#certainly... interesting combo

[new-york-no-shoes]

With every devastating mashup I become more and more nervous for my emotional well-being when the tortured poets department drops…

[https-hunter]

Headcanons of the saint cassian kids and what they do during church

Definitely not inspired by me having to go to my hometown church over thanksgiving break

At any given time, there are only three kids listening to Father Marcus’s homilies: Ocean, Constance, and Tammy

Ricky just zones out, like, the whole time, making Zolar lore

Mischa is fighting the nuns about wearing his hat in the church (for ppl who didn’t grow up catholic, men CANNOT wear hats in the church)

Ezra became an altar server for the cool robe, but does not pay attention and always misses his cues

I had this headcanon during my rtc/nischa fixation that Noel and Mischa hold hands during mass and people just think they’re in prayer together. This could be any of your rtc ships

Penny is doing everything but listening. Probably singing seven-up songs in her head. The only bible passage she cares about is noah’s ark with the animals

Let’s say that the choir sings the hymns. These kids are not on time and you can hear Noel and Ocean arguing through the mics

[the-hwaelweg]

Sometimes you have to stop yourself and say "self, you are doing the autistic thing where you think if you can just find the right words to explain it perfectly, people will just [stop being little proto-fascists and the world won't collapse around our ears]. But the first rule of humans is that we won't just anything. Also realistically there's only approximately 10 people on the whole planet who care what you think at any given moment."

[sea-buns]

it just set in for me that i start community college this upcoming monday literally less than a week from now and i want. to throw up

[chorus-the-mutate]

We need more Jonah Vasquez × Doctor toxic yaoi content. Bonus points if it just devolves into a CIA centric spy thriller.

[zorkaya-moved]

❛ i will keep hurting. i will keep killing. anything to protect you. ❜

The guard dog of FAC is a terrifying force to go against. Oak Casket knows she wouldn't have survived a head on encounter with Rahu, but it life seems to grant her another blessing in disguise as they would go forward into the battlefield together on Chief's orders. Both the Silver Spider and the Hush requested her knowledge, her information, and her ability but MBCC helped conceal one of Syndicate's worst criminals and puppeteers. Information is something countless people desire, but it seems that Rahu may be one of those people who will desire to gain that information. Or not.

There is no need to worry about those parts, Oak tells herself as she goes forward to take part in a battle that was granted to her by the MBCC, but it seems her only role here is together information from the newly dead. MBCC had to adjust to her, not the other way around. Her room was changed, a coffing brought in, she was moved next to Dudu, and she was declining instead of getting better at the MBCC while being so far away from the disturbing and raging environment. She made the Bureau dance under her tune, adjustic and aiding her needs so well. Oak Casket almost laughed at it when she started to regain herself, finally being let out of the stuffy room where she would read literature and listen to Dudu's wishes

"Go as far as you are allowed to," the woman of silver locks and dual colored eyes says, not looking back at the FAC's seemingly beloved soldier. Another rebel, another bright mind, another determined soul. A human whose life will go on and also end up joining her later on, after death claims her. What will be her regrets? "Kill anyone who dares to approach me while I gather information, they can become essential materials as well. All of them... deserve to finally be put to rest."

Yes, rest. Syndicate needs a grand farewell to be reborn from ashes akin to a phoenix, especially knowing the one who is hiding within DisCity. Where are you hiding, Leader of Legion? The rebirth cannot be finalized without her presence.

"Let us begin."

[hyperprosexia]

cw: 18+ | omegaverse au; a/b/o dynamics; sexism; curvy/fat!reader (some physical descriptions); strangers to lovers/mates; eventual smut

pairing: omega!soap x fem!alpha!reader

part I

it all takes but one glance at you and johnny doesn't know left from right anymore.

pair that with the captain's introduction of you being his new personal assistant and the 141's secretary and being a bloody alpha and johnny's whole being is in a sudden frenzy.

a female alpha he's rarely met one in his life.

most females serving in the military are betas. female alpha's choose different careers due to the military being a male dominated field, and everyone knows that female and male alphas don't get along most of the time.

or it takes lots of work and, in some cases, lots of fights for dominance to balance out a pack order and the cycle repeats itself until someone is transferred or, in the rarest of cases, someone gets injured.

but you don't look like a typical alpha, certainly don't smell or behave like one.

you look comically tiny next to captain price, his packs alpha, his leader. you look tame, well-mannered, friendly and... warm... soft.

he can barely imagine you in some feral alpha rut, and oh there goes his heart skipping a beat that leaves him straightening his stance, rolling his broad shoulders.

and as a male omega, johnny knows the struggles; he knows how difficult it is to look a certain way, but present another.

he doesn't look like an omega, doesn't behave like one. never has.

johnny isn't dainty nor soft or small. he's not some darling docile omega that alphas go wild for. he's a large bloke, rugged and strong, and before people get a dulled whiff of his scent through his scent suppressants, they usually take him for an alpha or even a beta.

the alphas he's met have always given him an ick, left him feeling anxious, weak, and with the need to flee and rather find comfort in solitude or with other omegas he trusted, like his sisters.

johnny gets lost in his thoughts until the captain dismisses everyone from the briefing, and suddenly, he's left alone in the room while you sort out some papers at the front desk.

ever the social one, he decides to approach you directly, despite his past experiences with strange alphas.

"john mactavish," he says, holding out his gloved hand confidently, "but everyone 'round here just calls me soap."

and as you look up at him through your lashes, lips splitting into a bright smile, his knees nearly go weak.

you take his hand and shake it firmly as you give him your name personally and with the right pronunciation, not like price had butchered it previously.

"aye," he replies, eyes glinting mischievously as they drink in your supple curves underneath your neat office skirt and blouse combo.

"soap's your callsign, i take it?" you ask with a curious adorable tilt of your head as you release his hand, and goddammit, johnny hopes your scent will stick to the fabric of his gloves, so he can sniff it later while stroking his pathetic omega cock.

he licks his teeth. the buttons of your white blouse look bloody near ready to pop; the lace of your white bra faintly imprinting through the thin fabric. his instincts are buzzing to life despite suppressants, and it's taking him off guard in your presence.

and then you chuff with a chuckle. "you don't smell like soap. definitely not like the military-issued kind."

oh. so you're a playful one.

his broad back straightens. not even trying nor bothering to make him submit. you're giving him space, treating him like a normal person rather than his secondary gender. that's new.

and he fucking hates it.

are you not interested in him like that? it's his omega wailing inside him for the first time since his youth, when everything was still new and foreign, and his first heats almost made him go mad without a bloody alpha to soothe him.

"ah i " he gulps. struggles to come up with something witty as you tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, causing your scent to drift to his nostrils. he inhales deeply.

it's not intrusive or sharp like alphas usually smell to him, but his breath stutters in his lungs anyway. you smell like the wildflowers one can find in the highlands, saccharine, spicy licorice schnaps, and burnt bark mulch.

his omega whines inside him, wants him to submit, to be good for you, to make you see what he could be for you. don't you want to smell him, too?

"are you okay, sergeant?"

he blinks and his dark lashes flutter as he peers down at you. fucking hell, your voice your concern. it's making his chest feel tight. what the bloody fuck is happening?

"aye, ah'm jus' "

you reach for his right hand and bring it up to your face, and johnny doesn't pull back like he usually would.

"it's fine," you reassure him as your thumb pushes the fabric of his tac glove to the side, exposing his small scent gland there. a shiver runs down his spine.

"you're just tired, hm?"

he swallows down a whine, grits his teeth to keep it together before he nods slowly.

"guess so," he rasps, sounding like he's spent the past week in the desert. thirsty... needy. "been a few tough months." years, really.

you hum understandingly. "may i?"

he nods again. john mactavish, lost for words, a bloody rarity.

he wonders if you're just doing this because of your duty as an alpha to soothe some poor, pathetic omega like him, or because you truly want to get to know him. he'd certainly prefer to believe the latter.

and then his breath hitches when your nose brushes over his scent gland the one that shouldn't feel as sensitive as it does right now. you're scenting him, getting to know him, and he almost purrs. almost.

you're absolutely gorgeous. everything he ever secretly craved in an alpha, and he's suddenly so aware of how ugly he is compared to other omegas.

an ugly scottish bugger.

his omega thrashes inside him, whines and snarls in distress, and his hand clutched in your gentle grasp, balls into a fist when his scent sours and your nose wrinkles.

you pull back, gaze up at him in question, still holding on to his wrist, but johnny doesn't have an answer for your unspoken words.

"dinnae know what ye're doin' to me."

all he knows is that he wants to be yours.

》 continue

[the-library-alcove]

I'm enjoying the latest antitheist to stick their nose in and say that, in their ideal world, Judaism would be gone, and then being upset when the Jews take offense at this, because "Judaism is just a religion". Seriously, you just can't buy quality entertainment like this.

