#every bisexual woman i know chooses one of these two losers

[carnage-queen-exe]

Had to go and filter tags for the stupid BG3 wizard guy cause none of you heathens have taste. Karlach. Karlach is the one true option. Get that weak shit out of here.

[artificialqueens]

Ms. California - Chapter One (Crygi/Jankie) - Mik

AN: Hey guys! This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction (or fiction in general). I absolutely love the idea of these two together, so hopefully you all enjoy it! If you guys like it, I’m definitely hoping to write at least six more chapters.

Summary: Crystal moves to Los Angeles from Missouri and meets GiGi Goode, captain of the varsity cheer squad. Queue the 1990s lesbian high school AU that absolutely nobody asked for.

The first time Crystal sees GiGi is on her first day of senior year at Fairfax High School. She’s just moved from a small town in Missouri to Los Angeles with her family and starting over is daunting. 

The second she enters the campus, she feels intimidated - it’s at least three times the size of her high school back home. She knows nobody; she is completely and utterly alone amongst her peers, who seem to be mostly chatting amongst themselves in groups. It’s Crystal’s senior year and she knows she should be looking forward to all of the so-called “high school experiences” that are surely to come this year, but all she can think of is how much she wishes it were all over. 

Crystal looks down at the somewhat crumpled piece of paper in her hands, examining her schedule. It’s going to be a pretty simple year, she decides, after realizing she only has five classes, one of which is advanced drawing and painting. Crystal is an art kid through and through. She looks the part - always wearing quirky combinations of bright colors and unconventional, wacky patterns - acts the part, and has the talent to match her aesthetic. 

Crystal begins looking for her first period classroom - art, thankfully. An easy way to start the day, she thinks to herself. Although she can see her class is supposedly held in room A12, she can’t find the building for the life of her on the huge campus. She’s sure that she looks impossibly lost and frazzled, and she starts to panic as she notices that the hands on her watch are slowly ticking closer to eight.

Apparently, someone else notices her alarmed expression too. “Are you lost?” a voice calls out from behind Crystal. 

“Um… yeah, I think I am,” Crystal replies, turning around. When she sees the person the voice belongs to, her nerves override her brain. The girl has shoulder length blonde hair and the most strikingly blue eyes she’s seen. She’s dressed like someone out of the magazines Crystal used to read; a short red dress clings to her long legs and Crystal can’t help but notice the pair of blush pink heels she’s chosen to accessorize the outfit with. Crystal thinks that she belongs on a runway or a movie set or at a photoshoot, not on a high school campus. She’s tall, she’s thin, she has full, pillowy lips, and a cute button nose; a girl that looked like that wouldn’t have made a point of reaching out to a stranger at her old high school. 

“What classroom are you looking for?” the girl asks, approaching Crystal. 

“A12,” Crystal chirps, sure she’s sounding as nervous as she looks. 

“Oh, you’re an art kid. Well, it’s right up that flight of stars,” the blonde motions to her right. “Are you new?” “Is it that obvious?” Crystal jokes, trying to hide how flustered she is. “Just a bit,” the other girl cracks a smile. “I’m GiGi.”

“Crystal.” “Well, maybe I’ll see you around, Crystal.”

GiGi walks off, leaving a stunned Crystal in her wake. As soon as she can calm her thoughts, she walks towards the flight of stairs.

She makes it to her first period class with five minutes to spare, and upon realizing she’s the first student to enter the spacious classroom, she makes her way to the front. Crystal elects to sit front and center, deciding that if nothing else, it will make her noticeable to other students and hopefully help her make some friends.

Students start trickling in one by one and filling out the classroom. Most choose to sit as far back as they can, probably to avoid being called on or so they can text without being noticed. Crystal silently prays for someone to sit next to her so she doesn’t look like the loner new kid. 

Her wish is granted when a girl with long, black hair wearing a pair of glasses with thick frames elects to sit next to her. 

Crystal, being somewhat extroverted - and desperate to make friends at her new school - introduces herself. 

“Hey, I’m Crystal!”

“Jackie,” the girl smiles. “Nice to meet you,” she says, extending a hand. 

Crystal suppresses a smirk at the formality of the gesture; it’s endearing. 

“Nice to meet you, too! How long have you been taking art?” Crystal asks,

Their conversation is interrupted by their teacher - who introduces herself as Ms. Velour - beginning the class. Crystal and Jackie both listen attentively to the bald woman with bold make-up as she reviews the course syllabus. 

Ms. Velour suddenly stops her lecturing and Crystal hears the door to the classroom open and close in succession. She twists around, partially out of curiosity to see who’s coming in so late, and partially because every other student is too. 

It’s GiGi. 

She makes a beeline for the only open desk in the back right corner. 

“Ms. Goode, thank you for joining us,” Ms. Velour says in a somewhat annoyed tone. 

GiGi doesn’t answer, and when Crystal tries making eye contact, GiGi ignores her. 

First period flies by, and even though Crystal would have loved to catch up to GiGi after class, GiGi seems to have sped out of the classroom. Crystal finds out she and Jackie both have second period - AP English - together anyways, so the two make their way to the classroom across campus. 

“So, that GiGi girl…” Crystal asks her potential new friend in a somewhat questioning tone. 

“GiGi? Well, there’s a lot I could say but I guess I’ll just stick with the super simplified version of it. She’s a junior and the head of the varsity cheer squad, she’s the resident “cool girl”, if you know what I mean. I’ve had art with her every year, and she likes to pretend she’s above it all.”

“Above it all?” Crystal questions - that definitely wasn’t the feeling she got from GiGi earlier. 

“Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, she probably thinks of all of the art kids as weird losers. But she’s one of us - she just won’t acknowledge it or you you, unless she’s hurling insults at you with her posse of cheer girls.” 

Crystal refrains from commenting about her interaction with GiGi before the class. “Well, that sounds like something out of a bad 1980s high school movie,” Crystal laughs. 

“It kind of is - welcome to LA, Crystal,” Jackie jokes as the two walk into their second class. 

~

Crystal’s first day goes well, overall. She and Jackie are on the route to becoming fast friends, and the dark haired girl even offers to give her a ride home after class, which Crystal appreciates.

The next morning, Jackie picks Crystal up and introduces her to her friend, Jan. The two seem a bit touchy; there are many fleeting glances and subtle touches between them.

