#do you notate in your books?

[artemismatchalatte]

Currently Reading: Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield. March 23 2023.

[pseudowho]

It wasn't the first time Kento had bought you flowers.

Your week had started badly, and as weeks which start badly often do, had the audacity to get worse. And worse. And worse. Kento watched it with the mute horror of a husband who could do little to intervene in the particular nature of ills the universe had decided to throw at you.

Sat on the sofa on Friday evening, your week finally dragged (kicking and screaming) to a close. You slumped against the cushions, having drowned your misery in most of a bottle of wine, and you sniffled, hiccupping.

Kento approached you with gentle caution; not because he couldn't manage your anxious, ill-tempered sniping at him. But rather, because he did not want to provoke a snipeshot, just to see you add a gut-chewing guilt to your list of misery, too.

"I just--" You sniffed, rubbing your eyes with the sleeve of one of Kento's old cardigans, "--I just wanna...get back to normal. Have an easy weekend. Bake...bake some bread, or...or something..."

Kento chuckled, sitting opposite you, and pulling your foot onto his lap to stroke it. His voice rumbled, good-humoured.

"Bake some bread?"

You giggled, which bubbled into a sob, lubricated by your wine. You pressed your head into the back of the sofa, slowly falling asleep to the feeling of his fingertips rolling sweet massages up your legs.

You felt Kento shift, climbing closer to bracket over you. You felt his nose, his breath, nudging the side of your head as if a cat. Your face crumpled into a frown, grumbling.

"...Kento...stop..."

"Time for bed, beautiful." Kento whispered against your hairline. "Come on."

You resisted, a paltry effort. You felt Kento's arms slip behind your knees, around your back, lifting you with a grunt, to cradle against him. Walking you to the bedroom, he kicked the door open with one bare foot, and slipped you into bed.

You dipped in and out of sleep, to clattering noises coming from the bathroom.

"Open up." You obeyed, and giggled to feel a toothbrush begin to swish around your mouth. Floppy and useless because Kento allowed you to be, you finally fell into a fractious sleep, disturbed by the traumas of the week you had left burning in your wake.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

You woke, reluctantly, to the muffled slam of the front door. You predicted the next sounds in your sleep-addled state, and heard them in perfect order: keys hung up. Shoes kicked off, placed into the shoe rack. Kento clearing his throat. A coat hanging, and footsteps past your bedroom.

You rolled, sloppy, shuffling out of bed with a yawn.

Approaching the kitchen, you noticed a wooden palette on the kitchen counter, and frowned. Inside, in neat rows, lay bag after bag of carefully colour coded...something. You blinked, bleary, and Kento smiled at you as if you were a painted beauty.

He approached you, trailing fingers through your scruffled hair with a hum. His hand dipped down to your fingers, grasping them and bringing their knuckles to his lips for a kiss.

"Good morning, lover."

"Kento, what's..." You gestured to the palette.

Kento was tying an apron behind his waist, flicking through a recipe book with carefully colour-coded notation stickers. He looked up to you, and to the palette, his eyebrows raising for a moment.

"I bought you flours."

"...flowers?"

"No. I bought you flours."

You blinked once, confused. You rolled a bag, turgid and heavy in your hand, and felt the softground shift of the contents within, and it clicked.

"...flours." You sniffled, welling up. "You bought me...flours. Flours, for..."

Kento's smile softened, turning the honey in his eyes to melted gold as he cupped your face, stroking one stray tear away with a swiping thumb. He whispered.

"Flours. For bread."

Kento reached behind himself, his eyes still on you, and a giggle chirped through you again as he lowered an apron loop over your head, reaching around in an embrace to tie it behind your back.

Hours later, sampling different hot breads, oozing with melted butter, a white sheet had draped over the week you left behind you. You left whitedust handprints on Kento's bottom. He sliced wheatsheafs into dough.

It wasn't the last time Kento bought you flours.

(bonus points to anyone who can guess the movie reference)

[sprintingowl]

Deadball

Deadball Second Edition is a platinum bestseller on DrivethruRPG. This means it's in the top 2% of all products on the site. Its back cover has an endorsement from Sports Illustrated Kids.

It's also not an rpg I'd heard about until I discovered all of these facts one after another.

I was raised in a profoundly anti-sports household. My father would say stuff like "sports is for people who can't think" and "there's no point in exercising, everything in your body goes away eventually." So I didn't learn really any of the rules of the more popular American sports until I was in my mid twenties, and I've been to two ballgames in my life. I appreciate the enthusiasm that people have for sports, but it's in the same way that I appreciate anyone talking about their specific fandom.

One of the things that struck me reading Deadball was its sense of reverence for the sport. Its language isn't flowery. It's plain and technical and smart. But its love for baseball radiates off of the pages. Not like a blind adoration. But like when a dog sits with you on the porch.

For folks familiar with indie rpgs, there's a tone throughout the book that feels OSR. Deadball doesn't claim to be a precise simulation or a baseball wargame or anything like that---instead it lays out a bunch of rules and then encourages you to treat them like a recipe, adjusting to your taste. And it does this *while* being a detailed simulation that skirts the line of wargaming, which is an extremely OSR thing to do.

For folks not familiar with baseball, Deadball starts off assuming you know nothing and it explains the core rules of the sport before trying to pin dice and mechanics onto anything. It also explains baseball notation (which I was not able to decipher) and it uses this notation to track a play-by-play report of each game. Following this is an example of play and---in a move I think more rpgs should steal from---it has you play out a few rounds of this example of play. Again, this is all before it's really had a section explaining its rules.

In terms of characters and stats, Deadball is a detailed game. You can play modern or early 1900s baseball, and players can be of any gender on the same team, so there's a sort of alt history flavor to the whole experience, but there's also an intricate dice roll for every at bat and a full list of complex baseball feats that any character can have alongside their normal baseball stats. Plus there's a full table for oddities (things not normally covered by the rules of baseball, such as a raccoon straying onto the field and attacking a pitcher,) and a whole fatigue system for pitchers that contributes a strong sense of momentum to the game.

Deadball is also as much about franchises as it is about individual games, and you can also scout players, trade players, track injuries, track aging, appoint managers of different temperaments, rest pitchers in between games, etc.

For fans of specific athletes, Deadball includes rules for creating players, for playing in different eras, for adapting historical greats into one massively achronological superteam, and for playing through two different campaigns---one in a 2020s that wasn't and one in the 1910s.

There's also thankfully a simplified single roll you can use to abstract an entire game, allowing you to speed through seasons and potentially take a franchise far into the future. Finances and concession sales and things like that aren't tracked, but Deadball has already had a few expansions and a second edition, so this might be its next frontier.

Overall, my takeaway from Deadball is that it's a heck of a game. It's a remarkably detailed single or multiplayer simulation that I think might work really well for play-by-post (you could get a few friends to form a league and have a whole discord about it,) and it could certainly be used to generate some Blaseball if you start tweaking the rules as you play and never stop.

It's also an interesting read from a purely rpg design perspective. Deadball recognizes that its rules have the potential to be a little overbearing and so it puts in lots of little checks against that. It also keeps its more complex systems from sprawling out of control by trying to pack as much information as possible into a single dice roll.

For someone like me who has zero background in baseball, I don't think I'd properly play Deadball unless I had a bunch of friends who were into it and I could ride along with that enthusiasm. However as a designer I like the book a lot, and I'm putting it on my shelf of rpgs that have been formative for me, alongside Into The Odd, Monsterhearts, Mausritter, and Transit.

[justhereforthemeta]

Romantic expectations and the story we didn't see: A magic trick hiding in plain sight

Here's a hopeful meta for all my fellow celestial brainrot sufferers out there. Cheers! :)

This idea started as a dead end, trying to track the movements of Crowley’s sideburns/tattoo because I thought time travel shenanigans were afoot. I had to abandon that theory when it was pointed out that David was simultaneously filming as the sideburns-having Fourteenth Doctor, and in-universe Crowley can do whatever he wants with his facial hair whenever he feels like it. But hey - null findings are still findings!

On the bright side, pausing the show to make notations in a spreadsheet forced me to slow down and notice other changes I'd overlooked the first time around: acting choices, costuming choices, references to book lore. And possibly a few surreptitious flicks of the wrist, in places where we’re meant to be focused on the magician’s other hand.

@amuseoffyre and @ineffablefood had a great exchange recently about romance and “the significance of misdirection and three-in-one (magic) tricks” throughout the show. I suspect Neil has done something brilliant with the audience’s long-standing expectations (since the 1990s, really) for the love story between Crowley and Aziraphale to develop. And while it is a wonderful story indeed, playing to this expectation lets Neil distract his audience from the blink-and-you'll-miss-them seeds he's planting for the final chapter.

Continued below the cut...

Let’s start at the beginning of Episode 2. First, context: In the previous installment, Crowley stormed out of the bookshop, was whisked away to Hell by Beelzebub where he learns about the Book of Life threat to Aziraphale’s existence, then returned to the bookshop to dance a little apology dance and hide Gabriel with an unintentionally massive joint miracle. In S2E2, we and Shax catch up with Crowley as he's snoozing in the Bentley.

Shax: “You’re in trouble”

A. J. Crowley, cool as a cucumber: “Obviously. Former demon, hated by Heaven, loathed by Hell. How will our hero cope?”

Interesting! Sarcastic? Yes, absolutely; but that’s also a good 4500 years and an averted apocalypse away from “I’m a demon. I lie,” wouldn’t you say? Someone is sounding a whole lot less depressed and aimless and navel-gazey (do snakes have navels?), and a whole lot more like he’s got a project to focus on, since his "what's the point?" ruminations on the park bench in E1.

And of course we all noticed the costume change right away. Hello, black turtleneck. Feeling cute today, thought I’d cover up my graceful long neck? That sounds unlikely. Let’s put a pin in this one.

There’s also an interesting acting choice going on here. Crowley speaks to Shax in a funny, drawling, too-cool-for-you voice that we haven’t heard in a while. Specifically, not since 1967. If you go back and give the S1E3 scene in the Dirty Donkey a listen, you’ll hear it (and if you know of another instance of it that I've missed, please let me know!). In S2E2, he keeps up this odd voice (if anybody knows what kind of affect this is supposed to be, please do tell!) throughout this dialogue with Shax, except for the brief moment when she first surprises him about the joint miracle having been detected.

