#ask the freedom pals
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ask-professorchaos · 2 years ago
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sure am hoping this is the content you want
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everythingwasnormalhere · 6 months ago
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Do you think Mysterion would occasionally play on his axe guitar...oooh or even do vocals for Crimson Dawn? Wants a singing Mysterion. XDD
ID LOVE TO SEE MYSTERION APPEAR AT A CD CONCERT OMG
It probably wouldn't happen though because yk, the whole secret identity issue, it would be easy to connect the dots of "kenny isnt on stage" "mysterion is on stage" and find out 😭 HOWEVER mysterion will definitely sing by himself a lot, and kenny when he's doing the backup vocals and sometimes even as the main singer will often randomly use the mysterion voice because it's too silly not to XD
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buttery-chaos · 1 year ago
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Hello again! I've been asking way too much but...
Since Chaos has his powers from TFBW like lightning in VGBT. I thought maybe..just maybe, that Mysterion would not just have his Immortality. But also those powers he had in TFBW. Idk, you probably thought of it or not.
haha its alright! tbh im not a huge fan of his powers in tfbw when it comes to fanon so its not smth i think about too much i think mysterion being just some guy who happens to also be immortal is way more entertaining c: sorta same reason i never include the minion stuff with chaos either- i think him being a solo act who likes to mess with mysterion for fun is equally more entertaining it also makes mystechaos interactions a lot more simple to me? (not in a bad way tho!)
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hardlyinteresting · 2 months ago
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love's never lost when perspective is earned
Jake Seresin x Reader
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” Peter Pan, J.M Barrie
Peter by Taylor Swift S P E Y S I D E by Bon Iver Big Black Car by Gregory Alan Isakov Smother by Daughter
Warnings: The reader is referred to as she/her, with no physical description, Parentification of eldest siblings, bad first date experience, gets a little spicy towards the end (no smut), (please let me know if you'd like me to tag anything please)
This one shot was written for @arcane-vagabond Fairy Tale writing challenge with the inspiration of Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, and the use of the word Scintilla.
Word Count: 6.7K Masterlist | talk to me about Jake and Tyler
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She remembers that summer wrapped in a golden glow. Back when hot, humid days were spent bathed in the sun’s vivid orange. Their fingers were sticky with jammy pie fillings, stolen from his mama’s kitchen. Cold water from the garden hose always tasted better after a day of chasing themselves around the properties. 
What do you want to be when you grow up?” Jake had asked her as they lay in the grass behind his house. 
“I haven't decided yet,” she told him matter of factly, “But, I’m gonna have a nice house, and I’m going to go far away from here”. 
“I'm gonna be a pilot,” Jake said, “And I’ll fly wherever I want”.
She knew he was entirely serious, even as a little boy he’d never failed to accomplish what he put his mind to. The gentle waiver is his voice as his statement teetered around the edges of his true feelings and fears. “I wish I could fly away,” She told him, watching the clouds shift across the bright blue sky above them. 
“Don’t worry, I’ll take you with me,” Jake promised. And back then, a promise had felt like enough. 
They were seven; her shins were always bruised from climbing trees and tackling the Seresin boy during their daily football scrambles; his cheeks were always sunburnt, and he lied every time his mother asked if he had put sunscreen on. In many ways, she thinks those two months running after Jake Seresin had been both the peak and the plateau of her childhood wonder. 
September meant returning to school; finishing supper and homework before being allowed out to play, and with the autumnal turn crept in early sunsets and earlier curfews. In November, her stepdad moved in, and her mother told her to expect a little brother in the spring. The days of scraped knees and make-believe slipped away before the winter frost set in. 
When he thinks about her now, he pictures her laughing like she did when they were ten years old. He misses the days when she had the freedom to forget herself. 
At ten years old Jake Seresin couldn’t understand why his friend wasn’t as fun as she used to be. He watched from his kitchen window as she sat on the front porch with her little brother, settling next to her and feeding him from tiny jars of baby food. At a distance, it'd be easy to mistake her for any other girl playing make-believe with one of her dolls. But Jackson wasn't a doll, he was fussy and gassy, and he needed to be fed and put down for his naps before she had a moment of spare time to spend with her pal Jake. 
Her little brother had been followed by a new baby girl two years later. Tire marks on the dirt driveway highlighted where her stepfather’s truck should have been most days. Jackson had finally gone down for a nap but Olivia had been teething and her wailing could be heard from a mile away. 
“What do you want to do today?” Jake asked her as he made his way up her porch steps to sit next to her on the stoop. “I want to fly away,” she told him. 
Without a second thought, he grabbed her hand as he took off running, down the stairs, across the lawn and into the field behind the house. The long grass tickled at their ribs as they ran as fast as possible, their arms outstretched on either side of them. 
Circling, and jumping, hooting and hollering they made their way across the flat land with boisterous laughter bubbling from their lips. By the time they stumbled to a stop at the fence line their breath came to them in quiet gasps, their cheeks warmed by the exertion of their activity. 
The sound of his pulse fell in time with her carefree giggles as she twirled around mimicking some kind of bird. Had it not been for the physical boundary of the wire fence he thinks they could have kept running forever, the promise of freedom they didn’t yet understand beneath their wings. In that moment he knew he’d chase that feeling for the rest of his life. 
At sixteen she felt more like a substitute parent than she did a teenage girl. Her mind and her soul had aged beyond her years and stayed wrapped in a youthful vessel. School had become an escape from the responsibility she felt at home. While Olivia and Jackson clambered onto the school bus excited for first and second grade, she climbed into the passenger seat of Jake Seresin’s restored F-150. Each morning he'd pass her a wrapped sandwich made in his kitchen with his mother's fresh-baked bread. A replacement for the meal he knew she sacrificed to divide the last of the breakfast cereal between her siblings. He filled her with servings of farm butter and homemade jam, or ham and cheese. Their silent dialogue in brushing their knuckles during the exchange, as he always chose to ignore how she saved half for her lunch later in the day. 
Pulling into the parking lot at school she had been keenly aware of the way the other girls looked at her as she walked hand in hand with Jake; the glares shot her way when he kissed her cheek as they parted ways to head to their classes.
Their jealousy rolled off them in waves, and she heard how they spoke about her in the locker room after gym class. Whispers about his gorgeous green eyes and boyish charm. What could the hottest guy in school possibly want from the strange girl in her secondhand clothes and studious persona? Surely he'd have more fun with a girl who wanted to party. 
It was true. In the span of one summer, he'd grown 6 inches, towering over her now. His shoulders broadened. The lanky awkward limbed boy she'd known in her childhood grew stronger and more defined as he learned better how to pull his weight on his family’s farm. His masculine stature and maturity softened only by his flushed cheeks, and childlike grin. 
And yes, he snuck beers from his father’s garage fridge and did handstands for ovations at parties hosted by the school football team. An absolute joy to be around. To know Jake Seresin was to love Jake Seresin, but didn't know him the way she did.
 They didn't know he was terrified of thunderstorms until he was 12. They weren't there when he split his pants open trying to climb over a fence when they were 9. They had never had the privilege of listening to him read aloud from all his books about aircraft; his 11-year-old fingers tracing the letters as he sounded out the big words, the fear of being held back in 5th grade hanging over his head. 
They had never held him as he tore into himself. The golden boy, raised in the shadow of an older brother who hadn’t lived long enough for him to remember; so deeply loved, but not enough to fill the ache in his parent’s hearts. 
No one in those school halls would ever be able to tell the difference between his happiest days, and the smirk he plastered on always aiming to be better than what he believed himself to be. 
He was so stubborn and far more clever than he ever let himself sound; she scolded him almost daily as he tried to shrug off his homework. “You'll need math and science if you ever want to fly a jet,” she would remind him, accepting the glass of sweet tea he offered her. Their textbooks and notes would lay spread across his kitchen table while Jackson and Olivia occupied themselves with blank paper and wax crayons, offering Jake scribbled drawings of airplanes, “wow! That's amazing, thank you,” he'd say every time. 
She hadn't asked Jake to worm his way into her soul, and yet even now she knows some part of her soul belongs deeply to him. Their games of tag had slowly become time spent talking about their parents and watching the clouds; their hands intertwined between them as they listened to each other's dreams and desires for the future. 
And on the nights when his life just didn’t seem to fit quite right, he’d tap on her window, willing her to join him in the bed of his truck a couple of miles from their homes; and she’d remind him who he was. The bright boy with a heart of gold, and a laugh that reminded her of everything good in the world. She’d rest her head on his chest, his fingertips tracing aimless shapes across her back, as she convinced him he was more than a collection of hand-me-down dreams. 
His eighteenth birthday crept up to him before passing in a blur of candlelight and buttercream icing. His mother cried in the kitchen when she excused herself to ‘take care of the dishes’. His father clapped him on the shoulder. Their two sets of hazel-green eyes met as the older man offered a nod.  The action itself did not speak to a relationship of closeness or specific affection, but still, it managed to convey a message of approval, apology, and love too difficult to speak. 
She had knocked on the door shortly after dinner had been cleared from the table, the remaining half of his birthday cake being ushered into the refrigerator under a cling wrap film. Shivering in the night air, her hands clutched a package of brown paper with a shiny blue ribbon, his name scribbled in her careful writing. Quickly, he’d pulled her into the house greeting her with a kiss as deeply passionate as she deserved. “Happy birthday,” she’d whispered, pressing the gift she’d brought into his hands. “You didn’t have to get me anything,” he’d told her. “I wanted to,” she insisted. With steady hands, he unwrapped the box. His question was silent, but the shocked expression on his face must’ve conveyed enough for her to be able to answer him anyway. “It’s the one from the antique store,” she grinned, “Mister Abbot let me pay for it in instalments”. He tipped the brass nautical compass into the palm of his hand, staid in his evaluation of both the physical and emotional weight of the gift. “This is too much,” he spoke after a moment. 
Her eyes went wide, her smile dropping. “I love it,” he was immediate in his attempt at reassurance, “but, you’re saving for school. I don’t want you spending your money on me, darlin’”. He tried to pass the compass back to her, a woebegone ponderosity settling in his stomach at the very idea of rejecting any part of her. Insistent, yet patient, she curled her finger over his. The digits were so much smaller than his own, cracked and raw from washing dishes and cleaning tables at the local diner. The painful reminder of how hard she’d been working to climb her way out of her own life. “I want you to keep it. Selfishly,” she said, “I want you to always be able to find your way back to me”. How could he have argued with that? 
Politely, she’d popped into the kitchen to see his mama, accepting a Tupperware of cake slices to take home for the kids to enjoy. His father met them at the door as Jake shrugged on his denim jacket. “Where are you kids off to?” he asked out of curiosity more than any concern. “Just going for a drive,” Jake told him, slipping his keys into his pocket. “Don’t let him get you into any trouble, ya hear?” he warned her with a teasing grin, the humour evident in his voice. “Yes sir,” she had agreed easily, knowing Mr Seresin’s penchant for faux sternness in the moments between his genuine stoicism. Seemly satisfied to see her smile grow, he had turned to Jake with an immediate pivot back to his natural sternness, “You make sure you get her home at a reasonable time. It’s a school night”. Jake’s compliance echoed her own, with no room for jest, “Yes sir”. 
Parked in their usual spot, at the edge of a cleared field he wrapped layers of blankets around her shoulders, before settling down next to her. Their biggest dreams breathed between them and the night stars. “I love you,” he said. The statement was resolute, and immovable in its honesty. “I love you too, Jake,” she told him. Her words were spoken like a promise she desperately wanted to keep. 
“When we graduate, I'll drive us across the country,” he tells her, “I'll buy us a house. You can go to school and I'll fly”. 
“It’s a nice dream, baby,” she says. 
Their drive home is silent. 
She spent her nineteenth birthday sleeping in his childhood bedroom. He hadn't been home in months but the sheet still smelt like him. She scraped her knees climbing up the trellis to his window, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. She’d laughed to herself examining the superficial wounds, enjoying the familiar bite of nostalgia. Memories of her childhood long since passed left tears at the corners of her eyes. Near manic laughter faded into a melancholy exhaustion. 
Her eyes focused on the small book collection Jake had managed over the years. They had all been perfectly aligned in their homes on his bookshelf; set in alphabetical order by author. His need for structure despite his free spirit had been amusing until it became mildly concerning. Routine, crafted to satisfy the need to stay completely distracted from an overwhelm of feelings he had always been sure he didn’t have the capacity to express. The hope in her heart had always been that he might learn to hone his particular brand of presentiment. He’d always been so rough-and-tumble, so hard to worry after; determined to never let the mask slip as he raced through life with a smile. 
1400 miles away she ached to be beside him; so lonely in her knowledge of him. She worked to comfort herself by tracing the titles on the spines of the books he’d left behind. Over and over. Over and over. With blurring vision and an unfocused mind, she slipped into a well-deserved sleep. The sun streamed so gently through the window of Jake’s room. A touch of light tugging her from her slummer had been a welcome change from the jarring wake-up call she had at home. Two siblings who had yet to figure out how to make themselves breakfast without bickering or clattering plates. The smell of fresh coffee and pancake batter wafted up from downstairs. 
The bedroom door squeaked as she opened it, and underfoot the floorboards in the old farmhouse creaked, each step down the staircase punctuated with the sonance of more than a hundred years of life. In the Seresin house, the noises reminded her of the generations who had come and gone, it was easy to imagine the lives that had been lived within the walls. Across the yard, the similar shifts and groans of her childhood home echoed like ghostly calls; the whispers warning of a life liable to be wasted if she stuck around. 
“Good morning, Sweetheart,” Mrs Seresin smiled, setting an extra spot at the kitchen table. His mother had always been the kindest person she’d known. Despite the undisputable reality that her son’s girlfriend had all but broken into her home, she welcomed her with open arms, asking if she wanted blueberries in her pancakes. 
The longer they went without mentioning the elephant in the room the easier it became for her to slouch a bit in her seat, appreciating each bite of the breakfast that had been offered to her. Nineteen years of being in rooms out of necessity rather than desire had made it difficult to trust other’s interest in her well-being.
 Feeling her shoulders drop in relief left her feeling something like a stray cat brought in to shelter from the storm; glad to accept Mrs Seresin’s kindness, but uneasy all the same. She had grown used to being weary of tenderness and generosity; always waiting to hear the conditions of the beneficence. 
Sipping her coffee, Mrs Seresin smiled over the lip of the mug. “If you want to stay a little longer, you could help me go through some of Jake’s old clothes. Some of them would probably fit Jackson now”. Her words reached like an olive branch across the table, and for a moment she understood that perhaps the older woman wasn’t just benevolent for the sake of it, not on this day at least. With her only living child out of the house she had been lonely in her need to mother someone, and glad just for the company as unorthodox as the circumstances may have been. She’d been glad to learn that some glint of selfishness lingered in everyone, and in a strange turn, it only made her trust the woman more. 
She hadn't expected a pile of folded sweatshirts to make her cry, and yet in a blink of an eye, she found herself sobbing. A flicker of hurt rushed through her with the realization that some things will always matter more to her than they do to anyone else. Just another piece of clothing to Jake, another part of her task for the day to his mother. But she was holding the world in her hands. 
She remembers that sweatshirt well, red and worn out by time, always just a bit too tight in the shoulders, the seams stretching at the sleeves. He was wearing it the night he picked her up from her first date.
Bobby Dunbar had been two years older than her, and had no idea of the meaning of the word ‘no'. She left him alone in the movie theatre after he'd tried to creep a hand up her skirt for the second time. With a quick call from the closest payphone, Jake was on his way to pick her up without questions. 
Together, they drove out of town and past their homes the sun dipping down below the seemingly endless horizon. Overhead the stars had begun to make themselves appreciable against the backdrop of the darkening sky. Parked, they lay in the bed of the truck looking up at the sky ahead. He took care to trace the constellations for her, naming them as he went. In the meantime, her fingertips copied the shapes with invisible lines across his chest. The well-loved red sweatshirt was soft beneath her cheek. 
He kissed her for the first time that night. Not her first kiss, but the first one that mattered. Jake always had this ability to make her world stop spinning, even if just for a moment. Sitting on the edge of his bed sobbing into the sweater she wanted nothing more than to be near him, to hear him tell her everything was going to work out for them in the end.
“I got my scholarship,” she told Mrs. Seresin, “I'll start in the fall, and I'll be able to live on campus”. 
“That's amazing news sweetheart,” her affirmation, so much like her son’s. 
“It's a lot farther for Jake to drive. I won't be here to check on Jackson and Olivia. My mo--”
“They'll be alright. It's high time you live your dream, honey”. 
At nineteen years old, she struggled to understand that sometimes the beginning feels like the end. A pit growing in her stomach, she clutched the bags of hand-me-down clothes as she headed home. The sky above was dotted with the same stars Jake had taught her about years ago, she stood still for a moment trying to remember the feel of his lips, or the comfort of his hand in hers, but only felt the cool evening breeze.
Twenty-one felt like wearing a costume. Joining the Navy. Getting good grades. Helping on the farm whenever he had an ounce of free time. Being a good son, being a good boyfriend. He was playing dress-up in a life that wasn’t built for him, and yet he found himself so desperate to play the part. 
The first few months away had been excruciating. Most nights he chugged Pepto-Bismol before going to bed, hoping that the tearing feeling in his chest was just heartburn, and not just his soul stretching across four states. It had been the longest they’d ever been separated; smashing the previous record of the one week he spent with his aunt and uncle when he was ten. 
He won’t blame her for the divide that grew between them, but he knows that the ache in his chest cracked into a chasm sometime after she moved onto her college campus. 
The commute to see her was longer, his back was stiff, and his eyes were tired after driving hours, and crisscrossing state lines. The time they spent together was almost exclusively spent sleeping or skipping around their desperate need to return to what they once were, all while refusing to give up their dreams.
 Two years into her degree he was exhausted. On base, his bed was assembled for practicality, not for comfort. Hard, uneven mattress and nights spent cold beneath the covers without the warmth of her body tucked against him. His bunkmates all snored, and the hustle and bustle of those still working during his allotted sleeping hours kept his mind alert even as his body dosed. In her dorm room, her duvet was plush and cozy, her pillows smelt like her shampoo, and she snuggled as close to him as physically possible on the nights he managed to make it to her. But her roommate was nosy and made it almost impossible for him to love on his girlfriend. Unable to touch her as freely as he yearned to-- and even worse, unable to speak as freely as he needed to, his feelings threatened to choke him. Lost without the level of communication that had become their life preserver for years, he felt as though he was drowning. 
At twenty one he asked his father for his grandmother’s engagement ring. A family heirloom he’d always known he’d propose with one day. He would make good on the promises he made. They would get married and he’d buy them a house-- he had already managed to save quite a bit. It was not a lack of love that broke them, but perhaps an excess of it. A shared desperation to do more, and be better; both of them hell-bent on clawing their way out of the ruts they’d found themselves stuck in. And with so much to prove it had been impossible to climb without letting go of each other. 
He was down on one knee when his heart was ripped from his chest. For a moment he felt it was impossible to breathe. His mind was silent, too stunned to think and too confused to speak. She was still shaking her head when he finally found the strength to look up at her again. “No,” she said. “I thought--”
“I’m sorry-- I can’t. I won’t. It’s not fair,” she told him. Certainly not fair, he thought desperate to understand. But when had life ever been fair? “I can’t,” she repeated. He watched, hopeless, as she shrunk in on herself. The bright, brilliant girl he’d spent more than half his life loving shied away from him, hiding behind a shame he couldn’t find a source for.
As he slowly made his way back to his feet, with the ring box shoved back into his coat pocket, she spoke again. “I think it would be better if we spent some time apart”. That he had not been expecting, and the words nearly had him keeling over; a brutal blow that knocked the air from his lungs. He found himself helpless, unable to do anything but nod. All his fight sat on the tip of his tongue, pinched between his teeth, betrayed by his pain, and misunderstanding. I’m sorry, he wanted to say. For anything. For everything. But the words never came out. “I’m sorry,” she wept as she ushered him out of her dorm room. 
With one hand, and no force he held the door frame for a moment, one last longing look at the girl he knew he’d love forever. “One day we’ll be enough for each other again”. He hoped that was true. 
She carries a spark of regret in her chest, it grows when she thinks of him, and it shrinks when she remembers she freed him too. She thinks now that her denial of Jake Seresin may have been hasty. Fifteen years older, and with more perspective than she had at twenty-one, she thinks their lives could have been different if she had been brave enough to talk things out. 
Her fear of stagnation had been her only motivation for so much of her life. His proposal had been on the surface a desperate attempt to cling to a bond they had begun to outgrow. And while his intentions at their core had been pure, getting married would not have saved their relationship. She had only begun to live for herself, and he still didn’t understand that his life was his own. Their marriage would have only served as a new way to masquerade and play pretend; years of running away from the fears that kept them both up at night. He would have grown to resent her inability to live without planning, and she would have hated his unintended absenteeism. Being married would not have kept his side of the bed warm, nor would it have given him any new ability to quell her anxieties. 
She still thinks of him often. From her apartment on a clear day her view of the sky seems to span for miles and miles. She pictures him up there, carving through the clouds with the dedication and precision she’s always known he’d be capable of. She imagines him happy, living his dream. She hopes he’s proud of himself, and she prays that he knows that she’s proud of him too. 
Sometimes, she lets herself wonder if he ever settled down; offered his grandmother’s ring and his heart on his sleeve to some other lucky girl. She’s tried to move on herself a few times, but never made it close to feeling like she was in love. The last guy had been a year ago now, he was nice enough, handsome, had a good job, and a good sense of humour. On paper he was flawless. He’d take her out for dinner, and walk her to her door. Sometimes he spent the night. He bought her flowers, and held her hand. But on one too many occasions she felt inexplicably lonely sitting next to him. He complained that she wasn’t any fun. She struggled to explain the sense of responsibility she’d never been able to shake. She asked him about his dreams. He never seemed to have any. 
And so the hint of any spark that had been there fizzled away into nothing. 
She tells herself she’s happier on her own and decides to keep moving forward, ignoring the cracking of her heart. She uncorks a bottle of wine, dancing alone in her kitchen, looking out at the vast evening sky and the setting sun. As much as she enjoys the view from her rental, she’s been in California long enough that it might be worth buying into the housing market. Nothing fancy, but something she can truly call her own. She’s been making good money for a while now, and her siblings have made it through college themselves. Jackson moved to New York with his sights set on being an architect. Olivia moved to Austin and became a nurse. Her mother hasn’t bothered to call in ages. Her shoulders relax without the added pressure of caring for others. For the first time in a very long time, her mind is quiet--it’s finally time to write the last chapters in her own story and stop running. 
He keeps an old photograph of her in the inside of his flight suit, right over his heart. He’s living his dream, and he won’t allow himself to forget that she’s the reason why. Driving home from base at night he passes houses much larger than the bungalow he’s been renting. He wonders where she went after she graduated, and what kind of job she has now. 
He chooses to picture her happy even at the expense of his feelings; a devoted husband coming to wrap his arms around her while she stirs a pot on the stove. A scintilla of guilt makes itself known as he grows somewhat jealous of this life he's envisioned for her. The truth is that he knows she was right for turning him down. They were too young, too naive, and too frightened. Breaking up with him may have been the first time he had seen her truly put herself first, and in hindsight, he’s glad she did. He knows he’d never have been able to live with himself if he had been what stood in the way of her making her dreams come true. It took him a while to understand the gift she had given him when she sent him away. The freedom to be the man he wanted to be, and not the man anyone else needed him to be. 
He’d fucked it up more than once along the way. At work, he had become too brash, too cocky, too full of himself. He put his walls up and wore the self-assured mask he thought people wanted to see. Unwavering confidence, and determination. His return to Top Gun had been a wake-up call. He’d been forced to adapt, to let his guard down and learn how to let people in again. And for the first time since he was a teenager he appreciated the difference between being valued and being important. The realization had come with a sense of belonging and camaraderie that he hadn’t expected but couldn't afford to forget.
In his personal life, he had failed time and time again to form long-term bonds. One-night stands didn’t hurt, but the idea of waking up next to someone left him nauseous. But the truth is he yearns for that connection. He wants to be seen. He wants to be understood. He stopped going home to visit his parents two years ago, the weight of self-placed expectation chewed through him and left him hollow; guilt filled its place. 
Last week he stood back straight, with his heart full of pride as he accepted his promotion. The new rank came with a new role, and a new more permanent position. He'd be stationed in San Diego for at least five more years. He called his mother. He booked a flight home for his next break. He started browsing real estate pages. It’s time to stop running. 
She’s only made it to a couple of open houses so far but she hasn’t been able to find anything she likes yet. Most of the houses she’s seen are out of her price range. Others have been too modern, some too outdated. 
She remembers the Seresin’s kitchen, the buttery yellow walls and linoleum tiles. Their house wasn’t flashy, nor had it been renovated anytime in 1980, but it was cozy. She can remember the smell of Mrs. Seresin’s baking. In her mind's eye, she recalls the feel of the cabinet doors that Mr. Seresin had built himself when they moved in, and his wife’s initials carved into the bottom corner of the cupboard over the sink. In every way possible they had made that ordinary farmhouse a home, and she wants the same for herself now. Like everything in her life, she decided her house has to be perfect. She’ll know it when she sees it. 
The house is a two-story craftsman, built circa 1935. The siding is a garish kind of coral colour, faded by the sun, and the trims stand out in a soft vanilla colour, chipped at the edges. She’s driving home from work when she sees the sign for the open house standing proudly on the front lawn. Without a thought she pulls over, throwing the car into park. Inside, it smells like freshly baked cookies-- a real estate trick she’s learned over the last few weeks. It’s easy to imagine a house is your own when it smells so inviting. She's come to expect this, and won't let it blind her. 
Her heels click across the hardwood floor, the sound echoing through the empty house. She moves past the stairs into the surprisingly spacious living room. A large window looks out onto the quiet cul-de-sac, and the room sits bathed in the soft glow of the street lights outside. She imagines the room furnished, with soft drapery, a plush sofa, tv hung above the fireplace, and she can imagine herself unwinding here. The dining room is a fair size, and the kitchen has a sliding door that opens up to the backyard. The cabinets are brand new, and the owners have spent time renovating while staying true to the charm of the house. On the countertop, she picks up the real estate agent’s pamphlets about the home, amenities and nearby schools are listed, and she wonders if she might have the chance to raise a family here. 
Overhead the sound of steady footsteps, and a pair of heels make their way down the hall and then the stairs. “If you decide to put in an offer, do not hesitate to call, in this market the early bird gets the worm,” a woman speaks. “I appreciate it, thank you,” a man replies in a low southern drawl, “do you mind if I take a look at the backyard before I head out?” “Not at all! Take your time, I’ll be out front just getting my signs if you need anything else”. 
He’s barely stepped into the kitchen when he hears his name. “Jake?” a familiar voice wonders, her arms coming immediately to wrap around him. She hits his chest with a thud, but it does move him an inch. Her name is sighed into her hairline as he holds her close. “You made it-- all the way to California,” He smiles, pulling back to get a good look at her. She’s as gorgeous as he remembers, if not more so. Her features have sharpened over time, and he thinks her hair might be darker now, but she’s glowing. Her grin is wide and her shoulders relaxed as she reaches to trace his name and rank on his uniform. “You’re flying, Jake,” she all but whispers. He nods, his eyes softening as his hand comes to rest over hers, his heart racing beneath her palm. “Turns out I’m pretty good at it,” he jokes, and is rewarded with his favourite laugh. 
His free hand lowers to rest on her hip and she steps closer, familiarity allows them to skip out on formality. He’s missed this; a shared closeness loud enough for them to speak without saying anything. He knows her like he knows the back of his own hand, and even with years passed between them, he’s able to fill in the gaps. Her clothes are well made, and well fitted. Office wear. Her shoes leave her standing tall, reminding him of senior prom and the time they spent slow dancing. He knows what she’s overcome, and he’s never had any doubt about where she would end up. Clearly successful, and if the way her smile meets her eyes is any indicator, she’s happy too. 
In all honesty, she’s not sure who leans in first, but she knows she’s kissing Jake Seresin for the first time in fifteen years. He kisses with hesitation at first but allows himself to give in to a passion grown with time. He’s more skilled than he was the first time they kissed, and she tries her best not to flush with jealousy. His cropped hair is soft where her hand reaches up to hold at the back of his head willing him closer. 
One step at a time he backs her across the room until her back meets the wall. With fingers gripping the collar of his shirt she begs him to crowd her space. She swears he’s taller now. His shoulders are broader, his arms far more defined. He’s always been handsome but the boyish charm has been replaced by something far more deadly, and she’s convinced she’d die happy if it was him stealing her breath away. 
She melts beneath him. His hand moves across her hip, down to feel the round of her ass, before his grip tightens at the flesh of her thigh, warm in her cute little dress slacks. Neither of them bothers to suppress the moans or sighs that leave them when begins to kiss down his neck. His knee slots between her legs, thudding when it makes contact with the wall, startling them both. 
“Careful. You break it you buy it, Jake”.
“I think homeownership will be good for me,” he grins catching his breath. 
“Not if I buy it first,” she quips, catching her bottom lip between her teeth as she blinks up at him. He groans, his knees weak as her smile grows. “Let’s talk it out over dinner,” He manages his counteroffer. 
***
Their house smells like chocolate chip cookies, made from the recipe Jake’s mother passed down. The window in the master bedroom offers a gorgeous view of the San Diego sky. On weekends, she wakes up to the smell of coffee brewing, and Jake sliding back into bed, his hands greedy as he pulls her from her sleep with warm kisses and the promise of breakfast if they manage to make it down the stairs. 
The floorboard creaks when he comes home at night, the weight of his day shed at the door. He greets her as if he's been gone for months even when it’s only been a few hours. And he holds as if he’ll never see her again when he returns from a deployment. 
The gentle breeze that blows through the open windows of their little home carries away their lingering anxieties, and they allow themselves to soften in each other’s presence. 
They lay in the grass in their backyard, paint smeared across their clothes, brows sweaty from a hard day's work. The siding is now a fresh, pale green, the trims glow in a soft white. Above them, the stars shine. The same stars they watched as children, and loved as teens. He watches her, enamoured, as she points to the North Star tracing her way around the night sky, recalling the stories he told her about each constellation. He wonders how many lifetimes are painted in the sky above them, how many lovers have admired the stars as they have. 
She pulls him from his thoughts, rolling to settle with her knees at either side of his hips, her left hand resting on his heart. He looks at her as if he’s in awe of her, his wedding band cold on her back as his hand slides underneath her shirt. Leaning down to kiss him she’s certain this is the life she’s always been running towards. 
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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months ago
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There’s no such thing as “shareholder supremacy”
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On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!
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Here's a cheap trick: claim that your opponents' goals are so squishy and qualitative that no one will ever be able to say whether they've been succeeded or failed, and then declare that your goals can be evaluated using crisp, objective criteria.
This is the whole project of "economism," the idea that politics, with its emphasis on "fairness" and other intangibles, should be replaced with a mathematical form of economics, where every policy question can be reduced to an equation…and then "solved":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/28/imagine-a-horse/#perfectly-spherical-cows-of-uniform-density-on-a-frictionless-plane
Before the rise of economism, it was common to speak of its subjects as "political economy" or even "moral philosophy" (Adam Smith, the godfather of capitalism, considered himself a "moral philosopher"). "Political economy" implicitly recognizes that every policy has squishy, subjective, qualitative dimensions that don't readily boil down to math.
For example, if you're asking about whether people should have the "freedom" to enter into contracts, it might be useful to ask yourself how desperate your "free" subject might be, and whether the entity on the other side of that contract is very powerful. Otherwise you'll get "free contracts" like "I'll sell you my kidneys if you promise to evacuate my kid from the path of this wildfire."
The problem is that power is hard to represent faithfully in quantitative models. This may seem like a good reason to you to be skeptical of modeling, but for economism, it's a reason to pretend that the qualitative doesn't exist. The method is to incinerate those qualitative factors to produce a dubious quantitative residue and do math on that:
https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/
Hence the famous Ely Devons quote: "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’"
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse
The neoliberal revolution was a triumph for economism. Neoliberal theorists like Milton Friedman replaced "political economy" with "law and economics," the idea that we should turn every one of our complicated, nuanced, contingent qualitative goals into a crispy defined "objective" criteria. Friedman and his merry band of Chicago School economists replaced traditional antitrust (which sought to curtail the corrupting power of large corporations) with a theory called "consumer welfare" that used mathematics to decide which monopolies were "efficient" and therefore good (spoiler: monopolists who paid Friedman's pals to do this mathematical analysis always turned out to be running "efficient" monopolies):
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/
One of Friedman's signal achievements was the theory of "shareholder supremacy." In 1970, the New York Times published Friedman's editorial "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits":
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html
In it, Friedman argued that corporate managers had exactly one job: to increase profits for shareholders. All other considerations – improving the community, making workers' lives better, donating to worthy causes or sponsoring a little league team – were out of bounds. Managers who wanted to improve the world should fund their causes out of their paychecks, not the corporate treasury.
Friedman cloaked his hymn to sociopathic greed in the mantle of objectivism. For capitalism to work, corporations have to solve the "principal-agent" problem, the notoriously thorny dilemma created when one person (the principal) asks another person (the agent) to act on their behalf, given the fact that the agent might find a way to line their own pockets at the principal's expense (for example, a restaurant server might get a bigger tip by offering to discount diners' meals).
Any company that is owned by stockholders and managed by a CEO and other top brass has a huge principal-agent problem, and yet, the limited liability, joint-stock company had produced untold riches, and was considered the ideal organization for "capital formation" by Friedman et al. In true economismist form, Friedman treated all the qualitative questions about the duty of a company as noise and edited them out of the equation, leaving behind a single, elegant formulation: "a manager is doing their job if they are trying to make as much money as possible for their shareholders."
Friedman's formulation was a hit. The business community ran wild with it. Investors mistook an editorial in the New York Times for an SEC rulemaking and sued corporate managers on the theory that they had a "fiduciary duty" to "maximize shareholder value" – and what's more, the courts bought it. Slowly and piecemeal at first, but bit by bit, the idea that rapacious greed was a legal obligation turned into an edifice of legal precedent. Business schools taught it, movies were made about it, and even critics absorbed the message, insisting that we needed to "repeal the law" that said that corporations had to elevate profit over all other consideration (not realizing that no such law existed).
It's easy to see why shareholder supremacy was so attractive for investors and their C-suite Renfields: it created a kind of moral crumple-zone. Whenever people got angry at you for being a greedy asshole, you could shrug and say, "My hands are tied: the law requires me to run the business this way – if you don't believe me, just ask my critics, who insist that we must get rid of this law!"
In a long feature for The American Prospect, Adam M Lowenstein tells the story of how shareholder supremacy eventually came into such wide disrepute that the business lobby felt that it had to do something about it:
https://prospect.org/power/2024-09-17-ponzi-scheme-of-promises/
It starts in 2018, when Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett decried the short-term, quarterly thinking in corporate management as bad for business's long-term health. When Washington Post columnist Steve Pearlstein wrote a column agreeing with them and arguing that even moreso, businesses should think about equities other than shareholder returns, Jamie Dimon lost his shit and called Pearlstein to call it "the stupidest fucking column I’ve ever read":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/07/will-ending-quarterly-earnings-guidance-free-ceos-to-think-long-term/
But the dam had broken. In the months and years that followed, the Business Roundtable would adopt a series of statements that repudiated shareholder supremacy, though of course they didn't admit it. Rather, they insisted that they were clarifying that they'd always thought that sometimes not being a greedy asshole could be good for business, too. Though these statements were nonbinding, and though the CEOs who signed them did so in their personal capacity and not on behalf of their companies, capitalism's most rabid stans treated this as an existential crisis.
Lowenstein identifies this as the forerunner to today's panic over "woke corporations" and "DEI," and – just as with "woke capitalism" – the whole thing amounted to a a PR exercise. Lowenstein links to several studies that found that the CEOs who signed onto statements endorsing "stakeholder capitalism" were "more likely to lay off employees during COVID-19, were less inclined to contribute to pandemic relief efforts, had 'higher rates of environmental and labor-related compliance violations,”' emitted more carbon into the atmosphere, and spent more money on dividends and buybacks."
One researcher concluded that "signing this statement had zero positive effect":
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/companies-stand-solidarity-are-licensing-themselves-discriminate/614947
So shareholder supremacy isn't a legal obligation, and statements repudiating shareholder supremacy don't make companies act any better.
But there's an even more fundamental flaw in the argument for the shareholder supremacy rule: it's impossible to know if the rule has been broken.
The shareholder supremacy rule is an unfalsifiable proposition. A CEO can cut wages and lay off workers and claim that it's good for profits because the retained earnings can be paid as a dividend. A CEO can raise wages and hire more people and claim it's good for profits because it will stop important employees from defecting and attract the talent needed to win market share and spin up new products.
A CEO can spend less on marketing and claim it's a cost-savings. A CEO can spend more on marketing and claim it's an investment. A CEO can eliminate products and call it a savings. A CEO can add products and claim they're expansions into new segments. A CEO can settle a lawsuit and claim they're saving money on court fees. A CEO can fight a lawsuit through to the final appeal and claim that they're doing it to scare vexatious litigants away by demonstrating their mettle.
CEOs can use cheaper, inferior materials and claim it's a savings. They can use premium materials and claim it's a competitive advantage that will produce new profits. Everything a company does can be colorably claimed as an attempt to save or make money, from sponsoring the local little league softball team to treating effluent to handing ownership of corporate landholdings to perpetual trusts that designate them as wildlife sanctuaries.
Bribes, campaign contributions, onshoring, offshoring, criminal conspiracies and conference sponsorships – there's a business case for all of these being in line with shareholder supremacy.
Take Boeing: when the company smashed its unions and relocated key production to scab plants in red states, when it forced out whistleblowers and senior engineers who cared about quality, when it outsourced design and production to shops around the world, it realized a savings. Today, between strikes, fines, lawsuits, and a mountain of self-inflicted reputational harm, the company is on the brink of ruin. Was Boeing good to its shareholders? Well, sure – the shareholders who cashed out before all the shit hit the fan made out well. Shareholders with a buy-and-hold posture (like the index funds that can't sell their Boeing holdings so long as the company is in the S&P500) got screwed.
Right wing economists criticize the left for caring too much about "how big a slice of the pie they're getting" rather than focusing on "growing the pie." But that's exactly what Boeing management did – while claiming to be slaves to Friedman's shareholder supremacy. They focused on getting a bigger slice of the pie, screwing their workers, suppliers and customers in the process, and, in so doing, they made the pie so much smaller that it's in danger of disappearing altogether.
Here's the principal-agent problem in action: Boeing management earned bonuses by engaging in corporate autophagia, devouring the company from within. Now, long-term shareholders are paying the price. Far from solving the principal-agent problem with a clean, bright-line rule about how managers should behave, shareholder supremacy is a charter for doing whatever the fuck a CEO feels like doing. It's the squishiest rule imaginable: if someone calls you cruel, you can blame the rule and say you had no choice. If someone calls you feckless, you can blame the rule and say you had no choice. It's an excuse for every season.
The idea that you can reduce complex political questions – like whether workers should get a raise or whether shareholders should get a dividend – to a mathematical rule is a cheap sleight of hand. The trick is an obvious one: the stuff I want to do is empirically justified, while the things you want are based in impossible-to-pin-down appeals to emotion and its handmaiden, ethics. Facts don't care about your feelings, man.
But it's feelings all the way down. Milton Friedman's idol-worshiping cult of shareholder supremacy was never about empiricism and objectivity. It's merely a gimmick to make greed seem scientifically optimal.
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The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/#figleaves-not-rubrics/a>
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thefreakandthehair · 8 months ago
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I just wanna see that smile
wc: 1.1k | tags: canon-compliant injury/recovery, hospital setting, getting together, (brief and inferred mutual) pining, first kiss
a/n: happy (belated) birthday to my pal, @firefly-party! kei drew this piece last year and it was one of the first artworks we talked about when we became friends. this series has continued to live in my brain ever since, so I decided to write a little something in the universe!
Eddie woke up on March 26th, 1986 and Steve’s waited patiently for this moment ever since. 
Well, patient is a misnomer— he’d waited quietly to anyone not named Robin or Dustin. Robin, because she knows him too well and there’s no point in trying to hide anything from her and Dustin, because he’d apparently grown up overnight and pieced together that Steve sitting at Eddie’s bedside and holding his fucking hand every time he waltzed into the room meant something. 
Or maybe it was when Steve gave Eddie all of his rings back, sliding them carefully onto his shaking fingers with a comforting smile. 
Or maybe when Eddie sat up unassisted for the first time and Steve nearly hit the ceiling, bracing him in a panic as if all of his stitches and staples would burst with the tiny movement he’d been working toward in physical therapy. 
Hell, maybe it was Steve taking over some of Eddie’s care for himself, washing his hair and braiding it because the staff at Hawkins Memorial are doing nothing more than the bare minimum to make sure they don’t get sued, or even more frightening, reamed out by the new duo of Hopper and Wayne again. Either way, his hair was making Steve’s own scalp itchy. 
Dustin never tells Steve what it was exactly that tipped him off but whatever it was, it’s enough for Dustin to give Steve the floor when Eddie’s getting ready to discharge back home. And that’s how, exactly two months later to the day from Eddie waking up, Steve enters Eddie’s otherwise empty room armed with a special treat in the form of milkshakes to find Eddie pouring over an unfortunately familiar stack of papers. 
“NDA?” Steve asks, nodding at the papers in Eddie’s lap. He’s upright, fully dressed in the black sweatpants Jeff brought by and a cut off Metallica tee shirt, bandages around his stomach and neck. 
Eddie mutters as he reads under his breath, eyes flitting across the page. 
“How the fuck do they expect any of us common folk to understand a fucking word of this? Hereby? Wherein? Hitherto? What fucking year did I wake up in, man?”
“Yeah, I think the whole point is that you don’t read what you’re signing but I’ll let you in on a little secret.” Steve huffs a small laugh through his nose as he steps carefully around Eddie’s crutches. “You may as well just sign it because if you don’t, they’ll forge it anyway. Now finish signing your life rights away so you can have this milkshake with me.” 
Eddie perks up, looking away from the mess of papers and smiling up at Steve with a smile so genuine, it punches the air out of his lungs. He keeps looking at him like this, like Steve’s a breath of fresh air, like he's someone Eddie wants to have around. 
Steve isn’t sure what to do with that look yet, but he’s sure glad it’s there. 
“Celebration milkshakes? Is this a freedom gift?” Eddie signs the NDA quickly and sets the pen down on the bed next to him. 
“It sure is. Figured this could make up for all those lame popsicles from the cafeteria.” 
The mattress creaks as Steve sits down on the edge, just to the side of the railing, and hands Eddie the strawberry treat. Their fingers graze, Steve’s chilled and Eddie’s warm. His hand is still a little shaky, trembling as he takes hold of the cup, but they’re warm and warm means alive. 
Eddie’s hand can tremble for the rest of his goddamn life so long as it’s always warm. 
They each take a sip, smooth ice cream slurping up their straws, and after a moment, Eddie sighs.
“Is it weird that I’m actually sort of worried about leaving?” 
Steve’s eyebrows knit together, looking down at Eddie’s rings glinting beneath the offensive fluorescent lights above them.
“What are you worried about?”
“Uh, well, I did almost die. And the town still wishes I did. It’s a lot easier to make those dreams a reality outside of these walls, y’know? And I’m uh…” Steve watches as Eddie takes a breath and Steve suddenly misses the early days when Eddie was connected to the heart rate monitor. 
“You’re…?” Steve presses, sipping his milkshake again to appear casual. 
“I see you all the time here. Guess I just don’t want that to change.” 
Steve’s heart skips a beat, clattering in his chest and pounding at his ribs, desperately trying to crack him right open and run to the man who’s claimed it. Eddie watches him with cautious eyes, opens his mouth to say something else but Steve cuts him off before he can take it back. 
“Why do you think that’d change? Forest Hills is a lot closer than this shithole, and you won’t be kept under lock and key. And as for the first thing, well, Wayne and Nancy have a lot in common and I have a bat loaded up with nails in the trunk of my car.” Steve rests his free hand on Eddie’s knee. “No one's gonna fuck with you. Don’t worry about that.” 
“You sound a little cocky there, Stevie.” Eddie lifts one eyebrow, glancing from Steve’s hand up to his eyes. “Ready to fight for my honor or something?”
“Yep.” 
He hadn’t brought the milkshakes intending to use them as props, but he’s glad he has something to do to fill the space as Eddie watches him with questioning eyes. As he slurps through the straw, grating noise still preferable over the awkward silence, Eddie’s pinched expression turns softer, realization dawning between the stark white walls of the hospital and the pink ice cream in both of their hands. 
“You’re serious.” Eddie says. 
“Took you that long to figure that out?” Steve teases. 
“I’ve been a little busy with learning how to breathe and walk again. Y’know, just little things.” Eddie rolls his eyes with that same fond smile, free hand lacing its fingers through Steve’s. “So what you’re saying is that I’ll see you just as much outside of this prison as I have inside of it?” 
Steve shrugs. “Probably even more, honestly. There are no visiting hours at Wayne’s, and it’s not like I have a job to rush off to these days. You’re stuck with me, Ed. At least for as long as you want me around.” 
Eddie snorts, unceremoniously scoffing in Steve’s face as if in disbelief.
“Don’t make promises like that. What happens when I never want you to leave?” 
The air shifts, growing heavier as they find themselves leaning closer, two satellites orbiting one another by nothing but gravitational pull. 
Steve’s not sure who actually closes the gap, but he finds himself with his lips pressed against Eddie’s— sweet, chilled, a little chapped but smiling against his. Months of waiting, of hoping that he’d get this opportunity, come to a deafening crescendo and it takes all of his discipline to not push. Instead, they pull apart and Steve smiles, tucking loose hair behind Eddie’s ear. 
“That’s easy. I’d just never leave.”
fun fact: kei, I wrote your birthday down in my calendar as the 28th for some reason, a solid ten days late, so know that this was planned from the get-go but was just a tad bit late.
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nicoscheer · 6 months ago
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Milex quotes (ranging from unhinged to batshit crazy while taking a detour through wtf land)
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- first impressions: “What is this puny spotty kid with his little brown bag ?” (Miles about Alex) “Who’s that jester who makes me laugh so hard as soon as he opens his mouth ?” (Alex about Miles). Via Les Inrocks arcticle
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- “I tell him I love him all the time,” via NME (Miles)
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- “I love you because you’ve got a very strong pain threshold.” Via NME (Miles)
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- since when are you both that close ? “You want to know if we’re going to get married ? If we have sex like real men, between the buttocks ?” Via Les Inrocks article
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- “For kids from the North, it's hard to say but we never stop telling each other that we love each other. Alex knows I'll always be there for him. (How do our girlfriends deal with that? Are they jealous? Maybe we should ask them).” (Miles) Via Les Inrocks article
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- “To me, The Last Shadow Puppets is not even a band. It’s more like a way-out of the notion itself of ‘band’. It’s a space of freedom. There is no embarrassment, no taboo, no limits between us. It's a real trade, we reroute each other's ideas. In the end, it's impossible to quantify the contribution of the two of us. Our complementarity sometimes freaks me out.” (Alex) via Les Inrocks article
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- MK: Totally, to me it’s even the best vocal take of his entire career! (He cuddles him.) AT: Thank you, my dear. (Note: here it says “mon lapin”, which can mean “my dear” but literally translates to “my bunny”) via MyRock Magazine
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- AT: Ah yeah, that’s how it is with my Miles! I start a joke and he’ll finish it! (he pounces on Miles and catches him in an armlock on the settee, before giving his crotch a light slap and shouting “Here comes the nuts!”) You wanna see how close we are as friends, Miles and I? Here, look, a spectacle exclusively for you! (At this point, we move up another notch in this madness: Alex swoops for a bowl of cashew nuts and starts to frenetically toss them at Miles, who tries to catch them with his mouth… after a fashion. Via MyRock Magazine
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- “Alex is so dedicated to song writing, it’s inspiring to be around. He’s a beautiful soul and I’m honoured to witness him and the band grow. His left ears going to be burning when he hears this…” (Miles) via GQ magazine October 2013
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- “Alex Turner is a genius, isn’t he? He’s a genius fish.” (Miles) via Knack Focus
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Via Kultura Onet
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- “Sometimes we have Skype-sex, or we wank off on FaceTime!” (Miles) via Index
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- “We've been through a lot together. It's like, he's one of those friends, those few best friends you have in life. As you grow older, your circle tends to shrink, but he's remained one of my closest pals. It's almost like a bit of yin and yang between us.” (Miles) via Numéro
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- Alex turns to Miles and propositions him: “Your place or mine, then?” There’s no-one expect us and the road-crew there to see it, but it feels like a special moment nonetheless. Via NME
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- “I think we can bring the best out in each other, you know? He certainly does that with me.” (Miles) Via Eska Rock
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- “Why, yes, bromances are for sharing your dreams. What a wonderful sentiment.” (Miles) via Interview Magazine
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- AT: Miles is, without a doubt, Wolverine. Wolverine is a style icon to him. I see similarities. Miles always follows his instinct. And he’s capable of fixing things that are broken, whether it’s material or emotional damage, in no time. MK: Alex often reminds me of Gambit. He can change something insignificant into something explosive. He’s very aware of everything that happens around him, something that balances him out. And he can read my mind. Via OOR Magazine 2016
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- “We understand each other and keep each other going. We both have strange ideas and we need the presence of the other to make sense of them.” (Miles) Via OOR Magazine 2016
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- “Sometimes it can be a pressure being the fella in the band who writes the songs. Getting together with Miles I've got someone to bounce ideas off and that is something new for me. Also, it gives me somewhere to hide because he's up there singing with me. In the Arctic Monkeys, there's nowhere for me to hide.” (Alex) via Culture
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- “My best mate. I love him, man. I like the way he pushes himself and keeps that thing of, whatever's going on around you, you're just a lad who loves playing music and writing tunes. He's a prime example of someone who's big but doesn't take anything for granted.” (Miles)
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- “I decipher his thoughts and organise them. When Miles bursts, the idea comes flying. Someone who knows him well enough might be able to filter out the good ideas. But usually, he only has good ideas and it’s up to me to catch everything. That’s my job within this duo. That process releases all kinds of stuff within me, causing me to go into certain directions I would never take my own.” (Alex)
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- “I thought it were going to be like them finding a tape where you’d had an affair,” he grins. “Like your bird had found an affair tape and was watching you having sex with another bird… but it weren’t like… an affair tape… erm, not that I’ve ever made an affair tape.” Alex Turner about the Monkeys’ reaction to The Last Shadow Puppets’ album via NME
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- “And also working with Miles, it comes very much from my heart. You know, with such a close friendship we have. Wanting to work together, it brings something else. I haven’t done too much with other people… he’s kind of the only one.” (Alex) via Hot Press
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- MK: And he can read my mind. AT: But you can read mine, too. MK: I knew you were gonna say that. AT: And I knew you were gonna say that. via OOR Magazine 2016
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- “Even if we aren't writing half a word is enough. We can finish each other's sentences sometimes and if we focus on it, we can take it to a much deeper level. That's pretty unique. My thinking process is pretty abstract and a lot of people don't know what to do with that. Alex understands me like no other.” (Miles) via OOR Magazine 2016
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- you’re living in Los Angeles too now, miles? “…because Alex lives there…” (Miles) via Humo
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- “He has written a lot of songs – a lyrical wonder, this boy!” (Miles) via Humo
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- The pair live, Turner says, “seven minutes away from each other”. Ask them what a typical night out entails, and they look at each other, then proceed to not be very forthcoming, though Turner will eventually concede that “some of what happens in those situations is disclosed, through the veil of song, on the record. There’s references.” Via Shortlist
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- “Starin’ out the balcony at the moon, wonderin’ where is he, what is he doin’ now, who’s he kissin’” (Alex) via Sidewalk Hustle
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- “… but this thing we had together… I know that I was the new kid and he was a sort of superstar, but even from day one, it was amazing. To an outsider, it wouldn’t look equal, but it was always so equal. He made me feel like that, just because it was.” (Miles)
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- “We take it in turns playing the straight man.” (Alex) via Shortlist
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- “Quite cute ! Quite and quite camp, you mean ?” (Miles about their relationship) via NME
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- On what it’s like to work with Kane again, Turner said: “It’s like John Lennon meets�� Paul [McCartney].” Via NME
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- Miles says their relationship was established “on laughter and general stupidness” via the Telegraph
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- Interviewer: Alex, what does Miles bring out in you that…. Alex: A woman can’t bring out in me?
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- Miles and Alex and their endearments and nicknames for each other :
“We always talk about it, me and the boy, y'know?” (one of the cutest things Miles has called Alex is 'the boy' it's so beautiful bc someone asked him on Twitter what he was up to and he just said he was 'going out with the boy'. which boy? it didn't need saying. everyone knows who The Boy in Miles' life is.)
"He's got the face for it...the little diamond."Miles to Alex
"The Little Prince" Miles to Alex x
“Shavambacu” Miles to Alex at 4:01
“You naughty turtle” Alex to Miles- Tlsp @ Paradiso, Amsterdam 2016 during the element of surprise
“Baby” Miles to Alex multiple times
“You scampi fry” Miles to Alex via the guardian
“The Wirral squirrel/wirral riddler” Alex to Miles via absolute radio 2011 at around 10:50
“All aboard the Kane train” Alex to Miles at Lowlands 2016 at around 21:56
“My Miles” Alex to Miles, MyRock interview
“The next song is called ”My Fantasy”… I’d like to dedicate it to my Alex Turner!” Miles to Alex, live performance
“If I can speak for both Darling” Alex to Miles via El País
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X
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- “He (Alex) turned up one day in red jeans. That surprised me. I like it when he wears red jeans. When they’re tight.”
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- “There's nothing innocent about Miles Kane,”Turner warns, in case anyone was planning to accuse him of luring his fresh-faced co-conspirator into a decadent world of rock star self-indulgence. “He is the antithesis of innocence.” “Ooh,” Kane retorts, archly, “you scampi fry.” Via the Guardian
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- “We went for a bike ride. Tops off. Fred Perry shorts on.” (Alex about their time recording the age of the understatement in rural France Blackbox studio) via Q Magazine 2008
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- You look like you're about to snog each other. AT: “It’s rare that we don’t look like that.” Tlsp at the Mercury music Prize 2008
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- “As far as I’m concerned there are only two superstars: Beyoncé and Miles Kane. You can quote me on that.” (Alex)
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spiderrmax · 9 months ago
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raccoon & friends x sidekick reader
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synopsis: headcanons about how i imagine the raccoon & friends would react to having a sidekick! author's note: freedom pals will eventually get their own post :) also, like all my other works this isn't proof read if you see any mistakes no you didn't.
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The Raccoon
The way you become his sidekick is probably out of your hands. Since he sees himself as the leader and you as the new kid (which, to be fair, you are), he feels like he has to take you under his wing.
He acts as if it’s a chore, but it is mostly a front. He’s excited to train you, and he genuinely cares about your powers.
Following the events of the game, The Raccoon shows an obvious soft spot for the new kid, and this amplifies when he is “forced” to protect you
The Raccoon doesn’t go on a lot of solo missions that require fighting, he is mostly looking for intel. You are mostly left on guard duty while he steals whatever he was looking for.
He doesn’t like telling you things, but he always caves and tells you anyway. He feels like you listen to him more than the other members, and it’s very obvious he likes you the most. (Similar to how the New Kid gets new classes in the game.)
When, however, the two of you are in battle, he is extremely overprotective. It’s not like you can’t hold your own, he just hates watching you take a punch, which is inevitable. 
You know how in the games characters can be enraged by certain attacks? The Raccoon will hyper focus on the enemy who leaves you bleeding. He doesn’t stop until the enemy is down, so when making battle plans you have to count for his rage.
After battle he will complain about you getting hurt, (“Jeez, if you’re going to stay my sidekick, you need to get better in battle.”) but he won’t let you leave his base without him bandaging you or at least giving you some sort of healing item
Gets jealous if you have to go on a mission without him. Always puts up a fight, that you shouldn’t be without him. Will threaten the superhero you are pairing with for the mission, making them promise to keep a good watch on you. Then will make sure your next mission is with him
Human Kite
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Unlike The Raccoon, Human Kite doesn’t even propose the idea of having a sidekick. It’s you who proposes the idea, admitting you think you two make a pretty good team as he is a range fighter where you tend to fight close up.
He’s so flustered that he says yes and then flies off. (He’s so used to people mocking his power/superhero identity that you admitting to admiring him was surprising.)
When Cartman finds out that you asked specifically for Human Kite he tries to persuade you to join him instead; you decline, and Human Kite can’t help but smile at your dedication to being with him.
He takes the role of mentor so seriously. When on missions, you are always in Human Kite’s field of sight. He is always prepared to fly off if the fight is too large for the both of you, but you are too stubborn and will fight anyone who plans to attack.
Constantly is having to heal you on the field. He knows that you aren’t going to die from a few hits, but the guilt of your injuries is heavier now that you are under his protection.
Although, he does agree you two make a good team. You do most of the damage due to the close combat, which allows for Kyle to keep you standing with his healing powers.
He isn’t as dramatic about attacking the enemies that hit you as Cartman is, but will shoot his laser eyes at them at the next opportunity. 
Human Kite is also great for morale. He constantly is motivating you on the battlefield, supporting you as you attack, with small words of encouragement. 
Doesn’t mind if you have to go on missions without him, with your guys’ different skill set and all, but worries so much. Will meet you outside the base to check for any major injuries when you return, scolding you for being so reckless as he wasn’t there to take care of you. 
The Flash
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The Flash, similar to Human Kite, has never really desired a sidekick. He always works alone, due to others tending to slow him down. He only really asks for help when it’s dire.
Presuming you are a speedster class hero, he is down to have you on his team! His missions are gaining intel, similar to Cartman’s, and he appreciates sending you on smaller quests that he knows you can tackle due to your similar powers.
Not to say, he wouldn’t accept you if you had selected another class, but there are some downfalls for his main missions. The two of you are a killer duo on the field though, balancing each other's strength and weaknesses 
The Flash always double checks areas before you go in because he knows he can go undetected
After you guys have been working together, anytime he goes on a solo mission he is very aware of how lonely it is. Will go and crack a joke, and only then remembers you aren't there. He gets solo missions done faster, but that doesn't mean he enjoys them
Will race you around for fun! Loves showing off his speed (especially if you aren't a speedster). 
When you're injured and he's forced to carry you back, he speeds up; adrenaline rushing. He hates seeing you injured, and he most likely doesn't carry healing items due to them slowing him down. 
The biggest perk of being his side kick is you are not bound by the limits of the Fastpass. He will take you anywhere (if he isn't busy). The Raccoon complained about this once, but The Flash did not care enough to stop the special treatment. 
Super Craig
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Considering he is a brutalist, he'd benefit most from a sidekick who isn't in that class.
However! He did not want a sidekick at first. Unlike Human Kite and The Flash, he saw it as a waste of time. He despised working with people, and would flip the Raccoon off when he tried partnering him up. (Of course, he works with the other heroes. It is also begrudgingly)
So, the first time you ask, he says no. He’s blunt, and doesn’t try to humor you. He has no reason to think you following him around would benefit him in the slightest.
It’s not until he’s in true battle with you – not a small squabble with criminals easily defeated – does he realize how beneficial it is to have you. Where he is often unprepared, you carry items that change the course of the battle, and you willingly share them with him too! You shoot from afar while he’s close-up, and it’s the first time he was thankful someone was there in battle with him.
He has to suck up his pride to reapproach you with the offer, but luckily for him, you don’t torment him with how his backtracking on what he previous said.
He is very silent when you are working together. If you come up with a plan he will follow it, and may even help modify it so it works more efficiently, but he is very quiet on missions. This helps them run smoother; however, after, he is willing to entertain any questions or small talk you have. It may be short responses, but he does enjoy how you fill the once empty night.
Super Craig carried healing items before, due to his close combat nature. However, with working with you, he carries even more. Or, he’ll give you some before you leave on missions so he isn’t weighed down by them. Either way, your health comes before his, and he would not hesitate to give you aid even if he also requires bandaging. 
The Raccoon hates how he has a sidekick. Believes that Craig is the lamest superhero due to his lack of care in concealing his identity. Craig just flips him off anytime he complains, saying that it’s not his fault you didn’t want to work with him.
Mosquito
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Mosquito, like the Raccoon, approaches you about it first!
The two of you have been in battle before – especially due to his kryptonite. Despite being charmed and fighting poorly, he can recognize your strength. You have nothing to lose when you are approached with this offer, so luckily for his pride, you say yes.
Despite how he is meant to be making most of the decisions, as comes with the Superhero title, he is always looking for your guidance.
He never makes a choice unless he has thought it out with you. A plan will not be enacted unless he has run it by you and you have done all of the changes you think are necessary.
He also gets extremely nervous when you become injured. He isn’t the strongest hero, and often feels like your sidekick, so seeing you bleeding or limping creates a lot of panic for him.
Mosquito is prone to emotional outbursts – if a mission becomes too stressful, he’s hurt, you’re hurt, it’s late, anything can set him off, really. He needs you to be level-headed, and he would work best with someone who isn’t quick to react emotionally. New Kid in game is often practical, and a similar personality would mesh well for Mosquito.
The Raccoon often sends Mosquito on simpler missions (due to knowing how Mosquito cracks under pressure) but will send you on more complex missions. Mosquito cries so much when you are gone, nervous about what you are doing, if you’re okay. When you return home – after being gone no longer than a day, at the most – he is blubbering in your shoulder that he missed you. He’s very dramatic.
Captain Diabetes
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Following along with the game, you are paired up with Captain Diabetes after he is assigned a complex mission.
This isn’t to say he is disappointed! Captain Diabetes is so excited to have you on his team, and takes pride in guiding you along the way.
He is so protective – even if you are technically stronger than he is. He won’t let you into a room without him entering it first and scouting the area out.
Is also really prepared, in comparison to the heroes who had to shift their behavior to count for you. He has snacks and drinks due to his diabetes, and has no problem sharing his extras with you if a mission drags on longer.
Tends to take control on missions, but is willing to listen if the situation isn’t dire. He respects you as his side kick, but he is mostly used to doing things alone. Your input is respected, he just often forgets to ask for it.
Similar to Craig, he would work best, for balance, with a blaster or speedster (or anyone with range.) He takes a lot of the hits, so strong damage from afar helps shift the course of battles.
Panics the first time you are injured and ends up forgetting to hand you a potion until you reach up to grab it from him. He gets really flustered after that, not used to being so frazzled in a mission.
Captain Diabetes is one of the better superheroes to sidekick with! He is a good balance of strong and capable but also respectful.
When your mission is done, and you aren’t technically assigned to him anymore, he approaches you and asks if you two can still work together anyways. He stutters a bit, and blushes when you nod your head ecstatically. 
Bonus! Call Girl
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Call Girl isn’t seen as a superhero by most, so you have even less respect as her “sidekick”
Realistically, Call Girl doesn’t let you or others call you by that. She finds it a bit demeaning, and doesn’t keep you as her equal. You two are partners in her eyes.
The two of you don’t often do missions together either. Call Girl prefers to stay behind the scenes to pull the strings. It’s you who is often fighting when it is necessary.
However, you aren’t alone on the streets. Call Girl has you carry a phone she can track at all times, and she occasionally (when not extremely busy) will check the traffic cameras near your location.
Since she can’t always be there with you, she constantly is reminding you to take food, medicine, and water since she can’t carry extras.
Will scold you if you return to her injured, but will never not be the one to bandage your wounds. She is delicate as she covers them, and although her words might come off as mean, her eyes tell a whole different story.
When she begins gaining credibility, and is in fights with you more often, she is always there to protect you. Similar to Cartman, she gets angry with those who attack you, but it doesn’t cloud her judgement (she just hits harder, or leaks more embarrassing information.)
She has the best strategies! Always makes them with your strengths and weaknesses in mind. Occasionally, she forgets to ask for your input, mostly due to being excited or deeply invested in what she is planning. She won’t be upset if you interject with what you think, especially if it is something she may not have thought of.
If she sees you in danger on the cameras, or she is with you and a small battle becomes much larger, she will always jump in. Although she always tries to have a plan, she cannot account for anything and will be there whenever you call her.
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local-new-kid-super · 2 months ago
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Wendy and fem new kid bonding over girl things? The new kid actually enjoys being able to “let their hair down” around them so to speak
Sorry this took so long, I got off a south park kick and then HARDCORE back into one recently because FBW is on gamepass. Thanks for the request!
Platonic!Call-girl/Wendy x New-girl!Reader
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☆ Wendy is thrilled to have another girl in town who gets her. It's not that she isn't close with Bebe, I mean, they are both instrumental in making lists on the committee, but after Bebe pulled that gun on her, Wendy worries she's a little bit of a loose cannon. Between her on and off relationship with Stan and dealing with Eric in school, this poor girl needs some stable classmates.
☆ She loves having you over to work on school work, she's class president and prides herself on being smart. Being the new kid can't be easy, and doing work to catch up to everyone in class is much harder given Mr. Garrison doesn't seem like he cares to teach. Expect lots of study hangouts, where she helps you with some class work and the two of you just chat.
☆ Wendy always asks for your input for the girls' committee lists. You might be new, but that doesn't mean you need can't have an opinion. She's also going to go over the old lists to make sure you understand the people in South Park. "Listen up, new Kid!" She exclaims. "That list was rigged, that's the old cutest boy list... there was a whole- a whole thing." She shakes her head. "All that to say Clyde isn't the cutest. Here, check this one-"
☆ Makeovers! For all her skills and talents, Wendy has been shown to be against things she thinks perpetuate beauty standards. Personally, she doesn't feel like makeup is good or bad really, but she has other stuff to worry about. She's the class president. Luckily; she has you, New kid! She's happy to let you apply some purple glitter or maybe a fun gloss on her face, just don't expect her to wear it everyday. She claims she "-Doesn't want to look like a clown hooker for her English presentation". If you teach her how to keep nail polish to the lines of her nails, she'd actually really like that. She'd roll into school with a nice purple or pink shade on her nails, shooting you a wave.
☆ If you're both superheroes, she's thrilled at the prospect of having another girl to fight with. Frankly, she hates that the freedom Pals stand for 'retribution with inclusion', but didn't even bother getting girl members. She Dislikes Raccoon and friends for more obvious reasons. She'll help you to learn hacking just like her, or if you prefer a more hands on fighting style, she'll be your guy, or gal, in the chair, surveying the security cams and radioing in all relevant data from a nearby rooftop while you complete a mission. She doesn't like the idea of sidekicks, you're a team. Two girls lifting each other up, while making super-boys cry. Plus; she's secretly been manipulating your follower count on Raccoonstagram to make it much larger than it would be normally. Your new, and shes felt alone before. Call-girl sees now reason that you should be any less popular out of costume than in.
☆ "Just hacked into the Raccoon and Friends, um, computer..." she mumbles, thinking back to the Toshiba handi-book that's taped to a cardboard box. "Anyways, looks like they've got a lead on some petty crime from the post office warehouse. Package thief." She chuckles. "Wanna bet we can handle it in half the time?"
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xabarik · 10 months ago
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я сделала первый ответ в аск :-) приветку не буду кидать но она есть нам там весело an thing for the patho ask :-) translation isnt perfect but i was TRY my best There's a lot of biblical references (unfortunately not very popular but i mean apostle andrey is exist its something) and i little bit of blood Q: Were you like that when you were young? Violent and obsessed with will?
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Violent?! Obsessed! Pal, are you sure you're not mistaking me for someone else?! I guess you don't care for your tongue at all. I'm not "violent", it's you the one who's fearful. And I've never been afraid. 
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But when I was young, it wasn't will that drove me, no. Behind the action was a thought, an idea! I believed that by not doing what my hands longed for, I could get something more... I knew I couldI could keep from burning in a fire, from being taken by a bullet. But that's what the rules were made for. A cage for the will.
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But in a single moment, all goals were forgotten. I knew the punishment that awaited me. A punishment that would tear my skull apart with the fire of guilt. One moment stretched into hours. For I had anticipated. Waited. But nothing happened. Then I realized that neither fire nor bullet could take me. I realized my nature. I realized my purpose. And I realized freedom. Will. 
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I became "obsessed" with this knowledge, if you like. You would like to believe that this is my obsession from a young age, don't you?
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ask-professorchaos · 8 months ago
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I bring good tidings and memes. (Sorry about my usual disappearing act. But, I'm almost done school, so that means more time to work on this again!)
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(The guy beside Chaos is a villain he knows called Dr. Funk)
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sugarbombs-n-stuff · 4 months ago
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Companion's Comfort Foods
(I didn't include Ada and Codsworth cause they don't eat)
Cait: Cait's comfort food is cottage pie (which is shepards pie with beef instead of lamb). It was on the food rotation at the combat zone before the raiders took over and it brings back good memories of her first few years of freedom. Cottage pie and a beer is a good supper for her.
Curie: A bowl of sugarbombs. It was the first meal she had after she got turned into a synth so she's grown really fond of it. She likes cereal in general so if you sit her down with some and a puzzle, she'll be so happy, though she does like eating while talking to a friend.
Danse: When he was in the BOS it probably would have been coffee seeing as the food really wasn't great. It was pretty much flavorless chicken and mashed tatoes and the thought of it made his stomach churn. A cup of coffee however was guaranteed, and it was good every time. After BB no questions asked his comfort food is beef(brahmin) stew. Sturges makes some flavorful, mouthwatering, downright sinful tasting food and you'll always see Danse first in line whenever it's the stew in particular that's being made. He also likes to dip some cornbread in it, and it isn't uncommon that you'll see him patting his stomach after eating like some midwestern dad.
Deacon: Roasted mutton on fry bread with hot peppers. Deacon was raised on Lake Mead by his mom and grandparents. His grandma was Navajo, so they always had something with fry bread and meat, normally bighorner meat. The mutton became his favorite though. It's a wave of nostalgia every time he takes a bite. He doesn't really have it anymore, partly because of he can't really get it in the commonwealth and partly because even if he makes it, it's never as good as his family makes. A big stupid smile is on his face whenever he visits his mom, and she makes it for him. Though he hasn't been out there in a while, too busy helping the Railroad.
Dogmeat: Dogmeat will eat anything, and he doesn't really have a comfort food. His favorite food though his dried brahmin ears,
Strong: Pre War Strong and Super mutant Strong actually agree in this area, his comfort food is still ribs. Pre-war, he liked dry rub ribs that make your mouth water and stomach grumble when you look at them, he was damn good at making them to cause he learned from his grandad so anytime he made them he thought about him. Now he likes raw brahmin ribs. He isn't picky anymore and doesn't care as long as he eats but if he really concentrates, he can still hear a deep laugh like rolling thunder and smell a hint of spice when he takes a bite.
Preston: Rabbit Stew. Growing up with his auntie on far harbor he ate pretty much everything, mans was a human garbage disposal. However, he had broken his leg when he was 10 and his auntie made him rabbit stew. They sat in the bed and laughed and joked for hours as she told him stories. His big brother even joined them and joked around too. Now every time he makes it, that memory is at the front of his mind, it causes a smile to sit on his face for the rest of the day afterwords.
Piper: Her dad used to make cabbage rolls with corn and rad stag. She still makes it for Nat but when she starts cooking it, she swears she can hear her dad talking her through how to make it for the first time. She doesn't let herself get sad at the memory when she's cooking, she embraces it. She keeps promising to teach nat how to make it but she's kind of swamped with work at the moment, but they have it every week they can afford it.
MacCready: Like danse he also likes stew however his comfort food his mushroom stew. He remembers eating it in Little Lamplight and when he takes a bite suddenly, he's Mayor MacCready sitting with his pals and getting irritated at Princess again. He also thinks of him chatting with lucy, both as kids and adults and gets a comforting sadness for a little afterword but comforting none the less.
Hancock: Him and his brother used to make fruit jam growing up and would sell it in Diamond City market. He still makes the jams now with the help of Daisy and sells them in her store. His mind wanders and he wonders that if things were different between McDonough and him, if they would still make them together. His brother's favorite was the dandy boy apple one so that's his comfort food. Dandy Boy Apple Jam.
Nick Valentine: Coffee. Nick doesn't eat much and human nick really only ate out of necessity. Ellie makes him a cup every morning and they talk before they get to work. Good memories are enjoyed over coffee and that's good enough for Nick.
X6-88: When he was in the institute he liked the coconut nutrition pouches but he wouldn't classify it as a comfort food because he was a machine that didn't need comfort in his or the institutes eyes. Now that he runs around with sole survivor though, his comfort food is braised deathclaw with rice. It's extremely filling, and he thinks of that first night he was assigned to Sole and they made them this. It was one of the first times he seriously considered being something close to human.
Longfellow: Roasted Fog Crawler with black beans and a side of scotch. He cooks well and he actually really enjoys it. Whenever he cooks, he gets peace and peace is comfort. Not to mention the whiskey settles his soul for a bit.
Gage: Spicy Curry. He learned to make this dish originally from his mom and for a while after becoming a raider he didn't touch it again cause of the memories. Eventually though, one night when he wasn't thinking about it, he started taking out the ingredients to make it. Muscle memory is a bitch but he's not going to waste food and when he took that first bite, he heard his mom singing in his brain and telling him to wash up after. It's rare when he does eat it but when he does you might be able to hear him humming as he makes it.
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jayholdenworld · 5 months ago
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@drsbutmakeitspicy because you asked for it.
Carcar AU where Oscar discovers carcar fics when there were only like 20 fics on certain platform, and becomes obsesses over them. While Carlos discovers carcar fics after Miami and he’s really intrigued but doesn’t show it until it’s too late.
Small scene:
Oscar knew that his dating life was not really interesting to anyone. Well, maybe it was to the fans, but that was because half of them wanted to support him and the other half wanted to toss him to a bed and fuck him or be fucked by him.
(No need to deny it. He had seen the video edits, the written works, even the tumblr posts. He's Gen Z after all.)
What amazed him was how involved people were to the idea of him fucking or being fucked by a fellow driver. It didn’t matter if he knew them or not, if they were pals or not. It didn’t even matter if they could be old enough to be his parents.
If people wanted, they could write him in a lot of absurd situations, like pregnancies, mafia worlds, even something like omega-verses (a rabbit hole he doesn’t need or want to explore, but he knew the basics. Thanks Lily). It was artistic freedom, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
(And coming from someone who was old enough to know about that 10-year-old fanfiction about Mark and Sebastian, he knew what he was talking about.)
So, when Logan sent him a link to a platform with stories about himself and other drivers as lovers, he didn’t react at all. He read the most popular couples and noticed Lando, Zhou, even Logan, in the mix. And it was not surprising, he had seen edits of him with Arthur or Robert. He knew the storm was coming to him, but at least they all made sense in a way.
That’s why he shouldn’t have been so shocked, amazed, repulsed, and many other words, when he saw one specific tag with his name. It was artistic freedom. People had the right to write about whoever they wanted. But why with him?
Carlos Sainz Jr./Oscar Piastri
Why with him!?
And why was Carlos the active one in most of them!?
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Posting the other ideas in a moment.
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therobotmonster · 9 months ago
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"Doctor Martin, why are you an atheist?"
Director Maria Kleinheart wasn't the sort of person who asked indirect or idle questions. She was in every way a Kleinheart, the spitting image of her grandmother. Only she wasn't staring out from a yellowed ad in a back issue of Popular Science or Woman's Day, she was staring from across desk made of polished slate.
Emil Martin didn't respond immediately. That sort of question usually came with an invitation to services or a badgering about Pascal's wager. That didn't fit what he knew about the director, though that wasn't much. An intense religious conversion would explain the rumors around her distance from the rest of her family.
"Director, is this a personal or work related question?" Emil finally asked.
"Work." She replied.
"Is that appropriate?"
"Yes. This is about security clearances."
That made even less sense. Emil decided to risk a lecture on his eternal soul and answered truthfully. "Pretty standard, insufficient evidence."
"Would you rather it be true?" She asked. "Would it be comforting to know you existed for a purpose, that someone was in charge of your existence, caring for you?"
"Not really." Emil replied. "I'm rather Hitchenisan in that regard."
"Good enough. Follow me."
-
"BE NOT AFRAID."
The words seemed to come out of the air itself. The thing was at the center of the large, expansive lab that had once been a missile silo. It was a sphere, surrounded by two rings of brass-like metal. The rings were lined with hemispherical semi-translucent white glass or crystal protrusions. The inner ring spun slowly, as did the central core, though only the faintest irregularities in its glowing blue-white corona revealed that motion.
The outer ring was held in place with steel chains, each link six inches in diameter. Two chains locked the ring to the floor, while a third latched the top to the ceiling. The cuffs the chains connected to seemed to have been welded shut around it.
"BE NOT AFRAID." It 'spoke' again. Its voice was clear and musical, but wrong and artificial at the same time. It sounded like familiar voices; his mother and father, his cousins, his old school pals, his boyfriends, even Director Kleinheart, each synthesized poorly via an AI speech simulator, all speaking in perfect time.
Every time it spoke, Emil smelled his grandfather's sweet cornbread fresh from the oven.
"That looks like an angel." He finally gasped.
"Looks like." Director Kleinheart smiled. He wasn't sure she could do that. "I knew we picked the right man."
"This is why you were asking about my beliefs?"
"Yes Doctor Martin. You see, freedom of religion is an extension of the principle of innocence until proven guilty. Once one faith is shown to be correct, all others are revealed as wrong."
"And you wanted to make sure I, what, wasn't guilty of being wrong?"
"No, the mistaken are innocent of everything except the actions they directly take." Kleinheart continued. "It's the ones who would take this to mean they were right that are fifth columnists to an unaccountable alien power."
"Oh." Emil replied. He didn't know quite what else to say.
"I want you on our team that's studying it. We need to know how it works, what it's made of, what those things its made of can be used for, you know the drill."
"BE NOT AFRAID." Again came the smell of cornbread.
"Are the restraints necessary?" Emil asked. "It is telling us we don't need to be afraid of it."
"Oh, we thought that too at first." The director said. "But we've already learned quite a bit about our little intruder here, even a bit of its 'source code' for lack of a better analogue. That message isn't meant for us."
"What is it then?"
"Can't you guess, Doctor?"
Dr. Emil Martin shrugged. "I have no idea."
"It isn't giving us a warning."
Director Kleinheart smiled for the second time in Emil's memory and spoke again.
"It's repeating its orders."
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ozzgin · 7 months ago
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Hi-! I'm new to this blog, and whew... Didn't expect to see this much monster porn of such degree. I'm impressed!
Oh! But I have a question.
Do you think your monsters would respect your decision to rest if you asked for it? Cause from what I read, your monsters don't think to respect you and your wishes all that much. I believe they only see you as an object to fuck, instead of love, and that's sorta depressing.
What would happen if you wanted to stop but then got gangbanged? Completely disregarding your choice?
Would that account to rape? Wouldn't that traumatize?
Let me first add, for my non-monster pals, that I'm actively working on human content as well. There's just been a sudden influx of monster-related asks, and I've been trying to keep my inbox on a relatively stable number. There will be a little bit of everything.
Now to your question: Absolutely they would respect your decision! You might notice that very few works actually have a noncon tag. There's a lot of "he won't let you go" as an ending cliffhanger, but it's always under the assumption that you're pretty much into whatever tomfoolery is going on either way.
The whole monsterfest trope is a little inside joke stemming from the public property reader, I think. Many were amused by the idea of a Reader who can just fool around with multiple monsters at the same time, so I decided to include it as an option for some future stories as well. The monsters themselves do like you very much, but it's up to you whether to settle with one of them or not. You can check my other monster stories that are more focused on non-horny romance if you're in the mood for that instead.
So basically, you have the freedom to be a 100% certified monster hoe, but this is entirely out of your free will. You can stop anytime you want, you can tone it down, you can purchase a small cottage by the monster realm seaside and crochet custom, horn-fitting winter hats for your unholy husband/wife. You decide.
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kindwarrior · 4 months ago
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Tucker Carlson is Outing Obama as Gay. But Everyone is Missing the Big Story. I’m Obama’s College Classmate. I’ve Been Trying to Warn America for 15 years!
By Wayne Allyn Root
I’m Barak Obama’s college classmate at Columbia University, Class of ’83. I’m also the author of the #1 bestselling hardcover book in America in 2012, “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide.”
I’ve always had Obama’s number. I understand what makes him tick. I understand his goals.
First let’s get the “gay issue” out of the way. I’ve reported on both my radio and TV shows for 15 years that my wealthy, connected friends in Chicago have always said, “Obama frequented gay bath houses and gay clubs. Everyone in the know, knows Obama is gay.”
Now that we’ve heard from Obama’s biographer that Obama wrote about his daily gay fantasies, I think it’s pretty clear my Chicago pals were right. Tucker Carlson is onto something!
But gay is not the issue. The issue here is fraud. If Obama is in fact gay, then he was lying to the American people from day one. He portrayed himself as a happily married family man with a wife and two beautiful young daughters. That’s called fraud.
If America had known the truth in 2008, does anyone honestly think Obama would have been elected president?
But all of this is small potatoes. This is not the big story.
Why does any of this matter now? Because Joe Biden is a brain-dead puppet. This is the third term of Obama. The proof is we are all reliving the nightmare Obama economy. Great for Wall Street and billion-dollar multi-national corporations. But a disaster for the American middle class and Main Street.
Second, Biden is fading fast – and everyone can see it. At the same time Biden’s cognitive health is in freefall, all of his corruption from the past is pouring out of the closet. Biden is finished. He is toast. He will never make it to 2024.
Sometime this fall Biden will have a very public “episode” and be hospitalized. Soon thereafter he (or Jill) will announce he is stepping down for “health reasons.”
Who will replace him? Either Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom. But whoever it is, Obama will be calling the shots from his nearby Washington DC mansion. That’s why this story matters.
I’ve had Obama pegged from the first day. Obama is the ultimate “Manchurian Candidate.” Gay is unimportant. What matters is he was groomed to be president by the Deep State and communist, fascist, globalist enemies of the United States. What matters is Obama is a radical Marxist tyrant carrying out the destruction of America.
Obama was tame in his first two terms. He was “boiling the frog slowly.” But Trump ruined his plan. Now Obama is trying to destroy this country as fast as he can before Trump has a second chance to undo the damage. And at the same time, Obama is coordinating the attacks on Trump to either imprison him, kill him, or disqualify him.
My guest on my show, “America’s Top Ten Countdown” on Real America’s Voice TV last week was former Illinois Governor Rod “Blago” Blagojevich. Blago’s Governor’s mansion was raided by an early morning FBI Swat team. Sound familiar?
I pointed out to “Blago” that Obama’s fingerprints were all over his frame job… and FBI SWAT raid… and long prison sentence. Obama set him up. Obama took away his freedom. I asked him to comment. Blago reported, “Obama set up the meeting that led to my arrest.”
Do you get it now? It’s the exact same M.O. as what’s happening to President Trump. The same FBI raids, persecution, frame job. The same weaponization of government to destroy Obama’s political adversaries.
I’ve always said the key to understanding Obama was his time at Columbia University.
First, there is the “Ghost of Columbia” mystery. I was a Pre Law, Political Science major. So was Obama. He had to be in all the same classes as me. But he was never in one class. I never met Obama, never saw him, never heard of him, never met anyone at Columbia who has.
Obama got in, so why didn’t anyone ever see him? My educated guess is Obama was in the Soviet Union studying communism. Columbia had a “sister school” in Moscow. That would be the only real answer as to why Obama was rarely if ever seen at Columbia. He was being groomed way back then by the enemies of America.
Secondly, at Columbia we learned a plan to destroy America called “Cloward Piven.” I’ll bet Obama spent two years in the Soviet Union at our “sister school” becoming the world’s expert. Look around. Everything happening in America today is Cloward Piven…
The open borders bringing millions of foreigners into our country, changing our demographics forever.
The explosion of welfare and bailouts.
The Green New Deal.
The destruction of our military.
The end of the dollar as world reserve currency.
The plans for pandemic lockdowns, climate change lockdowns and Central Bank Digital Currency.
The censorship, banning of dissent, and weaponization of government against conservatives and Christians. Defund the police.
The vicious criminals let out without bail.
Critical Race Theory and Transgender brainwashing.
Persecution of PTA parents.
Conservatives and Christians classified as “domestic terrorists.”
The arrest of political opponents.
87,000 new IRS agents.
It’s all about Cloward Piven and communist-level control.
Sound familiar? It’s what Obama the “Manchurian Candidate” learned in the Soviet Union from the best. This man was groomed from day one by the communist and globalist enemies of America. He was sent to destroy us.
Now he’s working behind the scenes to finish the job. He is the man who ordered the spying on Trump. The framing of Trump. Now he’s the man directing the nonstop government attacks against Trump. Just as he did to Blago.
So, Obama being gay is the least of it. America is being destroyed. Obama is at the root of every evil thing happening.
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