The trio arrive to school ten minutes early, after picking up coffee. Jan is bright and bubbly and kind and Crystal immediately adores her; much like herself and Jackie, they hit it off instantaneously. 

Jan hugs Jackie goodbye, and plants a kiss on her cheek, eliciting Jackie to turn a shade of light pink. 

Crystal doesn’t question it. 

“Jan’s really cool,” Crystal says to Jackie as they make their way to first period together. 

“Yeah, isn’t she?” Jackie grins. “We’ve known each other since middle school.”

“Those kinds of friendships are always the best, I had a few friends like that back home in Missouri,” Crystal recalls. 

“Oh, well… I wouldn’t say we’re friends,” Jackie stutters. 

“You seemed pretty close,” Crystal says, perplexed. 

“Uh, yeah, we are,” Jackie says expectantly. 

The pair are silent for thirty seconds as Crystal tries to understand what Jackie is insinuating. 

“Okay, I don’t get it,” Crystal admits. 

“We’re like, girlfriends,” Jackie half-whispers. “But you can’t say anything. Please do not say anything.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess I should’ve picked up on that,” Crystal sighs internally at her own obliviousness. “And I won’t - your secret’s safe with me.”

“Thank you. I mean, it’s just a bit weird because Jan is on the cheer squad and if anyone finds out, she’ll basically become a pariah - both for being bisexual and for dating someone like me.”

“It’s Los Angeles and it’s 1994 - do people still really care about that here? And what do you mean, ‘someone like you’” Crystal asks, somewhat shocked. If there was one thing she was expecting to be different in Los Angeles, it was the sociocultural climate.

“Most of the kids at this school come from money - rich, white families. Republican families,” Jackie exhales. “Which also means they’re not too fond of me - an out-and-proud Persian lesbian.”

“That’s stupid,” Crystal states. 

“We can agree on that,” Jackie sighs. 

The pair sit down together, in the front of the classroom again, and talk about their art - what they like painting, their favorite painting music, their current works in progress.

Class starts and to Crystal’s dismay, she doesn’t see GiGi - until she hears the door quickly open and close fifteen minutes later.

GiGi arrives late again. This time there are no seats left in the back, and she’s forced to make her way to the front of the room. Crystal barely notices that someone is sitting beside her until the scent of Chanel perfume floods Crystal’s senses. 

Crystal is greeted with the same bright blue eyes she was previously entranced by. 

Disregarding a suspicious look from Jackie, Crystal smiles at GiGi.

“Hey! Thanks again for helping me get here the other day.”

GiGi, unlike the day before, gives her a tight-lipped smile. “No problem.”

“Your make-up looks really nice today!” Crystal continues on, admiring GiGi’s dark lips, sparkling magenta eyeshadow, and long eyelashes..

“Thanks.”

Crystal notices a difference in the GiGi she met and this GiGi - she knew it didn’t mean much because she’d barely interacted with the girl, but she feels strangely compelled to get to know her. There was something about her that was intoxicating. 

Before Crystal could continue talking, the teacher shoots her a look, effectively silencing her. 

~

Crystal is on her own after class; Jackie is meeting Jan to do god knows what. She decides to use Jackie’s lack of presence as an excuse to talk to GiGi again. 

Class ends and Crystal trails behind GiGi, who once again darts out of the door. 

“Hey, wait, GiGi!” Crystal yells, partially expecting the tall girl to continue walking quickly down the hill. 

She doesn’t. She spins around, and crosses her arms. “Yes?” “I need help finding my English classroom. Jackie showed me where it was yesterday, and I forgot.”

GiGi rolls her eyes; Crystal figures her feigned ignorance is fairly easy to see through. 

“You do? Again?” GiGi says in a monotone voice. 

“Okay, I’ll admit that was pretty lame,” Crystal tries to lighten the mood. “I don’t know, you seem really cool, and I guess I was wondering if you’d want to grab lunch today? I’m new, I don’t really have friends here yet.”

GiGi’s expression turns from annoyed to something resembling concern. Her eyes dart around before motioning for Crystal to follow her back up the hill, towards the secluded side of the art building. 

“I don’t know what Jackie told you about me, but I can’t be like that. Especially not with you.” 

Crystal arches an eyebrow. “I don’t get it.”

“Come on. Jan tells Jackie everything, don’t play dumb, please. Class starts in…” GiGi checks her pearl-colored watch, “five minutes and I don’t have time to spell it out for you, new girl.”

“I’m not,” Crystal shrugs. 

GiGi lets out a muffled groan. “Sure you’re not. Okay, well, why don’t you just ask Jackie about me, then?”

Crystal doesn’t want to admit that she already has. 

“Um… okay. So that’s a no for lunch then, I’m guessing?” Crystal asks. 

GiGi’s facial expression indicates that she, under her rock-hard exterior, genuinely does feel bad. She opens her mouth and pauses, as if she’s trying to figure out the right thing to say. 

“Not lunch… and not at school. What are you doing on Friday night?”

“Um, nothing probably. New kid syndrome,” Crystal jokes, trying to break the tension. 

“Ask Jackie for my number. If she doesn’t have it, Jan does.” 

GiGi is gone as soon as she finishes her sentence, and Crystal is confused. GiGi seems to have some connection to Jackie - Jackie hadn’t mentioned that in the slightest. Second, she seems to think that Crystal has some hidden motive, one completely unbeknownst to her. Crystal can’t even begin to fathom what’s going on in the blonde’s head. She just wants friends and GiGi seems nice - and she’s stunning. But that’s aside from the point. Crystal snaps out of her thoughts, realizing she needs to make it to AP English in less than three minutes.  

She lets it go, and sets off to her next class, intending to tell Jackie everything. GiGi perplexes her.

~

“She wants to what?!” Jackie exclaims once class is over. “She wants to hang out, outside of school, with you?!”

“Yeah, I mean, I think so. It seemed like she wanted to spend time with me,” Crystal says. “She also kind of made a comment about you and Jan - she knows you’re close with her. Does she know about you two?”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I’m all for outing people, but I guess if she’s going to be so bold - GiGi and I had a thing during her freshman year - my sophomore year. She’s the only one who knows about Jan - they keep each other’s secret.”

“Wow,” Crystal mused. “I don’t even know what to say.”