More seriously, though, I find it fascinating how these types are almost always English-speaking Christian-background Westerners. When you actually game out what they're saying, it's actually quite interesting, because they're dealing with a fundamental conflict of their desires and their ideology.

What I mean by that is that they want cultural imperialism (everyone across the world speaking, acting, behaving, and thinking like them specifically) but they're coming from an ideological space that frowns on or demonizes overt cultural imperialism of that sort (at least from their own culture).

So you have this "I want to impose my culture and my beliefs on others, but I can't say that I want that, so I'll just imply that it'll happen as a natural result as time passes" passive-aggressive stance as a result. And whenever that stance gets called out for the "So you want us gone, but you're not willing to own up to that?" bullshit that it is, they get so defensive and intellectually dishonest--because their entire outlook is based on intellectual dishonesty, of wanting one thing but saying another.

The really interesting thing is that you only really find these types in English-speaking Western Leftism or Leftism-adjacent spaces. My theory on why is that most other cultures with imperialist spreading tendencies own up to that fact and aren't ashamed of it, or at least acknowledge it: Russification, the Great Commission, Tabligh, Fracisation, Arabization, Turkization, Americanization... even going back to the ancients, we had Hellenization as a deliberate effort to make other societies more Greek-like.

But in this specific brand of Western Atheists... they want their personal culture to be the template for the secular monotheism that they desire. HOWEVER, as colonialism and imperialism is seen as wrong and shameful by their ideology, they need to square that circle, and the way they do that is to make it a passive-voice cultural genocide. Oh, those other cultures and religions will just vanish of their own accord as time passes. So sad, but good for the human race... and for me, because certainly my culture will endure!

In essence, they want all of the benefits that come with cultural assimilation and imperialism... but not any of the social downsides that come with advocating for it, and you're only going to find that combo in places where:

1) their language is already the international dominant tongue, so they're catered to in cultural hegemony already.

2) their political ideology actively rejects "imperialism" from their own culture, to the point of self-disownment of their supposed principles

3) their culture is a combination of superficial multi-culturalism alongside deeper demands of conformity

Is it any wonder that as soon as someone points out that their antitheist ideology is discount cultural imperialism they get defensive and angry? Because, on some level, they know it, and they can't defend it with their supposed principles, just with emotional appeals. So they deny and lash out with immature petulance, like the "well, I'll stop defending you because you're mean, so there!"

Buddy, if your defense was predicated on you wanting us gone anyway, that defense was worthless.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Furiosa thoughts

About 48 hours after watching, I think my take on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is coalescing into: I enjoyed it as a Mad Max movie but found it disappointing as a Fury Road prequel.

Any Mad Max movie made after Fury Road was always going to suffer the fate of being compared to Fury Road, which is the best action movie ever made. So like, compared to any other action movie you can think of, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (we'll call it FMMS going forward) is very very good! It just isn't Fury Road.

The rest is under the cut for spoilers:

The action sequences were compelling. (I was aware I was hunched forward in my seat in tension/anticipation almost the entire time.) Some of them were even brilliant. That long sequence where the Octoboss and the Mortiflyers (yes those are their names) are attacking the War Rig with all kinds of airborne contraptions? Phenomenal. I was like yes okay now we are in a Mad Max movie! Other than that one sequence, though, in which we see Furiosa and Praetorian Jack begin to trust each other, I thought they rarely achieved the kind of wordless advancement of character relationships through action beats that is the lifeblood of Fury Road. So the action was good, but it was just normal-good, not Fury Road transcendent.

I did miss John Seale's cinematography. While I thought the action choreography was great, the shot selection was just not as dynamic and interesting as in Fury Road. I also really did not vibe with so much of the musical themes being recycled from Fury Road. The Fury Road score is SO memorable and the music is such an integral part of the momentum and feeling of every scene in the movie; I can play that score and see every beat of the action unfolding in my brain now. I wanted new score that felt like it was a part of this new action that we were seeing.

I loved all the new worldbuilding details and finally getting to see inside Gastown and the Bullet Farm. Those locations and their unique features were utilized really well for the action that took place in them. Loved the new details we got about the Citadel. The grappling hooks just dipping down to yoink people's vehicles during battle? Fantastic. The hidden Citadel ledge with the little pool of water?? That was such a fanfic-ready location. Pretty sure I already wrote at least one fic set there back in like 2016.

The Green Place! Very different from what I imagined but so much worldbuilding in just a few shots.

In general I thought the new cast rose to the challenge. Alyla Browne who played little kid Furiosa I thought was phenomenal actually. That's a tough role, both emotionally and physically, for a child actor and she slayed it. Casting Indigenous model and actress Charlee Fraser to play Furiosa's mother certainly made the Stolen Generation parallels more obvious. I'll have a lot more to say about Dementus down below, but Chris Hemsworth brought a great combo of bonkers and menacing.

I never doubted that Anya Taylor-Joy could bring the emotional intensity needed to the role--she can do crazy eyes like nobody's business, and with the growl she put in her voice she really did sound like Charlize Theron a bit. I found her physicality convincing for a young Furiosa. But she is not Charlize, through no fault of her own. Charlize is tall and she has broad shoulders and she just takes up so much space when moving and fighting as Furiosa and I think it was always going to be hard to replicate that. As long as they didn't try too hard to bridge the gap between the characters I was fine with it. But that one scene at the end where she's bringing the Wives to the Rig I was very viscerally like that is NOT our Furiosa. (I almost wish they would've used Charlize's stunt double for that scene the way they popped Jacob Tomuri into Max's place.) They could have simply left a time gap--based on the "15 years" she says to Dementus and the 7,000+ days we hear about in Fury Road there should be at least a 4-year gap between the film timelines, although in terms of bridging the look of the two actors it feels like it should be more like 10 years.

If FMMS had been a self-contained movie about a character named Furiosa in the Mad Max universe, I think I would have found it very satisfying. But as a prequel to Fury Road there were a bunch of ways I thought it was lacking on a story level.

I think it's pretty clear that this is not the backstory, or at least not the complete backstory, that Charlize Theron was imagining while playing Furiosa. Which...there's nothing objectively wrong with that; word of God and what actors think about their characters doesn't supersede what's on film for determining what is canon. However, Fury Road positions Joe as Furiosa's main antagonist, and while we don't get the full story behind the incandescent rage she directs at him, we know that rage is there and is a big part of her motivation. In interviews at the time, Charlize talked about the idea that Furiosa had been stolen to be a Wife but then was discovered to be infertile and discarded, how she survived by hiding in the Citadel and eventually rose to a position of power, how she saw her actions not as saving the Wives but as stealing them, and that her motivation at least starts out as more about hurting Joe than helping these women.

We get only the tiniest suggestion of Furiosa's backstory in Fury Road ("I was taken as a child, stolen") and the rest we piece together by implication. She is a healthy full-life woman working for a man who keeps healthy full-life women as sex slaves, hoping one of them will produce a viable male heir for him. She is effectively a general in his army, projecting his power on the wasteland, a position no other woman seems to occupy. She tells Max she is seeking "redemption." Redemption for what? She doesn't say. But "whatever she has done to win a position of power within this misogynist death cult" seems like a pretty obvious answer.

And that's interesting! That's an interesting backstory that engages with some of the core themes and moral questions of the Mad Max universe. These movies deal a lot with the tension between self-preservation and human connection. Do you screw someone else over to protect yourself? Even if it means putting them in the terrible position that you yourself have clawed your way out of? Even if it means enforcing your own oppressor's power over them? Or do you take the risk of helping people and caring enough to connect with them, even though this carries an emotional and physical risk?

FMMS doesn't really engage with Furiosa's relationship to Joe like, at all. It's not like Joe comes off looking like a good guy. He's just hardly in the movie. I don't know if this would have been different if Hugh Keays-Byrne were still alive. I don't know if there was pressure from the studio to cast an A-list male lead actor alongside Anya Taylor-Joy (who's a hot commodity now but wasn't what I would call an A-lister when she was originally cast). I don't know if, once Chris Hemsworth was cast, that affected how central his character's role became, since he is certainly the biggest name attached to the film. I would have actually been fine with Chris Hemsworth or another actor of his ilk playing a younger Joe, and us getting to see some of the charisma that attracted followers to him.

But the end result is that we have Dementus, who is a perfectly fine Mad Max villain, and quite entertaining at times! But not the most compelling antagonist you could give Furiosa.

The four Mad Max movies that feature Max go through an interesting evolution. In the first two movies, the villains are people "outside" society--criminals and roving gangs--and the people Max is defending are "civilization." So we have Mad Max where Max is a very fucked-up cop, and Road Warrior where Max is the prototypical western gunslinger, riding in to town to protect the settlement from an outside threat, but ultimately unable to accept any of the comforts of civilization for himself.

Then in Thunderdome and Fury Road, the dynamic switches. Now the antagonists are warlords and dictators. They are civilization. And the people Max ends up helping are trying to escape them.