1967 was a fun year. Crowley masterminded a heist! And seemed like he was having a ball doing it, right up until his little caper was called off after Aziraphale brought him the thermos of holy water. Crowley spoke to his co-conspirators in that same funny, very 60’s-caper-film voice. He wore a hip 60’s turtleneck. He bought petrol for the only time ever, so he could get those sweet James Bond bullet hole decals for his car (per the book, seen on the Bentley in the show).

Those James Bond bullet hole decals would of course have been part of a promotion for this 1967 release, which you just know our film-enjoying demon went to see in the theater:

Starring this suave, be-turtlenecked guy:

And now - begging your forgiveness - a brief rant.

There are a number of posts out there that refer to Crowley’s S2E2 turtleneck as a flirtatious sartorial choice - actually, ‘slutty’ seems to be the favored accusation. There are even a few posts floating around commenting on how sweet it is that Crowley swaps out his slutty, kinky, throw-me-over-your-desk-and-take-me turtleneck for a more dressy and appropriate collared shirt specifically to attend Aziraphale’s Jane Austen ball. 

Now this is all in good fun, and Crowley does indeed look fantastic here, and I do love a good fangirling sesh as much as the next person. However, fandom’s collective tendency to interpret what we are seeing on the screen through the lens of romantic expectation can, at times, give rise to a kind of blinkered enthusiasm that obscures the original text in a haze that is part Mandela Effect, part unrestrained horniness, and part in-group code talking and identity reinforcement.

Respectfully, Crowley’s black turtleneck does not appear at all in S2E5: The Ball. In fact, it never appears again after the end of S2E2.

For Someone’s sake, let’s collectively pull our heads out of the romantic fog/gutter for a moment and focus on what we are actually seeing in the book and on the screen. For Crowley, this is an uncharacteristic within-period costume change. There is a surreptitious flick of the wrist happening here, out in broad daylight, and we are all missing it.

So here’s a thing. Aziraphale appears to have settled comfortably into life on Earth, his neighborhood, his books, using Crowley as an outlet for sharing his good deeds that he would once have reported to Heaven. Meanwhile, at first glance, Crowley appears stuck in a rut. There he slouches on a park bench with Shax in S2E1: a guy who lives in his car, stagnantly clinging to old familiar habits, mulling over the pointlessness of it all.

Setting aside the bit about living in the Bentley (I’m going to attribute this to well-documented issues between him and Aziraphale, discussed in many other excellent metas, and move on), Crowley has at least two very good, proactive reasons for maintaining his contact with Hell through Shax. First and foremost, it’s a source of information he can use to keep ahead of potential threats to Aziraphale and himself.

But also, I would posit…he kinda likes it.

Recall that book GO was first conceived as a parody, with Aziraphale and Crowley as spy-against-spy (but not really) field operatives in an ages-old cold war between Heaven and Hell. Their entire book dynamic is rooted in the trope of two opposing agents who have been in the field for so long that they now have more in common with each other than with their respective head offices. Their St. James’s Park meetings among other spies and ministers trading secrets are a sendup of what was once a well-known Cold War-era cliché. 

Our contemporary Crowley still likes slick outfits and hellaciously expensive watches and high-performing vintage cars and pens that write underwater while looking like they could break the speed limit. He coaches Shax on how to blend in as a demon on Earth, and he helpfully redirects the wayward contact looking for the Azerbaijani sector chief. He loves improvising and getting away with shenanigans under the institutional radar. And boy golly was he impressed with Jane Austen: master spy, brandy smuggler, and mastermind of the 1810 Clerkenwell Diamond Robbery. 

And if you look at it a certain way, for as long as Crowley has considered himself to be on “[his] own side” - going at least as far back as Job - he could almost think of himself as a sort of double agent. It’s actually a very romantic sort of notion, befitting our hopeless romantic of a (professedly former) demon; but it’s romantic in a very different way than we, the audience, have been primed to watch for.

In other words, in a very “on my own side” kind of way, Crowley really gets a kick out of being a spy. Or at least, dressing up and accessorizing as one, and moonlighting as a good-doing double agent when he can get away with it. And also being a plotting criminal mastermind. Two sides of a coin, really. Just look at Jane Austen.

My point is: No, Crowley did not wait around for Shax to come find him in a turtleneck so that he could go flirt with Aziraphale later. He’ll flirt with Aziraphale no matter what. No, this:

is actually this:

Much like the one he wears to the Dirty Donkey in 1967: 

whilst holy water heist-plotting. Here's a clearer shot with gratuitous Bentley, because I love them:

…and which he'll wear again, with appropriate camouflage, while infiltrating Heaven in S2E6:

That is the 1967 planning a HEIST turtleneck for committing ESPIONAGE and STEALING THINGS in. Because turtlenecks are what modern human master spies wear to get their hands dirty - after all, he saw it in a movie once. 

Crowley dons his tactical turtleneck sometime during the first major break in the action (which doesn't happen until after the joint miracle to hide Gabriel) after he learns about the threat the Book of Life poses to Aziraphale. Loverboy started mentally preparing himself to go after that book immediately upon learning that it was in play as a genuine threat. 

Now let’s pick up at the S2E2 Dirty Donkey scene, reading the story from this angle. Of course, Crowley enables Aziraphale’s delusions about Heaven by hiding information from him, and does not disclose the Book of Life threat when they meet again. They go into the pub, Aziraphale shamelessly paws Crowley’s chest like the seductive Bond Girl he is, and Crowley gets to act all smooth and suave and intimidating as he chases off the interloping Mr. Brown (or Mr. Collins for the Pride & Prejudice fans, take your pick).

Ergo, theory: beginning in S2E2, Crowley is already thinking of himself as a Jane Austen/James Bond action hero (“How will our hero cope?”), psyching himself up to rescue Aziraphale by getting his spy game on and stealing the Book of Life.

Now, watch closely...This is where Aziraphale and Crowley brainstorm their plans to solve the problem they both know about: getting Maggie and Nina to fall in love and thereby get Heaven off their backs. Crowley’s vavoom plan is drawn from yet another movie (“Get humans wet and staring into each other’s eyes - vavoom, sorted. I saw it in a Richard Curtis film.”). But Crowley also implicitly shares his solution to the problem he hasn’t told Aziraphale about. And true to form, Crowley’s Jane Austen solution isn’t the same as Aziraphale’s Jane Austen solution. 

Two solutions that fail by the end of Season 2, and a secret third one that might still work...and there's our magic trick of three.

‘“I’m lost. Am I doing a rainstorm?” Yes, babe. And a heist, too - just not until season three. Can I get a wahoo!? 

I won’t spend time on A Companion to Owls during this meta, except to note that in all three minisodes, we get to watch stories that involve Crowley acting as a double agent on “his/their own side” - successfully making Hell and Heaven think he’s fulfilling their will while saving Job’s goats and children; failing to fool Hell when he does a good deed in Edinburgh; and of course, collaborating with Aziraphale whilst evading detection as an infernal turncoat during the Blitz.

(Because this is getting long, I'll also skip over Crowley's interrogation of Jim in this episode - I'll probably come back to that in another meta. But interrogating is a rather spy-ish thing to do.)

When we catch up with Crowley again later, he’s already slipped out of the bookshop, having left Aziraphale to his biblical reverie about Job. He saunters snakily down Whickber Street as usual, but with a very pointed and swift glance over his shoulder (see pic above). This demon is up to something - possibly something we didn’t get to see, something that may have happened offscreen while he stepped out. In any case, knowing there’ve been unfriendly angels in the neighborhood that morning, he’s rightly concerned about being spied on.

From this point until the beginning of episode six, there isn’t a whole lot of opportunity for Crowley to make any next moves. He babysits the bookshop, during which time he manages to wring some crucial information out of Jim; he follows his Crowley’s Angel around like a puppy, and downs a bottle of red like a good old fashioned lovesick boy once that’s been pointed out to him. If any plotting or scheming is underway, this occult being is keeping stumm for now.

This has been a long one, so I’ll wrap up with Crowley’s infiltration of Heaven with Muriel. The turtleneck disguise works (Archer fans, be vindicated!) long enough to gather some information that will be crucial not just to the denouement of S2, but also to Crowley’s journey in S3 (previous post on Crowley's Fall, Saraqael, and memory wiping). And Aziraphale gets to enjoy that view exactly zero times. The point isn’t oh, a turtleneck! How flirty! So cunty! So cute! Y’all. Everything matters. The costume change was a deliberate choice. In-universe, Crowley’s decision to wear his special spy turtleneck for spying in is a signal that he is out doing spy things, even as we watch.

In sum: Beginning in S2E2 and continuing through the end of the season, Aziraphale and Crowley are actively living out the scripts of two parallel, concurrent, and completely different Jane Austen stories. But you and I, dear fellow audience member, we came here for a comedy with a hefty jigger of romance, and that’s what Neil gave us to focus on. And right up until the Final 15, that was the only story we saw.

Meanwhile, Special Agent A. J. Crowley doesn’t have time to mope around at the end of S2E6. He’s kicked down, but he’s not out. He's got a Book of Life to steal, a very serious bone to pick with a certain memory-wiping angel, and his Angel and the world to save. 

“‘Heigh ho,’ said [romantic, optimist, former demon, hero, master spy] Anthony Crowley, and just drove anyway.”