“It’s all very dramatic,” Jackie sighs. “I don’t like GiGi very much - not anymore at least. She’s changed a lot. I mean, she won’t be seen with me because I’m out, even though I’m dating her best friend, and she was clearly ignoring you in front of everyone because you’re gay,” Jackie rambles.

“Oh, I’m not - I mean, I’m supportive of all of that but I’m like, I’m not gay,” Crystal says, turning bright red. 

“Oh,” Jackie looks confused. “But you’re going on Friday?”

“Yeah?” Crystal says inquisitively. 

“I mean, I don’t want to speak for GiGi, but if you asked her to get lunch, she probably thought you were trying to flirt. And I think suggesting Friday was her way of showing she is interested,” Jackie explains. 

Crystal realizes she’s a little bit oblivious; she’s embarrassed. Growing up in a small town in Missouri rendered her unable to read the situation; it’s not like gay people ever tried to secretly date there. She didn’t even know if gay people lived in Missouri.  

“Well, shit,” Crystal inhales deeply. 

“Are you gonna go?”

“Yeah, I mean… Maybe we can be friends, or something,” Crystal hopes aloud. “Oh, and on that note, I need GiGi’s number - she told me to ask you for it.”

[heeres-suffering]

Be More Alluring: a Personality Swap AU

[pic description and source will be at the bottom of this post, under the read more]

Start of summary:

“You need to be more alluring.”

"... don’t you mean attractive?”

“I do not. Your attractiveness is adequate, Brooke; if you want to mask your apparently latent queerness, you have to make them want you straight. Isn’t that why your step-father defended you?” 

Brooke Lohst is a loser.

But you know what? That was okay.

She always knew she was a weird one. The intensity of her affection for puppies, picture books, and near-constant daydreaming has lasted well-past a normalcy she can’t seem to grasp; when coupled with her inability to befriend anyone (besides the similarly self-identified loser Michael Mell), it’s not a surprise the rest of her peers have left her behind.

However, there were... ah, worse things in her life to worry about then some mild bullying. She liked her passion well enough, and all of her true insecurities went largely unnoticed, so any insults or weird looks rarely lingered in her mind. It’s not like she was a constant target either, which helped a lot. All in all, she just planned to hunker down, wait out the awkwardness of High School like everyone else, and move on to the rest of her life... 

Except.

When Brooke develops a crush on a girl she’s never talked to, after years of avoiding fairy tale romance and trying not to think about the inevitability of marriage (or how finicky her attraction to boys is in the first place), it feels like her whole world is about to cave in. She’d do anything to make sure her parents, especially daddy, never find out... including buying an edible super computer from the loudest, tiniest guy in school.

End of summary.

Alright!

Hi, hello, it’s Mod Seb, and here’s an AU I’ve been rolling around for a few days! You are free to do with this concept whatever you want, but I wanted to introduce it with a good chunk of the info I’ve already worked out in my head.

So. As the CWs are... too numerous, I’m going to go with a blanket “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” label and encourage you not to read the rest of this if you have any big darkfic triggers that could be upset by mere mention; this isn’t a fic tho, so descriptions of anything awful won’t last long. 

Although, I will mention upfront that Brooke isn’t a binary lesbian. I know the description might read like I’m setting her up to be 100% homosexual; she’s bi with a strong preference for girls, and anyone who presents soft enough in gender or appearance. If it wasn’t for the end-game pairings, her unfamiliarity with smaller details/history of the LGBTQ+ community, and general “gay newb” status, she’d likely ID as a bi lesbian!

(ships and everything else under the Read More)

Okay. That out of the way, there’s quite a number of pairings; I’m pretty sure it’s a super polyamorous and sexual AU, though you’re free to change this list as much as you’d like:

[bolded are end-game ships. italics physically hook up at least once. strike-through means they were in a relationship but break-up in some way before the ending. (H) stands for healthy, while (T) is toxic and/or noncon. underlined characters are pining for the other and may never confess their true feelings]

Brooke/Christine (H), Brooke/Rich (H), Brooke/Jenna (H), Brooke/Michael (H), Brooke/Chloe (T), Brooke/her Daddy (T), Brooke/Squip (H), Brooke/Jeremy (soft T at first bc of mirrored canon-compliant manipulation, H later on), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy (H), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy/Rich (H), Rich/Moses (H), [insert every form of Rich/Mo/Squip/Jeremy here] (H), Jeremy/Chloe (T), Jeremy/Michael (H), Michael/Christine (H), Michael/Christine/Mr. Heere (H; no, seriously), Madeline/Brooke (H)

This is, of course, a role swap AU where Brooke and Jeremy trade places based on my personal lore for their home lives. I always have some pretty fucked ideas as I don’t imagine MB is a great place with great adults, and I pick and choose which parts of canons I use and which I don’t. 

There is no definite ending planned in mind as this isn’t an outline; it’s meta (or an imagine or w/e) for an AU that you’re free to do whatever with. 

So,

The big difference is that Brooke was picked by Michael, while Jeremy was picked by Chloe. Jeremy is trans and hadn’t come out yet; if Chloe had known he was a boy, she wouldn’t have grabbed him. In contrast, Michael’s never gave a shit about potential friends genders.

Jer and B’s personalities... are altered some. Not ALL the way, but kiiinda fusing into their roles, kinda tweaked (I'll get back to that).

The main point of this for me was Brooke/Squip/Jeremy, with B/Jer having a MUCH stronger focus than in canon, and a really bad Chloe acting as one of the major villains.

Michael gets roped into Chloe’s shit, even tho he's still generally a good guy here, bc he's worried about B and thinks she can't properly take care of herself.

While B DOES have a strong crush on Christine, she’s the opposite of the Squip’s “goal”; that’s (obvs) masking, or making passably digestible, her queerness.

Her Mom and step-’Daddy’ have reacted to her friendship w/ ‘openly gay moms, also very flamboyant and GNC’ Michael... poorly.

Michael thinks the solution has to be “act as aggressively yourself as you can, and if they reject you, you know me and the mom’s have a space for you”. This works for him bc he’s permanently hyper-visible, what with all of his own marginalized identities. But, not only has she flied under the radar in comparison to him for years, he doesn’t know everything about her life.

In fact, he doesn’t know most of it. She’s very good at hiding things.