To me, Dementus feels much more like the earlier kind of Mad Max villain. If there's another Mad Max movie I can most compare FMMS to, it's the first one. Dementus is Furiosa's Toecutter. (Kills her family, gives her her signature disabling injury, movie ends with her seeking revenge on him but it doesn't feel heroic or triumphant.) The whole end of FMMS when Furiosa is implacably hunting down Dementus? Extremely Mad Max 1.

But violent revenge holds a different symbolic place in Furiosa's story than it does in Max's. The end of Mad Max is a tragedy because Max tells us it is. He explicitly states, early in the movie, that he needs to stop being a cop or he'll become no different than the violent criminals he's pursuing. So he leaves his job and goes on an extended weird vacation with his wife and child, trying to get away from the violence of a collapsing society. But that violence finds him anyway, and by the end of the movie, Max has become the exact thing he said he didn't want to be. It's a tragedy not because the people Max kills in revenge for killing his family don't deserve it, but because seeking violent sadistic revenge is damaging to Max. That is not what he needs in order to heal from the loss of his wife and child. What he needs is to take the risk of human connection again. This is what he starts groping toward in the following two movies and fully realizes in Fury Road.

But Furiosa doesn't have the same arc. Her story in Fury Road is about how a few people struggling against their oppressor can be the catalyst that brings down a whole regime. Furiosa getting to rip Joe's face off is fucking satisfying, and it's supposed to be! So it's a bit weird, then, to spend an entire movie giving her a backstory that not only is not about Joe at all, but implies that seeking and getting revenge against Dementus for killing her mother and Jack is what made her into the person we see in Fury Road.

Aside from questions of revenge, what I thought Furiosa's goal was going to be is set up in the beginning of the movie. "No matter what happens, find your way home." Very clear objective there. And then we see her try to get home like, 1.5 times. I thought we were well set up to follow the tried and true film story format of "simple goal, big obstacles, high stakes." I wanted to see her trying over and over again to get home, and being thwarted in different ways every time. I wanted to see grief and guilt over her mother's death turn her mother's last command into a mission for which she would sacrifice anything (and anyone) else. I wanted to see her justify working for Joe and accumulating power in the violent world of the Citadel as what she has to do in order to get home. I wanted to see "Have you done this before?" "Many times." But we didn't really get that either.

Ultimately, I think the least frustrating way to think about the film--which the film itself encourages--is as one of many possible Wasteland legends about a character called Furiosa. Maybe it happened this way. Maybe it didn't. Maybe this is the Furiosa we see in Fury Road. Maybe it isn't. It all depends on how much you believe of the History Man's tales.

[skzophreniic]

Home pt.2

warnings: deadly smut and fluff combo, fingering, breeding kink (Chan obviously), and I think that’s it? I’ve been in my soft hoe era so you’re all going down with me. Lemme know what you think!

(@chvnmax look!!! I did three pics side by side 😃)

part one

Chan who wakes up first, because he always does. But it certainly doesn't help that you're squirming and whimpering in your sleep, the sheets twisting underneath you.

Chan who at first thinks you're having a nightmare, and is genuinely concerned. But upon closer inspection, at the way your thighs are locked together, the way you let out a breathy little sigh that sounds suspiciously like his name, he realizes, a flush spreading from his cheeks to the tips of his ears.

oh. oh.

Chan who is flustered at the slight twitch in his boxers. He swears that he's not usually this needy, but it's been four months and now that he knows that you're craving the same thing as him, he has to have you.

Chan who pulls you closer towards him until your back is flush against his chest and softly kisses the back of your neck until your lashes are fluttering open. He can feel the hitch in your breath when his hands find the hem of your shirt, deftly slipping under them.

Chan who chuckles when you say, "Cold," at his actions. Who murmurs, "Yeah?" while moving his hands up and down your tummy. "You'll warm them up from me, won't you?"

Chan who can feel the heat radiating from your body, a stark contrast to the coolness of the room. His fingertips trace patterns along your skin, sending shivers down your spine as he leans in to press soft kisses along your shoulder.

Chan who revels in the intimacy of the moment, the way your body fits perfectly against his, the rhythm of your breath syncing with his own.

Chan who innocently whispers, "Nice dream?" because he can't help but be a tease, and he loves seeing you squirm as you try to find an acceptable answer. Who's chuckle vibrates through his chest and into your back from how close you two are pressed together.

You tentatively hum in affirmation, wondering how much you gave away in your sleep and he nuzzles his face into your shoulder, nipping at the skin he finds there. A little sigh leaves your lips.

"Was I in it?" He asks.

You hesitate for a moment, feeling his warm breath against your skin, the sensation sending a shiver down your spine.

"Maybe," you reply, your voice barely above a whisper.

Chan who continues tracing patterns across the soft skin of your stomach. "Interesting. Was I, perhaps, wearing any clothes in this dream of yours?"

"Chris," You whine indignantly.

Chan who laughs against your skin, saying, "Okay, okay!" Who's lips brush against your earlobe, hands now trailing down your sides, igniting sparks of electricity wherever they touch. "I'm glad, though," he murmurs, "Because you've been in mine for quite some time."

Chan who still sees the sleep in your eyes when he tilts your head towards his for a kiss. Who takes his time, kissing you slowly, hands tracing up your spine, entangling themselves in your bra straps. Who forgets every other mouth his had touched before you. Who nips at your bottom lip until you part yours for him.

Chan who chases your lips when you pull away for air, his own lungs burning. Who reassures you that he'll take care of you when you give him those eyes you know he can't resist.

Chan who's fingers find their place where you need him most, brushing over your clit and you're already bucking.

"My needy baby," he coos, using his fingers to spread you open. "It's been a long four months for you, hasn't it?"

All you can do is bite your lip and nod, trying hard not to make any embarrassing noises. But you can't help the mewl you make when he sinks a single digit inside of you.

Chan who takes his time, savoring each moment, wanting to etch this memory into his mind forever. He moves his finger in slow, deliberate motions, gradually adding another finger when your wet enough.

Chan who savors every gasp and moan that escapes your lips, his touch becoming more deliberate and precise as he learns your body's responses. He revels in the way you arch into his hand, seeking more of the pleasure he's offering. Who's thumb stokes your clit, fingers curling inside of you in the way he knows you like.

Chan who coaxes two orgasms out of you with just his fingers because it's been a while and he needs you prepped to take him. Who's already rock hard and throbbing in his boxers by the time you do. But he's patient.

Chan who nearly groans out loud when you grind down against him, whining, "need you. I need you, channie."

Chan who can't resist your plea, the desperation in your voice fueling his own. He's only a man.

Chan who can’t help the groan this time when he finally slips inside of you. Your walls are squeezing around him so desperately, so well. You feel tighter than you usually were, but you’re so wet from just fingers that he bottomed out in one go.

Chan who presses your own hand flat against your lower tummy. Who whispers, “I’m right here, baby. Feel me?”

Chan who goes achingly slow at first, because he wants you to feel all of him, every vein scraping against your fluttering walls until your crying and grasping at the sheets, begging him to go faster.

Chan who complies because he can never deny you. More selfishly, because he can’t deny himself the pleasure of pleasing you. Who gradually picks up the pace, rolling his hips into yours in a way that has your eyes rolling to the back of your head.

Chan who whines—whines—into your neck as your walls clamp down around him as you near your third orgasm. He could feel his own rapidly approaching, the coil taunt in his stomach.

Chan who always babbles when he gets this close. Who whimpers, “Wanna make you a mommy. You’ll let me, won’t you? You’ve been…nghh—f-fuck…you’ve been so good for me, baby. So so good. You’ll let me fill you up, yeah? Make your tummy all big and round with my kids? Hmm, pretty girl?”

Chan who snakes his hand around your hip so he can press against your clit while he fucks into you and you are gone. You don’t even have the energy to warn him before you are gushing around him again.

Chan whose entire body shudders and he buries his face into your shoulder when he finally comes undone, shooting his seed deep inside of you. Who fucks his cum back inside of you, moaning at the overstimulation but wanting to breed you so bad.

Chan who stays that way, his cock buried deep inside of you as he holds you close against his chest. Who knows you’re on birth control but genuinely hopes to have kids with you someday.

Chan who dreams of a future filled with love and laughter, of a family built on the foundation of the love you share, of a lifetime spent together in each other's arms. And as the dawn breaks outside, casting its golden light upon your tangled limbs, he thinks about the small, black box stuffed deep inside his suitcase he has yet to unpack.

Chan who is finally home.

[sgiandubh]

The trouble with Stravaigin'

This pic is currently making the rounds on Tumblr and X, and for all the good reasons (thank you @mariaae, for bringing it here):

After a rather busy week and an even busier week-end, it's certainly nice to check in for this 👆.

Funny how the dunces across the street dub this a 'wrap party combo' of sorts. Oh, come on, are you that stupid, people?