[gravehags]

the one who comes (richly endowed)

Pairing: Cardinal Copia x f!Reader (Curator!Reader)

Rating: EXPLICIT, MDNI

Tags: rough sex, cum eating, copia in that goddamn white suit, oral (m receiving, through pants), semi public sex, ghoul voyeurism, masturbation, curator reader being evil

Words: 3,459

Summary: A series of sartorial events.

a/n: i am quite literally always saying how i'm going to suck copia off through those white lululemon leggings so you know. here you go.

~~~

“The eh, Ministry tailor wants to go over some of the tour outfits tomorrow afternoon. Care to join me?”

You yawn wide enough to pop your jaw and snuggle into the side of your lover, fingers raking through his abundant chest hair. He’s got a book propped up on his belly and his reading glasses perched on his long nose as he pauses every few moments to notate something in the margins or underline. 

“Yes please,” you say, leaning forward to place a kiss to each of the entwined 6s tattooed on his freckled pectoral. The action makes him chuckle, eyes briefly leaving the page to flick to you.

“You promise not to get too jealous?” he asks innocently, turning the page, “I mean these are the outfits my adoring fans will be seeing me perform in while you’re stuck here at the abbey. Who knows what kind of mischief I could get up to?”

You snort and sharply pinch his nipple, causing him to let out a ridiculously rat-like squeak.

“You’re not the only one who could get up to mischief,” you coo, “When the Cardinal’s away, the curator will play, hmm? I bet Terzo isn’t busy these days…”

Copia lets out a growl and removes his glasses, tossing them carelessly on the nightstand along with his book.

“What did you say?”

You’re trying so hard to bite back the evil grin that threatens to spread across your face as you lean away from your lover to flop onto your back and stare at the bed canopy above you.

“I think it’s only fair that I be allowed to seek out some ah…diversion in your absence. Particularly when you’re going to have your ‘adoring fans’ crawling all over you. Tell me, which of the Papas is best at eating pus–”

You don’t get to finish the sentence because Copia has rolled on top of you and situated himself between your legs.

“Dolcezza,” he leans in to growl in your ear, making a delightful shiver run up your spine, “Do not toy with me. Do not make me keep you tied to my tour bus bed with your face in the pillow and your ass in the air to use as I please every night, eh?”

You giggle warmly.

“I don’t know, sounds kind of ideal to me,” you purr, “To be so deliciously, divinely stuffed with your cum over and over after every show. What is it the siblings call me? ‘The Cardinal’s mistress’? And what is it the ghouls call me? Ah yes, ‘the Cardinal’s mate.’ Would you mate with me in that tour bus, amore? Loud and feral, for all your ghouls to hear? I think they’d like to wat–ah!”

Flinging back the covers and sitting on his haunches, he grabs you and roughly flips you over. 

“Piccola provocazione mia,” he sighs, rucking your nightgown over your hips and bending your knees, “If you wanted my cock so badly tonight–” he says, and you hear him yank down his sleep pants behind you, “--all you had to do was ask.”

You giggle into the pillow as he drags the head of his cock through your slick folds.

“Much more fun this–ah!--way! Fuck, Copia!”

He’s bottomed out inside you before you can even finish your sentence and places a firm hand between your shoulder blades as he begins to roughly fuck you. You turn your head to the side to get some air and so he can hear every noise that comes out of your mouth.

“You–ah–want it like this? Bent over and spread open for anyone to watch? To listen? Tesoro, we should recruit you for–hngh–sex rituals. Who knew a sweet girl like you liked–ah–an audience?”

The snap of his hips against yours is ruthless and the sound of his balls slapping against you with each thrust drives another moan from your mouth.

“Fuck, Copia, right there! Feel so good baby, l-love it when you u-use me, ah!”

His hand on your back presses you further into the mattress, causing you to arch your back even more sharply. The new angle has starbursts exploding across your vision.

“Sei mio,” he grunts, his grip on your hip bruising, “And until the m-moment I leave for t-tour I’ll–ah–gladly remind you, s-si?”

“Yours, yours, yours,” you chant, pushing back onto his cock to meet his thrusts, “Mmm fuck, Copia, make me yours!”

His fingers abandon your hip to reach around and slide through your folds, moaning at how wet you are. When he brushes against your clit, you let out a sharp whine.

“Copia, please! Don’t stop, don’t stop, oh fuck!”

Your cunt spasms around him and you cry out as he brings you over the edge, his name on your lips. 

“Ragazza brava mia,” he moans, “My perfect girl, so good for me. Cazzo, I’m gonna cum, amore. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

When he pulls out of you, you whine at the loss but crane your head as far back as you can to watch him feverishly stroke his cock.

“Come on baby,” you pant even though your neck is killing you. “Cum on me. Mark me up.”

The sight of his fist rocketing along his reddened cock, slick with your juices has you grinding into the mattress, desperate for another release. When he cums with a shout, covering your lower back in spurts of his seed your body sags into the bed. You can hear his rapid breaths as he wrings out every last drop onto you and finally lets go to survey his handiwork. He drags his forefinger through the mess and you turn your head, opening your mouth obediently. When the warm digit meets your tongue, the salt of him on your tastebuds, you close your mouth around it and suck eagerly.

“What a deviant I have made of a sweet little virgin,” he marvels and you slide off his finger to swallow with a smile.

“Think I was a deviant even when I was a virgin,” you murmur, “You just encouraged it. But some of the fantasies I had…”

“Oh?”

“Get me a rag to clean this up then I’ll tell you all about them, my love.”

He does as he’s told, wiping up his seed and rejoining you in bed so you can assume your earlier positions. You make a bet with yourself about how many times the two of you are going to hunger for one another that night.

As always, both of you exceed your expectations.

–

“What do you think about this? Amore?”

“Hmm?” you look up from the binderful of sketches you’ve been browsing while your beloved and the tailor conversed in rapid Italian, “Think about what?”

Copia stands on a round platform surrounded by mirrors. The tailor leans up against the door and gestures to the Cardinal.

“It’s a good suit, no?”

You smile. Of course it’s a good suit. It’s the suit Copia was wearing the night of your first date. The night where the two of you grinded on each other and made an absolute mess of those trousers. Those lovely, snug trousers and the curve of–

“Amore?” Copia asks, and you see his mustache twitch in amusement.

“It’s great! I love it, did you um…change the material of the pants? From the original suit I mean.”

“Si, si,” the tailor nods, “the Cardinal requires pants with more stretch to allow for vigorous movement on stage.”

Mmm vigorous movement.

“So he’ll be wearing either of his cassocks and uh…this black suit?”

Once again the tailor nods.

“I also have made prototypes in two other colors. Would you like to see those?”

He’s asking Copia too but you interject to answer for him.

“Yes, please.”

“They’re in garment bags in the dressing room, Cardinal.”

The Cardinal gives the tailor a tight smile before turning to you and giving you a look. You smile and shrug. Better him than you, and the way he fucked you last night, you almost collapsed on the floor this morning when you got out of bed while he chuckled, the bastard. He deserves a little torture. A few more minutes pass and he comes out and does a little pose. He looks resplendent in a cardinal red version of the suit and you know you’re grinning like an idiot when he steps onto the platform, preening.

“Oh the red is good, signore,” you tell the tailor, who smiles pleasantly at you. “I think I like it even better than the black. What do you think, my love?”

Copia’s preoccupied with making stupid little muscle man poses in the mirror and you have to stuff your fist in your mouth to muffle your guffaw.

“Huh-wha…what was that, amore?”

“I said, how do you feel about the red?”

“Oh eh, si. Very nice. Vibrant. Is that all?”

“There is one more suit in the dressing room, Cardinale,” the tailor gently reminds him and Copia turns to give you a deep bow before retreating to his cubicle. You hear him disrobe and hang up the red suit followed by unzipping the last garment bag. There’s a shuffle of fabric and Copia makes an odd sound.

“I…I, eh don’t think I’ll come out for this one.”

You look to the tailor nonplussed, who looks to you, equally perplexed.

“Isn’t it just the same suit in a different color, hon?”

“Si, it’s just that it’s eh…” he makes one of his noises, “It’s…ah fuck it.”

When he opens the door and peeks his head out you smile encouragingly. That smile slowly drops as he slides out of the dressing room to stand on the platform, replaced with something more awestruck and hungry. True to the tailor’s word, it is the same suit, however this one is in snow white. He looks incredibly elegant but that’s not what occupies your mind - what occupies your mind is the hefty and defined curve of his cock and balls in those sinfully tight white pants.

“Well, what do you think?”

You let out a lewd gurgle and now it’s the tailor’s turn to muffle his laughter.

“Exactly. I don’t think I’ll be going with this one, signore.”

The string of filth going through your mind is interrupted by his words.

“What?! No!” you splutter, flapping your hands. “No, this one absolutely stays.” 

“Amore,” Copia stage whispers, “You can see my whole dick.”

“Yeah, and balls,” you loudly whisper back, “Which is exactly why you’re keeping it.”

“Sarto, will you eh, excuse me and the signorina for a moment per favore?”

The tailor silently nods with an amused expression and steps out of the room, snapping the door shut behind him.

“Dolcezza, I am supposed to be on stage in this outfit. I’m supposed to sing while wearing this. You want me to look like a…a Chippendale at these rituals?”

You cough to hide your laughter.

“Beloved, may I be frank with you?”

“Please.”

“People come to these rituals to be tempted, right? To dip their toe into what the Ministry has to offer? Copia I am being so honest with you right now when I say that this–” you gesture to what’s on display at the juncture of his thighs, “--in combination with the music? Baby, you’ll be beating new recruits off with a stick. Might as well have a sign-up booth outside the venue. If I were some wide-eyed, easily influenced young person and I walked into one of your rituals to hear you sing about being the one who comes richly endowed and coming into the daughters of men and whatnot? My love, I would swear myself to Satan for one corn chip if you asked.”

Copia nods slowly, considering.

“You…have a point, dolcezza. Kind of makes me wish I hadn’t met you until I became head of the Ghost project so I could see you front row at a ritual…oh the things I would do to you.”

“And you still can,” you murmur, setting the sketch binder aside, “Keep this outfit and I promise you I’ll visit you backstage at one of your shows. I’ll surprise you.”

“Done,” he says, slapping his thigh. A soft knock sounds through the room and the tailor opens the door.

“Everything good?” he asks, eyes flicking between the two of you.

“Molto bene, signore,” you say, “He’s keeping the outfit.”

“Ah, good, good,” the tailor smiles, clapping his hands together, “I was hoping you’d say that because I have a couple accessories for this one.”

You look to Copia, intrigued. The tailor produces a hat box and removes the lid, handing Copia a very dashing black fedora with a white band. The Cardinal places it on his head, looking devastatingly handsome as he poses in the many mirrors. The tailor disappears for a moment and then reappears to hand Copia a black cane with a silver snake handle.

“What do you think, signorina?” the tailor asks, hands behind his back. Copia turns to you and with an evil grin, slides the length of the cane along his cock then rocks his hips against it. Your jaw loosens and your eyes glaze over.

“Amore, the tailor asked you a question?”

“Hard. I mean good! Good! It’s all very good, thank you for indulging me, signore. Beautiful work but I expected nothing less from the man that makes his cassocks. You know, the way the fascia cinches him in and the fabric falls over his as–assets. Uh…”

The tailor coughs, hiding a smile with his fist.

“Grazie, signorina. And grazie, Cardinale. I’ll work on making duplicates of these designs at once.”

Copia nods and steps off the platform to return to the dressing room. A beat passes when you get up and scuttle over to the tailor.

“Is there any way you can make the pants um. Tighter?”

“I heard that.”

—

His veins are on fire, thrumming as he makes his walk off the stage post-encore. The crowd loves him. They love him. The little rat bastard Cardinal makes the beautiful young creatures of the crowd scream and profess their adoration. He’s feeling elated, high as he passes by two roadies and works his way backstage when he hears a low whistle come from a corner near some tour crates. When he looks he double takes because surely he must be dreaming. Surely his eyes must be playing tricks on him as he sees his amore slowly emerge from behind a box wearing that little half-smile you sport when getting up to mischief. Before he even realizes he’s doing it he’s running over to you - damn his sore muscles in need of a long shower - and into your open arms.

“Surprised?” you ask as you throw your arms around his neck. 

Immediately he buries his nose into your loose hair and a shudder rips through him as he’s enveloped in your scent. His hands roam your back, sliding down further to cup your ass and pull you into him.

“Mmm insatiable as always,” you mutter into his shoulder, pulling away just enough to look him in the eyes. The adrenaline of the evening matched with the way you’re gazing at him makes his cock stir. Your lips twitch upwards and eyebrow arches.

“Amore,” he growls, grinding against your belly, “Come to my dressing room so we can–”

“What’s wrong with right here?” you ask innocently, gesturing to the empty nook stacked with gear boxes. “I came such a long way for you, I simply can’t waste another moment.”

When you begin to lower yourself to your knees, his head tips back in a groan. Cazzo, he missed this. When he reopens his eyes he spots something in the darkness further behind you - a slender form in black and a flash of a silver mask.

Dewdrop.

He should tell you, should grab you by the shoulders and scurry away with you somewhere more private but he thinks about that day months ago when you said you wanted to be watched. Copia’s head jerks in a nod in the ghoul’s direction and he sees his mouth fall open in a pant. You’re massaging the meat of his thighs in your perfect little hands when he looks down at you.

“You’re distracted,” you murmur, blinking up at him, “Guess you haven’t missed me much after all.”

“Dolcezza, no!” Copia breathes, gloved hand stroking your hair, “Come up here and I’ll show you exactly how much I missed you.”

“No, no,” you say airily, and for a horrible moment he thinks he’s seriously hurt your feelings but then you look up and give him a sinister little grin that makes him throb.

“Did they like it?” you ask, trailing your fingertips over his clothed cock.

“L-Like it?”

“The white suit,” you say patiently, dragging your fingernails down his thigh. “How did they look up at you tonight, my love? Were they hungry for you?” 

You lean in to place a chaste kiss to his bulge that almost makes his knees give out.

“Will they go home tonight and fuck themselves to the thought of you?”

When you drag the flat of your tongue across his balls and up his cock he whimpers pathetically.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Hmmm,” you ponder, thumb rubbing the head of him through his pants. There’s a sizable wet stain on them now from where he’s been leaking pre, “I was out there, you know. Watching. Saw the way you thrusted and fell to your knees and grinded on that cane. Saw the way they all panted for you. And you know what I was thinking the whole time, my love?”

He’s breathing heavy through his nose.

“No, a-amore.”

“I was thinking about how much I wanted to do this.”

You lean in and wetly latch onto his balls through the thin fabric and his hand flies to the back of your head. You’re giggling around him and the vibrations make him whimper.

“Fuck, amata mia, yes,” he groans, rocking his hips into your touch. Slowly you drag your tongue along his shaft and even through the material he knows you’re tracing the thick vein. When Copia tilts his head back in a moan, his half-lidded eyes fall on the ghoul in the shadows. Dew is still mostly obscured but even the darkness can’t hide the way his strong hand is sliding along the ridges of his hardened cock. His head is tilted downwards towards you - drinking in the way you look with your thighs splayed in that pretty sundress, your mouth suckling on the head of his Cardinal’s cock. Copia knows he won’t last much longer - not with how worked up he already was from the ritual and with their audience - and he looks down at you adoringly.

“Close, tesoro. Gonna–ah–gonna make me cum in my pants?”

Your lips pull off him for only a moment to give him a wide smile.

“Just like New Year’s Eve. Remember?” You place a hand on his bulge and begin stroking it. “The champagne burning in our veins? The way the curve of your cock felt nudging my clit through those red lace panties you like? How your fingers gripped me hard enough to bruise?”

“Si, si, I remember, I remember, amore,”

“You told me to make a mess of myself. I should have put those panties in your pocket but we already know how you like to steal them yourself, hmm?”

Copia makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a whine as his cheeks are flooded with red and his hips buck into your touch.

“Dirty old man,” you say with a grin, “Can’t help yourself can you, Cardinal? On stage, in my bed, right now under my hand and mouth–”

He feels the pressure building in his spine as you rub him frantically through his pants.

“--while your ghoul watches us.”

The moan that comes out of him is loud and long, hips rutting against your hand as he cums in ropes and soaks the white fabric. You’re cooing praise at him from your spot on the floor as he takes shuddering breaths. When he looks up, Dewdrop is gone but there’s no mistaking what’s spattered on the floor where he stood. Did you plan this? How could he have known? How could you have known? How–

“Hey,” you say, placing a little kiss to the wet stain on his crotch, “Help me up?”

With a start he bends over and lifts you gently by the elbows until you’re standing and stretching. Overcome with adoration, he grabs you by the back of the head and slots his lips against yours. His ragazza bella. His mistress. His perfect mate.

“So,” you say once you finally manage to pull away from him, “Show me that dressing room?”

[books]

Writer Spotlight: Jamie Beck

Jamie Beck is a photographer residing in Provence, France. Her Tumblr blog, From Me To You, became immensely successful shortly after launching in 2009. Soon after, Jamie, along with her partner Kevin Burg, pioneered the use of Cinemagraphs in creative storytelling for brands. Since then, she has produced marketing and advertising campaigns for companies like Google, Samsung, Netflix, Disney, Microsoft, Nike, Volvo, and MTV, and was included in Adweek Magazine’s “Creative 100” among the industry’s top Visual Artists. In 2022, she released her first book, An American in Provence, which became a NYT Bestseller and Amazon #1 book in multiple categories, and featured in publications such as Vogue, goop, Who What Wear, and Forbes. Flowers of Provence is Jamie’s second book.

Can you tell us about how The Flowers of Provence came to be?

I refer to Provence often as ‘The Garden of Eden’ for her harmonious seasons that bring an ever-changing floral bounty through the landscape. My greatest joy in life is telling her story of flowers through photography so that we may all enjoy them, their beauty, their symbolism, and their contribution to the harmony of this land just a bit longer. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

How do your photography and writing work together? Do you write as part of your practice?

I constantly write small notations, which usually occur when I am alone in nature with the intention of creating a photograph or in my studio working alone on a still life. I write as I think in my head, so I have made it a very strict practice that when a thought or idea comes up, I stop and quickly write the text in the notes app on my phone or in a pocket journal I keep with me most of the time. If I don’t stop and write it down at that moment, I find it is gone forever. It is also the same practice for shooting flowers, especially in a place as seasonal as Provence. If I see something, I must capture it right away because it could be gone tomorrow. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

You got your start in commercial photography. What’s something you learned in those fields that has served you well in your current creative direction?

I think my understanding of bridging art and commerce came from my commercial photography background. I can make beautiful photographs of flowers all day long, but how to make a living off your art is a completely different skill that I am fortunate enough to have learned by working with so many different creative brands and products in the past. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

Do you remember your first photograph?

Absolutely! I was 13 years old. My mother gave me her old Pentax 35mm film camera to play with. When I looked through the viewfinder, it was as if the imaginary world in my head could finally come to life! I gave my best friend a makeover, put her in an evening gown in the backyard of my parents’ house in Texas, and made my first photograph, which I thought was so glamorous! So Vogue!

You situate your photographic work with an introduction that charts the seasons in Provence through flowers. Are there any authors from the fields of nature writing and writing place that inspire you?

I absolutely adore Monty Don! His writing, his shoes, and his ease with nature and flowers—that’s a world in which I want to live. I also love Floret Flowers, especially on social media, as a way to learn the science behind flowers and how to grow them. 

How did you decide on the order of the images within The Flowers of Provence?

Something I didn’t anticipate with a book deal is that I would actually be the one doing the layouts! I assumed I would hand over a folder of images, and an art director would decide the order. At first, it was overwhelming to sort through it all because the work is so personal, and I’m so visual. But in the end, it had to be me. It had to be my story and flow to be truly authentic. I tried to move through the seasons and colors of the landscape in a harmonious way that felt a bit magical, just as discovering Provence has felt to me. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

How do you practice self-care when juggling work and life commitments alongside the creative process?

The creative process is typically a result that comes out of taking time for self-care. I get some of my best ideas for photographic projects or writing when I am in a bath or shower or go for a long (and restorative) walk in nature. Doing things for myself, such as how I dress or do my hair and makeup, is another form of creative expression that is satisfying. 

What’s a place or motif you’d like to photograph that you haven’t had a chance to yet?

I am really interested in discovering more formal gardens in France. I like the idea of garden portraiture, trying to really capture the essence and spirit of places where man and nature intertwine. 

Which artists do you return to for inspiration?

I’m absolutely obsessed with Édouard Manet—his color pallet and subject matter. 

What are three things you can’t live without as an artist?

My camera, the French light, and flowers, of course. 

What’s your favorite flower to photograph, and why?

I love roses. They remind me of my grandmother, who always grew roses and was my first teacher of nature. The perfume of roses and the vast variety of colors, names, and styles all make me totally crazy. I just love them. They simply bring me joy the same way seeing a rainbow in the sky does. 

(Photograph: Jamie Beck)

[creaman]

Hi there! I apologize for taking up your time, I am just so curious: When you tackle a comic, what does the process behind it look like?

Asking because I found myself scrolling through your blog once again and couldn't help but marvel at all the beautiful effects you use, at how flawlessly the structure guides the viewer's eye across each page, how the graphic weight seems to always be in just the right places…, and wonder how you learned doing this. Everything you put out looks incredibly professional and I aspire to reach your level of skill 😌❤️

Thank you Finz!! You're no bother at all, I'm an open book. This is such high praise for a guy that really doesn't have a set process, I feel like a hack. Ha. Rest assured my style is still developing. Besides the referencing of the linework and composition of official comic books, (practicing by redrawing panels for fun), explaining the process makes me feel like a serial killer but I will do my best.

(WIP Riddler panel, scrapped Scarecrow composition)

My comics usually stem from a single panel or concept — I like to focus on/emphasise particular panels of my pages, the heavy hitters, the main piece that catches your eye. I know I'm not a profoundly technically proficient artist so I prefer visually interesting elements and formatting, i.e. drawing characters outside their frames, negative space, notation, perspectives etc.

(Kung Fu Panda 4 sketch god I hate Kung Fu Panda 4)

I like to establish 'main focus' panels, the bits of the comic that really, well. make people want to chew on it. This is where the technical effort is concentrated, really, and the rest of the comic is generally build around these concepts.

('Restaurant Balthazar' focus panels)

Textures and effects are done on individual panels first, then the entire page as a whole to even out the unity. Generally, blocking in shadows, hatching for visual interest + middle tones, then textures/half-tones, then highlights.

(Script excerpt WIP)

I'm not a writer per se, but having a vague 'script' in your pages helps with pacing and direction. Comics are a versatile story-telling medium. I only really do scripts for comics longer than 2 pages. An optional but recommended strat is to send your script to a friend for a second opinion.

(Script excerpt — 'Restaurant Balthazar', annotated by @vincepti0n I don't know why he drew a face in the middle)

With the script crudely slapped together, I rough out the thumbnails and composition with the text, prioritising coherence and clean integration of previously mentioned 'main focus' panels.

Settling on a composition sucks the hardest. Drawing is fun, thinking makes brain hurty. Variety is good! Close-ups, wide shots, visual metaphors. Every panel is its own artwork.

The text bubbles are usually added in post, yes, but I'm just one guy and I don't have a writer to call me a good boy for doing things correctly. Bite me.

(Early 'Restaurant Balthazar' drafts)

In addition, keeping the text graphics in mind help create a sounder composition wherein even if the panels don't read cleanly left to right + top to bottom, the text can stagger and create the same reading order effect.

Panels and concepts are constantly tweaked, and my comic process is still highly experimental. A lot of industry standard comics aren't illustrated to their full potential due to deadlines and such — I strive for visual epiphany by treating each panel as its own artwork, and every page as a a bit of a mural.

(Old art hurts the soul)

Constantly experimenting allows you the insight of looking at your current art in comparison to your older works. In more recent works, I've been blocking in more shadows wiht lineart with thinner lines and more line weight, and learned to integrate the subject characters with less plain, abstract backgrounds.

TLDR: I have no idea

[penvisions]

how we pass the time {by the grit of sandpaper}

Pairing: Jackson! Joel Miller x Patrol Partner! Reader

Summary: Budding conversations and budding feelings go hand in hand as you begin to spend more time with Joel Miller.

Word Count: 1.3k

Warnings: canon typical language, pining, requited unrequited feelings, heart of gold joel, carpenter joel, woodworking joel, artisan joel, patrol partnership, lots of feelings, joel miller's hands need their own warning, joel is so soft in this, pet names, terms of endearment, SET BEFORE THE FIRST CHAPTER

A/N: the lovely @picketniffler sent in an emoji ask for the final chapter celebration and i ran with the idea (it was only supposed to be a drabble but these two live in my head rent free) ♡♡

ao3 link || series masterlist || main masterlist || ko-fi

“Reading.” You had replied almost instantly, causing a hearty chuckle to sound from somewhere deep in Joel’s chest. His random question of hobbies barely leaving his plush lips. “I spend a lot of time reading, researching.”

“And what exactly do you research?” He didn’t turn from his survey of the trail ahead of him, the trees thick and dense with summer blooms. You had been with him for a few months now, partnered up as Maria begins to reduce her activities, Tommy wanting to remain as close to her as possible in case anything happened. Due in winter, she was about halfway through her pregnancy, something you were trying to fuel with protein and nutrient dense foods. Things you could make to allow for some hormone control and balance. Hence the research. Any and all books on food and cooking found their way to your doorstep, or were delivered to you by hand from the couple themselves, even a few of the other council members should they need to see if had anything of interest for the whole community first.

Your answer wasn’t as instantaneous. Voice caught in your throat as you took in the rather picturesque view of the man’s broad body atop his trusty stead trotting slowly up ahead of you. His shoulders were swathed in a denim button up, fabric taut over the planes of his shoulder blades, allowing you to see how his back tensed and clenched as Kiana, his favored brown and white patterned horse, tackled the overgrown trail. His hair was shorter, as if he had tried to curb the prevalent heat but it only made the disheveled curls his hair had been in begin to show themselves around the nape of his neck. Sweat beaded up and dampened the denim, no doubt even more noticeable on the tank top or undershirt he donned underneath.

But you hadn’t been so modest today, decked out in a pair of jeans and tank top. The sleeveless top allowed for your arms to feel the embrace of the sun, not quite smoldering but still sweltering. Sweat was surly discoloring the pale blue of it, the tone matching Joel’s attire. He had teased you over it when he approached the stables, you already having prepared the horses for the early morning route. But the grin with his tongue between his teeth had told you had hadn’t really minded, and maybe he had even liked that you had unconsciously matching him…

“Olive?” He turned to you know, one thick brow raised in question. “Heat got ya?”

“No, sorry. Just, taking in the views.”

“Views are pretty good.” His eyes moved over your body, taking in the way the strap of the shotgun was nestled over your chest, the collar of your top low. The shade provided by the wide brimmed hat you favored allowed for your eyes to remain hidden from him, though you were sure he could’ve felt the weight of your staring.

“You said you do a lot of research?” You shook the mental image of you both sprawled out on your couch, you with a book in your hands and a notebook to scrawl notations, him with another or even just content with something playing brightly across the room on your small television. He was so…alluring. His quiet demeanor, his willingness to do what he could to earn his keep in the community, his skills of helping Tommy and the scant crew with construction and home repairs. He had been a there since spring, a part of your life since then. Unwilling to imitate the rest of the town as he noticed how they either ignored your presence or gave you tight lipped smiles in response to your scarce interactions. He didn’t really see you much around town, something you had admitted to not doing much, leaving your house. He must’ve sensed the shift in your mood when he had asked why, moving his focus onto something else.

“Oh! Y-yes, research. O-on the nutrient offerings of food, of how certain crops can be boosted through simple scientific fixes, I work in the gardens a lot, have one in my own backyard.”

“I been reading a lot lately myself.” He turned back to face forward, the column of his neck glistening with a light sheen of sweat. “Also been dabblin’ in woodworking.”

“That’s pre-pretty cool. What made you interested in that, if I may ask?” Silent for a beat, his eyes tracing the way a long limb up ahead shook. Searching for anything that would signal another soul this far into the forest, or if it was just a small animal scurrying as they foraged or fled at the gentle rise and fall of your voices as you shared with one another.

But he was also thinking…picturing you sat beside him in his newly set up work room in his home. The light woodsy, floral scent you seemed to have naturally encompassing him as you watch him walk you through carving and painting the small figures he had begun to sooth his aching hands with. Turning to you, a smile so soft you often aimed at him in full bloom as you relished in sharing his space and the smooth baritone of his voice. He knew you liked it, how it was low and gravely sometimes in the early morning. Coffee smoothing the edges of his sleep and shifting it to velvet that prompted more conversation on the days your eyes dilated upon his arrival at the stables.

“Always so sweet with your questions. Thought we were passed that, I’ll talk with ya. About anything.”

“I really appreciate that, Joel.” You tightened the grip of your hands around the reigns. Thinking about how he didn’t shy away from you like most people, even if he was notoriously hard to connect with when he was out and about in town. So busy at all hours of the day, returning to his home, his and Ellie’s home well into the evening nearly every day. You only noticed because his street was just beyond yours, his large build passing by your windows as you made dinner each night. The urge to call out your open window and offer him a serving always on the tip of your tongue. “It…it means a lo-lot to me.”

“I like our conversations, sweetheart. One of the easiest people to talk to.”

Your breath hitched and you hoped he hadn’t heard it, but the minute swivel of his head to the left told you he had despite his bad hearing in the other. He had only ever called you by your nickname. He only ever called people by the names handed to him along with their introduction. Your skin tingled, pride at earning such an endearment from the man making your head swim and your mind go blank.

“Would love to show you the figurines I make sometime, started it as a way to curb the pain in my aching hands but it’s actually pretty calming.”

“Ye-yeah, I get that. Zone out and create something.”

“Exactly, you got it just right, sweetheart.”

There it was again, the new reference and you felt heat rise up from where it came to live in your chest and up the column of your neck. You…you wouldn’t mind hearing it more or even the invitation to see his home, his work. The niggling feeling of the town taking the occurrence and fueling the fires of gossip surrounding you springing up and tainting the moment. You frowned, not liking that the mere possibility of talk deterred you from the man’s kindness.  

taglist: @joelsgreys @morning-star-joy @sawymredfox @pascalpvnk @littlemisspascal @merz-8 @orcasoul @sabmat @dreamingofleon

@keylimebeag @picassopedro @tuquoquebrute @alejaa-a @jessthebaker @joeloverture @joelscruff @swiftispunk @tightjeansjavi @undercoverpena @corazondebeskar @honeyedmiller @novas-dreamworld @slugz-writes-shit @hiroikegawa @dugiioh @persephone-girl @furiousmushroom @copperhalfcent @lizlil @hiddenbabynyc @part2joelmiller @formulafun @noisynightmarepoetry @sofiparallel @blueberrylemon7 @maryrhodalouandted @joelsdagger @fluff-lover

@communism-bitches @slugz-writes-shit @mosssbawls @vie-is-punk

@ohhellotherebumblebee @koshkaj-blog @r4vens-cl4ws @picketniffler @joeldjarin

[bullet-prooflove]

The Better Man: Richie Jerimovich x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989 @lostinwonderland314 @fallout-girl219 @wabi-sabi1090 @morgthemagpie

Companion piece to:

One Night Stand (NSFW) - It was never meant to be more than a one night stand.

Old School - Richie and you prefer to do things old school.

Safe With You - Richie still has nightmares about how he found Michael.

Joy - The stabbing leads Richie to confront some of the doubts he has about himself.

All The Good Ones Are (NSFW) - Richie has never thought of himself as one of the good ones.

Happy Anniversary - Richie fucks up your first wedding anniversary.

Gift (NSFW) - Richie has always thought of you as a gift.

86 - Richie 86es a patron at The Bear.

It’s Saturday and Richie’s busy with the service when you pop in to pick up the takeout Carmy usually prepares for you. It’s a form of penance him and Richie worked out for fucking up your wedding anniversary. He has to make sure you’re fed every Saturday evening for the next three months to make up for monopolising your husband on what Richie deems the most important day of the year.

“Hey baby.” He greets you with a fierce kiss, one that you feel all the way down to your toes. “I can’t stop for too long.”

“I don’t mind.” You murmur with that sinful smile of yours as your fingertips straighten the lapels of his suit. “As long as you’re not too tired when you get home.”

“Never.” He whispers as his forehead comes to rest against yours. “I’m never too tired for that.”

It’s as you draw away that the expression on your face changes. Your shoulders tense and your eyes linger on something over his shoulder.

“Joy?” He questions, following your gaze as your grip on his sleeve tightens.

“Richie.” You whisper. “What is Peter doing here?”

Richie has never actually laid eyes on your ex-husband. You’d cut off all contact after you divorced the son of a bitch. He’d sent you a bottle of champagne shortly after the two of you got married with a card that said. “Don’t fuck it up this time.”

Richie had taken you out to the wasteland where his father had taught him how to shoot, before watching you blow away a thousand dollar bottle of champagne with his 9mil. It had been both cathartic and exhilarating.

Peter smiles at you from his seat, raising a hand up in greeting and something ignites inside of Richie, something furious and vengeful.

“Sugar.” He says with a dangerous lilt. “I thought we 86ed him?”

Sugar’s fingertips runs down the appointment book before it lands on the notation.

“I called him up myself.” She tells the both of you. “He must have rebooked under another name.”

“That deviant motherfucker.” Richie spits out, his eyes full of murder.

“Richie.” You say softly, tugging on his sleeve and he tilts his head towards you. “It’s ok.”

Your words should placate him but they don’t because he knows that Peter has done this intentionally, that it’s a way of fucking with your boundaries, encroaching on your territory. Your ex, he used to play mind games with you, gaslight you. Richie knows his presence here tonight is just another version of that, a way of showing you he still has control.

“I’ll see you at home.” You say, pressing your lips to his cheek.

It’s only as he watches your car exit the parking lot that he realises you’ve left behind the food that Carmy made for you. He tosses it in the trash before returning to work, waiting for his opportunity to confront that that fuckhead.

It’s when Peter stand up to use the bathroom that Richie accosts him. He grasps the other man by the scruff of his neck before he hurls him down the corridor and through the back exit.

“How fucking dare you.” Richie erupts when they break out into the alleyway. “How dare you come here and pull this shit. I should wipe that smug fucking smile right off your face.”

“And end up with a jail sentence?” Peter says, tilting his head to one side. “That would really fuck shit up for you and Joy wouldn’t it?”

“How the fuck do you know…”

“About your suspended licence or your aggravated assault charge?” Peter finishes as he tucks his hands into his pockets. “You think I wouldn’t check up on the man my ex-wife married?”

“That’s some fucked up shit right there.” Richie says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You know she told me you had issues with control but this is next level.”

Peter shrugs his shoulders.

“I like to see who my competition is.” He remarks and Richie shakes his head with a sardonic smile because he knows what this is about.

Peter had never expected you to leave him, you’d played the good wife for such a long time and then one day you’d had divorce papers delivered to his office. The final straw had been when he’d had lingerie sent to you. It was two sizes too small and had been addressed ‘To Emily’.

“This-” Richie says gesturing between the two of them. “-is not a competition. You treated her like dirt, like she was absolutely nothing.”

Peter laughs then and the sound grates across Richie’s nerves as he pushes past Richie, barging against his shoulder.

“Women like Joy, that’s how they like to be treated.”

Richie’s hand catches his arm, his hand squeezing so hard that Peter winces at the sensation as the fabric of his designer suit creases underneath Richie’s fingers.

“Play all the games you want motherfucker, but that woman is never coming back to you.” Richie tells him with a ferocity in his eyes. “You and I both know the better man won.”

Love Richie? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

Like My Work? - Why Not Buy Me A Coffee

[nymph-yoongi]

affection w/namjoon

Word count: 767

Namjoon is not the most affectionate person, often preferring to just exist in each other’s company

That being said, he does like it when you cling to him; you bring out his soft side

If you’re shorter than him, he’ll rest his chin on the top of your head

Although he’s not very into PDA, he does like to be able to either see you or touch you, happy to even just observe you while you do something 

The way he shows his love for you most often is by making time for you and showing you that you’re a priority to him 

Spare time is very rare and precious, so he makes sure to make time for you, even if it’s not easy

He enjoys taking care of you and feeling like you can depend on him to provide, but it also warms his heart when you do anything to provide for him as well (cooking for him, buying him gifts, etc.)

When he’s working, he tends to fixate on what he’s doing and forget to eat; when you bring him food or water or send him reminders to take care of himself, he feels grateful to have you in his life

He’s not afraid to admit his flaws, but it does bring him a special kind of peace when the two of you just lay in bed and talk about your own flaws with each other; to know he can be imperfect and still be loved is a healing thing to know 

Likes having intellectual discussions with you about philosophy, cosmology, and just anything that lets him see more into the inner workings of your mind 

He loves when you match his energy, whether he’s being goofy and dancing around like a maniac, or if he’s in a more spiritual and thoughtful mood; it makes him feel like you understand him in a way few others do

Likes coming up with places to go with you and events/activities you can experience together

Prefers shared experiences to buying you physical gifts

Has a hard time being very cutesy, he almost always gets shy and covers his face, especially if he does aegyo 

Despite his shyness, he enjoys it when you compliment him; especially if you call him handsome and/or smart

He used to be insecure about his nose, so he still gets a little shy if you kiss him on the nose

Has a tendency to wrap himself around you when you’re sleeping together 

Can’t and won’t stop taking pictures of you

Even though he can’t post them, his gallery on his phone is mostly photos of you, whether you’re at a museum, in nature somewhere, or just looking cute while asleep

He loves doing little photoshoots of you and showing you off to the people that know about you

Since he takes so many photos of you, it makes him happy when you take nice pictures of him too

It makes him happy knowing that you feel the same urge to show him off, that he feels about you

It’s pretty common for you to either be on an adventure together or just staying inside with good books

He leaves you little notations in the books he’s already read because you once said it makes you feel like he’s reading it with you

Takes pictures of the scenery around him whenever you’re apart; plants, pretty rocks, crab, you name it, he’s sent you a picture of it 

“I didn’t want to bother the bugs under this rock but look how pretty it is!”

If he ever has to travel without you, he sends you the prettiest postcards he can find with the cheesiest messages on them 

“It’s raining here today; even the sky is sad you’re not with me”

Draws little Koyas on his letters and postcards to you

If he knows he’ll be gone from you for a long time, he’ll leave letters for you to read when you miss him 

Writes short poems for you when he’s feeling sentimental and will leave them on sticky notes and index cards for you to find

Writes snippets of songs about different mythos of soulmates when he thinks about you 

Tells you about the myth of humans being created; how we were all made with four arms, four legs, and two heads, then cursed to spend our lives wandering in search of our other half 

“Despite the distance, I feel at peace knowing that I’ve found my other half; I don’t feel the need to search for anything anymore. I found what I need”

[librarycards]

do you have any recommendations for readings or memoirs or anything about non-binary identity?

yes! so, I feel obligated to share a few that I've done ––

Co/notations, an annotated essay chapbook.

Social Skills: A transdyke autie-biography in Sinister Wisdom

In Praise of -Less in AZE Journal

Others' Memoirs/Poetics:

Stacey Waite, Love Poem to Androgyny

Vivek Shraya, She of the Mountains

Akwaeke Emezi, Dear Senthuran

Eli Clare, Exile and Pride

Ivan E. Coyote, Tomboy Survival Guide

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Dirty River

T. Fleischmann, Time is the Thing A Body Moves Through

Sabrina Imbler, Dyke [geology]

Joan Nestle, ed., Genderqueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary [warning: this is pretty old]

Fiction [beyond Stone Butch Blues]:

Megan Milks, Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body

Sassafras Lowry, Roving Pack

John Elizabeth Stintzi, Vanishing Monuments

-

These are obviously not all of the gender-noncompliant/nonbinary/genderqueer/etc books I've read, nor all of the ones I recommend, but they do apply directly to your specification that they be about identity as such. Hope you find something you like!

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write Entry #9: Matters of the Heart

Prompt: lend an ear || Master Post || On AO3

---

A soft knock on the door jolted Dulia-Chai back into full awareness and she jerked her head up, decades of practice and composure the only thing that kept her from knocking her ink bottle over.

“Dulia-Chai? Do you have a moment?”

The door to her office was open, and she could see a familiar head of soft red hair just over the accounting books stacked in haphazard piles all over her desk. Dulia-Chai beamed. “Of course, Ryne! Come in, come in, have a seat on the settee.”

The door opened wider so Ryne could slip inside fully, and while she did so, Dulia-Chai quickly checked over her current work. Eulmore’s finances had, well, gone to utter shite long before Vauthry’s rule, or even that of his father, and she and the other municipal accountants were having a devil of a time straightening out the records. She had reached a good stopping point, however, and she had been at this for most of the morning already. Ryne had chosen an excellent time to visit.

Dulia-Chai made sure the blue ink of her own notations was dry, closed the book, and pushed away from her desk to stand. She took a moment to stretch out her poor back before she bustled towards the settee.