Meanwhile, Jeremy, one of the more popular ‘boy... ish’ (we’ll get to this, too) people in school, is mid-psychosis and self-destruction. He actually has schizo-affective disorder--as is the case with all of my versions of Jeremy--which he needs medication for. Combined that with so many bad influences and trauma, he can no longer fully control himself or his life.

The way he handles this (badly) is to ‘whore around’--which, besides being Chloe’s pet, is kinda why he’s so popular. Nobody respects him, but he’s viewed some form of favorably.

Jeremy is in a relationship with Rich, but he won't let him get as close/protective as Rich wants; Mo and Rich were doing their own man-whoring (but healthy, just droppin’ panties and making dudes and chicks swoon--yeah, Rich is out as bisexual, this is a very ‘the Squips are a good thing’ AU) to gain their standard reputation, but in the course of that, they got together with Jeremy and it became... complicated. Both of them are very "nnn" about how bad his life is for Jer.

The way that their personalities are altered is... okay. To explain this, I have to talk about my characterization of canon-Brooke and Jeremy in relation to this, starting with Brooke:

I imagine B as just a liiittle below the line of "all the way there" for sorta-similar reasons to Jeremy here: trauma, and Chloe (which is why that’s what Jeremy gets in this, it’s just WAY worse when compounded by everything else). She’s also--like me, and like almost every character I write as a result--autistic, in a near-permanent state of “not enough accommodations” and over-stimulation. This leads to a lot of dissociation and a very wandering mind, as well as being perceived as a bimbo or dumb blonde or w/e misogynistic bullshit is projected onto her by the boys she dates (she’s also much more down the middle bi outside this AU).

So, going back to how she is for this AU: she's actually not super nerdy, despite the close connection she and Michael have. Honestly, it’s their general neurodivergent weirdness that bring them together, and so she’s mostly adopted her nerdy interests through him, whether directly a thing he likes, or finding a whimsical variant that fits her tastes.

Obviously, unlike Jeremy, she doesn’t mind being called a loser. She does any insinuation she might be queer. This including anyone who calls her gay or a dyke.

She has too much Cis Male Trauma (unlike canon, where it comes from both cis angles) to really entertain the idea of a Traditionally Male Partner. This means she skews HEAVILY towards hard GNC guys at the very least, and generally finds herself most interested in the idea of enbies and women. she's also not super into butches tho, bc her trauma mixing with her sexuality has latched on to Strong Masc People Are A Threat. 

An expansion on her interests, in canon and otherwise: animals, ASMR/sensual service work (including massages and stuff), spending hours just sorta sitting by herself and letting her imagination wander, fairy tales, and YA-and-under fantasy books.

(Here, she tries to avoid het or f/f romance... except that, this past year or two, she’s started really like m/m stuff--esp after getting REALLY into drag shows, which she could enjoy safely since girls like Chloe have gotten into them too; in canon, she’s a romance fanatic)

Now... this is one of the really darkfic element; she's fucking her step-dad. 

She does this so that he doesn't walk out on her, her mom, and her little sister*. Her mom has a good-enough job as a standard office woman, but he makes enough to pay the rent on their nice townhouse and all the bills she can’t. So, after he expressed interest in Brooke and then casually mentioned he could always just leave if she wasn’t comfortable, she reluctantly entered a relationship with him

(* = her sister is currently know as her brother; he’s like 12 or 13, and started showing signs of trans/queerness which have been Heavily Discouraged. Brooke worries about him a lot)

((I didn’t use she/her pronouns bc I’m not entirely sure he would change them? This is an OC Oli created at the beginning of our interest in BMC, and we haven’t worked on him at all since, so how his characterization will be is up in the air))

Canonically, Brooke's "in love" with her daddy, which is a self-imposed delusion; if she actually addressed it, she’d says she’s well aware that’s not true, but it's so much easier to pretend when you’re cornered like that. Brooke’s life blows.

She’s a lot more honest to herself about hating him here; still, she tries to be as polite and generally-friendly as she can, doing what he says whenever he wants.

OKAY, THAT’S BROOKE. If any of that is badly described or potentially-offensive, it’s just bc I glossed over SO MUCH DETAIL, even in that amount of it!

So. Jeremy.

I don’t have to go over him much and we’re all mostly aware of how I feel about him and also I don’t have the energy to do this again--

(just... read my fics The Devil at your Door or hello yesterday or something... eyyy actually do that, my ao3 username is Sedusa, blah blah blah ANYWAY)

--but basically: He's still very nerdy, like, he’s super into film as well as video games (which is another constant for me), but after being largely ignored in elementary, he's been trailing behind Chloe at her orders since they were in 6th grade. As a result he isn't very open about... any of his interests.

In 7th grade, he came out as trans to everyone. Chloe was furious, but at the same time, intrigued; this was around the time Chloe gets her own... ah shit I gotta go into that too--

--yet another hc of mine is that Chloe gets a Squip on accident around this time at a party (there was one in a “”candy bowl””), and from there, she claws her way up the ladder. I... will not go into that much, but her Squip was crippled by the drugs and alcohol in her system, and therefore largely at her mercy. She’s used his power to manipulate certain things about herself and to sharpen her focus on popularity to the point she’s full-blown Alpha Bitch.

Man, I’ve had to go on so many tangents, I apologize.

Anyway, she drags Jeremy around as a punching bag. She constantly mocks Jeremy's transness, even though she usually calls him by his correct name and pronouns.

This has made the rest of the school follow her lead, hence why I said “boy-ish”; he’s popular, he’s technically ‘well liked’, but nobody really takes him seriously. This is compounded by Chloe’s refusal to let him dress in 'dorky' casual clothes, and, as he’s both too poor to afford designer clothes and also generally hates popular guy fashion, he has to wear the hyper femme clothing Chloe specifically tells him too/

As such, people call him a boy but largely see him as either an idiot, a slut, an attention seeker, or all of the above.

So of course, in Brooke's place, his neurodivergence is more prominent than ever; every day he slips further into this psychosis and self-infantilization haze, as his his mom leaving, his dad severely depressed, Chloe's sexual violence, and other repressed trauma (see: my fic hello yesterday on ao3) all weighing on him. This makes him INCREDIBLY regressed, like, all the time by Junior year.