Jamie Roy's OG post is absolutely clear with this regard:

'Thank you @thevinepr for having us at @stravaigin_g12's 30th Birthday.' An event that is directly linked to this very recent Stravaigin's announcement, that has to do exclusively with S's spirits' business:

'In an announcement that will delight the legions of whisky lovers who have been demanding its addition to Stravaigin’s renowned drinks menu, The Sassenach @sassenachspirits by @samheughan is today confirmed as joining the bar’s Scotch whisky offering as a permanent fixture 🥃. (...)

Stravaigin's Olivia Wong - Scotland's Bar Manager of the Year says: “We are thrilled to welcome The Sassenach to Stravaigin. We are all big fans of Sam and his Scotch whisky here at Stravaigin and know excitement levels will be running high with our patrons, as we announce it is becoming a permanent addition to our drinks menu.'

Note to self: this is something Marple 'forgot' to post about, despite her all-consuming obsession for S. Without this information, the rest was presented as just another heavy drinking sesh. Tss, shame on you, madam! Is this where you're at? Lying to your readers, in an attempt to demonstrate: a) S is a highly-functioning alcoholic (by your reasoning, half of the UK might be, ROFLMAO) and b) Ashley Hearn is a lazy, entitled idiot, who spends her time in bars chatting and drinking with her buddies?

Lying by omission is either a mortal sin (when made with the purpose of hurting someone's reputation) or a venial one (when 'in jest', like the Screeching Banshees pretend to do). But I have no idea if that woman is a Catholic, nor do I care. Either way, it's unsavory as fuck. So long for playing it Switzerland, in here.

All of the above to emphatically (LOL for ages) say that this event has nothing to do with Outlander. This has everything to do with Sam Roland Heughan and his own, local business network. This is exactly why Jamie Roy was thanking the organizing PR firm (more on this, a bit later in this post).There were zero reasons for C to be there that night, something that has been confirmed by fans on X:

Interesting: 'took a picture with them'. In the context, people were wondering if there were pics with the Two of Them, not the rest of the cast. But hey, didn't you know? THEY CAN'T STAND EACHOTHER, NEVER COULD!

And there we go, we have the arrival video (why does it always have to be Brazilian fans directly or indirectly involved? that is a mystery on par with who killed JFK, LOL):

And here we have it, courtesy of @maripimpao, the OG X poster (https://x.com/Mari_pimpao/status/1850588095046971487?t=p3_lv013WuINhA085ayr4A&s=19).

... S arriving separately, as predictible, probably on his own (fucking Tumblr doesn't let me upload more than one video, but you'll find everything on the X page above), then C and Skeleton (God, that girl must KNOW stuff!) together - not surprised at all, either:

A normal convo ensues, C stating that she feels 'both happy and sad' because Friday was their last day ever on set. I was very surprised by her genuine warmth, to be honest, as I wasn't expecting it, but it is in line with public lore on her being spotted before by fans.

A word on The Vine PR company. This is one of the biggest PR firms in Scotland and even the UK, with a very nice portfolio of clients, partners and events they manage on the regular:

Oh...

And re-oh...

So, there should come as no surprise to find, among The Vine's clients (for whom it managed flagship events), two of LVMH's portfolio companies/brands: Moët & Chandon and Glenmorangie. I also remember being ridiculed, as writing fanfic, by both Marple and her minions. Well, eat crow now, I have been announcing it for a year, already, for both of them. Not once, but three times in a row.

One...

Two...

Third time's a charm/Jamais deux sans trois:

Business-wise, this is about the amount of time it takes to make things of this amplitude happen. Wait, I forgot that business was bound to flounder, sweet Baby Jesus on a motorbike!

On top of it all, I have some very inconvenient, yet rhetorical questions (for the people across the street, a rhetorical question is supposed to make a point, not wait for an answer):

What about McTavish's spirits business? Still in promo mode, bought medals, and all the tralala? Hmmm.

What about Tony McGill? Why isn't he seen at any event at all, in the music business or otherwise, like ever? Isn't he supposed to manage (Media Manager, my 🦶) a Scottish band? Where was he, on Friday night? How does he even do business? Hmmm.

Oh, FFS.

[medlilove]

(Edited to add headshots because tumblr hates detail) I've etched away at this is a lovely few weeks, so click for full res and all the little details, okay? It's my love letter to the journey I've found myself on

This is long-ish, so its under the cut (but worth reading...)

I had been thinking a lot recently about that double feature episode, you know the one? I half remembered it then, when they chased a bunch of alien spies so fast through the solar system they all got thrown back in time. Half the crew went on a little undercover adventure in Toronto in 2024. It was great because they got completely cut off from the Enterprise, so half of them, well mostly Uhura and Spock if I recall correctly, spent their time collecting as many radios as possible and worked on building their own communications. Uhura and Spock were basically taking turns constantly tweaking radios by the window with wires everywhere. Oh yeah, their base of operations was the whole top floor of a worn out old building looking over a big square. They ended up in the really arty/queer part of town full of art galleries and thrift stores.....??

Chapel and Chekov were sent out to those shops to find disguises for everyone. I loved the joke that Chekov was puzzled and slightly alarmed that Christine just knew everyone's clothes sizes and measurements with no explanation. Later on, they ended up getting separated from the rest of the group and getting held up by B story shenanigans, mostly getting lost and running into culture shocks. It was fun to see them having their own adventures and made for a pretty interesting combo. Spock and Uhura spent most of their time with the tech, accidentally listening to the times most popular music while changing frequencies. Jim and Sulu paired off to search for clues, and getting supplies and spent a lot of time talking to the locals setting up for a Pride parade. McCoy, feeling paranoid and irritable that he had practically no equipment, wandered around with Dr Alfred Nahdi, the Botanist, who kept picking random weeds and talking about how extraordinary the little dandelions were. Oh and together they stole a whole medical bag out of an ambulance?? It was pretty funny.  Anyway, the main issue was they couldn’t risk leaving the area because all these alien spies had assimilated into the population and they had to track them all down and bring them back with them so as not to disrupt the timeline or something. They had to track down the aliens while making sure the aliens didn't pick up on who they were or that they were also out of place. They ended up being there for around two whole ass months, I think. The spies were spread out all over and there were about 30 of them, but it ended up being the Botanist, Alfred (Alfie) Nahdi who found the enemy base of operations by complete accident. Alfred, who had spent most of the time studying all the common flowers and weeds that were so ordinary at that time but were extinct in their time, figured out where the aliens' base of operations was because the big plant shop at the end of the square had a few succulents that could not have existed in 2024. It was a big "woah" moment. And there was this whole thing where he had to act like he hadn’t just figured it out because the florist, who was almost certainly a spy, was watching him and McCoy. But soon after, it all went to hell anyway when a fight broke out and Sulu was straight up shot with the aliens' weapon that had bullets made from alien metal. So then Bones had to perform old school surgery on him in their HQ, with only 2024 equipment. Jim, Spock, and Uhura were out fighting and ran into Chapel and Chekov and were able to finish them off, but it got really crazy because there was a Pride parade in the square at the same time so they had to make sure no one noticed them. While Bones was pulling bullets out of Sulu, with the botanist assisting him until Chapel (who had been sent by Jim) appeared and took over. McCoy said something like, “Christine, I’ve never been so glad to see you in my life,” and they sewed him up all old school. And it worked out! But Bones was a mess because he had to do messy surgery with none of his kit, and so much pressure, and more blood than he was used to... Chapel stayed with Sulu, and Bones and Nahdi went to sit on the fire escape stairwell and had a sweet scene of Bones just full of adrenaline, his hands couldn't stop shaking. They sat hand in hand for a while listening to all the people on the streets below. Then Spock, Jim, Uhura, and Chekov appeared at the stairwell and they all had a happy, albeit exhausted reunion. After a day of everyone recovering from all the excitement, Uhura and Spock used some extra tech they got from the aliens and finally made contact with poor Scotty who was up on the Enterprise losing the will to live. Anyway, their outfits were iconic tbh.

I invented this whole thing to draw Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy in a sweater. I lost control of the situation. I spent a lovely two weeks etching away at this with the support of my lovely ST server, I love you guys. This ones for you.

