#but more in a “how dare you tell me who i am and undermine my own history” kind of way

[sunnywalnut]

I used to know a person who claimed that anyone who disagreed with them (even if it was just a blatantly false statement) couldn't handle their "hot takes"

One day I found that they had not only removed me from every group chat we had, but also unfriended and blocked me.

I felt like Moses speaking to God. Everything was crystal fucking clear and I was SOARING.

The trash took itself out and was burning down every single bridge that had connected them to me.

It was GLORIOUS.

come on kids don’t do the “oh they blocked me, it must be because they’re too weak / can’t handle the truth” etc. being blocked by lots of people doesn’t mean you’re a genius speaking truth to power it just means lots of people find you annoying

[igotanidea]

Line of authority: Aaron Hotchner x fem!agent!reader

requested: yes, as a part of my 1k celebration: Aaron Hotchner and silent treatment.

Warnings: age gap, co-workers relationship (reader is Hotch's inferior), a bit of angst and um, well, silent treatment, fluff at the end.

A/N: I can easily get into Hotch personality, but stil find it a bit hard to write for him romantically, so please, do not go too hard on me 🥺

***

„Go home.”

„No.”

��Please, go home.”

„I’m telling you I am absolutely fine!”

“How long have they been going on with this?”

SSA Aaron Hotchner, one of the BAU most esteemed agent had only one person that could undermine his authority. His partner in both work and life – Agent Y/N Y/L/N.  Not that she was doing this on regular basis, she was a professional after all, but sometimes working together and staying in a relationship as a subordinate was too much. And the scene that was unravelling in front of the whole team was a perfect example of her limits.

Recently, the group of agents have been working on a case about assaulting and raping women. Again.  Much to Aaron displeasure Y/n volunteered herself to be the bait. After all, she looked young and innocent, definitely not like a trained FBI agent. Despite the fact, that whole team remembered what happened last time, when Elle was supposed to help catch a women offender, all of them agreed to the plan. Maybe they trusted Y/N more or maybe they had no other options to catch the guy.  Aaron objected giving his rational and logical arguments, but finally it was Gideon who made the tough call, taking some time to walk the girl through every step of the operation.  Y/N quickly got the attention of the suspected man and due to some casual flirting and playing around found herself on the unsub radar. All the BAU needed was hard proof of his guilt. Sticking to the initial plan, Y/N left the bar, pretending to be a little drunk, and started walking home, watched closely by the team, located near the area in the concealed van. Morgan and Gideon who had the pleasure of sitting in one with Aaron could almost hear his heart escaping his chest and see his clenched jaw. But he was a trained agent, no matter how worried or scared or stressed he was, there was not a chance he would ever show that. Not even when it came to her. So the three men were just spending the time in complete silence. Until the offender started walking after Y/N, captured her and dragged her inside the nearest bush. Of course she fought him bravely and before anyone else reached them, she already had the perpetrator on the ground, gat pointed at his chest, no serious damage, apart from some scratches and cuts done to her.  Girl’s psyche, however, was a whole different story. At least according to Aaron, on who’s orders she was supposed to hand over her badge and gun and stay on rest until being cleared out for the field.  And boy, she did not like it. At all.

“Y/N.” Aaron looked straight into her eyes with that characteristic, arcane face expression. His eyes were practically begging for her to listen, but lips were pursed.

“I am…..”

“Fine, you said it. But you’re still an agent and you need to follow the procedure. And that means you have to go through evaluation.”

“I don’t have to do shit! Don’t try to fool me!” she exclaimed “do you have any idea how many women, kids and people are still out there, being abused every day?! You need me on the field!”

“I’m sorry agent Y/L/N. I need you to hand over you badge and gun. Now.” he said calmly, but everyone who knew him could tell that there was a storm inside him.

“And what if I refuse?” she crossed arms over her chest, every action daring Aaron’s self-control.

 “Listen to me, than.” Gideon could tell that sooner or later one of them would snap so instead of watching he decided to take action. ”Y/N.” he smiled lightly “you know it’s not a way to get rid of you, don’t you? It’s like you said, we need you. But we need you in your best form, quick-thinking, rational, collected. Are you now?”

“I…..” she took a deep breath and after that threw her hands in the air “Fine. Fine!” her badge landed on the table “Have it your way. Maybe I’m off the field, but you can’t forbid me helping Penelope in her technician work.” The gun followed after the document “I can do work as a researcher, nearly as well.”.

“I’m sure Garcia will be more than happy to have you with her.” Gideon smiled at her “Thank you, Y/N. It’s just two weeks, the minimum amount we have.”

“Whatever.” She hissed, turning around and walking out of the room, shutting the door behind.

“You know that is not the procedure.” Jason turned towards his fellow profiler “she was not captured, shot or assaulted. She doesn’t need the assessment.”

“Let’s just get back to work, shall we?” Aaron retorted. Of course he knew that was a bit excessive, but what else was he supposed to do. He was trying to do what was best for her.

***

The following two weeks were torture for everyone in the team. Sure, Y/N was not supposed to go with them to the crime locations, but since Penelope was more than happy to have her best friend in her sanctuary she was always on the line. And in the main office in Quantico. With the amount of time Aaron were spending there, there was not a chance they would not run into each other. Or have to exchange words. And the fact, that Y/N moved back from his house, back to her own apartment and was giving him silent treatment were not helping. At all.

“Don’t you ever go the bathroom? Or to get coffee? Or, I don’t know, to stretch your legs?” Y/N was spinning around in the swivel seat, located in front of all the screen in Penelope’s offices.

“Of course not. How could I? I got loose threads to find and pull. I’m a genius, remember? I don’t fall into something so trivial and mundane as physiology!”

“Sure, Garcia, sure. I’ll definitely ask Reid about his opinion on the matter. Besides, we both know you only wait for you secret lover’s call.”

“Right. Speaking of the devil….” Penelope grinned, hearing the phone ring “you’ve reached the Oracle, ask and you shall be answered.”

“Garcia.”

“Oh, um, hi, Sir.” She stuttered a bit, realising it was in fact Hotch who was the called, and not Morgan.

“Is Y/L/N with you?”

“Um….” Penelope mumbled, eyes landing on the girl, who was frantically shaking her head and mouthing one simple word: NO!. Now poor Garcia was torn between the loyalty to her friend and line of authority. “Can’t I help you?’

“I need you to check some names for me. But Y/L/N had to go and do some paper research. And I know you are there Y/L/N. Talk to me. If nothing else convinces you, we got lives at stake.” The girl was still silent “Y/N….”

“It’s just about the case. What do I look for?” she could almost hear Hotch relief on the other side of the line when he started explaining the details.

And only a few hours later, they completed the investigation and were back in Quantico. And once the reports and paperwork were done, the only two people left in the office were Y/N and Aaron, sitting on opposite sides. Neither of them really wanted to go their homes, but they weren’t ready to talk. Not yet. This was the first time in their relationship that they found themselves in such a situation. Of course they need that working together was far from perfect, especially in this field, and they had to do some extensive explanation with the HR, but still…. At least they were spending time together. But now? This could have undermined and destroyed everything they had or made them stronger. The odds were even on both of those options. The question was, who would be the first to relent first in this game of hurt, pain, guilt and nerves.  

At that moment, she was the one to stand up first and walk towards the door.

“Can we talk about it?” he called after her, but she only did so much as to stop for  a moment and inhaling.

“No.”

***

The following weeks were… well, better in some way. She was keeping her professionalism, acknowledging Aaron’s presence whenever he was around, but the tension could still be felt. Especially when she was dropping occasional cold “morning, sir”, almost like she was trying to underline that he treated her simply as a subordinate or maybe even worse. If it were Emily or Ashley or damn, any of the man, Aaron would never go as far as putting them off. And that was what hurt her the most. That somehow he believed her to be … weaker, worse, not good enough to be an agent. She did not need him to act like her shield. She was trained, skilled and extremely good at her job. But instead of letting him know how she felt she choose to act like a kid. Finally, it was Morgan who snapped. And it was only when she got her badge back and was again a field agent, not a women in the chair (not that there was something wrong with that, but it was boring for Y/N, used to different kind of work).

“Hey, look who’s back on her feet!” he cheered when she entered the office, fully equipped “so, you’re graduated from the kindergarten or not yet?”

“What are you talking about?” she frowned and scoffed

“You know exactly what this is about. Y/N, I love you, all right, but you can be a pain in the ass and you showed that quite well lately.”

“Learning from the best” she smirked at him

“who?” Morgan titled his head ,not falling for the trap. Of course, it was too obvious for him. “Seriously, Y/N, it’s good to know you are on again, there is really no one to gets my jokes like you and Penelope.”

“Oh, so you admit you need a girl in the base and on the plane.”

“Duh.” He grinned  “Never said I didn’t. But…. If you want to get back in my good graces….”

“Who said I do?”

“…. Go talk to Hotch. Clear things up, cause I believe I speak for the whole team saying you two made our lives a living nightmare. More than usual.”

“He’s right, you know!”  Spender seconded Morgan from his chair, not raising gaze from the documents he was working on.

“All right! All right! I’m going. But why the hell does it always have to be me!?”

***

“Hotch?”

“Y/N” unlike Spencer, he did raise his eyes, focusing them on her. Not another word, just her name, like he was awaiting her reaction.

“You probably heard, I was … well, restored.”

“I did.”

“Well, um… if that’s all you have to say to me, than….”

“Wait.” He stood up and approached her, coming as close as he could considering the fact that they were still at work. Taking her hands in his, entwining their fingers, his eyes still focused on her to the point when it became uncomfortable and she had to look down. “Eyes up, agent.” She hated the fact that his deep voice was making her listen instantly “I’m sorry.” He said and everything in the tone and posture and his face was screaming sincerity.

“Why? You had every right to do so. It may have not been the standard procedure but it was still in your competence.”

“I overreacted.”

“That’s not happening often, does it?”

“Only when it comes to you.” he admitted and caressed her palm gently

“You don’t need to protect me, Aaron.” She took a step forward. Their bodies were almost touching and it was hard to not just dive into his embrace. But still, they were at work and his office had glass windows, for god’s sake!

“How can I not? I know you are trained. I know you know how to handle yourself, but I hate seeing you at this job. I let the work consume me before and now the same happens to you. And to think all I ever wanted was to keep the one I love out of this mess. “

“That’s what happened when your job is a mission….. wait, what did you just say?” her eyes grew wide and she took a step back to scan his face. “Are you saying that…..?”

“I thought it was pretty obvious at this point.”

“Yeah, but…..” her face became softer than before “I love you too, Hotch.”

“Does this mean you are coming back home?” he smirked pecking her lips, quickly, almost impalpably and she whined internally, wanting more.

“I’ll think about it. It’s not one of those “kiss and be forgiven” situation. I love that you love me but I also need you to let me do my thing. Just like with any member of the team. No special treatment. And that means both, not being too strict and not being too lenient. Although I’m sure you will have no problem with the latter.”

“Not at work.” he lifted corners of his mouth lightly, which was the equivalent of the brightest smile for him.

“I like how that sounds.” Now it was her turn to lean forward and peck his lips. “But before we take this conversation home, let’s not pretend the case files on your desk. Guess my absence took a heavy toll on you, agent Hotchner.”

@somest1

[arthurian-texts]

There’s a scene in Chretien’s Knight of the Cart that’s absolutely crucial for how I see Gawain and Arthur’s relationship, one that probably sticks in my mind more than any other for how subtly and succinctly it captures so many complexities of their dynamic.

For context, this is right after Arthur agrees to let Guinevere go into a quite obvious trap (which ultimately leads to Guinevere’s abduction by Meleagant) with only Kay for protection, simply because he’d promised to grant whatever Kay asked. We’re told that “there was no one who was not upset” at this decision, but no one dares openly stop it or contradict Arthur - who is, after all, the king.

And it’s then that we get this crucial exchange:

No one’s grief was strong enough to prompt him to follow after her until Sir Gawain addressed the king, his uncle, in private. “Lord, you have behaved like a child, and I am astonished,” he said. “But if you heed my counsel, then while they are still near, we shall follow them, you and I, along with any others who wish to come there. As for me, I could not hold back from racing after them. It would be wrong for us not to follow them, at least until we know what will happen to the queen, and how Kay will behave.”

“Let us set off, dear nephew,” the king replied. “You have spoken courteously now. Since you have taken this matter into your hands, have the horses bridled, saddled, and led out that we may mount without delay.”

There’s always a very delicate balance Gawain is walking in how he interacts with Arthur, and you see it even in how the relationship is described here: the king, his uncle. On one hand, Arthur is Gawain’s relative, which gives him a certain leeway to treat him, if not quite as an equal, certainly much closer to it than most people could dare. But on the other hand, Arthur is the king, Gawain’s king, and questioning his authority too strongly would be considered unacceptable.

And I think you see that balance in such a fascinating way here. We’re told that everyone was unhappy with Arthur’s decision, but only Gawain dares to say so. Not only that, he basically tears into Arthur in incredibly strong terms: “You have behaved like a child, and I am astonished.” Clearly, Gawain feels confident that he’s earned the right to speak his mind to Arthur - to give him a piece of his mind, really, in this scene - and he doesn’t seem remotely afraid that there might be consequences for doing so.

But. But. Notice that crucial little detail there: in private. Gawain very pointedly waits to say anything about this until he and Arthur are alone. In public, around the other knights, Gawain doesn’t say a single word to contradict Arthur’s decision. In private, he tells him he’s acted like a child.

