#blown off fuck you from people who went to school for years and years to help people and end up with the solution to everything

[winterrose42]

Whatever happens i hope the entirety of the medical system and every other established bullshit broken system run by people whi think theyre entitled to other peoples worth burn to the ground as painfully as possibly and the people effected get to mount their heads on sticks before being given contracts to be involved in the rebuilding process so its actually fucking fair and works

Rapidly losibg vacation time i cannot just simply go to work after just fuck all bullshit

[mollyrealized]

How Michael Met Neil

original direct link [MP3]

(Neil, if you see this, please feel free to grab the transcript and store on your site; I had no easy way of contacting you.)

DAVID TENNANT: Tell me about @neil-gaiman then, because he's in that category [previously: “such a profound effect on my life”] as well.

MICHAEL SHEEN: So this is what has brought us together.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: To the new love story for the 21st century.

DAVID: Exactly.

MICHAEL: So when I went to drama school, there was a guy called Gary Turner in my year. And within the first few weeks, we were doing something, having a drink or whatever. And he said to me, “Do you read comic books?”

And I said, “No.”  I mean, this is … what … '88?  '88, '89.  So it was … now I know that it was a period of time that was a big change, transformation going through comic books.  Rather than it being thought of as just superheroes and Batman and Superman, there was this whole new era of a generation of writers like Grant Morrison.

DAVID: The kids who'd grown up reading comic books were now making comic books

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, and starting to address different kinds of subjects through the comic book medium. So it wasn't about just superheroes, it was all kinds of stuff going on – really fascinating stuff. And I was totally unaware of this.

And so this guy Gary said to me, "Do you read them?" And I said, "No."  And he went, "Right, okay, here's The Watchman [sic] by Alan Moore. Here's Swamp Thing. Here's Hellblazer. And here's Sandman.”

And Sandman was Neil Gaiman's big series that put his name on the map. And I read all those, and, just – I was blown away by all of them, but particularly the Sandman stories, because he was drawing on mythology, which was something I was really interested in, and fairy tales, folklore, and philosophy, and Shakespeare, and all kinds of stuff were being mixed up in this story.  And I absolutely loved it.

So I became a big fan of Neil's, and started reading everything by him. And then fairly shortly after that, within six months to a year, Good Omens the book came out, which Neil wrote with Terry Pratchett. And so I got the book – because I was obviously a big fan of Neil's by this point – read it, loved it, then started reading Terry Pratchett’s stuff as well, because I didn't know his stuff before then – and then spent years and years and years just being a huge fan of both of them.

And then eventually when – I'd done films like the Underworld films and doing Twilight films. And I think it was one of the Twilight films, there was a lot of very snooty interviews that happened where people who considered themselves well above talking about things like Twilight were having to interview me … and, weirdly, coming at it from the attitude of 'clearly this is below you as well' … weirdly thinking I'm gonna go, 'Yeah, fucking Twilight.”

And I just used to go, "You know what? Some of the greatest writing of the last 50-100 years has happened in science fiction or fantasy."  Philip K Dick is one of my favorite writers of all time. In fact, the production of Hamlet I did was mainly influenced by Philip K Dick.  Ursula K. Le Guin and Asimov, and all these amazing people. And I talked about Neil as well. And so I went off on a bit of a rant in this interview.

Anyway, the interview came out about six months later, maybe.  Knock on the door, open the door, delivery of a big box. That’s interesting. Open the box, there's a card at the top of the box. I open the card.

It says, From one fan to another, Neil Gaiman.  And inside the box are first editions of Neil's stuff, and all kinds of interesting things by Neil. And he just sent this stuff.

DAVID: You'd never met him?

MICHAEL: Never met him. He'd read the interview, or someone had let him know about this interview where I'd sung his praises and stood up for him and the people who work within that sort of genre as being like …

And he just got in touch. We met up for the first time when he came to – I was in Los Angeles at the time, and he came to LA.  And he said, "I'll take you for a meal."

I said, “All right.”

He said, "Do you want to go somewhere posh, or somewhere interesting?”

I said, "Let's go somewhere interesting."

He said, "Right, I'm going to take you to this restaurant called The Hump." And it's at Santa Monica Airport. And it's a sushi restaurant.

I was like, “Right, okay.” So I had a Mini at the time. And we get in my Mini and we drive off to Santa Monica Airport. And this restaurant was right on the tarmac, like, you could sit in the restaurant (there's nobody else there when we got there, we got there quite early) and you're watching the planes landing on Santa Monica Airport. It's extraordinary. 

And the chef comes out and Neil says, "Just bring us whatever you want. Chef's choice."

So, I'd never really eaten sushi before. So we sit there; we had this incredible meal where they keep bringing these dishes out and they say, “This is [blah, blah, blah]. Just use a little bit of soy sauce or whatever.”  You know, “This is eel.  This is [blah].”

And then there was this one dish where they brought out and they didn't say what it was. It was like “mystery dish”, we had it ... delicious. Anyway, a few more people started coming into the restaurant as time went on.

And we're sort of getting near the end, and I said, "Neil, I can't eat anymore. I'm gonna have to stop now. This is great, but I can't eat–"

"Right, okay. We'll ask for the bill in a minute."

And then the door opens and some very official people come in. And it was the Feds. And the Feds came in, and we knew they were because they had jackets on that said they were part of the Federal Bureau of Whatever. And about six of them come in. Two of them go … one goes behind the counter, two go into the kitchen, one goes to the back. They've all got like guns on and stuff.

And me and Neil are like, "What on Earth is going on?"

And then eventually one guy goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't ordered already, please leave. If you're still eating your meal, please finish up, pay your bill, leave."*

[* - delivered in a perfect American ‘serious law agent’ accent/impression]

And we were like, "Oh my God, are we poisoned? Is there some terrible thing that's happened?"  

We'd finished, so we pay our bill.  And then all the kitchen staff are brought out. And the head chef is there. The guy who's been bringing us this food. And he's in tears. And he says to Neil, "I'm so sorry." He apologizes to Neil.  And we leave. We have no idea what happened.

DAVID: But you're assuming it's the mystery dish.

MICHAEL: Well, we're assuming that we can't be going to – we can't be –  it can't be poisonous. You know what I mean? It can't be that there's terrible, terrible things.

So the next day was the Oscars, which is why Neil was in town. Because Coraline had been nominated for an Oscar. Best documentary that year was won by The Cove, which was by a team of people who had come across dolphins being killed, I think.

Turns out, what was happening at this restaurant was that they were having illegal endangered species flown in to the airport, and then being brought around the back of the restaurant into the kitchen.

We had eaten whale – endangered species whale. That was the mystery dish that they didn't say what it was.

And the team behind The Cove were behind this sting, and they took them down that night whilst we were there.

DAVID: That’s extraordinary.

MICHAEL: And we didn't find this out for months.  So for months, me and Neil were like, "Have you worked anything out yet? Have you heard anything?"

"No, I haven't heard anything."

And then we heard that it was something to do with The Cove, and then we eventually found out that that restaurant, they were all arrested. The restaurant was shut down. And it was because of that. And we'd eaten whale that night.

DAVID: And that was your first meeting with Neil Gaiman.

MICHAEL: That was my first meeting. And also in the drive home that night from that restaurant, he said, and we were in my Mini, he said, "Have you found the secret compartment?"

I said, "What are you talking about?" It's such a Neil Gaiman thing to say.

DAVID: Isn't it?

MICHAEL: The secret compartment? Yeah. Each Mini has got a secret compartment. I said, "I had no idea." It's secret. And he pressed a little button and a thing opened up. And it was a secret compartment in my own car that Neil Gaiman showed me.

DAVID: Was there anything inside it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, there was a little man. And he jumped out and went, "Hello!" No, there was nothing in there. There was afterwards because I started putting...

DAVID: Sure. That's a very Neil Gaiman story. All of that is such a Neil Gaiman story.

MICHAEL: That's how it began. Yeah.

DAVID: And then he came to offer you the part in Good Omens.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, we became friends and we would whenever he was in town, we would meet up and yeah, and then eventually he started, he said, "You know, I'm working on an adaptation of Good Omens." And I can remember at one point Terry Gilliam was going to maybe make a film of it. And I remember being there with Neil and Terry when they were talking about it. And...

DAVID: Were you involved at that point?

MICHAEL: No, no, I wasn't involved. I just happened to have met up with Neil that day.

DAVID: Right.

MICHAEL: And then Terry Gilliam came along and they were chatting, that was the day they were talking about that or whatever.

And then eventually he sent me one of the scripts for an early draft of like the first episode of Good Omens. And he said – and we started talking about me being involved in it, doing it – he said, “Would you be interested?” I was like, "Yeah, of course."  I went, "Oh my God." And he said, "Well, I'll send you the scripts when they come," and I would read them, and we'd talk about them a little bit. And so I was involved.

But it was always at that point with the idea, because he'd always said about playing Crowley in it. And so, as time went on, as I was reading the scripts, I was thinking, "I don't think I can play Crowley. I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." And I started to get a bit nervous because I thought, “I don't want to tell Neil that I don't think I can do this.”  But I just felt like I don't think I can play Crowley.

DAVID: Of course you can [play Crowley?].

MICHAEL: Well, I just on a sort of, on a gut level, sometimes you have it on a gut level.

DAVID: Sure, sure.

MICHAEL: I can do this.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Or I can't do this. And I just thought, “You know what, this is not the part for me. The other part is better for me, I think. I think I can do that, I don't think I could do that.”

But I was scared to tell Neil because I thought, "Well, he wants me to play Crowley" – and then it turned out he had been feeling the same way as well.  And he hadn't wanted to mention it to me, but he was like, "I think Michael should really play Aziraphale."

And neither of us would bring it up.  And then eventually we did. And it was one of those things where you go, "Oh, thank God you said that. I feel exactly the same way." And then I think within a fairly short space of time, he said, “I think we've got … David Tennant … for Crowley.” And we both got very excited about that.

And then all these extraordinary people started to join in. And then, and then off we went.

DAVID: That's the other thing about Neil, he collects people, doesn't he? So he'll just go, “Oh, yeah, I've phoned up Frances McDormand, she's up for it.” Yeah. You're, what?

MICHAEL: “I emailed Jon Hamm.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And yeah, and you realize how beloved he is and how beloved his work is. And I think we would both recognise that Good Omens is one of the most beloved of all of Neil's stuff.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: And had never been turned into anything.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And so the kind of responsibility of that, I mean, for me, for someone who has been a fan of him and a fan of the book for so long, I can empathize with all the fans out there who are like, “Oh, they better not fuck this up.”

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: “And this had better be good.” And I have that part of me. But then, of course, the other part of me is like, “But I'm the one who might be fucking it up.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So I feel that responsibility as well.

DAVID: But we have Neil on site.

MICHAEL: Yes. Well, Neil being the showrunner …

DAVID: Yeah. I think it takes the curse off.

MICHAEL: … I think it made a massive difference, didn't it? Yeah. You feel like you're in safe hands.

DAVID: Well, we think. Not that the world has seen it yet.

MICHAEL (grimly): No, I know.

DAVID: But it was a -- it's been a -- it's been a joy to work with you on it. I can't wait for the world to see it.

MICHAEL: Oh my God.  Oh, well, I mean, it's the only, I've done a few things where there are two people, it's a bit of a double act, like Frost-Nixon and The Queen, I suppose, in some ways. But, and I've done it, Amadeus or whatever.

This is the only thing I've done where I really don't think of it as “my character” or “my performance as that character”.  I think of it totally as us.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: The two of us.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: Like they, what I do is defined by what you do.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And that was such a joy to have that experience. And it made it so much easier in a way as well, I found, because you don't feel like you're on your own in it. Like it's totally us together doing this and the two characters totally complement each other. And the experience of doing it was just a real joy.

DAVID: Yeah.  Well, I hope the world is as excited to see it as we are to talk about it, frankly.

MICHAEL: You know, there's, having talked about T.S. Eliot earlier, there's another bit from The Wasteland where there's a line which goes, These fragments I have shored against my ruin.

And this is how I think about life now. There is so much in life, no matter what your circumstances, no matter what, where you've got, what you've done, how much money you got, all that. Life's hard.  I mean, you can, it can take you down at any point.

You have to find this stuff. You have to like find things that will, these fragments that you hold to yourself, they become like a liferaft, and especially as time goes on, I think, as I've got older, I've realized it is a thin line between surviving this life and going under.

And the things that keep you afloat are these fragments, these things that are meaningful to you and what's meaningful to you will be not-meaningful to someone else, you know. But whatever it is that matters to you, it doesn't matter what it was you were into when you were a teenager, a kid, it doesn't matter what it is. Go and find them, and find some way to hold them close to you. 

Make it, go and get it. Because those are the things that keep you afloat. They really are. Like doing that with him or whatever it is, these are the fragments that have shored against my ruin. Absolutely.

DAVID: That's lovely. Michael, thank you so much.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

DAVID: For talking today and for being here.

MICHAEL: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.

[bigfan-fanfic]

Brother Mine (Winchester!Reader x Sam and Dean Winchester PLATONIC)

@xweirdo101x Hello, hope you are having a good day/nightI was wondering if I could request a Sam and Dean having an older brother (maybe by one or 2 years)  maybe they haven't seen reader in a couple years. The brother's finally get to see reader when he pulls them out of trouble?

(okay, author's note in that Sam is 22 at the start of the show and Dean is 26. The show spans the same amount of time as in the real world, technically, so Sam ends the show at 37 while Dean ends it at 41. Meaning this elder brother is probably 28 at the start and ends it 43. Good lord, that show went on for a while lol)

"So, explain to me why the two of you chuckleheads are in jail in freaking Kentucky? Because last I heard, Sam was going to college in California and you were still hunting boogeymen with Dad."

The two young men in front of you share a glance as you bail them out of some podunk town's drunk tank.

"Dad's... in trouble." Sam sighs, finally, to a harsh glare from Dean.

"Good riddance to bad assholes." you growl, and Dean clenches his fist

You and your little brothers don't exactly have a great relationship.

With the better part of seventeen years of your lives dedicated to hunting what lies in the darkness, spurred on by your domineering and obsessive father, Dean always has blamed you for "abandoning the family" and "breaking Dad's heart" because you left the life at nineteen and left seventeen year old Dean and thirteen year old Sam behind.

You did the amateur boxing circuit for a while before you were hired on to an indie security company and ended up catching the eye of the owner who trained you until you took over, eventually buying the company and running it.

You know a lot of your money was sent to help pay off any expenses Sam had, but you don't know if it was used for that or blown for motel stays or alcohol or sawed-off-shotguns or salt slugs for Dean and John.

You tried to stay in touch with Sam, but it was awkward. And he wanted space away from "family."

So you know neither of them would ever contact you unless something real bad happened (and apparently Dean's grudge was so strong that he wouldn't even inform you that John went missing)

Though to be perfectly honest, it wouldn't really matter to you anyway, and that's a matter to discuss with your therapist.

"I can't believe you called him." Dean grumbles, like a child.

"Sam apparently knew you'd need a responsible adult." you snark, and he grimaces. "Now, care to tell me why you're road-tripping?"

Sam looks at you. "My girlfriend. Jess. Whatever got Mom... it got her too."

"And you think that Dad is close to tracking it down and that's why he vanished." you sigh.

"Lemme guess, you're gonna tell us that there's nothing that goes bump in the night?" Dean sneers, looking at Sam.

"No, I'm not. I'm gonna tell you that it's not your job to chase it. It's not your duty."

"We save people. We hunt things. It's the family business." Dean growls.