[timeslipcamp]

i always thought it was interesting that people point out the first anomaly that mc interacts with is the "snakes of hera" and focus on the bridal veil aspect of it. hera was a bride, that's for sure, her and zeus' wedding feast lasted 300 years according to some sources. but according to a lot more of the myths, she was an extremely reluctant bride, not to mention she was never really depicted with snakes.

rambles below the cut, spoilers if you haven't finished chapter one i guess lmao

hera is kind of the epitome of an unhappy bride whose union was forced on her, but she was also the goddess who oversaw marriage and fertility. so i can see where people keep looking into the bride thing. but i don't think the focus should be on the veil.

the only place in mythology we really see hera use snakes is when she sent them to kill heracles as an infant, someone her husband had sired out of wedlock. these snakes were sent out of revenge for a wrong being done to her.

i'm slowly getting the idea, especially after writing that post about the houses, that revenge might also become an important theme in this story. the first anomaly we encounter (other than another greek named one, the kyklos) is named after one of the most classic tales of anger and revenge.

the snakes protect the wearer, the bride, against those who would do her harm. hera would like that. anyone who threatened her marriage (and even her to some extent) she went after. if not directly, then by sending creatures to attack. (actually. literally as i typed that, mc never uses her powers directly to fight the anomalies. we're always sending the ghouls.) the snakes certainly tried to go after romeo. and then later, the snakes turned into a ring.

sure, bridal ring. i could see that, i guess, considering it's on the ring finger.

but this doesn't really give wedding ring vibes. the pentacle on the ring is the main reason why. typically, pentacles symbolize a complete balance of the elements, though it seems this ring gives us the ability to enhance the ghouls' stigmas.

there's been a few hints that some of the ghouls have issues with their stigmas being painful, and it doesn't seem like the process of gaining those abilities was any walk in the park. eating part of the demons soul? eurgh. not to mention most people don't survive making a pact. so i'm wondering if this ring is completing some part of the process that bridges the gap enough that it doesn't affect the human parts of them as much, and thereby strengthens them by giving the full gift, not just a taste of the power.

i've also seen the ring of solomon theory being thrown out, but that one is typically depicted as a six pointed star, not five like we have. i'm sticking by my pentacle theory, because you know what else that symbolizes???

damn chimi how come you got so many cycles in your symbolism

anyways i'm sticking with hera. i think the ring balances the power in the stigmas, represents the cycle we're in, and the combo of hera (protector of women during childbirth.) i'm not saying mc is pregnant, but she certainly is carrying something inside of her, huh :)

[copypastething]

Ok, I don't usually post about these kinds of things, but I think I want to briefly talk about the new Overwatch hero because I've barely seen anyone talk about it yet.

So this is Juno, the newest addition to the Overwatch 2 roster, we currently don't know much about her. Now, don't get me wrong, I think the design is appealing enough, pretty cute even - in a vacuum (hehe), it would be fine. However... if you've been following the development of Overwatch at all and seen the other heroes, especially the female characters, you may see why this design is frustrating to me.

Why yes, it's another conventionally attractive young woman in a skin tight suit, despite being some sort of astronaut. Damn, must be some amazing future tech that allows people to wear space suits that look like body paint and yet still provide protection against radiation, vacuum and extreme temperatures. One could argue that this isn't her full suit and she is just wearing this in-game because combat, but come on. I want to add that having a body like this isn't bad, of course, it's more so the fact that the women in this game are rarely allowed different proportions or facial features.

And yea, I wasn't kidding when I said skin tight.. Certainly she also has movement animations with gratuitous hip-swaying to accompany this certified Blizzard-Moment™ of a design. The animations are cool, but this combo left me stunned when I watched the trailer haha.

The sexualisation part isn't the only thing that bothered me, of course. I actually liked this concept art much more - it provided a bit of bulk and visual interest while still retaining that sleekness that they wanted to have in there.

But for some reason, they stripped her of this, leaving it almost a bit under-designed, especially for Overwatch 2 standards.

All of this is just my opinion, and I want to emphasize that I don't fully hate the design. I'm just lamenting what could have been and the fact that, for a new hero, they just made cute Overwatch girl number 12 again. In the end, they want to market to straight gamer boys so eh, it is what it is.

[lillaydee]

Shhh!!! Part 3

Celebrity!Joel Miller / F Reader

A reluctant celebrity contractor who has closed his heart for love meets a celebrity-hating Cafe on Wheels owner...

She HATES him. Thing is, he couldn't get enough of the coffee she makes...

Tag List:

@kirsteng42 @peelieblue @harriedandharassed @joelalorian @vickie5446 @inept-the-magnificent @maried01 @brittmb115 @peedrow @lovefreylove

Let me know if you would like to be added/removed from the tag list.

Dividers by the awesome @saradika

Header by Moi cause I learned how to use Canva! Yay me!

WARNINGS: Grumpy Joel (The Last of Us), Protective Joel (The Last of Us), Good Parent Joel (The Last of Us), Joel is Bad at Feelings (The Last of Us), Alternate Universe - No Cordyceps Outbreak (The Last of Us), Joel Needs a Hug (The Last of Us), Celebrity Joel Miller, Fluff and Angst, Eventual Smut, I'm Bad At Tagging, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags May Change, Hurt Joel (The Last of Us), Jealousy.

SERIES MASTER LIST

Part 2

You’re just gonna say it.

You fucking hate celebrities.

Particularly ones who barked at you thinking you wanted a selfie when all you tried to do was be nice to them.

And those who your ex went crazy for and dumped you over the phone for simply because she was a celebrity, and showed interest in him.

Fuck celebrities. Fuck them all.

Okay, maybe that was a bit much. They’re not all bad.

Growing up in Hollywood, spending time at a popular café all your life, you were used to seeing them around. You’d met all sorts. Sure, there were snobby ones, but then again non celebrities could be snobby too. Part and parcel of being in the service industry. There were also celebrities who were the friendly, kind, sweet ones, nonchalant ones, blend-in-the-crowd ones – all patrons of your late Dad’s. Some even knew him by name, some even went to his funeral.

BUT.

The ones that stood out to you were the ones who cemented your idea of celebrity. The rude and entitled ones. It was a one-two combo that made you want to shove your fist down their throats. These were the ones who were basically that one drop of vinegar in a communal bucket of milk. Just spoiled everything for everyone.

And no, you were not the only one annoyed by them either. You could still see the faces of the long line of people in the café when some assistant pushed their way to the front of the line, telling everyone they were ordering for so and so from that show, and if met with resistance, the celebrity themselves made an appearance, ignoring the insults and proceeding to hold the line, unable to make up their minds as to what to order.

Not to mention the restrictions to their coffee. You could understand being careful with what was put in their coffees for health and dietary reasons - after all, everyone deserves to enjoy their cuppa, but sometimes, the demands can be just ridiculous.

One seemingly clueless songstress demanded a latte without milk, adamant she was served some in Italy, no less. Are you sure you know coffee, hon? They have them in Milan, surely you would have them in LA?

What the fuck was latte without milk? Latte literally means milk. You didn’t even want to imagine what the Italians served her that made her think a latte without milk was possible.

And don’t even get you started about the super particular ones, the ones who insisted you go to a certain organic store for some organic sugar that cost you a few fingers, only to use exactly one teaspoon and not even finish the damn cup. Oh, and there was that one supposed teen star that wanted exactly 100 drips of espresso in her cappuccino. Like… what??? Who had the freakin time to count? Certainly not you, that’s who.

Oh, and the worst ones of all, the ones who you had literally never heard of before in your life, who thought they were such a big deal that they got annoyed at you for not knowing who they were. Those were the ones who would snap their fingers at you like you were their personal butler. No amount of money in the world would get you to respond to someone’s finger snaps. No sirree.

And lately, it’s the freakin influencers. I have 20,000 followers. If you comp my bill, I will post about your cute little café and you’ll get loads of new customers.

First of all, cute little café? 

Honey.

This one was one of 30 branches. And second of all… you didn’t even have enough time to serve the currently long line of customers you had because you were standing right there telling her she had to pay seven dollars for her girly ice blended. It’s okay. You’ll risk not having more customers. Of course, she went online and complained about you being a boomer who didn’t know who she was.

If you could shake her, she would be a cocktail right now.

Oh, and did you mention you went to high school with a famous actress who decided that since you two ‘went way back’ - she talked to you one time, called you Layla instead of Lily, yeah… sure… you ‘went way back’ alright - she didn’t need to pay for the coffee and pastries her entourage ordered, much less left a tip? She’s worth millions, and she wouldn’t pay for coffee.

Dave knew this irk you had with celebrities. And he found it cute – he thought living in LA was awesome, celebrities around every corner. He grew up in the sticks and was awestruck by the glamour of it all. Got all tongue-tied when one walked into his vicinity. He got told to ‘move out of my way, boy’ once by an elderly action star, and it was the highlight of his life – literally the first story he told you when the two of you met all those years ago, extremely proud of the encounter despite admitting that the man stared at him as if he was nothing more than gum at the bottom of his shoe. You had rolled your eyes and ignored him then, but he sort of pursued you, and before long, you couldn’t help but find him rather endearing.

The two of you dated for 12 years, but didn’t live together. He told you he was not into that, that living together was only for married people. And you didn’t see what the rush was, so you just went along with it. You thought you were happy, just living your lives in separate togetherness.

The two of you loved each other, of course, but you were very different people. He was a party guy, you were a homebody. Your idea of an ideal evening was a quiet night in, a good book, some nice, soft music, or a movie or two. His was hanging out with his much younger co-workers, coming home with a buzz at the very least, waking up with a hangover the next day, one that lingered longer and longer as he got older.

