#as you can see i was doing another shading experiment on Andrew

[xmelimelonx]

no shade to anyone but why are raven!neil writers so insistent on having Neil experience continued sexual assault? not that I think he would get out of the nest without suffering some form of it but based on Jean's background we can sort of imagine that it wouldn't be as extensive as what some fic writers portray.

you don't need to make Nathaniel another Andrew, I think physical and psychological abuse is already horrific enough. and I'm not even against writing those themes in general but I do think some of y'all take it a bit too far and toe the line of traumap*rn.

anyways, shout-out to the unkindness of the ravens for handling the topic flawlessly and for being overall one of the best raven!Neil fanfics out there. really looking forward to seeing it completed.

[darthbreezy]

Sometimes...

- “Because, underneath it all, Crowley was an optimist. If there was one rock-hard certainty that had sustained him through the bad times then it was utter surety that the universe would look after him.” But even an optimist is (more often then not) subject to periods of self doubt and black despair. I honestly think it affects 'creatives' the worse as we tend to also feel more widely and deeply over all. While a good chunk of the rest of the world just sees their little 25'' Black and white TV screen and are happy about it, Creatives are of living in a world that's not only shades of gray, but full blown Cinama-Scope-Panavision-Technicolour in 70 milometer with the full blown THX sound experience.

It gets fucking tiring.... and you blow fuses, and short circuit. Sometimes you can reset... and sometimes...

Well yeah. Let's just say you don't. Out of the blue... you get little gifts - the thing is, you have to really see them to appreciate them. I'm going to do another drawing today - it's not Andrew Wyeth, nor maybe on the level of so many extremely talented folks but by god, it's MINE. So I thought, I really would like to have a blue pencil in my 'kit' for this, so I reached into the little ottoman that serves as one of the myriad of art stuff storage things around my flat, and what's lying on top?

Because of course it was. So there's the Universe, looking out for one of its eternal optimists again... Seeing me through another rough time...

[the-gay-id3-bastards]

Welcome to: another one of mod Pinga's procrastination project where we show you the consequences of insulting your best friend's boyfriend infront of him

[gluteus-canis-familiaris]

Alexander Skarsgård: ‘I still wake up shivering in the foetal position’

By Kevin EG Perry

October 1, 2016, The Guardian

A few years ago, Alexander Skarsgård turned up at a Hammarby football match in Stockholm noticeably… what’s a polite way of putting this? Worse for wear? “I was shitfaced,” says Skarsgård. “I went up in front of the crowd and started doing this chant. Someone put it on Youtube. I’m very drunk, going: ‘You fucking cunts, listen to me!’ I thought: ‘This is real embarrassing.’”

During the bleak hangover that followed, the 40-year-old Swedish actor thought he might have torpedoed a career that had just seen him get the part of Tarzan in this summer’s blockbuster. In fact it made him an even more perfect fit for the role. “Warner Bros had said they needed someone primal and animalistic,” he says. “So my agent sent them the video, saying: ‘Isn’t this motherfucker primal enough for you?’”

Another one of the half-million people who watched it was John Michael McDonagh, writer-director of The Guard and Calvary, who was on the lookout for a hard-drinking detective for his pitch-black buddy comedy War On Everyone. “He saw the video and went: ‘That’s the guy,’” says Skarsgård. “It got me the job. The moral of the story is: Make a fool of yourself and people will love you. Remember that, kids.”

When we meet around midday in the lobby of the Hotel Normandy during the Deauville American film festival, it seems he’s taken his own lesson to heart. The previous night he was so smashed that he invaded the DJ booth at War On Everyone’s afterparty and proved that while you can take the man out of Sweden… “I played strictly Abba,” he says. “When in doubt, Lay All Your Love On Me. We closed that place down.”

As he concertinas himself into the back of a people carrier for the two-hour drive to Charles de Gaulle airport, sheltering his eyes behind dark shades, it’s somehow reassuring to know that savage hangovers afflict even movie stars who’ve been blessed with the sort of face that led Ben Stiller to cast him in Zoolander so he could ask him: “Did you ever think there’s more to life than being really, really, really ridiculously good-looking?”

Yet he was back with his pecs out this summer for The Legend Of Tarzan, a blockbuster that, like many in 2016, struggled at the box office. He says he was drawn in by the character’s search for a place in the world and impressed by Harry Potter director David Yates’s ability to make a £140m film feel “intimate”. But it was in some ways a change of scale. “I work mostly in independent movies so the scope of Tarzan was definitely different,” Skarsgård says. “I didn’t feel pressured [by the box office demands] though. It wasn’t like: ‘Oh fuck, this is a big movie.’ It was an incredible experience, but it was also nine months of just gym, work and bed. I didn’t have a sip of alcohol. It was robotic.”

Which explains the appeal of War On Everyone, a film in which he both downs and takes shots in every direction. Skarsgård plays Terry, a perma-drunk, Glen Campbell-obsessed, unapologetically corrupt detective partnered with the lightning-witted Bob, played by The Martian’s Michael Peña. It’s the old bad cop/worse cop routine, but laced with fierce cleverness. Where Shane Black’s The Nice Guys were bumbling dunces, McDonagh’s pair trade wisecracks peppered with esoteric references to everyone from Simone de Beauvoir to realist painter Andrew Wyeth.

“It’s so un-PC, it’s so me,” says Skarsgård. “You could tell John didn’t give a fuck about anything, which I found refreshing in a script. I’d read a couple of comedies but nothing that was fun or intelligent enough. When I got this script and it was dark and twisted and weird and completely out there, I was excited.” And besides, he adds, “[John is] a beautiful soul, which helps when you insult everyone.”

He even sees some similarities between his dirty detective and the king of the swingers. “As with Tarzan, there’s dichotomy in the character between being a civilised man and a beast. That’s something we can all relate to. We live in a civilised society, but 12 hours ago we were beasts dancing to Abba.”

The young Skarsgård’s first taste of fame was his own. His appearance at the age of 12 in TV film The Dog That Smiled made him a child star, but he soon found he hated the attention and quit acting. “I was desperate to be normal and blend in,” he says. He saw his chance at a life on the straight-and-narrow by enrolling in the Swedish military at 19, “unheard of” in his family. “That was my way to rebel,” he says.

Afterwards, still in search of himself, he decided to head to university in the UK. But he swerved London to find a more authentic British experience, and enrolled at Leeds Met. “It doesn’t get more British than a northern, working-class town,” he says. “There was a club called the Majestic where they had student nights and it was a pound a pint. We lived in Headingley, near the pubs on the Otley Run. Uni was a bullshit excuse for being there. I was studying British culture. I loved it.”

Deciding at 20 that he may have been a little hasty quitting acting, it was while visiting Stellan in LA that he won his small part in Zoolander – at his first Hollywood audition – but it was a false dawn. It would be another seven years before he got a major role, and he spent the time in between shuttling between theatres and coffee shops. When he was cast in David Simon and Ed Burns’s Iraq miniseries Generation Kill, he spent a month convinced he was about to be sacked. “It was only after four or five weeks I realised they weren’t going to recast,” he says. “Before that all I could think about was how much it would cost them to reshoot the big fight scenes after they fired me.”

Imposter syndrome is a common feeling – although a little hard to believe from a handsome, 6ft 4in movie star. “That shit doesn’t change,” he assures me. “I felt like that on Tarzan. I was on set thinking: ‘When is the director going to come over and say: Dude, you can go home. We’ve got Tarzan here now.’ That was 10 years after Generation Kill.”

Alexander Skarsgård, then: just like the rest of us. Fond of a pub crawl, obnoxious at sporting events, constantly waiting for that tap on the shoulder telling him the jig is up. So life is still pretty much the same when you’re really, really, really ridiculously good-looking?

“I mean, fuck, I still wake up shivering in the foetal position,” he says. “I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunities I get. Getting drunk on someone else’s dime listening to Abba is brilliant, but my life is still shit. I’m still agonising. What the fuck am I doing with my life? Where do I belong? Who gives a fuck? Let me assure you, it doesn’t get any better.”

War On Everyone is in cinemas from Friday

[dwellordream]

“In theory, Victorians concerned with troublesome issues on the margins of respectable fiction for girls could deal with them within the family reading circle. Reading aloud was perhaps the most common domestic entertainment within the Victorian family, used as reward, improvement, or therapy for life’s challenges. The sisters taking turns reading to accompany their needlework, the matron at the sickbed, the daughter reading to her father at the end of a business day—there were myriad arenas in which families used reading to ease, amuse, and instruct.

At its most basic, reading aloud enabled the sharing of resources (a book, or a fresh installment of a periodical) among many. But beyond that, it was a profoundly social way of responding to the lessons of history, current fiction, or poetry. The critic Andrew Blake suggests that the novel, in particular, was ‘‘a most important point of contact between the public and the private’’ because ‘‘it gave people a chance to discuss domestic ideology in public without touching on domestic secrets.’’ The semipublic sphere that was the family circle provided an important venue for the discussion of reading. Within this context, instruction in morality could be accomplished informally, gently, impersonally, with reference to fictional characters rather than through direct criticism and rebuttal.

The convention of the family reading circle generally restricted polite novels from treating illicit sexuality or immoral characters, but if any lapses occurred, the family circle could deal with them most effectively. Thus Elizabeth Gaskell said of her own novel Ruth, which features an orphan who has been seduced by an aristocrat: ‘‘Of course it is a prohibited book in this, as in many other households.’’ The one circumstance that would change its unsuitability for young people, she opined, was if it was ‘‘read with someone older,’’ perhaps with an older female relative within a family reading group.

The kind of family conversation which could improve all who participated was explained by Sarah Browne in a private diary in 1859. ‘‘Albert brings [Harriet Beecher Stowe’s] the Minister’s Wooing. We sit quietly and hear how James is brought back to the living, we calmly rejoice with Mary, plan and maneuver with Miss Pressy, call Parson Hopkins in very truth a Christian and wind up the evening by wishing to see Mrs. Stowe, knowing how she would seem and if she would talk at all, like other women.’’

Albert Browne Sr. was generally the reader in the Browne family, sometimes of ‘‘superior articles in the Atlantic Monthly.’’ In these moments of quiet, Sarah Browne most idealized her shared family life, ‘‘sitting as we do in our little western chamber, Father, Alice and I storing in the rich thoughts of others as a life element of our own.’’Reading aloud enabled a submersion of family tensions in a focus outward on the problems of others.

The idealization of the shared reading experience suggested stylized familial communion to daughters as well as parents. During the final days of the Civil War, as she anticipated her own marriage, Helen Hart thought to memorialize the evenings reading aloud together. ‘‘I think I never enjoyed evenings more in my life. First Bertie reads, then Hady, and then Mother and I; from History, Shakespeare, the Atlantic, and other miscellany. Such peaceful, happy winter evenings at home! Something for us to look back upon in after years when we are scattered. I have treasured up each one as it passed, as a sweet and sacred memory.’’ The pleasure came from the contrast between ‘‘our quiet harbor’’ and ‘‘the world with its commotions, its struggles.’’

Never did home seem so secure and safe as when implicitly contrasted with the adventures and misfortunes of fictional characters, warring nations, or past princes. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s biographer noted that Charlotte and her destitute and emotionally distant mother were at their best when reading aloud to each other, their fraught intimacy dissolved in their shared focus on the lives and feelings of others. Those moments of community might even be resurrected by rereading books so experienced. (‘‘It seems as if we were gathered around the nursery fire again. I can almost hear Aunt Mary’s voice.’’) The pleasures of reading aloud were those of reading mediated—reading mediated by the fiction of shared purpose.

Reading aloud did not have a single simple meaning, however, nor did it model only one kind of power relationship. The Browne family’s shared reading was patriarchal, with father reading and other family members (according to the hardly impartial mother) celebrating familial harmony. Alice Stone Blackwell, in her irreverent and spritely diary, offered another example of paternal reading aloud, lightly satirizing her father, the noted reformer and women’s rights advocate Henry Blackwell:

‘‘Papa sat with his feet on the top of the stove, saturated with laziness, and rated me for enjoying stories [fiction], and formed plans to give me a taste for instructive literature, and ended by making me bring Plutarch’s Lives, and beginning to read them aloud.’’ This depiction of a well-respected father indulging in playful tyranny of his only child suggests a quite different emotional shading—if a similar actual structure—to the idealized portraits of patriarchal reading circles.

Daughters also read on their own, though, and given the risks of immoral reading and the gains from uplifting reading, good parents attempted to mon- itor what they read. The goal in choosing reading, as in all the lessons of character, was to instruct gently and surely so as to encourage daughters to make familial lessons their own. Advice to parents ranged from the relatively cut and dried—‘‘Parents should choose the books that their children read until the age of 15’’—to the more subtle: ‘‘Wise parents put so many good books in the way of their children that the taste for them is formed unconsciously, and there is never any feeling of restraint.’’ (The latter piece of advice, made in 1901, was clearly advice for the book-wealthy.)

Ellen Emerson’s correspondence with her mother while away at boarding school suggested the appropriate supervisory relationship of parents over girls’ reading. Explaining that she was reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, which she found ‘‘a very funny book,’’ she went on, ‘‘I never read any that I am not sure you would be willing to have me,’’ and recorded her assumption that Scott, Gaskell, and several others were ‘‘not forbidden.’’ She went on to query, ‘‘May I read [Margaret Oliphant’s] ‘Head of the Family’?’’ Middle-class or elite parents who participated in genteel Victorian culture assumed an important role in controlling the reading of their daughters—its quantity, its contents, and its circumstances.

In the elite midwestern Hamilton family, a family with a strong and eclectic reading tradition, novels were doled out prudently like candies during vacations from school, so as not to interfere with schoolwork. When her daughter was fifteen, Phoebe Hamilton gave her ‘‘Ivanhoe for my holiday reading, she always gives me one of Scott every vacation.’’ The next year her mother was more liberal, providing Scott’s Quentin Durward for a Christmas book and giving permission for the reading of Dickens’s Little Dorrit and Jemima Tautphoeus’s The Initials. As January arrived, Agnes lamented, ‘‘I have finished the latter but I am afraid as I go back to school next Monday I shall have to let Little Dorrit wait till summer.’’

There was a hierarchy within Hamilton family reading, and despite her voraciousness, Agnes felt that her tastes fell short of her family’s preferences. ‘‘Oh! why haven’t I the love of learning of the family?’’ She indicated what was expected in her next breath: ‘‘Knight’s England vol. III has been read all but two chapters since last fall and during two months I have read but four books of the Odyssey.’’ She forced herself to be realistic. ‘‘During this next week [probably a school vacation] I want [to] finish half a dozen or more books which I have begun but I dare say the novels are the only ones that will be looked much in.’’

Like the Hamilton reading regimen, other family routines, too, involved matters of both quality and quantity. There were appropriate ages for the reading of different books. At fifteen, Margaret Tileston wanted to read George Macdonald’s Alec Forbes of Howglen, an homage to the dignity of Scots country life. The author was certainly approved, but Margaret’s mother didn’t want her to read the book ‘‘yet.’’

At eighteen, Margaret was still reading under adult scrutiny. Sick at home she was ‘‘allowed’’ to read Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, considered excessively charged for young girls, and polished off 340 pages on the first day. Reading was one way of being inducted into family ideology; when Margaret reread Pilgrim’s Progress in 1883, she was conscious that she was reading a book that had been important to her mother when she was young.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Reading and the Development of Taste.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

[ginkgomoon]

MLQC as The Phantom Of The Opera Lyrics

The Phantom Of The Opera is coming to my state and I'm so excited to be watching the musical live this year. I've been a fan of the musical and movie for a long time now, and never thought they'd come to my country!

The Phantom Of The Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of the most successful and well-known musicals. Based on the 1910 novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, its central plot revolves around a beautiful soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, disfigured musical genius living in the subterranean labyrinth beneath the Paris Opéra House.

This post was inspired by its music, and I found some interestingly funny parralels! If you have heard of it then that would be amazing because we have something else in common, too!

Links to the music is provided on the title of corresponding song of the character! Have a listen to enhance your experience 🎭

Gavin-

Think Of Me Think of all the things We've shared and seen Don't think about the way Things might have been

Think of me, think of me waking Silent and resigned Imagine me trying too hard To put you from my mind Recall those days Look back on all those times Think of the things we'll never do There will never be a day When I won't think of you Can it be, can it be Christine (MC)? Long ago, it seems so long ago How young and innocent we were She may not remember me But I remember her

All I Ask Of You No more talk of darkness Forget these wide-eyed fears I'm here, nothing can harm you My words will warm and calm you Let me be your freedom Let daylight dry your tears I'm here, with you, beside you To guard you and to guide you

Lucien-

Music Of The Night Nighttime sharpens, heightens each sensation Darkness stirs and wakes imagination Silently the senses abandon their defences

Let your mind start a journey to a strange new world Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before Let your soul take you where you long to be Only then can you belong to me

Floating, falling, sweet intoxication Touch me, trust me, savour each sensation Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in

*Lucien falls in love*- I Remember Fear can turn to love—you'll learn to see...

Damn you! Curse you! Now you cannot ever be free!

All I Ask Of You Share each day with me Each night, each morning Love me—that's all I ask of you Say you love me You know I do

Masquerade Masquerade! Hide your face, so the world will never find you! Masquerade! Every face a different shade Masquerade! Look around—there's another mask behind you!

Masquerade! Seething shadows, breathing lies... Masquerade! You can fool any friend who ever knew you!

Victor-

All I Ask Of You

Then say you'll share with me One love, one lifetime Let me lead you from your solitude Say you need me with you here, beside you Anywhere you go, let me go too Christine (MC), that's all I ask of you Say you'll share with me One love, one lifetime Say the word and I will follow you

Chapter 18 Down With This Murderer I love her! Does that mean nothing? I love her! Show some compassion... (Dark MC- The world showed no compassion to me!)

Kiro-

I Remember I remember there was mist Swirling mist upon a vast, glassy lake There were candles all around And on the lake, there was a boat And in the boat, there was a man Who was that shape in the shadows? Whose is the face in the mask?

All I Ask Of You Say you love me every waking moment Turn my head with talk of summertime Say you need me with you now and always Promise me that all you say is true That's all I ask of you Let me be your shelter Let me be your light You're safe, no one will find you Your fears are far behind you

All I want is freedom A world with no more night And you, always beside me To hold me and to hide me

Masquerade Masquerade! Hide your face, so the world will never find you! Masquerade! Every face a different shade Masquerade! Look around—there's another mask behind you!

Masquerade! Burning glances Turning heads... Masquerade! Stop and stare at the sea of smiles around you!

Shaw-

The Point Of No Return Past the point of no return No backward glances The games we played till now are at an end Past all thought of "if" or "when" No use resisting Abandon thought and let the dream descend

MC-

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again You were once my one companion You were all that mattered You were once a friend and father Then my world was shattered

Wishing you were somehow here again Wishing you were somehow near Sometimes it seemed,​ ​if I just dreamed Somehow you would be here

Wishing I could hear your voice again Knowing that I never would Dreaming of you won't help me to do All that you dreamed I could

Wishing you were somehow here again Knowing we must say goodbye Try to forgive, teach me to live Give me the strength to try No more memories, no more silent tears No more gazing across the wasted years Help me say goodbye

All-

Notes Where is she?

You mean Carlotta?

I mean Miss Daaé (MC) Where is she? I want an answer!

Well, how should we know?

She's not with you then?

What's all this nonsense?

Of course not!

Monsieur don't argue Isn't this the letter you wrote?

Of course not!

Minor-

Notes Dear Firmin (MC), just a brief reminder My salary has not been paid

Whole storyline-

BLACK SWAN to STF-

So, it is to be war between us! But this time, clever friend, the disaster will be yours!

Poor Fool, He Makes Me Laugh [Instrumental interlude] [Scream]

Ladies and gentlemen. Please, remain in your seats. Do not panic; it was an accident ... simply an accident!

Dark MC-

Down With This Murderer Pity comes too late— Turn around and face your fate: An eternity of this before your eyes!

Nothing can save you now—except perhaps Christine (MC) ... Start a new life with me— Buy his freedom with your love! Refuse me, and you send your lover to his death! This is the choice— This is the point of no return!

[foxy-exy]

23 + andriel 👀

Bloom (forget me not)

Prompt 23 from here: “No, we’re going to talk about this now.” (and tattoo artist/piercer Andrew AU also came from Syd!!) TW: lots of talk about scars i’ve been mia working on my very-close-to-my-heart and very-long-compared-to-what-i’ve-been-writing-lately aftg big bang fic (WATCH OUT FOR THAT PLZ) but syd hit me w/ tattoo artist/piercer andrew right when my need for just one (1) tattoo and many (MANY) more piercings was highest so here we are (also my aftg server was talking about flower tattoos on jean and i was like oh worm flower tattoos on aftg characters you say??? so they are also partially responsible) also i may have never actually gotten a tattoo before but this is definitely Not How It Works, unrealistic, unprofessional, and general bad clienting but shhh you can also find this fic on my ao3 here!

Andrew’s pencil scratching is the only sound in the parlor — he thinks maybe his phone died an hour ago and with it, his music playlist. He should probably get up and plug it back in.

The cat eyes glare at him from his sketchpad page, though, and he can’t leave the face half finished now. He swings his chair back around to look at the picture on the shop’s computer screen that he’s sketching. God, this cat is ugly. He wouldn’t want this cat as a sleeve, but what the paying client wants, the paying client gets.

He blocks out the nose and jaw, shakes out his aching hand, and glares back at the drawing as he leans back in the chair and shoves the pencil eraser into his mouth to chew on.

“Hey.”

Andrew sends his sketchpad flying and nearly tips his chair over to turn back around. Nobody ever shows up for random walk-ins this early, it’s why he’s usually the only one on the schedule. (They retain more clients when Andrew is not the one who talks to them. Because Andrew is, as Nicky puts it, an asshole.)

Neil Josten stands before him, dressed as plainly as ever in his standard gray sweatshirt and baggy jeans, looking bemused and out of place in the strange context of Andrew’s workplace. He is not a piercings-and-tattoos kind of person. He is a somewhat-friends-with-Kevin-purely-because-they-like-to-yell-about-sports-together-on-Andrew’s-couch kind of person.

“Thanks for not even setting off the door bells,” Andrew says coolly, around a mouthful of pencil eraser, and takes it from his mouth immediately after, because Neil is smiling a little, eyes on it.

“Sorry, I’m pretty quiet.”

“No, you aren’t,” Andrew says, and Neil’s lips twitch again.

He and Neil are distant acquaintances at best. Kevin shares Andrew and Nicky’s apartment for rent purposes as Aaron moved out months ago to live with his girlfriend, but Kevin and Andrew don’t share friend groups. Even so, it is impossible to ignore Neil Josten when he’s worked up and shouting about Kevin’s favorite teams being terrible.

“What are you here for?” Andrew clicks off the cat photo and pulls up their schedule — empty for several hours, until Kevin comes in for an appointment with somebody who wants some script work. He doesn’t know why Neil is here when Kevin isn’t working, they’re the ones who know each other.

“How much for a…a medusa?”

“Fifty.” Andrew eyes him. The uncertainty in his voice is clear, which is…interesting. “I didn’t think you were into piercings, or Kevin would have bullied you into at least three by now.”

Neil doesn’t answer, because his gaze is glued to Andrew’s arms — his shirt sleeves have ridden up to show the patchwork pieces winding their way up his wrists and forearms.

“And…” This comes out more rushed now, clearly the actual reason for the visit, “What about tattoos?”

Andrew pulls back down his sleeves. “Are you asking for pricing? I can’t give you an estimate without any kind of idea of what you’re looking for. Do you even know the style you want? Where you want it?”

Neil drags his eyes back up to meet Andrew’s. “You covered up Kevin’s old tattoos, didn’t you?”

Andrew folds his arms. Enunciates clearly because he’s never been one to beat around the bush. “Are you looking for a tattoo consultation or not?”

“Yes,” says Neil, and his mouth flattens, brows pinching.

“Glad to see you’re so very excited about it,” Andrew deadpans, opens up an appointment entry on the schedule and types in Neil Josten, tattoo consultation: Andrew Minyard. He snatches up his sketchpad and pencil from the ground and curls a finger at Neil to follow.

***

“You don’t have tattoos to cover up,” Andrew says, when Neil tentatively perches on the edge of the lounge seat in the private office. “What do you want?”

Neil tugs at the fraying cuff of his shirt and looks pained. “I just…I don’t know.”

“That really sucks, because you’re paying me to help you figure out specifics on what you want right now.”

“Can you cover up scars,” Neil mumbles, and Andrew freezes. And Neil must pick up on this, because immediately he says, “Never mind. This was a bad idea.”

Andrew catches Neil’s shirt hem before he can completely turn towards the door. “No, we’re going to talk about this now.”

“I changed my mind, it’s okay, don’t tell Kevin, I just thought maybe —”

“I won’t tell Kevin,” Andrew says.

Neil tugs at his hair.

“I can cover up scars,” Andrew says.

Neil looks back at him, and he is very pale.

And then, because Andrew is stupid, “I’ve covered up my own scars.”

Neil’s face does something very complicated, his hands shake a little, and slowly, carefully, Neil sits back down.

***

Neil doesn’t know what he wants, exactly, he says. He says he likes what he’s seen of Andrew’s work, which isn’t all that helpful.

“Abstract,” Andrew says, and Neil shrugs.

“Animals.” Shrug.

“Skulls,” Andrew says, with a hint of impatience.

“Anything,” Neil says.

“You’re my least favorite client.”

“Even that one with the lion back tattoo?” Neil asks, and he is smiling again. Teasing. Andrew knows that Neil was in the house when he was telling Kevin about that client and his ridiculous whining, but he hadn’t realized Neil had been listening.

“Yes, maybe you’ll overtake even him,” Andrew retorts, reaches for the binder sitting in the corner marked Andrew Minyard — full of his past work — and tosses it at Neil. “I can’t work with ‘anything.’ That’s how people get tattoos they regret.”

“I liked Kevin’s black rose,” Neil says, and flips through the book, lingering on a page with more floral designs. “But you do color, too?”

“That is a style I do, yes.” Andrew watches Neil’s fingers trace delicate petals and fights back a curious rush. “Scar tissue can be unpredictable when it comes to holding ink, and it can hurt. But I’ve had experience with it. Do you want something like that?”

“I like these,” Neil says quietly, and Andrew shoves his pencil eraser back into his mouth and turns resolutely back to his sketchpad so he doesn’t have to look at Neil looking at his work.

“Colored flowers,” he says, drumming fingernails against his paper. “Fine. What flowers do you like? Where would this be?”

“Forget-me-not? On my arm?” Again, Neil sounds uncertain, and Andrew turns a glare on him.

“If you want this, you want this. If you’re not sure, I’m not inking an inch of you.”

He decides he hates looking at Neil’s soft smile when he is on its receiving end. This is the first time it’s happened, and he thinks if it happens again, he should check into a hospital for heart palpitations.

“I want it. Here.” Neil rolls up a sleeve, and Andrew clamps his jaw shut as Neil taps a finger to his forearm, covered in circular red puckers of skin and the occasional, familiar raised line of white. Andrew forces himself to lean closer to examine the canvas with clinical detachment, and press his fingers to the skin, measuring.

“This big?”

“Yeah,” Neil says, and that’s that.

***

“Why the hell was Neil on your schedule?” Kevin asks very loudly from the front desk as Andrew lounges across the waiting room couch and doodles blue petals.

“Huh, Kevin, I don’t see how that’s really any of your business,” Andrew says, and scribbles out another draft.

“No, seriously. He’s never wanted anything before. Why didn’t he tell me?”

“Contrary to what your ego says, not everything is about you,” Andrew drawls.

“Neil,” Kevin barks, and Andrew looks up to find Kevin with his phone to his ear. “Why did you come to see Andrew?”

Neil must apparently say something similar to Andrew’s sentiments because Kevin rolls his eyes. “You should have told me that you wanted something. No, I — he didn’t say anything to me. Neil —!” The last part is said to an apparently dead line, because Kevin pulls the phone away with a huff. “I don’t understand why he came to you without saying anything, I’m his tattoo artist friend.”

“Too bad,” Andrew says, and pulls out his own phone when it buzzes.

Thanks, is the simple text from Neil Josten. For not telling him.

Andrew doesn’t reply, but he tucks his phone between his elbows and pretends to ignore the warmth blooming in his chest as he flips the page and starts to shade another forget-me-not.

***

Do you like this? Andrew asks, and attaches a picture of his latest draft.

Almost immediately, the text is marked as Seen, but Neil doesn’t respond for a solid few minutes.

Finally, Andrew locks his phone again, irritated, and shoves away his sketchpad, feeling too jittery to sleep like he should be doing at — he checks the clock — 2 AM.

His phone chimes, and Andrew looks down at It’s perfect and thinks that having such a giant crush on his apartment mate’s probably uninterested friend is maybe really, really bad.

***

“Hey, Andrew.”

Andrew looks up from the fridge. He has been studiously ignoring Neil’s presence on the couch while Kevin chatters to him about the latest hockey wins. But Kevin has disappeared, and Neil remains, and Neil is…looking at him.

“I like it a lot. Like, fuck, really a lot.”

Andrew glares and slams the fridge closed. Neil’s smile only grows wider as Andrew stalks over to the table to deposit whatever leftovers he grabbed (that he most definitely did not look at) onto it.

“So, when are you free to ink me?”

Andrew’s going to die, and Neil Josten saying when are you free to ink me is going to be the cause of death.

“Tomorrow. 10 AM,” he grits out.

“Okay,” Neil says.

***

“Andrew.”

“Shut up.”

“Andrew,” Neil says again, shakily.

“Don’t.”

“Thank you.” Neil stares at the forget-me-not cluster blooming across pinkened skin underneath the plastic wrap, lips parted. Andrew wants to kiss them.

“Oh,” says Neil when he looks up, and Andrew is still too close, and Andrew would usually probably pull back but instead, he dips closer. And Neil would usually probably avoid physical contact like he does with everyone but instead, Neil kisses him back.

“Oh,” Andrew agrees, and starts to turn away, but Neil shifts with him, eyes too intense, and a finger hovers at Andrew’s collar to tug very lightly.

“When would be too soon to ask when you’re free again?”

“Has the tattoo bug bitten you already?” Andrew scoffs, and Neil looks down at his forget-me-not and nods. “You’ll have to schedule an appointment like everybody else. You’re lucky my schedule hasn’t been as booked lately.”

“Okay,” says Neil, and then, “and what about asking when you’re free outside of work?”

Andrew stares at him. “For?”

“What about a repeat of this kind of thing?” Neil gestures between them. “Or…lunch, on me?”

“Lunch, on me,” says Andrew automatically. “You just gave me a lot of money.”

“Okay,” says Neil again, and laughs. “Kevin’s going to be so pissed that he missed all this happening.”

“I don’t see why I have to tell him who I’m kissing,” Andrew says.

“You’ve only done it once.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow and fixes that grievous mistake.

Neil’s answering grin is not soft, just impish, but it does things to Andrew’s heart all the same.

[thefakejeffreyazoff]

‘He’s our Satan’: Mega music manager Irving Azoff, still feared, still fighting

(x)PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. —  

This is not Irving Azoff’s house. Irving and his wife Shelli own houses all over, from Beverly Hills to Cabo San Lucas, but right now in the last week of October it’s too cold at the ranch in Idaho and too hot at the spread in La Quinta, so he’s renting this place — a modest midcentury six-bedroom that sold for $5 million back in 2016.

From the front door you can see all the way out, to where Arrowhead Point juts like the tail of a comma into the calm afternoon waters of Carmel Bay. More importantly, the house is literally across the street from the Pebble Beach Golf Links, where Azoff likes to play with his college buddy John Baruck, who started out in the music business around the same time Azoff did, in the late ’60s, and just retired after managing Journey through 20 years and two or three lead singers, depending how you count.

(Via LA Times) 

Azoff is 72, and this weekend he’ll be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Bruce Springsteen’s longtime manager Jon Landau. Beatles manager Brian Epstein and Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham are already in, but Azoff and Landau are the first living managers thus honored. Azoff is not only alive — he’s still managing. As a partner in Full Stop Management — alongside Jeffrey Azoff, his oldest son and the third of his four children — he steers the careers of clients like the Eagles, Steely Dan, Bon Jovi and comedian Chelsea Handler, and consults when needed on the business of Harry Styles, Lizzo, John Mayer, Roddy Ricch, Anderson .Paak and Maroon 5. Azoff has Zoom calls at 7, 8 and 9 tomorrow morning, and only after that will he squeeze in a round.

The work never stops when you view the job the way Azoff does, as falling somewhere between consigliere and concierge. “My calls can be everything from ‘My knee buckled, I need a doctor’ to ‘My kid’s in jail,’” Azoff says. “I mean, you have no idea. The ‘My kid’s in jail’ one was a funny one, because the artist then said to me, ‘Y’know, I’ve thought about this. Maybe we should leave him there for a while.’”

Golf entered Azoff’s life the way a lot of things have — via the Eagles, whom Azoff has managed since the early ’70s. Specifically, Azoff took up golf in the company of the late Glenn Frey, the jockiest Eagle, the one the other Eagles used to call “Sportacus.” By the time the Eagles returned to the road in the ’90s they’d left their debauched ’70s lifestyles largely behind, but Azoff and Frey got hooked on the little white ball.

“Frey would insist on booking the tour around where he wanted to play golf,” Azoff says. “We made Henley crazy. Henley would call me in my room and he’d go, ‘Why the f— are we in a hotel in Hilton Head North Carolina and starting a tour in Charlotte? Is this a f— golf tour?’”

Trailed by Larry Solters, the Eagles��� preternaturally dour minister of information, Azoff makes his way down the hill from the house for dinner at the golf club’s restaurant. He’s only 5 feet, 3 inches, a diminutive Sydney Pollack in jeans and a zip-up sweater. In photos from the ’70s — when he was considerably less professorial in comportment, a hipster exec with a spring-loaded middle finger — he sports a beard and a helmet of curly hair and mischievous eyes behind his shades, and looks a little like a Muppet who might scream at Kermit over Dr. Teeth’s appearance fee.

His father was a pharmacist and his mother was a bookkeeper. He grew up in Danville, Ill., booked his first shows in high school to pay for college, dropped out of college to run a small Midwestern concert-booking empire and manage local acts such as folk singer Dan Fogelberg and heartland rock band REO Speedwagon. Los Angeles soon beckoned. He met the Eagles while working for David Geffen and Elliot Roberts’ management company and followed the band out the door when they left the Geffen fold; they became the cornerstone of his empire. “I got my swagger from Glenn Frey and Don Henley,” he says. “No doubt about it.”

Azoff never took to pot or coke. The Eagles lived life in the fast lane; he was the designated driver. “Artists,” he once observed, “like knowing the guy flying the plane is sober.” This didn’t stop him from trashing his share of hotel rooms, frequently with guitarist Joe Walsh — whose solo career Azoff shepherded before Walsh joined the Eagles, and who was very much not sober at this time — as an accomplice.

“This was a different age,” Walsh says of his time as the band’s premier lodging-deconstructionist. “We could do anything we wanted, so we did. And Irving’s role was to keep us out of prison, basically.” He recalls a pleasant evening in Chicago in the company of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, which culminated in Walsh laying waste to a suite at the Astor Towers hotel that turned out to be the owner’s private apartment. “We had to check out with a lawyer and a construction foreman,” Walsh remembers. “But Irving took care of it. Without Irving, I’d still be in Chicago.”

Azoff became even more infamous for the pit bull brio he brought to business negotiations on behalf of the Eagles and others, including Stevie Nicks and Boz Scaggs. He didn’t seem to care if people liked him, and his artists loved him for that. Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker said they’d hired Azoff because he “impressed us with his taste for the jugular … and his bizarre spirit.” Jimmy Buffett’s wife grabbed him outside a show at Madison Square Garden, pushed him into the back of a limo and said, You have to manage Jimmy, although Buffett already had a manager at the time.

His outsized reputation as an advocate not just willing but eager to scorch earth on behalf of his clients became an advertisement for his services, a phenomenon that continues to this day. In August 2018, Azoff’s then-client Travis Scott released “Astroworld,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and occupied that slot again the following week, causing Nicki Minaj’s album “Queen” to debut at No. 2. On her Beats One show “Queen Radio,” Minaj accused Scott of gaming Billboard’s chart methodology to keep her out of the top slot and singled his manager out by name: “C—sucker of the Day award,” she said, “goes to Irving Azoff.” Azoff says he reacted as only Azoff would: “I said, ‘I’m really unhappy about that. I want to be c—sucker of the year.’” In 2019, Minaj hired Azoff as her new manager.

Most of the best things anyone’s ever said about Azoff are statements a man of less-bizarre spirit would take as an insult. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the Eagles in 1998, Don Henley stood onstage and said of Azoff, “He may be Satan, but he’s our Satan.”

An N95-masked Azoff takes a seat on a patio with a view of hallowed ground — the first hole of the Pebble Beach course, a dogleg-right par 4 with a priceless view of the bay. He cheerfully admits that he and his partners at Full Stop are “obviously, as a management business, kind of losing our ass” this year due to COVID-19. In another reality, the Eagles would have played Wembley Stadium in August before heading off to Australia or the Far East. Styles would have just finished 34 dates in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. As it stands Azoff is hearing encouraging things about treatments and vaccines and new testing machines, and is reasonably confident that technology will soon make it possible for certified-COVID-free fans to again enjoy carefree evenings of live music together; he doesn’t expect much to happen in the meantime.

“What are you gonna do,” Azoff says, “take an act that used to sell 15,000 seats and tell them to play to 4,000 in the [same] arena? The vibe would be horrible, and production costs will stay the same.”

He knows of at least six companies trying to monetize new concert-esque experiences — pay-per-view shows from houses and soundstages, drive-in events and so on. But he’s not convinced anybody wants to sit in their parked car to watch a band play. More to the point, he’s not convinced it’s rock ’n’ roll.

“Fallon and Kimmel, all these virtual performances — people are sick of that,” he says. “Your production values from home aren’t that good. And they’re destroying the mystique. I mean, Justin Bieber jumping around on ‘Saturday Night Live’ the other night without a band, and then he had Chance the Rapper come out? It made him look to me, mortal. I didn’t feel any magic. So we’ve kinda been turning that stuff down to just wait it out.”

In the meantime, he says, Full Stop is picking up new clients during the pandemic. Artists with time on their hands, he believes, “have taken a hard look at their careers— so we’ve grown. No revenues,” he adds with a chuckle, “but people are saying, ‘We need you, we need to plan our lives.’”

“IN HIGH SCHOOL,” Jeffrey Azoff says, “I wanted to be a professional golfer, which has obviously eluded me.” He never expected to take up his father’s profession. “But my dad has always loved his job so much. There’s no way that doesn’t rub off on you.”

The younger Azoff got his first industry job at 21, as a “glorified intern” working for Maroon 5’s then-manager Jordan Feldstein. After a week of filing and fetching coffee, he called his father and complained that he was bored. According to Jeffrey, Irving responded, “Listen carefully, because I’m going to say this one time. You have a phone and you have my last name. If you can’t figure it out, you’re not my son.”

“Direct quote,” Jeffrey says. “It’s one of my favorite things he’s ever said to me. And it’s the spirit of the music business, by the way. There are no rules to this. Just figure it out.”

Over dinner I keep asking Irving how he got the temerity, as a kid barely out of college, to plunge into the shark-infested waters of the ‘70s record industry in Los Angeles. He just shrugs.

“I never felt the music business was that competitive,” he says. “It’s just not that f—ing hard. I don’t think there’s that many smart people in our business.”

It’s been written, I say, that once you landed in California and sized up the competition, you called John Baruck back in Illinois and said —

“We can take this town,” Azoff says, finishing the sentence. “Where’d you get that? John told that story to [Apple senior vice president] Eddy Cue on the golf course three days ago. It’s true. I called John up and said, ‘OK, get your ass out here. We can take this town.’”

In the ensuing years, Azoff has occupied nearly every high-level position the music industry has to offer, surfing waves of industry consolidation. He’s been the president of a major label, MCA; the CEO of Ticketmaster; and executive chairman of Live Nation Entertainment, the behemoth formed from Ticketmaster’s merger with Live Nation. In 2013 he and Cablevision Systems Corp. CEO and New York Knicks owner James Dolan formed a partnership, Azoff MSG Entertainment; Azoff ran the Forum in Inglewood for Dolan after MSG purchased it in 2012.

Earlier this year Dolan sold the Forum for $400 million to former Microsoft CEO and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, who’s since announced plans to build a new stadium on a site just one mile away. Despite the apocalyptic parking scenario that looms for the area — two stadiums and a concert arena on a one-mile stretch of South Prairie Boulevard — Azoff is confident that the Forum will live on as a live-music venue. “People are going, ‘They’re going to tear it down’ — they’re not going to tear it down,” Azoff says. “It’s going to be in great hands. I have many of the artists we represent booked in the Forum, waiting for the restart based on COVID.”

The holdings of the Azoff Co. — formed when Dolan sold his interest in Azoff MSG back to Azoff two years ago — include Full Stop, the performance-rights organization Global Music Rights and the Oak View Group, which is developing arenas in Seattle and Belmont, N.Y., and a 15,000-seat venue on the University of Texas campus in Austin. Azoff describes himself as increasingly focused on “diversification, and building assets for the family that aren’t just dependent on commissions, shall we say.”

But as both a manager and a co-founder of a lobbying group, the Music Artists Coalition, he’s also devoting more time and energy to a broad range of artists’-rights issues, from health insurance to royalty rates to copyright reversion to this year’s Assembly Bill 5, which threatened musicians’ independent-contractor status until it was amended in September. (“That was us,” Azoff says, somewhat grandly. “I got to the governor, the governor signed it — Newsom was great on it.”) He describes his advocacy for artists — even those he doesn’t manage — as a “war on all fronts,” and estimates there are 21 major issues on which “we’ve sort of appointed ourselves as guardians.”

He does not continue to manage artists because he needs the money, he says. (As the singer-songwriter and Azoff client J.D. Souther famously put it, “Irving’s 15% of everybody turned out to be more than everyone’s 85% of themselves.”) Everything he’s doing now — building clout through the Azoff Co., even accepting the Hall of Fame honor — is ultimately about positioning himself to better fight these fights. “I’d rather work on [these things] than anything else,” he says. “But if I didn’t have the power base in the management business, I couldn’t be effective.”

The recorded music industry, having fully transitioned to a digital-first business, is once again making money hand over fist, he points out, but even less of that money is trickling down to artists. That imbalance long predates Big Tech’s involvement in the field, but the failure of music-driven tech companies to properly compensate musicians is clearly the largest burr under Azoff’s saddle.

“These people, when they start out — whether it’s Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, whatever — they resist paying for music until you go beat the f— out of them. And then of course, none of them pay fair market value and they get away with it. Your company’s worth $30 billion and you can’t spend 20 grand for a song that becomes a phenomenon on your channel? Even when they pay, artists don’t get enough. Writers don’t get enough. Music, as a commodity, is more important than it’s ever been, and more unfairly monetized for the creators. And that’s what creates an opportunity for people like me.”

AZOFF’S FIRM NO longer handles Travis Scott, by the way. “Travis is unmanageable,” Azoff says, nonchalantly and without rancor. “We’re involved in his touring as an advisor to Live Nation, but he’s calling his own shots these days.”

I ask if, in the age of the viral hit and the bedroom producer, he finds himself running into more artists who assume they don’t need a manager. Ehh, Azoff says, like it’s always been that way. “There’s a lot of headstrong artists,” he says. “I haven’t seen one that’s better off without a manager than with,” he says, and laughs a little Dennis the Menace laugh.

We’re back at the house. Azoff takes a seat on the living-room couch; Larry Solters sits across from him, his back to the sea. Azoff recalls another big client. Declines to name him. Says he was never happy, even after Azoff and his people got him everything on his wish list. “He hit me with a couple bad emails. Just really disrespectful s—. I sent him an email back that said, ‘Lucky for me, you need me more than I need you. Goodbye.’”

He will confirm having resigned the accounts of noted divas Mariah Carey and Axl Rose. Reports that he once attempted to manage Kanye West have been greatly exaggerated, he says, although they’ve spoken about business. “Robert [Kardashian] was a good friend of mine. The kids all went to school together,” Azoff says. “What I always said to Kanye was, you’re unmanageable, but we can give you advice.

“A lot of people could have made a dynasty on the people we used to manage,” Azoff says, “let alone the ones we kept.”

But he still works with many artists who joined him in the ’70s — with Henley, with Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and with Joe Walsh. Walsh has been sober for more than 25 years; it was Azoff, along with Henley and Frey, who talked him into rehab before the Eagles’ 1994 reunion tour. “Irving never passed judgment on me,” Walsh says. “And from that meeting on, he made sure I had what I needed to stay sober.” If he hadn’t, Walsh says, there’s no chance we’d be having this conversation. “All the guys I ran with are dead. Keith Moon’s dead. John Entwistle’s dead. Everybody’s dead, and I’m here. That’s profound to me.”

The first client Azoff lost was Minnie Riperton — in 1979, to breast cancer when she was only 31. Then Warren Zevon, to cancer, in 2003. Fogelberg, to cancer, four years later.

“And then Glenn,” says Azoff, referring to the Eagles co-founder who died in 2016. “I miss Glenn a lot. And now Eddie.”

Van Halen, that is. I ask Azoff if he can tell me a story that sums up what kind of guy Eddie Van Halen was; he tells me a beautiful one, then says he’d prefer not to see it in print. It makes perfect Azoffian sense — profane trash talk on the record, tenderness on background.

I ask if he’s been moved to contemplate his own mortality, as his boomer-aged clients approach an actuarial event horizon. Of course the answer turns out to involve keeping pace with an Eagle.

“Henley and I are having a race,” he says. “Neither one of us has given in. Neither one of us is going to retire.”

Henley was born in July 1947; Azoff came along that December. Does Don plan to keep going, I ask, until the wheels fall off?

“I don’t know,” Azoff says.

Do you ever talk about it?

“Yeah! He’ll call me up and he’ll go, ‘I really feel s— today.’ And I say, ‘Well, you should, Grandpa. You’re an old man. You ready to throw in the towel? Nope? OK.’”

Azoff says, “I contend that what keeps us all young is staying in the business. I’ve had more people tell me, ‘My father, he quit working, and then his health started failing,’ and all that. Every single — I mean, every single rock star I know is basically doing it to try and stay young. And I think it works. I really think it works.

“I have this friend,” Azoff says. “Calls me once a week, he’s sending me tapes, it’s his next big record. Paul Anka! He’s 80 years old. OK? And my other friend, Frankie Valli …”

“Do you know how old Frankie Valli is?” Solters says. “Eighty-six. And he still performs.”

“Not during COVID,” Azoff says. “I told the motherf—, ‘You’re not going out.’”

[katrinayentch]

40 miles on the Rogue River Trail

40 miles in 2.5 days? Sure, I said. “That’s totally doable,” I said. Well, I’ve never hiked that much in my life so in retrospect it was pretty naive to assume I could backpack that much for my first thru hike ever. The most I had ever hiked prior to that was 19 miles in one day with a day-pack. And even then my feet were swelling the last 5 miles of that.

Despite the fact that I was in pain for half of this hike, and had to switch to sandals for 10 miles of it, this is one of the best backpacking trips I have ever done. The Rogue River Trail has been on my Oregon bucket list for awhile, but the logistics of transportation getting to and from the end of the trail kind of intimidated me. On top of that, there are always consistent reports on just about every kind of unideal condition you could imagine—rattlesnakes, black bears, scorching temperatures, ticks, and copious amounts of poison oak are the main concerns on this trail, which mostly runs along the length of the beautiful Rogue River in Southern Oregon (anyone ever try Rogue River Brewing?)

So what motivated me to conquer the trail otherwise? For starters, it is one of the only long-distance hikes you can do in this part of the Pacific Northwest this early in the season. A lot of backpacking in the PNW is in the mountains of course, and most of it doesn’t really melt until mid-late July. BUT that’s also when mosquitos are vicious (which I learned last summer after a group car camping trip to Crater Lake NP), so the ideal time here isn’t until August. After a short backpacking trip on the Salmon River Trail the week before, we were itching to get some more miles on our plate.

The Rogue River Trail is also one of the most popular thru hikes in Oregon. If people have been hiking this trail for years, why should those above-mentioned concerns truly hinder someone from doing it? And so, I obsessively researched for 3 weeks, spending hours reading All Trails reviews, Reddit advice, and YouTube videos of other people doing the trail. I’ve done my share of spontaneous and planned travel, and I’ve definitely learned that backpacking is not something you want to put together last-minute unless you’ve already hiked the trail you’re doing. By the time we headed off to the trail, I felt like I knew what to expect, but was still ready to be surprised by the views and the physical challenge of hiking 12+ miles/day.

*I have to give a shoutout to White Water Cowboys* for shuttling my car from the start of the trailhead to the finish. It’s otherwise a four-hour drive from one end to the other - on top of another 5 hours to Portland.

We hiked 12 miles on the first day, 17 on the second day, and 11 on the final day. The incline was pretty treacherous on the first day, and by the second day my feet were swelling so hard I had to switch to sandals - this was before my legs got close to giving up on me. Anybody got some advice for that? The third day it started to climb into the 90s, so after dunking our clothes in the creeks, we crisped up quite nicely walking through long patches of exposed trail. All the while, it was a poison oak maze - They weren’t kidding when they said there’s a lot of poison oak that never stopped, and I learned on this trip that it comes in many shapes, varieties, and textures. Yay! Somehow, still manageable to hike it without going through any true thickets. The last day, young bears stole our food from our poorly tied bear bag. I had purchased that bag literally the day before starting the trip and it wasn’t cheap! (Don’t buy Ursack. Just suck it up and get a bear can if you’re going into bear county.)

So why was this trip still incredible regardless? There were still good conditions! Thanks to dousing my clothes with Permethrin, I didn’t get a single mosquito bite along the journey. There were also 0 ticks despite there being plenty of tall grass on the trail. I’m also 5 days since this trip and haven’t had any poison oak show up on my skin. So, while it was weird to hike in long sleeves and pants on a sunny hike, it ended up being worth it to do so.

Secondly, the company both in my group and along the trail was amazing. The camaraderie and kindness of backpackers, and Oregonians in general, can be so incredible. In a COVID-era of avoiding people and maintaining big distances with half-covered faces, it was refreshing to simply say hi to people on the trail and make conversation with countless strangers. For both nights of our trip, after showing up disheveled and beaten up to a camping area and seeing it completely packed, folks came up to us to tell us they had made room for us to join them. On the last day when we lost our food, we also got gifted with more food than what we had in the first place! It felt like we were all in this together, and despite having nothing in common with some of these people, there were so many things to talk about. And of course, I feel so bonded to Andrew and Jonny after having done a few trails together now. It feels good to have people you can hike with who you also feel like they have your back—even if they hike way faster than you.

And the trail itself, of course, was beautiful. Hiking next to a giant river through a full forest on a sunny day is hard to beat. There isn’t a ton of scenery change but it’s still such an incredible trail that is so closed off from cars, that it feels like it’s really just you, the animals, and well...... all the rafters on the trail with their shade and food and beer. So I’m pencilling that in for my next Rogue River experience.

All in all, I’m so proud that I accomplished this trail despite hobbling for a lot of it. I am super open to completing another lengthy trail but on the condition that I will stop to prop up my feet every 3 miles instead of 8!

[iam93percentstardust]

Sense of Memory and Desire

So @ad1thi and I were talking yesterday about this post and, well, I’d say my hand slipped but honestly, I’ve wanted to write this for a while.

Rated M

No powers AU//featuring Tony and Steve approximately the same age//also featuring Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker:

Gucci calls Tony first. 

They’re doing an ad campaign, they say. For a perfume inspired by alphas and omegas, they say. They want him to be the omega, they say. Tony knows how these perfume ads work. They’re meant to be sensual, hinting this could be you with a strong alpha or a sweet omega on your arm. They usually come off as oversexualized, almost tacky, instead. But they describe it to him and it sounds tasteful. They tell him who the photographer is and Tony’s knows him only by reputation but also knows that as an omega, he will make it sensual and not tacky.

Tony says, “Sure. Why not?”

And that’s when they spring the big one on him: they want him on the verge of heat, no more than a couple hours away, for the extra sparkle to his eyes, the youthful glow to his skin, the aura every in-heat omega exudes that says come here.

He could probably say no. But he doesn’t, too intrigued by the thought of how the ad will turn out. Instead, he asks, “Who’s the alpha?”

They name him a model. Tony’s worked with him before, even slept with him once back in college. He likes the guy well enough. For an alpha and a model, he’s surprisingly down to earth. If it were any other ad, or at any other time for that matter, he would be perfectly okay with it. But he’ll be close to his heat. That makes things different.

“You need to ask Steve,” he tells them.

They dither.

“Steve,” he says flatly, “or I’m walking.”

They agree.

~

The thing is, Steve is almost never possessive. 

Tony met the man who would one day become his alpha at a benefit Stark Industries was throwing to support and honor veterans. Steve had been a captain in the army—although Tony suspects he was a special sort of captain, judging by the deference often demonstrated towards him. They had met and talked most of the night; Tony had been smitten by the time they finally parted. He’d left Steve with a phone number and a plea to call though he’d fully been anticipating that someone like Steve would want little to do with someone like Tony.

Steve surprises him though by calling him when he’d walked literally two steps away. Tony had turned, a little in awe that Steve was that eager. They ended up going out for burgers that same night and then finally back to Tony’s penthouse where Steve had placed a hand on his lower back, drawn him in, and kissed him sweetly before taking his place on the couch.

It had been like that for months, fun dates and sweet kisses, incredible conversations that kept Tony wanting more, wanting to burrow into Steve’s life and never leave. The lack of sex had worried him though until Steve told him he was waiting for Tony’s heat, an old-fashioned, charming idea that left him melting like chocolate in the sun. 

And Steve had been sweet and wonderful and not at all possessive—until the week leading up to Tony’s heat, when he’d turned jealous and growly and eventually, Tony had locked them both in his penthouse. Steve had apologized for it once, after Tony’s heat had broken, when he’d still been tied to his alpha. Tony had kissed the apology from his lips, rolled his hips up into Steve’s knot, and wailed when Steve flipped them back over to drive his knot deeper into Tony’s willing body.

Steve is just like that before Tony’s heat and Tony loves him for it. No one else has ever wanted him enough to treat him like he was something to be treasured, something to be guarded jealously and kept away from the world.

Letting another alpha touch him, Tony staring up at him with the same adoration he reserves for Steve, ranks at the top of the list of bad ideas.

~

Happy ends up being the one to drive them to the photoshoot. Gucci had been willing to send a car, had even been discussing it with Tony over the phone when Steve had ripped the phone out of Tony’s hands and growled, “No,” into it. And that had been that. Tony doesn’t blame him. He knows how many pheromones he’s putting out right now. Steve had once described his scent as oranges and chocolate, an intoxicating scent at the best of times but when it’s as dialed up as it is before heat…

Well, this isn’t the Dark Ages. Tony doesn’t need to worry about being jumped by rabid alphas but he does turn heads everywhere he goes. Steve doesn’t like that.

They pull up to the studio a couple hours before the shoot for hair and makeup. Steve offers a hand to help Tony get out of the car. It’s something that Tony doesn’t usually like but he adores being pampered in the days leading up to his heat so he takes it and lets Steve lead him into the building. 

The photographer greets them in the lobby, right by the front door. “Peter Parker,” he says, holding his hand out first to Tony and then to Steve to shake. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Stark, Captain Rogers. Right this way.”

They walk down the hallway, Parker chatting the entire way. As they near the studio entrance, Parker’s steps slow. “I’m really sorry about this,” he says apologetically. “Gucci insisted we bring in the other model just in case Captain Rogers doesn’t work out.” He sounds sincere, which is why Tony stops Steve from moving forward. Parker eyes the two of them, at Tony wearing Steve’s oversized clothes so he’s practically swimming in his alpha’s scent, at the fire in Steve’s eyes at the very thought of another alpha seeing his omega like this, and grins. “I didn’t think we would need him so I sent him to a different shoot in the building.”

“What are you sorry for then?” Steve rumbles. Tony shivers. He loves it when Steve sounds like this. It makes him want to wrap himself in Steve.

Parker pauses with one hand on the doorknob. “He made it into the studio before we could stop him so the room might smell a little like him. But he was the only alpha on set, I swear. I don’t like it when other alphas besides my mate are near me when I’m in heat and he really doesn’t like it so I made sure to hire only betas and omegas.”

“Thank you,” Tony says quietly, appreciating the courtesy. Parker nods reassuringly at him and opens the door. 

There is the slightest hint of another alpha in the room but it’s almost entirely overpowered by the omega staff members. Even so, Steve growls under his breath, only stopping when Tony puts a hand on his arm.

“Just focus on me,” Tony murmurs. “My scent is the only one that matters.” And as he gets closer to his heat starting, his scent will start to overshadow everyone else.

Steve is led away by a couple makeup artists. As he goes, he turns his head so that he can see Tony, keeping his eyes locked on him until Tony eventually has to follow Parker to his own team.

Parker flits off to set up the camera and the lights, leaving Tony in his team’s very capable hands. They start by making him take off his shirt. Tony whines a little, not wanting to lose his alpha’s scent, but they let him keep the pants so he settles. 

“They’re hot,” one of them says, eyeing the way they ride low on his hips. “You wearing your alpha’s pants and all. Peter might even want a couple pictures like that.”

The other one hums her agreement but doesn’t look up from the eyeshadow she’s applying to Tony’s eyes. It’s something dark and a little glittery and he would probably feel ridiculous if it hadn’t been for the dark background he can see behind Parker. The eyeshadow will probably look fantastic against that. She moves on to the eyeliner, drawing a skillful wing shape that leaves Tony marveling at her steady hand. He’s got a steady hand as well, kind of has to as an engineer, but he’s pretty sure he couldn’t pull off what she’s doing. She finishes with a coat of mascara and then moves on to lipstick, a deep red shade that makes Tony feel silly until he looks up at where Steve’s sitting and sees the way they’re highlighting the five o’clock shadow he’s got.

Steve’s eyes are dark and hooded as he looks back at Tony, promising filthy things as soon as they get home. Tony clenches his thighs together and whimpers. He wants his alpha now. Why had he ever thought this was a good idea?

“Ooh yeah,” the makeup artist says. “If I had an alpha looking like that looking at me like that, I’d be getting wet too.”

Tony doesn’t blush but only because he reminds himself that he’s an omega with years of experience behind him. He wears that experience incredibly well for someone nearing middle age—money talks when he’s hiring personal trainers—but he still has too much experience to be blushing about a lewd comment.

“You two ready?” Parker calls and Tony stands, walking over to join him. 

Steve catches up to him about halfway across the room, wrapping his arm around Tony’s waist and pulling him into his side. Steve is shirtless as well, radiating body heat and making Tony luxuriate in the skin contact. 

“You look good,” he murmurs. Tony throws him a questioning look. Steve always thinks he looks good but there’s something about the way he says it that’s different. “When we get home, I’ll show you exactly how much I like it.”

Tony hides another whimper.

Parker is grinning at them when they join him. “Save it for the camera, guys,” he tells them but doesn’t seem too put-out by their flirting.

He gestures at the backdrop behind him. It’s a dark grey piece that’ll probably look black after post-production but likely photographs better than a pure black piece would. There’s a small set of steps that Parker ushers them over to.

“I really want to emphasize the size difference here so we’re going to start with Steve on the top step and Tony on the bottom.” He waits until they’re standing in place before he starts making adjustments. “Tony, move a little bit closer. Steve, I want your hand on his lower back. Tony, can we try you wrapping your back hand around Steve’s neck?”

He snaps a couple shots and then shakes his head. “Actually, lower that hand again.” Another couple pictures. “Look up at him for me, Tony. Tilt a little towards him, Steve. He should practically be supported by you. You’re the only thing holding him up.” Steve moves so that their chests are almost entirely pressed together, parting just a few inches on the side closest to the camera. “Yeah, that’s perfect. I want to get a natural feel for the two of you so feel free to talk, move your heads maybe a little bit but don’t actually move from those spots, ‘kay?”

Steve lowers his head so that his lips are brushing Tony’s ear as he mutters, “I saw what’s under those pants you’re wearing. Are you trying to kill me?”

Tony smirks. “Not at all. Just teasing a little, you know how it is.”

“Is that what you want, sweetheart? Want to tease me?”

Looking up the way he is, Tony can see the heat in Steve’s eyes. He shivers and presses closer to Steve’s chest, craving the touch. His heat will be starting soon. He can feel it creeping up on him, his hole starting to slick up and loosen.

“Maybe I’ll take you home, tie you up, tease you for hours. How does that sound?” Steve taunts. Underneath that, Tony can hear the shutter clicking away but he can’t concentrate on anything but the words Steve is whispering in his ear. “Shove a vibrator inside your pretty hole and let you scream. Bet I could make you come at least twice just from that. Maybe I’ll even draw it for you so you can see how pretty you look, fucked out and covered in your own cum. You want that?”

“Steve,” Tony whispers, eyes falling half-closed as he pictures it, Steve leaving him alone on the bed, one of their toys buzzing inside him, pressing against his prostate until he’s begging and overstimulated. It would be torture but oh god, what bliss.

Steve’s hand clenches and smooths out on his back, traces the dip of his spine, falls to cup his ass and pull him up tight against him. Tony’s mouth falls open in a low keen as his alpha’s thigh presses against his dick. He wants to ride him, wants to push Steve down and shove those pants off his hips, damn whoever’s watching.

“Perfect,” Parker calls, interrupting their moment. Steve snaps his eyes away from Tony and toward the camera, right as the camera goes off. Parker views the picture and lets out a low whistle. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”

“Are we done?” Steve snarls, gently urging Tony’s hips into a rhythm against him.

“Must be closer than we thought,” Parker comments as Tony bites his lip against a wail threatening to escape. “Not quite done though. There’s two perfumes and they want two ads to go with it. So, for omega, we’re gonna have you switch places on the steps.”

Tony doesn’t like the idea of having to move at all but he obligingly tries to make his legs work. Ultimately, Steve and Parker end up having to move him while he only sort of helps.

“Sweet omega,” Steve croons into his ear as Parker positions them the way he wants. “You’re doing so well. Gonna reward you when we get home. Gonna wrap you up in our nest, keep you as full as you want.”

“Please,” Tony begs. He’s ready. He’s on the verge of his heat, teetering on the edge. God, Gucci better fucking like this because he’s never doing it again.

“I know, sweetheart. You’re so ready for me. You gotta hold on just a few more minutes though.” Steve’s strong arms are supporting him, forming a line against his spine to hold onto his shoulders. He’s done this before, when he’s deep inside Tony and wants to hold him in place. The memories make him shudder, one of his hands coming up to cup Steve’s head, holding him in place as Steve scents his neck, placing teasing, biting kisses along the length of his throat.

Through the haze of his heat, he hears Parker mutter, “Fuck, they’re gorgeous.”

He turns his face to smirk at the photographer. Gorgeous is right. He and Steve have been voted America’s hottest celebrity couple for the last five years in a row. Parker’s right to be jealous of what they have because no matter how good Parker’s alpha may be, Steve will always be better. It doesn’t matter how jealous Parker might be though. Steve belongs to Tony. 

The camera goes off right as he starts to turn, capturing an expression that’s blissful and heat-hazy and just a little bit smug.

“Alright, we’re good here,” Parker calls, voice a little high-pitched and nervous. “Can we get their shirts?”

The shirts are all but tossed at them. Somewhere in the back of Tony’s mind he recognizes how embarrassing this is. Heat is supposed to be something private between alpha and omega, not flaunted in front of a screen. The majority of his mind is too focused on Steve bundling him into his arms to care.

“I want to see those prints,” Steve growls as he sets off for the door, practically at a run, Tony cradled in his grasp like they’re once more newly bonded.

“Yep,” Parker agrees, looking anywhere but at the two of them. “Oh and Tony?” The pair stops just a few feet from the door. Parker lowers his gaze from the rafters to the two of them. A slow, wicked grin spreads across his face.

“Have fun.”

[love-killed-the-superstar]

yay its day 2!! uhh this one’s very dialogue heavy lol

CASSUNZEL WEEK DAY 2 - SECRETS AND PROMISES

“Hey... Cass?”

“Mhm?”

“The Day of Hearts is coming up. Think you’ll stick around for it this time?”

“Eugh. You know there’s a reason I don’t like to come back this time of year, right?”

Cassandra rolls her eyes so spectacularly far back Rapunzel can’t help but laugh despite the gesture being directed at her.

“Well, since you returned I’ve been thinking about the first Day of Hearts we spent together.”

“Oh, geez, this again? Can’t we just put that whole incident in the past?” Cass grumbles.

She’s posing – stiffly as a whistle, mind – for one of Rapunzel’s signature portraits. Rapunzel knows that Cass gets restless whenever she paints her, but the request is a way she can keep her in one place for a while. (That, and Cass is one of her favourite muses; something about the sharpness of her eyes draws her in, and the delight she takes in trying to paint hints of her toned muscles under her formless clothing is unparalleled.)

Cassandra hasn’t been back for… over six months now. She’s missed her.

“You just seemed so… annoyed about the whole affair, even before that guy Andrew arrived in Corona,” Rapunzel continues, mixing up a creamy paint for the base of Cassandra’s skin. “Was it really because you were only pretending to date him?”

“No, no, it had nothing to do with him at the core of it, I just… don’t care for romance and hearts, and Shorty dressing as whatever the hell kind of messed up cherub he’s going for.”

“Sure, the sight isn’t for everybody,” Rapunzel laughs. “You still believe you don’t care for romance and hearts though, after all this time?”

“You’re an exception to the rule, all right? Besides, Corona has way too many public holidays for my liking.”

“All right, noted. I’ve just always wondered if there was something more to it. I know we don’t share everything, and I know you have boundaries. If you really don’t want to talk about it, I’ll drop the subject. Princess’s Honour.”

She holds up her hand in a scout-like salute, almost dropping her paintbrush in the process, and Cass laughs.

“As a rogue traveller, Princess’s Honour only goes so far these days.”

“Well, what about Girlfriend’s Honour?”

“Now that, I can work with.” Cass hums in thought. “To tell you the truth, Raps, I just don’t have a great experience with romance. Besides you, of course.”

“I have no experience with romance besides you and Eugene,” Rapunzel remarks. “Does that make us about even?”

Cass grins, shaking her head in exasperation. “Uh, maybe, I guess. Besides, even if I was looking for love – which I’m not, just to clarify – it’s not so straightforward as that.”

“What?! Why? I know you, er, don’t warm up to people so easily, but you’re smart and funny and strong, and you’re beautiful! Any man would-”

“Well that’s one of the bigger hurdles, to start with,” Cass interrupts. Her mouth pulls into a line as she contemplates her next words, her eyes darting between Rapunzel and the door as if calculating her odds of being able to make a hasty exit if things get too personal for her liking. “I don’t date men, Rapunzel. At all. I thought that would be obvious, since I’m in love with you, but...”

Rapunzel stares, brush suspended midway to the canvas as she processes that last statement.

“What, at all? But, I thought – even if you were pretending with Andrew, you still…”

“Seriously?! After all that happened you thought I would actually be attracted to that whiny, pig-headed-”

“Ah-ah-ah!” Rapunzel holds out her hand, and Cass stops her arm-waving tirade to glare at Rapunzel. “Please, Cass, I’m still painting you.”

Cass pulls a face and reluctantly moves back into her original pose, before starting again. “Rapunzel, did you listen to that ridiculous story about the sheepskin jacket? I had to hear it three times. And the preaching on and on about being a bibliophile, while I had to sit there knowing perfectly well he couldn’t even spell the word… Any shred of curiosity I might have had for how the other half lives – it left long before that last retelling, believe me.”

“He had a nice face,” Rapunzel offers.

“A nice face is just a nice face, it doesn’t mean anything. Don’t forget he’s tried to invade Corona twice already.”

“Hmm. Good point. Well, you have me now, so we can forget about that guy.”

“I honestly haven’t given that clown a passing thought in years.” She stands patiently as Rapunzel holds up a tube of paint against her tunic to judge how much warm blue to mix with the yellow in her palette. “Besides, you’re telling me our extremely brief sham relationship felt believable to you? I’m surprised. Romance isn’t something you can just… force.”

And Rapunzel gets that – no, really, she does. While her relationship with Eugene has had its share of rough patches over the years, it’s something that happened organically. After all that she’s been through with Cassandra, it should have been obvious that she’d never had even an ounce of fondness towards the guy she had almost mercilessly swindled. Some small part of Rapunzel just wanted Cass to have felt happy and safe with someone in the days before they got together, she supposes.

“I guess back then I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did,” Rapunzel admits. She etches out Cassandra’s sturdy frame in shades of moss green, each stroke a little bolder than the last. “Maybe I still don’t. But I’d like to, you know! Has there ever been someone else you liked, as more than a friend?”

“...Once,” Cass begrudgingly admits. “It’s not exactly a happy story.”

“But it’s your story.” Rapunzel peers around the canvas to meet Cass’s reluctant gaze. “If you’re willing to share it, I’m here to listen.”

“God, I’ve never talked about this with anyone,” Cass sighs, folding her arms over her chest. This time, Rapunzel doesn’t bother asking her to move back into her original pose, out of fear of detracting from the story. “Well, anyone who doesn’t already know, anyway.”

“It won’t leave this room,” Rapunzel promises. She mixes a shade darker than the tunic and begins to fleck in little details. Stitches, tears, stains, anything to bring the girl on her canvas to life as the girl in front of her begins to recount her tale.

“...Her name was Alix. When I was turned fourteen my education was finished and I got indoctrinated into being a palace maid by my father. Alix was the same age as me but had been working there much longer, so she sort of took me under her wing and taught me the basics of, y'know, folding laundry properly! Making beds to the palace standards! All that stuff.”

“You've never mentioned an Alix before,” Rapunzel murmurs. She tries to conjure an image of this elusive Alix. Was she pretty? Did they understand each other on levels Rapunzel fears the two of them might never? Did she go charging in out of the goodness of her heart, blind to the consequences, like Rapunzel so often does when it comes to Cassandra’s wellbeing?

“There's a reason for that,” Cass sighs. She peeks over at Rapunzel doubtfully. “This... isn't going to paint me in a favourable light.”

“I can take it!” Rapunzel says, almost indignantly. She reaches over, standing on her tiptoes and stretching out her arm as far as it’ll reach past the canvas, to squeeze Cassandra's hand. “It’s me, Cass. You can tell me.”

Cassandra cracks a smile and hangs her head. “All right, all right! But you've been warned. Okay, so... just over a year after we first met, we started… I don’t know, being a couple, I guess. Iit wasn’t anything serious. Or maybe it was. I don't know, it was my first time just – just being with somebody, you know? It was all new to me – liking somebody, liking another girl.”

Rapunzel tries to picture an adolescent Cass, running arm-in-arm with this girl, whose features she just can’t seem to imagine. It’s pretty surreal, seeing as Cass was such a closed-off person when they first met, that she could ever be this giggly teenager smitten over a first crush. Then again, hasn’t Rapunzel been witness to moments like that, when she takes Cassandra’s hand unexpectedly, or hugs her from behind, or puts into words just how much she cares for her?

Against her better judgement, Rapunzel abandons detailing on the tunic and focuses on Cassandra’s face instead, wishing to capture a hint of that life in her eyes; memories of times she’s caught her unguarded, rather than the gloomy face of her girlfriend in front of her.

“So the Day of Hearts is approaching,” Cass continues, “and we’ve been together for a few months. It’s been great. But then one day Alix decides that when the day rolls around, the two of us are going to sign Herz Der Sonne’s journal together.”

“Wow, that’s… that’s a big step.” What else can she say? She and Eugene only signed their names last year, and they’d waited to get engaged before feeling ready to take that next step. She can only imagine the immense pressure someone like Cass, who has always been skittish about committing to anything in the department of romance, would feel when propositioned with something like that.

“Thank you, exactly! It felt like the biggest deal in the world! It was a big commitment, we were way too young, and I didn’t even think we were together long enough to do something like that.”

Rapunzel frowns. “So what happened?”

“We argued about it.” Cass snorts. “She called me chicken, like if she psyched me out enough I’d change my mind. Can you imagine that, saying it’s chicken for not wanting to commit to someone when you’re just barely fifteen?”

Rapunzel can’t imagine. At fifteen she’d never even met someone she could consider a romantic interest. Even the few books in the tower gave her a very limited view on what romance was.

“Anyway, I told her no. A firm no. I didn’t mind us spending the day together, but I didn’t want a written reminder that would show the whole world who we were. Of course, that turned into a fight about, you know, identity politics and pride in ourselves and stuff that as a kid I really didn’t think too much about. Well, she stormed off and I finished my shift as normal.”

Cass’s face changes a little, from this tired exasperation to… something of a stormy expression. “But I didn’t realise that she’d swiped my keys in the heat of our argument. That night, she snuck in and signed our names in the book after dark.”

Rapunzel’s jaw drops.

“But – but that’s against everything the ritual stands for! It’s something couples are meant to do together, with – with complete honesty!”

“Alix didn’t exactly care much about the rules, it’s what drew us together in the first place. Anyway, the next day she told me all about it, like it was something to be proud of. Really gloated that now we were serious and she’d done it because she wasn’t afraid of her feelings or what anybody thought about us.” Cassandra’s eyes narrow at the memory. “So I took a swing at her.”

“With a sword?!” Rapunzel frets.

“What? No, with the end of my broom. We were working. You think I’d still be working in the palace when we met if I’d struck another maid down with a sword?” Cass’s mouth draws into a grim line, and she suddenly finds herself incredibly interested in her own feet. “Well, that turned into the two of us physically fighting, so we were put on latrine duty as punishment and my dad was summoned. I was so distraught about what happened I couldn’t even think about explaining it to him, but somebody happened to overhear what we were fighting about and showed him the book.”

She falls quiet, and the silence stretches on. Rapunzel stops her almost frantic etching of facial features to peer past her canvas in concern, before Cass finally speaks up again. “That’s how he found out about me. About who I was.”

“Are you okay?” Rapunzel asks quietly.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s just kind of a horrible way for it all to go down, right?” She looks over at Rapunzel, eyes almost blazing, and utters, “My dad is a good man. He saw how furious and upset I was and marched right to the king to explain the situation. Hours later, our names were papered over and we pretty much never spoke of it again.”

Rapunzel thinks back to the times over the years that she’s spent flipping through the pages of the journal, recalling the one page with a simple square of embossed lilac paper neatly concealing the paper beneath, clearly a later edition. She had always wondered about it.

“And what happened to Alix?” Rapunzel ventures, as she mixes a deep raven for Cassandra’s hair.

“She was fired for breaking into the throne room after hours and desecrating royal property,” Cass recalls with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “After all, your father is a stickler for tradition. Last I heard she took up a post in Pittsford, but I don’t keep tabs on her or anything.” She spreads her arms out in a theatrical gesture. “Anyway, there you have it. My very sad, very brief experience of love.”

“She sounds awful,” Rapunzel declares, shaking her head in disdain. Cass shrugs.

“She wasn’t. Misguided, inconsiderate and a horrible decision-maker, yes, but she wasn’t a bad person. We were kids. I like to think she’s embarrassed about what happened, but I guess we’ll never know.”

“...So that’s the real reason you hate the Day of Hearts.”

“Raps, we went through this already!” groans Cass. “It’s not to do with any one thing, I just… don’t care for commercial romance and public holidays, that’s all there is to it.” She pinches her brow tiredly. “But I hated the book for years after. Just knowing our names were in there, even if no one else could see, just made me mad.”

“I’m sorry that it happened to you,” Rapunzel says gently. “It wasn’t a fair situation.”

“Yeah, well, what’s done is done. Look, uh…” Cass folds her arms, shifting from one foot to the other uncomfortably. “Can you… not tell Eugene about any of that? Or anyone? Not like… that I’m a lesbian, you can tell anybody that. In fact, I’m pretty sure Eugene already knows that part. But… all the stuff about Alix. That whole chapter of my life is kind of embarrassing, and I just. I don’t like to bring it up, so.”

“Cassandra, I promised you,” Rapunzel says, setting down her paintbrush and moving over to her. She grabs her hand and squeezes tight. “This is between us. No matter what.”

Pinched expression melting into relief, Cass squeezes back and squares her shoulders. “Thanks. So, can I see this painting yet? Or move from this spot, at least?”

“Sure, come here.”

Rapunzel leads her over to admire the canvas. The painting is a little odd, compared to Rapunzel’s typical style; the pose is stiff and vacant, just as Cassandra had been stood herself, but the ferocious brush strokes and tiny details woven in amplify the tension radiating from her body language, almost to the point of appearing antagonistic. Likewise, her expression is bright, wide-eyed and challenging; just as it is when Rapunzel says something overtly romantic or daring that takes her away from her usual focused exterior.

The amalgamation of those characteristics creates a vision of Cass that looks ready to jump up and pick a fight at any moment. Rapunzel glances over at Cass, an apology on the tip of her tongue, only to find that her girlfriend looks somewhere between amused and enamoured by the final product.

“I, um, didn’t mean to paint you looking so confrontational,” Rapunzel begins.

“Are you kidding me? I love this! Look, Raps, as much as I love your usual paintings of the two of us smiling at each other and hugging in a meadow or the like, this… it’s unusual for you. It’s fierce. I really, really love it.”

She leans down and presses a kiss to the top of Rapunzel’s head, before pulling her into a side hug. Rapunzel leans into the hug, beaming up at her.

“I’m glad you like it. It makes the standing in one spot for too long worthwhile, doesn’t it?”

“Ehh, almost. I wouldn’t push it too hard, Raps.”

“...Hey, Cass?”

“Mhm?”

“Do you think you’ll ever write your name in Herz Der Sonne’s journal, after what happened?”

“Maybe. See, now that you mention it, there’s this girl who I really like…” Rapunzel cranes her neck to look up at her, unimpressed, and Cass’s mouth quirks into a grin. “I’m talking about you, Raps. Just so we’re clear.”

“No, no, by all means! If there’s someone you’d like me to meet…”

“Well, I’ll give you a hint, it’s definitely not Andrew.”

“Thank goodness for that.” Rapunzel reaches up to cup Cass’s face, gently pulling her in close. “And it’s definitely not that jerk Alix, right?”

Cassandra’s grin grows wider. “You’re not jealous of the girlfriend I briefly had when I was a teenager, are you, Rapunzel?”

“What? No! I just, y’know, wish she’d treated you better, that’s all,” Rapunzel grumbles. “You deserve better, Cass. You deserve the world and more.”

With a huff of laughter, Cass leans in and kisses Rapunzel softly. “Lucky for me, my current girlfriend knows how to treat me right.”

“You know, my magic girlfriend powers work best on the Day of Hearts,” Rapunzel trills, twirling a strand of Cassandra’s hair around her finger. “Just so you’re aware.”

Cass groans. “I better not regret it if I agree to stick around this year.”

“You won’t! We’ll keep it nice and lowkey. You’ll never even know it’s the most romantic day of the year!”

“Uh huh, keep talking…”

Maybe this year won’t be the year. In fact, after everything Cass has told her today, wouldn’t it be super insensitive to broach the topic of signing the book together in two days time? Still, as she glances back to the painting of the tough fighter of a woman staring back at her, warmth washes over her, settling comfortably in the pit of her stomach.

Some day, when the timing is right, wouldn’t it be wonderful?

[soyforramen]

Ok, here's a prompt: bughead + their friends trying to trap the two of them under the mistletoe

I loved that this entire thing played out in my head in 2.6 seconds after reading this.  Send me a prompt!

——–

“And where do you think you’re going?”

Archie was yanked back almost off his feet when Veronica grabbed the back of his shirt.

“The sna-”

She tutted and shook her head.  “If you ruin this for me Andrews -”  

With a gasp, Veronica pointed towards the archway where she’d hung an obnoxiously large bunch of mistletoe.  Archie watched as Jughead walked towards it from the right, nodding at the occasional person while he grazed off the snack table.  From the opposite end of the room, Betty and Ethel chatted as they made their way towards the kitchen.  Before their paths met, Jughead was pulled into conversation with Dilton while Betty and Ethel continued on towards the kitchen.

Veronica huffed and stomped her foot.  Frustration radiated off her and Archie saw yet another long drawn-out strategy session in his future, only this time instead of mistletoe it would involve champagne, countdowns, and midnight kissing.

For close to six months Veronica had been plotting for a relationship to happen between their respective best friends.  Archie wanted the best for Betty, he always had.  And Veronica wanted the same for her friend nee high school frenemy Jughead.  But like two stubborn, obtuse ships in the night, the pair had terrible timing.

“Wouldn’t it just be easier to ask if they wanted to double?”  

Veronica rolled her eyes.  “This has to happen organically.  If Jughead knew I was trying to interfere in his lack of a love-life he’d refuse to speak to me until I swore on my abuelita’s Bible and my first edition of Bradley’s 1896 Harper’s Bazaar.”

“But it would be easier -”

“It’s about the romance, Archibald.  The once in a lifetime chance -”

“Of your underpants in France,” Reggie finished as he stopped next to them.  He handed Archie a plastic cup overfilled with beer.

“I’m surrounded by infants,” Veronica said with a curled lip.  She shot Reggie a withering look and went after Betty.

“What’s her deal?”

“Romance,” Archie said, though the word was a question that lingered in the air long enough to turn stale.  

“That’s why she brought in the giant bouquet of hookup material,” Reggie said with a smirk.  He tilted his head up at Josie across the room only to receive a peal of laughter in response.  “She digs me.”

Archie shrugged and took a careful sip of the drink.  Pabst.  He fought back a grimace and set the cup down on the table behind him.  It was worth getting yelled at for rings on the wood if it meant he didn’t have to drink that.

“So, who’s she trying to set up this time?” Reggie asked none the wiser.

“Bet- some of our mutual friends.”  Archie caught himself in time.  The last thing he needed was a primer from Betty and Veronica’s mutual ex about how to chase after either one of them.  

“Bet you five bucks and a shot of Tabasco she’ll have a toll booth set up around that mistletoe before the end of the night.

Archie shook his head.  “No bet.  She’s already staking out potential quarantine areas.  Twenty and a shot of chocolate syrup and vinegar she’ll come up with an elaborate reason to take a photo under the mistletoe.”

“Nah, too amateur hour,” Reggie scoffed.

“It’s always amateur hour where you two are,” Moose said as he joined them.  

He and Reggie fist-bumped a greeting.  Sensing a golden opportunity, Archie picked up his abandoned beer and handed it to Moose who gladly downed it in one go.  

“What’s going on this time?” Moose asked as he wiped his lip.

“Veronica’s playing matchmaker,” Archie and Reggie said in unison.

Moose turned a shade of green even the Grinch would be jealous of.  Archie squeezed his shoulder in sympathy.  Veronica’s attempts to set up her friends were practically legendary.  The rumors, as yet still unconfirmed, about what happened the last time Veronica subjected Moose to her romantic machinations were enough to make everyone think thrice about accepting any invitation to a Lodge social gathering. 

“I think I need something stronger,” Moose muttered.  He shoved his plate of half finished food into Reggie’s hand and rushed to find something stronger that might erase that night before last Christmas from his mind.

“Do I want to know why Moose looks like the wrong end of an elf?” Kevin asked as he sidled up to them.  

He handed them both a small piece of paper and a golf pencil.  In his other hand he held a tin can wrapped in candy cane paper.  

“Christmas movie, sex position, and favorite celebrity for dirty mad-libs.  Why is Veronica glaring at Midge harder than Margaret Thatcher serving turkey dinner at a homeless shelter?”

“Matchmaking,” Reggie said as he scribbled something down on a piece of paper.  “My money’s on her holding us hostage until they kiss.  Thirty dollars and…. an egg, cilantro, and maple shot.”

Kevin gagged and shoved the paper into his tin can.  “No bet.  She’s been blocking out this friend-fiction scene for weeks now.  I’m surprised she didn’t lock them in a closet with a neon sign that says ‘Now Kiss’.”

Archie handed over his own paper.  “Friend fiction?”

“Dude,” Reggie sighed.  “You really need to catch up on Kevin’s blog.  Wait, is Midge single again?”

They watched as Reggie waded out into the crowd ever hopeful.  

“He really can’t stand being alone for a single night, huh?” Kevin asked as if Reggie’s philandering ways were a blight upon his very soul.  “Why can’t Veronica just -”

“Romance,” Archie said in an attempt to mimic Veronica’s dramatics.  “Organic, once-in-a-life-time -”

“Bibbity Bobbity Boo, what’s that witch of yours now up to?” 

“Cheryl,” Kevin said by way of greeting.  The smile on his face was tight enough to stretch tinsel.  “Don’t you have presents to steal?”

“Charming.”  When he didn’t move Cheryl’s smile dropped into a sneer.  “This is a two way conversation, so see your way out of it.”

“That’s not even the right -” Kevin shook his head and muttered, “whatever,” as he turned to a different partygoer with papers in hand.

Archie eyed Cheryl warily; the last time she wanted to have a chat he’d ended up at a charity auction event that required very little clothes and Mantle levels of self-esteem.  

“Don’t worry, Archiekins,” Cheryl said with a smile.  She pressed a finger into the middle of his forehead.  “You’ll get frown lines like that.”

“What do you want Cheryl?” 

“Jughead and Toni are friends, right?”

Archie nodded.  

“Has he mentioned anything about her?” Cheryl asked, her smile becoming as forced as Santa coming down the chimney.  “I mean, about what she might want for Christmas?  We haven’t even been dating a year, so diamonds are obviously too much, and probably a trip to the Cacos, that’s more of a year-anniversary trip, but -”

Archie knew from personal experience that it was best to jump in quickly in these types of conversations.  He’d had a similar conversation with Veronica last year over a ‘normal’ person’s gift budget.  She’d been so stuck on what Betty might want for Christmas Veronica had almost missed that it wasn’t the present that mattered so much as the thought behind it.  Still, Betty had been over the moon about the new wrench set even Archie had gotten a thank you note from her.

“She likes photography?” he offered.  “Is there a gallery opening you could take her to, then dinner?  Sometimes just being together is more important than anything you could buy her.”

Cheryl frowned.  “Oh you poor naive thing.  What has Veronica been teaching you? But, I will admit, photography is a good idea.  Your girlfriend chasing people out of the kitchen, not so much.”

Archie turned and found that Veronica had, indeed, cleared out the kitchen of everyone but Betty and Ethel who watched her with curiosity.  Veronica then proceeded to drag Jughead towards the kitchen all the while waving for Betty to join them.  In the confusion, Ethel met Jughead under the mistletoe.

Obligingly she pecked him on the check to Veronica’s increasing consternation.

“I’ll be back,” Archie said before rushing over to keep his girlfriend from causing a scene large enough to get her back onto Santa’s naughty list.

Much, much later that night, at a time when all the good little children were dreaming of sugarplums and sending fruitcakes to all their teachers, Jughead and Betty were putting lost solo cups and abandoned utensils in a large trash bag.  Veronica insisted they weren’t obligated to help, but Betty had volunteered and Jughead followed suit.  Now the living room was almost back to normal, if one ignored the candy canes stuck to the ceiling.

“Did you notice Veronica being weird tonight?” Jughead asked as he up a precarious tower of trash.

“You mean how she was desperately trying to trap you under the mistletoe?” Betty said with a note of amusement in her voice despite the dark stain of cherry syrup that stained the cuff of her sweater.

Jughead looked up at the archway, understanding dawning on his face as if it were the first time he’d seen it that night.  “Huh. Guess that’s why the kitchen was on lockdown.  I thought it was Archie’s tuna salad.”

“For someone so observant, you can be rather oblivious”  Betty laughed and set another stack of cups in the trash.

He grinned, a sly quirk of his mouth that drew her attention.  “Too bad she wasted so much time.  I am spoken for after all.”

Betty bit her lower lip and met him under the archway, her hips leading the way.  She slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer.  “It would be bad luck to break tradition.”

“Very bad luck.”  He slipped his hands around her waist and tucked them into the back pockets of her jeans.  “Might carry over into the next year.  And I had such high hopes for where this was going.”

Jughead leaned down to press a kiss to Betty’s collarbone.  His nose brushed along her neck and she drew in a sharp breath.

“Elizabeth Ann Cooper!” came a scandalized voice.  “I hope you have a good explanation for this.”

They broke apart only to find Veronica staring at them, mouth agape.  Behind her Archie raised his own trash bag in a congratulatory salute.

“It’s a Christmas miracle?” Betty said with a half smile and a shrug.

“And there’s the bad luck,” Jughead muttered.

Veronica, however, wasn’t having it.  She stormed over and dragged Betty along behind her to the kitchen.

“So,” Archie said.  “Halloween party?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

Jughead gave him a sidelong glance.  “That’s it?  No ‘How did it happen’?  No ‘Is it serious’?  Nothing?”

Archie shrugged.  “This is all Veronica’s going to talk about until next Christmas.  And she refuses to leave any detail out.  Dining room next?”

“Sure.”

Jughead followed him to the dining room.  On the way, Veronica yelled out, “You’re next Jones!”

Normally the threat would have sent shivers down his spine, but Betty’s amused glance that held the promise of later made it all worth it.

[oyesmendes]

the river between us - one

a/n: here it is!!!!! this is the story of emma and shawn. hope you guys like it as much as i enjoy writing it! p.s. the butterfly that was mentioned on emma’s stage set up is the same one that shawn has tattooed!

summary: Shawn stumbled into a piano room one day following her voice. Now they’ve fallen into each others lives. But what happens when life gets complicated and international pop-star Emma Rivera isn’t all that she is?

the meet; new york city - Spotify Studios

“Okay, we’re going to record ‘In My Blood’ then we will do ‘Lost in Japan’ followed by a song of your choice. Is that alright, Shawn?” The rockstar nodded his head, leaning back on the soft leather couch in the studio. He was about to record a few special version of his new singles in the Spotify New York office to celebrate the release of his third album. The album had just hit the streets a couple weeks ago, sky rocketing to number one and was currently claiming it spot for the third week at number one. It was an overwhelming experience having a number one album for such a long time and it being one of his most vulnerable pieces of work so far. He glanced at the clock on the wall - another twenty minutes before the recording begins, he had time to escape the buzz in the room.  

Shawn slipped out of the room quietly, barely anyone noticing him leaving. The door shut softly behind him and he made his way down the corridor. It was quiet on this floor, each room sound proofed so artists could have the comfort of recording their music. Most of the rooms were empty when Shawn peered into them, until he got closer to the end of the hallway. An angelic voice filled the air, accompanied by the loud keys of the piano made Shawn move closer to the source.  

Off in the night, while you live it up, I'm off to sleep

Waging wars to shape the poet and the beat

I hope it's gonna make you notice

I hope it's gonna make you notice

Someone like me

Someone like me

Someone like me, somebody

He knew that song at the back of his hand but the voice that was behind it was someone who he’s never heard before. He pushed the door open softly, being careful not to make his presence known. And there he saw her. Her eyes were closed, and her body swayed while she played on the piano. She held the notes right where they needed to be held, a soft smile emerging on her face when she knew she did them right. Shawn hadn’t realised that she had finished, until she cleared her throat and his eyes met her honey brown ones. He stumbled into the room, nearly face planting the floor when the door swung open after he lost his grip. She giggled softly, shaking her head as the boy composed himself.

“My singing was that bad huh?” Shawn’s eyes widened at her comment, but he somehow couldn’t form words to respond to her. She chuckled again, standing up from the piano bench making her way to Shawn.

“I’m just kidding, amor. My name’s Emma Rivera, most people call me Em.”

“Shawn Mendes” His voice squeaked a little as he took her outstretched hand in his, shaking it one too many times. He was running her name through his head again and again, where did he hear or see it? It was so familiar, yet he couldn’t put a finger on it. Then he realised his hand was still holding hers when they stopped the handshake and he quickly let go, rubbing his neck sheepishly. Get it together, Shawn.

“Sorry for snooping around by the way, I heard your voice and the door was slightly open-“

“It’s okay” She was laughing again, and the laughter was suddenly music to his ears. He was about to open his mouth, before Annie, the crew in-charge of Shawn’s recording came bursting into the room.

“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“I uh-“ before Shawn could even respond, Annie cut him off with her loud voice.

“You’re recording in five! Come on let’s go big- Emma? Thought you were at rehearsals upstairs?” So she is a singer.

“I was, just had to take a little break from all the people upstairs.” She shrugged her shoulders and Annie nodded understandingly.

“You coming to watch the event later, Annie?” Emma asked. Annie perked up immediately, still gripping Shawn’s arm so tightly that he was sure a bruise was going to form on his bicep.

“Of course honey, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. You know how much we love hearing ya” Now it was her turn to smile. She waved Annie goodbye before Shawn was dragged out of the room by his arm.

-

“Nice work Shawn. That’s a wrap for today!” Shawn pulled the big headphones off his head, making his way out of the recording booth. He thanked the couple of producers and team in the room before heading straight to Annie. She eyed the boy up and down as he stood in front of her nervously.

“So, I heard there’s an event on the rooftop?”

“Yeah, Em is playing a special show for some of her fans” Annie smirked at the brunette.

“Can I go?” He asked softly. His cheeks turned a bright shade of pink while he stood in front of Annie like a kid asking for candy. She nodded at the boy, gesturing for him to follow her. Shawn bid his goodbye to the crew and made up a poor excuse to get away from Andrew. Annie handed Shawn a baseball cap with the Spotify logo on it, forcing him to put it on his head. “This is to avoid you being recognised!” She berated when Shawn refused. He eventually pulled the cap down when he saw the crowd that had arrived for the event. The rooftop was filled with tons of people of all ages, mingling and moving around in excitement. Annie led him to a corner of the rooftop where there weren’t as many people and Shawn could have a full view of the stage. The set up was simple - a large butterfly in the centre of the white backdrop, half the butterfly being covered with floral drawings. He waited quietly next to Annie while she chatted with a couple of her colleagues. Shawn never felt nervous at a concert before but somehow this one felt different. He replayed the image of her playing the piano so passionately in the studios, her brown hair covering her eyes just a little when she looked down at they keys. He was unknowingly smiling to herself and Annie was watching it in front of her eyes.

“She’s pretty good y’know? And single.” Annie’s voice brought Shawn back to reality. He hummed in response, eyes still trailing the stage set up. Shawn knew she was more than ‘pretty good’ but decided to keep his mouth shut, fearing that Annie would drag him off the rooftop.

Eventually Emma’s band took the stage, playing her intro music before she came strutting in. She had changed from her black hoodie and sweats to a denim jacket on top of a white t shirt and black jeans. Simple, but Shawn thought she looked stunning. The crowd roared as she waved and started singing her songs, dancing on the stage with her band. She was in her element, the crinkle in her eyes and her smile was the evidence. She interacted with her fans individually, trying to get to as many of them as she could when they sat down for a short Q and A. She would call each of them by name as they danced to her music, occasionally bringing a few of them on stage to dance along with her. Shawn felt connected to her, along with the feeling of sunshine and confidence radiating off her skin.

Emma hadn’t notice Shawn until her last song when he saw him  bopping to the music with a huge smile on his face. Her eyes met with his and she grinned widely, a couple of butterflies erupting in her stomach. She too hadn’t felt like this in awhile, not since her last relationship. Something about Shawn made her feel nerves unlike she’s ever felt before and she welcomed the feeling of it. She jumped off the stage and danced with her fans, twirling them around and hugging them while she sang. She glanced occasionally at Shawn, noticing that his grin never left his face. He would nod back at her while he moved comfortably to the music.  

"thank you Spotify! thank you New York!" Emma bowed and waved to the crowd before sprinting off to the back. Shawn trailed behind Annie as she led them into a small room filled with Emma's crew and band. He scanned the room until his eyes landed on her - chatting away to a blonde lady, the smile and cringe in her eyes still on her face. When she noticed Shawn, she kindly excused herself from the group and approached the gentle giant.

"my singing wasn't too bad now was it"

"no! oh my god, no" Shawn's cheeks flushed a shade of pink again.

"you sounded beautiful" he spoke softly, a shy smile gracing his lips. she hummed in response, swirling the beer in her hand. Shawn’s eyes were locked on the gold liquid, feeling the nerves running up his spine. He hasn’t felt like this in a while and it was scary yet exciting.

“Do you want to go for a coffee? I know this place down the street that’s pretty quiet”

“Sounds like fun”  

-

As promised, the cafe was quaint, empty and safe. They talked for ages, sharing their life stories. Shawn felt at home with Emma - her laughter and voice brought peace to his mind. He told her about his humble rise to where he was today, how he wrote the album and he talked about his family back home in Canada. She asks about the meaning behind his tattoos, told him about her older brother who she absolutely adores and the meaning behind a couple of songs she wrote. Emma teaches him a couple of Spanish words and they laugh at how bad his accent is.

“cariño”

“Carino?”

“No, ca-ri-nio. Roll your tongue.”

“Ca-ri-no”

“Forget it”

And they laugh, until the golden hour glow shines through the windows and they’re reminded of how long they’ve been sitting in the cafe. Emma’s knees were now brushing Shawn’s under the table, and he would occasionally push her hair behind her ears for her when she looked down. It made the heat rise to her neck and ears, and a soft blush appearing on her cheek. They sat in a comfortable silence for awhile, Shawn tending to messages from his team. She felt blissful and happy until a message from her brother made her smile falter.  

Aaron: Your boy Celio from Los Zetas, he just trashed Papi’s place.

Celio? He hasn’t spoken to me in a year. A million thoughts ran through her mind when she read the message again. Her brows knitted together before she set her phone screen face down on the table.

“Everything okay?” Shawn asked. She put on the smile she was trained to plaster on her face ever since she stepped foot in the industry and nodded her head.

“We should probably go” Emma suggested quickly. She had to get back to the hotel to talk to her family.  

“Let me walk you back to your hotel”

“I would love that but-” Shawn furrowed his brows and she quickly continued, “oh no! Don’t get me wrong, there are paps waiting outside my hotel. Last thing you and I need is a big headline when we’re both on a roll. I’ll get my driver to come pick me up”

Shawn had to agree with her. He couldn’t afford to have a massive headline about him when he was about to go on a worldwide tour, Andrew would murder him before he could apologise. So he exchanged numbers with her, opened her car door and promised to see her again. He watched her disappear behind the darkened windows of the car and smiled to himself. And she waited for the car to pull away before all the colour in her face drained and was replaced with a shade of dark red.

“What the fuck did Celio do?”

[leowenila]

Going for The Goal

Hello! The other day while listening to one of my favorite playlists for writing and appreciating the beautiful weather outside; this spontaneous idea at complete random appeared in my mind and I knew that I needed to expand on it, instantly. Highly unlikely that this will have a second part primarily because I almost never finish second parts, which causes me to have several already started multi-fics in the making; but I would definitely be willing to write another part if it is requested. Here is “Going for The Goal,” please enjoy!

Long vibrant strands of fresh grass waved in a repetitive motion as a calming wind passed through the suburban area of lower Seattle, on the perfect and early spring day. Homes across the picturesque neighborhood remained quiet as various residents continued to sleep including the larger home hidden beneath a cluster of trees. Inside the man-made home was Owen and Amelia as they peacefully laid in one another’s arms while their three young children slept in different rooms opposite the master, towards the back of the home. The male trauma surgeon’s rounded muscular hand naturally rested on Amelia’s growing stomach causing him to feel every rise and fall of her chest through her abdomen along with small but noticeable movements from their already active baby girl.

Slowly the bright sun welcomed its presence throughout the shaded home into the windows indicating the dreadful morning hours. With her beautiful eyes remained shut, the pregnant neurosurgeon grasped onto Owen’s hand making her tired muscles relax. Amelia groaned after noticing the brightness.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Owen lethargically inquired of Amelia once he had noticed her carefully shift in his arms seconds before she exhaustively yawned.

“Besides growing another small human inside of me and vomiting all my guts out last night, which caused me to almost faint? Better. I think my stomach muscles are still aching from it and the baby growing doesn’t help.” Amelia confessed honestly to her husband who seemed worried but instead he nodded in agreement.

“Leo has his first soccer game today; are you sure that you will feel up to it. I’m sure Maggie will film the entire thing.” The male trauma surgeon observed from the situation of his wife rubbing her swollen abdomen wearily, he patiently awaited her response in attempts to make sure she was okay.

Finally Amelia opened her tired eyes and matched her bright blue irises with his darker blues before adjusting her delicate hands from her stomach to the middle of Owen’s broad chest muscles then smiled at him, seconds before offering her statement.

“I love you; Owen.” The brunette reassured her husband which allowed him to acknowledge and understand how she was feeling. Being her soulmate; Owen knew exactly what she was feeling; although she was in a state of discomfort, her motherly instinct would sacrifice any amount of pain to witness and experience the joy of her children. Once hearing what she had to say and silently taking a note of how he can make her day brighter; Owen kissed Amelia with passion before he turned his head after hearing three small children at the tall door.

“Hi Daddy! Hi Mama!” Their youngest son, Cortland announced as his two older brothers stood on either side of him. Once more the male trauma surgeon kissed the brunette before removing himself from the thick comforter and bent his knees to the children’s eye-level.

“Alright soldiers. One of you decided that it was a good idea to get the others up after he decided to wake up himself. Who that is; is a mystery but don’t think that for a second that will trick, Major. Hunt.” The father teased with each son as the brunette continued peacefully resting in the bed, to watch her boys joke with one another. The man scanned into each pair of bright blue eyes carefully while they attempted to maintain straight faces that their father taught them at an early age.

“Mr. Leo is a soccer star as of today, so it could be him. Or maybe it’s Mr. Thomas who has his mama’s eyes but yet it could be Mr. Cortland but he’s my favorite. So it can’t be him? Mama? Who do you think our contestant is?” Owen proposed to Amelia who couldn’t contain her smile or laughter at the antics or each boy with their arms crossed over their small chests.

“My bets are totally on my little man.”

“Leo; it is!” Owen proclaimed aloud seconds before he lifted his six year old into his arms followed by lifting the two others above him until he landed them safely on the giant bed out of his muscular arms, where Amelia sat with her soft hands onto her stomach to feel the early morning kicks herself.

Once all the family was relaxing on the bed; the male trauma surgeon held Cortland in his arms and covered everyone with the thick blanket. Unprepared for what her oldest son was about to do Amelia flitched slightly once seeing his small arm come towards her stomach but was surprised the moment Leo rested his small hands in the middle of his mother’s growing and sore pregnant belly.

“Is my baby sister okay, mama? Does she not feel good when you don’t feel good?” Hearing Leo’s question; Amelia’s eyes immediately filled with small tears along with curiosity how he knew that she was not feeling well but knew already that someday he will care as much as his father does for the women he loves.

“Baby sister is wonderful, my little lion.” The neurosurgeon tearfully vocalized to her adopted son and the first one who made her become a mother for more than forty three minutes, while she played with his naturally curled hair he inherited from Betty. Owen and Amelia shared glances with one another ahead of mouthing their three favorite words.

Hours had come and gone, and the morning became an even more perfect afternoon when there was only an hour until Leo’s soccer game. In the rather large kitchen was the brunette as she placed healthy and organic snacks until plastic containers for the game while Owen remained occupied in his oldest son’s room to help him get in his uniform.

“Let’s go show mama!” Owen cheerfully directed to Leo who he walked behind as they made their way out of his bedroom, towards the kitchen. From afar the male trauma surgeon coughed to signal the neurosurgeon, she glanced up and saw the bright blue jersey along with shorts.

“Leo! You look amazing, what do you think?!” Amelia declared to Leo as he began to cheer for himself and the reaction he had been wanting of his mother’s approval.

Once they had arrived at the giant sports field; the male trauma surgeon parked in the parking space and shut off the minivan’s engine, Leo impatiently unbuckled his seatbelt before either one of his parents could exit the vehicle but remained sitting until his brothers were unlatched. Owen lifted Cortland into his arms before retrieving the lunch bag filled with several snacks beside him while Amelia helped Thomas step down off of the van’s platform then clasped onto his small hand and Leo followed.

“Drake!” Leo shouted to his teammate and cousin upon seeing him from afar sitting with his parents who patiently waited for the game to begin, in their lounge chairs and sunglasses covering their eyes to block out the bright sunlight.

“Leo!” Drake exclaimed back to his cousin before asking his mother for permission to run in the other boy’s direction. His mother approved and returned to reading her thick book. Both five year olds grew close over their years because their mothers shared a never ending bond as sisters as well as being two of the most successful surgeons at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.

“I’m so happy to see you; sister. I didn’t think you were coming!” Maggie cheerfully told her sister as she hugged her tightly mere moments before adjusting her hands down to Amelia’s growing abdomen.

“Hello baby girl; this is your Auntie Maggie. Don’t ever forget that.” The female cardiothoracic surgeon directed to her niece still inside the uterus while Andrew DeLuca greeted his brother in law and colleague once he removed himself from the lounge chair. Both men set up the extra lawn chairs for the rest of the family beside Andrew and Maggie’s other kids.

Twenty five minutes into the game as the third quarter was just seconds away, one of Leo’s teammates dribbled the ball towards him and passed it to him from being instructed by their coach; adrenaline was high and cheers soared for the home team although it wasn’t labeled as a competition all the parents made sure to cheer for their child. Getting ready to kick the ball towards the net, a slightly taller boy from the away team pushed Leo onto the ground with force. Before the small boy hit the ground the brunette ran as fast as her six month pregnant body could allow followed by the male trauma surgeon to reach their son. Favoring his mother’s tough will; Leo refused to cry despite the tears that were in his eyes, Amelia started to tear up at the site of seeing her son injured and felt paralyzed at what to do until Owen’s steady and calming nature took over, and reassured the both of them before he lifted Leo into his arms to walk back to the minivan. As they walked back Maggie nodded her head in Amelia’s direction, signaling that her and Andrew were able to take care of their nephews.

Once arriving at the hospital; Owen put the vehicle in park and turned off the engine to have it rest in one of the employee parking spots, he retrieved his son from the back seat in which his wrist hung down. The male trauma surgeon walked in the emergency department with Amelia behind him and was greeted with Meredith following.

“Hey; how was the game?” The older general surgeon asked her sister who was visually distraught and in pain, the brunette did not say a word but just stood in the doorway of the trauma room where she watched her husband and son who started sobbing in pain just minutes before, while a wave of pain shot through his arm. Although Amelia knew it was only an arm injury, the sympathy pain she felt was unimaginable. Meredith glanced back and forth between Owen and Amelia.

“Leo got pushed to the ground and his arm is broken. Either get an orthopedic surgeon down here or allow me to fix this.” Owen requested of Meredith who snapped on her gloves to take a glance at the laceration on her nephew’s head.

The general surgeon informed her intern to page an available orthopedic surgeon before the male trauma surgeon got angry, once the brunette heard Meredith’s request of the intern, she finally sat on the other side of Leo and took his hand.

“Ah, okay. Hey little guy!” The familiar voice boasted as he walked into the local trauma room causing both Owen and Amelia to glance up from where their eyes rested on each other.

“You paged Dr. Lincoln out of all the surgeons in this hospital?” Owen stressed to the clueless intern who looked helpless but sprinted out of the trauma room. Before Link started to snap the surgical gloves onto his hand, Leo stopped him.

“You got in Daddy’s way when I was a baby, don’t even dare touching my arm. Mommy don't even liked you!” Leo’s small but powerful voice ordered the blonde orthopedic surgeon before the man backed up in his standing position. Amelia and Owen attempted to remain a similar straight face to the ones that mirrored their sons’ earlier that day.

Once Link left the room the brunette bursted into laughter causing Owen to join in, causing the little boy to accompany his parents laughter knowing that he said something funny. The male trauma surgeon held out his hand for Leo to slap it with his non-injured hand.

“I think Leo just shot his first goal.” Owen proudly told Amelia who nodded her head in agreement after appreciating what type of life she happily had after deciding to shoot her own goal four years prior and returning back to her soulmate’s arms. 

Thank you so much for reading!

[andrewisdoing]

Melanin In Blue

I’m trying to stay positive in the midst of so much hatred and constant immense reporting of black men and women who have died.

I have so many feelings although I’m on a constant search for truth and facts. While I raise my fist high in solidarity, I still am listening and trying to hold on to my values.

It’s not always easy. Sometimes I feel like I should be feeling more angry. More militantly black and maybe even resort to shouting how much I hate racist white people. Then there are the times when I have to reach down deep in my heart and just resort to my default which is to try to love and be understanding.

Being black and person is not ever easy. From being stopped by the cops; stared at for rocking my hair in a fro or box braids, hell, just exuding blackness in any capacity garners stares. The attempts at hair touching, the ridiculous amount of people attempting or trying to prove their well meant wokeness while stepping on eggshells, the constant micro aggressive attitudes from other races because of their own experiences with certain individuals in our community, which can sometimes, for them, define our entire existence.Truly, the whole ordeal takes a toll on a person. 

All the while, my own community has work to do.

For me, it’s double duty. Being black and gay is a constant uphill battle that seemingly never ends. My sexuality, for everyone, is a problem. There have been times when my “brothas” have called me a fag, my “sistahs” make snipe judgement calls on how I “became that way.”  Worse than that, I’m not “black enough” for some because of where I’m from and who I kick it with. Because I’m not out here portraying a certain version of what a black male is thought or portrayed to be, I’m not man enough. Those ideals made it hard to grow up and just be a man. It’s a personal war because while I love my people, my culture, my skin, the past that has been tacked to my person since birth, my community still has bruised me too.

Furthermore, seeing how our community hurts our women bothers me. From colorist attitudes to somehow having a say in how a black women should rock their hair, rep their culture and how they should be portrayed is appalling. It seeps into our daughters minds that they need to be a walking in this “thirst trap” ideal instead of walking with confidence and radiance in EVERY shade. I have two sisters and I had a hand in raising them both. I tried to teach them that they don’t have to be anything other than what they are. They were always told that they were beautiful and wise. I always made sure they knew that they could accomplish anything, in spite of what this ugly world will tell them. That said, we as black men, need to love, protect and lift our women. I don’t care if you are out here trying to protect your tough exterior image  (I’m looking at you hip hop culture). If you were raised by  a black woman, protected by black woman and loved by black woman, speak the fuck up and stand by them. Period. 

That said, I could say more, I choose to find joy in the culture while learning other perspectives. I choose to remain grounded while my mind gets blown with new information coming from writers, philosophers, some politicos and thinkers. Even from just everyday people. I’m constantly trying to be a better Andrew. I’m trying to break the ideas of what these identities should be and live according to my own rules. To put it plainly, just be a good, complex and kick ass individual, while being proud of my cultural identities. Not putting others down because I don’t understand their culture or individuality. Fighting for injustice because it’s my right to do so. Standing up on my own two so I can make a life for me and love who I see in the mirror.

We, as human beings, have to do better to make a better life for those coming behind us. We have to grow up. We have to fucking read a book, talk and get to know our brethren while still holding our own ideals and politics.

We have to accept the fact that we are not God. We will stumble and fall short and make mistakes, particularly when it comes to educating ourselves on race and not hurt others for making those mistakes in spite of our justified anger. We have to recognize those mistakes and educate one another, in love and patience. 

We are still healing from wounds while we’ve neglected for centuries and maybe in a way, this is humanity, in some form, finally paying its bill. In a way, race and America is like, how my pastor put it, “a relationship that needs to be fixed” but in no way can be fixed until our intention is the same.  

In short, we have work to do. 

[enfpguy]

BioShock Infinite MBTI and Enneagram — Booker DeWitt Booker DeWitt is the Main Protagonist of BioShock Infinite and the Secondary Protagonist of BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea. He’s part of two multi-verses so we’ll be segmenting this analysis into 2 parts. BioShock Infinite: The Main Story. Burial at Sea Booker: This takes place after the events of Bioshock Infinite with an alternate version of Booker. Dominant Function: Introverted Thinking BioShock Infinite: Booker Booker DeWitt is a prime example of an individual that’s driven by situational logic. His views throughout the entire game change drastically. At first, he’s introduced as a very cautious character who doesn’t trust his environment, but he immediately adapts to it. His main goal is to pay off his debt and to achieve that goal he must find Elizabeth and bring her to New York. As he embarks on his adventure, he ends up being caught in unique situations. Such as unknowingly entering the Pilgrim’s Rocket and being transported to a new society that exists within the sky. This alone would cause most people to freak-out and have a panic attack, but not Booker. Instead, he casually moved on as if nothing happened. He immediately then ran into another problem he needed to get baptized by Preaching Witting. He was unwilling but did it anyway because that was the only way into the city. After practically being drowned Booker runs into his first challenge and this is where we first see his TI function in action. He needs to get passed a locked gate to proceed on his quest. He solves this by trying a possession vigor that a hawker is offering free samples of. Booker quickly figures out he can use it on machines and uses it on the automaton guarding the door, therefore unlocking it. He then ends up accidentally entering a raffle and being forced to use yet another piece of unknown technology, the Sky-hook to protect himself from the officers who are trying to harm him. This adaptive style of learning is present throughout everything Booker does in Columbia, from trying new vigors to instructing Elizabeth where to best open “tears” so they can live another day. But that’s not all Booker also has other Introverted Thinking indicators. Such as suppressing his emotions, not because he’s unemotional but because he would rather stay level headed at all times to solve situations, this causes strain on his relationships with other people since FE is his lowest function. This especially affects Elizabeth, who’s quite a sensitive individual, and because of this they often butt heads. We have a lovely example of one of these situations. After rescuing Elizabeth from her prison, Booker lies and promises to bring her to Paris by stealing the First Lady Airship. Before they can do that they must go through the ticket station that leads to Soldier’s Field, this is where things get ugly, the receptionist stabs his hand forcing him to become violent which ends in the death of his assaulters. Elizabeth, experiencing death for the first time, becomes horrified and tries to run away. Booker catches up to a defensive Elizabeth and uses logic to reason with her. He explains that she’s an investment and that those men won’t stop coming after her so she has no choice but to leave Columbia. As the game progresses Booker becomes more comfortable with his surroundings thus starts asking Elizabeth more questions. Such as how do you make these “tears” or why does the Songbird always appear when he hears a specific melody. Before we get to the Burial at sea segment, I want to contest Booker being an SI-TE function user. The first indicator of not having SI can be seen in Booker’s poor attention to detail and memory, this occurs often he forgets about the actions he takes. For instance, the time he forgot he helped interracial couple at the start of the game or the time he forgot about Chen Lin’s tools and machines or the fact that he cares nothing for tradition, duty, or his experiences. Instead, he rather live in the moment. If Booker was a TE user, he’d share similarities to Elizabeth such as her love for facts, systems and seeing things in black and white. However, Booker sees the world in shades of grey, prefers to remain flexible, and follows his own internal logical framework. Although I can recognize why people would perceive Booker as a TE user and that’s because of his cautious and aggressive nature which makes him seem more rigid than he is. Next up we’ll be looking into his TI functional traits and examples within the Burial at Sea DLC. Burial at Sea Booker: We get to meet a unique version of Booker who uses the mentioned TI functional traits much more effectively here. Unlike in Columbia, this Booker doesn’t have a debt to pay nor is he constantly stressed by life or death situations we can see a more accurate representation of his personality. Even in a different environment, his core traits remain the same, and if anything they’re enhanced. Let’s look at some examples. During their adventures in Rapture, Booker becomes acquainted with Elizabeth and notices logical inconsistencies within her actions and speech. This causes him to question her intentions and ask about how she isn’t aware of Rapture's structural system. Such as the time she asks about Little Sisters or what are Splicers. This is common knowledge in Rapture and Booker knows this and calls her out for being a fraud. Elizabeth knows how Booker’s personality functions and evades his questions and manipulates him by using Sally as her leverage against him. Elizabeth also has many questions on why people take certain actions, and Booker always answers with situational logic. An excellent example of that occurs when retrieving the Shock Jockey plasmid. Elizabeth asks why Andrew Ryan imprisoned Fontane's men if he was all about the free market? Booker responds with “All those ideas lose their luster when the quarterly earnings come in and you find the other guy’s eating your lunch” Auxiliary Function: Extroverted Sensing Extroverted Sensing function is often associated with the one-man army trope or within over the top action heroes, and Booker falls directly into both those categories. He’s a man driven by action and can always adapt to every situation that comes his way. From learning how to use unfamiliar weapons and tools with ease. To blowing up blimps and escaping from a gigantic angry robotic bird. Booker definitely sees a lot of action. But the Se function is more than just action. It’s directly related to receiving information from the 5 senses accurately while other functions process that information at slower a slower pace. That makes Extroverted Sensing dominant and auxiliary users quite versatile with physical tasks, such as sports or surviving in a city full of religious fanatics who want to kill you. There are downsides, however, and we can spot many of these within our protagonist. SE users have a hard time with possibilities, unique ideas, or scenarios. Booker thinks the Luteces are absolutely insane and criticizes them for not living within the present but rather within the idea of possibilities. We can see this as fear when Booker discovers that Elizabeth could create “tears” which shouldn’t be physically possible, but as time moves on Booker becomes comfortable and curious with the idea of “tears” since he can interact with them. This makes Booker appear closed-minded, but that’s only because reacting to possibilities he never thought were possible. Another weakness of SE is taking information at face value. Booker doesn’t search for hidden meanings or symbolism within objects, people, or information like Elizabeth. Instead, he would rather be direct and pragmatic. Speaking of his pragmatic and direct nature, Booker often solves problems by doing he’s a kinesthetic learner. This is how he’s able to learn how to use the Sky-hook so quickly. The last example of Booker’s SE function will be an unhealthy one. Booker has three problems, he’s addicted to physical forms of risk-taking, pleasure, and escapism. This is how he got himself stuck in this situation in the first place. He was a well-known drinker and gambler before the events of BioShock Infinite. The reasons differ but, In Columbia’s universe, he drank and gambled to deal with the passing of his wife. In the Rapture universe, he just drank and gambled himself into debt for the pleasure which caused him to lose his adapted daughter Sally. Regardless of the universe, Booker will always drink and gamble. Time for a fun fact before we move on to Booker’s Tertiary function. The detective agency Booker DeWitt worked for is real and still exists today! It’s called the Pinkerton National Detective Agency and was established in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton. They were best known for foiling a plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, working as his personal security during the Civil War and hiring the first female detective in America. However, fame soon turned into infamy during the labor strikes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The efficiency of the Pinkertons prompted businessmen to hire them to infiltrate unions to keep strikers and unionists out of factories. To make matters worse, they hired goon squads to intimidate workers to prevent them from striking. Today the Pinkertons are known as the Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, Inc and they’re of the oldest and most influential detective agencies in the world. Tertiary Function: Introverted Intuition Booker DeWitt’s use of Introverted Intuition is interesting, he often represses it to the point of it being an unconscious function because he doesn’t enjoy thinking too far into the future and prefers living in here and now. Yet somehow he’s constantly foreshadowing future events! Such as his dream of New York burning or Foreshadowing Elizabeth’s torture device that would brainwash her after she asked Booker why Comstock imprisoned her. Or the time Booker leaves Cornelius Slate alive and then claims that leaving him alive wasn’t mercy, Comstock’s men will capture and torture him. This ends up being true and Cornelius can be found mentally broken in an interrogation room in Fink’s jailhouse. Booker is either a brilliant detective who can deduce situations so fast that it looks like he’s predicting the future or his NI function usage is exceptional. Our last example takes place in Rapture after Booker collects the Old Man Winter plasmid. He stops Elizabeth after suspecting her of being a fraud and demands answers; She scoffs at him and lies. This causes him to predict that he’s being set up. Turns out he was right. Inferior Function: Extroverted Feeling Booker starts with an unhealthy usage of the FE function and slowly develops it throughout the title. At the start of his quest in Columbia, Booker remains disconnected from his emotions and closed off because he sees no reason to express them. We can especially see in Battleship Bay when Booker is trying to get Elizabeth's attention while she's dancing. He wants to leave Columbia so he can complete his mission, but first needs to stop her from dancing. At first he tries to be polite, then he tries using a more aggressive tone and finally he manipulates her by mentioning the First Lady Airship and how it can bring her to Paris. It’s an effective use of the FE function but used unhealthily. Booker lies to her for the first half of the game, telling her he’ll bring her to Paris, with the actual intention of bringing her to New York to pay off his debts. Or how he wasn’t able to empathize with Mrs. Lin at the loss of her husband instead he kept asking questions hoping she could give him an answer that would help track down her husband. As the game progresses, we can observe Booker loosening up and expressing his emotions in healthier ways by showing worry and care for Elizabeth during hardships. Such as the time where she killed Daisy Fitzroy. Booker recognized the look of horror in Elizabeth’s eyes, chased her down. He immediately attempted to comfort her by asking if she was okay and tried to relate to her feelings so she would feel better. Another example occurs after Elizabeth finds out her mother and the Luteces were killed by Comstock. She then says she’s just a specimen to be poked and prodded. Booker comforts her by letting her know she doesn’t deserve the stuffing she’s been through. Before we complete this segment, I’ll be mentioning 2 extra examples. The first one relates to FE grip that occurs when Booker realizes he’s Elizabeth’s father, he goes through a complete mental breakdown and irrationally wants to end it all. The second example is a moral example of FE. During the second half of the game Elizabeth and Booker run into a locked door that requires Lady Comstock’s finger print to enter. Elizabeth impulsively decides she will take it from her mothers corpse, Booker tries to stop her and suggests that it’s morally incorrect. But her decision is already made, Booker decides he will remove the finger for her. Our last FE indicator can be seen at the end of the game. Booker sacrifices himself to Elizabeth. He does this to stop Comstock from ever being born, Elizabeth takes him to Comstock's birthplace and Booker immediately realizes he’s both Booker DeWitt and Zachery Hale Comstock. He then allows the Elizabeths to drown him so she may break the circle. https://youtu.be/Dbjql-8coDw