"Jesus, Dean, do you hear how you sound?" you groan. "It's this kind of obsession that I tried to get away from! A terrible thing happened to Mom, and there was nothing any of us could do to stop it. It's not our fault, and it's not our responsibility to chase whatever did it down!"

"It's just gonna keep hurting people. We've seen it happening. It's gathering other people like Sam."

"Fuck." you growl.

Dean senses an in. "You were even better than me, back in the day. Remember when you ganked that skinchanger?"

He says "you were only 14" with as much reverence and awe as you do disgust and shame.

"I can't convince either of you to... let the chips fall where they may?"

"Nope." Dean pops the "p" sound.

"Sorry, no." Sam adds.

"I don't wanna kill things anymore, Dean. Not even bad things. But I do care about you both. So here. I'm going to help you, on one condition. We're going to all come back to my place in California, and Sam is going to apply to fucking law school, and you're gonna think about what you really want with your life, Dean."

They think.

They look at each other.

They nod.

"Welcome back." Dean grins.

"You better not still drive that shitty Impala and listen to crappy 80s rock."

Sam winces.

[hopelessromantic5]

SydCarmy clip

Artist Carmy

Sydney is his long lost muse.

TBC at a later date 💀

Carmen is a chef, that much is apparent.

But before that, he was an artist.

The notebooks that he kept hidden from the prying eyes of his disastrous family had been his only solace through a…turbulent childhood.

He would sketch whatever caught his eye. A specific bird with a pretty song. A wildflower on the playground that was shining extra bright in the sun.

As he grew, so did his art. Wobbly formations transformed into confident lines and lifelike shading. What was once inanimate became alive.

He drew what he knew. Sugar, Mikey, booths at The Beef, and most importantly, food.

It seemed that food was center of his existence. His mother, his brother, and then eventually, he himself was sucked into the love of food.

Maybe it started because no matter how many awful things they’d said to each other, dinner in the Berzatto house was never missed. They all sat, sometimes (most times) uncomfortably quiet. But still, they were together. A mess, but a mess that belonged to each other.

Maybe it was the way flavors on his tongue seemed to revive Carmy from the dead on days he didn’t think he wanted to be alive; bright mornings after a dreadful night of his mother screaming at him that he was useless, that he could never do anything right. All while she sobbed and shattered her wine glass against the wall.

But something about a breakfast sandwich from the Beef, perfectly curated by his brother, made him forget his life for long enough that he could ride to school in peace, sketching the layers to the egg and glazed bacon, the different cheeses, the perfectly toasted bun.

There was one awful attempt to draw this girl, Claire.

Carmen noticed her when she began hanging out with Mikey, which was already kind of a red flag. But for some reason, the sketches kept ending up distorted and, quite frankly, disturbing to look at. Carmen wound up ripping the pages out and burning them.

Of course, his notebooks and shading pencils began to form dust after Carmy gave his life over to cooking. Becoming a chef was exhausting, and maintaining life as a chef, a Michelin star retaining chef, was soul destroying.

Maybe it was just Carmen’s luck. Maybe he attracted assholes and bullies, people that liked to spit insults down his neck as he stood there and took it. Vomiting it back up, hours later in the alley.

Eleven Madison Park was the worst and best experience of his life. He wouldn’t be as good as he was without it, but he also wouldn’t be as fucked up, as mentally torn apart.

He didn’t think it couldn’t get any worse.

That is, until he got the call.

He should’ve known. Things can always get worse.

Yet, the ultimate dichotomy of the best and worst time of Carmy’s life was yet to come.

As he stood in the back of his dead brother’s collapsing, grease infested, death trap, an angel came to him.

Appearing in the form of a beautiful woman. Skin dark and rich, glowing with a shine all its own. Big, curious brown eyes nervously taking him in, announcing herself.

“Hi, hello. I-I’m Sydney, I called about the sous position? I’m staging today? I think you said I could stage today-“

Carmen’s head was completely fucked. He forgot about the lovely voice on the other end of the phone, after a long day of sarcastic, apathetic dickwads.

“Right! Shit, sorry. Yes, yeah. Carmy.” He gestured to himself.

He took her resume, and was blown away. Not only was she beautiful, she was also capable. Stacked by the CIA and extremely respected restaurants of Chicago.

He thought for a second that he may have been dreaming. The gods had answered his silent prayer of a reprieve in the form of this human goddess who was trained the same way Carmen was trained; knows the ins and outs of a kitchen the way he does. A true partner, in that way.

Nearly a year went by. Arguments were had and healed, copious amounts of cash was found amongst tomato sauce cans, and The Bear finally got off the ground running…after a few minor snags.

Carmy had resigned that night, in the walk-in, to call Claire one more time and end the entire thing, on top of apologizing vehemently. Apologize for ruining yet another good thing, another good person and then let her go on about her perfectly healthy life.

Carmen was ashamed to admit to himself, that he barely even liked her. Nothing was natural, everything felt like a show he was putting on for someone else. Maybe for Mikey, maybe for himself, who knows.

One thing Carmen did know, for sure; it was not good for him. Or the restaurant. Or her. His partner.

She took the worst of it, and Carmen will never forgive himself for that. She did everything, kept his dream alive, while he fucked off and pretended to be something he wasn’t.

Somehow, gratefully and graciously, he’d earned his way back into Syndey’s trust over these last few months. Carmy put his full focus into The Bear, as it should’ve been from the beginning. And he never let her forget that he was there for her, that they were partners. Even when shit got too overwhelming, too much, they would always be there.

They stood by that.

Things were…better than they’d ever been.

The kitchen worked seamlessly, every once in a while there was a small mishap. But that’s what a good kitchen is; one that can run even when the unpredictable happens.

And for The Bear, regular unpredictable is a cake walk compared to their original amount of unpredictable.

He and Sydney moved through the kitchen like two halves of one mind. Wordlessly knowing what the other will need before they have the chance to ask, small gestures of reassurance when they need it. His hand on the small of her back in passing, I’m here, it says.

Her soft smile directed his way when he quietly corrected a new hire on their technique, instead of flying off the handle.

Carmen hadn’t raised his voice that way in a while. While he went to Al-Non and saw Dick (his therapist [that’s his actual name, don’t blame Carmen]), he could credit his better sleep schedule and improved outlook on life to one individual particularly.

The more he saw Sydney, the more she came into his space, the longer she stayed, the more Carmen calmed. For the first time in his life, he was still, tranquil, happy.

It, whatever it was, that special drug, that magic, seemed to just radiate off her skin in waves of pure ethereal light.

She stood in his modest kitchen, throwing her head back laughing at something stupid he said. And Carmen knew peace.

Maybe that’s why the shading pencils that had been shoved into a carboard box in the back of his closet finally made a reappearance.

He was at the market on a random Monday, their one and only day off, when he saw a display of sketchbooks, at the end of an aisle.

Instinct made him throw one in his basket. Black with a singular word embossed on the front in gold.

Create.

Carmen’s immediate thought was: that’s cheesy.

At home, sitting on the couch tapping his leg in impatience , he narrowed his eyes at the sketchbook in the center of his kitchen table. He thought maybe it wasn’t such a bad cover.

The word was like an alarm, a reminder that he could always be doing something, creating something new.

As afternoon turned to evening, Carm didn’t notice. He hadn’t looked up.

For the last four hours, he had been practically dead to the world.

All that existed was the image in his mind and the empty pages sitting before him.

The sound of his phone ringing startled him out of his daze. Realizing all of once that he was starving, and he had to pee, and his phone was still ringing.

Fuck, the phone!

He caught it before it went to voicemail.

“Yo!” He was out of breath, for no reason.

“Yo, you good?” Sydney chuckled, poking at him. “Am I still coming over to cook or are you like…training for the marathon?”

“I could run.” He huffed. “You don’t know.”

The smile that he refused to acknowledge was difficult to keep out of his voice, but he managed.

“Ha! I don’t think any Berzatto even knows the definition of the word ‘run’. Except maybe Pete, but he doesn’t count.”

That made a laugh bubble up out of him.

“He does run. Nat complains about his early morning jogs sometimes.”

“Of course he jogs!” She bellowed, cackling on the other end. “Nothing worse than a jogger.” Followed quickly by. “Don’t tell Nat or Pete I said that.”

Carmen sucked his teeth and tilted his head as if weighing his options, though she couldn’t see him.

“I don’t know…”

“Carmen!” He loved this. He loved her.

“I’m fucking with you, Syd. I won’t tell Nat you think her husband is awful because he jogs.”

“Good. Thank you.” She sighed. “Nat loves me more, anyway. She would take my side.”

“Over her husband?” He asked incredulously.

“No, jackass, over you.” She laughed.

“Ouch. A jackass that got his sister stolen by his CDC. Might as well just end it then. Here I was, taking the jeans out of the oven, just for you.”

“Well, now I’ve caught you in a lie. You forget, I see your oven as often as you do, and I haven’t seen a single sighting of denim.”

“I wait til you leave, obviously.”

“Just shut up and buzz me in, weirdo.” He can hear her smile through the phone knowing that he was the one to put it there warmed his blood.

He was floating on a cloud as he made his way to the front door. Leaving it ajar after buzzing her into the building.

[shyphonics]

Salad Days, Chapter 9: Baby, Detonate for Me

(babypunk Rodrick Heffley x reader)

all chapters | playlist

I just want to give a warning for this chapter for mentions of mental health issues, antidepressants, and hospitals. This got weird and I'm sorry lol. My brain went to a dark place and I started thinking about my horrible middle school experience and the years I spent in a pit doing antidepressant roulette. This is also not any sort of anti meds/hospital propaganda, do whatever works for you :)

Anyway, this one's long and kinda sad, but I promise you it's uphill from here. These kids are gonna get their shit together.

9 to 5, they got you where they want you

There's a better life

And you think about it, don't you?

It's a rich man's game

No matter what they call it

And you spend your life putting money in his pocket

~

“Dude, are you kidding me?” Ben sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“No, dude! I have to work!” Rodrick insists, trying to step around him to get to the door.

“Ward worked really hard to get us this practice space, we already set up your drums, and you won't even come for just a little while? Call in sick!”

Ward crosses his arms, nodding, hurt in his eyes.

Rodrick thinks. There was a time when he would've blown off just about anything to go practice with his friends, in a real studio space. Now he's not even sure if he remembers how to play.

“All the big local bands practice there. It's, like, a little apartment building with studios! It's awesome! And we got in!” Ward frowns.

“All the big local bands?” Rodrick turns to look at him.

The guys all nod.

Rodrick sneaks around Ben wordlessly, heading towards the door and slipping out. The guys yell in protest as he walks down the hallway, but he doesn't stop. He can't face them, no matter how terrible he feels about all of this. He made this mess, and he has no idea how to fix it.

“That girl emailed you!”

Rodrick freezes. He turns around.

“That's fucking low,” He breathes, pointing towards the open door of the apartment, “Don't fuck with me like that.”

He storms off down the hallway, driving the band van across town, to the plant. He loads up his truck in anger, shoving the cases inside and slamming the door. Maybe he doesn't even want to be in the band anymore. Not with people who will toy with his emotions like that. The guys at the plant suck, but at least they don't need much more from him than “deliver the beer.”

He really does hate hanging out with them, though. He drives fast, the cans and bottles in the back rattling underneath the sound of a mix CD he hasn't listened to since high school. The radio isn't safe right now. Not when the only good station gives him a high chance of hearing you.

He stops at a red light, grunting and gripping the wheel. He didn't think his friends had that in them, to try and trick him like that. Unless they weren't… unless you really…

No. No way. You want nothing to do with him. He shakes himself out of his thoughts, driving through the green light.

He wheels his dolly into a grocery store, head down, until he hears a throat clear.

A man stands before him, holding up a picture. He looks at the picture, then the man, in total confusion.

“Do you know this girl?” The man asks.

Rodrick looks back down, the features slowly coming into view. It's you, without a doubt, but you look… different. Younger, straight laced, maybe a little dead behind the eyes. He squints in confusion, then looks up at the man.

“Why?”

“Why? It's none of your business,” He scoffs, “Do you know her? Do you know where I can find her?”

He eyes the man strangely, not liking the frantic look in his eyes. After everything he's done to you, he's not taking a chance on any weird shit like this. He’s at least not going to make anything worse. He shakes his head.

“Never seen her.” He keeps his face straight.

“Are you sure?” The man pleads.

“100%. I gotta get these cases in, ‘scuse me.” He pushes his dolly around the man.

He feels eyes on him the whole time, hunching over as he wheels into the store. He doesn't like that. He doesn't like it one bit.

Sitting in his truck after the delivery, he feels uneasy.

He sighs, turning the key in the ignition and pulling out of the parking lot. There’s a car right on his ass, some flashy, white BMW. He raises an eyebrow, speeding up a little.

“Just pass me, asshole.” He mumbles, turning up his music.

The white car follows him to all of his deliveries that day, and at the third one, the driver gets out. It’s the guy from the grocery store. Rodrick wants to say something, but he’s not exactly the confrontational type. He decides to just keep an eye on him, for now.

He’ll just end up on the opposite side of town from you, anyway.

~

I am the girl you know, can't look you in the eye

I am the girl you know, so sick I cannot try

I am the one you want, can't look you in the eye

I am the girl you know, I lie, and lie, and lie

I'm Miss World

Somebody kill me

Kill me, pills

No one cares, my friend

~

2 weeks. It’s officially been 2 weeks since you’ve seen Rodrick. On top of that, you and one of your best friends are not on speaking terms, and it feels like your dad gets closer to finding you every day. Not to mention that you’ve been alone, cooped up in the house all week. No bar, no radio, only a few horse calls from Mike to drop off groceries and scheme with you.

You lie back on your bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling defeated.

You should’ve known. Should’ve taken Rodrick’s whole “bad boy” schtick as the red flag that it had been. A “bad boy” schtick usually means one thing: coward. You should’ve protected yourself. You laugh, despite yourself, shaking your head. You can feel the crazy coming. It’s always preceded by feelings of rejection. And thoughts of your father. The beast comes out. You know how you are.

Feeling like this makes the memories come out. The bad ones, stored real deep, where you won’t dare dwell on your own.

You have passing memories of the first time you ever heard good music, which is kinda fun, at first.

You were 12, innocently flipping channels, when you’d landed on MTV. Hole, No Doubt, Smashing Pumpkins… whoa.

You’d been so curious, chasing the sound you’d heard that night, that you’d walked down to the mall, to the music store the next day.

“I’m looking for something… I- I saw these people on TV.” You’d looked away from the counter, embarrassed.

“How old are you?” The guy at the counter had smiled, his spiked hair huge, lime green. A thick, silver ring sat in his lip, and his jacket was covered in spikes. He looked like a dangerous disco ball.

“12,” You couldn’t meet his eyes. He’d just been so cool.

You’d left with a stack of CDs, sold on discount. The older boy had given you an ‘introduction pack’, as he’d said.

7 albums that would go on to change your life.

Misfits - Walk Among Us

Ramones - Rocket to Russia

Black Flag - Everything Went Black

Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables

Bad Brains - Bad Brains

Bikini Kill - Revolution Girl Style Now!

The Dead Milkmen - Big Lizard In My Backyard

The music reached you, where nothing else had reached you before.

Especially the basslines- you’d waited ages on dial-up internet to find out who the bassists were. Jerry Only, Dee Dee Ramone, Chuck Dukowski, Klaus Fluoride, Darryl Jenifer, Kathi Wilcox, and Dave Blood, your new heroes.

You laugh a little painfully, remembering the candle you’d lit earlier this year, to commemorate the one year anniversary of Dave Blood’s death. You and Mike had cried at the bar together, listening to surfy basslines like they were funeral hymns.

That summer, you’d begged your parents to let you into a music program.

They’d assumed it would be something classy, you playing chamber music on a violin, but it was a rock band program. Sure, you’d lied. Who cares?

You’d had the time of your life, all decked out in prop leather jackets and Halloween eyeliner. Learning how to play, how to be a band. Togetherness. It had only been a two week program, but you bonded with those guys more than any kid you’d ever met in school.

Your music teacher, Frankie, had awoken you to your own power for the first time.

You were already learning bass- you’d learned all the songs your tween rock band had decided on- but he’d wanted you to be the singer, too. No one else wanted to do it.

He’d placed a folding chair in front of you.

Yell at the chair. He’d said, like it was the most normal thing in the world to say.

I’m sorry, what?

Yell at the chair.

You’d yelled, half heartedly, looking to Frankie for approval.

He’d looked at you, deadpan.

C’mon. I know you can do better than that, Don’t look at me! Scream! You hear me? Scream like a girl!

You yelled, and screamed, as Frankie urged you to think about anything that made you angry.

You’d thought about your recent debilitating period cramps, your mother’s magazine fad diet obsession, and both of your parents’ lament that they could never have another child. As if to insinuate they’d had one shot with you, and you’d better be good, dammit.

You’d yelled until you could completely nail a song that you’d suggested to the group- California Uber Alles. Eerie wails left you until it was like the spirit of Jello Biafra was possessing you himself.

Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh…

The final performance came, and your parents looked horrified, a stark contrast to the supportive classic rock dads and lowrider moms, cheering from the audience.

You’d taken center stage, a too-big Fender bass positioned on your hips, and said to the audience, “We! Are! Ne’er Do Wells!”

You’d looked across the stage, the lights bright in your eyes, and god. For the first time in your life, you’d felt like you had some sense of control over yourself. You felt like you had power. The set had been incredible- you’d yelled, and jumped around, even dramatically dropped to your knees, scraping yourself up on the splintery, old wood of the stage. People went crazy for it- well, except for your parents. Your bandmates’ parents and Frankie more than made it up to you. You’d had stars in your eyes. Finally, a beam of hope.

That’s what I wanna do. You’d repeated, over and over, that’s what I wanna do when I grow up.

You were 13 years old the first time you were put on antidepressants.

“I don't know. She's angry, she doesn't listen,” Your mom says, rolling her eyes, “Fix her.”

The doctor doesn't even look up.

He's not even a psychiatrist.

“We can start her on 75mgs of Zoloft,” he scribbles on a sheet, “Standard practice for a girl her age. I'll send it in.”

It's just like that. You're not involved. No one wants to know how you feel.

You think maybe it won't be so bad, but the first dose hits you like a truck. You stand from the couch, and a blast of vertigo sends you flying sideways to the floor.

Your mom looks down at you.

“I guess you can't go to your bass lessons.”

You panic. No, no, no. That's all you have left. Frankie had taken a liking to you, and gave you lessons for free. He’d known your parents hated the music thing, and he took pity on you. Your one safe place.

“No, I can go!”

You stand. You fall. Your mom brings you to your room.

“You should rest.” She closes the door.

You sit on your bed, knees to your chest. You look at the walls, a chaotic collage of magazine cutouts and posters, and are comforted, slightly. Dead Kennedys; 3 regular looking guys, and a screaming, shirtless Jello Biafra. Bikini Kill, solemn in sepia, with dark lipstick and baby tees. Suicidal Tendencies, sitting on a curb in their flannels and Dickies, hat bills flipped up. You try to slow your breathing, your head feeling cloudier and cloudier as a wave of nausea hits. You roll onto your side, coming face to face with a goofy, shirtless pinup of 80s Danzig, trying to look tough. It always makes you laugh. This time, all you can manage is a faint smile. Sleep eventually finds you.

The pills just make everything worse.

You're a zombie, except for brief outbursts of rage. Nearly always directed at your father, but sometimes just when you're alone.

This only angers him more, and your dose is upped.

You float through school, numb and confused, barely even noticing when they make you switch schools.

It's a private school, a tiny series of buildings on the outskirts of town.

Your dad insists such a small school will make you focus, and thrive. It’s some kind of experimental learning style.

All it gets you is the attention of the principal, a meek, older hippie named Dina.

She looks sweet, but soon- you find she's your worst enemy.

Every little thing you do is under scrutiny. She pulls you aside in the short hallway, nearly every day, demanding to know what you'd lied about.

“I haven't lied about anything!”

“That's not what your dad told me.”

She keeps you there for whole class periods. Your grades suffer. Your dad is pissed.

She slowly breaks you down, more and more as months go by. Even when you think things have been going well- you've been pretending to be happy, talking to people, engaging in class- it doesn't stop. She's relentless.

Eventually, a breaking point comes.

You've been working on oral reports, you've spent months on them. You're a nervous wreck. Sitting at your desk fidgeting and twitching. You can feel the bags under your eyes, and your dry lips are chewed to the point of bleeding.

Dina makes you go first.

Your blood boils.

She knows. She can see you. Why does it have to be you first?

Finally, you stand.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” You shriek, the built up rage of nearly a year evident in your voice, “Why? Why? Why, Dina?”

She stares at you, not shocked, but something like a smirk on her face.

The students around you are stunned.

“Oh, right, because you hate me! You're always on my fucking case about shit I didn't even do!”

“I'm just trying to help prepare you for the real world.” She smiles, her voice cold, “They won't care if you're a little tired in college.”

“A little tired?” Your voice grows quiet, breaking, “I'm not a little tired, I am drugged out of my fucking mind and under constant suspicion from every single person in my life!”

People stare as you cross the room, looking at her eye to eye, your fists clenched.

“Fuck you.” Your voice comes out low and shaky.

You shoulder the classroom door open and leave the school, stumbling down the sides of busy streets, no final destination in mind.

You have passing thoughts of jumping in front of a truck, the option seeming better and better as you grow exhausted, collapsing on your knees in a dirt lot.

Then you hear the ambulance.

And that marks the start of your first visit to the psych ward.

White, sterile cinder block walls. Tiny little window to the outside. It's like you're in prison.

A woman enters your room, smiling. You manage a smile back. They've got you detoxing off the antidepressants, to get a better scope of what's actually wrong with you.

“Hi, I'm Dr. Parks. You can call me Marie, though.”

The doctor has a kind face, calm eyes, pink lips, and a freckled nose. Her hair hangs in soft, brown curls.

“What were your symptoms before you started Zoloft?” She asks.

“Well… I didn't really have any. I didn't have any symptoms until I started taking it.”

“What?” She asks, after a pause.

“I guess I got a little sad or angry sometimes, but it wasn't that bad. I thought that was normal. But maybe I'm wrong.” You look down, doubting yourself.

You hear Marie arguing with a man outside of your door.

Her dad says she's out of control!

She seems perfectly normal!

You don’t even know what you’re on now. Three different pills a day, and your mom watches you like a hawk when you take them. You’re on edge constantly, feeling like any little thing you could possibly do will land you in more trouble. You feel like a stranger in your own body, like you’re dreaming everywhere you go. You’ve lost all autonomy, all awareness. Is this normal? Is this what life is supposed to be like?

The corners are all that remains of your old, glorious poster collage. Your dad has ripped everything down by the time you got home.

You miss goofy, shirtless Danzig.

You miss being able to trust your own thoughts.

You miss feeling alive.

~

They can't make things worse for me, sometimes I'd rather die

They can tell me lots of things, but I can't see eye to eye

I know they know the way I think, I know they always will

But someday I'm gonna change my mind, sometimes I'd rather kill

Bloodstains, speed kills

Fast cars, cheap thrills

Rich girls, fine wine

I've lost my sense, I've lost control, I've lost my mind

~

“Rodrick!”

A girl's voice. A wasted girl’s voice. He turns around.

Heather stumbles towards him, picking blonde hairs out of her lipgloss.

“Rodrick, hey,”

He feels his whole body stiffen as she approaches, and her hand lands on his shoulder.

“Can I talk to you?”

“No.” He shrugs out of her touch.

“We can go somewhere private, let's go to my place.”

“No.”

She narrows her eyes.

“Okay, well I guess I'll just drive home like this, or maybe I'll be safe and walk, and get kidnapped or something.” She throws her hands out to the sides, wobbling slightly.

“Ricky, are you fuckin’ crazy?” Buck whispers.

“What?” Rodrick turns.

“If you don't take her home, I think I might,” he laughs.

Rodrick wrinkles his nose.

“Buck, she's wasted. And half your fucking age.”

“What, like that's a bad thing?” He looks around at the group. Everyone laughs. Rodrick feels a pit in his stomach.

It hits him. They're disgusting. All of them. Why is he even here?

“Fuck you, Buck, I quit,” He stands up, not waiting for a reaction, “Heather, give me your keys.”

Heather grins, smug.

She walks out, clinging to him, and he helps her into her passenger seat. Her red convertible is stupidly nice, and he's afraid to mess up the leather seats just by sitting down.

“Blue sorority house on campus,”

Rodrick nods, pulling out of the parking lot. They drive in silence.

The house is empty, and he helps Heather onto a white sofa.

“Will you at least sit down?” She sighs.

“We don't have anything to talk about, Heather.”

Her eyes widen in disbelief. She scoffs.

“My boyfriend's got the cops on his ass because of you.”

“How is it because of me?” He gives up, sitting on the opposite side of the couch.

“Whatever. Either way, he's probably gonna go to jail.” She rolls her eyes, scooting closer to him.

“Uh-huh,” Rodrick moves until he's right against the arm of the couch.

“But he was kind of a bad boyfriend anyway.”

Rodrick is silent, looking at her. Searching her blue eyes. She looks part drunk, part sad, part… smug, maybe?

“And, y'know, it's got me thinking,” she puts her hand on his chest. Rodrick’s heartbeat skyrockets, “Maybe I should've… given certain people a chance.”

“Heather,” he looks down at her, breathing heavily as she combs her fingers over the fabric of his shirt, “Don't. C'mon.”

“Why not?” She pouts.

“You're… you're drunk. And I think nothing ever happened between us for a reason, I mean… I don't even feel anything for you anymore. You made my life hell after the party. And after we graduated.”

Her hand grips the front of his shirt, knuckles white. He stares down at it, eyes wide.

Then her face is right in front of his, and before he can stop it, her lips are on his, and it feels… oh, god, it feels wrong.

He pushes her off and stands up.

“Heather, no. It's not gonna happen.”

She sneers up at him.

“Fine, then leave.”

“I've wanted to leave this whole time!”

“Then go!” She yells.

He stands outside the door, breathing fast, fists clenched.

After all that time, it finally happened. And it was awful. He curses, kicking a piece of gravel across the street as he starts walking back to the bar. It takes a while, but he gets there, not bothering to go back inside. He spots Caitlin outside, on her smoke break.

“I’m glad you quit,” She laughs, a bitter sound, “Fuck those guys. I’m gonna miss you, though.”

“Thanks,” He sighs, looking down, holding the door of the truck open. “You should see about getting a job downtown. Don’t put up with them anymore, y’know?”

She smiles, taking a long drag.

“Yeah. Yeah, I should. I’ll work on it. See you around?”

“We’ll see.” Rodrick smiles softly, opening the door of the van.

He gets home to a dark, empty apartment. He should’ve gotten the address of that practice space. He feels bad for how he left this morning, even if they did hit him a little below the belt.

Unless they didn’t.

Rodrick eyes his laptop, his hands hovering over it, his mind flipping rapidly back and forth between open it and don’t fucking open it!

He opens it, and there it is, plain as day. World’s best bartender.

His eyes scan the page, mouth falling open in disbelief.

I assume the ship has sailed.

Dick move.

You probably don’t care anyway.

Rodrick’s heart drops.

You’d been waiting for him. You hadn’t hated him from the start, but you have to by now. It sure sounds like it. The offer to email back and call seems like a bitter formality now. He might as well just stay in his little shame bubble.

He’d hurt you.

He’s done stupid things before, lots of them, but he’s never hurt someone like this. It feels horrible, and here he’d been thinking it was all for your benefit.

He slowly closes the laptop, curling onto his side on the couch. This time, he lets himself cry. Without the shame, without the frustration. He just cries, until his eyes are dry, and he’s a lump on the couch.

He remembers the guy at the grocery store, and then the line from your email. Bonnie Forester…

I can’t answer mystery numbers right now.

He shifts to lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling, troubled. Are you in hiding or something? Who the hell was that guy?

He takes out his phone, and nobody has tried to get in contact with him all day.

Well, except his mom, who sent him a low resolution image of a kitten in a tree, with the text: hang in there! He rolls his eyes, but sends her a thanks, mom.

At least he has someone.

He decides to do something possibly stupid. He scrolls down to your number, saved as your name with several question marks afterwards. He debates for a while, thinking very carefully about what to say. He finally dials, and hears Bonnie's voicemail once again. Beep.

“Hey, um…” He sighs, cringing, “If this is… Bonnie… I'm sorry. Just in case, though, it's- it's Rodrick. I got your email. I'm so fucking sorry. I know you probably don't want to hear from me, like, ever again. I'm really, really sorry, and I’ll give you an explanation and a real apology sometime if you feel like listening to one. I just thought you should know there's some older guy showing pictures of you outside the grocery store on 4th, asking where he can find you? I don't know. It was really weird, and I told him I'd never seen you before. I figured it’s better safe than sorry.”

He pauses, squeezing his eyes shut, tears pricking at the corners.

“I'm just so sorry for what happened to the bar, and I know you hate me, I just… I miss you so much. Fuck-” As he's trying to hit the key to start the message over, his dumb fingers hit the one to confirm it instead. Shit, shit, shit. That was way too much. He stares at his phone in shock, like it's betrayed him. He debates just throwing it across the room, but he settles for letting it clatter to the floor.

This almost feels worse than ignoring the problem. His heart feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest.

He had to do it, though. He doesn’t want anyone to hurt you any worse than he had.

~

I wait forever for you

Figure out your problem with me is you

I won’t ever be like you

Ever see right through

~

High school starts. Public, this time.

You walk through the halls, feeling like a ghost. People look at you, and then quickly away. Nobody talks to you. And can you blame them? You look like a total nutcase. Well, you are, apparently.

Your mother dresses you like a Catholic schoolgirl. Plaid skirts and knee socks, white button downs and stupid little ties.

All of your focus goes into school.

I just have to pass this class. I just have to pass every single class.

You get A’s that your dad wishes were A+’s.

You grow angrier by the day.

Your 16th birthday passes, and nobody notices.

Spring Break comes, and you're actually invited to a party. Well- everyone is. You have one friend at this point, a lanky, unpopular boy named Peter. He's been on ADHD meds since he was in Kindergarten. He understands you in some weird way. He'd told you about the party with great excitement- finally, the two of you had a chance.

You beg your parents to go. To feel normal for a night.

They say no. Of fucking course they do.

You spend spring break at home, studying for finals.

The night of the party comes.

Rage builds. You're wasting your youth in a brain and a body that don't feel like yours. You’re fucking sick of it. You walk to the bathroom.

You find a pair of clippers that your dad uses to touch up his hair. You plug them in, removing the blade cover. They buzz to life.

You take a chunk of your hair off, and your jaw drops in surprise. A huge, bald stripe down the center of your head. You grin, taking off another stripe. And another. And another. Until your head is completely bald. Your hair lies in a pile on the floor.

Your mother had always loved your hair. It was just like hers, she’d said. People could mistake you for sisters.

Not anymore.

You haphazardly shave your eyebrows off for good measure.

You walk downstairs.

Your parents sit in front of the TV, neither watching. Your dad reads a newspaper, and your mom is asleep with an empty wine glass in her hand.

You stand there, staring at your dad.

He blinks at you in surprise, “Good lord- you look awful.”

You don’t say a word. He sighs, his tone staying calm.

“Is this still about that stupid party? You know I just want what’s best for you.”

Your face contorts, and you feel hot tears leaking out of your eyes. You grab his newspaper, and throw it on the ground.

“It's not just the party, and you know it!” Your voice comes out ragged.

“Okay, just calm down-” he starts.

You grab your mom's wine glass and launch it through the TV. You move on a path of destruction, breaking stupid, ugly vases, the glass case for your dad's dumb signed baseball, the “good” china plates in the cabinet.

Your dad tells you to calm down, to stop. He threatens you.

Your mother’s voice is shrill and panicked, “Your hair! What did you do to your hair?”

A scream bubbles out from your throat that won't stop, and you wail until your voice breaks, smashing everything you can get your hands on.

Your dad follows you to the kitchen, and before he can grab you, you take a knife from the block and hold it to your throat.

“Stop.” His voice is still entirely too stern and calm.

You press the tip to the hollow of your throat, raising your eyebrow, your heartbeat loud in your ears. After all that, the biggest outburst of them all, he's still a cold, emotionless asshole.

Your mom tackles you to the ground.

You come to in a room, identical to the one before, in the psych ward.

You sit on the side of the hard cot, bouncing your knees, feeling your eyes twitch, dry tears in hardened streaks on your face.

A woman comes in. You see the light from behind her, shining through her soft curls. She looks like an angel.

“C'mon. Hurry.” She whispers.

This must be some kind of a hallucination, but… the door is open. You follow her.

She sneaks you through the hospital, retrieving the clothes you'd come in with and rushing you out the front doors. You're hurried into the passenger side of a car. You finally get a good look at her.

It's Marie, the doctor, from all those years ago.

“Are you… real?”

She looks at you.

“Yes. You shouldn't be here.”

You just stare at her, feeling dazed.

“Your parents want to have you transferred to a long term facility and put a conservatorship on you once you're 18.”

“What…?”

“When you shouldn't have even been here in the first place.” She huffs, starting the car.

“What does that mean?” you ask, feeling small in the car seat.

“They'll have guardianship over you for your whole life, unless you can prove to a court that you're able to take care of yourself. And you won't be able to if you're on drugs that you don't need to be on.”

You blink at her.

“Where are you taking me?” Your voice shakes.

“Well, where do you want to go?”

You look at her, stunned. You haven't gotten to make a decision for yourself in years.

“I get… to choose?”

“Yeah,” she smiles at you, “I'd hide you at my house, but I've got too many people at home. It would be too hard. Where's somewhere you've always wanted to go?”

You think, New York instantly coming to mind. It's not far, but… you'd get eaten alive. C'mon, think.

You remember seeing flyers here and there, outside of grocery stores, and on telephone poles by the high school, for punk shows.

Always in a town called Port Hanna.

You grin.

“I wanna go to Port Hanna.”

She smiles, and takes a turn that leads to the highway.

Port Hanna is 45 minutes away, and Marie lets you fiddle with the radio.

A station turns from static to a man talking, in a passionate, nasally voice.

“People thought I was crazy. My parents kicked me out when I was 16, and I said, okay, screw you. I'm going where the music is.”

Your ears perk up.

“I got to Oakland, and followed this group of punks onto a bus that went right to San Francisco. Followed ‘em to Mabuhay Gardens. Walked inside with the Xs on my hands, and Dirk Dirksen was calling the guy onstage a cavalcade of insults that I can not repeat on this broadcast. That man was Iggy Pop, and he played a song I had heard many times before. This time was different. This time, it changed me. This is that song.”

A bouncy, simple guitar riff kicks in. The music feels like it’s hugging your ears. You’ve heard it before, but you feel it changing you, too. Tears fall from your eyes uncontrollably as Marie drives.

~

Honey, gotta strike me blind

Somebody’s gotta save my soul

Baby, penetrate my mind

And I’m the world’s forgotten boy

The one who’s searchin’, searchin’ to destroy

And, honey, I’m the world’s forgotten boy

The one who’s searchin’, only to destroy

~

Marie pulls up to a motel. She gets the room while you wait in the car. She hands you the key outside the door, an outside entry on a 2-story balcony, and slips a bundle of money into your hand. You embrace her.

“I got you 7 days- I know it’s not enough. Nothing would be enough, but-” She sighs.

“It’s enough. It’s more than enough.” You squeeze her, “I’ll figure something out,”

“Jesus. You’re too young to have to figure something like that out.”

“It’s okay.”

“One more thing,” she pulls away, “If the phone rings, you don’t say hello. You wait until they talk.”

You nod.

“And as the meds wear off, you’re probably going to feel a little weird, but it’s worth it. I’m sure it’s nothing you can’t handle, after all you’ve been through. Just… please be careful. Call me if you need anything.”

She hands you another slip of paper, with a phone number written down.

You hug her one last time, and she’s gone.

The room is friendly, if dated. A tacky, fruit-patterned comforter covers the bed, with a matching armchair in the corner. The walls are a soft beige, and a tired-sounding air conditioning unit runs under the window. Your head feels freezing- an unfamiliar feeling- and you turn it off. You change out of your hospital clothes into the ones you’d been admitted in, and feel a little better. You click the TV on, sitting in the middle of the bed. Alone- the good kind of alone. You tune in to MTV, a formerly banned channel in your household. You don’t know who’s being interviewed, and you don’t care. You’re just too happy to hear music. To hear people talking about music.

Hello, my dears, Dave Holmes here-

An ad for a pizza joint grabs your attention from by the phone, and your stomach growls. You haven’t had much of an appetite in months, not to mention your mom put the two of you on a different restrictive diet every month or so.

You count the cash Marie had given you, wondering if you could even budget food, and are shocked at the amount. Feeding yourself is definitely in the budget. You’re so happy you could cry.

You use an alias on the phone- Debbie Carlisle- and don’t look too close at the pizza guy when he arrives. As you’re about to close the door, a voice stops you from outside.

“Debbie Carlisle? Is that your stage name?” the man laughs, tall and slender, leaning on the balcony, blowing out a plume of smoke, “Debbie Harry, plus Belinda Carlisle? I like it.”

“No. Yes! Uh… no.” You panic, standing in the doorway. How did he figure it out so fast?

The man turns around. He doesn’t look too much older than you are. A pencil mustache lines his lip, and his hair makes him look like a rooster.

“You look like you’ve been through hell.” He nods at your shaved head.

You’re silent for a few seconds.

“Yeah,” you nod.

“You watchin’ 120 Minutes?” He peers into your open door.

“Yes.”

“Alright, well I won’t bother you too much, then. See ya ‘round, Debbie.” He smirks, ashing his cigarette over the side of the balcony.

You shut your door.

The ending of the memory is bittersweet. Nick took your rejection hard. You don’t know if he’ll ever talk to you again. You sit up on the bed, looking out the window. You’re exhausted. You wipe a tear from your cheek and pull out your cell phone. 1 missed call, and a voicemail. The same number from last week. Strange.

You click on the voicemail, holding the phone up to your ear.

The shock of Rodrick’s voice makes your eyes go wide. You feel yourself go limp, your eyes welling up again.

I’m so fucking sorry.

I’m really, really sorry.

You let your face fall into your hand, your lip trembling. All your anger with him seems to fall away, all the bullshit you’d been telling yourself earlier.

Some older guy showing pictures of you-

Your head snaps up. Nerves take over your body. You sigh with relief that Rodrick had good enough instincts to not give you up.

Your heart warms when he says he misses you.

As much as you sort of hate yourself for it, you miss him, too. You really, really do.

You don’t have it in you to call him back, not right now. You’ll be a blubbering mess. You’d rather see him in person, anyway.

There’s a party tomorrow- a big one- and The Strike re-opens on Saturday. It’ll be your first time out of the house in a week, if everything goes to plan. Maybe, just maybe, his friends will manage to drag him out of the house.

For now, you wait.

~

Now you’re finally sixteen

And you’re feelin’ old

But they won’t believe

That you’ve got a soul

Whoa-whoa-no

tag list: @crumpets-are-better-with-jam , @stargurl-01

[hypaalicious]

NGL y'all, it's been rough.

On the surface, I guess you could say I'm doing alright. I have a roof over my head, adequate food to eat (most of the time), good friends and family to rely on... But when I say this world has beaten me down to pieces, it definitely has.

COVID was the first chink in the armor. Watching the entire world basically shrug off mass death and try to blithely live like it's still 2019 despite a pandemic raging worse than ever with less protections than we had before is wild. Don't matter how much facts you have to show to people, they will ignore it and then also in the same breath wonder why everyone's sick all the time. I mourn the children who aren't protected, who are sent into schools with no masks to become disabled/chronically ill for the rest of their lives. I mourn the immunocompromised who are trapped indefinitely in their homes because the world has moved on from pretending to care about COVID. It's been 4 years. Time doesn't even feel real. Then October 7th happened, and I get to watch a genocide happen in occupied Palestine in real time. Now, if you don't know me, then you may not know that I generally avoid rated R live action movies because I am a wuss and can't take the explicit violence and gore in a lot of them. I went from that, to watching lives of Palestinians recording their loved ones blown up, carrying their remains in plastic bags, IDF psychos shooting women and children in the back, the despair and anguish of Palestinians being corralled, starved, poisoned just because they exist. I have irrevocably been changed by bearing witness to this horror. Writing my script for my game has slowed down to a crawl. I close my eyes at night to sleep, and dream about the devastation I witnessed. I wake up and see even worse horrors, all unchecked by world powers. I get on Facebook and see people carrying on with life as if nothing is happening at all. I don't... I feel like I'm looking at society from the opposite side of a glass window. Everything has lost its color. How can I care about movies, video games, traveling, etc when it all just serves as a distraction to the ugly reality that cannot be ignored? I don't care about celebs and their drama. I don't care about the regurgitated mess Hollywood puts out. I don't care about what overpriced AAA game is highly anticipated. I do not care at all. The climate is fucked up and I see venture capitalists literally selling pieces of iceburgs to rich folks in the UAE for cocktails like it's nothing. People wanna talk about what new restaurant opened up and all I can think of is the fact that a singular bell pepper is like $2. A musical artist announces a tour and all I see are more superspreader events where people won't mask then bring home viruses to their families. Is this the future we want? Hell, will we HAVE a future? We, collectively, will rue the day we sat around and did nothing to stop all of this. And I fear that day will come very soon.

[penisbutterjellytime]

can we see more of ur rdr oc?? him and sean are so cute!

I unfortunately don't have much of him. Drawing or lore wise.

⬇️ When I was still figuring out his face || like a day ago ⬇️

Well educated guy, either went to school or apprenticed to learn about chemicals and such idk. I'm thinking he might of had family who worked in the factories as a kid and that's how he got a fascination.

Deaf / HOH after a failed experiment when he was younger blew up and fucked up his ears. Still has tinnitus and so severe that loud things like gun shots or explosions sound really muffled. But he got used to it probably after a few years. As long as he can read your lips and everyone's talking at a time he can understand. Would be cool if he'd knew some Sign Language but he probably wouldn't've. Could've been possible tho since French Sign Language didn't arrive in America until the 1810's and obviously PISL and such other indigenous sign languages. Probably has signs he does use with people to communicate from afar, but not enough to have a conversation.

After some time or whatever he made business off making his own tnt and other chemicals / explosives from his house. I'm thinking people as well as maybe the O'Driscoll's and other gangs would come to him to get resources (ranging many purposes but most his costumers being interested in things that can kill, loudly or silently). idk maybe Kieran heard that the O'Driscoll's get their explosives from this guy and a conflict between some O'Driscoll's and the Van Der Gang results in his home getting blown up. For all the other gangs know he's dead from the explosion so he's taken by the gang and stuck in camp making stuff for them. I imagine if he was an actual in game character he would have a little table/tent of his own, with all his beakers and viles and shit strewn about. He'd maybe have a few side missions (like Dutch's pipe, Sadie's harmonica, Charles' arrows, etc.) where you find materials for him and you get something in return.

He actually originated from a dream like a year or two ago. I don't get a lot of dreams that take place in stuff I'm invested in, even my own oc's in my own worldbuilding which really sucks so I had to draw him to remember that. Only difference is that I decided to make him the gangs tnt / chemist guy. Also makes more sense as to why the gangs arsonist would like him. Typa guy who will excitingly show you how to make a pipe bomb or explaining the chemical components of cyanide and the process in excruciating detail. Typa guy to recreate the German Thioacetone incident because he thinks he could do better.

[byanyan]

@chronal-anomaly sent:ㅤ"Y'know, by the time I was 17, I was already enlisted." The tone is light, conversational, but pacing all wrong. It fell out of her in pacing, halting pauses, a rate they've heard a couple times before, with similar stories. "London had been devastated by the wars, reserve troops non-existent. The fighting eventually moved away, but the rubble what was supposed to be my secondary school stayed." She dragged on the joint they were passing, ignoring the itch in her throat as she exhaled. "It was everywhere, recruiting posters and ads and people in our schools. Trying to get us to be the next generation, next round of soldiers. Promised they'd fix up even a fuck up like me. Guess there isn't many requirements to get blown up in a war." She passed the joint back to them, eyes looking distantly into the horizon. "Go' busted for breaking 'n entering. Spent three nights in jail, came out to find - well, that's not important. Went runnin' up to the office the next day. Changed my life forever." Lena chewed on the words for a second before snorting out a laugh. "Changed it for the worst. Word to the wise, stay away from those fuckers."

ㅤit was a tonal contrast they were becoming more familiar with now that lena had shared more of her past with them. hell, it was one they used themself, sharing shocking tidbits of information in the most casual, unsuitable manner possible. made it easier. made it seem like it didn't bother you, didn't haunt you. gave you some kind of power over it.

disgust curled their lip at her descriptions. none of it came as a surprise, not remotely, but it never ceased to fuel the burning pit of hatred that sat so neatly in the center of their chest when they heard or saw that sort of thing. there was never any shame in it, the way people who couldn't afford a better life were capitalized upon, fed promises of being able to have everything they wanted or needed for a successful life if they just spent a few years as fodder for a country that never cared about them in the first place. never any shame in all the lies they were fed about fixing them, about helping them follow a better path and being able to earn respect, when really all someone got (if they survived) was horrendous trauma, physical disabilities, and a system that somehow cared even less about them than before.

it was a shame that lena fell for it. but that was why they preyed on those who were too young to know better, right? those whose circumstances were so far from ideal that almost anything looked better than the life they were already living.

accepting the joint that was passed back to them, only then did byan finally chance a glance at her face. watching for a moment as she spoke, they eyed the distant expression she wore. came out to find... what? they wanted to ask, but they knew better. 'that's not important' always meant that it was important, but it wasn't easy to talk about. was it her dad? that was who she was living with at that age, right? her mom was already gone, if they recalled correctly. —whatever it was, it couldn't have been good. not if it resulted in her enlisting the next day.

bringing the joint up to their lips, they took a long, slow drag and listened as she continued, unable to help the wry smile earned by her hollow laugh. such a familiar sentiment. somehow it still caught them off guard when they realized how much they actually related to lena, how much they were, in a lot of ways, the same. except... they still had the option of choosing a different path, where she didn't. not in the same way, at least. not when it came to those fundamental years between teenager and adult.

ㅤㅤ" don't worry, "ㅤthey murmured finally, gaze drifting back out to the view from the balcony as they blew a puff of smoke from between parted lips. in a way, it felt wrong to only verbally acknowledge the part of what she'd said that was warning them against following in her footsteps, but at the same time... it didn't feel like any of it was something she wanted to discuss. it felt like it was more getting things off her chest, like she was sharing with someone who might understand in their own way. ...something, to their own surprise, they found that they appreciated. there was something about lena being comfortable with confiding in them that was... nice. it was nice to be trusted with something that most people weren't.

drawing the joint back up to their lips, byan shrugged, their eyes following a few birds flitting across the darkening sky. rather than press for more, and rather than trying to lighten the mood by asking if she had any breaking and entering tips they could borrow, they opted instead to finish reassuring her;

ㅤㅤ" never wanted to hear their shit anyway. rather die on the street than die protectin' a world that never gave a damn. "

[catchingbigfish]

🤔

🤔 - What's the inspiration behind my WIP

ohhhh thank you for asking! i kept promising to eventually make this post for So It Goes but never got around to it because i felt like it was verging on trauma dumping to do an unsolicited breakdown of this. i'm going to go into the sad stuff at the end, but it's under a cut! @indecentpause, @thelittlestspider, and @brazenlip also sent this emoji so tagging for ref!

so, first off, i read Slaughterhouse-five by Kurt Vonnegut in middle school. one of the perks of growing up in Indiana is that you're really hammered away at about how important Vonnegut is (he was an Indianapolis native) and there's even a super cool museum about him. i was blown away and absolutely loved it. it was required reading later in high school and i loved it then too but yeah, it was a huge impact on me. the reason this is relevant is because throughout the novel, whenever someone or something dies, he writes, "So it goes." just like that. and the first time i read it and came to the scene where (iirc) someone throws a paper ball and it misses the trash can, and he says, "So it goes", i burst out laughing.

this also factors into the Sad Girl Shit you'll read in a second if you're curious, but i might be the world's biggest mac miller fan. not really, but i actually was in his like top .5% of listeners in 2020 on spotify, so close. his song So It Goes factors into the sad shit, but i just love the song.

okay so i'm going to write the rest of this under the cut and specify a content warning for potentially upsetting topics related to deaths of relatives and friends!! just a heads up for anyone who's sensitive to that. i'm totally comfortable talking about this and i don't need anyone to tell me how sorry they are for me -- it's just a matter of fact now and i'm totally used to talking about it, but i feel bad when i share it with people and they get sad because of me. you don't need to!! i'm fine!! don't be sad on my account!!

alright so historically speaking i've dealt with like… a lot of death. most of it was clustered in my teens and early 20s, but without getting too far into the weeds i'll say i probably lost around 20 relatives and friends before i turned 22, and i lost my dad when i was 21. only a handful were due to illness/expected, the vast majority were accidents, overdoses, and violence related.

what really sparked SIG, though, is when a few years ago i was walking home from the bus stop after work and heard the mac miller song, then learned about a death.

before i move on, let me tell you about a friend of my sister's. i'm going to call him Isaiah, because that's why Isaiah-the-character exists -- this friend.

Isaiah was an absolute joy. sometime earlier in the year, i ran into him at his job, and it just filled me up with the warmest happiness to see him. you know those people whose existence just makes you feel a little better about the world? yeah. anyway, he was working at a starbucks and took my order and when i reached the window he gave me the goofiest smile and asked if i was who he thought, and i said yes, and he told me i should let him know it's me next time and he'll give me the family discount. it was sweet. i went home and texted my sister about it and made a joke about how i never want to find out if he did something wrong (we'd learned some dark shit about people in our lives recently) because i didn't want my memory of him tarnished.

so that day in 2019, probably close to a year after he served me coffee, i was walking home and heard the song coming from a car and felt a little uneasy (it's a sad song, considering mac miller's untimely death) and i got home and my sister called me, and yeah. Isaiah had died. he was shot, they still don't know why or by who, but despite how much death i've dealt with in my life that hit me fucking hard. it was right around the 5th anniversary of my dad's death and somehow, Isaiah's passing hit me harder than my dad's that year -- a testament to how much time had passed since my dad's death, but also a testament to how cruel i felt it was that Isaiah was gone. i told my therapist i felt like the world was a little sharper after that, like things were just slightly meaner. let me be super clear and say i wasn't Isaiah's best friend by any means; he was a close friend of my older sister, and i was often assigned to keep her out of trouble, so i was around him but not that close to him. but something about him just made the world feel a little lighter.

so, yeah! that's what happened. i came up with the idea for SIG in 2020, and it percolated over the years, and finally in nov 2022 i started writing SIG to purge all of the deaths i'd experienced and i knew from the start Isaiah's would be front and center. in the first draft, the final scene of SIG is an almost beat-by-beat remake of what happened in real life, up until marisa sees death sitting on her couch but embraces sophia instead. i needed to believe in that -- that even despite Isaiah's death, the world was still kind, and love still existed. it definitely does, by the way! like i said, i'm fine these days -- his was actually the last death i've experienced -- and i really don't need anyone to feel sad for me!

[snippetsofsydney]

Hell of a week

If a gif could sum me up right now, Hades losing his shit and playing it cool is pretty damn accurate. The overwhelm and overload I'm experiencing right now has me all RAWR! But because my ass is full of the 'tism, I can't verbally explain any of this.

So, let's break the last few weeks down:

Life has been hectic, a lot of it has been good but it's also non-stop which can be detrimental to me. My love got the surgery she's waited over a year and a half for, this is good, the not so good part is that the after care was severely lacking which resulted in a post-op infection as well as a kidney infection (which the hospital knew of and said nothing about when they discharged her). It's taken 3 weeks to get the medication she was supposed to have been sent home from the hospital with. Yay. I'm thankful for the NHS, I really am, I would never be able to afford private health care but sometimes mistakes like this just make me wanna go bash sense into people.

I got scammed. AGAIN. Yep. This time they went the route of my phone provider and caused me stress like you wouldn't believe. I spent 2 hours on the phone trying to sort shit out. I had to go to my bank and get a new card (which I think is the third one this year, second due to fraudulent activity).

Trying to setup a joint bank account has been a fucking nightmare. Neither of us have a driving licence or passport. We've been advised to get citizen cards etc. which supposedly exist for people who have no ID - fun fact! You need photo ID in order to obtain a citizen card. There is no card out there you can get that's recognised by the banks that you can get without photographic ID.

Trying to sort out our benefits has been nothing short of a nightmare. Phone calls, meetings, people I don't know in places that aren't exactly sensory friendly and I'm beyond fried. To say I'm in burnout would be beyond stating the obvious but if things don't let up soon, I'll be in a full blown shut down.

I haven't been able to stream because I just haven't had the time or energy whilst looking after my family and home. Ordinarilly there are two of us taking care of everything but my girl is recovering from open surgery so it all falls to me and I wouldn't have it any other way because she needs to rest and recover but it's wearing me down and I feel like I'm failing. Then because my brain is the way it is I beat myself up because others can do all this and more piece of piss but then I'm not like them so I can't.

The orb in my vision is really pissing me off beyond believe. It's lowering my already limited useful eye power and does not help with the pain in my skull.

Speaking of the pain in my skull - 5 weeks of clusterfuck headaches. I'm so over this. I hope this attack finishes fucking soon cos there are some days where I'm thankful I live in the UK and not the US or I'd be out buying a weapon to eat to get rid of the pain in my head. Yes, it is that bad.

This one is good but also daunting cos I'm already in burnout and I've no idea how I'll manage it but I will. We're moving. We haven't got a date yet. Hopefully it'll be soon. We're doing a house swap and are waiting for the other tenant to have their house inspection so it can be signed off and approved. I'm looking forward to it. This will be our first home as a family that's entirely ours and we can decorate it from scratch. Our current home, I moved in. My girls were already here. The move puts us in a better position for our support network and schools (which is the main reason for moving as Sunshine goes high school next year).

There's more but I've lost steam. I'm hoping to write more over the next few days just to allow myself to process everything and hopefully come out of burnout. I've decided to abolish my stream schedule for the rest of the year. There's just too much happening right now to keep to a regular schedule. I'm just going to stream as and when I can because I miss chatting to my friends.

Sorry that this has been a moany post ladles and jellyspoons, but sometimes you just gotta let it all out. Hopefully I'll be better in a few days, right now I think most of this is the burnout talking because it's hitting hard right now.

TTFN!

[eliesczhae]

From $1 a day to $21 an hour

It seems impossible for this to happen.

But happen, it did. It happened to me.

Actually, it wasn't even a dollar. It was less than that. I was serving food, washing dishes, sweeping the floor, scrubbing toilet bowls, and occasionally getting sexually harassed by drunk customers for twelve fucking hours to get paid a mere $0.75 back when I was 16.

Once I broke a glass, and it cost me two days' wages to pay it off.

How miserable.

But I slaved away because what choice do beggars like me have?

When one asks if I ever had a dream job, I always stutter and fail to answer.

You know why?

Because I do not dream to be a fucking slave, working my ass off for someone else to get fucking rich.

Who does that?

I've had several odd jobs after that. Quit school, went back, and quit school again because there was just not enough money to support my education. And home life isn't great either.

Eventually, days before turning 18, a friend called me up and said, "Yo, you have good comms skills, why not apply where I'm interning at?". She was doing an internship at a local BPO company. A call center, if you may.

I was like, damn, bro. Why not?

A couple of years later, I discovered the world of freelancing and I'm now earning an astronomically higher wage than my younger self ever did.

Thanks to my experience and skills acquired in the BPO industry, the change wasn't very hard.

I'm not saying the journey was easy. I was working for several clients at the same time just to secure that bag because I'd never been presented with these many opportunities before and had never experienced getting paid this much ever in my entire life.

$21 an hour may not be much for some but the conversion to my local currency is eye-bulging.

I was mind-blown.

And then, I almost died.

I was overworked, blood shot up high.

I'm done.

I don't wanna work myself to death. This isn't the life I envisioned for me.

It's been almost 5 years since I started earning this much and I still catch myself sitting in the middle of my room asking myself if any of this is real or if it's just a simulation.

I've given up most of my clients and chosen my health and mental well-being.

I don't want to work myself to death. This isn't the life I envisioned for me. Didn't my younger self hate slaving myself away so much?

I wanna live my life now.

Nowadays, people see my success and say I'm lucky.

Some would say they want to be me.

Oh, honey. I highly doubt it!

As I was saying, the money is there, and I'm grateful for it. I use it to help better my family and friends' lives. Alleviate their sufferings and make them happy. Give to the less fortunate and so on.

We're all gonna die anyway, what use is it to keep it stashed away?

Don't get me wrong, I do have insurance and savings. I'm not financially irresponsible.

Maybe I do splurge quite a bit on games and books and sometimes travel because it heals my inner child.

But nothing has changed.

I still do not have a dream job.

My dream is to quietly create art, make music, read books, enjoy shows, see the world, and help people.

My younger self is proud of the adult me for my achievements.

But the adult me is even more proud of my younger self for not succumbing to the void.

Had it not been for you, I would not be where I am now and enjoying everything that I have, can have, and will have.

Emotional turmoil is labor.

An extremely hard one.

Happy labor day!

[thoughtsbeewild]

Best Book to Read: People I want to punch in the throat

Literally Everyday was hell. Working with the know it all's, people with the titles(power and control), the OMFG thirsty fake ass moms(in my case a white mom with 2 brady bunch kids(like she holy, sent from above mom), what she really was is a kiss ass mom who only there for a paycheck. Without this book, i would have blown up and got my ass fired. They just hired a mom of 2 kids who hasn't worked in 16 years and has a fucking anger and temper problem. My guess probably why you didn't have a fucking job in 16 years. United States of America Companies have hired stupid dumb fuck people with a low pay rate. I call it cheap labor. Fire the hard working American people who went through school, started at the bottom and try to work their way to top. In 2023 , finding a job has gotten worst. So for the stupid people who voted in 2020 Election for the $15.00 minimum wage. Truly this is all your fault= inflation, lay off of all American workers, homelessness is fucking real people(brainwash media only wants you focus on celebrities and instagram influencers. The US job market pay rates are from 15-23 dollars per hour at its highest, Depending on per State law. But fuk ya for voting for this shit for United States of America..Now job markets are seeking pathetic needy people to p pay them at a low rate and replace American workers who worked hard to get the American dream/life. Now we have unstoppable morons replacing the highly intelligent workforce..

#dealing douche coworkers #writing through madness

[lifestreamsblog]

Samurai Maiden for Switch Review: Don’t Believe the Hate

So, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve been to heck and back. I’ve:

Lost my apartment

Caught Covid and nearly died

Had acute kidney failure

Went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated

Had a stroke

Had pneumonia and nearly died

Have had lung problems ever since having pneumonia

...Long story short, I’ve been through so much shit, it’s a fucking miracle I’m even alive today.

Anyway, now I’m back, and just in time to see the internet dogpile on one of the better Yuri games to come out recently. Oh, joy. Yes, if a bunch of hateful reviewers are to be believed, Samurai Maiden is one of the worst games ever to grace the Nintendo Switch! With horrifying issues that will plague gamers everywhere, including:

Horrible translation

Fake-feeling relationships between characters

Subpar quality

Fan service

High cost

Total anarchy that will melt your favourite politician, and replace them with HitlerStalinMao(TM)

Needless to say, people HATE this game.

Aside from the high price, the aforementioned points are all blown out of proportion at best, and downright wrong at worst. Here’s my two-cents:

Samurai Maiden is a beat-em-up developed by SHADE LTD and published by D3 PUBLISHER for the Nintendo eShop and other platforms. The game is done in the style of Oneechanbara and Senran Kagura. Unlike Oneechanbara, this is a Yuri game. Unlike Senran Kagura, it’s actually amazing and full of potential.

Let’s start with the one I hear complained about the most:

The Translation:

I speak some Japanese, and I can tell you that the translation is mostly accurate. It takes some liberties here and there, and at times, it makes puzzling choices, but it’s not the OH NOES THIS SUCKS BEYOND BELIEF!! that all the other reviewers are saying. Honestly, I’ve seen far worse! But...let’s address the elephant in the room:

The game dares to make the protagonist from Gen Z! How dare they!

First-off: the girl in question is in motherfucking HIGH SCHOOL! And, you know what generation is in high school in 2022? GEN Z! The Japanese says something similar to properly date the girl, so it’s what we in the linguistic community like to call “localisation!” It’s a common and necessary practice to properly make a game accessible to the audience the game is being translated for. This should be applauded, not vilified.

Onto the next matter:

Relationships Between Characters:

Let’s look at a very famous and popular franchise for a moment: Senran Kagura. This franchise is famous for its lesbian fans. However, as a genderfluid person who is attracted to any gender and spent many years identifying as a transwoman who was a lesbian, I can safely say that Senran Kagura’s relationship dynamics have always been a HUGE TURN OFF! Here’s why:

Sexual desire and instant physical intimacy is ALWAYS the norm

The women are always falling over each other in awkward ways

There is no real time for anybody to develop feelings

So...if all lesbians only care about skinship and sex, this game may be accurate. But, we know this is not the case. In fact, emotional connection and support is just as important! This just isn’t the case with Senran Kagura; if anything, that is the franchise with fake-feeling relationships.

Samurai Maiden, by comparison, sees relationships grow organically. There is love at first sight, but that happens lots in the real world as well. The truth is, in this game, there’s no instantly jumping into the arms of the protagonist, nor is there the opposite with the protagonist jumping into the arms of one of the supporting women. The protagonist shares stories and experiences with the other women, and they grow fond of each other.

In my world, this is called a healthy relationship, not an unrealistic one.

Okay, what about...

Mechanics:

Like any beat-em-up in the 3D space, this game involves a lot of running around and beating up baddies. The supporting cast is there to help. Of course, you need to equip your party members, and give them commands, but this is not at all unusual in this sort of game; to expect anything else is unrealistic. The mechanics, according to one of my partners, are neither amazing, nor are they awful; it’s somewhere in the middle. According to her, this game is loads better, mechanically-speaking, than Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae, a Steam game which plays like garbage. She says a much better comparison would be Oneechanbara. So, again, the other reviewers are dumping on Samurai Maiden for a nonexistent issue.

And now...for the one everybody is yelling about:

Fan Service

Have you seen Senran Kagura? The fan service is beyond obsessive. Anything in Samurai Maiden is beyond tame by comparison. See what I wrote about relationships above.

I rest my case on this particular issue.

Now...Onto the only talking point where everyone else is actually correct for a change!

Price

Samurai Maiden costs US $59.99+tax for the standard version, and US $74.99+tax for the deluxe version. These are AAA prices for a mid-tier market game. This is standard issue when it comes to D3 PUBLISHER. But stop and think for a moment: this isn’t a large-scale developer or publisher. And they’re not obscene with microtransactions and DLC like the people behind Senran Kagura. They are genuinely trying to fill a niche market and charging enough money to make a little profit. They know their game won’t sell millions and will likely only sell in the tens of thousands, so they charge more to ensure they can make more games! Not everybody in the industry is a greedy capitalist nightmare; some of these people genuinely love making games! If you’re going to complain, why not hold the people behind Senran Kagura to account; they have so much DLC, you’d think you’re dealing with those behind Dead or Alive.

Now that I’ve covered all the main bases, I want to discuss something I find important:

Voice Acting:

Unlike countless other games featuring Anime women, most of the characters don’t have those cutesy voices that make them sound extremely unrealistic. This is SUCH A BREATH OF FRESH AIR FOR ME! In fact, the mature voice of the protagonist actually makes me take her seriously as a person! Her companions are hit-and-miss, although none of them have that cutesy, high-pitched whiny voice that you ALWAYS hear in these types of games.

All in all, Samurai Maiden is a competent beat-em-up with realistic lesbian relationships that doesn’t shove DLC, microtransactions or endless fan service down your throat. It’s a refreshing breath of fresh air for me, given how much utter drivel you see on the market out there for this sort of concept. Truthfully, I don’t play games very much these days, preferring to watch one of my partners play instead, but I actually enjoy this game. And I’m going to keep on playing it. And I hope it gets sequels and becomes a franchise, because for me, this game is like if Senran Kagura were actually done right!

FINAL SCORE: 8/10: Don’t Believe the Hate

[kikixreverie]

Hi- may I ask for an angst-mix with Bucky x reader: she had her share of abusive/toxic relationships in her past, but it was nothing she spoke of, and not now when she had James. It wasnt like she thought she was gonna be triggered again, not by him, any other guy- buy not her Bucky! Some tiny bickering evolved to a large dispute, and before she knew what was happening, she shied away from him, making herself small, awaiting the blow - that never came... And instead she was overcome by shame...

Pasts and Apologies

Bucky x Fem!reader

Word count - 3k

Warnings - Mentions of domestic abuse from ex, some descriptions of abuse, angst, trauma

A/n - Okay I definitely went hard on the angst for this one. I kinda just went off on one so not so much bickering and more just a full blown argument but I've been feeling kinda angsty lately so I kinda accidentally made this darker than I expected. Please read the warnings and do not read if you think this could trigger you.

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Love had not been kind to you before Bucky. Every decent memory of your ex was clouded with uncertainty, you would walk on eggshells around him, terrified that saying the wrong thing would set him off and you'd be calling Sam again, sobbing down the phone, cradling another bruise at the hands of your 'partner'.

You were together for years, devoted to and unconditionally in love with the man that you had met in high school. Childhood sweethearts.

He always was quick to anger and he wasn't shy about that. He never had any issues with shouting at you when you pissed him off, just as he never had issues with shouting at his mother or younger brother, but at the time, you had always stood up for yourself and defended the poor woman, making him apologise, and he let you, he always let you clean up his messes.

The first few years were spent in ignorant bliss, you constantly ignored the fear that would creep up your spine when he got angry, but you could manage a screaming match or two, you could manage it all because you loved him, you depended on him despite that he wasn't at all dependable.

The arguments were tough, but you never expected it to go further than that, but eventually, it did.

The first time he was physically aggressive was on his 22nd birthday. He had insisted that he spend his birthday with his friends, calling it a guys night, and you were fine with that, you knew how handsy he got when he was with his friends anyway, so you spent the day with him instead, making sure to keep him happy and spoilt rotten.

As the night crept on, you had tried to wait up for him to return, just as he had asked, but as it passed 3am you decided that he wouldn't mind you going to bed since you had work the next day, so you crawled into bed and fell asleep, a mistake, at the time, you didn't know you had made.

When he returned half an hour later to see you unconscious, he woke you up with his shouting, angry that you hadn't stayed up for him, convinced that you were ruining his night on purpose. The loud awakening was enough alone to trigger your fight or flight but when he threw the duvet off you and grabbed your ankle so tightly you knew a bruise would form, you were terrified. He dragged you off the bed and pushed you towards the door, telling you to fuck off, and you did, tears streaming down your face as you laid awake on the couch till morning.

It only got worse from there, when he realised that he could hurt you and get away with it, it became his favourite past time, he'd look for reasons to shout at you, make you do things that would piss him off just so he'd have a reason to be cruel.

When Sam started noticing dark bruises on your skin, he was livid, and despite how often you'd try to convince him that it's just clumsiness, Sam knew better.

There were rare days that you would have long conversations with Sam, you'd talk about how you'd lost all your friends and distanced yourself from your family but you didn't blame your abuser, you blamed only yourself, and Sam would beg you to leave him but you'd be sobbing in his arms, telling him that you still loved the man who hurt you, that he didn't really mean to hurt you and you'd feel even more guilt if you ever got him in trouble for it.

It was a long and hard journey, but the moment you told Sam that you wanted out, he was there for you, offering you to stay at his place and helping you call the cops. He gave you all the resources he could possibly find through the VA and set you up with an amazing therapist and eventually you were living in your own place, talking to old friends again, and filing a restraining order against your ex.

It was nearly two years later when you met him. Introduced through Sam, you met the love of your life on a Sunday. He was quiet and focused, with hard eyes scanning the room, looking for escape routes, analysing people's faces.

You smiled gently at him when you met, opting for a small nod in greeting instead of a handshake. You stayed near him for the remainder of the gathering, not pressuring him to speak to you, just sitting in silence. You were drawn to him, his behaviour was so similar to yours.

You knew what it felt like to want to just blend into the corner, to stay unnoticed, you understood the need to know how to escape a room, and you saw the way he hesitantly returned your smile and then struggled to chase his smile away once you had sat down beside him.

You and Bucky soon became each other's rocks, always there for the other on the hard days, days that you would spend just walking or reading together in calm silence. There was no doubt that the two of you loved each other, and after months and months of trying to hide longing glances and blushing cheeks, you finally confessed to each other, and the rest was history. You trusted him like you had never trusted anyone before.

As your relationship progressed, Bucky started to notice some strange things in your behaviour, how you'd always ask his permission for you to go out with friends, how you were always quick to apologise in any situation and distanced yourself from him when he was the slightest bit irritated.

He had tried to ask you about it, but you always changed the subject as soon as it was mentioned, ensuring him that it was nothing to worry about.

To tell the truth, you were embarrassed, you were ashamed that your ex still had this effect on you, and no matter how many times you told yourself that he would never, that your Bucky would never, your brain refused to allow you to believe it and you continued with the odd behaviour that you used as a defence mechanism when in the abusive relationship.

You never spoke out of line, you never asked him where or who he was going out with, and you never let small bickering escalate.

It was only after you had overheard Sam and Bucky in a heated conversation, Sam scolding Buck for being reckless and stupid during a mission, that you had your first argument with him.

You had called Sam while Bucky was at the store, convincing him to tell you what had happened and after a few minutes of guilt-tripping, Sam finally confessed that Bucky had practically ran into open fire, endangering himself in an attempt to shut down a Hydra base, it could've very easily been fatal, and it wasn't the first time something like this had happened.

You knew it was wrong, you knew you should've just asked Bucky about it, but you couldn't help yourself, and you knew that Bucky would've downplayed the whole situation.

When he returned home you were pacing up and down in the living room, chewing the inside of your cheeks and your nails to pieces because you could've lost him, Bucky could've died and he was acting as if it were nothing.

"Doll?" You could hear the worry in his voice as he placed the shopping bags on the kitchen counter and walked over to you, standing in front of you to stop your movement, pulling your hand from your mouth and kissing your knuckles.

It was supposed to calm you, and it almost did, but as his soft lips grazed your hand, and his eyes met yours, your mind kept wandering to the fact that he could've died.

This moment could've never happened, instead, you'd have Sam or Steve at your door, trying to deliver the news of their best friend's death, your lover.

"Honey speak to me" He looked utterly confused, but the look only made you feel angry.

How could he be so reckless?

"I just got off the phone with Sam."

He froze, eyebrows furrowing and taking a step away from you, waiting for you to explain.

Your gaze didn't move from the floor, trying to even out the anger and worry rushing through you, settling like a heavy rock in your stomach.

"He told me about the missions, about how you've been acting."

"What do you mean, how I've been acting?" He scoffed, sounding offended, and you sighed.

"How reckless you've been acting. Sam said that Tony's considering pulling you out of missions! How many times have you endangered yourself like this? How many times is it gonna take for you to realise that you could fucking die out there, James."

Your voice was stern, and the tone felt foreign against your tongue. Bucky's kept his face hard, refusing to show any emotion, but you could see the way his jaw clenched harshly, eyes glued to the corner of the room, ignoring your fiery glare.

"Were you ever going to tell me? I thought that all the injuries you got were fairly normal for the jobs you do, but when I hear that you run into open fire, that you make decisions on your own before talking to your team, that you've gotten fucking stabbed in the past, and you never told me, how do you expect me to react?"

He sighed heavily through his nose, jaw ticking in annoyance towards his friend, angry that he had told you even though it wasn't his place.

"I told him not to tell you." His voice was gruff, the words spoken harshly under his breath and you felt your anger flair again.

"What and you think that's okay?!"

His gaze shot to yours, looking at you incredulously.

"Bucky we're partners! You're supposed to tell me this shit, you're supposed to tell me when you've nearly died on a mission, you're supposed to trust me."

"You think I don't trust you?!" His voice was slightly raised and you felt your annoyance spike, "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry."

"Of course I'm gonna worry, James. This is a big deal, I can't believe you've been getting seriously injured and not telling me."

"Well, I don't think it's that big of a deal, Sam shouldn't have fucking told you. This wouldn't be happening if he had just kept his mouth shut, but no! Of course not!" Bucky's eyebrows were drawn in tight with annoyance, wishing you'd just drop the subject, "I'm not stupid, I know what I'm doing."

"What the hell do you mean 'You know what you're doing?' You know that you're not supposed to endanger yourself to complete a mission, yet you do it anyway. I'm glad Sam told me because otherwise, I doubt I'd ever find out!."

"I don't see how what I do on missions is anything to do with you. Sam is exaggerating. I'm fine!"

As Bucky's voice raised, you started to lose focus, flashbacks of your past echoing in your mind and in his annoyance, Bucky didn't notice the way your eyes had gone distant, losing sight of the man in front of you, the man you loved, and forming the image of the man you still see in nightmares, the man you're so terrified of seeing in the street that you haven't stepped foot in Queens since leaving him.

You could almost feel the sting of his palm against your cheek, the burn of his hand, tight around your wrist, and you tried to remind yourself that it wasn't real. It had been months since you'd had an episode, and your steps to control them were hard to find with the false image of your abuser so clear in front of you.

"Are you even listening to me?" The statement dragged you back to reality and you felt yourself calm when your eyes focused in on Bucky, reminding yourself that your ex wasn't here, that Bucky wasn't like that, he would never, but as he raised his arm to push his hair out of his face, everything flew out the window and in the moment, you were 21 again and you were sure he was going to hit you, your exes face flashing behind your eyes again.

You flinched, a gasp falling from your lips as your eyes squeezed shut and your head ducked down, breathing heavily through your nose as you awaited the hit.

Time slowed.

Bucky froze completely, his eyes wide and frantic as he quickly stumbled away from you, shaking his head as self-hatred ran through his veins, disgusted at himself for making you think even in the slightest, that he would ever hurt you.

"Doll?" He sounded absolutely broken.

Your head shot up, panic flooding through you when you realised what you had done and pain replacing the feeling when you saw the agony on Bucky's face.

"Y/n, I- I would never-" He kept his voice at a pained whisper, not wanting to scare you further as he stayed at a distance.

You collapsed to the floor, sitting on your knees as the weight of the situation pulled you down. Your hands raised to cover your mouth as a sob threatened to tear through you, so fucking ashamed of what had just happened, so fucking ashamed that your ex had done this to you, and you had let him for so long, ashamed that he still haunted you.

"Babydoll I-" He struggled to find the words, terrified that he had just lost you, wanting to reach out and hold you but scared shitless of hurting you more than he already had, "I don't know what- I'm so fucking sorry y/n, I can't- I can't even fathom the thought of-"

His voice trailed off, unable to even say the words and you felt your guilt tenfold.

"N-No Bucky, I'm sorry I thought-" You struggled to speak through your crying, hot tears flowing down your cheeks as you rocked yourself gently in an attempt to self-soothe.

"Why are you apologising honey? This is on me, this is-"

"No, it isn't, I promise Buck this isn't you, it's.." You couldn't get the words out, you couldn't tell him, "Just come here, please."

You wanted him to wrap his arms around you, you needed him to know that it wasn't him, you know the way his mind works and you knew that by now he would already be drowning in guilt and self-hatred.

"I don't think that I should. I don't want to hurt you, I can't- I can't hurt you" You smiled at him gently through your tears and your chin wobbled as you saw the tears running down his cheeks too.

"It's okay. I'm okay Bucky, I just- I-I need you over here, I need you - I need you to touch me. I need you."

He was over in an instant, falling to the floor beside you and letting out a huge sigh of relief when you instantly wrapped yourself around him, tucking your head into the crook of his neck and crawling into his lap, needing to be as close to him as possible, to rid the memories of the pain, to remind yourself that his touch is good, his touch is safe.

Arms enveloped you and he held you as tight as possible, the both of you crying.

After the two of you had calmed down and a comfortable silence enveloped you, Bucky knew he would have to break it.

"Why did you think that I would hit you?" He asked, his voice tentative and gentle and you sighed, knowing that it was time for you to tell him.

"I didn't, I don't, I promise."

You lifted your head from his shoulder but still stayed on his lap, instead, resting your forehead against his.

"Then why-?"

"I thought I was better, I-I thought it was all over but I just- I lost myself again. Everything got all foggy and I lost where I was and I just, I thought I was there but-" The floodgates opened again and you knew that Bucky had no clue what you were talking about but the words just kept coming.

Bucky's eyebrows were furrowed tightly and when your vague, confusing explanation only made his worry grow, he felt himself pulling you even tighter against him.

"Doll, Did someone hurt you? Is that why you're always walking on eggshells around me? Is that what the nightmares are about?" He struggled against the words, not wanting to say them because he didn't want to believe them and he watched in agony as you swallowed hard and nodded slowly, your hands coming to rest on the back of his neck as you continued to hold your forehead against his.

He refused to let his anger show, he wouldn't do that to you, especially with you so fragile, but he couldn't hide the pained shaky breath he let out at your confession, "Fuck, I'm so sorry. God, I'm so sorry that that happened to you. Was it your ex? Did he hurt you?"

You nodded again, doing your breathing exercises, and calming yourself so that you could explain your situation fully to your partner.

"I should've told you, I know, I just, I'm so angry that I'm still like this, I just wish it would all go away and I could forget about what he did. I thought I was better. I can't stand that I'm still so haunted by that asshole" Bucky nodded along as you spoke, brushing his fingers up and down your back to help calm you.

"It's okay, Doll. Things like that don't just go away. Believe me, I wish they did too, but things will get better, I promise you that. Thank you for telling me."

You scoffed in self-deprecation, "I should've told you ages ago."

"That doesn't matter, you've told me now, and I'm sure it wasn't easy, so thank you for sharing" His voice was so gentle, his hands caressing your back almost making you feel sleepy.

"And Buck?" He hummed in response, letting you know that he was listening, "About the mission thing, I'm just worried about you. I can't lose you, I need you, and I need you alive."

A gentle smile lifted his frown and he nodded in understanding, feeling bad for getting mad in the first place, and you leaned back, looking down at him, your hands playing with his hair.

"I know. I'm sorry for being an idiot, It's just so hard to look at them and remember what they did to me and know what they've done to so many innocent people and I just lose it, all rationality out the window" You nodded at him, understanding how painful some of the missions must be.

"I'm sorry I got so upset with you, and I'm sorry I went to Sam instead of talking to you. Don't be mad at him, I kinda forced him to tell me" You gave him a sheepish look and he breathed out a small laugh, his nose crinkling like you always loved.

"It's okay doll, I'm sorry for being so careless and hiding the stuff about the missions, I promise I'll be more careful, I gotta make sure I always come home to my sweet girl. And don't worry about Sam, you deserved to know and I know what you're like."

You tutted at him and he smiled in response, the adorable, loving look on his face making you pull him into the sweetest, softest kiss which he instantly returned.

After sitting together in each others embrace for a while, the yawns eventually started. You were both positively exhausted from all the emotions you had both just experienced so Bucky wrapped your legs around his waist and lifted you both from the floor, discarding the groceries still left in bags in the kitchen and carrying you to bed, holding you as close as physically possible as you both drifted off to sleep.

[earthtoplum]

straddle the line. // eddie munson.

pairing: eddie munson x fem!reader ( couple from hellraiser! ) ( id&r PART TWO! )

summary: Spending Halloween in Eddie's bed was becoming a recurring way to celebrate the holiday, but, for the two of you, it was more than just an exciting holiday that the town of Hawkins adored.

word count: 5k

warnings: SEXUAL CONTENT MINORS DNI. ~ 18+ ONLY. Duran Duran gets their own warning, the song is back, oral receiving (m+f), safe-sex (eddie knows how to wrap it), but he has a biting problem, swearing, no drugs or alcohol mentioned- if i missed anything PLEASE let me know!

a/n: hi! :) thanks for being here! this is a little mini from my main series hellraiser and a PART TWO to THIS!  this can be read as a stand alone, but reading hellraiser will help with the little details. This is like... the smut that couldn't be written the first time... Yanno... ENJOY! :) <3 this may only be minorly edited I am sorry.

{ masterlist }

October 31st, 1985

Halloween in Hawkins, always the place to be, it was the town's most exciting night, but this year things were different. After the mall fire this past summer, the biggest thing to happen here since that Byers kid went missing, people weren’t too into the idea of celebrating a ‘holiday of death’. The mayor even supported the protesting of Halloween events in school, and on the actual night itself.

Parties were still thrown, you and Eddie got invited to a couple secret ones during the school day, but Eddie made it adamant that  this year there would be no partying of any kind. With his lips close to your ear in the hallway by your locker he tells you he has a surprise, and that you should prepare to have your mind blown all night long.

That’s how you ended up here in his bed with all the covers thrown to the floor and the pillows a mess in the dim glow of his bedside lamp. You were laying with your head at the foot of the bed, your hair strewn behind you off the edge of the mattress. A thin layer of sweat coated your skin, the air in his room thick that had only turned that way after you’d arrived an hour ago.

“Eddie,” You whine, tugging on his hair that your fingers were tangled in, “What… What’s the… fuck.” Glancing down to the boy who was half-naked between your legs, your met with devilish eyes glaring back at you underneath his curls. Swirling his tongue over your clit, sucking on it with his lips for a second before he pulls away with an obnoxious smack, he gives you a look that had lethal potential.

“Ask me after you cum again, yeah?” His deep voice sends a chill through your core, the lust laced within his tone making you melt. The devious look in his eye is persuasive enough to make you lay your head back down. “Such a good girl,” Eddie whispers, leaning back in to lick a heavy, slow stripe between your folds, smirking as he watches your back arch off his mattress.

You were halfway there, he knew it, and with one already drawn out of you minutes prior, there was no doubt the second would be easier to score.

Bringing one of his hands up, covered in rings, he kitten licks your sensitive bud a few times while his fingers tease your entrance, purposely covering them in your arousal. The warmth of his skin mixed with the coolness of his rings is enough to have you squealing as you tug his hair rougher than you have all evening.

Slipping his middle finger inside with ease, he takes his time, admiring the way your body reacted to the intrusion. It was a beautiful sight watching you writhe with pleasure because of what he was doing to you, the way your breasts bounced on your chest as you heaved heavy breaths and songs of pleasure.

“More,” You sigh, grinding your hips on his lips. Sliding his finger out, he lines up two, keeping his eyes fixated on your expression, making sure you were content with everything he was giving, and when he pushes his ring wearing fingers inside of you  to the hilt, he’s satisfied with the sound that escapes your lips.

“Such a slut for the rings,” He mumbles against your center, kind of thinking you wouldn’t hear him.

“Fuck yeah, I am,” You cry, swirling your hips in a circle on his digits. The silver rings were chunky, breaching your entrance with even more of a stretch.

Eddie made sure from the start, if he was going to touch you with them on, they had to be safe. There was an entire night spent with just his fingers inside of you, testing which rings were comfortable, subsequently making you pick out three of your favorites. Now, if someone was to comment on any of those three rings, you and Eddie would both blush.

Eddie takes his other hand to your thigh, keeping your legs spread open for him, but letting it explore your skin, touching you gently, but squeezing in all of the right places. Pumping his fingers steadily, his tongue is back on your clit, repeating a pattern you loved, switching it up every fifth time to keep you on your toes. He had his habits, and most of the time those habits came from the way you responded.

“Oh my fuck,” You babble, between moans, and the scramble of words makes him want to laugh, but spurs him on to work harder.

“You gon’ cum for me, princess?” He asks, watching you as you try to pick up your head to look down at him while his fingers work. Catching his eyes for a second, he throws you off by curling his fingers within you, making your legs start to tremble underneath his hand that was gripping below your knee.

“Yeah,” You cry, “Don’ sto- Eddie!”

With a vengeance, Eddie latches back onto your leaking core unable to hold back, shrewd sounds filling the room. Between his lips and his tongue, the way he’s slurping and smacking every time he pulls away, for even half a second, he’s heightening his own pleasure along with yours. Pumping his fingers into you, curling them within your walls, twisting them as he used his strength, watching your body shake- everything is elevated, it’s incredibly pornographic, Eddie can’t help but moan himself.

The sweet sound finds your ears, sending a chill down your spine, making you clench around his fingers. Smirking, he knows he’s got you.

“Come on, princess,” His tone is sultry, yet demanding, “Be a good girl,” He scissors his fingers inside you, sliding them in and out that way. A high pitched whine that ends with a groan comes out of you, and it makes him laugh. “I know, baby, I know,” He says quietly, and before his tongue is back on you, he’s gathering his saliva in his mouth, spitting it vulgarly onto your clit, watching as it slid down your already soaked folds, mixing with your slick that had made a mess on his fingers.

The sound of him spitting alone has you clenching tighter around his fingers.

“Oh, so close,” His tone is nearly degrading, “I’m letting you cum,” He says, “Sounds like you want to, but sometimes I forget what a little slut you can be, yeah?” A spark is ignited within you, one that starts to grow.

“Yeah,” You whisper, the euphoria building up was rendering you speechless. Eddie’s lips suck at your clit for a bit, and the cheeky fucker he is, he moans again, letting it vibrate on you.

“So good,” He mumbles, then flicks his tongue over your bud while he sucks on it again, “Cum for me,” He sighs, “Please?” Comes out of him in what you swore was a whine, it sounded needy as all get out, and whatever it was, it tipped you straight over the edge.

Moaning his name, and a plethora of profanities, you squeeze the life out of his fingers that have slowed their pace to help you ride out your high comfortably. Pulling his hair unapologetically, it only fuels the passion waiting for you in his pants.

Slipping his fingers out, he pops them in his mouth, licking them clean, and then crawls up over your bare body, coming face to face with your completely fucked out eyes. Your lips are parted, and with every exhale there’s a soft sound that leaves you.

Eddie’s pupils are blown out, his eyes are totally dark as he gazes down at you. His eyes flicker to your lips where he watches the tip of your tongue pop out to lick them, then your teeth start to nibble on your bottom one. Licking his own lips, tasting nothing but you, he dips his head down, just ghosting your lips that thought his were coming in for a kiss. Pulling back a bit, he smiles as your eyes flutter shut, and your lips part as they anticipated the kiss. When you’re not met with anything, you pop open your eyes and catch him with that goofy grin on his face in pure satisfaction.

“Rude,” You whisper, lowering your brows. Losing the grin, he makes a look of concern and agrees with you.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He whispers back, leaning into you again, slower this time. The air shifts as you keep your eyes open this time, only until his nose brushes against yours and your foreheads are pressed together. Letting your eyes close, you tilt your chin to catch his lips in a kiss you so desperately wanted, but again, you’re not met with anything.

“Eddie,” You grumble, opening your eyes to another shit-eating grin. He was having entirely too much fun teasing you.

“To be fair,” He begins, shifting his weight to one elbow so that he can reach for one of your hands to hold, “The first time we did this, you did that to me.” Pressing your lips into a line, you soften your eyes and huff a quiet laugh.

“Remember that?” He asks, his smile still cheesy, and big.

“‘Course I do,” You say, “And if I remember right, you might’ve said, fuck, kiss me, and then did this.” Wrapping your arms around his shoulders, you pull Eddie down with a force and plant your lips to his. You can feel his smile, the boy was always down for these nights, just happy to be here.

“You still ‘ave too much clothing on for my liking,” Mumbling against his lips, your arms travel down between your bodies to search for the button on his jeans. The belt he had on was shed earlier after you nearly ripped his shirt off of his chest to get your greedy lips on his tattoos.

With a breathy laugh and a cute noise, Eddie keeps your lips together as he picks his knees up one by one, helping you get his pants off. Giving him your tongue for a moment, you dip a hand into his boxers once the denim hits the floor and give his rock hard length a stroke of your palm.

Eddie melts into you at the one, single touch, shoving his tongue to the inside of your cheek and giving his hips a thrust. Under his breath you swear you hear a growl.

Pulling your lips away with a smack, you tilt your head to the side and take a couple breaths. Eddie, not wanting to miss a second, takes his teeth to your collarbone, giving you a gentle nip there before dragging his tongue over it.

“Eddie?” You sigh, eyes shut.

“Mm,” He hums to answer you, sucking the skin at the base of your neck knowing it drove you crazy.

“What’s the surprise?” You ask, and his entire being freezes. Lips to your skin, you can feel his chest as it rises and falls with each quick breath he’s taking. Opening his jaw, his teeth graze your neck, pretending to take a huge bite, then he picks his head up to look down at you. Your flushed cheeks and mascara smeared eyes was a sight he’d kill to see everyday. Toying with his bottom lip between his teeth, he smiles.

“You know what today is,” He says quietly, tapping the tip of his nose to yours.

“Halloween,” You copy his tone, and furrow your brows when he rolls his eyes.

“What’s today?” He asks, cocking his chin to the side, waiting for you to get the answer right. The realization hits you, making you sit up to your elbows with wide eyes, taking Eddie with you.

“Shit, Halloween, oh my god,” You start to smile, “Two years.” Eddie nods, lifting a hand to grip beneath your chin and give it a small shake as if to praise you for figuring it out.

“Two years, princess,” He pops his brows and kisses your cheek.

“I didn’t forget,” You whisper, catching his lips in another quick kiss, “We’ve been together forever, it’s longer than two years if you think about it.” 

“Oh yeah, you know I was into you the day you sat next to me in Clark’s,” Eddie chuckles. Smiling, you nod. That story is one you’ve heard thirty times. “This started that day,” He says swiftly.

Leaning to the side, Eddie rolls off of you and onto his mattress, then bounces up onto his feet. Dragging your eyes up and down his exposed skin, you can’t help but roll over onto your stomach and crawl to the edge of his bed to keep him close. You watch as he sauntered over to his radio and reaches behind it, pulling something of a tiny box shape out of it’s hiding place.

“Eddie,” You sneer, shifting around so you were sitting up on your knees. You didn’t do the gift thing with one another. Not for Christmas, not for anniversaries, not for birthdays, not for anything.

“No, wait,” He objects, spinning around fast. His brown curls flip over his shoulder elegantly. Hurrying back over, standing in front of his bed a couple inches taller than you, he curls his lip and wraps a hand around your neck. He isn’t gripping it, but he’s applying enough pressure to keep the heat inside of you burning. 

Ghosting your lips like he did before, they touch a bit, just soft enough to where you feel his warm breath fawn over your skin. Smirking as he watches your eyes close, he sticks out his tongue and likes between your parted lips, bottom to top, taking his time.

“Open this,” He says, placing the little box in one of your hands. Releasing your neck he takes a single step backward, relishing in how long it took for you to regain your composure to even try to pull the brown paper off the gift.

Giving him a couple glances before it’s completely unwrapped, you can tell he’s buzzing about this.

When the last layer is ripped off, because Eddie wrapped it like he was trying to protect it from the apocalypse, you let out a dramatic gasp and almost topple to the side with laughter. In your hand, in a tiny plastic case, was Duran Duran's second album, Rio, with your song on it.

“You did not buy this!” You cry, looking up at his smug grin.

“I did,” He gleams with pride, “Give it to me.” 

“What, are we gonna listen to it?” You ask, scrunching your brows as he snatches the tape from you. Shooting you a look while he pops it in his stereo, he snaps the set shut and presses play.

“Princess, I’m gonna fuck you to it,” His voice is deep, and dark, a quick shift into heavier energy. Butterflies stir in your stomach, and his words have you scrambling back up to your knees, waiting patiently for him to come back to bed with eager eyes. A smile grows on his face while he watches you.

“You want me to do that?” He asks, strolling back to his place in front of you. Rio was the first song to play off the cassette, the synthy pop music pumping through the speakers of his stereo, flooding the air with an electric feel.

Duran Duran was a secret, your secret to share.

“Please,” You whisper, and Eddie rolls his head back with a groan.

“Such a good girl,” His voice is just as hushed, forcing the words out with a passion so he can have his hands on you within the next few seconds.

Pulling his boxers down, kicking them to the side, his next move was going to be pushing you backwards onto the mattress and crawling over top of you, but you catch his hands before they have the chance to touch you. His lips part, about to ask you what was happening with confused eyes.