It was during one of those parties that he met Cleo. God knows what she said to him, because he called you at three in the morning, leaving a voicemail saying that he was head over heels in love and that your time together had come to an end. He sent his buddy over to your place to drop off your box of belongings from his place, and to collect his from yours. According to the guy, Cleo approached him, talked to him for a bit, and the two proceeded to make out for hours.

That must’ve been heaven for him. She was young and very much the ‘it’ girl back then. She was everywhere, on TV, the movies, the adverts, the whole shebang. He simply couldn’t resist her charms, his buddy told you. And despite his scepticism in cohabitating while unmarried, he moved in with her right away.

The sad thing was you didn’t even feel upset at first. You accepted that your relationship had plateaued some time ago. You had gotten to a point where you only saw each other on a weekly basis, and that, only for a couple of hours, and didn’t miss each other much in between. Gone were the days of endless texting and hours-long phone calls, the mushy dialogues and the inability to get your hands off each other. In fact, by the time he broke it off, the two of you hadn’t had sex in months. So perhaps the make-out session shorted his brain? You had no idea, and you didn’t even care. You got used to seeing him on the red carpet with her – well, not as her date, more like part of her entourage. She was always paired with some hot young star of the moment for the cameras, part of the publicity to keep her in the spotlight, he had told you.

When your Dad died, a year after the break up, he came to the funeral, stood next to you and Jenny, head hung in respect. After, he walked you to your car and gave you a long hug as you sobbed into his shoulder. He was a familiar in your life, you had known him for 13 years at that point. It was an intimate, vulnerable moment for the both of you. Even he was crying – his own father passed when he was just a toddler, and your Dad was kind to him. Your teary moment came to a screeching halt, quite literally, as Cleo screamed at you after pulling him off you, telling you to keep your grubby, coffee stained hands off him. She spewed post after post on her social media, snidely remarking on how some women couldn’t let go, warning others to beware of opportunists who would use the loss of a life as a manipulation tactic to steal other women’s men.

You hadn’t heard from Dave since, and you were not in the mood to contact him either, especially since he stood there like a chump as she made a scene at your Dad’s funeral. She, however, made it her mission to stalk your whereabouts for about a year, going to wherever your truck was parked, making a scene, buying coffee only to then leave a bad review, only stopping once your Uncle Bill threatened a lawsuit against her.

So, yeah, you hated celebrities.

As for your love life, you were beyond your mid-30s when you started dating again. You did go on a few first dates, only to come home after each one feeling like you would be so much better off alone. Going on first dates when you were pushing 40 was… interesting. It was astounding how much less crap you were willing to settle for, and how obvious the red flags were. One guy took you to an Indian restaurant and had to leave early because of… erm… indigestion. One completely ignored you and spent the entirety of the date trying to coax his wailing ex-wife on the phone - she had gone completely mental upon finding out he finally went out on a date. One guy kept receiving text messages from his mother, only to admit he still lived with her – she was just excited he was out on a date, you know? Just giving him tips on how to behave.

The last guy seemed completely normal and interesting, all the way until the end of the date, when he took your offer to split the bill, which was completely fine, you did prefer to pay your own way after all. Except, the bill that arrived was for eight people, not two. He had ordered take out for his six teenage children, who he had conveniently forgotten to tell you about.

So, you decided no more dates. You’re just gonna stay single. It wasn’t exactly abnormal to be single these days. You have your own business, a cute little apartment, you’ll be alright. Sure, you might die alone and not be found until someone complained about the smell, but that was neither here nor there. It’s not like your cause of death would be ‘death by singledom’. To your knowledge, at least, no one had ever died from being single. So you put your head down and focused on work, doing what you loved the most. Overcharge people for legal addictive substances.

You loved this new setup you had. Small business, you had a handful of regulars, you had something to do with your time, made enough to pay your bills. Less headache. Less stress. Less worries. You liked that you were busy for a couple of hours in the morning, and then had some time chilling and eating food from the trucks next door for lunch after the lunch rush. You liked that the kids from the rec centre came to hang out with you, despite the fact that they made you feel so fucking old.

And best of all, you liked that no celebrities came to buy coffee here from you, the lot usually only visited by the people working in the surrounding areas and the rec centre. You could use a life away from all that. But now, you discovered that a celebrity had just gotten a free coffee from you – a free coffee made of six shots of espresso that you gave him out of spite, just because he was rude to you.

Great. Just great.

“Hey Lil?” Ellie finally piped up, having served the final customer for the afternoon. You were wiping the tables outside, waiting for the lunch you ordered from the truck next door to arrive. “Can we talk?” She looked nervous.

You sat down after throwing the rug in the sink, washing your hands. She sat opposite you, fiddling with her shirt.

“I’m sorry about my old man. He’s a bit… well… he’s… you see… my old man’s kind of…”

“Famous,” you finished the sentence for her. Her eyes snapped at you in shock. “Frank told me. He didn’t know your Dad was famous either. Not that it matters, but how come you’ve never told us?”

“Well, he doesn’t like it if we do. And to be honest, we don’t like it either. Telling people about it, I mean. As soon as people know who he is, we all get treated differently. I get away with it a lot more than Sarah does. She has his last name. And she was seen with him a lot since he got famous. But Lil, Joel is not like that. He’s not that kind of celebrity. He doesn’t even see himself as one.”

You scoffed. Sure. Someone who didn’t see himself as a celebrity would snap at people supposedly wanting selfies. Ellie immediately went on his defence.

“It’s what usually happens. People would walk up to us as we were eating at a restaurant for selfies. Follow him into the bathroom, that sort of thing. Sarah told me people would come up all the time and just shove a camera in front of his face. And if he said no or get annoyed, it would be all over social media. Joel Miller was rude, all that. He didn’t choose this life you know. When he started this he was just thinking about Sarah, he wanted to give her everything he could. He never thought everyone would have a camera in their hands at one point, or that he would get this well known.”

“If he hates it so much, why doesn’t he just quit?”

She looked contemplative for a while. “Lil, it’s not that I don’t want to share, but having been in his life all this while, I just want to protect his privacy, you know? You have no idea how many times people in his life said something – something they didn’t even consider something, and the media just blew up as soon as they found out. When Sarah was little, Uncle Tommy got her one of those baby dolls that you could feed and change their diapers for Christmas, you know the ones? Well, she told her friends at pre-school that Uncle Tommy was giving her a baby for Christmas. Their parents heard and went to the news – apparently you get paid a lot of money for information like that back then, and suddenly the gossip columns were filled with the news that Uncle Tommy supposedly got someone pregnant and was giving his baby away. It was ridiculous. So I’d rather not say anything, you know?”

Tony from the next truck came over with the lunch you ordered for the both of you. As you unwrapped your sandwich, Ellie pleaded with you to forgive her old man again.

“Please Lil, he didn’t mean it. I think he was just worried I’d gone missing or something. I was usually waiting for him up front. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to get a car. I hate seeing him worry like that. He’s busy, but he wanted to be there for me and Sarah, you know? Please Lil? He’s a good guy. I promise. He didn’t have to take me in, but he did. I have a good life now, because of him. I... I don’t know what would have happened to me if he didn’t step up.”

She was fiddling with the sandwich in front of her, looking so forlorn and hopeful at the same time, begging you to forgive her Dad.

Damn it. Now you felt bad.

Uh oh.

“Erm… I might have done something bad…” you told her, your eyes wide, your teeth showing in an attempt to cringe and show regret at the same time.

“What? What did you do?”

“He… uh… he came by this morning for a cuppa and I might have… erm… served him a lot of espresso instead of the usual americano…”

She spat her sandwich out, “He came in for fancy coffee?” She looked disbelieving for a second, "Which size? How many shots?”

You cringed, told her the largest cup you had, and held up six fingers.

"I did top off the six shots with water, though..." you added, still looking guilty.

She snorted and began howling with laughter. She finally waved her hand at you, “Man’s used to deadly potent burnt coffee. He’ll be fine.”

“How do you burn coffee?”

“He has this ancient coffee machine that’s only a year younger than Sarah. Refused to throw it out. That thing is beyond broken. That’s how you burn coffee. And short the house.”

You snorted. “Why doesn’t he just get a new one?”

She shrugged, but you could tell she was holding something back.

“So… he came in for coffee… did he apologize?”

“Nah… I was busy. I didn’t really give him the chance.”

“But you will let him if he comes again tomorrow?”

You couldn’t even pretend. You were touched by her pleas. Fine, you’ll give him another chance.

The next morning, Joel waited in the truck after dropping Ellie off for attempt number two to apologize to you. He had the script locked in his head now, determined to at least get the words out to you. Tell you how sorry he was for snapping at you. Thank you for giving his daughter a job. That he would never bother you again, just please, forgive him.