I’m reminded of a post I wrote a while ago about Game of Thrones, pointing out that Jon and Daenerys both make a distinction between being criticized in public and in private. Daenerys tells Jorah and Ser Barristan: “You’re both here to advise me. I value your advice. But if you ever question me in front of strangers again, you’ll be advising someone else.” And similarly after being crowned King in the North, Jon tells Sansa: “You are my sister, but I am king now. When you question my decisions in front of the other lords and ladies, you undermine me.” (Emphasis mine.) In both cases, I think the point was pretty clearly not ‘You cannot criticize me’, but rather ‘You cannot publicly undermine my authority’.

Arthur doesn’t need to tell Gawain this. Gawain knows. And I think you get a powerful sense of the trust between them from this short moment: Gawain trusts that he can speak his mind freely to Arthur without consequences, but he waits to do so until it’s just the two of them. In return, Arthur doesn’t stand on his ego but listens humbly and accepts Gawain’s criticism. I think it’s particularly fascinating that he tells Gawain he’s spoken courteously. On the face of it, “You have behaved like a child, and I am astonished” doesn’t sound remotely courteous - it sounds downright rude, in fact. And yet Arthur clearly doesn’t think so. He not only admits that Gawain is right, he endorses the way he said it as correct and praiseworthy.

I think that’s a great demonstration of how Gawain’s courtesy isn’t just a synonym for “polite”: it’s about his ability to follow social codes for correct behavior. Here, the measure of his courtesy isn’t that he always minces words, but that he understands when it is and isn’t acceptable to speak bluntly.

And I think it’s telling, too, that even when he’s basically telling Arthur off, he still addresses him formally as “Lord”. That might seem like a meaningless formality when the rest of what he’s saying seems anything but respectful, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s a constant reminder that Gawain never forgets Arthur is his king, or the respect that’s due to him, even when he’s openly questioning his decisions. He might seem harsh, but yet it's always tempered by a fundamental deference and he's careful never to overstep those lines.

He knows his place, not in the sense of being a doormat, but in the most literal sense of understanding the multiple - in some ways conflicting - roles he occupies and the expectations thereof: As Arthur's nephew, his knight, his subject, his advisor and right-hand man, arguably his friend and/or surrogate son (or brother, depending on your interpretation) as well. The fact that he manages to thread that needle so well is a testament to just how intelligent and socially adept he is, and the fact that Arthur gives him leave to speak his mind so bluntly to him in private is a huge testament to the mutual trust and respect between them.

[jitterbugjive]

So, some people may have noticed this but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to bring attention to it and I wanted people to just assume it was someone theorizing. But it appears someone from my ex friend circle whom I had trusted with certain details of how Discord Whooves would end decided to stoop to a lower than low level and ruin the ending for anyone who stumbled on their posts that had been made on a blog made specifically to post spoilers and tag them with common tags Discord Whooves uses. I’m sure it was out of sheer spite towards me and the people who dared to support my work.

Saying bad things about me and things I’ve done and said, okay that’s justifiable. But going out of their way to take something I once trusted them with because I thought we were close friends, and then throwing it out for the world to see out of revenge against me and anyone following me? That’s just petty, immature, and a really low blow to make. Even if I really hated someone, I would never reveal their harmless secrets to the world just to get back at them. There’s a chance to be the better person, and at least have some code of ethics to know when it’s going too far. I deserved to be called out. I didn’t deserve to have my 12 years of work undermined by a vindictive person who can’t move forward, and my fans didn’t deserve it either because they are not even involved in this drama.

There is a point where revenge goes too far and one crosses over into just being villainously cruel.

It’s sad, and really pathetic that someone thinks they have to do everything in their power to screw me over in some way instead of trying to actually recover and get past the point of obsession over wanting to get back at me all the time.

I’m sorry the whole world isn’t against me like you want it to be. I’m sorry a lot of people believe in recovery and the fact that I feel terrible enough already about my shitty actions in the past and am doing everything in my power to avoid anything like that happening ever again. I’m sorry I’m not being bombarded by hoards of angry people calling me names and telling me to kill myself. I’m sorry my feeling horrible isn’t enough to satiate you and all you want is to see me suffer.

It’s been years now. YEARS. For the sake of your own mental well being, just cut me out of your life completely and stop obsessing over me. You already won. I am constantly in a state of panic thinking of this shit and how else it’s going to come and bite me in the ass. I lost the comic website I depended on, I’ve lost a huge chunk of my readership and no longer really have my ‘popular’ status. (very rarely get fan art, not being bombarded by asks constantly, no longer receive fan mail, original projects aren’t catching on very well) Selling commissions has gotten increasingly more difficult. My insomnia is worse than ever and I have to take heavy duty sedatives just to sleep because my mind won’t stop spiraling about this stuff. I cannot go a single day without feeling guilt, regret, self hatred, and doubt and wishing hopelessly that I just never did those things. I have severe trust issues and have almost no one I can feel comfortable enough sharing anything personal or story related with which was just made even WORSE by these recent actions, and I haven’t been able to form new bonds with anyone in years either.

I know I hurt you badly, I know what I did was incredibly wrong and irresponsible, and I don’t know how it���s affected you over the years but this rage and anger is not good for anyone. I don’t hate you. I just want you to be able to move on and learn to be healthy and happy and no longer stuck thinking about me and how much you hate me and want me to fall. I don’t want to be hurting you by just existing and trying to move on with my own life, and I wish there was something- ANYTHING I could do to bring you peace.

But the only one who can ultimately bring you peace is yourself. So you can keep on trying to claw and bite and drag me down with you, or you could be the better person and try to just move forward and put the past in the past where it belongs.

I’m not mad. I’m just incredibly disappointed. I would have thought you were better than this, but I was wrong. I was wrong to ever even trust you as a friend, and I wish we were never friends to begin with, or even ever met, and I’m sure you feel the same way.

[peony-pearl]

"someone PLEASE dare me to talk about the writing of Ursa's story from the comics"

This is your sign, child. Tell me all you've got

BLESS YOU!!!!!!!!

A bit of a foreword to anyone reading: I am going to be speaking about the writing of Ursa's trials from the comics in a critical light in the ways that her story was chosen to be written this way. If you find any kind of comfort or catharsis in her story, this post may not be for you. I am not here to be an anti, I am here to look at changes made to a character that I think could have been a lot more interesting if she had been allowed to keep her original backstory.

That being said:

Ursa's story of being plucked out of a happy home to marry 'the bad guy' could be interesting!

My problem with it is the inconsistencies it creates in it's own narrative... and the fact that it's such painful woobification of a woman who was willing to commit a high crime to save her son in the way that her circumstances create an issue where she is nothing but a martyr. It also continues the whole 'good lineage vs bad lineage' idea that completely undermines the power of Zuko's arc.

Ursa, in the comics, is presented to us as this bright eyed hopeful actress, in love with a man named Ikem when Azulon rolls up with Ozai, unlike some earlier lore where she was born into royalty and was the perfect match for Ozai. Now she's subjected to a wretched life which I can only imagine they put her through to make her completely sympathetic, because otherwise she would have been just like the rest of the royal family - EVIL.

Which I really hate that train of thought, but this is a family friendly show and as good as atla does with it's good vs evil nuances, I often remember I have to cut it some slack... but then I get a bit more frustrated because of the whole 'just because it's family friendly means they can simplify things' which I also don't care for but again... eh. I can't be too picky at times. (I was also raised on Gargoyles which did a great job on showing villains in sympathetic moments and heroes having big major flaws so I'm already a little biased)

Regardless; completely rewriting Ursa's backstory to the point that we no longer see her view of the war (or Ikem's! So they're good people!! We promise!) just comes off as almost manipulative and middle-school fanfiction-y. Ursa is a good person to sympathize with because she's being forced into these situations :C

And as such, she's a good person because of Roku!! And so Zuko is a good person because his mom loved him so much!!

And such, they don't have to show any changes on Ursa's part. No moral failings, no her and Zuko butting heads once they reunite to show how much he's grown... his morals come from her and Roku, because Avatar lineage = good.

And that grinds my gears so hard because then just like Ursa, that's robbing Zuko of his autonomy to make bad choices.

When Iroh tells Zuko in The Avatar and the Fire Lord that his legacy is the good and evil within him, it sucks because Zuko's legacy should solely be his own choices (I have my own issues with Zuko's view of the crown). Not the bloodline within him that he can't control. THAT'S A MAJOR POINT OF THE SHOW. People aren't born evil.

and yet Ursa is GOOD because she is Roku's GRANDDAUGHTER. That's really it. Yes, I can understand that she was raised in the moral compass left behind by him. But Ozai is only really good/charming to Ursa right up until their wedding when suddenly he's just EVIL and he's like 'you're MINE now hehehehe' like there's no in between, you just have to show Ursa in this miserable predicament which then also doesn't allow for any interesting development in our Ozai, aka previous big bad which could have been him following his father's orders to marry some woman and maybe he legitimately TRIED to make things work because NO ONE IS BORN EVIL. Ozai is such a shadow of Zuko that he would try to appease his father, and he might take this marriage on in the hopes that it would start building a bridge between them.

And we're not even getting into the fact that we don't learn that Ursa is the Avatar's granddaughter until the final season, JUST IN TIME for Zuko to learn this while he's locked in his self loathing and is utterly directionless. Again, this takes away the importance of his own choices. The boy who started the series completely devoted to returning home, willing to put himself and others through constant danger and misery just to appease his father is given a free ride card of 'oh you're actually good on the inside! Just do the good thing!'

Because he's Ursa's son, the woman who didn't want to marry Ozai because he was so so awful that his bloodline is OBVIOUSLY why Azula is the way she is (ugh).

Like this could work in more fairytale/simpler story settings but atla has gone so far out of it's way to continue to say 'no one is born evil' and 'people can change'; but when it comes down to it, they're really restricting the moral compass.

In the end, Ursa is good and suffered. Ozai is BAD because VILLAIN. (which yes he is but... ugh).

I don't know if I've made sense. I had a more cohesive idea when I wrote those tags but this is more or less my views of Comic!Ursa.

I don't hate her. But I hate that they just kind of shoved her on the misery train and kind of went 'wow that sucks right? This makes you want to see Zuko find her right?'

And then he does and all is well. Because Ursa is a GOOD WOMAN unlike that EVIL OZAI.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Brendan O'Neill

Published: Nov 11, 2023

One of the weirdest things about identitarian activists is that they hate being asked where they’re from but they love telling you where they’re from. Politely inquire about their ethnic or cultural origins and they’ll damn you as a racist. ‘How dare you, I’m as British as you!’, they’ll yell, either to your face or in a column in the Guardian in which they’ll document at great, yawn-inducing length the horror of having some dim pleb ask about their family origins.

Then, in the next breath, before you’ve even had a chance to splutter your apology, they’ll tell you their entire ancestral history. You’ll know where their great grandmother was born, the exact quantity of melanin grandad had in his skin, which maternal haplogroup they belong to, as revealed by 23andMe. Just don’t say ‘Oh, that’s where you’re from’, because they’ll call you racist again.

This political schizophrenia of taking offence at the question ‘Where are you from?’ while simultaneously feeling a burning urge to tell the entire world where you are from was best captured in the Ngozi Fulani controversy. You remember Ms Fulani: she’s the black charity worker from Hackney in London whose ‘racist’ run-in with long-serving royal aide Lady Susan Hussey hit the headlines last year. Lady Hussey’s crime? At a Buckingham Palace do, she asked Ms Fulani where she is from. Call the cops! What a bigoted old bat.

Not so fast. Ms Fulani was adorned in African threads at the palace. She frequently decks herself out in the Pan-African colours and Africa-shaped earrings. To constantly suggest to the world that you are from somewhere else and then reach for the smelling salts when someone asks ‘Where, exactly?’ is a bit much, no?

Now, in literary form, Afua Hirsch has done the same thing. Ms Hirsch is an author, broadcaster and writer for the Guardian. Her first book, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was all about the horror, the sheer indignity, of ‘The Question’. The question, of course, is ‘Where are you from?’. I am asked this ‘every single day, often multiple times’, said Hirsch. Really? Where’s she hanging out? It feels like a ‘daily ritual of unsettling’, she wrote. Oh, please. If I penned a sad book every time someone asked me, on account of my very un-British name, ‘What part of Ireland are you from?’, or ‘Where were your parents born?’, I’d be the most prolific author in Christendom.

Now, we have Ms Hirsch’s second book, Decolonising My Body. And you’ll never believe it: it is an eye-wateringly detailed answer to… The Question! Here’s my question: if Hirsch hates being asked where she is from, why has she written a whole tome on where she is ‘from’?

I now know more about Ms Hirsch’s ethnic and cultural origins than I do about my own. To her credit, she admits that this is because she comes from a staggeringly privileged background. I ‘know quite a lot about my ancestors’ and ‘there’s a privilege attached to this’, she says. Her African ancestors were not the ‘enslaved’, but rather were ‘antecedents about whom written records were kept’. Fancy. As someone who knows next to nothing about his colonised forebears – largely thanks to the Potato Famine of the 1840s and the catastrophic fire at the Public Records Office in Dublin in 1922 – I confess to feeling envy while reading Ms Hirsch’s comprehensive tale of her origins. How the other half live, eh?