“Hold on,” Your smile is sweet. Keeping your eyes on his, you let go of his hands and lean over, dropping down to your elbows so your ass was perked in the air for him to see. Opening your mouth you stick out your tongue and bob your head forward, licking the length of his cock playfully. A groan escapes him. Watching patiently, eyes focused on your pretty lips, he has to hold himself back from snatching up your hair and thrusting forward.

After another lick, swirling your tongue over the tip, you take it between your lips, give it a couple of pulls, then take him all the way in, feeling him in your throat. Eddie’s breath hitches in his chest. This time he’s actually grabbing your hair, but to pull you off.

“Oh, fuck,” He grumbles, feeling his high being sparked entirely too fast. The view he’s met with however, it doesn’t help. Your looking up at him with your big, innocent eyes, your mouth open in a pout and a bit of your spit leaking onto your chin.

“I’m sorry,” You whisper.

“Jesus christ,” Eddie snorts, “Don’t apologize. Don’t ever, ever, tell me you're sorry for doing… that.”

“Okay,” You smirk, then turn it into a pout, “Eddie?”

“Whaddaya want, pretty girl?” He grills, dragging a thumb over your chin to gather the mess that was there.

“Want you, inside me,” Your tone is almost a whine, an inflection that has Eddie moaning as he brings his thumb to his lips, giving it a lick.

“As you wish,” He says, this time following through with his plan, using his hands on your shoulders to sit you up and push you onto your back. Letting out a giggle as you fall, you take a deep breath while he reaches for his dresser and, with his teeth, rips open a condom to slip it on.

There’s a song change on the tape as Eddie grabs your ankles once he’s situated, pulling you closer to the edge of his bed, closer to him. You let out another laugh as you're pulled, and Eddie smiles down at you with pursed lips.

Holding your legs up in front of him, he lets them rest on his chest as his hands fumble between your bodies. He brushes the tip of his cock over your clit and smirks when you squirm, singing his favorite song. 

“You want it?” He half teases, and half asks for consent. Your comfortability was always his main concern, though he wanted to blow his load, he wouldn’t do it if you happened to change your mind.

“Please, baby,” You sigh, stretching your arms over your head, tangling your own hands in your hair. 

Without a second thought Eddie slides himself inside of you, both of you gasping with knees buckling in pure pleasure. Sliding a hand up your leg to hold onto your ankle, Eddie presses a kiss to it, then drags his teeth over your skin before he bites it gently. He takes a deep breath with his eyes shut, composing himself, that is until you wiggle your hips, beckoning him to move.

Flickering just his eyes to you, he huffed a laugh, then snapped his hips with fire. Tossing your head back with a filthy moan, he completely knocks the brat out of you that was threatening to make an appearance. 

Looking up at him with brows twisted with euphoria, you find him pushing your legs back, holding them behind your knees, keeping them spread far apart as he starts to rock his hips steadily.

His focus shifted from your eyes, down to where your bodies were connected, and back again. He loved when he got to see it all, but you, all you needed was him. The way his hair was fluffed, the lust that flooded his eyes, how his chest heaved with every breath he took and the muscles of his stomach that flexed with every thrust inside of you was enough to have your skin set aflame.

Amidst your serene sounds he lost himself. His eyes screwed shut as his grip on your thighs tightened. Tilting his chin ever so slightly in the air, stretching the muscles and flashing you his chiseled jaw, he let out his own whine, sucking air in through clenched teeth straight after. Feeling a spark shoot through your center, you whimper and reach for his hands, startling him. The view was spectacular, but you much preferred being able to touch him.

“Come here,” You say quietly, pulling at his fingers. 

Obliging, something changes in his demeanor. Lacing his fingers around yours, his eyes soften.

“Come here,” You lower your voice to a whisper, repeating yourself, feeling your chest swell with admiration as he climbs over you. Letting go of your hands, he takes one of his underneath your back and lifts you up to move you to the center of his bed, moving himself at the same time.

Eddie rests an arm on the mattress just above one of your shoulders, close enough to rest his forehead on yours, letting his fingers mess with your hair. His other hand searches for yours, gripping it tight, placing it beside you. Holding your gaze while you wrapped your other arm around his back, you give him a scratch and smile.

“Back how we started,” He speaks quietly.

“Yeah,” You whisper, then laugh softly, “Except now we know what to do.” Eddie smirks.

“Yeah we do,” He mumbles, eyes catching a glimpse of your lips before engulfing them with a deep kiss. 

With an insatiable thrust of his hips he steadys his pace, quick enough to have you moaning into his mouth, yet still slow enough to drag out and heighten the pleasure. Digging your nails into his skin, sliding your hand all over his beautifully sculpted back, you wrap your legs around his waist and lock your ankles together.

Minutes go by spent this way, insufferably intoxicated by one another. There was little to nothing at this point that could stop either one of you, until the song changes.

Eddie’s face is buried in your neck, littering it with marks when it happens. The cute laugh that plays before the beat rolls in catches you both off-guard, pulling you back into reality. All he has to do is lift his head to meet your eyes, and you both become a giggly mess.

“Darken the city, night is a wire!” Eddie sings aloud, shutting his eyes like he was performing the song. Unable to hold any of it back, you have to join him and sing along. After a couple beats, you both take a sharp glance at each other, a deadly look in your eyes.

“Woman you want me give me a sign,” You sing together, then break into laughter again over how serious you both were.

Taking a deep breath, wearing a smile, Eddie lifts a hand and pushes your hair away from your face, messing with his own for a second before he shakes his head.

“This is what I’ve been waiting for,” He tells you like he’s not allowed to say it. Touching your foreheads together again, he doesn’t hold himself back. It’s three minutes and forty one seconds of utter sin.

Four knocks on Eddie’s bedroom door send you launching forward, sitting up in a hurry. Beside you, his curly mop was still buried between two of his pillows.

“Shit,” You mutter, looking over at your boyfriend who didn't have a care in the world. He didn’t even open his eyes where he laid face first on the mattress, shirtless. The blanket over him was pulled down enough to show you that at some point last night you both put clothes back on.

“You gon’ be late,” You hear Wayne say from the other side of the door. The door that wasn’t locked.

It was a Friday morning. A school morning. 

An accidental sleepover wasn’t a part of the Halloween plan, you weren’t even allowed to stay overnight at his house. Wayne’s caught you there two times already, and unfortunately was about to make it three.

Shaking Eddie awake, you catch a glimpse of the red lines over the skin on his back and hold in a laugh, letting it come out of your nose with a heavy breath.

“Hm?” He groans, picking his head up, “What?” He asks, opening an eye to peek at you.

“I said you gon’ be late!” Wayne emphasizes, “Usually you’re gone when I get home.”

Eddie, half processing his uncle's words, widens his eyes as he realizes you’re still sitting in his bed, sitting up just as fast as you had.

Wiping the sleep off of his face, he sighs and shakes his head. It sucked that unlike your bedroom, there wasn’t a suitable window for you to shimmey out of. You were both paralyzed, trapped in the inevitable.

“Were ya’ partyin’ or something? Your not missing school ‘cause a hangov-”

The door was opened, and Wayne’s shpeel of wisdom was cut short by the sight of you and Eddie staring at him like two deer in headlights. Tightening his hand on the doorknob, Wayne looks between you both and sighs. His eyes do a quick sweep of the room, and you feel your stomach flip. You were in Eddie’s t-shirt. That meant your clothes were still everywhere.

“We talked about this,” Wayne says, looking at Eddie with gentle disappointment. The boy beside you doesn’t say a word, he simply gulps and nods his head- fast.

“Sorry, Uncle Wayne,” You mumble, and he shifts his eyes over to you.

“I already have Mom and Pop breathin’ down my neck,” He raises his eyebrows, “Feel like you two wanna see me dead, shit,” Eddie starts to smile, you can see it from the corner of your eye. It triggers you to do the same. Wayne sighs.

“This is the last time,” He says, “Now get your asses up, you both graduate this year, can y’all at least act like you care?” You and Eddie crack at the same time, laughing out loud at what Wayne has said. Shaking his head, he even laughs at himself before he leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.

“Jesus,” Eddie mutters, then launches himself over top of you, pinning you under him, “Thought he’d never leave.” Planting kisses all over your cheeks, you giggle and try to push him away.

“Eddie, we gotta go,” You try to keep your voice quiet.

“I won’t do it,” He says, then releases his body weight, laying on top of you.

“Eddie!” You partially whisper, wiggling beneath him.

 “Oh shit,” His head pops up with his eyebrows furrowed over worried eyes, “What are you gonna tell your mom?” He asks, and your heart sinks to the bottom of your stomach.

“Fuck,” You groan, “And she’s already pissed we wouldn’t take the twins trick or treating.” Watching you talk with intent, Eddie purses his lips, thinking for a moment.

“Tell her the truth?” He genuinely offers, making it seem totally serious, but when your eyes go crazy the laughter starts back up.

“Let’s go!” Wayne calls from out in the kitchen, sending you and Eddie scrambling out of bed to get ready for another drab day at Hawkins High.

[plotdesigner]

Since there’s multiple Fates, several different people have gotten wishes!

Here’s some genres of people who keep showing up for the wish battles who do not ever get their wishes granted:

People who want immortality OR people who want infinite magic power: they’re always dog kicking assholes and usually the last but one boss to whatever is going down.

People who want world peace: they’re either going to die tragically chasing their dream OR they’re about to break the Geneva Convention in the name of the greater good. perhaps both.

People who don’t want a wish, they’re just here for a good time: A good time can range from ‘I want to dunk on my wizard college teacher who’s a dick’ to ‘I’m adopting baby Jack the Ripper and we’re gonna go on a crime spree <3 to ‘my dad died trying to get a wish but i! am going to make him proud by WINNING what do you mean i should wish for something -  ‘ 

These guys usually meet their magic dream pixie historical figure and experience incredible personal growth and a deep and personal relationship - though them getting a happy ending vs being a miniboss depends on where their idea of a good time is on the ‘going shopping and our hands touch and our hearts beat faster and did you just buy us matching t shirts??’ vs ‘murder buddies!!’  spectrum.

As for wishes... under the cut, spoilers for fate apocrypha, fate zero, fate stay night,  fate extra,  and fate grand order

Fate Apocrypha: soooo you know Astolfo? They got summoned by a team of morally ambiguous mages, realizes the mages were growing clones in vats as human sacrifices, went YIKES! and decided to bust one out because fuck that. Astolfo and cloneboy Sieg end up teaming up to try and find a way to extend Sieg’s cloneboy lifespan and try and keep the wish away from the worst of the assholes in the competition...

Good news, they found a way to help Sieg live past one year. Questionable news, it’s by turning him into a dragon.

Bad news, one of those ‘i wish for world peace’ guys used the wish to try and remove humanity’s free will. Good news, Sieg the dragon and Astolfo were able to stop him! Now Sieg is hanging out deep in the mountains, keeping the wish from going off, and buffing Astolfo’s magic powers so Astolfo can go run around saving other people for eternity.

Fate Zero: You saw that hot take about how it’s a super edgy story that sands down the interesting parts of the female cast? yeaaah that is. that is true. i say this as someone who likes it, all the women got done dirty. this is one of the grimdarkest fates.

our hero, an edgyboy mercenary who wants to wish for world peace, is fighting his nemesis, a depressed priest desperately seeking a purpose in life...when they work out the wish is Super Cursed.  any wish that happens will happen in the meanest way possible. 

mercenary boy tries to blow it up. it...does not work, and a very unconscious and dying priest’s wishes: to live, and to find his purpose in life. Unfortunately, that purpose is to make people miserable, and that wish is granted by melting a city block. Local priest decides he’s going to spend the rest of his life causing problems on purpose.

Fate Stay Night: The original! And the thing Fate Zero is a prequel to! A bunch of dumbass high school students get dragged into the war for a wish. Things escalate quickly, especially when that fucking priest shows up to cause more problems on purpose.

As a visual novel, this one has multiple endings, and thus multiple ways things can go down: the wish grail can get blown up and there’s no wishes; OR it can be salvaged at the last second to save a dying protagonist at great cost.

Fate Extra: A thousand people download themselves into the computer on the moon to fight for a wish. (as.... you do? moon’s haunted!) It ultimately devolves into two ghosts duking it out for the wish - one wishing to bust himself out to create world peace by killing everyone, and the other, our hero, determined to get the last living survivor of the moon clusterfuck OUT of the moon computer. (the last survivor of the cast varies again thanks to branching story structure....) 

Ultimately, it works, getting both the last survivor and the protagonist ghost out....albeit with the ghost losing their memories in exchange for returning to life.

is anyone going ot get a normal wish? well. uh.

Fate Grand Order (babbage game!): In the backstory, a mage interested in protecting the timeline used a wish to obtain a SHITLOAD of cash money, and used that to fund the Protecting the Timeline Squad. Given that he did that in the interest of world peace, the playerbase is deeply suspicious of him being Up To Some Freaky Shit, though no one knows how yet since he’s very much deceased as of the present day. (Please let me time travel to kick his ass! He’s mean to his daughter!)

The demons of the Ars Goetia decide to blow up the timeline in the interest of preventing whatever Cash Money Guy up there from taking place. this is also for world peace, because the only way they can think of to save humanity from itself is to restart the timeline. I am belatedly realizing how much “I want world peace” is a red flag in this franchise because they’re all going to blow shit up until there’s peace. guys. please. 

- where was i? Wishes! The goetia squad hand out wishing grails to people all over the timeline to snap it in half, which leads to wishes such as:

Multiple badly thought out attempts at world peace that end in horrible murder. (including those robots in victorian england! also evil girl king arthur making the crusades worse.)

Sir Francis Drake wished for a world of eternal piracy and ever-flowing ocean.

Three way sun goddess wish-based warfare in Ancient Babylon to prevent the mother of all monsters, Tiamat, from waking up.

And Joan of Arc’s one evil bestie taking her dying REALLY badly and wishing for an evil clone of her to help him blow up france, which wigs a freshly summoned Joan of Arc out a lot because DUDE WHY. I HAVE BEEN GONE FOR ONE WEEK???

(Given FGO’s nature as a phone game, there’s events once or twice a month where someone inevitably has gotten a wish and caused a minor timeline error that has to be fixed, like “I have created a world of eternal halloween because I am 14 and fucking love halloween″ or  “what do you mean, making a ever flowing fountain of chocolate for valentines day is going to cause a flood??” you give a bunch of historical figures access to near infinite wish power, it’s going to get goofy real fast)

Today’s Fate shenanigans star Charles Babbage and his buds! This isn’t a terribly cohesive combat team but they’re all friends in universe , so it’s fun :9

the young lady in front is frankenstein’s monster, who Babbage adopted because fuck victor frank, what a dick! Together they solve robot themed mysteries and are trying to install AC in the historical people dorms. While Babbage tries to use tech to make sure the squad are safe and happy, Fran is using her new lease on life to enjoy making friends, creating an identity separate from victor F, and drag racing.

professor Moriarty is here because it turns out his weakness isn’t Sherlock Holmes, it’s being asked to become a father. Local crime lord would cry over The Last of Us, The Mandolorian and other cool dad and child team up shows. Fran is one of the only people to outscam the scammer, and he’s been derailed from causing problems on purpose by Fran asking to hang out and be spoiled. (….mostly.)

Babbage and Moriarty are trying to get along for Fran’s sake and it’s mostly working. It turns out they both like modding her racecar, who’d have thought?

what are the robot themed mysteries???? is fate set in the future?

this game's lore is like a rollercoaster ride that i hope never ends

oh, and in other news, a fate take was selected for the bracket!!

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it probably isn't the one you were hoping for