And while he was at it, he could get another cup of that extra strong coffee you gave him yesterday. He may have left feeling down and flustered that he couldn’t get the apology out of his mouth when facing you, but he did feel energized after that cup. He needed one, since his machine was still broken. Not because he liked the coffee or anything. He was still staunchly against overpriced, fancy coffee. He was just an average American who needed his morning cup of Joe. Which was why he was still in his truck instead of going out when Ellie did. Ellie and Sarah must never know he bought coffee here. The idea that they would tease him for deliberately getting fancy coffee was beyond a nightmare. Nope. So he was going to wait until Ellie walked in to class before going for another try. At an apology, not the coffee. He could do without that cup, obviously. But since he was here and all. Might as well.

He was about to leave the truck when Tommy called. They had another meeting with Angela that morning, to pick up their discussion from two days before. The current contract was for another year. He was already reluctant about this coming year. The show basically consisted of one main, large project a year, where the progress of the massive project was portrayed in every episode, along with remodels for other houses or office spaces which would be completed weekly. Smaller DIY slots were interspersed with the main two projects. All of which required shooting, him being away from home much of the day. Taking time away from the ability to take genuine contracts away from the cameras, honest work that gave him joy. Time away from his daughters.

The plan for the next year was locked. The main project was to basically remodel an entire mansion. He was sceptical about the timeline. This mansion had 20 rooms and 11 bathrooms. They usually build and shoot for nine months out of the year. This large project, along with the smaller, but still considerable projects and the DIY slots to boot, all to be filmed within nine months. He just didn’t see it happening. He knew for a fact that they will run long. He was getting tired of it all. Sarah would be home in the coming year. He wanted to spend time with her and Ellie.

“Tommy.”

“Joel, where are you?”

“Just dropped Ellie off. I thought I had another hour and a half?”

“You do. I just wanted to talk to you before. Come on Joel, just five more years. Think of the money we could make. We could demand more if we renew. I need the money to pay for everything Joel. You can’t just think about yourself here.”

“What do you mean you need money to pay for everything? You have money.”

“I’m not like you Joel. My house, my staff, my cars, I need to maintain them all. Not all of us live the way you do, Joel. Not all of us do our own chores and just have weekly cleaning ladies. And not all of us drive beat up pickups Joel. Some of us have standards.”

Joel was beginning to lose his patience again. He had had enough of Tommy’s whining. It was his choice to buy a mansion with more rooms than he needed. It was his own choice to have a fleet of cars, some of which he never even drove. It was his choice to buy thousand dollar wallets and a wardrobe that could rival the men’s department at any malls. It was his choice to buy a collection of watches, the price of some of them could feed a small country. And now he was complaining that he didn’t have enough, despite the millions he had earned. He was earning much more than Joel, in fact, never shying away from the modelling contracts and endorsements. And yet, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. It would never be enough.

“I’m not stopping you from going on, Tommy. You go ahead. But me, I’m done. I want to spend my time with my girls. I want to rest, enjoy my hard work. Be away from the spotlight for once.”

“Come on, you think people would still want to watch if you’re no longer involved? It’s called ‘Build with the Millers’, Joel. We both need to sign on. Where are you even gonna go, Joel?”

“I don’t want to talk about this Tommy. My mind is made up. I have more important things to think about than money. Maybe you should grow up and find other things to focus on. Some things are forever. But looks and fame go away, Tommy.”

“That’s exactly why we need to get it while we can, brother. Think about it. Please.”

“Maybe no one’s told you this, Tommy, but money isn’t everything. It doesn’t buy you happiness. Tell me you’re happier now than you were when we were scrounging for contracts back when Mama was still around.”

“Think about the girls. Don’t you want them to be taken care of if anything happens to you? You want to leave them with nothing?”

“My girls will have plenty left to them, and even if they didn’t, they were raised to live without extravagance, Tommy.”

“So was I!”

“And yet, here you are, a greedy little boy, crying about how his millions are not enough!”

Tommy hung up.

Great. He knew what he was going to face later this morning, now. He looked at the old, cheap watch Sarah got him on his birthday when she turned 14. He smiled thinking about that year. It was 80 dollars, a lot of money for someone her age. She had stolen 20 dollars from him to be able to pay for the watch – she couldn’t save enough from her babysitting jobs by the time his birthday came around. No amount of gold plated Rolexes could rival the price of that watch.

The watch that was telling him he had a little over an hour to get to his meeting. Damn Tommy, he didn’t realize how much time he spent talking to him on the phone. He rushed out of the truck and walked around the building to get to your lot. There were two people in line. Good. He didn’t exactly have much time. Traffic could be really bad at this hour.  

A young couple ran past him and stood behind the second person in line. Great. Joel ran a little to get behind them. The older lady at the front of the line was taking a little time to decide what she wanted. You were so patient with her, he thought, his foot tapping slightly from the urgency he was feeling. The couple in front of him were starting to make out a little, Joel taking a step back to give them some privacy, though he was cringing a little bit at such PDA. You finished serving the lady. The man after asked for some complicated drink he had never heard of, and you went about making his drink, surprisingly quickly considering he couldn’t even pronounce the drink without scrambling his brain. The couple was starting to moan, the girl practically climbing the boy, right there in front of your coffee truck. Joel looked away, his foot tap-tapping a bit louder, arms crossed on his chest.

You finished serving the second man. But the couple wasn’t stopping. You called out to them, asking them what they could get for them. They didn’t stop. The making out got a bit more aggressive, in fact. Joel had had enough.

“Excuse me,” he said, nudging the boy’s foot with his boot. The couple finally separated, a look of annoyance on their faces. “You might want to order now, some of us have places to be,” Joel said, pointing at you.

The girl’s face morphed from annoyance to excitement. “Oh my God, you’re Joel Miller! I love you! Can I get a picture?”

“I’m in a hurry, please order,” he pleaded, trying hard not to lose his composure. The last thing he needed was for you to see him lose his cool again.

“Oh, come on, just one picture. I’ll be really quick,” she said, as she raised her phone and leaned into him, snapping a quick photo, his grumpy face just in the frame. She didn’t like it. She leaned in again, asking him to smile. He looked at you pleadingly, as she snapped yet another picture.

“What can I get you sir, miss?” you asked, a little louder, still with a smile on your face. You could see how annoying this would be for him. You could also see he was trying hard not to snap.

The boy ordered his drink. You keyed it in, looking at the girl for her order. She hummed and oohed for a while, unable to decide, so you started his coffee while you waited. She still couldn’t decide. Three more people joined the line behind Joel as she contemplated what she wanted, taking her own sweet time, all the while wrapping herself around her partner.

Joel found himself taking deep, deep breaths, willing himself not to lose it. He was so tempted to just scream at this young thing, so self-absorbed she had no problem invading his personal space, twice, and then taking her own sweet time inconveniencing those behind her. Two more people joined the line, making a total of six people she was holding up with her indecisiveness. After what felt like forever, she finally ordered an iced lemon tea. Joel swore he could see you almost roll your eyes behind your sweet, dimply smile, turning around to get it for her, while this girl, completely oblivious to the emotional turmoil she had caused, turned round and asked Joel for another selfie, since he wasn’t smiling in the first two.

You gave her the tea, and the boy paid, but the girl kept pestering Joel for another selfie. He ignored her, simply asking you to please make him the coffee you made him the day before, he didn’t know the name. The girl now asked you what he ordered. You ignored her, too, making his coffee for him. The boy finally had enough and pulled his girlfriend away from the truck, angry whispering at her for causing such a scene, as she sulked away, still unable to grasp how childish she was being.

When she finally left, you, along with Joel and all the customers in line heaved a sigh of relief. You quickly made his drink. He decided he would talk to you that evening instead, seeing as two more people had now joined the line, including a man who looked even grumpier than he was. You placed his drink on the sill, so he reached inside his pocket to get his wallet, only to realize it wasn’t there. He panicked, and asked you to serve the next customer first, running off to his truck before you could say anything.

When he came back, he went to the front of the line to get his drink and pay. The grumpy man drew an exaggerated breath and shouted at him.

“Hey Miller, get back here. Just because you are who you are doesn’t mean you could just cut the line!”

“I was just going to pay, I left my wallet in my truck,” Joel defended himself, his impatience and anger beginning to surface.

“I don’t fucking care. You left, you don’t get to just cut the line. We all have places to be.”

“It’s okay, Joel,” you gently said, “It’s on the…”

“I can pay for my own fucking coffee!” he snapped at you.

Oh… hell no.

“Fine,” you said, just as the realization that he had snapped at you, yet again, surfaced for Joel, his eyes closing, frustrated with himself. “One americano with six shots of espresso. That’ll be 40 dollars.”

His head snapped from taking his card out to looking at you. “What?”

“The espresso is five dollars a shot.”

“Six shots make 30 dollars, which is still robbing me way blind, by the way,” he seethed.

“That’s right. Ten dollars is a ‘fuck you, I don’t like you’ tax,” you raged right back, keyed in the price and shoved the card reader to his face.