Ryne was fretting with her hair ribbon, head ducked low, and Dulia-Chai eyed her thoughtfully.

Tea, she decided. They definitely needed tea.

Her Nuzz had installed a small stove for her here in her office, to make it easier to brew tea or even coffee on the days when the finances proved most troublesome. It took only a moment to fill the kettle from the water pitcher one of the pages always made certain was refreshed throughout the day, set it on the stove to heat, and began laying out a tea tray from the cupboard and cold box. Bowl of sugar, small jug of cream, two cups, and of course: a tin of coffee biscuits.

Once the kettle was off the stove and the leaves steeping, Dulia-Chai brought the tray over to the settee, placing it on the low table, and perched on the settee next to Ryne. She poured a cup, added two sugar cubes and a dash of cream, and passed the cup to Ryne, who took it automatically and raised the cup from the saucer to gently blow at the hot liquid before sipping carefully. Dulia-Chai made her own cup—no sugar, healthy glug of cream—and wedged a biscuit onto the saucer before finally settling back.

The drank and nibbled in mostly comfortable silence for a few minutes. While Ryne’s nerves had calmed, she still seemed disinclined to proffer what had brought her here today. Well, then!

“How may I help you today, Ryne?” Dulia-Chai said gently.

Ryne sighed quietly, stuffed the remaining half of her own coffee biscuit into her mouth to keep from answering for a few more moments as she set down her teacup. She chewed, swallowed, and finally said, shy as a lamb: “Were you ever scared your relationship with Chai-Nuzz wouldn’t work out?”

Ahhhh, there it was. Dulia-Chai finished draining her own tea as she best thought how to answer, before deciding the most straightforward way was best, as always. “Certainly!” she said. “We were both young, and the young aren’t always so wise, and it’s common for people of all ages to realize they aren’t a good fit for one another. But here’s the thing: relationships take work.”

Ryne finally looked up, meeting her eyes for the first time today, puzzlement clear on her features.

Dulia-Chai nodded. “It’s something that gets left out of the romances, something even we adults often forget to pass along, because it isn’t glamorous. I adored my Nuzz from the first, but adoration does not make for stability. Of course, I had to convince Chai-Nuzz of my adoration first…”

She took a moment to grumble as Ryne giggled. Stubborn, ridiculous man and his low self-esteem! Even today it was still a struggle.

“How do you do it? Making it work?” Ryne said.

“Talking,” Dulia-Chai said with a firm nod. “If you’re upset, say so, and why. If you don’t know why, say that, too! Sometimes we just feel poorly for no good reason, and it’s important to communicate that so that no one feels as if they’ve done something wrong. If you’d like to do something together, ask. It sounds very simple, but often people expect their loved ones to just know, and that is neither fair to yourself or to them! Though, it’s not impossible to become well attuned to your loved one after long years together; my Nuzz always knows when I need a biscuit or when I need to take a walk if I’m grumpy, but he didn’t know that when we first courted.”

Ryne nodded slowly, nibbling at her lower lip as she absorbed Dulia-Chai’s words. “And…what about just wanting to be alone for a bit?”

“Oh, my dear Ryne, that is perfectly normal, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” Dulia-Chai said. “You are your own person, as Gaia is her own person, as I’m my own, as Chai-Nuzz is his. We all have different needs and desires; sometimes that means we want to spend our time with our beloveds, sometimes with friends, sometimes by ourselves.”

Ryne seemed to sag with relief, the tension that had been thrumming through her finally released. “Oh, thank you, Dulia-Chai,” she said. “Some days it doesn’t feel any different with Gaia than before we began dating, and I’ve also been having this awful itch to just…go camping in Lakeland for a sennight like in the old days with Thancred, and Gaia hates that sort of camping.”

Dulia-Chai reached out and gently patted Ryne’s knee. “You and Gaia have a strong foundation, being friends first,” she said, “and that’s good. One’s beloved should also be one’s friend, and some days you will feel that friendship more strongly than your romantic feelings. And your friend knows the two of you don’t need to be bound at the hip at all times! I have no doubt Gaia will understand, and she can enjoy some time to herself and her own hobbies, and then once you’re back, you’ll both be mentally recharged and feeling better. But you have to talk to one another, hm?”

“Yes, Dulia-Chai, I will,” Ryne said, smiling at last. “Thank you again.”

“You are always welcome, my dear. Now…” She held out her arms and winked. “Big squeeze or little squeeze?”

“Big, please!”

As Dulia-Chai gave Ryne a bone-crushing hug that had the girl squeaking in delight, she wondered if a certain black-haired young lady would be visiting her before Ryne had the chance to talk with her.

[noondefensesquad]

omg you saw it too!! Can you give us a detailed review too pretty please? But if you prefer not to, I totally understand!!

unfortunately my memory sucks and i saw it over a week ago at this point so i'll try my best 😅

i was sitting in row N so closer to the back and there were two people with ipads taking notes on things to change which was cool because im nosy. however, they didn't make a lot of notations and from what i could read, it mostly had to do with lighting so i don't expect much to change when i go see it again in a few weeks.

i love jamie's work and have seen his productions before but was still taken aback by the darkness at the beginning of the play. you can see tom on the screens (i loved the usage of cameras and screens so they could have full use of the theater) as he's backstage and the heavy breathing put me on edge because i was like

then tom sat at the front of the stage and cried and because he is also such a pretty crier and maybe that's my own weird kink i had the biggest smile on my face. however, the girls in front of me were about to cry with him 😂 tell me this didnt do something for you!

but when fran came out, the people around me sat up. she's phenomenal and i want more people to talk about her performance because she's the star of the show. the way she delivers her lines is so funny and they have a great balance of making it feel current while delivering the original iambic penameter.

then as soon as fran and tom came face to face, the audience audibly reacted. not loud enough to be distracting but enough that you know they were into it. i was in love

lots of shakespeare stuff happened, tom took off that sweatshirt and came out in that vest and multiple people gasped. you can see his abs through the shirt 🫠 and when the nurse squeezes his arm and basically says juliet i get it, that line got a huge laugh. my internal monologue was just

this is a married man this is a married man this is a married man

and then intermission came and i talked to the people around me and this was the conversation

fran is so pretty, talented, funny, amazing, we love her

tom's haircut

tom's arms 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

is zendaya the jealous type or would she say yes that's my man (i had to pretend to be very normal about this conversation and said absolutely the jealous type i have no sources 👀)

how do we get to the stagedoor in time to see them (the amount of texts i got about those videos because i am RIGHT THERE with the most in love expression on my face)

the chemistry is unbelievable and we didn't want the show to be over

somehow we made it to the end of the play and i'll be honest, the second half is my least favorite part of the play so it was also my least favorite to watch. i love how silly and romantic the first half can be and the second half is more doom and gloom. i will say, when this exchange happens

"will you speak well of him that killed your cousin?"

"shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?"

my friend and i audibly said "oop" and that got laughs in our section. the best thing about this play was their delivery and when i read r&j, i couldve never imagined how much fun it could be coming from jamie.

anyway, at the end, we rushed out to the stage door and it was insane to see how the street cleared when tom left. and security was the best. really such sweet guys and if you see them being mean to people, they spend the whole time giving instruction is the friendliest way so those people deserved it.

the we got to speak with fran who is the sweetest and signed my customized r&j book with her face on the cover and my programme

can't wait to go see it again in a few weeks. i wish i could have every second imprinted on my brain

[pyrotechnicarus]

What program do you write your scripts in?

Google Docs, haha. It's definitely not the preferred or industry-standard way of doing it; it gives older writers at my program hives when I drop a Docs link in the homework folder. But I was raised on it and it's a great collaboration tool, so I haven't made the switch yet (and maybe never will? Actually probably will once Google inevitably starts charging money for it. But not quite yet!).

Through my school I have a free Final Draft license, so I use that for screenwriting (which has a lot more pesky formatting rules and things), but I'm not planning on buying it once my license expires because A. I don't write films that much and B. I can probably hard-code it into Google Docs for free.

If you're insane like I am and wanna use Google Docs for scriptwriting, here's some formatting tips under the cut:

We're gonna be using a page of the Ghost Story script to demonstrate!

I use Times New Roman because Deborah Brevoort recommended it as a more readable (and slightly more condensed) font than Courier. Your font should adapt to your style; I tend to write short, snappy lines with a lot of back-and-forth, so I use Times which is a common font style for comedy writers (despite not writing comedies.) If you write a lot of long monologues, Courier New might give you a better sense of how your script flows on the page. Basically, you want to space your writing so it comes out to 1 minute of performance time = 1 page of writing.

Scene headings are centered and in bold.

Stage directions that start a scene are left-aligned and in italics; in NAMT-standard style, these are center-margin aligned, like this:

But it's kind of your personal preference.

4. All names are centered and underlined

5. Any stage directions that take place during a scene and cue a line of dialogue are centered, in italics, and in parenthesis. If they can start eating whenever while they're talking, I'd put They start eating left-aligned between two lines of dialogue. However, it is important to me that Hao and Józef start eating before Hao says his next line, so I put it center-aligned.

6. When you get to a song it looks like this:

Basically, songs should be numbered and come after a stage direction (even something basic, like "He stands up.") The enter after the stage directions isn't kosher, it's a Google Docs thing I'll get into later. Then you close the parenthesis on the stage direction and put a page break. Songs should always start on a new page. This is because when you integrate the book and score, you can just take those lyric sheets out and put sheets of music in. Nifty!

7. Lyrics are always capitalized. When two people sing the same thing at the same time, you can put both their names over it:

But if they're singing something different, I usually put it in two columns (there is some debate among musical theater writers on what the proper notation for this kind of thing is. But columns are easy on Google Docs, so I use those. When I have four or more people singing different things on top of one another, I use a 1x4 table and make the lines between the cells invisible, haha.)

Google Docs Specific Formatting Stuff

Ok, so, if you're lazy like me and don't want to be hitting 800 buttons while you're writing to format everything correctly (and please, god, format while you're writing -- going back and doing it later sucks) you can use the Google Docs headings to format your writing! And it will even make a nice little outline for you!

So, the default of these settings (on the left) is useless and ugly. But mine looks like this (on the right!)

If you want yours to look beautiful and be useful like mine, you can format some kind of text the way you want it to (for example, I want all my names in 12 pt Times New Roman, centered and underlined.)

Then I go to some random heading and I hit "Update heading to match"

Now, anytime I type a name, I can go back to this menu and hit "Apply Heading 5"... and it will automatically make it centered, underlined, and 12 pt Times New Roman! I make one of these for all my categories of text: stage directions, song titles, scene headers, etc.

But, ok, you still have to open all those menus while you're writing. Well! See this thing?

All of these have keyboard shortcuts (the Windows ones will show up on a Windows computer). You can really easily hit them after each name/stage direction you type instead of fiddling around with font settings. You're a formatting machine!

And here's the bonus: If you do all this correctly, you can get a really nice outline like this one embedded in your document on the left (this is where the song titles on a new line come in; I make a heading style for them so they show up on the outline, but headings only show the start of the phrase that they are part of in the outline. Ignore the numbers being wrong, lol. There's a secret song 3 that we haven't released yet.)

And it's clickable, too-- like I can jump right to Your Face from the outline without having to scroll down 20 pages.

Is this all needlessly complicated and doing manually something Final Draft will do for you? Yes. But I'm set in my ways, and it's free, so maybe it'll be helpful to another Musical Theater writer out there working with someone else on Google Docs.

That's it! Thanks for the question.

[sassenach77yle]

||COUNTDOWN ||SEASON 3 EPISODE 04 || OF LOST THINGS ||

#83daysofoutlander☆

She bent her head and shuffled through the papers before her, turning the pages over slowly, one by one. They were lists of names, these sheets, lists of prisoners, copied from the ledger books of British prisons. The task was complicated by the fact that not all prisons had been well-run. Some governors kept no official lists of their inmates, or listed them haphazardly in their journals, in among the notations of daily expenditure and maintenance, making no great distinction between the death of a prisoner and the slaughter of two bullocks, salted for meat. Roger thought Claire had abandoned the conversation, but a moment later she looked up again. “You’re quite right, though,” she said. “I’m honest—from default, more than anything. It isn’t easy for me not to say what I’m thinking. I imagine you see it because you’re the same way.” “Am I?” Roger felt absurdly pleased, as though someone had given him an unexpected present. Claire nodded, a small smile on her lips as she watched him. “Oh, yes. It’s unmistakable, you know. There aren’t many people like that—who will tell you the truth about themselves and anything else right out. I’ve only met three people like that, I think—four now,” she said, her smile widening to warm him. “There was Jamie, of course.” Her long fingers rested lightly on the stack of papers, almost caressing in their touch. “Master Raymond, the apothecary I knew in Paris. And a friend I met in medical school—Joe Abernathy. Now you. I think.”

She tilted her cup and swallowed the last of the rich brown liquid. She set it down and looked directly at Roger. “Frank was right, in a way, though. It isn’t necessarily easier if you know what it is you’re meant to do—but at least you don’t waste time in questioning or doubting. If you’re honest—well, that isn’t necessarily easier, either. Though I suppose if you’re honest with yourself and know what you are, at least you’re less likely to feel that you’ve wasted your life, doing the wrong thing.” She set aside the stack of papers and drew up another—a set of folders with the characteristic logo of the British Museum on the covers. “Jamie had that,” she said softly, as though to herself. “He wasn’t a man to turn away from anything he thought his job. Dangerous or not. And I think he won’t have felt himself wasted—no matter what happened to him.” She lapsed into silence, then, absorbed in the spidery tracings of some long-dead writer, looking for the entry that might tell her what Jamie Fraser had done and been, and whether his life had been wasted in a prison cell, or ended in a lonely dungeon. The clock on the desk struck midnight, its chimes surprisingly deep and melodious for such a small instrument. The quarter-hour struck, and then the half, punctuating the monotonous rustle of pages. Roger put down the sheaf of flimsy papers he had been thumbing through, and yawned deeply, not troubling to cover his mouth. “I’m so tired I’m seeing double,” he said. “Shall we go on with it in the morning?” Claire didn’t answer for a moment; she was looking into the glowing bars of the electric fire, a look of unutterable distance on her face. Roger repeated his question, and slowly she came back from wherever she was. “No,” she said. She reached for another folder, and smiled at Roger, the look of distance lingering in her eyes. “You go on, Roger,” she said. “I’ll—just look a little longer.”

When I finally found it, I nearly flipped right past it. I had not been reading the names carefully, but only skimming the pages for the letter “J.” “John, Joseph, Jacques, James.” There were James Edward, James Alan, James Walter, ad infinitum. Then it was there, the writing small and precise across the page:

“Jms. MacKenzie Fraser, of Brock Turac.”

I put the page down carefully on the table, shut my eyes for a moment to clear them, then looked again. It was still there.

“Jamie,” I said aloud. My heart was beating heavily in my chest. “Jamie,” I said again, more quietly.

It was nearly three o’clock in the morning. Everyone was asleep, but the house, in the manner of old houses, was still awake around me,creaking and sighing, keeping me company. Strangely enough, I had no desire to leap up and wake Brianna or Roger, to tell them the news.

I wanted to keep it to myself for a bit, as though I were alone here in the lamp-lit room with Jamie himself.

My finger traced the line of ink.

The person who had written that line had seen Jamie—perhaps had written this with Jamie standing in front of him. The date at the top of the page was May 16, 1753. It had been close to this time of year, then. I could imagine how the air had been, chilly and fresh, with the rare spring sun across his shoulders, lighting sparks in his hair. How had he worn his hair then—short, or long? He had preferred to wear it long, plaited or tailed behind. I remembered the casual gesture with which he would lift the weight of it off his neck to cool himself in the heat of exercise. He would not have worn his kilt—the wearing of all tartans had been outlawed after Culloden. Breeks, then, likely, and a linen shirt. I had made such sarks for him; I could feel the softness of the fabric in memory, the billowing length of the three full yards it took to make one, the long tails and full sleeves that let the Highland men drop their plaids and sleep or fight with a sark their only garment. I could imagine his shoulders broad beneath the rough-woven cloth, his skin warm through it, hands touched with the chill of the Scottish spring. He had been imprisoned before. How would he have looked, facing an English prison clerk, knowing all too well what waited for him? Grim as hell, I thought, staring down that long, straight nose with his eyes a cold, dark blue—dark and forbidding as the waters of Loch Ness. I opened my own eyes, realizing only then that I was sitting on the edge of my chair, the folder of photocopied pages clasped tight to my chest, so caught up in my conjuration that I had not even paid attention to which prison these registers had come from. There were several large prisons that the English had used regularly in the eighteenth century, and a number of minor ones. I turned the folder over, slowly. Would it be Berwick, near the border? The notorious Tolbooth of Edinburgh? Or one of the southern prisons, Leeds Castle or even the Tower of London?

“Ardsmuir,” said the notecard neatly stapled to the front of the folder. “Ardsmuir?” I said blankly. “Where the hell is that?”

7 A FAITH IN DOCUMENTS ~voyager

[rockermazy]

All singing in the show is canonically diegetic - meaning that all singing 100% takes place in-universe, for all the characters to hear and potentially participate in.

In the first (non-pilot) episode, the " Story of Hell" book, as read by Charlie, states that Lillith "empower[ed] demon-kind with her voice and her songs - and as the numbers of Hell grew, so did its power." After the extermination began, Lilith's "dream was passed down to her precious daughter, the Princess of Hell", who is presumably Charlie herself. Two scenes later, Charlie is in musical-notation hammerspace with other denizens, being the cognito hazard that she is.

In episode 7, Rosie invites Charlie to rally Cannibal Town in defending the hotel during the upcoming extermination. When Charlie initially fails, Rosie asks how she normally explains her hotel. Charlie replies, "Through singing". Singing is canonically a gift of both Charlie and every demon - both Hellborn and Sinner.

Which leads me to a theory: One thing that's been nagging me since the pilot, is how Lucifer and Lilith have been fucking for nearly 6,000 years, but only NOW decided to have a daughter in the 21st century. It makes Charlie's existence look almost Mary Sue-ish*. After watching Helluva Boss, it made more sense that Charlie might be an "insurance baby", much like Octavia is to Stolas' lineage. Lucifer might not be unkillable. Carmine and the hotel battle of episode 8 have both demonstrated that angels can be killed with the right ammunition. But why was Charlie born now, in the 21st century? My theory is that Heaven asked Lilith to leave Hell, hoping she'd take her song with her. Heaven knew that Lilith was the one making Hell stronger through her songs. Charlie uses song to rally the people around her.

Husk used song to heal.

Song, even when used to butt heads, (ex: Lucifer vs Alastor), will make combatants drop valuable info, basically outing themselves to everyone within earshot in this universe.

My guess is that a conversation sometime in the past went something like this: Heaven: Lilith, bitch - we see what you're doing. Stop teaching Hell how to sing - the bonding and wholesomeness is threatening our status quo." Lilith: No. Heaven: Fine, we'll exterminate. Lilith: (years later, looking at Carmine's charts) hmmm... the number of sinners getting exterminated each year seems to be climbing. Heaven might want all of us dead. Hey, Luci-boo... get your depressed-ass over here. You wanna make a kid this time? (Waits til Charlie is somewhat grown, and asks Heaven for a "meeting".) Lilith: ok, I have got an offer you cannot refuse - I will never EVER sing again, and my power will leave with me - IF you give me a spot in Heaven (or Earth - I should technically be immortal since I never touched the Forbidden Fruit). Heaven: um... win for everyone? ok! Charlie herself (for lack of a better term) might be Lilith's "ace in the hole" herself. Also, this makes me wonder if the only way to avoid lying is to avoid singing on the topic XD

*I have nothing against mary sues. I'd been wanting for years now to do something visual describing the internal turmoil that religious trauma caused in my The-Cell-starring-J-lo --like inner worlds. Telling personal stories and Mary Sues are inextricably intertwined. This show has inspired me to either keep pursuing that or just quit. Because picking apart past trauma for analysis can be more trouble than its worth - especially if you are ready to forget. u.u I still get deep chills every time I hear Emily and Charlie's duet in "You Didn't Know", even though I've officially considered myself atheist for like, what, three months?" This shit was an essay. I'm just going to play Warframe instead. Peace.