#at least with andy i think they had a long rest and it was post saving [REDACTED] by the beach

[soulfulazrael]

Haven't watched Mastermind episode (and wont), but will talk about stuff I saw from it and heard about it

So... I as you who follow my ramblings here probably know (all 2 of you probably). I do not watch this show anymore because I don't care about it's story. Apparently this new episode is BEST OF THE SEASON, but since rest of the season at best gave me a feeling of pure apathy and at worst INCREDIBLE disdain and lack of faith in humanity I say good middle ground is talking about pieces I saw because at this point I don't think I can stand watching this show for longer than 5 minutes at a time.

I make my own story for HB/HH so I will make some comparisons to my own story and plans... Maybe one day I will do bigger post about how my versions of Sins and other things look. No arts though... no talent on my part. Eh... Or maybe... Eh we will see. Probably not, but... Maybe... I dunno.

Comparisons will be mostly about Sins. And the thing I reference is a fic called Song for the Quiet Bird that for now is center of my AU where I make things of Hellaverse in my own way.

So first off. Stella moment. Probably the first thing I saw from it when I heard about it. When I saw that scene I was like: Wow. Actually proper moment where Stella shows more of a character and maybe nuance aAAAAAAaaaand the smirk...

You are amazing at failing every expectation aren't you HB? YOU KNOW SHE LE EVIL!? YOU KNOW SHE BAD!? YOU KNOW STOLAS GOOD!?

Yes I do. I am deaf from the amount of SCREAMING you are throwing at me about this every other minute. Thank you. I am not a 5 year old. She evil. What you do with it? Also apparently NOW she has a brain compared all other times besides season 1 where she had more of a peanut there? What is it? Also incest with her brother? Great... Keep on going with this. I am sure at some point even completely blind AND deaf people will understand how evil she and Andy Magic are. I sadly missed the part where I am supposed to find them interesting. But HEY at least it gives such a great explanation of why Octavia sees Stella as better parent than Stolas which is clearly shown in some of that promotional material... entire one scene... that is not a minute long even and has no dialogue between them. No chemistry or anything... Let's be honest though. For most fans that's probably enough. Just slap one or two scenes later of Andy Magic and Stella saying how bad Stolas is and you are golden... Fuck my life as it is not even a joke. Jesus.

Okay. Besides that... tragedy? I dunno. There is also SINS! Leviathan and Belphegor...

Well... that's just amazingly underwhelming. You know there is a problem when I cannot tell if a character is even meant to be someone special. Because what the Hell (get it? HELL!) is this? They look like about nothing Demons. They are barely more interesting visually than any other shmuck we saw in this world. Ozzie keeps being the best design out of all of them with most distinct and accurate one and I am starting to feel like it is only because Viv took years in making it before hastily making ones for everyone else. Seriously, would you even be able to tell they are meant to be important characters? Because they look like everyone else in this world.

Now funnily enough I have my own concepts for those in my AU. Not exactly more interesting visually as again... not an artist and it is still more concept thing as I keep figuring things out, but this is the current form I want to get them across. I think they do the job on some level in terms of what they are meant to be. One is Leviathan. It is... interesting to portray it with 2 heads... a reason for that kind of eludes, but who am I to judge? But I know in my version it will just honestly a large beast swimming across endless waters of Envy. A giant sea monster that keeps itself in a giant form among domes of Envy where cities are with immeasurable wealth and power, a creature meant to be envied. But also a creature that envies deeper than any other over the loss of their partner at the hand of God, not being able to be close with anyone or even be understood. A creature who's deep resentment and pain created entire Ring around them.

If I made a scene like that with 'sins' meeting I think it would be with a High Demon that serves as a high priest/priestess of the Leviathan faith. As all very high rank demons like Sins, certain Goetia Kings and other VERY important figures have their own religion that Hellborn MUST adhere to, in a way choose their deity and in this case it would be a Demon from said church of Leviathan that interprets them... cluelessly.

While Belphegor would not be much different as a creature that also is a larger than life being. But this one being like a giant, anthropomorphic crocodile like being similar to SCP 682, but more... static. Basically giant center point of a garbage heap that is Sloth in my AU. In some ways beautiful, but also incredibly toxic and dangerous to everything wasteland. Very bottom of Hell. Horrible place where you can be killed by some horrifying monsters with no real mind that prey on the helpless. As Belphegor itself (dunno if it even has gender) exudes aura of sloth where most Demons that come to sloth will be at some point forced to lay down and stay in place. "Bask under non existent sun" which is a term used in that version of Hell a bit to call someone lazy and it comes from that which can spell someone's horrid death.

Those are my ideas for those. But next one is the big boy himself. The Big S. Adversary. Satan.

He looks alright. Nothing you would not imagine a Satan to be. He looks dragon like, buff (even if he skipped leg day) and has funny horns of Imps. Also he has little therapist... which is funny because in my fic I also have a trial with the main judge there (in that case Lucifugus or Lucifuge Rofocale) who also has his own little therapist thing (alongside some other annoyances... and far more misery). It is funny how I guess both me and Viv kind of agree people in high political power in Hell would have their own therapist. In my version though he keeps them deep within the tower he resides in. But either way. Can't say his design or personality is something I did not see coming.

As for my version I will go with... yeah it will be quite different. Better or not. Your choice. A centaur like being that has 4 big arms, molten lava in his veins and skull on top of his body looking like a goat or dragon like being (still thinking on that). A demented monstrosity who's head went awry due to their perpetual rage who can now think of nothing, but drowning everything in so much blood that he will one day swim on that tide of gore to the Pearly Gates and smash them open in ultimate showing of their superiority over all of creation. Something his kin the Imps for the most part also believe and praise. A promise of sea of gore and glorious war. Not the kind of creature that would hold a trial. In that world it's more of a Lucifuge thing... or Lucifer if he is mood for jokes and tormenting some poor souls for their amusement.

Also I hear Stolas lost all his wealth and power over... NOT the shitty things that he did, just that he was forced to lie for the sake of I.M.P.... Eh... The avoidance of responsibility continues. Even when characters face consequences it can NEVER be over their own actions. It has to be something that can be proven wrong and goddamn will that probably be true with Via as well. Because let me tell you they are most likely going to make her be in the wrong for hating poor little Stolas baby and I hate it already. I know making assumptions is not good, but by GOD were they good at making those expectations of nuance low so far...

Actually what expectations? I don't watch this show anymore. But I am passionate about it's ideas... and that hurts me. A lot. I made this entire post because of those... and make a fic that has now few HUNDRED THOUSAND words. Damn. No idea if my version is better or worse... but it is one I prefer. It is different definitely. Even though in certain ways it's weirdly similar.

[sidecast-text]

hey your tags abt project hail mary on that one post were fascinating can you pleeaseeee elaborate :3. the white saviorism & consent ones…. that book took my brain over for a month and im still in its clutches every now and then

HI HELLO YES OF COURSE

(disclaimer: i just love sci fi and literature and took a sociology module this year i am Not a media scholar this is just my personal analysis of this book)

Project Hail Mary was a really intriguing read for me because I went into it somewhat cynically, you know? I really like Andy Weir's writing, but from the moment it became apparent that this is another book in first person about a guy stuck alone in space I was fully expecting for the style and tone to match the Martian. After finishing it, I think he clearly managed to separate Mark Watney from Ryland Grace, mostly by their general attitudes but also with the situations they are getting put in. Watney is an astronaut, he knows what he is doing, and he has (sort of) been trained for the crisis he is in. Grace has no idea who is or why he is in the Tau Ceti system and this memory loss trope is exploited audience for loop after loop.

Spoilers under the readmore because honestly going in blindly is the best way to read Project Hail Mary in my opinion GO READ IT GO NOW

So. We figure out who Grace is, why he is 12 light years away from Earth, what he has to do: he has to save Earth from a major extinction event by sacrificing his own life. The rest of his crew died while they were in comas for the voyage, so the entire fate of humanity is resting exclusively on his shoulders. This is where I kind of heaved a sigh. At least it's not a twelve year old saving the world, but it is a white American man. This plays into the white saviour trope stemming from colonialism in the 15th-16th century, wherein concepts such as humanity and civilisation are values inherently tied to whiteness, exclusively possessed by white societies and must be spread to "uncivilised" areas through colonialism. Overall its an ethno- and eurocentric way of thinking that views the image of the white man as cleaner, better, more educated, et ceatera. This bias remains present in Western society and therefore in our media as well, in the form of the aforementioned white saviour trope, which I had expected Project Hail Mary to unintentionally cater to.

In the case of Project Hail Mary, Grace must be the saviour of humanity by journeying through space. The book makes references to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you can see the general similarity in the premise of both stories: men are sent on a voyage further into space than ever before with varying certainties of return. While the men abroad the USSC Discovery know they will be placed into cyro-freeze and retrieved by another mission in the vague future, the crew of the Hail Mary have no such hopes. They are sent out into space at nearly light-speed with no fuel for a return trip. Hail Mary plays with the trope of the traveler changed by his journey by making return both figuratively and physically impossible for Grace. As readers, we assume he was aware of this when setting out.

The audience also assumes that Grace is on the Hail Mary mission because he volunteered. He is set up as feeling great responsibility for his students and the children of the world, so although we are not shown for a long time why he decided to volunteer for the Hail Mary, we assume that at some point he must have, since we are tied to his first person perspective and he assumes the same. We keep on waiting for some sort of eureka moment in his flashbacks when he realises what he must do and with newfound conviction pledges his life to save humanity. We find out that he was not the first choice for the mission's science specialist; he wasn't even the second. The book introduces Shapiro and Du Bois, and as the audience we know that they will either die before the launch or be incapacitated in such a way that Grace is forced to step up. Again, I was rolling my eyes here. Somehow, Grace had to be switched into Du Bois's place, changing the intended protagonist from a black man to a white one, and I thought somewhat begrudgingly that if the author acknowledges that it could have been Du Bois who saves Earth, then why not just write it as so? After all, all the accidents and consequences through the story are conscious choices by the author. Why does it need to be the white man who bravely steps up and declares that he will sacrifice his life? I felt that there were biases in the writing and in the choice to portray the white man as the brave, lonely hero who will die for the greater good in the far depths of space, alone, afraid, and without complaint.

The actual reveal of the circumstances that landed Grace on the Hail Mary is expertly teased and foreshadowed. We see from the start that Ryland Grace isn't a particularly courageous man. He leaves his academic field after his paper is badly received, he surrounds himself with students who are easy to impress and who idolise him, he doesn't seek out relationships or even friendships because he fears rejection. He throws up in zero g, is not used to space travel, he's queasy around the idea of self administered death and generally lacks the brave enthusiasm and commitment that other astronauts in his flashbacks are shown to have.

So when we find out that Grace is actually a sort of coward, it all falls into place. Stratt gives him the option of joining the Hail Mary mission after Shapiro and Du Bois die, and Grace presents an obviously weak excuse and it's painful to read because the eureka moment we were waiting for never comes. I was personally thinking "wait a second, this isn't how it's supposed to go". But it also makes sense, after all, Stratt is asking him to go die in space and he's a high school teacher.

Stratt is also set up as someone who always gets what she wants. She is legally exempt from any consequences; she could kill a man and she would be pardoned since pulling together the project that will save Earth is her responsibility. She is ruthless, but as a readers we think that Grace is safe from her decree; he's her right hand, and furthermore Captain Yao is adamant that no one be forced to join the mission. If Grace decides to go, it must be on his own. Up until the last moment, we expect Grace to experience sudden onset character growth, to stop when he reaches for the door-handle and to overcome his cowardice and to say "yes, I will go, I will die for Earth".

And it doesn't happen. At this point I was texting all my friends "i am gouing to throw up". It is revealed that Grace was only given the illusion of a choice. In hindsight, it makes sense; he was given no choice about joining the project to begin with or at any step in the process. Stratt was hoping that he would choose to join, but when he refuses it the carpet is immediately pulled from under his feet and it becomes apparent that he has had no agency at all since meeting her. He has been set up and manipulated to be the second backup for the role of the science specialist on board of the Hail Mary by being placed with Shapiro and Du Bois and learning to use space equipment under the guise of testing it. He was kept close to Stratt, so he would always be at hand. Even more terrifying, Stratt has a way to work around Yao's demands. She has Grace drugged so he forgets that he is on board involuntarily and he is heavily sedated until launch.

This is what I meant by saying that Grace's autonomy is entirely taken away. Thorough the entire book, he is dragged and ordered around by Stratt's men, and now he is drugged and forced into a coma. His violation goes to the extreme; not only is he not allowed to say no, he is also not allowed to Remember wanting to say no.

Overall, Grace is a really interesting character to me. He is faced with a situation where only he can do what must be done and instead of rising up to the challenge he pleads and begs for someone else to be chosen. The book completely and satisfyingly flips the white saviour trope on its head. The protagonist is so against the idea of self-sacrifice that he threatens to doom Earth by self-sabotage if he is sent into space. Grace is not a bad person, but he has accepted that other people will take care of the crisis, that other people must die and that is the way things must be. It reminds me of Omelas; it is impossible to walk away, so how do we each accept the world that we live in? Grace accepts that three people must be sent to die in space in order for the rest of the Earth to have a chance of survival, but he thinks of that sacrifice as something that unquestionably happens to others. This echoes the contemporary state of affairs more closely; Western society is upkept by Eastern and Southern labour. We are aware of this, but still benefit from it.

Ultimately, Grace rises to his task and manages to save humanity. He could even return to Earth, but he doesn't. That's the part I think about the most. The journey changes and improves Grace, to the point where he does choose to sacrifice himself in order to save Rocky and Erid. We can ask what happened to make him more willing to save an alien world than he was to save his own. He does have a real choice, he could return to Earth and experience no consequences for leaving Rocky behind. I think the reason is that Grace has changed, yes, but Earth has changes as well in his eyes. Earth violated him, and in way exiled him, ruling through the figure of Stratt that his life was expendable.

First I thought the ending was cheap, but I've been thinking about it for days and I am coming around. It's just!!! I haven't formed concrete thoughts about it but God. God Fuck UGH. It's been 26 years on Earth. His students are grown and up his knowledge is probably archaic by now. His use for humanity has been expended. I am in pain. Would you crawl back home if the value of your life had been dismissed. Would Odysseus go home if he knew no one was waiting for him. I'm going to be sick.

[carriehobbs]

Hi ^^ I was reading your tags on the tina/verda finding out post and first of all, you are so right that not stopping verda's research is not the same as telling him.

I like that you mentioned the bobby finding out path, because that one *is* a choice we get to make, and it made me wonder: what is syd's reasoning for not wiping bobby's memory?

hi seren!! 💕💕

yeah, not stopping verda or tina from finding out =/= telling them directly!! and i think the detective should be allowed to have a variety of feelings about the fallout of tina and verda finding out (whether the detective told them directly or not), some of which may include retroactive self-blame for their situation, but it shouldn't be just written into the narrative like that (ex. if alina saw how poorly verda reacted to finding out about the supernatural and felt guilty because she could have stopped him from finding out and chose not to, that's a completely fair reaction. but it shouldn't be the only option, and it shouldn't be treated the same as if she told him explicitly).

but i digress

so, bobby (or douglas) does not find out about the supernatural in any of my detective's (current canon) worldstates. this is because all of my detectives are 1) people who take the stakes of their mission in b3 seriously and appreciate the opportunity to have backup and 2) are willing to set aside their feelings for rebecca (whatever they are) in order to get the backup they need to ensure their mission succeeds. however, as a player, i am very interested in having a subplot or character arc for bobby&douglas (depending on if the detective is on the bobby route or the douglas route. i'm going to use "bobby&douglas" as a shorthand to mean "whichever character's route the detective is on" for the rest of this post).

as wayhaven is still in development, i don't know yet if there will be alternative subplots or character arcs for bobby&douglas for detectives who did ally with rebecca at the auction (and so bobby&douglas didn't find out about the supernatural). if there aren't any further subplots/character arcs for bobby&douglas, i've seriously considered going back and having one/some of my detectives make different decisions at the auction, so at least one/some of my detectives have the opportunity to explore this subplot in their worldstates. as such, i've spent a lot of time thinking about 1) which decisions would each detective make about bobby&douglas? (lauren would wipe bobby's memories, alina would encourage douglas to work with the agency, syd would let bobby keep his memories, i waffle a bit on this but i think andy would let bobby keep her memories) and 2) which detective would, realistically, not ally with rebecca at the auction and actually unlock the supernatural subplot for bobby&douglas? all this is to say that, in syd's worldstate, bobby never learned about the supernatural, but if he had, she would have let him keep his memories.

the short answer to your question is: if bobby learned about the supernatural, syd would have let him keep his memories because she and bobby have a good relationship. the long answer is under the cut, since this is long enough as it is

(unless i'm suuuuuuper mistaken) wayhaven has 2 different stats for the detective's relationship with bobby: there's a past relationship stat, which you decide at the beginning of b1 and is on a scale of 1-4 (i don't know which numbers are which relationship off the top of my head, but let's say 1 is "everything's fine and there's no hard feelings" and 4 is "i want to hit them with my car"), and a current relationship stat, which takes into account your ongoing decisions through the books and involves adding value to your relationship stats with every decision. in terms of pure stats, syd's past relationship stat with bobby is a 2 (lauren's and alina's are at 4, andy's is at 3. bobby is the ex of all of my detectives) and her current relationship stat is fairly high (it's an invisible stat, so i don't know the numerical value).

syd's relationship with bobby is a little complicated. syd felt incredibly betrayed by the plagiarism incident and there was a lot of hurt between them after the breakup. they kind of fell out of each other's lives afterwards, during all of the messiness. however, syd managed to do something none of my other detectives have managed to do when it comes to their relationship with bobby: syd moved on. so while there is still lingering hurt and their relationship will never be quite what it was, syd doesn't hate bobby anymore an hasn't for a long time (this hurt is why their past relationship stat is a 2 and not a 1).

additionally, one thing about syd is that, if you have ever been someone important to her (even if you aren't close anymore), she will always care about you, at least a little bit. this significantly impacts her current relationship with bobby. when he comes to her and expresses concern about the murders in b1, she cares about him enough to try to assure and relate to him. when he comes by her house unexpectedly in b2, she's worried enough about his sudden and unexpected arrival that she lets him in and expresses concern for him. and, if you have a good relationship with bobby, he does express care and concern for the detective, in his own way (if you have a bad relationship with bobby, he's pretty unrepentant about fucking up your whole day; however, if you have a good relationship with him, there are moments where he does show he cares. i'd love to pull up exact lines, but i don't have any handy). syd doesn't have any lingering romantic feelings for bobby at all (she deliberately doesn't kiss bobby in b2), but she does still care about him. he's probably always going to be someone she has some kind of attachment to.

(i don't remember the exact lines here so excuse me for potentially incorrectly paraphrasing but) when bobby and syd talk at the agency after the auction, bobby says something about how he wouldn't want to lose the memories and knowledge he's just gained, and how he's wanted for a while to be able to be closer to her and hopes this will bring them closer together. at that moment, syd respects bobby's wishes regarding his autonomy and his desire to keep his memories and (perhaps inadvisably - we will see in b4!) genuinely thinks that he won't tell anyone about the supernatural (yes, he normally over-sensationalizes his papers and tends to report on anything that would make her life harder, but he might keep the knowledge of the supernatural under wraps because it's important to her, it can be a secret the two of them share, it can bring them closer, etc). ultimately, syd believes that their relationship has been positive enough after all this time that bobby won't turn around and betray her trust again. maybe this is (incredibly uncharacteristically) optimistic of her, but syd has always had a weak spot when it comes to the people she cares about, and syd does still care about bobby.

[morgansmornings]

💢Something about the muse that annoys you? 😂Funniest thing that’s ever happened to your muse?    📷 Favorite picture/screencap of your muse? 📑 Favorite part of your muse’s backstory?  😩 Hardest thing about writing the muse?🎭 How similar are you and the muse? 

This Meme: Accepting @ltxoliviabenson

~~~*~~~

Something that Annoys me? 

What annoys me is when I am trying to be serious in a thread, she decides to become a regular comedian. When I am trying to be funny, she wants nothing but bare bones facts. Not all the time, but a good chunk of it when I have 37 drafts to get through and she decides that she doesn’t have the attention span for it. I want to hogtie her and make her reply to the people but sadly that is not the way things work. But it is rather infuriating when she gets clingy to certain muses. 

Funniest thing that has ever happened? 

The funniest thing that happened to her was a birthday a while back. IT was a gift for her sister’s birthday. She had hand made a massive shark shaped beanbag, that can in fact seat at least three people comfortably. She had to drag it up several flights of stairs and then drag it into the loft that the RIley siblings own. Upon doing so, she ended up being half crushed by the weight of it after tripping and falling to the ground. She was stuck there for an hour. I laughed, Jayden laughed, Beth jumped on top of the bean bag in full starfish position. Andy has photographic evidence. 

Favorite Pictures?

Favorite part of her back story? One of my favorite things about Jayden’s history is the fact that she has such a strong and loving relationship with her mother. Donna is the highest point of perfection aside from Beth that she has. She has many characteristics that come from Donna, a major one can be followed back from this post. The fact that they are still so close even now reminds me of my own relationship with my mother. They are best friends, they are family, and Jayden knows that Donna will always be in her corner while cheering her on. Be there to pick up the pieces when Jayden crashes in failure. Donna instilled a love of music in her daughter. Showed her that she could be powerful and not need anyone as Donna raised Jayden with her father. Donna means the world to Jayden. Hardest thing about writing my Muse? 

Weirdly enough, the height difference between Jayden and I gets me caught up on things all the time. Jayden is a solid 5 '7 out of shoes. I barely break 5’1 when I wake up after a damn good night of sleep. So when I have to try and put myself in certain scenes I literally have to put on my highest pair of heels and stand at my desk, thinking about how much taller she is to get the right point of view. Sometimes I will stand half crouch on my bed. It is strange but it works. I can tell you being short has major challenges. 

How similar are Jayden and I?

Jayden and I share about 30% of things in common. She and I both have long hair. She and I both have a scar on our eyebrows, her’s on the right and mine on the left. We both have long fingers and a similar undergarment size. Those and a few other things we have in common the rest is based mostly on Holly Marie Combs and personality wise a wide range of inspiration. 

[nevermindirah]

a public transit meet-cute

inspired by this post

"Your ticket is for this time next week," the clerk had said.

Nile could come back in a week, but the whole point of this trip is to see her dad, and his leave will be over by then. Damnit.

She's doing her best to pull herself together when she hears someone say, "Excuse me."

The man says he couldn't help overhearing and offers her the spare ticket he suddenly has because his friend ditched him. Which is so kind. Unfortunately, this train is only going as far as Frankfurt.

"Of course. Well, just in case, here's the list of the 5 places this ticket is going between here and Budapest."

"No way."

"Sorry?"

"I'm supposed to be going to Budapest."

"Would you... still like to?"

"Wow, um, yeah. Thank you." Like, wow. This is beyond lucky. And nice of this person. Whose name she doesn't know yet. "I'm Nile."

She and her rail station hero both go to shake hands and are both stymied by the fact that their hands are full of luggage. The awkward laugh they share is… nice.

"Sébastien," the man says with a cute little nod.

As they wait in the boarding line Nile asks what's bringing him to Budapest.

"Meeting friends," he says. "Minus Andy, who was supposed to be traveling with me, but her ex-wife barreled into town and swept her off her feet."

They chatter their way through the boarding line, then once they're settled in for the first leg of their trip, their conversation winds down to companionable silence. Nile spends most of the ride alternating between working on a research paper, doodling in her sketchbook, and just enjoying the view. Sébastien sits quietly next to her typing away at what from a few glances seems to be some kind of tech job.

Transferring is a little rushed but they make it onto their next train just fine. Sébastien naps for the first few hours of that leg while Nile finishes up her work. She's about to get dinner when he wakes up, so they go to the bistro car together.

Nile was lucky enough for a stranger to come by and solve her can't read the dates on train tickets problem. As the trip wears on she's finding just how much she hit the jackpot — she's having a great time hanging out with Sébastien.

If she'd booked for the right date, she would've been doing this exact same trip, only she probably would've missed her second transfer. Fortunately for her, Sébastien has a lot more experience hopping across Europe and was able to navigate them through a chaotic 7-minute layover.

The longest they stayed in one place for the rest of the trip was wherever they did their fourth transfer, a three hour and change layover that Nile spent most of asleep on Sébastien's shoulder. They'd gotten pretty comfortable with each other by then, she guessed. Or at least she had. He didn't seem to mind.

Finally they're on their fifth and final train of this ridiculous adventure. As the sun comes up, Nile gets an enormous coffee and starts to tell Sébastien all about what she and her dad have planned for their time together. She's talking a big game about what she'd like to do today as if she's not gonna crash by noon and need to head to the hotel for a long nap.

Sébastien and his friends are more play-it-by-ear about their plans, and more intent on night life than museums, but a few places are on both their lists.

"Who knows, maybe we'll run into each other," Nile says without really thinking about it.

But then Sébastien's eyes brighten. "I'd like that," he says.

Now that Nile's thinking about it, she'd like that too. A lot, actually.

"Hey, if you… if you want," Sébastien starts. "I don't know what your plans are, if you're going to stay the extra week or… If you wanted, I've got the extra seat for the return trip next Thursday."

She smiles. "Wow, thank you." With a little laugh, she adds, "Again."

"How about we exchange numbers, and you can let me know what you decide?"

Some things Nile later decides to do:

leave her dad at the hotel to enjoy an early night in while she goes to meet Sébastien and his friends at a bar

dance with Sébastien

kiss Sébastien

start calling him Seb

kiss him some more

take him up on his offer to travel back to Marseille with him

go on a real date with him, not with his friends in tow (though they're great) and not on various trains (though that was so much more fun than she could ever have imagined)

go back to his place >:)

marry him

[moonchildreads]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love❤

aaaaaaa this one's hard!!! i've only written small town so far (which you can read here lol thank you for giving me the chance to shamelessly promote my work losty 🤎) so what i'm gonna do is share my fave five chapters instead!

chapter 3 - tonight she comes - this is when we meet our girlie dot, and it was my first time writing the hellfire club all together in the same room. here's where we start to explore their dynamic as a group and it's full of foreshadowing for things that haven't happened yet 👀

chapter 10 - that's what friends are for - this chapter has everything i love: the hellfire club spending time together, the gentle will they/won't they between eddie and dot, deep conversations with chrissy, dnd, and a lot of bickering. i consider this one to be one my best chapters and it was the longest i'd written at the time! 💕

chapter 13 - you give good love - another entry into one of the chapters i'm most proud of and, again, it includes a lot of the things i love about small town: wayne being a menace, chrissy being eddie's biggest supporter, dot and eddie realising that it isn't them individually vs the world. this was their first big fight, and i had been working on this fic for around a year by the time i posted this specific chapter so it'll always be special to me. got 3/3 laughs with the sponge bit amongst my friends so that's a win to me! 🧽

chapter 15 - don't you want me - the whole sleepover at gareth's will forever be one of the bits i've enjoyed writing the most about this fic. i adore that little gremlin and so much of him (and the rest of hellfire, really) is based on friends i've had throughout the years. there is something so very pure about a platonic friendship (stobin, am i right?) and if chrissy is eddie's steve, i wanted to give dot her very own robin in gareth. this was me officially confirming that both eddie and dot are bi/queer and bonding over rocky horror, which felt important to me as a queer girlie. it's my fic and i can do what i want, lol 💗💜💙

chapter 20 - self control - the moment everyone was waiting for!!! the love confession!!! it was messy, and so uniquely them, you can't take it and give it to anyone else because it's so dot and eddie that there's just no other way around it: if it had to happen, it was going to be like this. other things i loved about this chapter were allowing nancy to dip her toes into dealing with her grief over barb (more on that later lol), the hellfire class of '86 being there for one another, and finally getting to kick andy's bitch ass down!!!! 😈

honourable mention goes to chapter 14 - missing you, which is the mother's day chapter and deals with eddie and dot's mothers who passed away when they were children. i wrote this one while actively mourning someone i'm still thinking about every day and while i will probably be dealing with this for a long time, this chapter helped me purge a lot of my inner demons and helped heal more than i thought it would. it's my love letter to my person who isn't here anymore, and i know that she'd be proud of it because one of the last conversations i got to have with her was about me writing small town, and she was so happy and interested about it.

i'm in the process of writing chapter 23 right now and hopefully i'll get it out this week if i can stop crying at work for more than five minutes lmao. again thank you losty for giving me the opportunity to talk about small town, i love this fic, and i love writing it and talking about it. 🥰

[pumpkin-is-fandom-trash]

Hot Fuzz OC Fanfic

So...this fanfic is about my Hot Fuzz OC, Lola. I made a post talking about her, and someone said it'd be cool if Nicholas adopted her. This fic isn't the best, I had a few ideas but had no clue how to write them so take my shoddy writing with a grain of salt. And please no hate, this is for fun and is not to be taken seriously.

Word Count: 2272 (Longest thing I have wrote in ages.)

Lola was anxious enough in this small town as it was. She’d only lived here a month or so at this point, and she hated it. It was too…perfect there. So perfect it felt unnatural. In her mind, having spent a lot of time watching horror movies and reading similarly horror-esque stories, it felt…off-putting. Well, that was to put it lightly. Very lightly. But she brushed it off. She was somewhere she was unfamiliar with…and she stood out like a sore thumb. 

What she hadn’t expected was to become (or nearly become anyway) one of the many deaths that had been happening far more frequently as of late. 

And yet, here she is, face down in the lake. Everything had been fine, her and her rather flashy artist parents had been taking a late night stroll by the lake near the church, not wanting to worry themselves over everything that had been happening lately. And suddenly the trio all felt a harsh shove and now here they all were. 

Her parents long since stopped breathing, she could tell. And she was holding her breath, hoping that the attackers would leave…and think she too was deceased. And her hopes were answered as her would be killers walked away, convinced they’d succeeded.

She lifted her head above the water, finally gulping down air, trying to ignore the burning in her lungs from lack of oxygen, and swam to the edge of the water, pulling herself up onto dry land where everything faded to black.

Hours later she awoke, wincing as the light of the sun nigh on blinded her. Goodness, had it always been so bright? Then again, being out cold for hours would probably mean her eyes needed to readjust.

She reopened her peepers once more and glanced around. She wasn’t on the edge of the shore now, no, she’d been moved into the back of an ambulance and was being monitored. At least she survived, she thought to herself, but sadly her parents were a different story.

The rest of that day was a blur of doctors words and everything else. She sort of just, let the day happen. 

On the other side of the sleepy town, there was some debate in the police office. “These can’t all be accidents!” The newest face in the Sandford Police Department huffed out, arms crossed. 

“Or maybe, it can be.” Andy Wainwright….or was that one Cartright… Scoffed, rolling his eyes, earning agreement from the rest of the folks there. They’d heard this whole ‘murder’ spiel too many times at this point. Well, they’d heard it two times so far, but still, in a place where no murders have been recorded in years, such a spiel does seem rather…far-fetched to those who only know their hometown as safe.

“There was a survivor though this time, weren’t there?” Another officer spoke up. They had a point. But that brought up the question, where would that survivor go? By all accounts she was in fact still a child. She couldn’t exactly stay on her own. She wasn’t ready to live alone.

After a whole lot of debate, it seemed nobody wanted that responsibility… it was decided that a certain Nicholas Angel would be the one offering the survivor shelter ... though he was…incredibly reluctant to do so…

Later that evening, he set off to pick up the young girl he would now be taking care of. She seemed…shaken. Understandably so though, her parents had died and she nearly had as well. 

“Are you okay?” He asked the young girl, who was simply looking at the ground as they walked to her home to gather her belongings.

“What do you think?” The teen mumbled, her gaze not once lifting from the floor, as if it was all she wanted to see. 

“Sorry you’re stuck with me.” She added under her breath, already sensing his reluctance to be the one looking after her. “The name’s Lola..” She continued. Well if he had to take care of her he’d have to know her name.

He nodded “Well, Lola, what exactly happened? How did all three of you end up in the lake?”

Lola shrugged “Pushed” She said bluntly “Felt someone push me, they probably pushed my folks too.”

Pushed? So…this really was a murder? Well, this just proved that these weren’t accidents…or this one at least. Nicholas made a note of this.

The next day went by. Lola’s stuff had been moved to the hotel room Angel was staying in. The girl didn’t bring much. A blanket, some books, a sewing kit, some clothes, and a spare pillow. She’d set up her own sleeping place on the floor to one end of the room, having set her pillow and blanket there. 

Nicholas had went into the station, doing his duty and work. His first course of action, speaking with the chief. He had to tell him what he had found out. “Sir, I have cause to believe this incident was not an accident.”

“Oh? Are you sure?” Frank asked, raising a brow.

“Yes, sir, I am quite sure. The..victim told me that she felt someone push her into the lake. Someone intended to harm her and her parents and did succeed at ending two of the three lives.” Angel explained. Perhaps this was enough to convince everyone.

Of course though, no one believed him. He should have expected it at this point. But he knew for a fact this couldn’t have been an accident, but no matter how hard he tried there was no convincing the rest of the police. 

The day went by as always. He nipped to his hotel room briefly to check on the young girl only to find her huddled under the bed covering her ears. He crouched down and peered under the bed at her. “Is..everything okay?” He questioned, looking at her.

“Th-there was someone banging at the door earlier. I-I didn’t know what to do so I hid.” She told him, slowly uncovering her ears as she looked up at him.

Could that have been her attackers coming back to finish the job? It was likely.

Well, he couldn’t leave her here alone if that was the case. “You’re safe now, Kid. I’ll keep an eye out.” He said, gesturing for her to come out of her hiding place. “Just stick with me, alright?”

Lola nodded slightly, crawling out from under the bed. 

She did just that too, she stuck with him. She seemed to feel safer having a police officer nearby at all times. She made sure to keep out of the way, and not to interrupt any conversations, overall being more polite than one would expect from her.

One day Lola and Nicholas were sat in the hotel room. Lola seemed to have settled in by now, she seemed less anxious. She was far more talkative than a day prior. “Thanks for looking after me, Mister Angel.” She said, looking over at him with a smile as she set down the small project she was working on, careful to place her needle and thread where they wouldn’t get knocked off.

“It’s alright kid, Just doing what’s right.” He told her, a barely noticeable chuckle in his tone. This kid was…a lot sweeter than she looked.

The pair spent a while chatting. By the end of it the pair seemed more at ease than before. She wasn’t as anxious, and he wasn’t as reluctant.

This kid was just…lost in a way. No longer having the guidance of her mother and father. She needed that guardian figure, so he made up his mind that he’d be that figure.

More deaths occurred over the next few days, all as brutal as the last. Nicholas’ suspicions were growing with each death. And in turn his concerns for the safety of both the innocent folk of Sandford and the teen he was tasked with taking care of.

He’d often let her accompany him when he went to the station, he needed to keep an eye on her..make sure the attackers didn’t come back. A few times he’d taken notice of her chatting with the others, laughing with them. At least she seemed to be cheering up a bit.

He had on a number of occasions heard her discussing movies with the others. He realised her and Danny would probably get along, both seemed to enjoy movies. (Though the genres were vastly different, Danny enjoying action movies, whilst Lola enjoyed Gritty and darker films…one he’d often heard her bring up being The Crow).

Then one night, where he assumed it would be just another night, was when a certain trolley boy came a-knocking. So these were no accidents, and now they were trying to get rid of him too? They sent Lurch to deal with him. This just proved he was right.

Lola, oblivious to the situation outside, was in the bathroom, changing into her sleepwear, but hearing an almighty ruckus, she opened the door, just a crack mind you, and peeked out, her eyes widening and her instincts kicking as she shut the door and hid herself, she wished she could go out and help, but she just…couldn’t. She was a kid, what would she be able to do?

After what felt like forever, she peeked back out, spotting Lurch on the floor. 

Nicholas looked at her, silently checking she was okay, and she nodded in a silent answer. She was okay. Startled but okay.

She stayed there, hiding herself behind the locked door of the bathroom while Nicholas went to deal with whoever was at the church. 

Lola stayed in there for what felt like hours, well…actually it had indeed been hours. She wasn’t aware of anything going on. Nor was she aware that Nicholas had learned everything and…had taken Danny’s car to leave Sandford. She wasn’t aware of anything that was happening until the next day when Nicholas returned to Sandford.

She hadn’t witnessed his bad-assery (Sorry, I will forever refer to it as this). Well, she had seen some of it through the small window in the bathroom, watching in silent awe at the shootout taking place outside. 

She silently unlocked the bathroom door and crept down to street level to get a closer look, sneaking outside and watching in…a less than safe location. She did what she could to help out without being noticed…mostly throwing rocks at those who were clearly the ones Nicholas was dealing with. 

She wanted to help out more until she was spotted, much to her dismay. The man she had grown to view as her guardian noticed her and gave her a stern look, gesturing for her to go back inside where it was safer.

Begrudgingly, she did just that. She sat there inside for ages, waiting for whatever was happening to end. She ended up dozing off as she waited, woken a while later by someone shaking her. She looked up to spot Nicholas. “Hey. You okay?” He asked.

She nodded, looking at him. “What was all that about out there?” She asked, peering over his shoulder to spot some of the other officers.

It was a long story but they filled her in on everything. 

“So…does that make you all town heroes?” She asked, raising a brow as she looked at them.

 “I guess it does, Lola.” Nicholas said, nodding at her. Her eyes widened, that was the first time he used her name instead of calling her Kid.

“There’s no guessing about it, you guys are heroes, Nicholas!” She retorted, calling him something other than Mister Angel for once.

Lola had…started to feel like she had a family again now that she was in Nicholas’ care, and he seemed to care a great deal about the young girl too.

Lola had been hanging around with some of the other kids in the village, when she happened to spot an…explosion (Yes, I’m including the sea mine scene because I can) coming from…oh no!

Her eyes widened in horror as she realised where that was. She ran towards where it happened. “Hey? Dad?!” She called out, not noticing her slip of the tongue when calling for Nicholas. The relief she felt when she saw him alive. But she noticed the look on his face and could instantly tell something was wrong, she’d never seen him so…worried.

“Dad, what’s wrong?” She asked, stumbling over rubble, ignoring the fact that she was stumbling and tripping constantly. That’s when she spotted why he was so concerned, seeing Danny on the floor. “Oh…”

Thankfully, Danny wasn’t dead and instead was rushed to the hospital. Lola felt awful, she could only imagine how worried Nicholas must be feeling, and she walked over, looking up at him. “Hey, I’m sure he’ll be fine..”

“Yeah…yeah you’re right…”

Months or so passed, Danny was out of the hospital and he and Nicholas were talking. Nicholas…was asking him for his opinion on something. You see, Nicholas wanted to…officially adopt Lola and wanted to let his closest companion know first.

Danny was glad to hear the idea, and encouraged Angel to do just that.

It wasn’t long before the documents were signed, and he was officially the father of Lola. And well, she was thrilled! 

A day or so after he had officially became her new father, he found something laying on the table in their cottage. A small handkerchief? How odd. He looked at it and noticed, embroidered into the fabric was a message. “Thank you for everything, dad.”

He knew exactly who it was from.

[babyjakes]

and you know, and so do i.

〈 disclaimer: this blog posts content not suitable for individuals under the age of 18. minors are strictly prohibited from viewing, sharing, or interacting with this blog. for more information on this blog's commitment to protecting minors, read our full statement here. 〉

summary | andy calls you in for office hours, just as he’s done almost every week of the semester. you both know your grade in his class is the least of the worries that he hopes to address.

pairing | professor!andy barber x student!reader

warnings | ed themes mentioned: implied restrictive subtype, no real symptom talk/mostly just body experience descriptions (weak, dizzy, spaced out, confused), resistance to help andisolation, suggestive that reader is severely ill. angst; this is not a fic with a happy ending, this is not a fic headed in a happy direction. soft!very concerned!andy.

word count | 1,179

an | hi friends. this is one of those fics that i don’t really know how to write an introduction for. i think this was mostly written as a way for me to support myself when i wasn’t getting the support i needed. please heed all the warnings given; the topic of ed’s is very fragile, i know, and i want you all to be safe and make choices that’ll be healthiest for you. i wrote this originally after rediscovering a song i used to listen to a lot back in high school when i was in the worst of my anorexia; listening to it again after so long brought back a lot of memories, one in particular of one of the last times i was brought into the er. i was deteriorating heavily and i remember just lying there and staring at the ceiling, listening to this song and feeling like i was back at my childhood home, sitting by the open windows listening to the neighbors’ kids playing outside. idk, it’s a very vivid memory for me. here’s a link to the song (getting lighter, goldmund) for anyone who’s interested.

Sitting in your regular brown armchair, the worn vintage-patterned fabric barely bending beneath your shallow frame, your eyelids droop like flower petals heavy with rain; you could not focus on the man in front of you if your life depended on it.

Standing with his back to you, broad shoulders filling out the deep navy seams of his university sweatshirt, Professor Barber tends to the whistling kettle on the stove, carefully killing the heat as he asks his question again, “Y/n, are you sure you wouldn’t like a cup of tea?”

Eyes lazily resting on some point just beyond the tip of your own nose, you hum some sort of confirmation or agreement, though it isn’t enough for him to understand until he turns around briefly to look at you, his gaze softening in worry as he watches you watch… nothing. Pouring himself a mug, he adds a tea bag and joins you in taking a seat, picking his usual spot on the green sofa across the narrow office from you. Setting his drink down on the coffee table beside him, the man sets his hands in his lap, an expectant silence falling over the room as he looks you over carefully.

And you, are entirely somewhere else. Chapped bottom lip parted ever so slightly from the top, you draw in a shaky breath as something warm hits your cheek; you think it could be a tear before you realize the window is open right beside you, a gentle ray of sun shining in and landing just below your eyes. Closing them for a moment, you stop to listen, the distant sounds of blowing grass and voices from afar filling your chest with heaviness. The whole world feels so light, like you could step right off the ground and float up into the sky on the breeze. For a moment, just a moment, you begin to forget where you are. Everything sounds and smells like home; you wonder if the faint smell of tea leaves in the air is coming from your mother’s favorite olive-green mug.

Voice trembling, you manage to say, “It’s beautiful out.”

“It is,” Andy’s soft voice agrees through the darkness. Andy, he had told you to call him that. Sometime, weeks ago. You never knew why he kept calling you in to see him every Thursday afternoon, and he never offered any reason, and yet- you continued to show up, week after week. Or maybe, maybe you did know. Maybe you do. Maybe even, you know, that he knows.

“It feels like summer,” you admit, your own voice barely recognizable to you as you do your best to fight back tears that have for some reason built up; maybe it was the tenderness of his voice. Maybe it’s the familiar smell of the spring air. You realize that you don’t want to be here; this is a frightening place for you, sitting in the warmth of the early May sun. Your hands squeeze the armrests of the chair as you do your best to remind yourself of your surroundings, but you can’t help but feel like maybe you’ve fallen asleep; maybe you’re dreaming of home. Maybe you’ll never see home again.

“Do you like the summertime, y/n?” Andy asks, watching patiently as you continue to sit with your eyes fully closed, nostrils flaring slightly as you struggle to take in a breath that feels big enough.

Head still heavy with thought, you mumble an, “I don’t know.” I’d like to live to see another one, you think to yourself, but as always, the words just can’t seem to find their way past your lips.

Straightening himself a bit in his seat, Andy nods though you can’t see him, clearing his throat briefly before saying your name once more, “Y/n.” Your eyes open, gaze landing on the man as he sits just a handful of feet away from you, and the look on his face is something you’re not ready for; it’s full of concern. You can’t tell if that’s everything you’ve ever wanted, or everything you’ve been trying to avoid. “Do you know why I assign you here, every week?”

Breaking away from his softened gaze, you try to shrug off the question. “I am barely passing your course,” you admit.

Andy nods, though you somehow already know that’s not where he’s headed. “Of course. But you know that’s not why I ask you to come. That’s not why you do come, is it?”

Heaviness sinks into the tips of your fingers as you blink at his question; part of you knows there’s no point in answering. Though still, you find yourself confirming his guess, “No, it’s not.”

He hums with a nod, repeating your name once more. “Y/n…”

“I can stop coming,” you say quietly, everything about you: your voice, your body, your presence- suddenly feeling incredibly and dangerously small as your head drops in shame. “I-I can stop. I won’t bother you anymore.”

Shaking his head, Andy’s tone has softened as he tells you, “I hope you won’t stop. I hope you keep coming- I hope you’ll talk to me, y/n. I hope one of these days, one of these afternoons, you finally will.”

Swallowing down a lump in your throat, you can’t bring yourself to look at him again. You know you should get up, you should walk out before this can go any further, but there’s something too heavy about the sunlight on your face, the thick balminess of the air that keeps you trapped in your seat as you blink back more tears. You are stuck; there is no way out for you. And you think that you’ve probably been that way for a long, long time.

“I don’t want to talk,” though you’re expecting your voice to be full of bitterness, you’re surprised to find it’s more than anything else, just weak. Weary.

“I’m sure you don’t,” Andy acknowledges understandingly. “But don’t you think you should?”

“I-I can’t,” you say, eyes struggling up to meet his waiting gaze. “I just… I can’t.”

Smiling gently in defeat, Andy nods. “Well, I can’t force you, and I wouldn’t want to. But I will keep inviting you back, just in case,” he tells you.

As he shifts directions in the conversation, beginning to go on about something that happened the other day in class, the heaviness in your chest rots and blisters into a burning pain. Eyes clouding over as the man’s voice floats up and away, out of reach for your ears, something collapses a little inside you. Pressing your palms into the wood of the chair’s frame, you realize this’ll be the last time you sit here in this spot; next week when youre invitation arrives, you’ll ignore it. You have to.

Eyes drawing to a close once more, you inhale deeply, savoring the sounds of the world through the window as they grace your ears. You’re not coming back, and you won’t hear them again. And a part of you knows you won’t make it home for the summer.

[barclaysangel]

Sick Day

This is 100% dedicated to @streets-in-paradise as a little belated birthday present (feliz cumpleaños, amiga!)!

Lucy, remember how I was writing a Barclay-Wheeler oneshot where Andy was sick and Jake and Junior were taking care of him BACK IN JULY (I'm awful, I know)? Well, since I realized too late it was your birthday yesterday, I decided I was going to buckle down and finish the oneshot. I spent all night and this morning writing it and I finally finished this 3.3K oneshot!

I reeeeeeally hope you like it, sweetface, because I started writing this when I was still weary of my Andy skills so I hope I did him justice by writing in his POV. Also...I think this is the first Barclay-Wheeler written thing that I've ever posted. So...congrats to me I guess!

I hope whoever also reads this enjoys it, please comment what you think of it! Comments help fuel me and make me feel motivated!

Thank you and enjoy :)

As soon as Andy started waking up, he was aware of his head pounding. 

He was confused as to why he had a huge headache that felt like someone was trying to drill a hole into his brain. But it wasn’t until he became more aware of his scratchy throat when it finally occurred to him what was going on. 

Andy was sick. 

Great. That’s exactly what he needed. 

He had spent nearly two weeks taking care of the boys when they got sick. First Junior and it didn’t take long for him to pass his illness onto Jake since the latter had been determined to also help out his cousin due to Junior not dealing with being sick well. 

They were both doing better now, Junior being completely healthy and Jake still having the occasional cough, but Andy actually thought that he managed to avoid getting sick also. 

That was proven to be entirely false when he woke up with a headache and sore throat. 

Fuck, this was going to suck. 

Andy groaned, the sound not agreeing with his throat and caused him to cough into his fist. Jesus, when was the last time he had been sick? He could barely even remember, but he knew that he took care of himself well enough. Except now he had to take care of the boys and himself. 

It would be fine. He could pretend to be healthy, it wouldn’t be that difficult. He needed to focus on Jake and Junior, he could worry about himself later.

It was proving to be more difficult than he thought, physically pulling his body off of bed when every part of him wanted to just lie down and stay there for the rest of the week. What got Andy to keep going and move his legs out the bedroom door was the thought of having to take care of his boys. 

He definitely didn’t want them to try and cook or anything. Especially Junior. Things tended to be very flammable whenever he was too close to the stove. 

At least Jake was a better cook, but he still wanted to be the one to make meals for them anyway. 

Andy all but stumbled into the kitchen, one hand on his head and his eyes just managing to stay open. The boys weren’t there yet, thankfully. He could still hear them bickering in one of their rooms, just like they do every morning. 

He was pretty sure they got along better when they were fighting than when they were actually being nice to each other. 

Andy leaned his forehead against the refrigerator doors, accepting as much of the coldness as he could against his burning head and closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, probably for a minute or maybe even ten minutes, but he pulled himself away and opened his eyes once he heard the familiar footsteps from the chaotic teenagers that he took in. 

“Good morning.” Jake said as he walked into the kitchen, Junior coming in with a “morning, Andy” as well. 

“Mornin’.” Andy responded and tried his hardest not to wince from how scratchy his voice sounded and felt, hoping that it wasn’t noticeable. 

“Dude, why do you sound like how Kyle’s gonna sound like in ten years if she keeps smoking?” Junior asked and yelped quietly under his breath, presumably from Jake nudging his elbow against his cousin, a habit he got into if he was sure that Junior’s words were a little too blunt and mean. 

Apparently, his new “smoker voice” was more noticeable than he realized. 

“I just woke up, kid, not everyone sounds great when they first wake up.” Andy told him, keeping his back turned to the boys as he opened the fridge door to grab the milk and eggs so he could make pancakes, something he did every Saturday. 

“I mean, you do sound…off.” Jake chimed in this time and even though he wasn’t looking at the kids, Andy knew could practically feel them staring at him. 

“I don’t sound off, this is how I normally sound.” He insisted, swallowing a few times in a pitiful attempt to soothe his sore throat, which felt like he was swallowing glass, as he went over to one of the cabinets and grabbed a bowl. 

“We know how you usually sound, short stack. You having a gravelly smoker voice is definitely new.” Junior said, somehow not earning an elbow nudge from Jake. 

Andy turned his head to shoot Junior a glare for the short comment. The glare must’ve looked pathetic because both of the teenager’s eyebrows scrunched together in concern so he quickly turned his attention back to the pancakes he was trying to make. 

“Are you okay, Andy?” Jake asked him, a worried tone in his voice. 

“Yes, I’m fine.” He reassured Jake in a—hopefully—convincing manner. He wasn’t quite sure if it worked, but he hoped so. 

Andy closed his eyes in an attempt calm the raging headache that was growing by the minute. He didn’t even bother to open his eyes when he cracked one of the eggs. 

“Uh…Andy?” 

“Hm?” 

“You just cracked the egg into the sink…the bowl is behind you.”

Andy opened his eyes and sure enough, he realized that he had indeed cracked the egg into the sink, judging by the almost sickening yellow yolk that was staring up at him. He rubbed his forehead with one hand and dropped the egg shells into the sink, grabbing another egg and turning around to face the bowl. 

“Mhm, yeah. I knew that. Was just…testing to see if the egg was still good.” He lied, trying once again to sound convincing but knew that the boys weren’t buying it. 

“Andy, you’re an even shittier liar than Jake and that’s definitely saying something.” Junior bluntly told him, which prompted another elbow to his ribs from Jake and he shot his cousin a deadly glare. Then Junior turned his attention back to the adult, squinting for a moment before his eyes widened with realization. “Oh, shit…you’re sick, aren’t you?”

“No, ‘m not sick.” Andy denied and looked away from Junior’s piercing stare. 

Then his body decided to betray him, quickly burying his face into the crook of his elbow as he sneezed harshly three times in a row. Andy sneezed so hard he nearly doubled over, his back aching in the process, but he’d die before admitting that and dealing with another joke about him being old from the boys. 

No one said anything for a moment before Jake broke the silence. “Yeah, you’re definitely sick.” 

Junior suddenly nudged his cousin’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “Good job, Jake, you gave Andy your disease.” 

Jake gave Junior an incredulous look. “I gave him my disease? You were sick first and then got me sick, you jackass!” 

“Enough!” Andy stopped the fight that was bound to break out between the cousins by raising his voice. It succeeded, but the adult nearly winced again from the headache his own damn voice gave him. He still swallowed what was left of his pride, quickly wiping his nose on his sleeve before straightening up. “I’m not sick. I’m just tired. I’m fine.” 

For a moment, the boys didn’t look convinced at all. They just stared at him, eyebrows raised until Junior sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “You’re right. I’m sure you aren’t sick. You probably just didn’t get enough sleep.” He said in such a casual tone that it made Andy raise an eyebrow this time. 

“Uh huh…yeah.” 

“Right,” Junior took a few steps closer until they were only a couple feet apart, “that’s exactly what’s going on, it makes total sense.” He then put his hand on Andy’s cheek, patting it a couple times almost goodheartedly before whirling his head toward Jake. “He has a fever, definitely sick.” 

Oh, that little shit! Andy cursed mentally. 

He should’ve known that the most mischievous of the two kids he adopted had a trick up his sleeve, he always did. 

“I knew it was only a matter of time before he got sick.” Jake said while standing up, shaking his head and observing the grown man more. 

“Kids, I am fine!“ Andy tried to convince them but his shitty lies fell upon deaf ears, Junior’s hand moving to the back of his shoulder and gently pushing him out of the kitchen. 

“Yeah right, you seriously are a worse liar than Jake.” Junior scoffed and ignored his cousin’s “hey!” at the slight jab toward him while the latter grabbed his sleeve and joined in on tugging the adult toward his bedroom. 

Andy knew that the little shits weren’t going to be listening to him at this point, so he just gave up. At least, that’s what he told himself. He really was exhausted and every part of him was screaming to just lie down and fall asleep. 

He didn’t even bother trying to hold his ground and stop the boys from dragging him back to his bedroom. Andy knew that it wouldn’t work to begin with—damn those boys for being already taller than he was—so he continued stumbling over his own feet until they finally got to his room. 

“Okay, get in bed, Andy.” Jake said stubbornly, lightly pushing him onto his bed. 

Andy sat on the bed before adjusting himself to start lying down, having almost no energy to continue arguing with the boys. The cousins got to work pulling the blankets up to Andy’s shoulders, finally getting the adult to protest. 

“You-you two really don’t need to do all this—” 

“Andy, I will punch your lights out to make sure you rest if I have to. Don’t test me.” Junior threatened the man while practically tucking him in, Jake finally not nudging his cousin despite his almost terrifying warning. 

It seemed as if, for once, they were both in agreement. 

Great, he was being bullied by two teenagers. 

Andy opened his mouth to speak but instead began coughing severely into his fist. Each painful sounding cough was enough to make his lungs ache and his back to feel like he was being stabbed. He wasn’t sure how long he was coughing for, not until he was able to feel Junior’s hand patting his back to ease his coughing and then Jake pressing a glass of water to his hands so he could drink it. 

When did he get a glass of water? 

Andy’s coughs began to slow down so he was able to drink his water, carefully sipping it. The cool liquid helped refresh his burning esophagus but still brought a painful feeling in the back of his throat. However, it was enough for his coughs to subside, barely being able to keep his eyes open anymore. 

“Just go to sleep, Andy. You took care of us, now it’s our turn to take care of you.” Jake said softly now, to probably not aggravate Andy’s headache, taking the glass away and putting it on the nightstand beside him. 

He finally allowed himself to rest his head on his pillow, almost melting from the feeling. His body started to relax, even though he was shivering from his fever, and despite every part of him wanting to argue, to insist that he was fine and that he didn’t need to be taken care of by his own kids just because he was sick, he didn’t anymore. Andy was just too fucking exhausted at this point. 

Just before he could drift off, he heard Junior whisper a “G’night, mom” before he finally succumbed to the sleep he so desperately needed. 

At some point, Andy woke up. He wasn’t sure how long he was out, but the sun was no longer glaring through his window. In fact, the room was almost dark now. 

He realized that there was a damp rag on his forehead, reaching one hand up to pull it aside and drop it beside himself on the bed. His throat was still sore, body aching, and head pounding, but he had to admit, he did feel a bit better. He was no longer shaking with the chills, thankfully, the fever must’ve broken. 

Andy tried to lift his head to see what time it was on the clock before Junior suddenly poked his head into the bedroom and grinned. 

“Oh good, you’re awake!” He said enthusiastically before calling out to his cousin. “Jake! Sleeping Beauty has risen from his slumber!” 

The adult rolled his eyes at the very inaccurate comparison while Jake quickly rushed into the room, both cousins now almost awkwardly yet worryingly hovering over him. 

Jesus, was he like this when the boys were sick a couple weeks ago? 

“How long have I been out?” Andy asked, his voice still grating but not as painful as before. 

The teens paused before Jake smiled delicately. “…nine hours.” 

Andy’s eyes widened. “Nine hours—?!” He started to exclaim before coughing. Just like before, nine hours ago apparently, Jake helped him drink the now completely full glass of water until he was able to stop his coughing fit. 

“I mean, it wasn’t consecutive,” Junior ended up correcting with his hands on his hips, “you kept going in and out of consciousness.” 

“I was?” 

“You don’t remember?” Jake asked and the adult shook his head. “Huh…that kind of makes sense. You were really out of it. Delirious and shit, mumbling too.” 

“Try enunciating next time, so we could further understand the ramblings of a mad man.” Junior threw in with a teasing smile, ignoring the glare from his cousin. 

Andy rubbed a hand over his face, trying to process all of this. “Yeah, I…don’t remember anything. Last thing I remember was you two putting me to bed. And that was it.” 

“I mean, I guess it’s not that surprising. You did have a really bad fever,” Jake said before reaching out and placing the back of his hand to Andy’s forehead, then pulling it away, “Which has gone down now, thank god.” 

“That’s definitely good because your fever did get pretty bad. We were worried that we were gonna have to drag your ass to your car and then I’d have to personally drive you to the hospital. Or worse,” Junior paused, most likely for dramatic effect, “call Aunt Kyle.” 

“Thank you for not doing either of those things.” Andy truly was grateful that the boys were able to lower his fever so neither of those options happened. He sure as hell didn’t trust Junior behind the wheel, the kid enjoyed speed far too much and then all three of them would be in the hospital. 

As for Kyle…he’d rather not deal with her yelling about how he should’ve called her because he was sick. She’d be far more overprotective over him than the boys were being, so he would worry about her later. 

Jake moved to sit down beside Andy on the bed, Junior doing the same on Andy’s opposite side and leaned his back against the wall. “Are you feeling better now, Andy?” Jake asked, his eyes still laced with concern. 

Andy looked at the boys and nodded slightly, cracking a small smile. “Yeah, I’m doing better. Thanks,” he paused for a moment, “you two really didn’t need to take care of me like this, I would’ve been fine on my own.” 

“That’s it, I’m gonna punch him.” 

“No, Junior, you’ll make his headache worse.” 

Thank you Jake for assuring that Junior won’t punch me just because of my headache. Andy thought to himself sarcastically. 

“Look, all I’m just saying is…” the man thought about the correct way to phrase it so he wouldn’t earn a punch from one of his kids, who certainly looked eager to deliver at the moment, “I’m the adult. You two are the children—I know you’re teenagers, don’t give me that look, just roll with me here. I’m supposed to take care of you. Not the other way around.” 

“But you always take care of us,” Junior reminded him, “every single day. Especially when we were sick. Did your brain get fried so much from your fever that you don’t remember?” The last comment finally attained a nudge to his side by Jake’s elbow, leaving Junior to scowl at his cousin. 

“Look, what Junior was trying to say before his asshole alert went off was that it isn’t a crime for us to take care of you. You always take care of us and this time, it was our turn to take care of you. And there’s nothing wrong with that.” Jake translated for his cousin as Junior nodded along in agreement. 

Andy supposed, if he thought about it, the boys were right. Everyday, his sole focus was on taking care of the kids. When they got sick, those feelings were enhanced. He rubbed Junior’s back when he coughed so hard that he threw up, he lifted Jake’s head so he could drink water because he was too physically drained to do it on his own. 

From the moment he had the Wheeler cousins, his goal was set to being there for and helping them. Their previous fathers certainly never understood the role that Andy took on, so he made sure to give all the love and support that he had to the boys. 

So maybe, it would be okay to let Jake and Junior take care of him while he’s sick. 

Just this once. 

“Thank you, you little shits.” Andy said to them with a fond smile. 

“You’re welcome, mom.” The cousins said simultaneously, something that he was sure that they picked up from Glen and Glenda. 

Great, he had to deal with another set of twins. Except they weren’t actually twins, just cousins that were born a few weeks apart. 

“You hungry?” Jake asked. “I have chicken soup on the stove, I just need to heat it up since I wasn’t sure when you’d wake up.” 

Andy nodded with a smile. “Yeah, I’m kind of hungry, thanks.” He said as he tried to sit up. Both boys got into action in helping him, propping a few pillows behind him so he could comfortably lean back against the wall. 

The adult knew that the kids picked that up from him, remembering clearly that this was how he would sit them up so they could eat when they were sick. 

Jake left the room to get started on the soup and Junior scooted closer to Andy, resting his head on his shoulder. “You two have eaten, right?” Andy asked, already growing concerned at the mere thought that the boys became so focused on taking care of him that they forgot to feed themselves. 

“Yeah, yeah, we ate.” Junior quickly reassured him. “We’re running on Jake’s pancakes and last night’s leftover lasagna. His pancakes aren’t quite as good as yours, but they made do. And we ate an entire bag of party size Fritos chips.” Junior paused, now bashful. “Okay, I lied, I ate the entire huge ass bag of chips, not Jake.” 

“Good. I’m glad you’re well fed, kiddo.” Andy said quickly, playfully nudging his cheek to the top of the teenager’s head, hearing his kid giggle. 

He knew that Junior still struggled with food at times and couldn’t care less that he ate an entire party size bag full of chips. The kids could eat as much as they wanted, they deserved it. 

Besides, Andy bought those chips knowing how much Junior loved them. It was about time that he went to town on them. 

They sat there in peaceful silence for a few minutes, the silence occasionally being interrupted by the adult coughing, before Jake came in with the soup. The boys started conversing while Andy slowly ate, listening to them joke around and squabble with each other with a smile. 

Maybe being sick and having my sons around isn’t so bad. He thought to himself as he watched Jake and Junior. 

After a moment of watching them endearingly, Andy smiled more. 

Yeah, this really wasn’t so bad after all.

[mprosperossprite]

Since my post yesterday about Nile Freeman’s erasure from The Old Guard fandom, I’ve noticed several non-American folks respond that they want to explore Nile more but feel like they’re missing an understanding of a key piece of Nile’s backstory that it seems like American folks understand without talking about it: that Nile is not just from Chicago, but she’s from The South Side of Chicago.

I’m not an expert, and, once again, I’m a white person. But my best friend is a middle school English teacher who’s taught A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking 1956 play about the Youngers, a Black family attempting to achieve the American dream by moving from their apartment on the South Side of Chicago into a house in a white neighborhood. On the first day of the unit, before they even touch the play, she shows her students these two maps.

The first is from 1934. Though the language used to refer to Black people is antiquated (please never use the word this map uses), the data is interesting. It shows each census tract in the Chicago area, shaded based upon what percentage of the population in the tract is Black. The darker the shading, the higher the concentration of Black people living there. Note that there are a series of tracts in the southern part of the map that are shaded to indicate that Black people consist of 80% to 99% of the population in those areas. Also note that most of the rest of the tracts on the map have almost no shading.

So what does this map tell us?

It tells us the Black people in Chicago were concentrated in certain neighborhoods, to such an extreme extent that there are almost no other groups of people in those neighborhoods and almost no Black people anywhere else.

This was intentional.

The US Federal Government engaged in a practice called red-lining, wherein the Federal Housing Authority designated some neighborhoods as “dangerous” and “undesirable” and made it almost impossible to get a home loan in those areas because the agency would not insure mortgages. Richard Rothstein, whose book The Color of Law, interrogates the ongoing harm and effect of red-lining calls this a “state-sponsored system of segregation.” Yes, state-sponsored segregation happened in the North, too.

There were other contributing factors that created this intense housing segregation in Chicago and other northern cities, including restrictive covenants that legally prevented homeowners in certain neighborhoods from selling their homes to non-white, non-protestant people, but the result of all these policies is that during periods of so called “American prosperity,” wherein white Americans were owning homes at higher rates than ever, Black Americans were excluded. The result was neighborhoods like the South Side of Chicago, intensely Black and intentionally impoverished.

But that was almost 100 years ago. Red-lining and restrictive covenants and other housing discrimination practices have now been ruled unconstitutional.

So let’s look at another map, this one from the New York Times’ 2015 project Mapping Segregation. Using the 2010 Census Data, each dot in the map below represents 500 people. The different colored dots represent the different racial categories used by the Census. Notice how in the southern part of the map, there is a wedge that consists almost entirely of the blue dots representing Black people. Notice also, how the green dots, representing white people, are intensely concentrated on the northern shoreline of the city, as well as on the outskirts, in the suburbs.

What I hope you notice about these two maps is that they are essentially the same. They tell the same story.

The end of state-sanctioned discrimination and ghettoization does not reverse the harm and inequality caused by these practices.

All this is interesting, but what does this mean for Nile specifically?

It means she grew up in a segregated neighborhood, in an intensely segregated city.

It means that the glittery downtown and famous lake-shore probably felt almost like a different world, even if it was technically her own hometown.

It means she probably grew up in a community with Black churches and Black hair salons and barbershops and kids playing streetball and cookouts in the summer. It means she grew up in a community with a long tradition of celebrating Black culture and Black arts and Black identity.

It means she probably also went to a school that was chronically underfunded, with teachers who were overworked and underpaid. The odds are good that Nile had at least one full school year where her class didn’t have a permanent teacher at all.

It means she probably grew up knowing the sights and sounds of gun violence in her neighborhood, and knowing people who were the victims of gun violence, both gang related and caused by police.

Perhaps, most important of all, she grew up in a neighborhood which is heavily targeted by US military recruiters. The most common pitch these recruiters make is that the US military will pay for their college education if a person enlists straight out of high school. For many of the people Nile grew up with, and maybe even Nile herself, this seems like the only path to higher education that won’t saddle them with an inescapable amount of debt.

In the film, Nile tells Andy that growing up on the South Side of Chicago with a single mother meant there was a “million different ways it could have gone left.” That might just be the understatement of the century.

And yet one of the reasons I love Nile and think she's so so so important is that her story is not about any of this. Her story is not about how she triumphed over adversity, or how she "made it out." Nile's story is about a woman whose upbringing and identities inform her future actions. She understands loyalty. She understands suffering. She understands fighting for herself and those closest to her and what she believes in. And maybe the South Side had something to do with all that, but it also comes from who she is.

[navybrat817]

Beg Me

Pairing: Andy Barber x Female Reader Summary: Distracting Andy from his work is always a fun time. Word Count: Over 1k Warnings: Explicit sexual content, hand job, possessive behavior, dirty talk, Andy Barber (he's a warning!) A/N: For @happygowriting 's Hat Draw Challenge (Prompt: “I’m going to jerk you off until you’re begging me to stop.” with Andy Barber) ). Congrats, lovely!!! ❤️ Not beta read, so any and all mistakes are my own. Moodboard by yours truly. Comments, likes, reblogs and asks are appreciated. ❤️

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I do not consent to have my work posted on any third party site or app. If anyone sees my work anywhere but here or archiveofourown under my same username, it has been reposted without my permission. 18+ Please!!! By reading this, you agree that you are at least 18 years old. Enjoy, lovelies!

If you could have dreamt up the perfect man, he would have been in the form of Andy Barber. Handsome, commanding and passionate, there was no denying him and you never wanted to. While he was usually the dominant of the two of you in bed, you occasionally liked to be the one who drove him crazy. It wasn't to give you a sense of power or control. You were just happy to make the man you loved feel good.

You watched him as he sat at his desk, tapping your fingertip against the doorframe. He promised he wouldn't work when he got home, but there he was. You didn't blame him and you weren't even upset. But now was the perfect time to give him something to get him through the rest of the day. 

You walked over to the desk, your hips swaying enticingly. You continued to watch him intently as he tried to ignore your presence, but you saw him look out of the corner of his eye. He cleared his throat as he looked back at the papers in front of him. Smirking, you snatched them from his hand and put them out of reach. You swore he snarled when you kept the smirk on your face.

"I'm trying to work and you're distracting me."

Your body clenched in reaction to his glare. Being on the receiving end of that look scared most people, but you were the exception. It sent a shiver of excitement through you when he didn't blink and you dared to step closer. 

"I know I am, but I can help you out," you offered. 

Andy raised an eyebrow as his gaze shifted to feigned disinterest. But he couldn't hide how dark his eyes got. "You're going to help me?"

"Yep. I'll get you off and you can go back to it," you said innocently, straddling him as he leaned back in his chair. 

His hand reached up and gently moved along your jaw, the small action immediately spreading more heat between your thighs. You had no idea how he turned you on so quickly with the lightest of touches, but you wanted to have the same effect on him. Before he could pull away, you grasped his hand and brought it to your lips. Your eyes twinkled with something lustful as you sucked a finger into your mouth, moaning around it. 

"You think teasing me is a good idea?" he asked, a slight rasp to his tone as his finger slipped free. 

"Teasing would imply that I have no intention to follow through. And I have every intention of doing so."

Brushing your lips against his, you moved a hand between your bodies to cup him. You felt how hard he was beneath his slacks and you wondered how long he had been worked up. Thankfully, he had you to take care of him. 

"Poor Andy," you said softly as you rubbed him, kissing the corner of his mouth. Feeling his beard tickle your lips made you tremble as you unbuttoned his pants. Maybe later you could convince him to rub his beard against your inner thighs. "How are you supposed to get any work done with your cock so hard?"

You heard the air rush out of his lungs as you pulled the zipper down, feeling his strong thighs tense beneath yours. "Still fucking teasing me," he groaned as your hand grasped the band of his underwear to move it down. "Fuck, honey."

You smiled as you grasped his cock and pulled him free. Holding him in your hand, your fist went tight. You rubbed your thumb across the head as you leaned back and glanced down. The thickness of him never ceased to amaze you. It made your mouth water.

“I told you I'm not going to tease you," you reminded him as you twisted your wrist. "I’m going to jerk you off until you’re begging me to stop.”  

Andy was amazing. Addicting. How could not worship him? You ignored how soaked your panties were as you pumped your hand because this was about him. And after so many nights of him bringing you over the edge multiple times, it was time to return the favor.

"Fuck, honey. Faster," he groaned, his hips rocking as you worked him in even strokes.

"No," you laughed softly. "You have no patience right now, Mr. Barber, and that won't do. Just like my pussy is yours, this is my cock. I'll go as fast or slow as I please."

There was no mistaking the growl this time. He sounded impressed that you took control. "I'm ruining my pussy the second I'm done-"

"The second you're done what? Coming?" you questioned, kissing his cheek as you brushed the head of his cock again. Feeling him leak for you had you lightly grinding your own hips. "I told you. Until you beg me to stop, your cock isn't leaving my hand."

His hips bucked hard enough to rock the chair, his moan low and deep. "You think I won't fuck you with my fingers? Or make you ride my thigh until you gush on these pants?"

"That would be a shame," you sighed, feeling more precum slide across your fingers. "I like these pants… But it would be fun to ruin them the way you ruined me. Just like I want to ruin you."

His head fell back as he could look in your eyes, his hips starting to lose their rhythm. "I was ruined the moment you walked into my life," he breathed.

You whimpered, wanting so badly to take him into your quivering cunt at his words. "Later," you thought because your release didn't matter. But his… "Prove it. Make a mess on my hand. C'mon, hotshot. Do it. Come."

He whined, actually whined, for you as his cock pulsed, shuddering as you watched his release spread between you both. Some of it landed on your hand as you finished stroking him, hot and searing. You wanted to taste every drop as he came down. 

"Fuck…" he panted as his shoulders slumped, catching his breath. 

As you pulled your hand away, you quickly replaced it with the other. 

"What…" he gasped as you brought it to your lips.

"Beg me," you whispered as you began to clean your fingers. "That's an order, Mr. Barber."

[harrysgoldenline]

When In Italy Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2

He remembered your order.

It was all you could think about after you sat down, a waitress coming quickly to your table and he gave you a look, asking you if that’s what you wanted. You gave a small nod and you refrained from commenting on it, not wanting to stroke his already enlarged ego you are sure has only gotten big since you have seen him last based on… well everything.

The waitress thanked you both, taking your menus and leaving the two of you alone, giving one another an awkward smile before you looked down at your hands, now regretting pretending to not know what to order in order to hide behind your menu a bit more.

“So…” Harry began, fingers drumming onto the table, “how have you been?”

You let out an airy laugh, looking up at him with a raised eyebrow before leaning back in the woven dining chair, warm Italian sun hitting your face as you looked out at the view and back to him, not even sure what to say. You, obviously, were not doing great and he was.

You open your mouth to start to answer but stop when the waitress comes back, placing the cool, water glasses in front of you and they quickly become interesting as you watch the condensation drop down from the glass onto the table.

“Y/n…” Harry began, looking up at you and sighing when your eyes met, “Can you talk to me? I just want to see what you’ve been up to.”

“What about you?” You counter, heart pounding against your chest, “I feel like you’re the one who needs to check in and share some updates more than anyone else, don’t you think?”

“I guess I deserve that.” He chuckled, taking a sip of water and looking at you over the glass causing you to scoff.

“I’m glad you think it’s funny.” you glare, crossing your arms over your chest, trying to calm your pounding heart, “really makes the whole situation better.”

“Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry,” He nodded, holding his hands up in defense, “but I didn’t know you were going to be there, I would have never brought her if I would have known that, obviously and I’m sorry it happened this way but I’m glad I saw you, I’m glad to see you.”

“Who is she?”

He looked surprised by your question, not expecting you to rip the band-aid off in the way that you did. But, you knew him. Better than anyone you’ve ever known in your life and you couldn’t understand why he was beating around the bush like this so much. You also needed this for yourself, not wanting to fall for his famous charm, looking into those beautiful, jade eyes you knew you would be done for.

It’s the reason your sitting across from at this table at all, not being able to resist his smile, his sot, caring voice as he asked you to see him, having no idea what you would be getting into all, you said yes without any hesitation and you decided in that moment, watching as he went around the clear high priority topic with ease.

“Her name is Olivia.” He sighed, “she’s the director of the movie I’m going to be in and…”

“You’re together?”

He didn’t answer, looking at his hands.

You nodded, taking his silence as the clear answer and you bit your bottom lip hard, tasting blood as your teeth sunk into the flesh, hoping the pain would stop the tears that were stinging your eyes. You could feel your hands shake and you let out a sigh, standing up from the table and running your hands over your skirt, frustrated he didn’t even have the nerve to come out and simply say it.

“I-I’m going to go,” You began to ramble, looking down at the water glass and you dug through your bag, looking for money to pay for your meal and tip the waitress, even though it wasn’t yet served to you, eyes burning as you did your best to keep in your tears.

“Please stay.” He whispered and you shook your head rapidly, pulling out your wallet and looking for a big enough bill, “Okay, let me just drive you back, put your wallet away this is on me.I asked you to come.” He added, pulling out his wallet and laying down a more than generous amount.

“No, please.” You whispered, stepping back as you stepped closer to you, “just, stay. Take my food with you. I’m gonna book a flight home and you guys can have the house to yourselves by tomorrow night.”

“Y/n-”

“Goodbye, Harry.”

You ignored his calls of your name, walking down the pavestone as you made your way through the quaint town, passing the many boutiques and gelato shops you two went through a dozen times.You also did your best to ignore the longing look of pity as you passed by the strangers, thankful your italian wasn’t as good as his, that way you didn’t have to also hear what they were saying about you.

You wandered your way through the beautiful village, wishing it brought you the same amount of joy as it always did, but not it just left you a bitter taste in your mouth, reaching for your phone and calling for a cab, looking up flights the second the car pulled up.

***

Your eyes fluttered open at the sound of your alarm, heart wrenching at the realization that all of this was real and you fist rubbed your swollen eyes, sniffling as you sat up and the details all came back to you.

“He found someone else already.” you had sobbed into the phone to your best friend, clutching at your chest as your back was against the front door. “He already moved on, y/bff/n and he brought her here and-and… I-I got a flight home and I just don’t know what to do.”

You were beginning to hyperventilate, mind being unable to wrap around the fact that he had moved on so quickly, the man you thought you were going to marry, being together for years, had already moved on to someone else.

Your best friend had done her best to calm you, begging you to let them fly there to help get your things together, to at least meet you at a connecting flight so you weren’t flying home completely alone, but you didn’t allow it, knowing how much trouble they would get into with their boss.

“I’ll be there to pick you up.” they told you, after a long pause, their heart was breaking at the sound of your cries, “You’re gonna make it through this, y/n. I know you are.”

You weakly stumbled out of bed, walking straight to the closet and, once again, pulling your bags out and throwing them onto the bed, throwing your all clothes into a messy pile and zipping up the bag, pushing it into the hallway after quickly changed into a clean outfit, slipping on a pair of sneakers as you got ready for your flight home.

Forcing yourself to brush your teeth and run a comb through your hair was harder than you had ever imagined, hating to have to look at your reflection as the face of her was being compared side by side in your mind. You hated yourself more for wishing that Harry tried a little harder, wishing that he had ran after you and tried to at least explain more, extend the olive branch so to speak, even though it would never fully heal your wounds.

Your anxious mind wouldn’t stop reliving your morning with Harry and you couldn’t help but have regrets, wondering if you overreacted, wondering what would have happened if you stayed for the rest of the meal.

Could you ever be friends?

Pushing yourself away from the counter you hoped that the thoughts would subside, wishing you knew the answers but knowing you never would. You shuffled your way into the living room, curling up on the couch as you waited for the car to come pick you up and take you to the airport, not having the energy to reach to pick up the remote so you sat in silence.

Although it felt like minutes, an hour soon passed and you heard the knock at the door and you forced yourself up, grabbing your suitcase and wheeling it behind you as you opened the door, being greeted by the driver who took your suitcase from you and loaded it into the car as you followed behind, finding your place in the backseat.

The time went faster than you thought it would, the drive to the airports, the security line, flights, layovers, all of it. The next thing you knew you were walking down the steps of the airport, seeing the face of your best friend and running towards them, dropping your suitcase in the process as they quickly took you in their arms, holding you as tight as they could.

“I got you.” They whispered, rubbing your back as your tears sunk into the fabric of the fabric covering their shoulder, “I’m so, so sorry, sweetheart. You’re gonna be okay, I promise.”

“How do you know?” you horsley whispered, “my heart hurts so much.”

“I know, I know.” They whispered back, pulling back and looking you into the eyes, giving you a smile and wiping away your tears, “It’s going to be okay, I promise. You are an incredible human being, y/n, you are so unbelievably strong andI know that you can do this and I’m going to be there for you every single step of the way, okay?. ”

And they were.

Being there for you every single step of the way for the next two weeks since you got back from your trip and even moved into your apartment with you for a few days at first as you adjusted. Holding you every single time that you cried, always checking in and making sure that you were taking care of yourself and always being there for you to talk about everything, even though you weren’t quite ready yet, they were there for you when you were going to be and you couldn’t have been more thankful for that.

Now, after a couple weeks of healing, after your plummet on your journey of healing post break up, you felt like you were back on your way up. You started leaving your apartment more again and y/bff/n even got you to go out with them and a couple of friends one night.

Actually starting to feel better and even starting to feel a lot more like yourself.

Your phone buzzed and you quickly took a look down at it, seeing a text from y/bff/n

Be there soon! i can't wait to try out this new coffee place!

You smiled and sent back your quick reply, letting her know you were going to head downstairs touching up your makeup quickly as you looked at yourself in the mirror and smiled back at your reflection, seeing the glow and fullness starting to come back to your face, the circles under your eyes slowly disappearing more and more everyday.

Grabbing your purse off the kitchen counter and sliding on your shoes you got ready to leave your apartment, heading out the door and locking the door behind you, jiggling the handle to endure it was locked before turning on your heel to head out. You go to reach for the elevator button, but it dings as it announces its arrival and you step out of the way, allowing whatever neighbor to have a clear path to their apartment. Instead, you're met with a pair of familiar green eyes.

“Harry?”

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

Thanks for reading! Comments/feedback is always encouraged and that way I can let you know when the next part is up!!

Are you interested in a personalized imagine? check out my pinned post on my page or click the link below!

https://ko-fi.com/em21356

[nevermindirah]

Do you have any thoughts on the use of AAVE for Nile (or lack thereof) in TOG fanfiction? I've been reading some Book of Nile fic and some writers seem to write her as a Millennial™ (using words like "fave" and "woke") but never acknowledge her Blackness in her patterns of speech. I know we don't see her use as much AAVE in the films, but I would argue she's in situations where code-switching would be valued (first in a "professional" environment in the army, then around a group of non-Black strangers).

Hi anon! I have many thoughts on this and I'm honored you asked me! But I should start by saying I'm white and any thoughts Black fans and especially Black American fans have on this that they want to share would be beyond lovely. (I'm not gonna tag anybody bc that feels rude but please add onto this post if any of y'all see this and want to!)

The main reason I personally avoid AAVE for Nile in my own fics is because I'm not Black. But Nile-centric fics by Black writers tend to avoid using much of it too, at least from what I've noticed/understood, and my guess is it's largely for the reason you mention, that she's in situations that encourage code-switching.

In movie canon Nile is highly competent at tailoring her language to each situation she finds herself in. This fantastic linguistics analysis meta shows how skillfully Nile chooses her vocabulary and grammar to meet her goals with different conversation partners in different contexts. In comics canon Nile had a bunch of different civilian jobs before joining the Marines, so she would've had experience code-switching in the ways that made sense for all those different contexts as well as the Marines and her family and high school and wherever else she spent her time before we met her. And now she's spending her time with a handful of immortals none of whom are native English speakers and a fellow Black American but one with a Queen's English UK accent whose professional experience is in the CIA where high-status code-switching is often an absolute must for success or even survival.

Fics featuring Nile are charged with extrapolating from that to how it might show up in her use of language that she's coping with a traumatic separation from her family and her career and pretty much everything she's ever known and now she needs to be able to make herself understood to people who seem to care about her and each other but are super duper in crisis, three (soon to be four) of whom predate Modern English entirely and the only one who's anywhere near her contemporary she's not supposed to talk to for a century. All of these people are telling her that pretty much any contact with any mortals poses an existential threat to her and the rest of the group. How the FUCK is she supposed to cope with that, like, generally? And would it be a more effective way for her to cope if she talked to Andy Joe and Nicky using the speech patterns that she used to use with her mom and brother, to at least retain that part of her identity even if it means having to do a lot of explaining, or would it meet her needs better to prioritize Andy Joe and Nicky understanding what she means with her words over using the particular words and grammar forms she used with her family?

I've seen several fics, both Nile-centric / BoN and otherwise, explore this a little bit in how/whether Nile uses Millennial™ speak. It's often a theme in Nile texting Booker despite the exile because of the popular headcanon that he as The Tech Guy is the only other immortal who understands memes. But Nile's much-younger-than-Booker mom probably uses Boomer and/or Gen X memes and Andy has been adapting to new communication styles for forever as evidenced by her canon high level of fluency with standard-American-accented English.

Which brings us back to people avoiding AAVE because they're not Black and they don't want to make mistakes (or they're not Black and they don't want to get yelled at for making mistakes, though I think many people overestimate how much they'll get yelled at while underestimating how much these mistakes can hurt). I can imagine some Black fans hold back from using much AAVE in fic because they don't want to share in-group stuff with white people who are likely to then adopt and ruin it, as white people so often do with Black cultural stuff. Some links about this including a great Khadija Mbowe video. I'm saying this gently, anon, because you might not know: woke, an example you cited as Millennial™ speak, is AAVE, and that's gotten erased by so many white people appropriating it and using it incorrectly online.

And also there's the part where fandom is a hobby and you never know when you're reading a fic that's the very first thing someone's ever written outside of a school assignment. This cultural considerations of language shit takes a level of effort and skill that not everybody puts into every fic, or even could if they wanted to because they haven't had time to build their skills yet. It's definitely easier for non-Black fans to project our millennial feels onto Nile than to do the layers of research and self-reflection it requires to depict what Blackness might mean to Nile, and it's not surprising that often people sharing their hobby creations on the internet have gone the easier route. There's not even necessarily shame in doing what's easier. It's just frustrating and often hurtful when structural white supremacy means that 3-dimensional Black characters are rare in media and thoughtful explorations of them in fandom are seen by the majority of fans as not-easy to make and therefore Nile Freeman, the main character in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood, has the least fic and meta and art made about her of our 5 main immortals.

I've been active in different fandoms off and on for twenty years and I barely managed to write 5,000 words about Sam Wilson across multiple different fics in the 7 years since I fell in love with him. There's an alchemy to which characters we connect with, and on top of that which characters we connect with in a way that causes us to create stuff about them. Something about Nile Freeman finally tipped me over the edge from a voracious reader to a voracious writer. It's not for me to judge which characters speak to other individuals to the level of creating content about them, but I do think it's important for us to notice, and then work to fight, the pattern where across this fandom as a whole Nile gets way less content, and way less depth in so much of the content that's in theory about her, than any of these other characters.

Anyway, back to language. My two long fics feature Nile with several Black friends — Copley and OCs and cameos from other media — but all of those characters except Alec Hardison from Leverage aren't American. It's very possible I'm guilty of stereotyping Black British speech patterns in I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore. I watched hours and hours of Black haircare YouTube videos in the research for that fic and I modeled my OCs' speech patterns on what I heard from some of those YouTubers as well as what I've heard people like John Boyega and Idris Elba saying in interviews, but the thing about doing your best is you still might fuck up.

I'm slowly making progress on my WIP where Nile and Sam Wilson are cousins, and what ways of talking with a family member might be authentic for Nile is a major question I need to figure out. For that, I'm largely modeling my writing choices on how I hear my Black friends and colleagues talking to each other. I haven't overheard colleagues talking in an office in a long-ass time, but back when that was a thing, I remember seeing a ton of nuance in the different ways many of my Black colleagues would talk to each other. Different people have different personalities! And backgrounds! And priorities! A few jobs ago my department was about 1/3 Black and we worked closely with Obama administration staff many of whom were Black and there was SO MUCH VARIETY in how Black people talked to each other, about work and workplace-appropriate personal stuff, where I and other white coworkers could hear. There are a few work friends in particular who I have in my head when I'm trying to imagine how Sam and Nile might talk to each other. From the outside looking in, God DAMN is shit complicated, intellectually and interpersonally and spiritually, for Black people who are devoting their professional lives to public service in the United States.

One more aspect of this that I have big thoughts on but I need to take extra care in talking about is the idea of acknowledging Nile's Blackness in her patterns of speech. There's no one right way to be Black, and Nile's a fictional character created by a white dude but there are plenty of real-life Black Americans who don't use much or even any AAVE, for reasons that are complicated because of white supremacy. (Highly highly recommend this video by Shanspeare on the harms of the Oreo stereotype.)

Something that's not the same but has enough similarity that I think it's worth talking about is my personal experience with authenticity and American Jewish speech patterns. My Jewish family members don't talk like they're in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I've known lots of people who do talk that way (or the millennial version of it), some of whom have questioned my Jewishness because I don't talk that way. That hurts me. Sometimes when another Jew tells me some shit like "I've never heard a Jew say y'all'd've," I can respond with "well now you have asshole, bless your Yankee-ass heart," because the myth of Dixie is a racist lie but I will totally call white Northerners Yankees when they're being shitty to me for being Southern, and this particular Jew fucking revels in using "bless your heart" with maximum polite aggression, especially with said Yankees. But sometimes I don't have it in me to say anything and it just quietly hurts having an important part of me disbelieved by someone who shares that important part of me. The sting isn't quite the same when non-Jews disbelieve or discount my Jewishness, but that hurts too.

Who counts as authentically Jewish is a messy in-group conversation and it doesn't really make sense to explain it all here. Who counts as authentically Jewish is a matter of legal status for immigration, citizenship, and civil rights in Israel, and it's my number 2 reason after horrific treatment of Palestinians that I'm antizionist. But outside that extremely high-stakes legal situation, it can just feel really shitty to not be recognized as One Of Us, especially by your own people.

It can also feel really shitty to be The Only One of Your Kind in a group, even if that group is an immortal chosen family who all loves each other dearly. Sometimes especially in a situation like that where you know those people love you but there are certain things they don't get about you and will never quite be able to. I'm definitely projecting at least a little bit of my "lonely Jew who will be alone again for yet another Jewish holiday" stuff onto Nile when at the end of I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore she's thinking about being the only Black immortal and moving away from the community she'd built with a mostly-Black group of mortals in that fic. Maybe that tracks, or maybe that's fucked up of me.

Basically, this got very long but it's complicated, writing about experiences that aren't your own takes skill which in turn takes time and practice to build, writing about experiences not your own that our society maligns can cause a lot of harm if done badly, it can also cause a lot of harm when a large enough portion of a fandom just decides to nope out of something that's difficult and risky because then there's just not much content about a character who deserves just a shit ton of loving and nuanced content, people are individuals and two people who come from the exact same cultural context might show that influence in all kinds of different ways, identity is complicated, language is complicated, writing is hard, and empathy and humility and doing our best aren't a guarantee of avoiding harm but they do go a long way in helping people create thoughtful content about a character as awesome and powerful and kind and messy and scared and curious and WORTHY as Nile Freeman.

[itlivesproject]

Hi! I only recently downloaded ILW and love it so far. I have a bunch of questions, and hopefully I'm not spamming you guys too much.

First, massive props for making Joss so likeable that I'm actually romancing her in several playthroughs (not all because Amalia is too amazing, and I'm a sucker for a good BFFs to Lovers story. And yes, I'm creating several playthroughs with multiple setups; my main one is the one based on what actually happened when I played ILITW and ILB. Then there's the 'ideal' playthrough where Parker stayed, and neither MC was romancing anyone (I originally romanced Ava) so I can guilt-free set up a romance between ILITW MC and Noah, now another one where it's ILITW MC and Dan, some where MC sacrificed herself, one where Noah actually killed her, some where both the gangs except MCs survived or where everyone other than MC died, and the absolute worst possible setup where everyone who can die, or in Parker's case leave, died. Most are barely started, but you've got me seriously invested in the story, ILW is that good), and making me genuinely enjoy Connor as a character when he bored me in ILITW. Amazing work right there.

Speaking of Joss, I (and I know others in the fandom do so as well) have been wondering, is she on the autism spectrum? That line about her taking some things too literally or something a few chapters ago, I don't remember the exact wording, but it struck me.

So ILB MC vanished, huh. I was hoping we might interact more with that side of the anthology soon, since ILITW has been dominating the story with only one throw-away mention of Tom until then in my main playthrough. Might be Andy romancers had more, but it was Ava for me so idk. I'm definitely excited for whatever you have in store for us in that regard. Does it have anything to do with Annie's sudden reappearance in ILW MC's life 👀?

How many chapters are projected for ILW, by the way? We're at number 9 now, so around halfway, less or more than that?

Also, I keep hearing something about a hiatus, and when exactly does it start, next week? (That would be just my timing, lol. I finally download ILW, and it goes on break immediately after.) Do you have any idea how long it might last, if I may ask?

Basically ILW has really captivated me, you guys are doing amazing, I'm looking forward to all the coming plot twists and branches (which I'm exploring with my different playthroughs as much as I can) and can't wait for whenever the next chapter drops. I probably forgot a bunch of questions I was going to ask, but this ask is already a mile long so I hope I didn't bother all of you too much. Thanks for this project, it really captures the spirit of the IL series in a way I didn't think was possible to replicate. I can tell it was made by real fans, and that's awesome, and for answering these rambling questions!

I love all the different setups you have! 😍😍

So we haven’t explicitly stated if she is on the spectrum but it is an absolutely valid interpretation that I support!

ILW is slated to be a whopping 23 chapters. You can find our progress tracker in our pinned post!

The hiatus will be after chapter 11 airs on July 2, so you have two more chapters before the break 🥲 the length will be a few months at the least but there is no finalized time frame. Basically we just need to finish writing/editing/programming the rest of the chapters so however long that takes 🤷‍♀️

Thanks for sending this in and for all your kind words and support! We value it so so much 🥰 can’t wait to share more of the game with you!

[tokiro07]

Undead Unluck Ch. 132 reaction

[The Journey’s End]

Akira being revealed to be sitting slightly to Fuuko’s left during Ragnarok is, likely unintentionally, the funniest god damn thing to ever come out of this series

Cus like...you gotta figure that from the moment G-Liner broke and Anno Un died, he was just chilling with the group the entire time. This raises a lot of questions, like who he went with when Fuuko was taken by Under or how he reacted to Fuuko being STABBED IN THE HEART

Did he know who Ruin was? He must have, right? Ruin must have existed within Information’s vision, unless he was literally only just created post G-Liner? But that’d be weird, considering that he has a scar already. I kind of doubt Sun designed him with a scar, I’m pretty sure his entire thing about being created by God is a bunch of bull, but whatever

Anyway, I think it’s extremely fitting that Akira is the one who both closes out the old and opens the new loops. Not only is he the author surrogate, lamenting the end of the current story and expressing his hope for what he’ll be able to do in the future (possibly an expression of the fear of Undead Unluck potentially being canceled before reaching that conclusion like so many other Jump manga), but he’s also a major impetus for the entire story thus far

Akira wrote To You, From Me, the story that allowed Fuuko to continue living right up until she would meet Andy. For all intents and purposes, he saved Fuuko at the very beginning of the manga, so it’s only appropriate that Part 2 begins with Fuuko saving Akira WITH the story that he allowed her to “write”

Also, fun bit of trivia, the new manga that Akira is talking about being in Jump that week (Sep. 11, 1972, issue #39) is Astro Kyuudan, and the issue of Jump he’s carrying actually has the cover in question!

Astro Kyuudan is about a baseball team made up of boys born with baseball-shaped birthmarks and unique powers that they use to build the ultimate baseball team. I have to wonder if this series was an inspiration for Tozuka, considering that Undead Unluck is about a group with special powers trying to form the best team possible to achieve their goals (in this case killing God instead of going to Koshien). Apparently it’s a series known for doing unconventional things with the sports genre, which is appropriate, considering that Undead Unluck does a decent number of unconventional things with the battle genre

Back on topic, Akira once again found G-Liner, which presumably had again become Information’s host, but that’s a little odd since A) that means that the selection of the Artifact was pre-ordained instead of random as it was stated, and B) that the timing of Information’s capture was the same. I’m going to chalk this up to Tozuka not wanting to get bogged down in the details and instead wanting to do something compelling, which I definitely feel, I’m just the type to think about that kind of thing

Now, here’s the odd thing:

Fuuko’s got her long hair again, tucked into her shirt, implying that Andy hasn’t been around to cut it, but it’s been about 100 years since Fuuko should have been placed in the Loop. Has she really not run into Andy yet? Or are they split up for some reason, like covering as much ground as they can for recruiting the rest of the Negators? 

Fuuko telling Akira about the previous Loop presents the perfect framing device for us to learn how she’s spent the last 100 years, so I’m sure it’ll be made clear soon enough

Backtracking a bit, Fuuko’s declaration that she and everyone else would negate the Gods is as strong of confirmation that they’ll be fighting Luna as I think we could possibly ask for. When she turned to face Luna, we saw the burning Earth framing her determined expression, as if to say that the whole world had her back and that the Earth itself was declaring the Sun and Moon their enemies

The image of Andy’s skull, or the portion that holds his eyes at least (the most recognizable part of Andy in my opinion) floating through space and biding its time is one that I imagine will stick with me for a long time, especially with how it contrasts how bright and bombastic the last several chapters in the Sun fight were

Seeing countless Suns emerging to initiate Ragnarok was honestly chilling, and brings up the question of what’s going to happen after they manage to defeat Sun next Loop: are more just going to keep popping up? Do they only need to defeat one, or do they need to defeat all of them? Will Sun admit defeat if they manage to beat just one, or will its consciousness be defeated in that moment?

There’s clearly a lot more to this than initially suggested, and most likely a lot more build up to the finale than I anticipated, so we might actually hit the four year mark after all!

Time will tell, but I’m very excited to be along for the ride!

[mugenmine]

I posted 226 times in 2022

That's 22 more posts than 2021!

24 posts created (11%)

202 posts reblogged (89%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@fuckyeahfightlock

@destinationtoast

@buckysbaron

@luthienebonyx

@pennypaperbrain

I tagged 210 of my posts in 2022

Only 7% of my posts had no tags

#stucky - 30 posts

#writing - 28 posts

#steve rogers - 27 posts

#mwt - 24 posts

#bucky barnes - 24 posts

#true facts - 23 posts

#mugen writes things - 19 posts

#captain america - 12 posts

#what remains - 10 posts

#you may never see - 8 posts

Longest Tag: 47 characters

#and came up with a wee 2-chapter one after that

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

10 notes - Posted June 16, 2022

#4

I’ve got 50k words between two WIPs now. Six chapters deep into a long fic and two chapters into a 5-chapter novella. This time last year and for many years before that I had zero words. Things are definitely looking up. Not sure how long this writing bout will last this time, but enjoying it while it’s here.

12 notes - Posted April 14, 2022

#3

Title: You May Never See - Chapter 1 Author: mugenmine Fandom: Captain America (MCU) Pairing: Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes Rating: NC-17/Explicit Chapters: 1/4 Wordcount: @ 5000 Contains: Pre-War II Steve and Bucky, Angst, Pining (tags will grow with each chapter)

Summary: His longing for Bucky flared up like summer allergies, some years the symptoms were relentless and painful in their severity, lasting weeks before they worked through his body and he could breathe again. Other times the feelings would be fleeting and easier to swallow back down. He didn’t know why this bout had lasted longer than all the rest, why thoughts of Bucky inevitably drifted to what his mouth would taste like, or what would happen if a touch was allowed to linger. This fever had been raging for more than a month now, and he just wanted it to fucking break.

* * *

So very weird to be writing/posting/putting stories out there again! New fandom, new pairing, new words. (same kinks, yo!) The story is complete and I’ll be posting it weekly. Thanks so much for reading!

15 notes - Posted January 29, 2022

#2

10 Things I Learned From my Duran Duran Fanfic

I unearthed my Duran Duran fan fic from the closet the other night. I've been contemplating posting it on AO3 but after cringing/laughing hysterically for an hour I think it might just be better off staying in the vault. But I did learn a few things...

I was 12 when I wrote it. For some reason I thought I was older.

Prince shows up in the third act.

This might have been my first bondage fic... (Hello, Nick Rhodes!)

I wrote the entire fic in first person starring ME! (*facepalm*)

I paired my least favorite friend with Andy Taylor...

Everyone in England drives an Aston Martin.

Guess overalls are all the rage.

All of my friends grew up to be high fashion models or private investigators...

Halfway through the story everyone goes ice skating.

Somehow we all end up at Studio 54.

It clocks in at 115 handwritten pages. Yikes! Sadly I never gave the story a title.

***

I was digging though my old LJ and found this entry and it still cracks me up. I'm still seriously thinking about transcribing this pencil-on-notebook paper disaster and posting it on Ao3 and just backdating it from the '80s... I'd have to change the names of all my school pals tho.

25 notes - Posted February 7, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

You May Never See - mugenmine - complete

Title: You May Never See - complete Author: mugenmine Fandom: Captain America (MCU) Pairing: Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes Rating: NC-17/Explicit Chapters: 4/4 Wordcount: @18,500 Contains: Pre-War II Steve and Bucky, Angst, Pining, Body Worship, First Time, Bondage, Friends to Lovers, Pre-serum Steve, and more...

Summary: Of all the ways he’d imagined his first time with Bucky—and he’d imagined many—sitting tied up on his kitchen table in his underwear, while Bucky dug under the sink for the first-aid kit had never been one of them.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36746308/

************

And it's done! I guess I'm officially writing for a new fandom now, I've got the receipts! This is the first story in a series that I don't have a title for yet. I'm excited to start the next one...

36 notes - Posted February 19, 2022

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