(Shout out to @hiddenbabynyc for giving me this awesome tax line)

He tapped his card, a little too aggressively, took his coffee and huffed away from your truck as the grumpy man shouted profanities at him, congratulating you for getting back at an entitled celebrity.

Joel slammed the door to his truck closed, still seething. 40 dollars for a cup of coffee? You are nuts. A blind-robbing, coffee-riddled, hoity-toity nutcase. He was gonna have to talk Ellie into finding another job. No way was he going to let her work for someone as snobbish as you.

But… he did pay for that coffee, and his Mama taught him never to waste food. So he took a sip.

And just like that, his eyes involuntarily closed, and your dimply smile filled his head.

He could never go back there. But at least he now knew what coffee that was. He could get it elsewhere.

Or maybe, he could try and fix that damn coffee machine of his.

Part 4

[salierisregards]

Clothes Make The Man: Paulie Lombardo

Much to my chagrin, I’ve discovered that Mafia DE is maybe one of the best video game remakes of all time. It’s obvious from the designs to the writing to the worldbuilding that someone cared a lot about making something with intent and purpose and quality in mind.

Maybe you disagree, and that’s fine, but I haven’t seen anyone really make the case for DE in a design sense. I’ve seen arguments for gameplay, the graphics, the acting, but not so much the characters. Fortunately, I do this kind of thing for fun. If it falls to me to be the guy that talks about the fashion choices in a game from 5 years ago, so be it. Derek Guy I am not, but I can certainly try. Hello, I’m Ray, and I’m going here to talk at length about something no one cares about!

Fun bonus challenge: Try to guess what my major was by the end of this post.

The first thing I noticed in the jump from Mafia (2002) to Mafia DE was the choice to really shake up the character designs. This makes sense, as Mafia wants to be a cinematic series and the foundation of good cinema is strong characters. Hiring actors is part of that, but so too is the deliberate design of the characters - how they look and what they wear in specific.

Paulie and Sam and Tommy are beloved characters in Mafia Classic, but the fact that the games are so old presents a challenge to the modern designer. Audiences in 2020 need more than a cool badass player character gun guy to carry their interest, and Paulie and Sam as your sidekicks need to charm and engage the player for the game to deliver on its narrative beats.

So how do you take an old, low-fidelity character design and make him memorable? Let’s take a look.

I want to start with Paulie because I think his rework tells us the most about the goals of the designers, and we can use that in the future when we (I, me) talk about the other characters and their design choices.

In Mafia Classic, Paulie is easily described: Grey suit, red tie, no frills. The only reason his suit isn’t black is because that distinction is reserved for Tommy, who’s tie is also red.

This isn’t an indictment or commentary on the original game at all. If you thought keeping the dark-haired, dark-eyed, be-suited cast of guys in a mafia movie was difficult, imagine trying to do it in a video game and all while staying within a certain polygon count. The fact that you can tell - at a glance - the difference between Paulie, Tommy, Sam, Salieri, and Frank and do so while keeping most of them in a similar uniform is a testament to Illusion Softworks’s attention to detail and commitment to making something of a particular caliber. For 2002, Paulie’s is a perfectly functional design, no notes.

Mafia DE, having the flexibility afforded them by time and a budget, makes the (frankly, inspired) choice to change the characters’ wardrobes over the course of the story. Paulie actually gets the fewest amount of wardrobe changes of the main three with only two suits (three, I guess, if you count the one he wears to the funeral), a coat, a hat, and the single appearance of the shirt/suspenders combo we see him in at the end of the story and nowhere else.

For those curious, the funeral fit is just a recolored version of the grey suit, double left-side pockets and all.

This lack of outfits compared to Sam (four suits) and Tommy (I haven’t finished counting, but it’s more than four) is interesting in light of the fact that DE also expanded his character to make Paulie something of a clotheshorse. He’s only got a few suits, but he’s very proud of the ones he does have. As indicated by his dialogue, he hates getting his clothes wet, schemes about stealing classy suits as a way of making money, and at the very least has a passing interest in maintaining his hair. Our boy’s got a bit of a vain streak.

Note Tommy's quick pursed lips expression here. Here's a guy who's used to dealing with this shit.

The brilliant part (and this will become a running theme) is that the character design is doing as much work here as the dialogue.

Taking cues from the Classic design, the outfit we first see DE Paulie in is a grey suit and a red tie. However! The increase in graphical fidelity gives the designers here an opportunity to expand on the details.

As a quirk of what I believe to be the lighting engine, Classic Paulie’s suit often appeared not just grey, but cool grey, almost violet. The DE designers really leaned into that, giving the first suit we see him in a more purple tone, brought out even more by the (now darker) red tie. The second suit he starts wearing after A Trip to the Country leans into this even more heavily, purple windowpane check with a rich purple tie and matching pocket square.

Thank you Nikita Nanako on Artstation for uploading this to his portfolio. Makes my life easier.

Even without knowing the historical significance of purple in fashion, this marks Paulie immediately to the player’s eyes, and certainly in the eyes of the other characters. Purple is a flashy color, historically expensive to manufacture, associated with royalty. By the time Paulie’s wearing it in 1930-whatever, it was an artificial dye and much less expensive to make, but that doesn’t stop it from being a statement. Purple is a color you wear when you want someone to notice what you’re wearing. And as we’ve established already, Paulie very much wants people to notice. There’s also like, literary implications to the color choices here, but I think that’s another post.

The lapels on the DE suits, too, say a lot about the kind of guy Paulie is. Both suits have peaked lapels as opposed to the notched lapels of the Classic design, and indeed, everyone else in DE. Peaked lapels - like the color purple - are a deliberate choice, one that draws attention to itself. They’re sharp-looking, or as Paulie says, “real classy”.

More importantly for our purposes as students of design though, they’re not always appropriate for every situation. A peaked lapel is usually reserved for a highly formal look. To our modern eyes, we see a peaked lapel and think ‘high-powered courtroom drama’, or ‘classy social event’. It’s not exactly out of style, but it’s a bold choice to wear to, say, an illicit moonshine deal at an old abandoned farm. Paulie does not care about the context. Unless the situation demands discretion, this is a guy who is pulling up in his Sunday best no matter what.

And the hat. Oh, we can’t move on without talking about the hat.

Note the windowpane check suit has a hat with a shinier band too!

Paulie is the only character in the game to sport the homburg, again setting him apart from the more classic fedoras the Sam and Tommy usually wear. The homburg is a favorite of online menswear aficionados, but despite years of tireless blogging, this particular hat has yet to come back into fashion the way the fedora has. As a result, to the modern eye, the homburg looks very old-fashioned. It has a tall, broad profile that… Hey, see if you notice a running theme here: draws attention to itself.

Importantly, the homburg (in the American cultural consciousness anyway) is very much a bad guy hat. There’s a few contributing factors to this, but it comes primarily from our genre fiction and the images of the mobsters of the ‘30s and ‘40s. In gangster flicks, the good guy detective wears a fedora. The big, bad, cigar-chomping gangster wears a homburg. If you’re British, you might be able to get away with wearing one as a stuffy upper-crust sort, but if you’re American you are immediately ranked amongst the likes of Michael Corleone and Lucky Luciano.

The urge to add a picture of Diamonds Droog here was a little too strong.

There’s more I could touch on. His ostentatious little peacock pocket square alone has bewitched me.

But really, I want to get to the crux of the thing, which is that like… Despite everything about him saying he pays attention to these things, none of these aesthetic choices he’s making are actually working for him.

The peaked lapels, the big, fat hat, the garish colors. They might command a hefty price tag, but they don’t actually *look good*. This is a guy who has learned what good taste looks like in theory, but has not made himself master of it. The clothes are wearing the man.

Would you trust this man with your money? Your car? Dating advice?

It makes sense when you think about what his background would have been. What does a poor son of immigrants know about expensive suits? Only what he can pick up by observation! He wasn’t raised in a high-society environment, he wouldn’t know the difference between a suit you wear to a warehouse shootout and a suit you wear to a wedding just as he wouldn’t know the difference between a fish fork and a salad fork. To a guy like Paulie, the details don’t matter. He just knows the suits are expensive, and that a younger Paulie would never have been able to afford them.

Many real-life gangsters had this problem as well. Al Capone went from being a poor bootlegger to an extremely rich and powerful gangster, and all the money in the world couldn’t buy him good taste either.

He's swimming in those lapels! And hey, that tie looks familiar...

There were other gangsters who had this problem too, but some were smart enough to look to their peers for cues about what to wear and how to wear it. (We’ll talk more about that when I get around to Sam.)

The fact that Paulie doesn’t do this, however, tells us everything we need to know about the guy just by looking at him. He’s stubborn, stuck in his ways, unable to tell the difference between expensive and tasteful, and wouldn’t know subtlety if it clocked him in the jaw. All from the design decisions the art team made, and without adding a word of dialogue. This is brilliant stuff. I’m in love with him, obviously.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading.