula jolted with surprise and a frantic noise of protest that died in her throat, without voice. Zuko only deepened the kiss, and she wrenched in his grasp, arched beneath him in a last desperate attempt at escape. But he clamped an arm around her waist and gripped the damp hair at the nape of her neck, holding her so tightly against him he left her no room to move."—She's protesting and trying to get away from him. He won't let her. "As if this had been a signal*, she shuddered once and went still, without explanation. If felt enough like surrender that Zuko broke from her, breathing hard, and laid his head against hers, his harsh exhalations stirring dust from the faded covers. He could feel her heart beat much too fast behind her ribs, like a bird breaking itself on the bars of its cage. Zuko wondered, distantly, if there was even more wrong with her than he knew."—First, yes, there is something very wrong with Azula that you aren't aware of at this point, Zuko. Second and much more importantly, /this is where Zuko could have stopped/. Azula is no longer fighting. He could have pulled back and tried to assess the situation. He could have tried to say something to her or tied her up, to capture her like he'd intended. I could almost forgive him for the first rape (you know, despite the fact that he knows what a healthy sexual relationship looks like and should have realized that something was wrong with how Azula was acting), but then this happens: "It was the last coherent thought he managed, before he found himself again in her midst." He rapes her a second time. And he realizes that that what's he's doing, too, even if he doesn't call it rape: "She cried out once, and his stomach twisted with guilt"—he knows what he's doing is wrong—"but he didn't stop, couldn't make out what she screamed before she strangled the sound in her throat, as if she were scared of getting caught."—He keeps going anyway. "She didn't speak again and only held tighter, as certain as Zuko, it seemed, that letting go would mean her death…."*—That has to be one of the most depressing things I've ever read. She felt that way about Ozai too, didn't she? "Her eyes were empty of recognition. Her lips moved silently, forming the same word over and over again. But he couldn't read it."—We know from future chapters that she's saying "father" here. "A deep and visceral horror filled him. She was never this bad before. He did this, he /did/ this…."—Yeah, people don't tend to respond well to being raped, Zuko. So this next section is arguably where Azula rapes Zuko: "Her vacant gaze lit with a predatory gleam, a look he'd seen her wear before, but one he caught more often from his father." "'Aaah-ah! Ngh…' was all the objection Zuko could manage, when she thrust herself aggressively against him. It was too much. He had nothing left to give, and she was hurting him."—He's not into this anymore. He's in physical pain. At the same time, though, I don't think Azula has any control over what she's doing. Her dialogue heavily suggests that she's in another dissociative episode and reliving an encounter she had with Ozai: "'You're mine. You'll /stay/ mine,' she breathed, and her voice sent a shiver down his spine. She didn't even sound like herself. 'You will /bend/ for me, you will /obey/ me.' She punctuated each command with a thrust of her hips, and Zuko's hands on them did little to deter her. 'You'll never tell. /You'll never tell./ And even if you tried,' she faltered here, and had to choke out, 'who would believe you?' Her tears fell on his chest, so hot they almost scalded, when she whispered haltingly, 'Azula always lies. /Azula always/—lies…'"* I'm going to get back to this dialogue in a minute. I'm going to cover the rest of this chapter before I discuss my theory about this. "Frozen with the shock of realization, she looked down on him as if she'd just woken from a nightmare, to find it followed her into the waking world. 'No…' she whispered brokenly, her voice edged with panic."—Yeah, she absolutely wasn't in control of herself the third time they had sex. "But she tore [her hands] from his fingers, her teeth clenched in disgust." "The rest of her trembled with rage."—So here's the thing. While Zucest happens in "Dominion," I don't think that Azula feels any sexual or romantic desire for Zuko. I don't even think that Zuko feels romantic desire for her either (sexual desire, though, absolutely). What they've done obviously disgusts Azula, and Zuko even acknowledges later that what they did was an act of hate. It was also an act of dominance, with both of them, but mostly Zuko, taking the dominant role at different points. But Zuko—who wasn't drugged and who wasn't disassociating—bears more of the responsibility for what happened. Azula wasn't cognizant of her behavior. Zuko was. Which isn't to dismiss the trauma Zuko will feel from this incident later, but I am much less inclined to sympathize with him than with Azula, given the above. And as far as the blame for this encounter goes…while it ultimately leads back to Ozai's abuse of both of his children, I don't feel comfortable saying Zuko that had no agency in this. He made choices here—and one of them was the choice to have sex with his sister when the opportunity arose. And since Azula didn't want him when it happened, that makes Zuko a rapist. "'I missed you,' he offered weakly, too exhausted to realize this was the first time he had admitted it to anyone. Even himself."—That might be one of the saddest things I've ever read.

Zuko falls asleep after this, but Azula does not. This is technically our first scene from Azula's perspective and it is /heartbreaking/: "Azula took five halting steps into the dusty room before she succeeded in tying the sash of her robe with shaking hands, so tightly she could barely breathe. It wasn't nearly tight enough."—She feels violated from what happened. "She had done worse than this, she reminded herself. She had done worse, and lived. She would survive this too."—This makes me wonder just how extensive Ozai's "training" was and I don't think I actually want to know the answer. "Her mouth bent into something resembling a grimace, and her sight blurred with tears. She clenched her hands into fists to forget how Zuko tried to hold them, when she panicked. He was just trying to save his own worthless life, she told herself, bitterly. /It had nothing to do with you. It never did./ Azula had to look down before she realized she had drawn her fists to her chest, as if to shield herself from a blow."—Oh baby I am so, so sorry. I wish I could give you a hug. "The dagger their uncle gave Zuko from his abortive conquest of Ba Sing Se. How much she coveted this once, Azula recalled. But he never meant it for her. And she contemplated putting it to a use he never intended."—I'm pretty sure no jury would convict her if she killed Zuko here. I'm not even sure I would, given the extent of the violence he inflicted on her. But of course, I also know that she won't do it, because, A.) Azula isn't keen on the whole murder thing, B.) The note she wrote was obviously meant for him, and C.) That would end the story too soon. So Zuko gets to keep breathing and I get to keep glaring at him through my computer screen. Alright, so now to get to that theory I've been listing *s for. Here are the specific points again: "And Zuko struck her hard across the face." "Zuko grabbed her wrist to jerk her back, and didn't know he burned her until he felt the heat beneath his fingers [ . . . ] and Azula fell against him with a sharp cry that choked off too quickly, as if she were afraid to make a sound." "He barely has time to register this, his hand still gripped her hot and blistered skin, when Azula pressed a soft kiss against the side of his neck." "Her fingers grasped his collar, and she pressed closer, as if to hide herself against him." "But he clamped an arm around her waist and gripped the damp hair at the nape of her neck, holding her so tightly against him he left her no room to move. As if this had been a signal, she shuddered once and went still, without explanation." "She didn't speak again and only held tighter, as certain as Zuko, it seemed, that letting go would mean her death…." And most importantly: "'You're mine. You'll /stay/ mine,' she breathed, and her voice sent a shiver down his spine. She didn't even sound like herself. 'You will /bend/ for me, you will /obey/ me.' She punctuated each command with a thrust of her hips, and Zuko's hands on them did little to deter her. 'You'll never tell. /You'll never tell./ And even if you tried,' she faltered here, and had to choke out, 'who would believe you?' Her tears fell on his chest, so hot they almost scalded, when she whispered haltingly, 'Azula always lies. /Azula always/—lies….'" I'll start with the dialogue. When I was first reading "Dominion," I thought that this was something that Ozai had said to Azula while he was "training" her. Then I realized just how hostile this dialogue was. "You're mine. You'll /stay/ mine."—This implies that when this was happening, there was a question about whether or not Azula would try to break away from him. Her loyalty, in short, was under question. "You will /bend/ for me, you will /obey/ me."—Azula's obedience was also under question. But what's most telling to me is this: "You'll never tell. /You'll never tell./ And even if you tried, who would believe you?" This, combined with the predatory expression and the aggressive thrusting, gives me the distinct impression that this sexual encounter wasn't "normal" by Ozai and Azula's standards. "You'll never tell" indicates that it's something that Ozai knows Azula will want to do afterwards. As far as the timing goes, this means that there was someone around who she could potentially turn to, which suggests that this happened either before Mai and Ty Lee left originally, or after the trio were reunited. And then there's the /purpose/ behind this—because if Ozai is addressing the possibility that Azula will want to tell someone about what happened afterwards, then he is also acknowledging that what he is doing to her is wrong. Which means that the intent behind this encounter wasn't to "train" Azula—it was to /hurt her./ Why else would he taunt her that there was no one she could go to for help, because no one would believe her? So this is my theory: what we're seeing here isn't a general episode of abuse, but how Ozai punished Azula after Zuko defected. For lying to him, he struck her in the face and split her lip, then burned her. Then the violence turned sexual in nature, though it's unclear who initiated it—it could have been Azula doing it as a defense mechanism, or Ozai doing it to enforce his power/control over her, or a mixture of both. Azula definitely obeyed him, in part due to her conditioning—the grip on the back of her neck is a trigger to get her to comply—and in part due to her genuinely fearing for her life during this encounter. That is what Ozai meant when he said he "made sure [Azula lying to him/disobeying him] would never happen again" and what Azula keeps alluding to when she thinks about the aftermath of Zuko's defection. It also, I suspect, was a contributing factor to the deterioration of her mental state in the last few episodes of the show, because her father not only assaulted her (without any ambiguity about that being was what he was doing, unlike during the other parts of their "training"), but then abandoned her not long afterwards. And here's thing: I only realized the significance of this exchange recently. It's not obvious on the first read through what is happening here, and it's not obvious the fifth time either. Which suggests to me that you, as a writer, were purposefully trying to obscure the contents of Azula's flashback to the readers. The fact that Ozai and Azula alike both avoid going into detail about it later on only adds to this deflection. Which suggests to me that you're planning to reveal the aftermath of Zuko's defection in full later—and that if there is one scene you include that depicts Ozai raping Azula, that scene is going to be it. And why/when would it come up? When Azula is finally being confronted about what Ozai did to her. She will try to defend their "training," but I think this assault will be in the back of her mind, arguing that there was actually something deeply wrong and evil about what Ozai did to her. And as far as your writing style goes, its inclusion would also further your use of "echoing" scenes and dialogue, deepening the impact of chapter seven upon re-read.

Now I'm of mixed feelings where showing Ozai raping Azula is concerned, if it in fact happens. On the one hand, you have never shied away from depicting disturbing material before in "Dominion," and it feels as if not seeing that abuse from Azula's perspective would be a notable absence. On the other hand, showing the aftermath of the abuse is much more important than showing the abuse itself, and showing it risks feeding into reader voyeurism as well. Ultimately, it's up to the writer to decide how much to show or only allude to, but I trust you whichever way you go with this. Now if it turns out I'm wrong about this theory, I'll feel both surprised and embarrassed. I /am/ confident that my interpretations of the sex scenes in this chapter are correct, though. I've been wanting to dissect those scenes for a while now, because there are readers who find the issue of consent in them to be ambiguous (I'm thinking mostly of icewhisker21's discussions of "Dominion," which seem colored by Zucest shipping googles). However, I think it's clear that there was no mutual or positive consent where the sex between Zuko and Azula is concerned, and as such, Azula's later claims that Zuko raped her are completely justified. So that's my lengthy analysis of chapter seven. This will probably be where I leave off until the summer, unless my homework load lightens and I get some time before May. As always, though, thank you for the read! Sincerely, WiseAbsol

[sanjosenewshq]

Kevin Spacey Finishes Testimony At N.Y. Civil Intercourse Abuse Trial

NEW YORK (AP) — Kevin Spacey remained composed Tuesday throughout cross examination at a civil trial, repeatedly rejecting solutions that he wasn’t telling the reality when he denied an actor’s claims that he made a sexual advance on him when he was 14 within the Eighties. His testimony for a number of hours on cross examination by a lawyer for actor Anthony Rapp, 50, went easily sufficient that Spacey’s lawyer didn’t ask any questions after the examination was accomplished by early afternoon. Rapp testified earlier within the trial, now in its third week. He’s in search of $40 million in damages. Addressing Rapp’s lawyer as “sir,” Spacey didn’t appear rattled a day after he emotionally testified that he regretted following the recommendation of his handlers to be “pleasant and cordial” in responding to Rapp’s claims in 2017 that Spacey picked him up and briefly laid on high of him on a mattress in his condominium in 1986 when Rapp was 14 and he was 26. “In my coronary heart, I didn’t consider this had occurred,” Spacey stated of his response to the claims. He stated he was “terrified” and went alongside along with his handlers proposal of a public assertion saying he didn’t recall the encounter but when it occurred, “I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken habits.” “The entire thing was horrifying,” Spacey stated. Rapp’s claims, and people of others, abruptly interrupted what had been a high-flying profession for the two-time Academy Award successful actor, who misplaced his job on the Netflix collection “Home of Playing cards” and noticed different alternatives dry up. Rapp is an everyday on TV’s “Star Trek: Discovery” and was a part of the unique Broadway forged of “Lease.” NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 06: Actor Kevin Spacey is surrounded by members of the media and followers as he leaves the US District Courthouse on October 06, 2022 in New York Metropolis. Spacey’s trial started immediately with jury choice after allegations of alleged sexual misconduct surfaced in 2017 by actor Anthony Rapp. (Photograph by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Photos) Alexi J. Rosenfeld through Getty Photos Spacey, 63, admitted entertaining Rapp and Rapp’s buddy, John Barrowman, one night in 1986 after they noticed Spacey carry out in “Lengthy Day’s Journey into Evening.” However he stated if he had a romantic curiosity, it was Barrowman, not Rapp, who was performing on the time in “Valuable Sons” on Broadway. Spacey recalled dancing with the then-19-year-old Barrowman on the Limelight dance membership and stated he invited Barrowman and Rapp to his condominium afterward to see his canine. As soon as there, Barrowman and Spacey “playfully had a second collectively” on his mattress in a go to to the condominium that lasted a couple of half hour, the actor stated. Barrowman testified in a deposition partially performed in courtroom Monday that Rapp was within the restroom when Barrowman and Spacey briefly flirted on the mattress. “It was a flirtatious and playful second between two individuals who have been attracted to one another,” Spacey stated. “I used to be captivated by John Barrowman.” On Monday, Spacey testified that he was certain he was by no means alone with Rapp, and that Rapp’s declare that Spacey made a cross at him after a celebration at his condominium was not true. “I knew I wouldn’t have any sexual curiosity in Anthony Rapp or any youngster. That I knew,” Spacey stated. Originally published at San Jose News HQ

[freenewstoday]

New Post has been published on https://freenews.today/2021/03/21/tom-reed-apologizing-over-groping-allegation-says-he-wont-run-in-2022/

Tom Reed, Apologizing Over Groping Allegation, Says He Won’t Run in 2022

WASHINGTON — Representative Tom Reed, Republican of New York, apologized on Sunday to a woman who accused him of touching her inappropriately and said that he would not run for any political office in 2022, including governor.

In a lengthy statement, Mr. Reed apologized to a former lobbyist, Nicolette Davis, whose allegation that the congressman groped her during a 2017 political trip was reported on Friday by The Washington Post. Mr. Reed said that he took “full responsibility” for the episode and that it “occurred at a time in my life in which I was struggling” with an alcohol addiction.

“Even though I am only hearing of this matter as stated by Ms. Davis in the article now, I hear her voice and will not dismiss her,” Mr. Reed, 49, said. “In reflection, my personal depiction of this event is irrelevant. Simply put, I caused her pain, showed her disrespect and was unprofessional. I was wrong, I am sorry and I take full responsibility.”

Before Ms. Davis’s allegation, Mr. Reed was publicly mulling a run for governor in 2022, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, was besieged by a wave of accusations of sexual harassment and other misconduct. Mr. Reed also said on Sunday that he would not run for re-election, citing a pledge to serve only six terms that he made to voters when he was first elected in 2010.

Ms. Davis told The Post that when she was a 25-year-old lobbyist for the insurance company Aflac, Mr. Reed groped her at an Irish pub in Minneapolis after a day of ice fishing with donors, politicians and lobbyists. While intoxicated, Mr. Reed placed his hand on her back, she said, unclasped her bra through her blouse and moved his hand up her thigh before Ms. Davis asked the man sitting next to her to intervene.

After her accusation was made public on Friday, Mr. Reed said in a statement that the “account of my actions is not accurate,” but did not elaborate or deny the encounter outright.

Mr. Reed had been on a short list for New York Republicans thinking of challenging Mr. Cuomo, who has been significantly weakened politically by the sexual harassment scandal as well as by controversy over his administration’s handling of the state’s nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic.

A Quinnipiac University poll released on Thursday found that Mr. Cuomo’s approval rating had shrunk to 39 percent, the lowest of his decade-long tenure. Even worse for the governor’s future prospects was a finding that two-thirds of voters did not want to see Mr. Cuomo seek a fourth term next year, while only 25 percent did.

Such results have given hope to Republicans, who have not won a statewide election in nearly two decades. In February, even before Mr. Cuomo’s first accuser, Lindsey Boylan, came forward, Mr. Reed had told Fox News he was “seriously considering” a run.

“We’ve been asked by many people to do this for months, because I think they appreciate the way I govern,” he said.

Mr. Reed, who was easily re-elected in November in a large district that encompasses much of New York’s border with Pennsylvania, was considered a more moderate option than other possible candidates for governor, such as Representative Elise Stefanik, a close ally of former President Donald J. Trump’s. The co-chairman of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, Mr. Reed had cultivated a reputation as a centrist who was willing to reach across the aisle in an attempt to cut through partisan gridlock and broker deals.

“I want to do whatever I can as a proud Republican — and I’m working with proud Democrats — to bring people together to try to win hearts and minds based on ideas and influencing them from policy perspectives,” Mr. Reed said in January.

With Mr. Reed’s apparent departure from the political stage, Republicans have only one prominent official declaring interest thus far: Representative Lee Zeldin of Long Island, who said in early March that he was mulling a campaign to oust Mr. Cuomo.

Late Sunday, Nick Langworthy, the New York Republican Party chairman, said he commended Mr. Reed for “taking real accountability for his actions” and wished him “continued strength” in his battle with alcohol problems.

“I believe he has made the right decision,” Mr. Langworthy said, “and I hope that this can bring some peace for Ms. Davis, who made very serious allegations that deserved to be heard.”

Mr. Reed was first elected to Congress in 2010, triumphing in a special election after the congressman who previously held the seat, Eric Massa, a Democrat, resigned while being investigated for sexually harassing his male congressional aides.

Source

[easyfoodnetwork]

The Boundary Pusher

Peter Meehan’s transgressive vision helped redefine food media with the groundbreaking Lucky Peach, and later transformed the LA Times’s food coverage. But that vision came with a toxic management style characterized by intimidation, a barrage of sexualized commentary, and explosive anger, according to two dozen current and former staffers.

On Tuesday, June 30, staffers on the Los Angeles Times food section prepared to log in to Zoom for their weekly 11 a.m. meeting. It had been pushed back 15 minutes — a potentially ominous sign. The day before, writer Tammie Teclemariam published a lengthy Twitter thread laced with allegations about the section’s editor, Peter Meehan, spanning his time as editor of groundbreaking food magazine Lucky Peach and as head of the Times’s food section. Now, after a day of nonstop texting and immense uncertainty, the team would face each other for the first time.

Sitting in their bedrooms, living rooms, and other makeshift workspaces, the staffers anxiously signed on. Meehan was missing, but as faces from other teams populated their Zoom windows, it looked like it might be business as normal, except for the appearance of Times managing editor Kimi Yoshino, Meehan’s direct boss. At the top of the meeting, she outlined the paper’s response to a few of the assertions in Teclemariam’s thread (Meehan’s salary is not $300,000; he planned coverage of Juneteenth). A discussion about cliquishness broke out after Andrea Chang, the section’s deputy editor, asked staffers to come to her with any concerns; several food staffers, including Chang, apologized for contributing to an atmosphere of insiders versus outsiders that orbited around Meehan.

As the conversation continued, Bill Addison, one of the paper’s two restaurant critics (and formerly Eater’s national critic), worried that it was sidestepping the larger issue raised by the thread, which he describes as “the culture of fear that Peter had been masterful at creating.” Before it could end, Addison spoke up and said, “Even after those tweets, I am right now afraid of retaliation from Peter.” The tone of the room shifted. One by one, staffers spoke out: about waves of panic that hit whenever a Slack or phone call from Meehan arrived, about him belittling their work in public Slack channels, or screaming in all caps about small mistakes. One staffer reminded Yoshino that she had come to Yoshino’s office and wept about Meehan’s behavior. When someone outside the department remarked that the group seemed eerily calm discussing these painful experiences, Ben Mims, a cooking columnist, replied that Meehan was still their boss, and they were afraid of what he would do.

The next day, Yoshino informed Meehan the paper would launch a formal investigation into the allegations raised at the meeting. Meehan offered his resignation and publicly apologized on Twitter, characterizing Teclemariam’s thread as alleging “a number of things I don’t think are true” and describing his failures as those of perfectionism. “In my tunnel-vision commitment to making the best things we could, I lost sight of people and their feelings,” he wrote in a statement.

Later that week, Jenn Harris, a senior writer in the food section and a 10-year veteran of the paper, posted a statement in a locked company Slack channel. Torn up by what she’d heard in the meeting, Harris apologized for not speaking out sooner. She said that she’d been on Meehan’s good side, and she’d been afraid to find out what would happen if she wasn’t. She alleged that Meehan once called her “fuckable” after a work dinner. On another occasion, she alleged, he rested his head on her shoulder and slid his hand up her dress in the back of a car. After she pulled his hand away and said, “no,” Harris said he tried to put his hand up her skirt again. When she demanded to know what he thought he was doing, she alleges that Meehan, who was intoxicated, had mumbled, “Pushing boundaries.”

In the midst of the national uprising for Black lives sparked by a white police officer’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a wave of protests broke out in newsrooms across the country, from the New York Times to Refinery29. The first of these were directly tied to issues of racism and anti-Blackness, but they have since expanded to the broader problem of toxic leadership in the industry, and the dominance of white men and women in positions of power. Social media has driven much of this reckoning by providing a space for rank-and-file editors and writers to speak out. Most notably in the food media world, Bon Appétit editor Adam Rapoport resigned in the wake of social media protests by employees of color over unfair treatment, sparked when Teclemariam tweeted a photo of Rapoport in brownface.

While Meehan’s resignation occurred after his staff spoke out in a meeting, many of those staffers say without Teclemariam’s Twitter thread, that conversation would never have occurred. Meehan’s departure occurs during a moment of wider agitation at the Times over the paper’s hiring decisions after its acquisition by the billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong in 2018, which some staffers say privileged star journalists from the East Coast establishment — overwhelmingly white and male — who were richly rewarded while existing staffers battled in union contract negotiations for fair compensation after years of brutal cuts. Meehan is in some ways the most obvious example of this trend: He never relocated to Los Angeles, instead flying out one week a month from his home in New York.

Meehan may not be a household name, but he is one of the most consequential food journalists of the last decade, whose mentors and compatriots include Mark Bittman, David Chang, Jonathan Gold, and Anthony Bourdain. One of an emerging generation of culture hounds who took food seriously as a badge of cool, Meehan started his career working for Bittman, who helped him land a gig writing the New York Times’s $25 and Under column in 2004, a plum position for an emerging food writer. His real ascendance began when he teamed up with Chang, at the time a brash young chef who sparked a nationwide mania for ramen and pork buns, whose early creative evolution Meehan had chronicled as part of his column. He went on to co-author the Momofuku cookbook, which was as groundbreaking as the restaurant was, and helped establish the irreverent yet maniacal perfectionism of Chang’s star persona.

In 2011, Chang and Meehan joined forces with Chris Ying, then an editor at the San Francisco small press McSweeney’s, to launch the food magazine Lucky Peach. From the first issue, the magazine was a phenomenon, combining McSweeney’s fetish for literary excess and groundbreaking design with Momofuku’s foul-mouthed, ramen-worshiping swagger. Over its six-year run, the magazine racked up critical adoration and industry awards, spun out successful cookbooks, and arguably changed the way food media worked and looked forever. Its abrupt closure in 2017 caught even the magazine’s contributors off guard, and was attributed to irreconcilable differences between Meehan and Chang. (Both signed a legal agreement in 2013 with a robust nondisparagement clause.)

In the summer of 2018, Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic and secular saint of Los Angeles food, died of pancreatic cancer. Gold was a frequent contributor to Lucky Peach, and had already been advocating for Meehan to be recruited to oversee a revival of the Times food section. After Gold’s death, Meehan came to work at the paper, first as a consultant and then as the section’s official editor, overseeing the relaunch of a standalone food section, heavy on illustration and other hip signifiers of the design that had characterized Lucky Peach. With his many, many connections in the food world, he delivered in-depth features on, say, the closing of the world-famous Faviken, and brought talent from all over the world to the paper’s monthlong, revenue-generating Food Bowl. Within months, Meehan developed a reputation across the paper as difficult, but these issues were considered by upper management to be the necessary price of working with a hard-driving auteur.

To Meehan’s expansive roster of friends and allies, he was a generous, brilliant, and genuinely subversive writer and editor. I know this from personal experience: There’s a great deal of professional overlap between Eater and Lucky Peach. A number of its staff and contributors, including many people I spoke to for this story, have contributed to Eater. I’ve attended numerous Lucky Peach parties, contributed a story to the magazine, and have met Meehan on several occasions, finding him to be charming, thoughtful, and sharp.

Behind all of Meehan’s public success, however, were ever-growing ranks of scarred, fearful staffers who worked under him. Interviews with more than two dozen sources, including former Lucky Peach employees, current Los Angeles Times staffers, and freelancers for both publications, allege that Meehan’s management of both these publications veered beyond the realm of a difficult boss in a high-stakes environment, and into a deeper and more disturbing toxicity. They describe a relentless cycle of unrestrained generosity and explosive anger, while his disdain for professionalism, combined with a zeal for perfection, led to workplaces with few boundaries and constant tension. A number of sources for this story spoke anonymously out of a fear of professional retribution from Meehan or their current employer.

Violent tempers, inappropriate jokes and comments, and allegations of sexual misconduct are far from unknown issues in the media world, and they’re a hallmark of the restaurant industry. Lucky Peach got its start in the cradle of the Momofuku restaurant group, making these dynamics even more intertwined. Former Lucky Peach staffers with restaurant experience say it was especially disturbing to see the behavior they associated with hostile kitchens — behavior David Chang has apologized for perpetuating in his own restaurants — replicated in an office.

Former staff, including many media industry veterans, say working under Meehan was shattering in a way they had not experienced under other tough bosses. At Lucky Peach, his over-the-top insults and physical displays of anger — slamming doors, hitting tables, knocking over chairs — created an atmosphere of fear, while female staffers say that Meehan’s sexual jokes and inappropriate comments crossed a line even in their freewheeling and irreverent workplace. At the Los Angeles Times, Meehan’s outbursts were limited to Slack or other written communication, but pushing back, staffers say, led to difficulties around deadlines, feedback, and assignments, while his lack of professional boundaries culminated in one employee finding herself subject to repeated sexual commentary, and, in one incident, unwanted, sexually charged touching.

Meehan declined repeated requests to speak on the record. In a letter sent to Times food staffers and provided to Eater, the paper’s management said, “Employees told us that Meehan created a negative work environment where employees did not feel comfortable raising their concerns. … We have taken a series of actions that reflect the seriousness of the allegations, including imposing, where appropriate, discipline, and insisting that managers receive new counseling and training.”

Marian Bull, who freelanced for Meehan both at Lucky Peach and the Times, says Meehan’s persona, steeped in subversive cultural tropes, could obscure how his behavior reinforced a much blander and more oppressive status quo. “He thought his transgressiveness absolved him,” she says.

In food media, the last great economic cataclysm ushered in a broification of the industry after decades of publications staffed and run largely by white women and gay men. In 2009, Gourmet shuttered, and Bon Appétit was relaunched under Rapoport, a straight, white male editor from GQ. Lucky Peach was born soon after, on a lark: What if a food magazine was written for the people who cooked the food, not who ate it?

Chris Ying met Meehan and David Chang in 2009 while putting together an experimental newspaper, called the San Francisco Panorama, which featured a food section, for McSweeney’s. A year later, the pair approached Ying, who had cooked in restaurants, with an idea for a food magazine. The first issue, exuding pork fat and swagger and bad words to spare, was overseen by Meehan and Ying and put together by McSweeney’s staff, with significant input from Chang. In addition to its restaurant cred, the magazine’s aesthetics and zine-like attitude borrowed from indie rock culture, positioning it as a publication for those left out of the mainstream.

Chasing the unexpected hit led to a fuzzy leadership structure and a bicoastal operation. Ying became the editor-in-chief, heading a small San Francisco office spun off from McSweeney’s, while Meehan worked from New York. While the magazine, especially its early issues, was a true collaboration between Meehan and Ying, Meehan always held a larger share in the company, commanded a higher salary, had more say over the budget, and was more tightly connected to Momofuku and Chang.

In late 2011, Rachel Khong was hired as the magazine’s managing editor and first employee. The first time Khong hung out with Meehan, her new boss, was at an alcohol-fueled dinner at San Francisco’s Mission Chinese, where the small staff of the new food magazine were feted. At the end of the night, she sent an email to her boyfriend when she got home, asking for a ride to the office the next morning and adding, “Peter Meehan kissed me goodbye!” Today, Khong says she no longer remembers this kiss, in part because her time working for Meehan involved a barrage of blurred boundaries. “For many mornings during those years, I would wake up to a Peter phone call and go to sleep after talking to Peter,” Khong says. “It was always there were just never any boundaries.”

As at many indie publications, the work schedule at Lucky Peach was punishing at best, and like many small staffs working closely together to produce an aggressively honed creative product in a pressure-cooker environment with unforgiving standards, a distinct workplace culture emerged that reflected the profane, transgressive high-low spirit of the magazine. The bicoastal offices ran on constant riffing over email and Hipchat, a Slack precursor, and elaborate wordplay and absurdist imagery were the norm. Editors would say they were tickling, massaging, diddling, and piddling a piece; jokes about hot chats and “that’s what she said” were volleyed back and forth. At the San Francisco office, a running prank was to jump out of the closet to scare other employees; deadline stress would devolve into ridiculous fake headlines and photoshopping frogs’ heads onto bodybuilders.

By 2014, Meehan began to staff up the New York office, which was eventually located in its own space at 128 Lafayette Street, in Chinatown. (Disclosure: This space is now the Eater test kitchen.) The giddy, weird energy that pervaded the magazine’s stressful early days — which still reigned in San Francisco — was overlaid with dread in New York. While members of the San Francisco office say they had seen glimpses of Meehan’s temper — Khong recalls seeing him slam a door violently over a video call — on the East Coast, fear of his anger pervaded the office. Several staffers recall a New York editor saying, during one of Meehan’s explosions, “Peter, please don’t make me cry today.”

Priya Krishna, who was hired out of college to do outreach and customer service, says that, at first, getting a job at Lucky Peach was thrilling. She’d devoured the magazine in college, and when she went to events with “Lucky Peach” on her nametag, people were eager to talk to her. Behind the scenes, she says that the work culture was increasingly toxic — the New York office was often tense and silent. She would cry on Sundays because she had to go back the next day. “I was scared to go to work,” she says. “My day was dependent on this man’s mood, whether Peter was going to feel generous that day and buy us all lunch, or whether he’d be angry at something that would set him off.”

Late in her tenure at Lucky Peach, Krishna was called into a meeting over a subscription partnership that was underperforming. “Peter banged his hands on the table really really loudly and the table shook, and [he] yelled ‘WHAT HAPPENED?’ at the top of his lungs,” she says. Another employee sent messages to the SF office about the incident over Hipchat. When Krishna took a scheduled call after that meeting, Meehan publicly berated her for not addressing the partnership immediately, and told her to go home for a month and see if she had a job when she came back. She resigned a few days later.

During the photoshoot for the magazine’s last cookbook, All About Eggs, which Khong traveled to New York to oversee, the tension in the office was extraordinarily high, even by Lucky Peach standards. Meehan slammed a door so loudly the staffer who witnessed it was frightened. At one point, a staffer alleges, he grew so angry about the state of the kitchen, which was littered with boxes from new equipment, that he shoved a chair out of the way to charge at her in a manner she found threatening. “He stormed at me physically, and stood over me, raised a fist or his hand,” she says. Then, she says, Meehan seemed to catch himself and back away. “That was the tone and tenor of how things were there,” she says.

Walter Green, who began working at Lucky Peach as a designer in the magazine’s early days, when he was just 20 years old, says Meehan encouraged him to write, and he viewed him as a mentor. “He could be a really, really sweet guy at times,” he says. “He would invite us to get burgers with him in the evening and hang out with his family.” But even though Green, who eventually became one of the magazine’s art directors, was never a target of Meehan’s temper, he understood it as a problem in the office. “I viewed him as a damaged person who would act out,” he says. “Coming from a family where people do sometimes fly off the handle and say mean things or act out, if I’m around Peter, I want to make sure to keep him calm and make sure he doesn’t blow up at people. You feel protective of your coworkers.” Green says that when things got tense, he would take Meehan on walks to calm him down or play silly music to lighten the mood.

While Lucky Peach’s culture was casual and frequently profane, former staffers say that Meehan revelled in his propensity for over-the-top insults and descriptions of violence, which struck a dissonant chord coming from their boss. Of a contributor who wouldn’t translate a piece he reported for the magazine, Meehan wrote in an email in 2016, “I’m gonna mouthbarf seeing that half-bald sweater-wearing pussy’s name printed in my magazine if he’s unwilling to do the basic legwork of the relatively simple fucking task at hand.” Multiple staffers describe Meehan recounting a time he threatened another employee by saying he would shove a “golf umbrella” up his ass and open it. (This former employee says Meehan never said this to him).

Lucky Peach employees often spoke in crude metaphors or riffed on absurdist sexualized scenarios. But multiple staffers say that Meehan crossed the line, indulging in a truly constant barrage of heavily sexualized terminology in casual conservation and at times making quips directed at specific female staffers. In one exchange, when Khong said getting through submissions would be “easier with interns,” Meehan responded, “No, that’s NSA sex.” When she got a space heater for the office, Meehan said he’d always been trying to “heat up her space.”

Coming from her boss, these types of jokes made Khong uncomfortable, but she had no idea how to respond; she felt obliged to either play them off or to laugh. “He was a grown man who was my boss and I felt I had to be deferential to when he made those jokes,” she says. “He felt people were either cool or not cool, and you could be on either side of that.”

Aralyn Beaumont, who was hired as an assistant editor for the magazine before becoming its research director, also remembers Meehan making off-putting comments that objectified her. At a work lunch, Beaumont says that he remarked in front of the entire table, “You might have bluer eyes than Chad Robertson, who I thought had the prettiest eyes.” During that same visit to San Francisco by Meehan, after Beaumont ordered ramen, Meehan asked her if she was bulimic — an inside joke that referenced when Chang ate so much ramen during a trip to Japan that he threw up, an incident recounted in the first issue of Lucky Peach. To the young, junior employee, the comment felt alienating. “Maybe he thought that was a compliment, but I had an eating disorder since I was 13,” she says.

In New York, Meehan’s behavior around one young female staff member in particular made others in the office uncomfortable, even though they were unsure if it bothered her. Staffers recall Meehan giving her shoulder massages and making joking suggestive comments about her. On one occasion, he put his feet in her lap. Staffers brought their concerns to Ying, then the magazine’s editor-in-chief. The group discussed going to HR, but decided against it, in part because the HR team served Momofuku as a whole, not Lucky Peach. Ying opted to discuss the concerns with Meehan in person. “I had a private conversation with him, in which I expressed how disappointed I was both in the fact that his actions were making the staff uncomfortable, as well as disappointed as his business partner that he would jeopardize the business in this way. He was pretty contrite.” Ying did not address the issue with the female employee, since he saw the problem as lying squarely with Meehan, but he says that he now regrets not dealing with the situation more forcefully.

The woman at the center of these accusations told Eater there was never an inappropriate relationship between herself and Meehan, and while she does not recall much of his behavior, she believes this was in part because she did not think she could challenge the culture there, and so she accepted it. In retrospect, she believes that some of his actions toward her were inappropriate — she says that he once repeated a joke he’d heard that touched on her sex life — and undermined her professionally. But she had no idea that a complaint had been lodged by her colleagues; no one at the magazine ever spoke to her about Meehan’s behavior.

By 2016, Meehan and Ying’s partnership began to deteriorate, and Ying became more involved in projects outside the magazine, including the nonprofit he co-founded, Zero Food Print. Ying says that he and Meehan spoke about transitioning to an editor-at-large role, but in time, he felt that he had transitioned into no role at all, where his suggestions and ideas were undermined and disrespected. When Peter began repeatedly asking when he planned to leave entirely, he decided to do it. At the time, Ying was one of the few prominent Asian-American editors in the food world, and his departure marked the end of an era at the magazine. (Several staffers of color observed that by the end of Lucky Peach, the masthead had become almost entirely white.)

In both an editorial context and casual conversation, discussions about race and ethnicity could be frank and involve reappropriating slurs or stereotypes, especially in dialogues between Ying and Meehan. Some of these conversations were genuinely productive for the magazine, but Ying says he now regrets how he spoke about Asianness with Meehan. “I gave him an ‘honorary Asian card.’ That’s my fault and I own that,” Ying says. “I was improving my relationship with Peter by defanging myself. You give other people power by saying, ‘Here, it’s cool, because I’m saying this in front of you.’ It’s self-degrading in so many ways. The damage is it gives him license with other people who aren’t okay with it.”

Meehan did not appear to see (or set) boundaries between how he spoke with his business partners, Ying and Chang, and how he spoke to people who worked for him. For Asian-American staffers who were not partners but employees, his habit of speaking like an insider to Asian-American culture was fraught. Khong recalls that during her time there, Meehan discussed staffers’ ethnicity in a way that felt tokenizing. “It was like he’s calling you a Malaysian person or a Chinese person, [so you should] go get this story, or ‘Chris and Rachel are the Asians, they can do this,’” Khong says. “This casual way of referring to Asians, or to Dave being Korean, felt right on the edge of appropriateness. I think he felt like he was in on the joke.” And while the magazine’s aesthetics often reappropriated or satirized Orientalist tropes, when Meehan was the creative force behind the joke, it took on a different tone; Krishna recalls feeling uncomfortable when Meehan styled one of her mother’s recipes with a statue of a Hindu deity in the Power Vegetables cookbook, for instance.

While Chang was the most famous face associated with Lucky Peach, he claims to have had limited visibility into the work environment, mostly contributing ideas over email and meeting with Meehan or Ying at infrequent work lunches. He was in contact with high-up staffers, including Khong and Ying, but says he did not meet other employees until after the magazine’s closure. His distanced approach, which became more pronounced, several staffers say, as his relationship with Meehan grew more tense, meant that staffers struggling with Meehan’s behavior were unsure who to turn to, while Chang’s own reputation for anger did not encourage people to come forward.

Chang provided the following statement to Eater, in which he says he is bound by a legal agreement not to disclose or disparage Meehan. “First, to the staff of Lucky Peach, I let you down and I’m sorry. Within the first twelve months of the magazine’s start, I largely stepped away from the day-to-day operations of the company. I chose instead to contribute ideas from a distance. I am incredibly proud of the magazine, its contributors, and its staff, but frankly, I wasn’t around for much of its life and I regret it.” Chang notes he has gone on to work with several former Lucky Peach staffers, including Ying and Khong at Majordomo Media, and Krishna on a forthcoming cookbook. The statement further says, “Throughout my career, I have been known — even celebrated by the media — for being an angry bully in the kitchen. I have tried not to hide my shortcomings and I have worked extremely hard to become a better leader and a better person.”

“Had I been better, had I created an environment that was a polar opposite, with no shades of black or gray,” he added later, “I can imagine a scenario where they would have come to me, and that’s what I’ve been wrestling with.”

One veteran of Lucky Peach says that the magazine’s last year, when the San Francisco office consisted only of Aralyn Beaumont and Meehan was fully in control, was less marked by his temper. Ben Mims, now a cooking columnist at the Los Angeles Times, worked for Meehan during the magazine’s final months, and says he had no bad experiences with Meehan then. The magazine’s closure was sudden, unexpected by freelancers or staff, and because neither Chang nor Meehan can or will speak publicly about it, remains a subject of fascination. (One thing everyone agrees on is that Lucky Peach was not profitable.)

Ying says he feels frustrated that over the years, Meehan has become known as the “founder” of Lucky Peach when the first issue was put together over his own kitchen table. He also expressed frustration over how allegations about Meehan’s behavior might erase the work he and other Lucky Peach staffers were proud of. “Rachel worked on every single piece in the magazine,” Ying says.

The magazine’s goodbye letter, written by Meehan, argues that he and Ying got too much credit for the magazine, but does not mention Khong at all, despite her integral role in much of the magazine’s history and development; she became its executive editor in 2015. Khong departed the magazine in 2016, having hit her limit with Meehan’s behavior and frustrated by disparities between her salary and compensation and those of new hires. “I never wanted to leave the job,” Khong told me through tears. “The good parts were so good and he was the biggest bad part of it.”

The environment Meehan stepped into at the Los Angeles Times was markedly different from the scrappy early days of Lucky Peach, and several former Lucky Peach staffers told me they’d hoped the structure of the institution would blunt Meehan’s behavior. In fact, Meehan’s arrival as a consultant was greeted with relief by a paper still reeling from the loss of Gold. As editor of the newly created food section, Meehan frequently battled with other departments at the paper, isolating it from the organization as a whole. Because Meehan never moved to Los Angeles, his interactions with staff mostly occurred in locked Slack rooms or clustered in weeklong visits.

Even though Meehan only flew out for one week a month from New York, his manner over Slack, over email, and in edits was enough to put the whole section on the defensive. Mims, the former Lucky Peach staffer, says that when a story of his went live on the site without following protocols, Meehan exploded at him in a group Slack channel, berating him in all caps over the decision, even though Mims thought Meehan had approved it. The exchange, over what Meehan called, “THE F-ING STORY THAT JUST WENT LIVE,” prompted a conversation with Meehan’s deputy editor, Andrea Chang, in which Mims said no one should speak to their employees like that. After a day of tension, Meehan, who was in the LA office, sent an apology email and gave Mims an awkward hug, according to Mims, saying, “We hurt the people we like the most.” Mims says after this, he believes it became harder to have pitches approved or to get feedback in a timely fashion, resulting in stressful, last-minute rushes to meet deadlines — leading him to conclude that pushing back any harder would make his life even more difficult.

Bill Addison, one of the paper’s two restaurant critics, who had worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, Atlanta Magazine, and Eater before coming to the Times, also says within weeks of joining the paper, he found Meehan’s behavior went beyond tough editing into something that felt like bullying. He admired the editorial eye Meehan brought to the section, Addison says, but within months he found himself demoralized and afraid. He did not speak up beyond going to Yoshino, because he feared both internal retaliation, since he perceived Meehan to be supported by the paper’s leadership, and public castigation, since in the past Meehan had publicly attacked other colleagues at the paper on Twitter.

Patricia Escárcega, the paper’s other restaurant critic, says she also felt shut down by Meehan, despite the fact that he’d fought to bring her to the paper. Other staffers describe the relationship between the two as notably chilly. She felt singled out, and eventually went to Yoshino to complain. In an email to Eater, Escárcega described the meeting: “I told her I felt like I was working for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I told her I was walking on eggshells. I sat in her office and cried. She said he was under a lot of stress.”

Escárcega, the only Latina in the section, says she also felt a “subtle” pressure to write about Mexican food, a subject that she cares about deeply but didn’t want her work reduced to. “It definitely felt like there was more resistance when I wrote about different types of cuisines,” she says. In an initial statement from a company spokesperson, the Los Angeles Times told Eater, “Meehan has been an advocate for more inclusive coverage in the section he helped relaunch, reflective not only of Los Angeles’ vast and diverse food scene, but also of the writers, photographers, designers and illustrators who chronicle it.”

Managing editor Kimi Yoshino, who was Meehan’s direct supervisor, provided a statement to Eater noting Meehan’s talent as an editor should not have come “at the expense of the staff’s well-being.” The statement continues, “It became clear Peter had problems in the way he communicated and collaborated with others. I believed those problems were fixable and worked with him to become a better manager and more diplomatic communicator. I regret not doing even more to fully understand the extent of the staff’s concerns.” Yoshino characterized her own working relationship with Meehan as challenging and says, “I sometimes found his approach to be rude and disrespectful to our colleagues. I had many difficult conversations with him about the changes he needed to make as a manager, though I see now that wasn’t enough.”

One of the issues that employees struggling with Meehan’s behavior point to is that he seemed to create an environment of insiders and outsiders, and that the insiders included deputy food editor Andrea Chang and, to a lesser extent, Yoshino. Chang, senior writer Jenn Harris, and columnist Lucas Peterson (a former Eater contributor) would regularly dine out together, expensing their meals if they were relevant to a story, and posting glossy photos of these nights out to Instagram. Meehan would join during the one week each month that he was in town (there was even an Instagram hashtag: #peteweek). This “cool kids” dynamic (as more than one staffer put it) was in part driven by these posts. Instagram plays a more professional role in the food world than many other sectors of media, as an arena to display dining knowledge and build a profile, and while it’s one thing to know a boss and certain coworkers are friendly it’s another to see evidence of that relationship posted on social media for likes and clout, especially as other staffers were alienated by and fearful of Meehan.

The group was genuinely close, especially Chang, Peterson, and Harris, and the boundaries between managers and writers were blurry, since Peterson and Meehan were high school friends, and Harris had at one point been the interim editor of the food section. The group drank together often, stayed out late, visited each others’ homes, and spoke frankly about personal matters, including their sex lives, smearing the boundaries between personal and professional.

On July 3, 2019, Harris says that Meehan obliterated those boundaries. That night, she went with Meehan, Chang, and Peterson to a show at the Hollywood Bowl. It was a social outing, not a work one, and Chang drove the group. When they left, Harris says Meehan was so drunk he seemed to raise a fist at Peterson when Peterson tried to help him up, and Meehan needed to be led down to the car. “Pete got into the back of the car with me,” Harris says. “Instead of leaving the middle seat open, he slid next to me and put his head on my shoulder. I thought he was going to pass out on my shoulder and fall asleep. As we’re driving, I felt him stick his hand and slide it under my dress on my inner thigh. I picked his hand up, really caught off guard and really embarrassed. I said, ‘No,’ and put his hand back on his own lap and then a couple seconds later he did it again. I took his hand off and put it back and I said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He mumbled, I understood him saying the words, ‘Pushing boundaries.’ So I said, ‘The boundaries are fine where they are, don’t fucking do that.’”

Peterson and Chang say they did not witness what happened in the back of the car. Harris says, and Peterson confirms, that she told both him and Chang about Meehan’s actions later that night. Harris asked them not to report the incident to anyone, and Peterson suggested that he talk to Meehan directly. (Chang declined to comment further for the story.) After such a long friendship, Peterson was shocked and upset by what he had heard. The next day, he confronted Meehan and told him his behavior had been, he says, “violent and inappropriate,” and he says Meehan apologized to him. Peterson told him he needed to speak to Harris and Chang. Harris says he never did speak to her about the incident, even as they continued to socialize. “I don’t know how we all kept hanging out trying to pretend like nothing was wrong,” Peterson says. “I’m honestly still so angry with myself for not doing or saying more. During the past year, Jenn and I have talked over these incidents a lot. And I think we were just really afraid.”

Later that summer, while out at the Chateau Marmont, along with Chang and Peterson, after a review dinner at Chateau Harare nearby, Harris joined Meehan on the smoking patio. She does not exactly remember what they were discussing, but she believes it was the subject of dating apps and her experiences with them. Harris says that Meehan said, “Jenn Harris, you are fuckable, you’re very fuckable. I know I shouldn’t be saying this to you, but I would stick your head in a pillow and fuck you.” She says that she did not interpret this as a solicitation so much as an inappropriate attempt to compliment her, but it made her deeply uncomfortable, so she went back to the table. She says she later told Peterson and Chang, as well as several other people, about the comments.

There was one other incident, which Harris did not include in her Slack post after Meehan’s departure. On another night in late summer 2019, Harris, Meehan, and Chang got together at Chang’s apartment, again as a social outing rather than a work one. They ordered in Thai food, and there was drinking — Harris perceived Meehan to be very drunk. She says, “We were sitting on the couch, and I was getting up to leave and he just looked at [her and Chang] and drunkenly said, ‘I could have fucked both of you tonight.’ I started laughing, like, are you fucking delusional? I said, ‘Well, I’m leaving now,’ and I left him there.”

Harris says she was never afraid of Meehan during these interactions, and at times tried to convince herself that these actions and comments had not been a big deal. But she did fear him in the office, and that led her to be afraid to say anything about what happened, or to stop hanging out with Meehan and the rest of the friend group. She saw when Meehan unleashed tirades in public Slack channels, and she recalls once hearing him say he would make a person who had pissed him off “his hobby.” Harris did not ever want to become his hobby. “He can be so nice and charming and supportive of your career,” she says. “I was worthy of being invited to social engagements. I benefited from that. I would think over and over, ‘What happens when he stops liking me?’ I didn’t want to find out.”

Harris also saw how upper management valued Meehan at the paper, and his ability to bulldoze through long-standing barriers and red tape to get what he wanted for the section. During her years at the Times, the food section had long fought to have a dedicated photographer and social media person — under Meehan, they got both. Harris wasn’t sure if this was Meehan’s doing or if management was just finally giving the section the resources it needed, but either way, she did not believe her story would be heard. “He is this beloved person in food media and at work, and I didn’t know if I told someone, if I’d be the one who had to leave,” she says. “If I said something, and he was still my boss after, it would be awkward. I was just scared.” (In her statement to Eater, Yoshino says, “I was shocked and appalled to hear the serious allegations of misconduct, including against one of my longtime friends and colleagues.”)

During her long tenure at the paper, Harris worked closely with Jonathan Gold, and she’s troubled by how often management has said Meehan got the job because he was Gold’s choice, even though Gold wasn’t the person who hired him. The paper spoke to, among other sources, former colleagues at the New York Times to vet Meehan; no one ever contacted anyone at Lucky Peach. Harris says, “I knew Jonathan very well, and I really don’t think that he would have been okay with this behavior, or been aware of it. For people in the building to say, ‘Oh, he was Jonathan’s pick,’ that is skirting responsibly for who hired him, and did or did not properly vet him. That’s a deflection of responsibility on a dead man.”

Following Meehan’s resignation, a wave of posts proliferated across social media by people who had worked with Meehan at Lucky Peach and the Los Angeles Times, who finally felt able to speak out. Aralyn Beaumont described her time at Lucky Peach as “living with a hole that has yet to close.” Chris Ying wrote on Instagram that “it took me a long time — too long — to understand that we weren’t dealing with a run-of-the-mill bad boss.” Rachel Khong wrote about how Twitter could distort the complexities of the situation. “I don’t believe Peter is an evil person. I don’t believe in evil people, full stop,” she wrote. But, she continued, “the harm that was done to us was not one Tweetable instance but was daily, and relentless, and insidious.”

Staffers at the Los Angeles Times, who by then had seen Harris’s allegations about Meehan’s behavior in Slack, were sharper-edged. Ben Mims wrote that the apology posted by Meehan was “an embarrassment,” saying that “‘tunnel vision’ and a ‘management style’ doesn’t begin to describe the culture of fear, intimidation, and retaliation that traumatized our whole team.” Lucas Peterson posted a long statement that many other staffers say encapsulated what it was like to work for Meehan, especially where he wrote, “One of my colleagues described it as like being in a house of horrors — we were all in different parts of the house, and had different experiences. But we were all in the house.”

On August 11, the entire food section at the Los Angeles Times sent a letter to management calling for an end to the holding pattern in place since Meehan’s departure. “The continued uncertainty regarding leadership — with no end in sight — is putting the future of the section in peril,” it states. “There has been no communication from upper management since July 6, which has only served to shake our confidence further during an already upsetting and traumatic time.” The letter demands regular updates on the HR investigation launched after the allegations about Meehan’s behavior surfaced on social media and Slack, and the immediate posting of both the food editor and deputy food editor positions, with an eye toward addressing the section’s lack of representation of the demographics of LA. “We at the Food section recognize the work of the Times’ Black and Latino caucuses, and insist that people of color, particularly those underrepresented in the newsroom, be prioritized in any new hiring,” the letter states.

On August 20, management relased the results of an internal HR investigation launched in the wake of Meehan’s departure. The report states, “Employees told us that Meehan created a negative work environment where employees did not feel comfortable raising their concerns. We also found that managers failed to prevent or report behavior they knew or should have known was inappropriate.” Yoshino will no longer oversee the section, and Chang has been reassigned to Column One. Internally, some LAT staffers say they are dissatified with these changes, including Chang’s lateral move into another section.

It’s not a coincidence, or even that singular, that the Los Angeles Times uprising against Meehan happened over Zoom and the reassessment of Lucky Peach happened over social media, all of it sparked by a single, pointed Twitter thread. This is a story shaped by COVID-19 and the mass quarantine of professional workplaces. The pandemic chewing through the tattered American safety net is too gigantic a disaster to contemplate head on for long, but its silent destruction is always unfolding, creating an atmosphere of fear and urgency whose only outlet is the streets, or social media.

Every institution seems to be failing, and failing us. Navigating media jobs over screens during this frightening moment has left workers isolated and exhausted, but also in possession of a strange freedom. As career ladders crumble, many journalists are doubling down on the one thing the job can still offer: a sense of meaning. That meaning grows sour if bosses are cruel or inequities are entrenched, and calling out a famous, perhaps brilliant editor as a bad boss is less intimidating if there’s no newsroom to face them in. The best hope is for a better way of life to rise from America’s disastrous failure, but right now, the pandemic still rages — the worst may just be beginning. Those with professional jobs in cities willing to issue stay-at-home orders, a bleak blessing, are trapped at home with nothing but time to reassess the past’s failures, and enumerate what must be born anew.

The question for the media reckoning underway is: What might truly subvert the old power structures? What comes after the legend of the brilliant, intimidating, perfectionist editor, embodied appetizingly by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (who in reality is most often a white man)? In the recent past, explosive tempers and blurred lines could be excused if the end product were exciting enough. Dismantling that ethos is only a start; it stems from larger inequities in how power and value are accorded in a newsroom, and who gets credit for the work. In an industry where power is nakedly ranked on a masthead, it took the lateral, flattening effect of social media to shake those hierarchies. “I think Peter had a gift for surrounding himself with talented people,” Escárcega wrote in an earlier email. “I hope we get smarter about who we exalt and why.”

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent. Andrea D’Aquino is an illustrator based in New York City. Fact checked by Samantha Schuyler

Disclosures: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater. The Eater Test Kitchen that housed Lucky Peach was, for a time, sublet from Momofuku. A number of people in this story have contributed to Eater, including Tammie Teclemariam, Marian Bull, Rachel Khong, Lucas Peterson, and Bill Addison.

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Peter Meehan’s transgressive vision helped redefine food media with the groundbreaking Lucky Peach, and later transformed the LA Times’s food coverage. But that vision came with a toxic management style characterized by intimidation, a barrage of sexualized commentary, and explosive anger, according to two dozen current and former staffers.

On Tuesday, June 30, staffers on the Los Angeles Times food section prepared to log in to Zoom for their weekly 11 a.m. meeting. It had been pushed back 15 minutes — a potentially ominous sign. The day before, writer Tammie Teclemariam published a lengthy Twitter thread laced with allegations about the section’s editor, Peter Meehan, spanning his time as editor of groundbreaking food magazine Lucky Peach and as head of the Times’s food section. Now, after a day of nonstop texting and immense uncertainty, the team would face each other for the first time.

Sitting in their bedrooms, living rooms, and other makeshift workspaces, the staffers anxiously signed on. Meehan was missing, but as faces from other teams populated their Zoom windows, it looked like it might be business as normal, except for the appearance of Times managing editor Kimi Yoshino, Meehan’s direct boss. At the top of the meeting, she outlined the paper’s response to a few of the assertions in Teclemariam’s thread (Meehan’s salary is not $300,000; he planned coverage of Juneteenth). A discussion about cliquishness broke out after Andrea Chang, the section’s deputy editor, asked staffers to come to her with any concerns; several food staffers, including Chang, apologized for contributing to an atmosphere of insiders versus outsiders that orbited around Meehan.

As the conversation continued, Bill Addison, one of the paper’s two restaurant critics (and formerly Eater’s national critic), worried that it was sidestepping the larger issue raised by the thread, which he describes as “the culture of fear that Peter had been masterful at creating.” Before it could end, Addison spoke up and said, “Even after those tweets, I am right now afraid of retaliation from Peter.” The tone of the room shifted. One by one, staffers spoke out: about waves of panic that hit whenever a Slack or phone call from Meehan arrived, about him belittling their work in public Slack channels, or screaming in all caps about small mistakes. One staffer reminded Yoshino that she had come to Yoshino’s office and wept about Meehan’s behavior. When someone outside the department remarked that the group seemed eerily calm discussing these painful experiences, Ben Mims, a cooking columnist, replied that Meehan was still their boss, and they were afraid of what he would do.

The next day, Yoshino informed Meehan the paper would launch a formal investigation into the allegations raised at the meeting. Meehan offered his resignation and publicly apologized on Twitter, characterizing Teclemariam’s thread as alleging “a number of things I don’t think are true” and describing his failures as those of perfectionism. “In my tunnel-vision commitment to making the best things we could, I lost sight of people and their feelings,” he wrote in a statement.

Later that week, Jenn Harris, a senior writer in the food section and a 10-year veteran of the paper, posted a statement in a locked company Slack channel. Torn up by what she’d heard in the meeting, Harris apologized for not speaking out sooner. She said that she’d been on Meehan’s good side, and she’d been afraid to find out what would happen if she wasn’t. She alleged that Meehan once called her “fuckable” after a work dinner. On another occasion, she alleged, he rested his head on her shoulder and slid his hand up her dress in the back of a car. After she pulled his hand away and said, “no,” Harris said he tried to put his hand up her skirt again. When she demanded to know what he thought he was doing, she alleges that Meehan, who was intoxicated, had mumbled, “Pushing boundaries.”

In the midst of the national uprising for Black lives sparked by a white police officer’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a wave of protests broke out in newsrooms across the country, from the New York Times to Refinery29. The first of these were directly tied to issues of racism and anti-Blackness, but they have since expanded to the broader problem of toxic leadership in the industry, and the dominance of white men and women in positions of power. Social media has driven much of this reckoning by providing a space for rank-and-file editors and writers to speak out. Most notably in the food media world, Bon Appétit editor Adam Rapoport resigned in the wake of social media protests by employees of color over unfair treatment, sparked when Teclemariam tweeted a photo of Rapoport in brownface.

While Meehan’s resignation occurred after his staff spoke out in a meeting, many of those staffers say without Teclemariam’s Twitter thread, that conversation would never have occurred. Meehan’s departure occurs during a moment of wider agitation at the Times over the paper’s hiring decisions after its acquisition by the billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong in 2018, which some staffers say privileged star journalists from the East Coast establishment — overwhelmingly white and male — who were richly rewarded while existing staffers battled in union contract negotiations for fair compensation after years of brutal cuts. Meehan is in some ways the most obvious example of this trend: He never relocated to Los Angeles, instead flying out one week a month from his home in New York.

Meehan may not be a household name, but he is one of the most consequential food journalists of the last decade, whose mentors and compatriots include Mark Bittman, David Chang, Jonathan Gold, and Anthony Bourdain. One of an emerging generation of culture hounds who took food seriously as a badge of cool, Meehan started his career working for Bittman, who helped him land a gig writing the New York Times’s $25 and Under column in 2004, a plum position for an emerging food writer. His real ascendance began when he teamed up with Chang, at the time a brash young chef who sparked a nationwide mania for ramen and pork buns, whose early creative evolution Meehan had chronicled as part of his column. He went on to co-author the Momofuku cookbook, which was as groundbreaking as the restaurant was, and helped establish the irreverent yet maniacal perfectionism of Chang’s star persona.

In 2011, Chang and Meehan joined forces with Chris Ying, then an editor at the San Francisco small press McSweeney’s, to launch the food magazine Lucky Peach. From the first issue, the magazine was a phenomenon, combining McSweeney’s fetish for literary excess and groundbreaking design with Momofuku’s foul-mouthed, ramen-worshiping swagger. Over its six-year run, the magazine racked up critical adoration and industry awards, spun out successful cookbooks, and arguably changed the way food media worked and looked forever. Its abrupt closure in 2017 caught even the magazine’s contributors off guard, and was attributed to irreconcilable differences between Meehan and Chang. (Both signed a legal agreement in 2013 with a robust nondisparagement clause.)

In the summer of 2018, Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic and secular saint of Los Angeles food, died of pancreatic cancer. Gold was a frequent contributor to Lucky Peach, and had already been advocating for Meehan to be recruited to oversee a revival of the Times food section. After Gold’s death, Meehan came to work at the paper, first as a consultant and then as the section’s official editor, overseeing the relaunch of a standalone food section, heavy on illustration and other hip signifiers of the design that had characterized Lucky Peach. With his many, many connections in the food world, he delivered in-depth features on, say, the closing of the world-famous Faviken, and brought talent from all over the world to the paper’s monthlong, revenue-generating Food Bowl. Within months, Meehan developed a reputation across the paper as difficult, but these issues were considered by upper management to be the necessary price of working with a hard-driving auteur.

To Meehan’s expansive roster of friends and allies, he was a generous, brilliant, and genuinely subversive writer and editor. I know this from personal experience: There’s a great deal of professional overlap between Eater and Lucky Peach. A number of its staff and contributors, including many people I spoke to for this story, have contributed to Eater. I’ve attended numerous Lucky Peach parties, contributed a story to the magazine, and have met Meehan on several occasions, finding him to be charming, thoughtful, and sharp.

Behind all of Meehan’s public success, however, were ever-growing ranks of scarred, fearful staffers who worked under him. Interviews with more than two dozen sources, including former Lucky Peach employees, current Los Angeles Times staffers, and freelancers for both publications, allege that Meehan’s management of both these publications veered beyond the realm of a difficult boss in a high-stakes environment, and into a deeper and more disturbing toxicity. They describe a relentless cycle of unrestrained generosity and explosive anger, while his disdain for professionalism, combined with a zeal for perfection, led to workplaces with few boundaries and constant tension. A number of sources for this story spoke anonymously out of a fear of professional retribution from Meehan or their current employer.

Violent tempers, inappropriate jokes and comments, and allegations of sexual misconduct are far from unknown issues in the media world, and they’re a hallmark of the restaurant industry. Lucky Peach got its start in the cradle of the Momofuku restaurant group, making these dynamics even more intertwined. Former Lucky Peach staffers with restaurant experience say it was especially disturbing to see the behavior they associated with hostile kitchens — behavior David Chang has apologized for perpetuating in his own restaurants — replicated in an office.

Former staff, including many media industry veterans, say working under Meehan was shattering in a way they had not experienced under other tough bosses. At Lucky Peach, his over-the-top insults and physical displays of anger — slamming doors, hitting tables, knocking over chairs — created an atmosphere of fear, while female staffers say that Meehan’s sexual jokes and inappropriate comments crossed a line even in their freewheeling and irreverent workplace. At the Los Angeles Times, Meehan’s outbursts were limited to Slack or other written communication, but pushing back, staffers say, led to difficulties around deadlines, feedback, and assignments, while his lack of professional boundaries culminated in one employee finding herself subject to repeated sexual commentary, and, in one incident, unwanted, sexually charged touching.

Meehan declined repeated requests to speak on the record. In a letter sent to Times food staffers and provided to Eater, the paper’s management said, “Employees told us that Meehan created a negative work environment where employees did not feel comfortable raising their concerns. … We have taken a series of actions that reflect the seriousness of the allegations, including imposing, where appropriate, discipline, and insisting that managers receive new counseling and training.”

Marian Bull, who freelanced for Meehan both at Lucky Peach and the Times, says Meehan’s persona, steeped in subversive cultural tropes, could obscure how his behavior reinforced a much blander and more oppressive status quo. “He thought his transgressiveness absolved him,” she says.

In food media, the last great economic cataclysm ushered in a broification of the industry after decades of publications staffed and run largely by white women and gay men. In 2009, Gourmet shuttered, and Bon Appétit was relaunched under Rapoport, a straight, white male editor from GQ. Lucky Peach was born soon after, on a lark: What if a food magazine was written for the people who cooked the food, not who ate it?

Chris Ying met Meehan and David Chang in 2009 while putting together an experimental newspaper, called the San Francisco Panorama, which featured a food section, for McSweeney’s. A year later, the pair approached Ying, who had cooked in restaurants, with an idea for a food magazine. The first issue, exuding pork fat and swagger and bad words to spare, was overseen by Meehan and Ying and put together by McSweeney’s staff, with significant input from Chang. In addition to its restaurant cred, the magazine’s aesthetics and zine-like attitude borrowed from indie rock culture, positioning it as a publication for those left out of the mainstream.

Chasing the unexpected hit led to a fuzzy leadership structure and a bicoastal operation. Ying became the editor-in-chief, heading a small San Francisco office spun off from McSweeney’s, while Meehan worked from New York. While the magazine, especially its early issues, was a true collaboration between Meehan and Ying, Meehan always held a larger share in the company, commanded a higher salary, had more say over the budget, and was more tightly connected to Momofuku and Chang.

In late 2011, Rachel Khong was hired as the magazine’s managing editor and first employee. The first time Khong hung out with Meehan, her new boss, was at an alcohol-fueled dinner at San Francisco’s Mission Chinese, where the small staff of the new food magazine were feted. At the end of the night, she sent an email to her boyfriend when she got home, asking for a ride to the office the next morning and adding, “Peter Meehan kissed me goodbye!” Today, Khong says she no longer remembers this kiss, in part because her time working for Meehan involved a barrage of blurred boundaries. “For many mornings during those years, I would wake up to a Peter phone call and go to sleep after talking to Peter,” Khong says. “It was always there were just never any boundaries.”

As at many indie publications, the work schedule at Lucky Peach was punishing at best, and like many small staffs working closely together to produce an aggressively honed creative product in a pressure-cooker environment with unforgiving standards, a distinct workplace culture emerged that reflected the profane, transgressive high-low spirit of the magazine. The bicoastal offices ran on constant riffing over email and Hipchat, a Slack precursor, and elaborate wordplay and absurdist imagery were the norm. Editors would say they were tickling, massaging, diddling, and piddling a piece; jokes about hot chats and “that’s what she said” were volleyed back and forth. At the San Francisco office, a running prank was to jump out of the closet to scare other employees; deadline stress would devolve into ridiculous fake headlines and photoshopping frogs’ heads onto bodybuilders.

By 2014, Meehan began to staff up the New York office, which was eventually located in its own space at 128 Lafayette Street, in Chinatown. (Disclosure: This space is now the Eater test kitchen.) The giddy, weird energy that pervaded the magazine’s stressful early days — which still reigned in San Francisco — was overlaid with dread in New York. While members of the San Francisco office say they had seen glimpses of Meehan’s temper — Khong recalls seeing him slam a door violently over a video call — on the East Coast, fear of his anger pervaded the office. Several staffers recall a New York editor saying, during one of Meehan’s explosions, “Peter, please don’t make me cry today.”

Priya Krishna, who was hired out of college to do outreach and customer service, says that, at first, getting a job at Lucky Peach was thrilling. She’d devoured the magazine in college, and when she went to events with “Lucky Peach” on her nametag, people were eager to talk to her. Behind the scenes, she says that the work culture was increasingly toxic — the New York office was often tense and silent. She would cry on Sundays because she had to go back the next day. “I was scared to go to work,” she says. “My day was dependent on this man’s mood, whether Peter was going to feel generous that day and buy us all lunch, or whether he���d be angry at something that would set him off.”

Late in her tenure at Lucky Peach, Krishna was called into a meeting over a subscription partnership that was underperforming. “Peter banged his hands on the table really really loudly and the table shook, and [he] yelled ‘WHAT HAPPENED?’ at the top of his lungs,” she says. Another employee sent messages to the SF office about the incident over Hipchat. When Krishna took a scheduled call after that meeting, Meehan publicly berated her for not addressing the partnership immediately, and told her to go home for a month and see if she had a job when she came back. She resigned a few days later.

During the photoshoot for the magazine’s last cookbook, All About Eggs, which Khong traveled to New York to oversee, the tension in the office was extraordinarily high, even by Lucky Peach standards. Meehan slammed a door so loudly the staffer who witnessed it was frightened. At one point, a staffer alleges, he grew so angry about the state of the kitchen, which was littered with boxes from new equipment, that he shoved a chair out of the way to charge at her in a manner she found threatening. “He stormed at me physically, and stood over me, raised a fist or his hand,” she says. Then, she says, Meehan seemed to catch himself and back away. “That was the tone and tenor of how things were there,” she says.

Walter Green, who began working at Lucky Peach as a designer in the magazine’s early days, when he was just 20 years old, says Meehan encouraged him to write, and he viewed him as a mentor. “He could be a really, really sweet guy at times,” he says. “He would invite us to get burgers with him in the evening and hang out with his family.” But even though Green, who eventually became one of the magazine’s art directors, was never a target of Meehan’s temper, he understood it as a problem in the office. “I viewed him as a damaged person who would act out,” he says. “Coming from a family where people do sometimes fly off the handle and say mean things or act out, if I’m around Peter, I want to make sure to keep him calm and make sure he doesn’t blow up at people. You feel protective of your coworkers.” Green says that when things got tense, he would take Meehan on walks to calm him down or play silly music to lighten the mood.

While Lucky Peach’s culture was casual and frequently profane, former staffers say that Meehan revelled in his propensity for over-the-top insults and descriptions of violence, which struck a dissonant chord coming from their boss. Of a contributor who wouldn’t translate a piece he reported for the magazine, Meehan wrote in an email in 2016, “I’m gonna mouthbarf seeing that half-bald sweater-wearing pussy’s name printed in my magazine if he’s unwilling to do the basic legwork of the relatively simple fucking task at hand.” Multiple staffers describe Meehan recounting a time he threatened another employee by saying he would shove a “golf umbrella” up his ass and open it. (This former employee says Meehan never said this to him).

Lucky Peach employees often spoke in crude metaphors or riffed on absurdist sexualized scenarios. But multiple staffers say that Meehan crossed the line, indulging in a truly constant barrage of heavily sexualized terminology in casual conservation and at times making quips directed at specific female staffers. In one exchange, when Khong said getting through submissions would be “easier with interns,” Meehan responded, “No, that’s NSA sex.” When she got a space heater for the office, Meehan said he’d always been trying to “heat up her space.”

Coming from her boss, these types of jokes made Khong uncomfortable, but she had no idea how to respond; she felt obliged to either play them off or to laugh. “He was a grown man who was my boss and I felt I had to be deferential to when he made those jokes,” she says. “He felt people were either cool or not cool, and you could be on either side of that.”

Aralyn Beaumont, who was hired as an assistant editor for the magazine before becoming its research director, also remembers Meehan making off-putting comments that objectified her. At a work lunch, Beaumont says that he remarked in front of the entire table, “You might have bluer eyes than Chad Robertson, who I thought had the prettiest eyes.” During that same visit to San Francisco by Meehan, after Beaumont ordered ramen, Meehan asked her if she was bulimic — an inside joke that referenced when Chang ate so much ramen during a trip to Japan that he threw up, an incident recounted in the first issue of Lucky Peach. To the young, junior employee, the comment felt alienating. “Maybe he thought that was a compliment, but I had an eating disorder since I was 13,” she says.

In New York, Meehan’s behavior around one young female staff member in particular made others in the office uncomfortable, even though they were unsure if it bothered her. Staffers recall Meehan giving her shoulder massages and making joking suggestive comments about her. On one occasion, he put his feet in her lap. Staffers brought their concerns to Ying, then the magazine’s editor-in-chief. The group discussed going to HR, but decided against it, in part because the HR team served Momofuku as a whole, not Lucky Peach. Ying opted to discuss the concerns with Meehan in person. “I had a private conversation with him, in which I expressed how disappointed I was both in the fact that his actions were making the staff uncomfortable, as well as disappointed as his business partner that he would jeopardize the business in this way. He was pretty contrite.” Ying did not address the issue with the female employee, since he saw the problem as lying squarely with Meehan, but he says that he now regrets not dealing with the situation more forcefully.

The woman at the center of these accusations told Eater there was never an inappropriate relationship between herself and Meehan, and while she does not recall much of his behavior, she believes this was in part because she did not think she could challenge the culture there, and so she accepted it. In retrospect, she believes that some of his actions toward her were inappropriate — she says that he once repeated a joke he’d heard that touched on her sex life — and undermined her professionally. But she had no idea that a complaint had been lodged by her colleagues; no one at the magazine ever spoke to her about Meehan’s behavior.

By 2016, Meehan and Ying’s partnership began to deteriorate, and Ying became more involved in projects outside the magazine, including the nonprofit he co-founded, Zero Food Print. Ying says that he and Meehan spoke about transitioning to an editor-at-large role, but in time, he felt that he had transitioned into no role at all, where his suggestions and ideas were undermined and disrespected. When Peter began repeatedly asking when he planned to leave entirely, he decided to do it. At the time, Ying was one of the few prominent Asian-American editors in the food world, and his departure marked the end of an era at the magazine. (Several staffers of color observed that by the end of Lucky Peach, the masthead had become almost entirely white.)

In both an editorial context and casual conversation, discussions about race and ethnicity could be frank and involve reappropriating slurs or stereotypes, especially in dialogues between Ying and Meehan. Some of these conversations were genuinely productive for the magazine, but Ying says he now regrets how he spoke about Asianness with Meehan. “I gave him an ‘honorary Asian card.’ That’s my fault and I own that,” Ying says. “I was improving my relationship with Peter by defanging myself. You give other people power by saying, ‘Here, it’s cool, because I’m saying this in front of you.’ It’s self-degrading in so many ways. The damage is it gives him license with other people who aren’t okay with it.”

Meehan did not appear to see (or set) boundaries between how he spoke with his business partners, Ying and Chang, and how he spoke to people who worked for him. For Asian-American staffers who were not partners but employees, his habit of speaking like an insider to Asian-American culture was fraught. Khong recalls that during her time there, Meehan discussed staffers’ ethnicity in a way that felt tokenizing. “It was like he’s calling you a Malaysian person or a Chinese person, [so you should] go get this story, or ‘Chris and Rachel are the Asians, they can do this,’” Khong says. “This casual way of referring to Asians, or to Dave being Korean, felt right on the edge of appropriateness. I think he felt like he was in on the joke.” And while the magazine’s aesthetics often reappropriated or satirized Orientalist tropes, when Meehan was the creative force behind the joke, it took on a different tone; Krishna recalls feeling uncomfortable when Meehan styled one of her mother’s recipes with a statue of a Hindu deity in the Power Vegetables cookbook, for instance.

While Chang was the most famous face associated with Lucky Peach, he claims to have had limited visibility into the work environment, mostly contributing ideas over email and meeting with Meehan or Ying at infrequent work lunches. He was in contact with high-up staffers, including Khong and Ying, but says he did not meet other employees until after the magazine’s closure. His distanced approach, which became more pronounced, several staffers say, as his relationship with Meehan grew more tense, meant that staffers struggling with Meehan’s behavior were unsure who to turn to, while Chang’s own reputation for anger did not encourage people to come forward.

Chang provided the following statement to Eater, in which he says he is bound by a legal agreement not to disclose or disparage Meehan. “First, to the staff of Lucky Peach, I let you down and I’m sorry. Within the first twelve months of the magazine’s start, I largely stepped away from the day-to-day operations of the company. I chose instead to contribute ideas from a distance. I am incredibly proud of the magazine, its contributors, and its staff, but frankly, I wasn’t around for much of its life and I regret it.” Chang notes he has gone on to work with several former Lucky Peach staffers, including Ying and Khong at Majordomo Media, and Krishna on a forthcoming cookbook. The statement further says, “Throughout my career, I have been known — even celebrated by the media — for being an angry bully in the kitchen. I have tried not to hide my shortcomings and I have worked extremely hard to become a better leader and a better person.”

“Had I been better, had I created an environment that was a polar opposite, with no shades of black or gray,” he added later, “I can imagine a scenario where they would have come to me, and that’s what I’ve been wrestling with.”

One veteran of Lucky Peach says that the magazine’s last year, when the San Francisco office consisted only of Aralyn Beaumont and Meehan was fully in control, was less marked by his temper. Ben Mims, now a cooking columnist at the Los Angeles Times, worked for Meehan during the magazine’s final months, and says he had no bad experiences with Meehan then. The magazine’s closure was sudden, unexpected by freelancers or staff, and because neither Chang nor Meehan can or will speak publicly about it, remains a subject of fascination. (One thing everyone agrees on is that Lucky Peach was not profitable.)

Ying says he feels frustrated that over the years, Meehan has become known as the “founder” of Lucky Peach when the first issue was put together over his own kitchen table. He also expressed frustration over how allegations about Meehan’s behavior might erase the work he and other Lucky Peach staffers were proud of. “Rachel worked on every single piece in the magazine,” Ying says.

The magazine’s goodbye letter, written by Meehan, argues that he and Ying got too much credit for the magazine, but does not mention Khong at all, despite her integral role in much of the magazine’s history and development; she became its executive editor in 2015. Khong departed the magazine in 2016, having hit her limit with Meehan’s behavior and frustrated by disparities between her salary and compensation and those of new hires. “I never wanted to leave the job,” Khong told me through tears. “The good parts were so good and he was the biggest bad part of it.”

The environment Meehan stepped into at the Los Angeles Times was markedly different from the scrappy early days of Lucky Peach, and several former Lucky Peach staffers told me they’d hoped the structure of the institution would blunt Meehan’s behavior. In fact, Meehan’s arrival as a consultant was greeted with relief by a paper still reeling from the loss of Gold. As editor of the newly created food section, Meehan frequently battled with other departments at the paper, isolating it from the organization as a whole. Because Meehan never moved to Los Angeles, his interactions with staff mostly occurred in locked Slack rooms or clustered in weeklong visits.

Even though Meehan only flew out for one week a month from New York, his manner over Slack, over email, and in edits was enough to put the whole section on the defensive. Mims, the former Lucky Peach staffer, says that when a story of his went live on the site without following protocols, Meehan exploded at him in a group Slack channel, berating him in all caps over the decision, even though Mims thought Meehan had approved it. The exchange, over what Meehan called, “THE F-ING STORY THAT JUST WENT LIVE,” prompted a conversation with Meehan’s deputy editor, Andrea Chang, in which Mims said no one should speak to their employees like that. After a day of tension, Meehan, who was in the LA office, sent an apology email and gave Mims an awkward hug, according to Mims, saying, “We hurt the people we like the most.” Mims says after this, he believes it became harder to have pitches approved or to get feedback in a timely fashion, resulting in stressful, last-minute rushes to meet deadlines — leading him to conclude that pushing back any harder would make his life even more difficult.

Bill Addison, one of the paper’s two restaurant critics, who had worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, Atlanta Magazine, and Eater before coming to the Times, also says within weeks of joining the paper, he found Meehan’s behavior went beyond tough editing into something that felt like bullying. He admired the editorial eye Meehan brought to the section, Addison says, but within months he found himself demoralized and afraid. He did not speak up beyond going to Yoshino, because he feared both internal retaliation, since he perceived Meehan to be supported by the paper’s leadership, and public castigation, since in the past Meehan had publicly attacked other colleagues at the paper on Twitter.

Patricia Escárcega, the paper’s other restaurant critic, says she also felt shut down by Meehan, despite the fact that he’d fought to bring her to the paper. Other staffers describe the relationship between the two as notably chilly. She felt singled out, and eventually went to Yoshino to complain. In an email to Eater, Escárcega described the meeting: “I told her I felt like I was working for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I told her I was walking on eggshells. I sat in her office and cried. She said he was under a lot of stress.”

Escárcega, the only Latina in the section, says she also felt a “subtle” pressure to write about Mexican food, a subject that she cares about deeply but didn’t want her work reduced to. “It definitely felt like there was more resistance when I wrote about different types of cuisines,” she says. In an initial statement from a company spokesperson, the Los Angeles Times told Eater, “Meehan has been an advocate for more inclusive coverage in the section he helped relaunch, reflective not only of Los Angeles’ vast and diverse food scene, but also of the writers, photographers, designers and illustrators who chronicle it.”

Managing editor Kimi Yoshino, who was Meehan’s direct supervisor, provided a statement to Eater noting Meehan’s talent as an editor should not have come “at the expense of the staff’s well-being.” The statement continues, “It became clear Peter had problems in the way he communicated and collaborated with others. I believed those problems were fixable and worked with him to become a better manager and more diplomatic communicator. I regret not doing even more to fully understand the extent of the staff’s concerns.” Yoshino characterized her own working relationship with Meehan as challenging and says, “I sometimes found his approach to be rude and disrespectful to our colleagues. I had many difficult conversations with him about the changes he needed to make as a manager, though I see now that wasn’t enough.”

One of the issues that employees struggling with Meehan’s behavior point to is that he seemed to create an environment of insiders and outsiders, and that the insiders included deputy food editor Andrea Chang and, to a lesser extent, Yoshino. Chang, senior writer Jenn Harris, and columnist Lucas Peterson (a former Eater contributor) would regularly dine out together, expensing their meals if they were relevant to a story, and posting glossy photos of these nights out to Instagram. Meehan would join during the one week each month that he was in town (there was even an Instagram hashtag: #peteweek). This “cool kids” dynamic (as more than one staffer put it) was in part driven by these posts. Instagram plays a more professional role in the food world than many other sectors of media, as an arena to display dining knowledge and build a profile, and while it’s one thing to know a boss and certain coworkers are friendly it’s another to see evidence of that relationship posted on social media for likes and clout, especially as other staffers were alienated by and fearful of Meehan.

The group was genuinely close, especially Chang, Peterson, and Harris, and the boundaries between managers and writers were blurry, since Peterson and Meehan were high school friends, and Harris had at one point been the interim editor of the food section. The group drank together often, stayed out late, visited each others’ homes, and spoke frankly about personal matters, including their sex lives, smearing the boundaries between personal and professional.

On July 3, 2019, Harris says that Meehan obliterated those boundaries. That night, she went with Meehan, Chang, and Peterson to a show at the Hollywood Bowl. It was a social outing, not a work one, and Chang drove the group. When they left, Harris says Meehan was so drunk he seemed to raise a fist at Peterson when Peterson tried to help him up, and Meehan needed to be led down to the car. “Pete got into the back of the car with me,” Harris says. “Instead of leaving the middle seat open, he slid next to me and put his head on my shoulder. I thought he was going to pass out on my shoulder and fall asleep. As we’re driving, I felt him stick his hand and slide it under my dress on my inner thigh. I picked his hand up, really caught off guard and really embarrassed. I said, ‘No,’ and put his hand back on his own lap and then a couple seconds later he did it again. I took his hand off and put it back and I said, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He mumbled, I understood him saying the words, ‘Pushing boundaries.’ So I said, ‘The boundaries are fine where they are, don’t fucking do that.’”

Peterson and Chang say they did not witness what happened in the back of the car. Harris says, and Peterson confirms, that she told both him and Chang about Meehan’s actions later that night. Harris asked them not to report the incident to anyone, and Peterson suggested that he talk to Meehan directly. (Chang declined to comment further for the story.) After such a long friendship, Peterson was shocked and upset by what he had heard. The next day, he confronted Meehan and told him his behavior had been, he says, “violent and inappropriate,” and he says Meehan apologized to him. Peterson told him he needed to speak to Harris and Chang. Harris says he never did speak to her about the incident, even as they continued to socialize. “I don’t know how we all kept hanging out trying to pretend like nothing was wrong,” Peterson says. “I’m honestly still so angry with myself for not doing or saying more. During the past year, Jenn and I have talked over these incidents a lot. And I think we were just really afraid.”

Later that summer, while out at the Chateau Marmont, along with Chang and Peterson, after a review dinner at Chateau Harare nearby, Harris joined Meehan on the smoking patio. She does not exactly remember what they were discussing, but she believes it was the subject of dating apps and her experiences with them. Harris says that Meehan said, “Jenn Harris, you are fuckable, you’re very fuckable. I know I shouldn’t be saying this to you, but I would stick your head in a pillow and fuck you.” She says that she did not interpret this as a solicitation so much as an inappropriate attempt to compliment her, but it made her deeply uncomfortable, so she went back to the table. She says she later told Peterson and Chang, as well as several other people, about the comments.

There was one other incident, which Harris did not include in her Slack post after Meehan’s departure. On another night in late summer 2019, Harris, Meehan, and Chang got together at Chang’s apartment, again as a social outing rather than a work one. They ordered in Thai food, and there was drinking — Harris perceived Meehan to be very drunk. She says, “We were sitting on the couch, and I was getting up to leave and he just looked at [her and Chang] and drunkenly said, ‘I could have fucked both of you tonight.’ I started laughing, like, are you fucking delusional? I said, ‘Well, I’m leaving now,’ and I left him there.”

Harris says she was never afraid of Meehan during these interactions, and at times tried to convince herself that these actions and comments had not been a big deal. But she did fear him in the office, and that led her to be afraid to say anything about what happened, or to stop hanging out with Meehan and the rest of the friend group. She saw when Meehan unleashed tirades in public Slack channels, and she recalls once hearing him say he would make a person who had pissed him off “his hobby.” Harris did not ever want to become his hobby. “He can be so nice and charming and supportive of your career,” she says. “I was worthy of being invited to social engagements. I benefited from that. I would think over and over, ‘What happens when he stops liking me?’ I didn’t want to find out.”

Harris also saw how upper management valued Meehan at the paper, and his ability to bulldoze through long-standing barriers and red tape to get what he wanted for the section. During her years at the Times, the food section had long fought to have a dedicated photographer and social media person — under Meehan, they got both. Harris wasn’t sure if this was Meehan’s doing or if management was just finally giving the section the resources it needed, but either way, she did not believe her story would be heard. “He is this beloved person in food media and at work, and I didn’t know if I told someone, if I’d be the one who had to leave,” she says. “If I said something, and he was still my boss after, it would be awkward. I was just scared.” (In her statement to Eater, Yoshino says, “I was shocked and appalled to hear the serious allegations of misconduct, including against one of my longtime friends and colleagues.”)

During her long tenure at the paper, Harris worked closely with Jonathan Gold, and she’s troubled by how often management has said Meehan got the job because he was Gold’s choice, even though Gold wasn’t the person who hired him. The paper spoke to, among other sources, former colleagues at the New York Times to vet Meehan; no one ever contacted anyone at Lucky Peach. Harris says, “I knew Jonathan very well, and I really don’t think that he would have been okay with this behavior, or been aware of it. For people in the building to say, ‘Oh, he was Jonathan’s pick,’ that is skirting responsibly for who hired him, and did or did not properly vet him. That’s a deflection of responsibility on a dead man.”

Following Meehan’s resignation, a wave of posts proliferated across social media by people who had worked with Meehan at Lucky Peach and the Los Angeles Times, who finally felt able to speak out. Aralyn Beaumont described her time at Lucky Peach as “living with a hole that has yet to close.” Chris Ying wrote on Instagram that “it took me a long time — too long — to understand that we weren’t dealing with a run-of-the-mill bad boss.” Rachel Khong wrote about how Twitter could distort the complexities of the situation. “I don’t believe Peter is an evil person. I don’t believe in evil people, full stop,” she wrote. But, she continued, “the harm that was done to us was not one Tweetable instance but was daily, and relentless, and insidious.”

Staffers at the Los Angeles Times, who by then had seen Harris’s allegations about Meehan’s behavior in Slack, were sharper-edged. Ben Mims wrote that the apology posted by Meehan was “an embarrassment,” saying that “‘tunnel vision’ and a ‘management style’ doesn’t begin to describe the culture of fear, intimidation, and retaliation that traumatized our whole team.” Lucas Peterson posted a long statement that many other staffers say encapsulated what it was like to work for Meehan, especially where he wrote, “One of my colleagues described it as like being in a house of horrors — we were all in different parts of the house, and had different experiences. But we were all in the house.”

On August 11, the entire food section at the Los Angeles Times sent a letter to management calling for an end to the holding pattern in place since Meehan’s departure. “The continued uncertainty regarding leadership — with no end in sight — is putting the future of the section in peril,” it states. “There has been no communication from upper management since July 6, which has only served to shake our confidence further during an already upsetting and traumatic time.” The letter demands regular updates on the HR investigation launched after the allegations about Meehan’s behavior surfaced on social media and Slack, and the immediate posting of both the food editor and deputy food editor positions, with an eye toward addressing the section’s lack of representation of the demographics of LA. “We at the Food section recognize the work of the Times’ Black and Latino caucuses, and insist that people of color, particularly those underrepresented in the newsroom, be prioritized in any new hiring,” the letter states.

On August 20, management relased the results of an internal HR investigation launched in the wake of Meehan’s departure. The report states, “Employees told us that Meehan created a negative work environment where employees did not feel comfortable raising their concerns. We also found that managers failed to prevent or report behavior they knew or should have known was inappropriate.” Yoshino will no longer oversee the section, and Chang has been reassigned to Column One. Internally, some LAT staffers say they are dissatified with these changes, including Chang’s lateral move into another section.

It’s not a coincidence, or even that singular, that the Los Angeles Times uprising against Meehan happened over Zoom and the reassessment of Lucky Peach happened over social media, all of it sparked by a single, pointed Twitter thread. This is a story shaped by COVID-19 and the mass quarantine of professional workplaces. The pandemic chewing through the tattered American safety net is too gigantic a disaster to contemplate head on for long, but its silent destruction is always unfolding, creating an atmosphere of fear and urgency whose only outlet is the streets, or social media.

Every institution seems to be failing, and failing us. Navigating media jobs over screens during this frightening moment has left workers isolated and exhausted, but also in possession of a strange freedom. As career ladders crumble, many journalists are doubling down on the one thing the job can still offer: a sense of meaning. That meaning grows sour if bosses are cruel or inequities are entrenched, and calling out a famous, perhaps brilliant editor as a bad boss is less intimidating if there’s no newsroom to face them in. The best hope is for a better way of life to rise from America’s disastrous failure, but right now, the pandemic still rages — the worst may just be beginning. Those with professional jobs in cities willing to issue stay-at-home orders, a bleak blessing, are trapped at home with nothing but time to reassess the past’s failures, and enumerate what must be born anew.

The question for the media reckoning underway is: What might truly subvert the old power structures? What comes after the legend of the brilliant, intimidating, perfectionist editor, embodied appetizingly by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (who in reality is most often a white man)? In the recent past, explosive tempers and blurred lines could be excused if the end product were exciting enough. Dismantling that ethos is only a start; it stems from larger inequities in how power and value are accorded in a newsroom, and who gets credit for the work. In an industry where power is nakedly ranked on a masthead, it took the lateral, flattening effect of social media to shake those hierarchies. “I think Peter had a gift for surrounding himself with talented people,” Escárcega wrote in an earlier email. “I hope we get smarter about who we exalt and why.”

Meghan McCarron is Eater’s special correspondent. Andrea D’Aquino is an illustrator based in New York City. Fact checked by Samantha Schuyler

Disclosures: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater. The Eater Test Kitchen that housed Lucky Peach was, for a time, sublet from Momofuku. A number of people in this story have contributed to Eater, including Tammie Teclemariam, Marian Bull, Rachel Khong, Lucas Peterson, and Bill Addison.

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