When I say her new book is detailed, I mean it is detailed. In her first book, she told us off for being nosey about her family origins; in her new book, she’s telling us about the time she got her butthole lasered. She finds herself in ‘the undignified position of spreading my butt cheeks under the chill of a laser clinician’s hosepipe-like nozzle, as atoms are excised, electrons rise and fall, and light beams are making their way into my crack’. The whole thing cost her £1,000. They must be paying well at the Guardian if contributors can splash out a grand on having their anal fluff zapped.

Surely we need to talk about how easily the identitarian elites can shift from exasperation at being asked ‘Where are you from?’ to absolute blaséness about telling the world what their ringpieces look like. Don’t you dare ask where my family is from but please listen to me describe the hair follicles on my arsehole. Excuse me, what?

As its title suggests, Hirsch’s book is a somewhat narcissistic endeavour. It’s all about her body. More specifically, it’s about how empire and colonialism interrupted the mystical traditions through which Hirsch’s African ancestors marked and celebrated their bodies – with tribal tattoos, menstrual festivals and whatnot – and how Hirsch now wants to rediscover all that stuff.

She says she wants to ‘decolonise’ her body of its ‘Western’ expectations – thinness, hairlessness, white-defined attractiveness – and let it become more African. Imagine how time-rich, and literally rich, you would need to be to spend so much energy obsessing over your own flesh and skin. To publish a book about decolonising the body of a privately educated Guardianista while everyone else is wondering if they have enough cash to keep the lights on speaks to the pathological self-regard of the new elites. In this era of economic, military and moral crises, Hirsch is going to have to work a lot harder to convince me that the fact that her period ‘still often takes me by surprise’ is something we need to know.

Hirsch’s argument is that she has been violently ripped from the ‘magical’ traditions of her African history by colonialism and capitalism. So where her historical forebears held menstruation ceremonies and celebrated women for having hairy legs and insisted upon the tattooing of female flesh, our new era heaps shame on women for bleeding, discourages female hair growth, and idolises ‘pure’ over ‘marked’ flesh. None of this is quite right though, is it? Period chatter is everywhere these days. You can’t so much as click on Instagram without seeing some feted female influencer showing off hair-covered shins that would make Peter Sellers wonder if he should reach for some Veet. As for tats – not having a tattoo is the great shame in the 21st-century West. What, you haven’t had a tribal slogan pasted on your pasty flesh by a needle-wielder in Camden? What’s wrong with you?

And yet our body-decolonising Ms Hirsch perseveres, regardless. To counter the evil West’s disdain for old African tribes’ celebration of menstruation, she takes her poor daughter to a tribal period shindig in south London. They have to traverse the South Circular, ‘one of the most congested roads not just in London, but in the world’, and Hirsch, under instruction from the London-based tribal priestess, must wear all-white clothing, which in this case means a ‘floor-length summer robe, made from soft sheets of cotton’. Still, at least it connects Hirsch to her tribal lineage, even if her daughter, by Hirsch’s own admission, would rather be anywhere else.

Hirsch’s favourite word is ‘conditioning’. She thinks women like her – women of non-British origins – have been ‘conditioned’ to discard the tribal rituals their elders engaged in. Perhaps. Or perhaps black women and all women in London in 2023 would just rather buy some tampons for their pubescent daughters than subject them to an old-world menstrual ritual in a posh garden in south London. Who can tell?

Hirsch says ‘the forces of globalisation’ lead to a situation where ‘people like me’ – people of colour – have been ‘conditioned’ to behave and think in a particular way. That is, in a Western way. There’s a darkly ironic twist here. Hirsch’s obsession with the idea of ‘conditioning’ means she ends up viewing African-origin people in a similar way to how old colonialists viewed them – as vacant-brained entities swayed this way and that by the messaging of their superiors under capitalism. It smells like neo-colonialism disguised as anti-colonialism.

Hirsch thinks that even she – an expensively educated, successful writer – has been ‘conditioned’. She wonders if her submission to laser hair-removal is a craven acceptance of Western culture’s white-supremacist loathing of female hair. ‘Why do I keep on coming back’, she wonders, ‘to uncomfortable and expensive appointments, just to squash the capillaries which nature, in its wisdom, wanted us to have in our nether regions’? Again with the nether regions. She ends up staring at her vagina and reminiscing about her lost hair. She beholds the ‘pathetic little tuft of hair clinging to my bikini area, with a forlorn sense of having banished something that may have loved me’. I cannot imagine ever having a deep thought about my pubes – is that only me?

Who is responsible for the fact that even Hirsch, with all her education, has done things to her body that she later thinks she shouldn’t have done? It’s Charles Darwin. It’s always Charles Darwin. On the thousands of pounds she’s spent on ‘pink-packaged razors’ and ‘painful, expensive waxing’, Hirsch says, ‘The person I do blame… is Charles Darwin’. You might think of Darwin as the most important scientific figure of the period of Enlightenment, the brilliant man who revealed to us the truth of both nature and humanity, but to Ms Hirsch he’s the bloke whose ‘paradigm-shifting work on evolution’ led to the inexorable destruction of ‘attitudes to body hair [that] were as diverse as the cultures [they were] rooted in’.

In short, Darwin’s exploration of the origins of species, of the origins of man, helped to nurture a colonial discomfort with tribal culture. Imagine witnessing the epoch-shaping discoveries of a man like Darwin and thinking: ‘He’s the reason I feel compelled to get my butthole lasered.’ The narcissism of it, the anti-Enlightenment of it.

Anti-Enlightenment is the right phrase for where Hirsch ends up. Throughout the book she dabbles not only with tribal cultures – which, in my view, declined and fell for good reason – but also with astrology and even witchcraft. She quotes authors who bemoan the disdaining by ‘intelligent persons’ of ‘witchcraft, magical healing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts and fairies’. It falls to her sensible-sounding parents to keep a check on her descent into pre-modern hysteria. Her father, the esteemed geophysicist Peter Hirsch, responds to her pleas that a planetary ‘conjunction’ in the sky must be a sign that she should change her life by saying: ‘It’s just from our arbitrary viewpoint that the planets appear close together… It doesn’t mean anything deeper.’ Yes, dad!

Her mum is even better. Asked by Afua why women of African origin don’t wear ‘waist beads’ anymore, her mum essentially says: ‘Because we have nice knickers now.’ Hirsch discovers, alongside the wonder of menstrual rituals and tribal tats, that wearing beads across one’s belly is a great African way to demonstrate a) that you are fertile and b) you have a chunky ass. Why don’t you wear them, she asks her Ghanaian-British mum? To which comes the glorious reply: ‘As soon as we heard about Marks & Spencer’s underwear, we stopped wearing beads…’ Exactly. All those desperately poor African ladies who hold up their sanitary / undergarment equipment with beads around their bellies would love a pair of comfy high-street knickers, even if wealthy writers like Afua Hirsch frown upon such basic desires. Give me good underwear over tribal realness any day of the week.

Fundamentally, this is a daft book. It bemoans Western capitalism while singing the praises of billionaires like Oprah Winfrey and Rihanna. (And the people, black and white, whose labour is exploited by Oprah’s media machine and Rihanna’s make-up machine? Shush! Don’t mention them.) It attacks cultural appropriation while telling the tale of this hyper-privileged Londoner who gets ‘adorned’ in the fashions of ancient Africans.

I hate to be the one to ask this, but how is it any different for a privately educated woman of colour from Wimbledon to experiment in the cultures and jewelleries of African nations than it is for a right-on white ‘appropriator’ to do the same? It would be like me donning the animal skins my ancestors wore as they searched high and low for grub in the wilds of pre-modern Ireland. ‘Wanker’ would be the cry of friends and family if I were to put on the rough uniform of my tragic, regressive forebears.

Hirsch’s retreat from modernity into the witchy traditions of old is some rich lady shit. Anyone who can traipse through London to attend menstrual rituals and traverse Africa to examine beads and pants is clearly someone with too much time on their hands. And that’s the rub. Identity politics is a fundamentally privileged pursuit. Indeed, it is the means through which the well-off launder their class privilege and turn it into oppression. There is nothing in Ms Hirsch’s plush, lovely life that can be described as oppression – apart from being asked The Question, of course… – and so she plunders ancient communities for little pieces of victimhood she might claim as her own. And thus is her cultural power in the here and now fortified, with more of that hottest currency of all: ethnic suffering.

Hirsch’s book confirms that the new elites have retreated from reason, fleeing from Enlightenment into the tattooed arms of fashionable tribalism. ‘Educated people, and people like me, [were] brought up to learn about, understand and respect science’, she writes, but now many of us are ‘following our curiosity’ and embracing ‘systems of ancestral knowledge’. Yes you are. From ‘decolonise the curriculum’ to the upper-middle-class fads for everything from African jewellery to Tibetan spiritualism, the right-on and rich are turning their backs on modernity and its gains and knowledge. Knock yourselves out. The rest of us, however, who have no cultural clout to gain from dabbling in magic and other ancient bullshit, prefer science, civilisation and comfortable undergarments.

==

These people are fucking bonkers. They think they're the most fascinating and enlightened people on the planet, when they're just the most mediocre, narcissistic people, using big, empty, academic, jargony words to hide the fact they're completely fucking insane.

For the record, Hirsch's ancestors are Norwegian, German-Jewish, British and Ghanaian. So her appropriation of African aesthetics isn't actually any more meaningful than espousing her Norwegian viking ancestry.

We have to stop giving these lunatics oxygen.

[nonegenderleftpain]

Just had the most fucking infuriating conversation. My lovely partner was dealing with their shithead centrist roommate and his opinions on trans people in prisons and I was like hey, send him to me! I do trans education with guys like this professionally, and that way maybe you won't have to deal with his shit without adding more tension to your household. So we connected, and I set a boundary: I was upfront about being bipolar, because it affects how I communicate and how my emotions react to things, and I said that I needed him to trust that I and *only I* knew when I was being "too emotional" to talk rationally. I told him that I did not consent to anyone except my physicians commenting on my mental state, and that I have dealt with my particular cocktail of mental illness for years while he has not. I gave him a yes or no question - can I trust that you will not use my disability to undermine my professional knowledge about trans issues?

I sat and watched him go off about how he's getting a PhD in clinical psychology, and how dare I presume he doesn't know things about bipolar disorder, and on and on. I asked him if he had bipolar, and told him again that if not, I do not consent to discussing it with him except to get his agreement that he will not use it to belittle me. He then proceeded to state that unless my physicians also have bipolar, then it's a completely unfair question, etc etc. I repeated the question, clarifying that this was a yes or no.

I got ANOTHER paragraph of going off about how the way I set my boundaries was rude and inappropriate and he doesn't respect the way I said it, etc etc. I gave him one last chance to answer my yes or no question - a chance that he failed, when he proceeded to tell me that I was using my disability as an excuse (an excuse for what, he never answered when I asked), and that I had "blinders on about my own behavior."

I clarified what happened - that I gave him three chances to answer a yes or no question guaranteeing he would not use my disability as an excuse to brush aside my years of knowledge on trans issues because I might get emotional, and he chose three times not to answer. After which he blocked me.

Now, if you are a minority educator, you may have caught what I did here, but maybe not, so I'm going to explain. When this man said he had "concerns" about trans people in prisons, I decided to test how sincere he was about engaging with me as a minority. I set a reasonable boundary in a polite but no-nonsense way about an axis of discrimination that had *nothing to do* with the thing we intended to discuss. To be fair, I was trying to give the guy some warning about my emotional regulation problems and how they affect response times, but really, I was testing how he would respond to being told no. I chose to be mildly vulnerable about an axis of oppression that is under legal protections, in order to both protect myself and to test his responses. If he could not respond appropriately, and with some level of consideration, to a request about an axis of oppression that he cannot deny exists, he could not be trusted to engage with me on an axis he sees as debatable.

Do not give people your heart to get them to respect you. If they cannot respect your "no" with something objective and concrete and communicate clearly, they will not respect your "no" when it is hurting you. And remember that you NEVER owe people like this your time and energy. Never. It doesn't matter who they are. I chose to step into this conversation knowing it was unlikely to go well, because I am an educator. You do not have to be an educator just because you are a minority. If you're Just Some Guy, it's not your job to listen to people shit on you or use this libertarian-ass centrist doublespeak to avoid answering simple questions like "can I trust that you will not discriminate against me if we talk." Just tell them to fuck off and you will be so much better for it.

(And on another note, for his patient's sake, I hope this man fails med school. Someone like that is not ready to interact with vulnerable groups, and I told him as much before he ran like a coward from having to admit that no, he WAS going to use my disability to undermine me if it was useful for him to.)

[pruning-the-minds-garden]

A Question, or "Searching for Sensitive Solutions"

Okay so my question is going under a "Read More" because I need to explain around it a little but, and also because the question itself is... spicy... in the rhetorical, not sexual/kinky sense. Thoughts, input and advice regarding it are free to come in via replies, or via Asks (either anon or not). I've disabled reblogs. Anyway -

For context and psychological background, I'm an AMAB person who presents to 99% of the world as a man. Most of the world addresses me by male pronouns, treat me as they would a man (I get taken more seriously by doctors for no good GD reason, my ideas have more weight in general despite never asking for that, etc etc, you all know what the package looks like), and for most of my life that was never even a thing. I spent some time and energy questioning my gender, and thought the answer to the question was "no." But, it turns out I was asking the wrong question that whole time. I should have been asking "am I the man (i.e. the gender) I've been told I am?" instead of "am I a woman?" There's more than just the two options.

I've also got my share of psychological issues. I won't go into why, but there's a fair amount of rejection sensitivity (the most relevant Dx to this conversation), PTSD (of the traditional and "c" varieties), anxiety, depression, etc. Yes, I have meds. Yes, I was in counseling. No, I'm not in it right now for insurance reasons (insert "America is a healthcare dystopia" memes here). I place a high premium on not burdening others with my issues, but I mention them so you can understand things better. Anyway, on to the actual question.

One of the most frequent things that I see (and bearing in mind I understand sampling bias and selective memory here), in bios or pinned comments or whatever, is some form of "Men do not interact." Now, that's a perfectly valid boundary to assert. I also understand why people (mostly women) assert it. I get it and I'm not saying don't do it, or they shouldn't do it, or that I am in any way shaming or whatever anyone who does - no, none of that is the case. What I am seeking, is advice on how I can better frame and respond to that, so it doesn't make me feel shitty (or less shitty) and in this semi-rejected liminal space. So, how do I do that? Let me elaborate on the precise situation (see? There's a reason I put this under a Read More).

My thought process generally goes something like this: "Oh, men don't interact? Well I'm not a man I'm enby so-" "Yeah but if they saw a picture of you they'd disagree. Society sees you as a man. You were raised as a man. You dress as a man. Come on, be honest with yourself here." "I do those things because they were forced on me at such an early age that I don't know how to stop doing them. I've never actually wanted to do any of them and they don't make me feel good, they never have. There's a reason I identify as enby-" "You're way too masc for them and honestly you're being one of those men for even wanting to stay and disrespecting their clearly-asserted boundary." "They are probably an SA victim so how dare you prioritize wanting to have this particular person in your social media circle above their psychological well-being, because seeing you would likely be triggering for them so you need to leave." "Well but being told to get out sight unseen is triggering fo--" "THAT'S NOT THE SAME" "But I... okay."

And, well... yeah. I know that the rejection sensitivity is not rational. I realize it is an overreaction, caused by having to deal with a lifetime of rejection and undermining of my sense of self and self-worth, and that none of those things are the doing of that random person on social media. They are just clearly asserting a boundary, generally for their own mental health and well-being. Also, replies that tell me that the above thought process is wrong, are not helpful. First, I already know that. Second, I present the thought process not for your critical discoursal review, but because that's what the voices in my head say in the moment and sometimes that something isn't the prettiest, cleanest, most acceptable form of a given argument, and I want you to have an honest insight into that before moving on.

So, what I am looking for is a more sensitive mental model, a way to look at it or frame it or respond to it that both preserves their mental well-being and my mental well-being. The things that immediately jumped to mind are ways to avoid seeing it at all, and those essentially consist of blocking blogs that have that DNI in the bio because every interaction would be a replay of the above conversation. However, it occurs to me that regardless of any practical or social implications (which are significant), and regardless of my wanting to reach as wide an audience as possible with some of my content (the safety/consent stuff) and that working against that goal... it also has a psychological down side. That is basically me actively rejecting them pre-emptively. I know that they likely have no interest in my accepting them, especially, but it's more the personal implications of casually rejecting people that I take issue with. It's precisely that kind of attitude, one that casually says "nope, you're wrong for me" and permanently excises a person from your life after reading three lines of text about them, that really triggers my rejection sensitivity. So, I don't want to be performing those same triggering actions routinely unto others, even if they'd not have the same (or any) effect, because of the splash-back effect that it would have on me. I reserve blocking for fairly serious or egregious stuff.

Anyway, what's a person to do? I don't like seeing that time and time and time again and having that dialogue play out in my mind where I have to interrogate my own gender, and whether I'm "enby enough" to interact with a given person. I also don't like blocking people for no (good) reason. I'd like better options, but I'm at a loss for them right now.

Thoughts?

[meanderingstream]

Living through the Next American Political Order: Institutions Will Comply, and You Will Be Made Complicit

I woke up this morning to see that Donald Trump had been elected president again. Like roughly half of American voters, this is not the outcome that I had hoped for. Politics, like history, is chaotic and uncertain. Yet the victorious party in American politics last night has campaigned for years on a clear platform and a coherent vision of America’s future. Voters chose that party, and institutional guardrails will not constrain the next government. American life will change accordingly.

I did not predict this outcome. I predicted no outcome, because I did not know, and what I did know made me fearful. But about two weeks ago, liberals like me started to acknowledge—quietly, privately—that we thought Trump would win again. So I am not surprised, exactly. Nor is any woman I know, including my own daughter.

But I am demobilized and discouraged nevertheless. The results confirm some of my worst fears about what Americans will support when given the choice. And now I, like others who share my views towards the next administration, must ponder how to make our way through the coming years. The threats facing Americans are not all the same, and so they will be borne unequally; people with my characteristics will face fewer risks than many others. And yet all of us will need to wake up every day and make our way through our lives, mindful of the new political world we live in, but with the same obligations as ever amidst an uncertain and frightening new future.

When I wrote “Life in Authoritarian States is Mostly Boring and Tolerable” in 2017, I was anticipating a situation much like this one. And so in the early hours of the second Trump administration, here are the implications I see.

Liberalism is Not That Popular. I am a liberal at heart. I believe in individual autonomy, collective self-determination, and political equality. I believe that this implies a certain form of politics, including the rule of law, republicanism, and proceduralism. But my values are not that popular among the voting public, and the consequences are apparent. The liberal strands (dare I say “foundations”) of American politics shall be undermined, and some dismantled. Anyone who thinks that America has never been a liberal republic will find evidence to support their position as well.

Your Institutions Will Comply with the Administration. The next administration will likely destroy some institutions, but more likely, it will work with and reshape existing institutions to suit its purposes. The mechanisms through which this will happen are legal and financial. Concretely, this is how they will direct the corporate sector, constrain universities, and shape the mass media. Electoral authoritarian regimes routinely do this around the world. Our next administration will follow that playbook. There are plenty of past precedents in U.S. history, and comparative examples around the world right now.

That means, there will come a time when the administration tells the press not to publish a story, for reasons that are transparently nonsense. The press will comply. There will come a time when universities are told what they can teach and what students can do. They will comply too. They will comply because the consequences of noncompliance are too severe, even if every single person working within those institutions opposes the actions taken in their name.

You Will Face A Choice. Many people are going to be made vulnerable under the coming administration, especially anyone who lacks a U.S. passport, women, and gender nonconforming people. Most people living in the U.S. will not be so vulnerable, but we will operate within a system in which our friends and neighbors face existential risks. And because we are embedded in institutions, we will become the agents of the administration even if we do not want to be. The institutions will comply, rendering us complicit even through nonaction, without our consent, sometimes without our knowledge.

Last week I spoke to some students who had concerns about how my institution regulates speech and protest. I told them directly: you must not assume that our university can safeguard you. You should not believe any promise that they make, because they do not rule. Our financial and legal status is contingent, and a change in government will threaten that. Make your choices fully aware of this fact.

I’ll close by spelling out the implications of this last point. People like me will face difficult, perhaps even agonizing choices about whether to comply with odious policies and oppressive regulations. Some of us will resist when we can, but others will not. It is best, in the quiet of the morning after, to sit down and think, what will you resist, and what price are you prepared to pay for that resistance.

We must all make these decisions for ourselves. I have my own values. But I also look around the world to see other countries where governments like Trump’s have been elected. And because I believe that we learn from the world around us, I anticipate that most Americans, most of the time, will choose not to resist

Thoughts on this situation, and managing it.

[hanzi83]

Fandom

Blog 

Here I am partaking in a forbidden rule that only applies to me by the official rules, trying to be creative, even if writing run on sentences blogs just to put more out there. I don’t need it to be appreciated or anything because I have come to grips that shit I write, or talk about is only for private consumption so people who hate me will all analyze it and make shitty remarks because they can’t stand me, while plotting and figuring out ways to undermine me, and take more from me mentally because they have already suppressed me enough. And when you look at the origin of why stuff like this happens, and again this is just my personal feeling. I know I am not allowed to go off vibes when writing. I am not trying to sell myself as this ultimate intellectual or someone who has read all the fictional works of all the obscure authors and writers out there, I just kind of decide I want to write and I just do it, I am already wasting time with not even getting to the subject matter and instead constantly wallow in self awareness and being ahead of the criticism, even though these people will be steps ahead of me because of their advanced knowledge and where my trajectory is going, which will never not be disturbing because once you realize people know your trajectory and they decide to pick and choose when to be nice, but on a sociopathic level are looking for other ways to bring in problematic people in your life, or trying to take from me on any level, and when the system, who hates me gives people incentive to do that shit, and do other fucked up shit, I have to sit there and take the mental abuse, and the undermining and if I dare speak up, the ones in charge can make the mental torture even more unbearable while letting people show off the luxurious shit they get, or who they are connected to, and how they are growing a cult that will have to tell uncharismatic people how they are really a personality, and all of it is because they see me as a threat, someone who has been suppressed and harassed and pushed to insanity while disturbing people have gotten away with so much to instill fear, and I have to chalk it up to low level trolls, because then the bigger potential picture of these “trolls” being Arkham Asylum funded weirdos, or fed accounts themselves, but because it is online you have to think it is so random, yet people get defensive. And when I look at the overall picture, a lot of this shit is incentivized because of this problem we have with “fandom” and the most you can say about fandom is how people are just crazy and unhinged, but why are these people unhinged and fucked up, for people online who love to poke holes in the MSM, the establishment and legacy entertainment, I never seen a bunch of sports entertainer accounts who have lowered the bar and become even more parody like compared to the supposed MSM shit they fucking say they despise, but find their coded ways to become those same people, but I guess because you use a shitty emoji of you laughing at your own comment, it suddenly means that it means a lot more because it comes off more organic, and not to mention the horny on main jokes to really show us they are not part of the system. So I guess the basic topic of this is about fandom becoming its own little cult and religion, and it is making people a lot worse. Again this is just my opinion, but take a look at the in fighting and nonstop discourse online through culture wars, while there are valid shit to say about topics of misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, but even stuff online to take advantage of real stories and deep rooted causes, we reduce it to culture wars which leads to ignorant people who follow their favorite fandom, to only consume these topics by the most sensationalized ways. 

Now someone like me pointing it out won’t do much because I no longer have the social media clout I once had when I was relevant, but back then I was a lot more ignorant and scattered brained from already being dumbed down because it was too difficult to put energy into thoughts, I always assumed in my dumbed down way as a kid that magically I would be able to know the shit I needed to because maybe the brain would automatically do that work, which then makes me wonder if we lived past lives where technology was at an all time level, and we had machines to basically memorize everything that we didn’t need to think, it is like when I was born in this world, I automatically had that thought in my head but never knew how to articulate shit, me being a free thinker or thinker in general is a big threat for people because they are so used to my thoughts representing my aesthetic, the aesthetic that snobs, who are corrupted inside and out, to judge me, and people have assured I am no longer relevant again, my trauma and issues have to be ignored and prodded because officially we can’t prove them, because it is not convenient to make money off of just yet, so a bunch of uncharismatic characters from my past can then give their shitty testimonial because they are desperate to become cultic characters who couldn’t last a day in my shoes mentally, they need the support behind the scenes, they need power in numbers, they are afraid of having to defend their point on their own, me on the other hand, I know what it is like to have no one support you mentally and wish the worst out of you I have taken every insult, every fucking pathetic tactic to discredit me, and I am still standing here, even if I don’t want to be here, and people who already have everything by the aesthetic get mad that I have not been knocked down permanently, which they will eventually do, but someone like me is not supposed to even have any free thoughts, I have to be limited and then if I dare express the accumulation constantly from the mental illness in my head, then there is revenge toward me, if I mean this less to you, and all of you hate me this much, why not just fucking end me then. Is it because the system needs me alive for some odd reason, I am one of few people who genuinely don’t want to cross over to the far right wing side and have my breaking point of “wokeness getting out of control” even though the system keeps that shit out there to make it unbearable, and people just arguing in bad faith and talking in circles, and all of this revolves around fandom in every aspect of life, not just religion, politicals, race, gender, sexual orientation, but now these fandoms have mixed in a bunch of these things to now keep nonstop conversations going that go nowhere, and to me for someone who has been considered a parody his entire life, it is amazing how much people have ended up themselves being a parody, a shell of a human being, they all end up becoming the same as a Howard Stern Wack Packer, and none of us are going to get any better because in order to make a difference, you have to join the circus and become something you are not. You know how many convos I tune out of online and in real life because a lot of time, I don’t feel it is genuine and organic, it is just people doing their version of previous artistic acts that have already been run into the ground. 

I know the propped up accounts who will secretly hate this will make these snide remarks of “Imagine being this upset about fandom and the internet” And that would suffice maybe 10 years ago, even though to me, that point is completely shit if you actually expand your thoughts and maybe put in 2 in 2 together that maybe that people take the internet seriously because it is just as much a funded platform as much as the legacy entertainment and media you claim to hate, they will call out obvious shit that is transparently designed to be an error because the legacy shit is becoming a dumbed down parody and I don’t mind people pointing how shitty it is, the issue then becomes, the same system will then create new narratives online which then are seen as the official story because a bunch of sports entertainers online claim that is and use the obvious gimmicked shit to add to their point. Narratives are designed to be changed every couple of years and this is why I don’t just sit with one, because if I see the patterns of how the system designs and manipulates our thoughts, I am allowed not to want fall for it, it becomes uncomfortable for people who want to socially climb up and be beholden to billionaires, they aren’t happy enough they get this contact, but they get increasingly mad that someone like me does not want to believe every single human being at their word when I have been shown what people can be driven to. People are so mentally unwell, they don’t realize how dangerous being beholden to entertainment and fandom is, they will downplay it, the political analysts, who now want to become entertainers, will never want to point out how entertainment as a whole has played a role in manipulating us and manufacturing consent, this is not one of those overly religious rants about “ENTERTAINMENT IS THE DEVIL’S WORK” i think that shit is used to downplay entertainment’s role in shit, because who wants to rock with the the side of the overly fundamentalist religious assholes who are gonna sound like the party poopers for ranting out this entertainment, but there is a valid claim to point out how entertainment has influenced people in good and bad ways, we can only acknowledge good shit, never the bad shit. I am just saying you will never get to the root cause if you don’t accept that there is a possibility that portions of entertainment have propaganda, it can only be pointed out when it is forced neoliberal diversity that is designed not to come off well, so people can get their regressive shit back, and the only entertainment that does get called out for its effect on society, is hip hop. They don’t mind throwing that shit under the bus, not saying music can’t play a role in how people think, but you really think hip hop is the most dangerous, because to me comedy has become one of the most dangerous propaganda tool, and the reason why no one wants to hear that is because everyone who has a platform, thinks they are funny within their echo chambers, and through the guise of entertainment, you rather present shit in a very goofy way while people drop their guard down for the eventual evil that is gonna run the world, like it hasn’t already but dumbing down your villains with comedic tropes and routines, is not gonna fucking do a god damn thing and if everyone thinks they are funny, then what is really funny then. I know that might sound like a Hopsin lyric, “Did the man who invented college, go to college?” which I always thought was a fair question, there goes my credibility, I am not completely shitting on Hopsin. 

But listen the fandom shit is so out of control, I am kind of glad I am not a propped up account or desirable, because it feels like the same convos happen every fucking day and no one wants to fucking have their mind changed, everyone wants to smell their own farts, some will take their skid marked riddled tightie whities and whip it in the air like they are Petey Pablo in 2001. I don’t know why I keep naming rappers who have not been as popular in the discourse, but who fucking reads this shit anyways, my trolls will read this and try to organize more torment, they have to be on top of what I say since they monitor my private thoughts. But again I get it, I am not supposed to be taken seriously and normally it would hurt my soul a lot more like it has in the past, because I am a human being, believe it or not, but when I see how parody like and how dumbed down and elitist people in general have become, even if they have a good aesthetic, I know the mental pain a lot of you are going through might be worse, it is just a lot of those people think they can double down by being shittier and because they have connections and resources, and get to be part of the upper echelon, you will not be cured mentally and more and more I see people unraveling more, whether it is being forced to do fucked up shit or reducing yourself to do some fucked up shit because you blindly hate me and hate that someone like me can see through it, it is ironic because I am one of the dumbest people alive if you are judging by society’s standards, because I dare to look at how advanced the game is, because if I think by the limited narratives, you will never get to the solutions, and you can tell people who have parroted the official rules are scrambling more and more, when we have public figures who are getting away with horrible shit, society on a bigger level, was able to give you the illusion in the past because one big public figure suffered consequences that it was the standard when people knew otherwise, but now we have never been in an era where every public figure, every other fucking day is being accused of rape and being a pedo etc, and it has never meant less, Peewee Herman and Milli Vanilli’s only issue was not doing the shit they did during this era, because you would be given a fucking cult for lip syncing or jerking off in a porn theater. So now this is happening and people who have always parroted the rules society lives by can’t even come up with valid reasons for why this is happening the way it is. How can I survive in this world where everyone seems to be joining the fucking circus. I really don’t belong here on any fucking level. I know most of you agree, because a lot of you hate me, and you won’t hesitate to destroy me even more, maybe give random vacations to people I know so it makes me feel like shit I am left out, me being in isolation from making my own connections and new friends because people are greedy to take everything away from me. That is my perception, and with all the secrecy I had to endure for the last decade plus, I have my reasons to perceive shit the way I do, and I might not be for everyone, but I don’t need to be. No one forces you to listen or read what I say, but god forbid I try to vent out and be a bit creative. I just do it because I feel like it, I don’t need to get boosted up to feel good about the work I put in with giving my thoughts, I rather have my own lane than do the standard cookie cutter shit, and this is what internet has become, this is what fandom has made people become, people needing to be boosted and they will do things they don’t even want to do but they are addicted to being boosted up and copying every cookie cutter regressive edge lord character or a played out preachy politically correct person, who might have a good message but know because you are compromised, your point won’t mean shit because once you become discredited, you still exist in the discourse, but people will constantly dunk on you for shit you did if you dare given an opinion in the future. 

I don’t know where this blog is going. Either way people will pretend they didn’t read it and even though no one will acknowledge this other than my trolls who want to constantly want to push me to suicidal thoughts, and make me feel like shit for even existing, partaking in trying to destroy my image even more, and no one had my fucking back, they let me fucking sink and let the white supremacists cunts destroy me mentally and some of them are disappointed I didn’t get lured to that side because they were beaten into mental submission, got their privates grabbed metaphorically or literally, and they are now parroting shit the system says and it makes people mad that I didn’t give in to regress because they have been trying and before I would cross over to that side, I rather fucking die. I don’t care if I am likable or not, I am the anti villain. I just wanted to ramble on and get myself in the thick of things by writing down my opinions. I feel more people will read this shit than listen to the podcast anyways and not having to hear my stuttering and just reading my thoughts might seem more venomous to some people, because at least when I speak, there is the stuttering you can mock more directly and do your shitty impressions in your group chat, that other uncharismatic shit heads will love, not that people won’t mock this shit in private, but at least the words will get to them which will take them off their game when trying to come up with shit to say about me, and people won’t break bad habits, because we are beholden to being in cults under the guise of fandom, there is reason why people take entertainment seriously because it is the number one tool to manipulate people because we are not supposed to take entertainment seriously and the more I see people who are supposed to be educating us through the news etc and other intellectuals, when everyone ends up doing sports entertainment, your expertise in whatever field does not mean shit as much anymore, because the sports entertainment element is what takes over. You think people gave a shit that Brutus the Barber Beefcake was a barber after a while, he became a sports entertainer through countless gimmick names and watering it down even more, that is what most public figures and social climbers now remind me of. I just hate how people online who are connected will book shit to be an error so they can then book themselves as Jim from the Office, to be the one who is looking at the camera when weird shit in the scene is going down. You would think we would want to advance the ways to improve shit, but we remix old shit and pretend we are coming up with solutions within limitations, anyways I better go, I better appreciate the platforms I have for my own thoughts before funded system people will come into my life to take over what I talk about because they rather be close to the people in the system, so they limit me even more and try for a fucking takeover because they hate that I actually have a more unique outlook, and their personality is just whatever entertainment they watched and what their echochamber will fucking prop up. People who take pleasure in being closer with people in my family than me, and the only reason they stay around because if things turn around for me, they won’t hesitate to count my money or try to insert themselves in being part of my life, if they can’t do it, they will get others to be “nice” to me, and lure me in, but the more I see through it, eventually everyone shows their true colors, they can’t conceal their ugliness when they have this fucking hatred for me. They will even hate this blog and I am sure people will be on the horn and will fucking punish me more mentally. If you do that, just kill me because I want to see all of you who have secretly needed me behind the scenes to do this on your own, and you will see that me not being around, you will then have people who will then not have this common hatred, you will see a bunch of people who have showed how ugly they can get and you won’t have any choice but to think if that person will fuck you over. Maybe I am being irrational, but this is my blog and I am allowed to vent my shit out, what else am I supposed to do when it has been impossible to vent to anyone since everyone reports to everyone, at least with these blogs, it is out there since everyone is gonna be monitoring it anyways. I just felt like writing and getting shit off my chest. People claim they want people to get better mentally, but when someone does it, it becomes so unbearable because people don’t want to see the ugliness in how someone could think, or they don’t want it pointed out that is what they are doing. I am just saying being beholden to entertainment has been one of the more destructive things on the planet because everyone has showed their true colors of how manipulative, greedy, sociopathic etc they all are, and even at some point I have also been that but even if I am not the desirable I would have loved to have been, I do feel a bit happier that I have skirted away from trying to be a sports entertainer online. Here let me make this blog even more by quoting a really shitty Drake lyric, “Toodles to these bitches” what the fuck was that asshole thinking saying that line? Anyways I better stop before I start asking what happened to rapper Yung Wun and how his main event level push was derailed or some other shit that doesn’t make any fucking sense.

[rainiishowers]

Obey Me Incorrect Quotes

———

MC, gesturing to Simeon: I think my guardian angel drinks.

——

Satan: "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" - Charles Darwin

Mammon: What the fuck? Begets isn't a word. Quit trying to make up words, fuckface.

——

Belphegor: Watcha doin?

Satan: Stealing my neighbour’s cat.

Belphegor: Scandalous.

Belphegor: Can I help?

——

Asmodeus: What’s the dumbest thing you believed as a child?

Belphegor: That naptime was a punishment.

——

Mammon: Uh, I think I got your lunch. *Holds up a note that reads: ‘I am very proud of you. Love, Lucifer’*

MC: Oh yeah. I didn’t think this was for me. *Holds up a note that reads: ‘Be good. For the love of Diavolo, Please be good.’*

——

Simeon: Barbatos and I got married!!

Belphegor: Don't share your personal problems with everyone.

——

Beelzebub: I think I did fairly well on my anatomy quiz! :)

Belphegor: I forgot I was doing a test.

Lucifer: Belphie.

Belphegor: I said the vertebrae was the back stick because I thought it was funny

Lucifer: Belphegor.

——

Lucifer: I hope you have an explanation for this.

Satan: We have three actually-

Belphegor: Pick your favorite.

——

Asmodeus: Look at you! All cute and small! I could just eat you up!

Luke:

Luke: *proceeds to kick him in the shin and run away*

Asmodeus: Wha- Oww! How dare you!

Mammon, walking past: Rule number 1, don't call Fido cute or small.

——

Solomon: I dare you-

Lucifer, exasperated: MC is not allowed to accept dares anymore.

Solomon: Why not?

MC: "I have no regard for my own safety", as some would say.

——

MC: Belphie annoyed me today so I told him that I can’t wait to see what he has planned for our special day tomorrow.

Beelzebub: There is nothing special about tomorrow...

MC: But there is something special about watching the color leave his face as panic takes over.

——

Beelzebub: I lost Asmo..

Lucifer: How do you LOSE Asmo?

Mammon: To be fair, he is small-

——

Solomon: So... who's the big spoon and who's the little spoon?

MC: We're chopsticks!

Simeon: Well... that's cute!

Solomon: Does that mean you two snuggle together perfectly?

Belphegor, protectively curling around MC: No, it means that if you take the other away, the only thing the other is good for is stabbing.

——

Satan: I woke up and chose VIOLENCE. I WILL COMMIT ARSON AND BURN EVERYTHING TO THE GROUND!!! I AM ANGRY-

MC: Awwww, you’re so adorable! Give me a hug~

Satan: Wh-What? nO, yOURE SUPPOSED TO BE SCARED OF ME! TREMBLE BEFORE MY WRATH-

——

Mammon: You know the sound a fork makes in the garbage disposal? That's the sound that my brain makes all the time.

——

Mammon: *Pulls a glass a water from out of nowhere*

Leviathan: Where did you get that?

Mammon: My pocket.

Leviathan: How do you keep a glass of water in your pocket?

Mammon: Skills.

——

Lucifer: I hope he’s calmed down...

Satan: Shut the fuck up you annoying ass pig.

——

Belphegor: I hate when people ask me, 'What did you do today?' Buddy listen, I woke up at noon and then it was five p.m., okay? I don't KNOW!

——

Asmodeus: My gender is in a constant state of flux.

——

Leviathan: I came out here to have a good time and I'm honestly feeling so attacked right now.

——

MC: So I have made the decision to trust you.

Leviathan: A horrible decision, really.

——

Barbatos: *Coughs* Ah.. What kind of tea is this?

Solomon: I boiled Gatorade :D

——

Lucifer, possibly drunk: I have no respect for Santa. Don’t sneak in through the chimney and undermine my authority by bringing my family presents. Walk in through the front door and fight me like a man.

——

Luke: Everything’s fine, Barbatos, it’s just a rat-

Barbatos: Luke, I know your relationship with the english language is strictly casual, but you- I- *deep inhale* ALLOW ME TO TELL YOU WHAT’S NOT FINE.

——

MC: Why does everyone in this house want to kill Sol?

Satan: Because, goddamnit, have you seen him? His neck looks so snappable.

——

Leviathan, to Mammon: If karma doesn't hit you, I fucking will.

——

Lucifer: Enough! How dare you mock me in such a manner!?

MC: Well. How would you like me to mock you? I take requests.

——

Leviathan: Pros and cons of dating me.

Leviathan: Pros. You'll be the cute one.

Leviathan: Cons. Holy shit, where do I begin-

——

Satan: I couldn't do this without you, Asmo.

Asmodeus: Sure you could. Not as stylishly, of course.

——

Lucifer: Mammon, can I speak to you for a minute? In private.

Mammon: Ooh, someone's in trouble.

Mammon: It's me. I don't know why I did that.

- -

-

Bonus!!

Lucifer: you'll be working with Beel and Belphie

Rainy: Alright! My fantasy threesome!

Everyone else: *blank stares*

Rainy: ...Of people on a team.

[cybrheartheart]

Same here. Though add in autism, a walking raw nerve, all senses at 11 all the time. Not to mention it gets even more sensitive when the insomnia kicks in, which happens when stressors are thrown in for fun. Oh, and being alive is a stressor because being autistic means not getting nor knowing how to do social cues and reading between the lines. Then throw in specific stressors like parties, special events, and holidays which are cacophonies of sound, lights, noise, tastes, and touch (hugs for family events, crowds glancing and bumping into each other, people inside each other’s social bubbles, emotional energy flying).

So, both of these compete with each other. One might swap for the other, or they might team up. At least with my medication I am able to ignore or push the abuse that my brain does, so it doesn’t step up and beat on me for every perceived slight it thought I did to anyone I remotely came in contact with. Without the medication I have a running commentary of what I did through my day with a filter from my brain telling me constantly all of the things that I did horribly like, “you are a horrible human being for failing to do this right.” and “how dare you try to have a conversation and think you could get through it without infodumping, making an awkward comment, or even humiliating yourself in front of your friends and family.” So, I tend to flinch when I do these perceived wrongs, and then I lay in bed at night and have my brain show me a screening of my day with those highlights of what I did wrong prominent.

Doesn’t help that I really don’t want to go to bed in the first place because I don’t feel like I’ll wake up the next day, partially because of PTSD from surgery back in the day that went wrong, partially from an incident with a horror movie at a very young and vulnerable age that stops me from sleeping in the dark, and then just add in to all of that the trauma of an abusive brain rubbing my face in the BS it is showing me to undermine my self-esteem and self-confidence.

In interesting side note about that point, I’ve been abused repeatedly throughout my adult life by people who were in positions of power and to who I gave my complete trust (not including my partner, my parent, or my current circle of whom I would consider friends); some were church members, some roommates, some just friends, and yet through all my recollection and years of healing from those years of traumatic events, I learned that the worst of my abusers was from my own brain, because I had to live with it constantly, 24/7/365 and all my life. Fortunately years ago, I realized that that voice isn’t me. That what my brain does to me, isn’t how I would choose to treat my loved ones. I was able to realize that I can choose to feed that part of my brain or divorce myself from it or like in A Beautiful Mind, just completely ignore it all the while trying to actively recognize in what ways it is trying to take me down. I’ve been successful with medication to be able to ignore it...though life is still rough. I feel like it’s so hard to be myself and to want to live this life, but it is so worth the journey and I will live it until Death* walks up to me and is ready to escort me back into the folds of the Universe to become stardust again, and have much less pain and suffering, until then, I’m enjoying the ride as best as I’m capable. *Death from The Sandman preferably.

ADHD is dumb af. how you gonna give me object permanence for PEOPLE. what do you mean I spent fourteen hours straight putting together this Lego set. what is the biological advantage to missing 60% of every conversation I'm a part of. why won't my foot stop tapping. i'm not convinced I've retained anything ever. oh gOD THERE GOES THE FOOT AGAIN. "This is your brain on drugs" but it's not drugs it's just the executive dysfunction. the hell am I supposed to do with a disability nobody believes is real. girl I'm tired. girl I can't sleep. oh it's the impostor syndrome again. no offense @ my brain but you're harshing my vibe. I would like a new one. can't return it though bc I used the receipt as a bookmark and lost it. my foot is still tapping.

[sukirichi]

a thing or two (m.)

tutor geto has a thing or two to teach you.

cw. oral sex (f and m receiving), lube, unprotected sex, sweet! geto, halloween setting so priest! geto, age gap, slight body worship, fingering, overall romantic sex, kitchen counter sex, dirty talk, lots of kissing, mutual masturbation, intoxication, pwp, unedited as always eep

note. for my right boob @sixeyesgojo​ my first ever geto fic and i hope it’s to your liking...writing this with a frozen arm and numb fingers weeeee, i almost became a geto simp.

Halloween festivals have never felt livelier in the city. People dressed up in various outfits milled about the events place, your drink nearly sloshing on the ground the more they bumped into you. 

Bass and music boosted from the large speakers smack in the middle of the grounds, and everyone danced to their heart’s content, you and your friends a huge inclusion to the crowd.

You don’t really go out to parties that much. Hell, you don’t even drink.

But after numerous encouragements from your friends, you’re now dressed in she-devil skin-tight black dress, black lipstick, and red horns placed on your head. It’s hard not to feel confident and sexy – the kick of the liquor is settling down as well – when you’ve got human eyes, vampiric red eyes, ghoul sclera lenses and even a fucking Cyclops eye turning your way.

You’re excitedly grinding against your friends, the whoops and cheers mixing in with slurred mumbles of the lyrics.

The night is young and so are you. 

This may have been your third or fourth drink, you don’t really know, but probably some way along the second since you’re not really hammered. You’re somewhat sober enough to feel large hands gripping your hips, a protest of not tonight, Dracula about to leave your lips when you come face to face with a face you never thought you would see here.

Clad in a long black cloak, a silver cross hung around his neck, his dark hair in a neat bun and black earrings a perfect completion to the hauntingly stunning look he pulled off, your throat ran dry.

“Sir Geto?”

“Hey, it’s you,” your tutor spoke up with unmasked interest, his curious eyes trailing down your revealing outfit…the way your dress hugged all your curves and how your breasts are practically popping from your top. Geto smirked, “And please, we’re not studying at home, just call me Geto. Surprised to see you here.”

“Well, it’s Halloween, would be a shame if I didn’t go out,” laughing nervously, you found yourself acting out of habit as you twirled a strand of hair to your finger. “I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you’d have work.”

“Nah, the boys and I are free for tonight,” he answered with a grin, nodding to where his friends – a really tall white haired man and a bored blond who looks like he’s ready to leave anytime – dancing and drinking at the corner. Geto must’ve felt your unnecessary prolonged stare at his attractive friends for he’s pulling you closer again, not sexually or even hidden with motives, but because it’s hard to hear each other through the music.

“Hey, do you wanna dance?” Nodding, you waved goodbye to your friends. They didn’t really notice considering they’re way too hammered and occupied dancing with others. Surely, they wouldn’t notice your little escapade.

Geto’s warm hands leads you somewhere out the bar and into the open grounds, where cups are already littered on the grass and people are drunkenly shaking their ass to everything and everyone.

It’s a ridiculous sight that has both you and Geto laughing.

“So…you liking the festival so far?”

“It’s…pretty fun,” you admit and loop your arms around him with ease. Normally, you wouldn’t be doing this. 

He may not be your actual professor or teacher, but he’s still a family friend of your friend who’s been tutoring you for the past semester and is basically the only reason you can endure math. Granted, he’s always been deadly attractive, but you’ve never really been affected by it, not up this close, anyway.

But you’re most definitely closer now, and Geto’s forehead is pressed against yours as he sways you both side to side.

“My first time drinking and I feel so light,” Geto hums at your slightly intoxicated eyes, his grin turning gummy when your curious hands trail up his robes to experimentally grope his pecs.

“First time, huh? We’ll I’ll be here to hold you up if you feel dizzy.”

“Thanks,” you beamed up at him. Geto, albeit being at least seven years older, feels so youthful that you’re not really bothered by the age gap. Again, it could be the alcohol, but he feels so warm, so nice, that you lean back to survey him this time around. “You look great, by the way, though you’re dressed up as…”

Geto rolls his eyes before you can finish.

“I know, the priest costume looks weird, but we found it pretty funny so here I am.”

“No, no, it looks great,” you wave off, your smile freezing on your face when a nostalgic song starts to blast through the speakers. In your head, in your head! “Zombies by the Cranberries. A classic.”

Geto’s hands snake around your waist before they hover over your ass, his eyes mischievous and slanted as he mumbles, “It’s a great song to dance with a perfect little devil with.”

You don’t know who leaned it first.

Not like it mattered, when Geto tasted strongly of strawberry flavored bear and cheesecake. An odd combination, even more so with his spicy cologne, but it only has you pulling you in closer to him.

He’s such a great kisser. Legs turned to jelly, knees weakening and lips locking in rhythm to the beat – it feels like it’s just the two of you in that moment. Geto smiles through the kiss, tongue prodding your lips to open before you’re gasping for air. Your attempt to regain air back to your lungs is cut off when Geto leans closer to slip his tongue inside your mouth, greedily sucking on it until you’re moaning in his arms.

Soon enough, you’re both holding on to each other to the point you might as well be fucking openly.

Geto is cupping your cheeks as he excitedly kisses you, his smiles intoxicating and the bubbling laughter he lets out much like music to your ears.

“Yo, Geto, are you sure about this? She looks like a minor, dude,” one of his friends speak up, and that’s when you see his white haired friend – who has extremely azure eyes that you can’t tell whether it’s contacts or not – crossing his arms on his chest, though his amused smirk said otherwise.

If anything, the guy is only suggestive, wiggling his brows up and down as he puts his fingers into a V shape, his tongue poked out.

You snort at his gestures, and just like how Geto did before, he turns your cheeks towards him again, his gaze feral and wanting. “I assure you,” Geto murmurs over your lips, “She’s not.” Eyes wide and all attention to him the way he wants, Geto’s smirk is cunning before he leans down to capture your lips in another heated kiss.

Stumbling back to his apartment turned out to be a lot more challenging. With the urgent need to relieve each other of this burning in your cores, you and Geto have made out everywhere, hands kneading each other’s skin until you fall awkwardly at his bed.

There’s no time to worry about it though. Not when he’s eagerly unbuttoning his robe, his dark hair messed up and a few strands shielding his eyes that glimmer when you struggle to squeeze out of your dress. He helps you get it off before he hovers over you, knocking your knee with his to make you fall open. You’re left completely vulnerable and naked under his predatory gaze, large hands smoothing over your skin – from your ankle, up to your thighs and the dips in your body, before he settles right above your breasts, nipples hard between his fingers.

“Fuck, you look stunning,” he praises, biting his lip at the same time you drunkenly giggle. “Bet you taste perfect too.”

“Only one way to find out, then.”

“Come here,” Get growls and rips off your panties, your half-hearted protests completely missed in his haze of pleasure. Upon seeing you bare for him, wet and pussy lips glistening, Geto groans deep in his chest. “Such a pretty pussy. Shoulda fucked you a long time ago when we were alone for so many hours,” curling his upper lip, he begins to settle down between your legs, peering up from you under his lashes as he teasingly blows air over your core that has you shivering. “I could’ve taught you so many more things, don’t you think?”

“Careful there, father, wouldn’t want you to sin tonight.”

“Oh no, you don’t get to do that to me tonight, sweetheart,” he laughs evilly, joined by you afterwards at the little teasings. “You’re a little devil and I’m nothing but a mortal man. Of course I’d fall to the consequences of my sinful desires.”

Sitting up with your elbows resting on the mattress, you tug him by his cross, hard. “Here’s your one way ticket to hell then,” you dared, letting your legs spread wider and pushing his head down. Geto inhales sharply when the tip of his nose nudges your clit, drawing out a shuddered moan from you. “Feast for yourself.”

“Hmm, you’re a whole ass fucking meal, baby,” he marveled, giving little teasing bites on your inner thigh that you’re sure would leave a mark. “I’m going to devour you.”

Geto isn’t kidding.

You clearly undermined him, or perhaps you knew all along what he could do and you just wanted to bring out this side for him, because riled up Geto who was excitedly sucking on your clit like a man starved had you seeing stars in the whites of his ceiling.

“Hnggrr, G-Geto, fuck!”

“Yeah, you like that?” he chuckles from your pussy, the vibrations of it sending electricity jolting down deep to your core. Geto begins to trail down, his tongue playfully poking your entrance as slick coats his muscle and cheeks, licking and kissing everywhere that you actually find it hard to keep quiet. Narrowing your eyes at him – and you wished you didn’t, because you’ve never seen a more lewd sight before – you slap your palm over your mouth, the only thing keeping your legs apart the strong grip he had on you. “Don’t be shy, babe. We’ve got the whole place to ourselves tonight. Scream as loud as you want. Let the neighbors hear how good I’m fucking you.”

“Y-you’re so lewd, fuck-” you announce, but the sounds of your squelching being sucked by his eager, unquenched self is even more lewd. “Geto, I’m coming, I’m coming!”

Geto just pushes you over the edge, ignoring the way your thighs are shaking and you’re pushing him away once the overstimulation becomes too much to handle. You giggle when he sighs at not being able to eat you out anymore, but his glistening face is a lot more arousing than entertaining. Struggling to catch your breath, Geto smirks at how easily you’ve come undone, groaning as he wipes your juices with his thumb and licking his lips afterwards. He bends forward as he stares at you the whole while, slipping his digit through your mouth in a silent demand for you to taste yourself.

Never pulling away from holding his gaze, you wrap your lips around his thumb, swirling your tongue and sucking just hard enough that he absentmindedly humps the air.

“You okay? You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“Shut up. You literally ate my soul out,” you stare at the trail of saliva connected to his finger, the image so fucking dirty yet arousing that you begin to clench around nothing. Meanwhile, Geto’s biceps flex as he runs his hand through his hair, and that’s when you see he’s so rock hard that he probably feels uncomfortable. “Do you want me to…?”

“You don’t have to. It’s okay.”

“Seriously, Geto, you’re declining an offer to get your dick sucked?”

“I mean, I’m not against it but-” you shove his boxers down and immediately take him into your mouth, no foreplay at all, and your teeth graze his dick as you do so. Geto’s hips sutter forward in a knee-jerk movement he almost falls down on his bed, but catches him on the last second to not crush you. He ogled at your cock-stuffed mouth and puffy cheeks, his breaths sharp from the pleasure he’s receiving. “Sh-shit, not so fast, baby. I don’t want to cum like this.”

“Hmm.”

Staring up at him innocently, Geto closes his eyes and runs his finger through your locks, slightly bucking his hips deeper into your mouth. Even in his euphoria, Geto is careful to let you go at your own pace, though his self-controls falter a little bit the moment you fondle his balls.

His eyes snap open. Teeth bared and belly flexing, you keep rendering him frozen with how you take him in deeper until his hair is tickling your nose, cheeks sucked in and hollow as you slide his cock along your warm walls. “Oh, fuck, you’re really a fucking devil, right there, yeah,” he hisses, taking a handful of your hair so he could get a better look at you. “Well, who would’ve thought? Always seemingly so innocent. Who knew you could suck dick like this?”

“You like it,” you tease while pumping his shaft up and down and giving kitten licks to the head, where Geto smirks at you.

“Yeah, I love it,” he corrects, his cock twitching on your dainty hands that look so tiny in comparison to his girth. “But no way I’m coming tonight anywhere than your pussy,” Geto pushes you back down on the bed where he showers you with heated kisses, wrists pinned under his grip and hickeys left everywhere on your neck. His sticky fingers trail down your skin to finger you, the sensation too much, too good, too wrong, and that thought alone that’s been drumming into you as the intoxication fades away make you both pause.

“I-I…”

“It’s okay, just relax,” he reassures, withdrawing his fingers that can’t get past your pussy that has now tightened the minute he touched you down there. Geto sends you another approving glance before he pumps his shaft and up down, aligning it with your entrance and kissing you flat on the lips the whole time. “I’ll put it in, okay? Tell me if anything hurts.”

“Hey, hey. Breathe,” he cups your cheek while looking deep into your eyes, though that slight pinch on his forehead let you know he experienced the same discomfort.

Geto must’ve realized both of you aren’t getting anywhere tonight because soon, he’s falling back to this side, eyeing your pussy with longing and lust before his arm lands over his face.  “Well… Maybe not tonight.”

“Geto,” you begin, turning on your side in hopes of easing the pained frown on his face. “I’m so sorry…”

“Hey, it’s fine, really, don’t worry about it,” he blinks at you and rests back on the pillows, his hand already wrapped around his hard, throbbing cock where the tip is leaking. “Let me just relieve myself. I’m so fucking hard it hurts.”

You don’t know what you’re expecting, but definitely not for him to jack off right beside you. You watch; perplexed, awed, undeniably aroused as he holds your gaze, his jaw clenched and accentuating his sharp features more from the movement. Geto is absolutely shameless as he fucks his own fist that is cum-stained, beads of white pre-cum coating his incredibly thick shaft with thick veins.

It’s so wrong yet so fucking hot that you can’t help but do the same.

Sneaking your fingers down to your kitty, you rub your clit and bite your lip, pleasuring yourself the same way he does. Geto exhales in wonder from watching you masturbate, his muscles ripping and arm so buff, you wonder why he hasn’t folded you in half yet.

Oh right, you’re too anxious to ever have his dick inside you, yet you’re shamelessly rubbing circles in your clit. Spreading your pussy lips open, you slide your fingers down and collect your juices, gasping right beside Geto who’s angrily pumping his dick.

Geto suddenly leans back on his calves to stare at your pussy and jacks off, catching some cum from your pussy lips which makes you giggle in surprise, but he comes back to fisting himself. The eroticism of your actions pushed you both to the edge until the both of you came, his dick softening and his cum shooting all over your thighs.

“God, you’re so sexy, I could stare at you all day.”

“That was…”

“Yeah,” he breathes out in stuttered chuckles, throwing a leg over the bed as he stands to hs full naked, cum-stained glory. “Hey, I’ll clean you up. Do you want something to drink or eat? A glass of water, maybe?”

“That sounds great.”

Geto comes back with a shirt of a rock festival and wipes his cum from your stomach, then folds it to wipe your arousal off. He helps you settle inside his oversized shirt that is warm, comfortable, and smells so faintly of him that the exhaustion of tonight’s events is rapidly coming to you.

“Come here. It’s pretty cold tonight,” You gladly cuddle with him, your head laid on top of his buff arm while his free one is wrapped around you.“How’s your studies going? Do you understand math a little better now?”

Despite his innocent queries, his actions are everything but.

His hands are trailing up to slowly to stroke your nipples. Geto thumbs at the hardened peaks before he softly squeezes your breast, letting his hand repeatedly graze over your sensitive nipples as if it’s second nature to him. It turns you on so bad, but you’re exhausted and you’re rubbing your thighs together, sighing and quietly moaning every now and then.

“A-a little, I guess,” you answer, a little bit distracted. He’s modest and no longer aroused (judging from his state inside his boxers), so you try not to start something you’re not prepared to finish. “Hey, Geto, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you more of an ass or boobs person?”

Geto handles the question with ease. “As long as the proportions are right, I like both, and I like yours,” he grins, cupping your boobs in his hand as if to prove a point. Then, he tugs your (his) shirt up just enough to reveal the erect nipples, his eyes narrowed before he sucks lightly on the sides. You gasp at his ministrations but voice no complaints, and neither does he when your nails dig into his arm. “Yours are so beautiful.”

“Flatterer,” you playfully punch his chest, but Geto only chuckles and brings you closer to his chest, his lips warm on top of your forehead. “I’m pretty sleepy…”

“Then sleep. I’ll still be here tomorrow, don’t worry. You’re free to stay as long as you like.”

The next day, Geto is already gone from the room. You’re not worried because one) this is a one night stand with your hot tutor, you’re not supposed to be attached, and two) the smell of pancakes wafting from the slight crack of his door is very much present.

Stretching your arms out, you pad to where Geto is busy flipping pancakes. He’s already dressed comfortably in a white shirt and dark sweats, turning around to smile at you at the sound of your footsteps. “There’s a naked girl in my room? Wow.”

“It’s not like you haven’t seen everything last night.”

Geto doesn’t need to gesture you to come closer to him, you’re already too pulled in by his presence that you’re wrapping an arm around his neck while he kisses you flat on the lips.

“Doesn’t mean I get tired of it,” he teases, lips lingering above yours before he drifts down the crook your neck, voice deep and husky as he greets, “’Morning. Can you pass me the syrup?”

Nodding, you bend over the counter. The syrup is located in the bottom of the pantry and you’re halfway to opening the glass panels when you hear Geto shut off the stove. His hands come to grip on your hips as he grinds his hard cock on your exposed bottom, his lips hovering over your ear. “On second thought…I think I’ll have my meal a little differently.”

“G-Geto.”

“I bought lube while you were asleep. Maybe it’ll make you loosen a little bit?” Geto touches you down there, his eyes glimmering with mischief once he witnesses for himself your state. “You’re already wet babe,” he announces, proudly presenting his wet fingers right before your eyes. “Wait for me.”

Nervously, you fix your shirt and hair as Geto runs to the living room where he pulls out a bottle of lube and discards his shirt somewhere. He wastes no time in lifting you up to the counter where dives between your legs, and you’re tugging at his hair as his tongue eagerly licks your wetness.

“Geto, ah, stop playing around!”

“Wasn’t planning on it, babe, I’m a little impatient,” Geto stands up again to kiss you for a quick second before he grabs the lube and spreads it all over his cock, his fingers experimentally prying your hole open to see if you could take it.

Once his digit slides in with ease, you moan the same time he grins wickedly.

You think he’ll go straight for it but Geto takes his time with you, making sure you’re properly stretched open before he splits you in his half with his cock. He’s really thick, after all, and your tight little cunt needs to adjust well to make sure you enjoy it rather than be in pain. Once satisfied, you pull Geto by the collar and wrap one leg around his waist to bring him closer, gasping when his tip slides between your pussy lips.

Both of you are too lost in a daze of lust to be able to speak properly. One nod from you is all he needs before he’s slipping inside your warm walls, his head falling into the juncture of your neck where he keeps grunting on how good you feel around him.

You can’t help but scratch down his back the deeper he drives his hips, the mere movement of his cock sliding against the bumpy drags of your tissues making you fall apart.

Not a minute later, your shirt is bunched up under your breasts, free for Geto to suck on while he fucks the living daylights out of you. His knuckles turn white from how hard he’s gripping the counter, another hand planted right under your knee to keep your leg spread open for him. You’re moaning openly under him, strings of fuck yeah right there and shit, Geto, you feel so good filling in the early morning air that would’ve been innocent if there weren’t such loud sounds of skin slapping against skin mixing with the chirping birds.

You squeeze Geto’s ass as he plants himself deeper inside you, setting a pace that is both mind-numbing and exhilarating.

It’s hard to believe that just days ago, you’re in the exact same place sharing waffles with him, only you’re studying math and he’s wearing glasses; professional, formal, polite – the exact opposite of the sinful things he’s doing to you right now.

Geto’s grunts are almost choked in your ear as you come hard, walls convulsing and spasming around his thick length.

He immediately pulls out his hard cock to come all over your thighs instead, watching the way your hole clenches around nothing while his slippery dick is smeared and repeatedly slapping your inner thighs. You keep gasping as you ride out your orgasm, thighs burning from the uncomfortable stretch of having one leg propped by him and the other heel planted on the counters. Geto’s moans are deep, sinful, and inherently masculine the whole while he shoots his deep all over you, creating a mess both on the counter and on your skin.

It takes a while before you both regain your breath and composure, with Geto awkwardly pulling his pants up as he laughs along with you. “So…breakfast?”

“Yeah,” you giggled, “I’m famished.”

Safe to say, that morning was spent with not much enough breakfast, but definitely lots of kissing and even more fucking around. Everything Geto said the first time you met him had been proven true – he did have a thing or two to teach you.

[fluffypotatey]

watching Leverage: ep 6

ok had myself some dinner, now i'm snacking on fries, LET'S GET INTO IT

Before we go:

the episode we're diving into is called "The Stork Job" and according to @0hheytherebigbadwolf, they await my tears (whatever the fuck that means, she grumbles nervously).

so, if i do cry, everybody blame them for that (i kid, i kid..........unless 👀)

anyway, last episode, we got to see more of our lovely crew working on the spot and they sure did deliver!

Eliot, our boy, was able to work out who the hostage was for the robbers were AND take out the men who were the reason the two were robbing the bank

alec, my boy, along with parker, my queen, expertly impersonated the fucking fbi without a hitch and parker was even able to sneak into the back to steal the briefcase full of money

another thing, i love how even when the episode only has minor characters for that one episode, they still feel like fully fleshed out people. the cops that alec and parker had to fool? they felt like bumbling cops for a small town (we even got a hint of the sheriff's and the judge's friendship(?) towards the end which I thought was awesome. the bank tellers? they felt like people and not stoic stock characters.

i applaud the writers room

anyway, ON WITH THE SHOW

the episode

oh no we starting off sad :(

parker :((((((( she knows....she KNOWS THE SIGNS OF ABUSE :(((((

FUCK YOU BESTIE (i'm kidding, i love you)

oh....we are mentioning how they got any orphans???? are we...will they discuss this?

the war....how vague -_-

SOPHIE YOU QUEEN

she scammed the embassy??? queen shit

lmao they're dunking on eliot about how to pick up girls. eliot: "i'm not an amature" sophie: "of course not! but i'd peg you at a level 2 and she's a level 20"

oh??? driver man has the hots for parker??? 1) great for their plan but 2) i am now worried for parker

if she gets hurt itsg i will be upSET

she lost sight of him when she went to try and take his wallet. this man knows those kind of moves and i am worried.

alec??? getting jealous??? or am i looking into this too much, more on 11

"ranch in texas?" HOW SHE GOT HOOKED shit man, is that what i need to do? but i don't have a ranch :( i can't even use a lasso T^T

nathan is so bothered about sophie's tips to eliot "you were manipulating me???" "i was a thief" "our love not real :(" "we are on the clock, nathan, for god's sake"

poor alec being the third wheel to all this

ok driver man making his move on parker, and she's trying so hard to get info from him. parker, baby, i am so worried for you. i don't like this man and he seems like the stalker type.

PARKER DON'T WORRY I WILL COMFORT YOU

the fact that this case is hitting a little too close for her my girlie :(((

YES STAB HIM BITCH THAT'S WHAT HE GETS ok nobody get mad at parker or i WILL hurt them

lol the others guys are so confused.

PARKER JUST JUMPED OFF THE LEDGE???? WHERE'D SHE GO???

good on eliot using the movie thing

steal a movie??? you mean a bootleg????

they did not just- omg

alec trying to reassure parker that they're not just a team(in dom toretto's voice: "we're family")

SOPHIE YOU QUEEN

she wrote a script, she gave herself the role of the nun, THERE'S WEREWOLVES???

NATHAN YOU WHIPPED SON OF A BITCH

YES SOPHIE YOU DID SO GOOD. oscars, it's what she deserves

oooooh nice little plan there to ensure she brings the boy

awwww parker doesn't want to be babysat (bc she feels it undermines her and that they don't trust her) but alec tells her that no one asked him to T^T he just wants to look out for her ok ;-; he cares ok!

you got this parker! something tells me creepy driver man will make a comeback and i won't like it.

something FISHY is going on here in this orphanage! where be the children? why are there trucks with cargo that isn't children?

WE FOUND THE CHILDREN

CURSE MY SENSITIVE SOUL I WILL NOT SURVIVE THIS EPISODE

parker is about to cry HOW DARE

parker going rogue again. kick their ass!

ALEC :(((( BABY

NOT NANA :((((

THEY ARE BONDING T^T

HUG HER! SHE NEEDS IT!

"they're gonna turn out like me" PARKER NO

"i like how you turned out" ALEC YOU SMOOTH MOTHERFUCKER

alec really wants to help the other orphans T^T i'm on his side. i'd provide a wonderful distraction as they helped the children escape! (i'd die but still)

oh no! how ever will our crew save all the orphans....ah jee, i am stumped. (i WILL believe they'll save all of them or so help me! realism be damned!)

oop the jig is up! she's been fooled! (your death scene was nice tho)

we still got 15 more minutes...i reFUSE to believe this is the end

where's parker????

YES GIRL

but why didn't you tell alec tho??? he'd help you

she's trying so hard to get them out ;-; don't laugh at her she's trying!!!! even here she's so adorable

omfg so they'll leave for Häagen Dazs? silly children

KICK HIS ASS PARKER

SHIT NO WAIT HANDS OFF BITCH

YEAH KICK HIS ASS

YES AHAHAHAHA i love her so much

sophie! that means the gang's here! oooooh the police? or is it just an audio recording???

YEAH ELIOT

how dare they scare me for second. i thought parker was gonna get shot! did nathan really stop that bus just so they could figure out the guns were props???? really nathan?

oh alec i know you felt so cool doing that in front of parker. walk in strut in with your little button, press it, and the building explodes. yeah

nathan is such a dad and how he calmed parker down about where the kids would get help

awwww alec!! he was worried about you parker!! THAT SMILE YEAH I SAW IT!

general thoughts

my parker feels were attacked today. will i recover? yes, but i'll need a minute or something. i just...she understood how much the foster system would fuck up these kids and didn't want to see that, but also knew that where they were was just as bad and T^T

AND ALEC, ALEC WHO UNDERSTOOD AS WELL! he already knew she was going through it. and he wanted to help, but also wasn't going to push even if he saw how much it troubled her T^T AND THE FACT THAT HE WAS WORRIED AND WANTED TO HELP THE KIDS UGH MY HEART

how parker called back to alec's comment about how they're "a little more" than a team all up close and personal and he was totally blushing don't @ me.

nathan/sophie were cute and it was fun seeing nathan a little miffed that sophie would use her charm for anyone when thieving (like it wasn't just their thing jfc nathan you are down so bad). it was cute. i like how she's one of the only people he struggles to lie to also.

but yeah. good episode, we got character stuff and i am all about that. until next time!

[donutloverxo]

Soooo there are many fics where reader makes steve jealous and it ends in rogh possesive fcking.. but what if steve tries to make reader jealous and it totally backfires and she becomes extremely insecure?? But please with a fluffy ending because my poor heart can’t handle anything less 🥺🥺

Hey. Thanks for the request and I hope this fits. *gif is not mine* Dividers by @firefly-graphics

Please note that my stories are not to be stolen or reposted on any other site. Reblogs and welcome and much appreciated. This blog and this story is 18+. Do not read, follow or interact if you are not 18+. Please🙏🙏

"Um... yes?" You asked as you brought down the hand which was holding out a twenty dollar bill - since you thought it was the pizza you've been waiting for, for like the past half an hour, and not a blond, six feet and some inches,tall super soldier.

"Hi... doll," he smiled.

"My name's Y/N," you corrected him as you frowned, so fed up of men undermining you by calling you such 'sweet' nicknames. You knew Captain Rogers wasn't like that, but still you couldn't have him getting any ideas.

"Right," he cleared his throat as he repeated your name. "Sorry," he said with a toothy grin, which almost made your heart melt.

"How did you get my address, Captain?"

"Tony gave it to me. I would've asked you at work... but I wanted to do this the right way."

"Do what?" you quirked a brow.

"Um, I maybe people aren't as formal nowadays," he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck, "But I can't really change who I am... not so late in life anyway," he cringed as he realised he was pretty rambling then, taking a deep breath he gathered enough courage, "I wanted to ask you to come with me, as my date, to the valentines party this Sunday."

You hummed at that, considering it because damn if Rogers wasn't convincing. Even when he wasn't as authoritative and dominating as he is when he puts on the suit.

It would be nice to be courted and treated nicely, and to not have to put up with the shit most men try to pull with you, you were sure Rogers would show you the time of your life. Besides, only an idiot would say no to him.

"No." You said with a finality that left no room for debate. "Is that all?"

"Uh... I... yes..." he stammered, not exactly prepared to be turned down so bluntly. "Can I ask why?"

"I don't shit where I eat."

"What?" his eyebrows cutely scrunching up.

You just knew you must've touched a nerve with your crass language. Tony, your boss, had told you about Cap and his 'language' incident.

"I don't date people at work... it can get complicated," you explained as he nodded.

It wasn't a complete lie. You didn't want to be known as the 'easy' girl or have others gossip about you. But that would be a sacrifice you'd willing make for someone like Steve. Who'd dare make fun of the Captains girl anyway?

You had been smitten with him from the moment you saw him, learning about his bravery and sacrifice as a kid you looked upto him and respected him, but when you met him in real life... you were a complete goner. Your stomach did somersaults every time he touched you, or hell even looked your way.

You tried your best to flirt, which was basically you stuttering and trying to make small talk whenever you had a chance to talk to him. Since he was born almost a century ago he would probably be offended if you were the one to make the first move.

You continued your back and forth for weeks before he told you about her. That he'll be visiting her over the weekend. You simply nodded, having a vague idea of who Peggy Carter was but not of what she went to Steve.

After some research you found out that she was an old flame of his, someone he couldn't marry and build a life with because he was frozen for decades. Upon seeing her many qualifications, and just how freaking brilliant she was, you knew one thing.

You may not be as smart as her, but you knew that you could never measure upto a woman that incredible. Someone Steve still visits after all these years. You were already afraid that he was out of your league but now you were sure of it.

"Did I do something wrong?" he wanted to know.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," he shoved his hands in his pockets, his bottom lip jutting out in a pout, "It's just that you used to talk to me all the time... and now it seems as if you're ignoring me. Is it because of something I did? Whatever it is I never meant to hurt you," he swore.

You sighed. "It's nothing you did, really. I just realized how incompatible we are. I hope you find the one you're looking for, someone who'll make you happy and give you the world. It just won't be me."

You didn't let him say anything closing your door instantly as you kept your tears at bay.

At the valentines party

"Cap," Tony said, slapping a hand on Steve's shoulder, "I thought you'd have her on your arm tonight. What happened?"

Referring to his assistant. He wanted to play cupid this once, since it was the season of love, he wanted to see his idiot friends happy. He was sure you both would be disgustingly smooching and all cute at the party. But not only had you both shown up separately, you seemed to be actively ignoring Steve.

"She uh... rejected me," he said, looking down into his glass of whiskey. It didn't do much for him but it helped him blend in.

"Ouch," Tony winced, "I was sure she would go for you. But I guess I have been wrong before," he shrugged.

"Really?"

"Yeah. She goes all heart eyes whenever you're around. But I guess that's nothing unique since that's just how most women act around you," he scoffed. "You should read all the love letters you got today. I was going through them, you have quite a passionate fanbase of people who want to... what was it..." he pretended to think hard about it. "Yes, 'ride your bicep', I don't understand the physics of how on earth that would work, but I am intrigued."

"Tony," Steve rolled his eyes as he always does when he's around the billionaire. "I don't really care about all of them... they don't know me. I only care about her and I don't know why she said no, but there's nothing I can do about it."

"Whoa, you're accepting defeat so soon? Where's that I-can-do-this-all-day attitude?"

"This isn't a war, Tony. If she doesn't see me that way... then there isn't much I could do."

"Maybe she's just playing hard to get. There's absolutely no way to really know what goes on in womens heads, Rogers. They're so smart and sneaky... it's kinda scary actually."

"I don't think she'd play games..."

Tony had gotten distracted pretty quickly and left Steve alone to pout and only appreciate your beauty from afar. You had worn a pink dress with red hearts on it, and for some reason, you got more beautiful every time he looked at you.

"Hello."

He jerked when he heard the foreign voice, looking at the blonde woman next to him, with her hand out, he shook it just to be polite.

"I'm Crystal," she smiled, flashing her sparkly white teeth.

"I'm Steve."

"Of course I know who you are!" she laughed, "You're Captain America, everyone knows you," she playfully hot his bicep before squeezing it, "Oh my... you must work out a lot."

"Uh... yeah..." he nodded. He could never get used to how people perceived him so differently.

"There is something I need to know really bad," Crystal blinked as she looked up at him, "Do you wear underwear in those suits? They seem really tight, wouldn't it be uncomfortable?"

"Oh, um... we just sort of..."

You had never looked at yourself as a jealous person. Maybe things were different when it came to Steve... he was a pretty special guy.

When you looked at him, talking to some girl, dancing with her, laughing and having fun with her, it was as if you were on fire from simmering rage, at the same time you could feel your heart breaking in a million pieces.

You knew it was wrong. You had no claim to him, he can do whatever he wants. If you said no to him then it makes perfect sense that he seeked out someone else.

You just had to get away for some fresh air, so you wouldn't abandon all class and pull the girls hair and drag her away from your Steve.

You yelped when you heard him call out your name.

Looking over your shoulder you saw him staring at you, his brows scrunched up, he looked so worried. But why?

"What're you doing here? You'll catch a cold, doll," he takes off his blazer, putting it over your shoulders and then groaning when he realised his slip up.

"Right, sorry, old habits die hard. I won't call you that again, I promise," he said, crossing his finger over his heart.

"No... I think it's kinda sweet. No ones ever had such an endearing petname for me. I do like it."

"Oh," he frowned, "it's just that you said you didn't."

Tony, of all the people in the whole universe, was right. There was no understanding women.

"I guess I lied..."

"Why?"

"Um..." You were at a loss of words and nervous. Steve wouldn't tolerate lies, and you didn't want him to hate you. "It was easier to do that then tell you the truth."

"What's the truth?"

"I do like you... a lot. But I don't want to live in someone else's shadow. And I just think the whole thing would end in a disaster..."

"What're you talking about, Y/N?"

"Peggy. Your first and only love. I can't measure upto her, not in my wildest dreams, there's no use trying."

"Why would you have to measure upto Peggy?"

You opened your mouth to answer, but couldn't really come up with an answer. "Why wouldn't I?"

"I did have feelings for her, but that was a long time ago. I'm happy she lived her life, it just wasn't meant to be."

"So, you're not still in love with her?"

"No," he shook his head, "I wouldn't have asked you out if I was."

"Well, what about Crystal? You were practically glued to her the entire evening!" you huffed as you stomped your foot. Mad at your own stupidity. You could've simply told him the truth and asked for a straight answer. "I have to warn you, she had was pretty crazy in the last season."

"Last season?"

"Mm-hm, the last season of her reality show, I've seen all eight seasons. Maybe they just amp up the drama, maybe she isn't actually crazy, I wouldn't know," you shrugged.

"Doll," he smirked, circling a hand around your waist and pulling you into him, "are you jealous?"

"I am not!" you gasped, looking away from his eyes as you felt your cheeks heat up.

"I don't want anyone but you. Why would I? You're goddamn perfect. And... I want you to be my girl."

"I guess I don't really have a reason to say no now..." you murmured, your face still flustered as you played with the buttons on his shirt before he tilted your chin up to make you look at him, placing his lips over yours in the most tender of kisses.

"Got the job done, Tones... I'm pretty sure I saw him go after her, I have to say though, you look at Captain America, and you really don't expect him to be that awkward..." Crystal said as she sipped on her gin and tonic. "You owe me."

Tony only hummed, not too happy about being indebted to someone, but you both needed a necessary push in the right direction.

[wonderlandleighleigh]

May we PLEASE have the prequel to #47? I would love to see that fight.

The door closes quietly behind Lenny as he goes to get some air, and it's no Midge who turns to Joel to scold him, but Rose.

"How dare you," she snaps.

Joel looks confused. "What-"

"I have approved Miriam's dating Leonard. I have. I am her mother, and more than that, a professional matchmaker. Are you accusing me of not knowing what I'm doing?"

Joel stars to answer but doesn't get the chance.

"Are you saying that I don't know what's best for my daughter?"

"Rose-"

"I will not be undermined in my own home," Rose says firmly. "And certainly not by a man who couldn't tell the difference between his wife's suitcase and his own."

The room goes quiet, Midge blinking rapidly.

Joel crosses his arms. "Fine. Sorry."

"You aren't," Rose tells him. "And that has always been the problem. I'm going to retire for the night. Goodnight all."

Abe sighs heavily. "Thank you, Joel."

"I said sorry!"