And then Brooke's Squip (IE: canon Squip) falls in love with Jeremy extremely fucking hard. He pushes her to date him as a way to compromise on her queer desires, since Jeremy is technically a boy, and certainly a few other straight-ish girls have hooked up with him in the past.

WHEW. That is a fucking lot. To wrap this up, lemme go over the interpersonal relationships not already mentioned, and what directions I think it takes.

First off, Madeline has a more prominent role, as I quite like her tbh; she’s a sex worker, she has her own Squip, she’s one of Chloe’s most hated enemies, and she gravitates towards both Brooke and Jeremy. She’s also Actually French, Chloe’s just weird.

(Anyway she prolly sees through Brooke’s straight act and asks her why she’s pretending to be a good little cishet. It rattles Brooke.)

Chloe is scum. This bears repeating. She DEFINITELY rapes Brooke at the Halloween party, and becomes obsessed with her, along with already being obsessed with Jeremy and Jake. 

Jake, by the way, has a lot of regressive behavior and impulsiveness bc he’s been in an abusive relationship off and on with Chloe for years now.

Speaking of Jake, moving on to his best bro: Rich doesn’t set himself on fire. He’s having a good time with his Squip.

But.

He IS set on fire at the Halloween party.

Instead of the Smartphone Hour being about Rich's instability, it's actually about the mystery of Someone Did It To Him But No One Saw Who It Was, They Were Disguised.

The answer relates to the fact that Rich and Brooke are ALSO hooking up, after she’s already with Jeremy, bc he Properly introduces her to him and the three of them hit it off really well.

(She initially wasn’t interested, but while Rich is loud and still kinda abrasive, his Squip doesn’t drive him to act like a bully--and in private, his nerdiness is really obvious and he’s extremely gentle with her and Jeremy. Add to that that he’s bi and trans*, when Brooke connects best w/ queer men over cishet one, and it off-sets his masc-ness enough to make him an Exception.

* = I always imagine him as trans. See: all of Vanceypants fics.)

Sooo... the culprit is actually Brooke's daddy, who sees her with this obvious heartthrob and Cannot let that be.

Chloe convinces Michael that the Squips are Very Very Bad and has him team up with her to force Brooke into drinking Red, with the intention to convince him to kill himself after to get him out of the way, bc she’s really going nuts at this point.

Eventually, he snaps out of it when he and Christine get together (he’s thought he was Full Homo all of his life, but Christine’s prolly genderqueer-ness makes him realize “oh shit, I’m bisexual”) and she starts to question why he’s acting the way he is towards Christine.

He also definitely has a crush on Jeremy and during his time with Chloe he kinda tried to flirt a little but couldn’t really... he’s not up for dating someone as sexually active and a push-over as Jeremy is in this.

However, when he snaps out of Chloe’s manipulation, he and Christine approach Mr. Heere to convince him to straighten up and help Jeremy and also bc they really need an adult to successfully fight Chloe.

This requires a month+ of Christine getting him to see her psychiatrist (the one who prescribes her ADHD meds). Jeremy spends the majority of his time staying with Chloe, and very rarely comes home to gather things or to make sure his dad is eating/still alive, as much as he can remember to in his own haze of mental illness. Anyway, point is, he doesn’t know Christine and Michael are there often... not that, in the course of growing close to Mr. H, they both fall for him hard and it becomes one of my stranger OT3s.

(God, Jeremy goes through a lot of shit in this, tho.)

Pre-Squip, Jenna was kinda-sorta Brooke’s friend--or, well, friendly. However, she’s actually full blown “oh my God she’s wonderful” in love with Brooke.

Brooke isn't aware of that, esp since Jenna tries her not to be around her a lot. She's also trying to hide her own queerness, bc she’s a trans woman and she knows Chloe finding that out would be extremely dangerous.

Eventually, Chloe succeeds in making Brooke take the Red months after canon usually ends, w/o Michael’s help. If you’re curious, Red doesn’t affect her normal Squip bc she’s had him too long and a lot of his receptors and stuff are damaged, so it’s the second one she gets in canon that turns off.

This plan backfires, however, as Brooke’s Squip comes back with a physical body w/ help from Rich and also-bodied-now Moses.

With a body, and shenanigans, Mo and Squip take out Brooke’s daddy too. His life insurance more than makes up for the loss of his income, as it’s a sizable amount. Now that Brooke feels more empowered and strong, she overrides her mother’s neglectfulness and takes control of the household w/ her boyfriends*, comes out as queer, helps her sister transition, and begin to heal from all of this trauma.

(* = Rich and Mo move in, as does Jeremy eventually, after graduation; Jeremy gets a psychiatrist and a therapist and prolly has to go through some intense outpatient care and possibly a stay in the hospital, before finally making major breakthroughs and looking like himself again. The five of them are now happy and in love.)

Chloe, after her arm gets twisted by the Squip’s protective presence so thoroughly, gives up on Jeremy and Brooke to focus on Jake. This too gets abandoned when Rich and Mo help him cut her off, and so she stays in her own popularity bubble, bitter, until graduating and going to a community college in a different state.

All in all, things work out well in the end, but getting there is a long, difficult process. This AU fascinates me immensely and feels like a great way to examine some of my really dark headcanons about MB, as I think it’s a town similar to Derry in Stephen King’s IT--as in, just chronically The Worst Place Ever, with this, like, miasma of low-key despair around it. People adjust and don’t question it, which is why so much of BMC is this flippant dark humor in the face of some highly questionable shit.

I’m so sorry this post is so long (I’ll be uploading it to AU under my usual Sedusa account, as metas like this are more than allowed), but I really adore these characters and the way they can be twisted around, so I had a lot to say!

Thank you for reading <3

-mod Seb

image description: virtual-like stairs pointed forward and bathed in neon yellow and blue to represent Brook and Jeremy, which I’ve modified from the original blue-only design.

source: x (link description: a free Wallpaper Flare image that I found off Google Image’s “filtered by ‘labeled and reuse with modification” feature) 

[bigskydreaming]

notjustawave replied to your post:

If the only evidence of a character not being...

me seeing ppl act like deadpool movies are the pinnacle of representation like i HAVE to laugh

Like....we’ve been hearing this “oh, progress takes baby steps, one little thing at a time” crap for our entire lives, and guess what? With the exception of representation created by actual marginalized creators who manage to get a platform for it against all odds, most other so called representation from major studios and companies and franchises looks barely any different from the scraps they were giving us twenty years ago.

Baby steps my ass. Just say you’re trying to keep marginalized viewers on the hook watching your stuff without pissing off the homophobes and racists enough that they stop watching your stuff. That’s what it comes down to. That is the only reason most representation is still half-assed, blink and you miss it.

Major billion dollar corporations and highly successful and influential actors who makes millions off every movie honestly have people bending over backwards to say they’re trying or progress isn’t easy and it takes time, like these people are actual victims and like....boxed in by the evil homophobic society or whatever....instead of the tastemakers whose prioritization of straight white heroes for generations is the reason we have to fight so hard to get actual representation in the first place! 

They’re not powerless to do more in the face of a still largely homophobic society, they’ve just made the conscious choice that they care more about making sure homophobes still buy tickets to their movies than they do actually making a difference.

And like, if that’s what they want to do, then fine, they can do that, but what kills me is this idea that we’re supposed to be grateful for whatever little hint of not-straightness or not-whiteness that they shine a spotlight on for 2.5 seconds in a movie before its back to business as usual.....as though they’d do more if they could, really they would, but that’s just the best they could manage because The Homophobes and the Racists, y’see.

The movie Deadpool only happened because Ryan Reynolds wanted it to happen so badly, he wouldn’t let the project die in development hell. He kept making the rounds himself, kept the push on to keep new scripts for it getting made, and he has enough star power and a big enough fanbase that he was able to make it happen when lots of other actors couldn’t. There’s that post going around about how there’s a Bea Arthur T-Shirt he wore in the movie that they had trouble getting in because copyright stuff, so he paid $10K out of his own pocket for the licensing stuff to go through. And on and on.

Like, these aren’t small, innocuous things, they’re a display of the fact that people have power and influence in Hollywood and use those things every single day to get what they want or do things they care about. If the Deadpool production team and star really WANTED Deadpool the character to be the kind of meaningful representation they’re obviously all too happy to accept accolades for having provided already? Then they absolutely had the power to to give Wade an actual romantic history with one of the men in his films, or even one of them as an actual love interest or reciprocated flirting with one of them responding to his come-ons with like, interest of their own. Because notice how that suddenly, magically, turns what WAS just Wade obnoxiously using suggestive humor purely aimed at getting an audience laugh rather than an actual reaction....into two men having a moment like happens hundreds of times throughout every other summer blockbuster between a man and a woman and given the same degree of consideration and attention.

And yes, before someone comes at me with ‘bi and pan people don’t need to be in a romantic or sexual relationship with the same gender to be bi or pan’, like yes, thank you, I, a bisexual man, am aware of the fact that I remain equally bisexual when single, dating a man, dating a woman, or mid-orgy. My sexuality is not dependent on anyone or anything other than my own identity.

But we’re not talking about a real life human being’s identity here. We’re talking about REPRESENTATION, which is a thing created deliberately by human beings making conscious choices about what they want to display and what they don’t, and their reasons for both.

So yes, a bi or pan character is still bi or pan whether we see them kissing the same gender or not, but you can not act like a living bi man’s romantic and sexual interests being driven by his own unique choices as an individual....this is NOT the same thing as a bi or pan character who just so happens to be romantically interested in women love interests save for the occasional suggestive joke aimed at the nearest male character.

Because the former is born of that real life bi man’s entire life, experiences, personality, his BEING. The latter is born of human agendas and creative decisions and studio politics and yes, the fact that Fox and the Deadpool production are more than happy to throw LGBTQ+ viewers just enough table scraps that they’ll stay invested in supporting it, but not so much that it might risk them losing tickets in large numbers from the homophobic sector of their audience.

If I ignore the five men in my vicinity and focus on the one woman because I feel more of an attraction or connection to her for whatever reason, I get to do that because I am my own person, and people can assume whatever they want about what my motives or thought process might be but guess what? It doesn’t matter, because my choices are for me and me alone.

If Deadpool ignores the five men in his vicinity to focus on the one woman, its NOT because he feels more of an attraction or connection to her, because HE DOESN”T FEEL ANY OF THOSE THINGS. He is a fictional character. He only feels and acts upon whatever the writers decide he should feel and act upon, and THEIR motives and thought process absolutely get to be called into question, because they are not individuals making personal choices that are for them and them alone, they are creators of content that benefits and profits from the positive responses and continued support of whomever they choose to cater that content to in order to gain their support and positive response.

And bottom line, they still care more about selling tickets to homophobes than they do about creating real, positive, meaningful representation, and like....people should say that?? We do not owe it to million dollar franchises to say thank you, can we please have some more because of whatever they deign to dole out. Not while still blatantly making it clear PS, glad you liked that little moment there in Act Two Scene Five but tbh, we still care more about not pissing off the dude who lives in his parents’ basement in Kansas and has five guns and every Deadpool action figure ever made and cries into his pillow every night because Sara Lee rejected him when he asked her to his high school prom because he’s weird and ugly and nobody understands his pain like Deadpool, who is also weird and ugly and thus he NEEDS him, and just because he makes dumb jokes to guys onscreen sometimes, that’s no big deal, everyone does that sometimes, its not like he’s REALLY into guys, that’d be weird and also he can’t be because then he wouldn’t be like that homophobic shitbag who lives in his parents’ basement and trolls LGBTQ+ fans on twitter with “Lulz, dumbass losers, just accept that Deadpool doesn’t really represent you and never will, he’s OURS.”

They understand what actual representation looks like, because they’ve been representing the infinite shades of Shitty Straight White Human Being for generations now, and every single straight white man in Hollywood has a story about the character they identified with most as a child and made them want to write or act and basically shaped their entire life.

They know what actual representation looks like and what it means, but they have no interest in providing it so long as it might alienate who they see as the real moneymakers still, knowing they can still keep marginalized viewers watching by doling out the bare minimum and saying “there’s more coming, its just progress takes time, we need to take baby steps” like they’ve been doing for actual, literal decades, with very little actual change to show for it.

Sorry not sorry, but you tell me here’s five cents for you and hand me a nickel and then turn to the shitbag human being standing on the other side of you wearing a GOD HATES GAYS T-shirt and say “and here’s a twenty dollar bill for YOU, don’t spend it all in one place, lol” and then you and he share a hearty laugh while I’m standing there holding a fucking nickel?

LMAO, you can keep your five cents, you’re not like....actually doing me any favors there and I’m not going to feed your ego by pretending you did anything other than give me a shitty fucking nickel you probably picked up off the sidewalk.

[nicoknows]

Fog of Love or, 5 Ways in Which Tabletop Gamers Don’t Like Board Games

So this one was sitting on my living room table within eyesight and I figured why not? 

Fog of Love represents the way forward in modern board gaming. Or at least a promising alternative to traditional narratives in board gaming. 

You might immediately think, “Narratives in board gaming? Whomst?” And I get where you’re coming from. But there is a story being told every time you game. In Monopoly, the story is that each player starts from the same position, and through luck, skill, and even more luck, one person will emerge as a “winner,” someone will be designated as having a good outcome, everyone else will not. It’s not a compelling narrative in comparison with any kind of literature maybe, but it is a story nonetheless.

This narrative has been complicated in recent years as innovation continues to visit contemporary tabletop gaming. The earliest known board game, Senet, is conjectured to include a “winner,” and board games followed this trend for centuries, invariably as far as I can tell. However, in 1974, the first tabletop RPG came to the market, Dungeons and Dragons, and turned the world of board gaming on its head. We were introduced through D&D to the concept of a game without a winner. What was the reason for playing a game if it was not to win? I mean, you can play board games without obnoxiously and single-mindedly caring about who wins, but at the end of the day, up until this point, if you didn’t care about the win condition of a board game in the slightest, then it was literally a pointless exercise. The point, as written, of (under the unlikely assumption that I haven’t overlooked any) every board game created until 1974 was to meet a victory condition and be declared the “winner.” Dungeons and Dragons rejected this.

No better way to tell you in a TV show who’s a nerd than by telling you they play RPGs.

D&D argues that there could be something more, or at least different, substituted in for winning as the reason for playing board games. D&D says that the experience of play is enough to justify its own existence, that through the fundamental nature of tabletop gaming (i.e. a rule set) an engrossing story can be told that changes the conventional and dominating winner/loser narrative. There is meaning and emotional depth to be had in tabletop gaming, says D&D.

Since then, the win/lose narrative has been repeatedly challenged. As far back as the 1980s (perhaps earlier), cooperative games have risen with the idea that a group of people can compete, not with each other, but against a shared challenge in games such as Scotland Yard, Arkham Horror, and Fury of Dracula. In more recent years, Pandemic has reignited this trend, proceeding to catch tabletop gaming on fire again with Pandemic Legacy Season 1, a game which tells a coherent narrative across 12-24 games and which evolves based on player decisions. Other games like Dead of Winter, Battlestar Galactica, and Shadows Over Camelot are something called a semi-cooperative game, in which most or all players work together to achieve a common goal, but one or more players may be some kind of “traitor,” whose goal is to ruin the situation for everyone by being secretly selfish while everyone else accuses random people in the room.

Which brings us to Fog of Love, a sleeper hit of 2017 by first time designer, Jacob Jaskov, and first time publisher Hush Hush Projects. Fog of Love gives two players the opportunity to role-play a romantic relationship with characters they create and make choices for based on secret traits their partner doesn’t know. The game’s rulebook starts out fairly traditionally, explaining the game thematically, explaining how to win (which is by completing your character’s “DESTINY”), and the basic mechanisms. But on page 2, the rulebook has an inset, which states:

The Right Mindset

This is a game that tells a story. The more you infuse the game with your own imagination, the more rewarding it will be. . . . 

The game is designed to support fun dialogue and immersion. . . . In the end, the game is all about creating a good story. . . . 

You are playing the story as much as you are playing the characters. Whether you fulfill your characters’ DESTINIES or not at the end is therefore less important than the story you have created together.

From the get-go, Fog of Love doesn’t want you to prioritize “winning.” Instead, it has another goal in mind. This game wants you, the player, to create a story and to learn about yourself and your partner. Its goal differs then from most other games, which is to crown a winner. And it would do Fog of Love a disservice not to take it on its terms. 

I’ve seen one person on BoardGameGeek (the largest online gathering of board gamers) comment that certain aspects of the game’s win condition do not suit the role play. When you create a character in Fog of Love, you are dealt certain traits, which encourage you to role play your character in a certain way when you are given story choices in the future, and which give you a mechanical goal to have a certain amount of points in a certain personality aspect by the end of the game in order to eke out some last minute happiness points. This person on BGG argued that once you have achieved your trait goals, what mechanical benefit is there to continue roleplaying in that way? 

I think the game speaks for itself: “The game is all about creating a good story.” Ultimately, Fog of Love baffles a lot of long-time hobbyists because it eschews what they’ve come to believe is the reason to game. Fog of Love doesn’t reject that concept in its entirety; it’s still got a win condition, tbh. But it does restructure priorities back to what I think board gaming should be: Did you have fun? 

This game is ridiculously fun. I’ve heard it described as “barely a game,” and, despite not entirely knowing what that phrase means, I tend to agree. But no one I’ve played it with talks about how the trait goal mechanic doesn’t support role play, or how the game essentially boils down to repeating the same action of choosing from a list of multiple choice actions with a partner repeatedly. What we talk about when we remember this game is that time that Jessica Anne, a conservative, Christian woman, found out her partner was bisexual and had to deal with it in a positive way. Or when Maggie cheated twice on her pregnant fiancee, Suzette, once with Suzette’s best friend and once with some random guy Suzette never found out about because Maggie got amnesia and forgot about it. I remember how shocked and elated I felt when Thomas McPhearson suddenly asked my insecure and overzealous character, Paul Newcastle, to marry him, despite Thomas’s high levels of sexuality and Paul’s relative innocence. And I remember who it was I had these experiences with and how we’ll have memories to share about those games forever. Asking how many points I got in Terraforming Mars, or what strategy I went with in Concordia is great, and I love games like those, but I’ll remember and cherish my plays of Fog of Love with my friends much more. And I think that’s the mark of a truly excellent game.

[thefairefolk-rp]

Hi, Hannah! Your application for Kasha Greywolf has been accepted!

OOC INFORMATION:

Name/Nickname: Hannah Victoria (just Hannah is fine)

Age: 22

Preferred Pronouns: she/her

Timezone: GMT+1

Activity and Availability (Please answer in words as well as rating your availability from 1-10): 8/10 - I am usually on every morning or every other morning during the weekdays without fail, and often weekend mornings as well as all day weekends (depending on the time of year).

Have you read the rules and FAQ? Yes

IC INFORMATION:

Desired Character: Kasha Greywolf

Second Choice Character: x

What made you choose this character?: First and foremost because she is a strong female character with a clear sense of who she is and how she operates, but her strength is a masculine one and her character development now requires that she become more diplomatic–in essence, she must now embrace her femininity to upholster her masculine ferocity. I am highly interested in this kind of character development, the balancing act and the process of learning to be patient, logical, diplomatic without compromising one’s innate sense of self nor one’s principles. Secondly because I rarely play such stark female characters, so I find the opportunity to be appealing and adequately challenging, thus attractive. Thirdly because her clan and political alliances were my preference while I read the plot.

Are there any changes you would like to make?: Headcanon she is bisexual.

Questions/Comments: x

Writing Sample (Must be 300 words or more, third person limited, in the character you’re auditioning for’s point of view):

Kasha settled into her chair and withdrew her pipe as she looked out over the realm. Everything was silent in the night, and she could hear Ronan snoring at her feet. The calm was almost unbearable. For years the war had dragged on, one of the greatest Kasha had ever seen, and yet the number of battles she’d fought in was unacceptably low. Her blood seemed to boil, her limbs itch at the untouchable prospect of a straightforward battle of iron and blood as opposed to all the mind-numbing, difficult diplomacy she’d been facing recently. Her free hand fell to the axe at her hip and she sighed, caressing its sharp edge with her fingers the way another woman might do to a lover. It was hard. Cold. Decisive. As soon as she made a decision, the axe carried it out; nothing like the endless discussions, debates, collaboration that resulted in nothing more often than not. She missed precision, expediency, conclusion. The assurance that when the day was done, there would be a clear victor and a clear loser.

She took a puff from her pipe and sighed, clenching her hand in her lap. One of these days, her allies would see reason; they would realize that the only way to settle the unbalance in the world would be a swift, crushing war and the complete vanquishing of the enemy. They will see merit in my ways, when they too grow impatient with the lack of resolution, with the continued insult to their claims, she thought, tapping out the ashes and refilling her pipe. This thought alone sustained her when she faced discouragement and disillusionment with the proceedings, and restrained her from the wild desire to take matters into her own hands and rid the realm of the enemies of her own devices. Remember that this is not your battle, and that you must comply with your allies or risk fighting a battle on two fronts, Kasha told herself. Though she craved to feel the weight of her axe driving through flesh once more, experience the violent elation of battle, win honour through bloodshed, she was also a great enough warrior and tactician to know better than to betray her allies when it could leave her vulnerable, no matter how insufficient their strategies.

[trigafy]

New Post has been published on

New Post has been published on http://gogetthelook.com/2017/05/07/assessing-the-hiv-prevention-needs-of-gay-and-bisexual-men-of-color/

Assessing the HIV-Prevention Needs of Gay and Bisexual Men of Color

Product Description A 1993 report from the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the U.S. Conference of Local Health Officials on the subject matter. Includes statistics, demographics, assessment of needs and availability of local programs.

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Bi the way, we exist | Viet Vu | TEDxTerryTalks

In this TEDx talk, Viet speaks about the complexities of coming out as bisexual and the positive and negative reactions that he received from his family and friends. While focusing on a group that is rarely talked about in LGBTQ+ rights, Viet explains how anyone can have a tangible impact on someone’s life by choosing to care.

Viet is a fourth-year Economics student at the Vancouver School of Economics. He’s also a researcher at EqualDex, a database that maps the status of LGBTQ+ rights worldwide.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

If a mad scientist in a white coat came up to you and said he could make you a better woman with a few bits and pieces from the graveyard and the scrapyard, you’d be well within your rights to be a little concerned.

Of course, white coats are so last season, and we men love you just as you are, but if we could redesign you from scratch we can think of a few things that would make you even more amazing. In all fairness, you’d probably like to do the same to us, but for now, it’s our turn. Here are the modifications we’d choose to make if we had a say in creating Woman 2.0:

Behavior

The Current Model

Unless you’ve spent long, long periods studying her, she can be scarily unpredictable. Even if we had a time machine with which we could monitor her behavior, she’d still be unpredictable.

Sure, she goes to work and gym at the same time every day, SMSes her girlfriends like clockwork and calls her mother regularly, yet she surprises us with: Sally’s birthday party (‘Of course I told you we were going’); dinner at her parents’ house (‘You told my mother you couldn’t wait to see her again’), spontaneous tearfulness (‘I’m fine, leave me alone’) and, well, you know the rest.

The New Model

She’ll schedule everything, copy it to our PDA, and be perfectly flexible about moving things around if we need them to be moved. And everything includes everything –

18.15-18.35: complain about what a bitch that Angela from accounts is; 19.00-19.15: tell the story about yelling at that tramp at the gym who doesn’t wipe the equipment when she’s done; 20.00-20.10: express gratitude for being with such a fantastic listener; 20.10-00.00: demonstrate that gratitude with an intriguing new position. (Okay, that last one can be a surprise.)

Expectations

The Current Model

Despite how effortless we may make it look, it’s not that easy being a man. Women’s expectations of us range from easy (‘Come here and make sweet love to me’); to sigh-inducing (‘You promised to take my car to the car wash’); mildly difficult (‘Let’s go for a run’); tough (‘Must you go out with those loser friends of yours?’); and really tough (‘Why can’t you be more like [idiot ex-boyfriend’s name here]?’.

The New Model

As we have not yet mastered The Force (that’s the one where we wave our hand in our girlfriend’s direction and murmur something about wanting her to get us another beer), the next best thing is for her to be highly susceptible to hypnosis.

We’ll teach ourselves this ancient mystical art (there must be a DIY website, right?) and, with a click of our fingers and a few choice keywords, her expectations will be met.

Her: ‘Must you go out with those loser friends of yours tonight?’ Him: ‘You adore my friends. To you, they’re like the cutest puppies in the world. You love puppies. When I snap my fingers, you’ll be filled with happiness when I tell you I’m going out with my friends.’ Her (sighing): ‘I love puppies.’

Talking

The Current Model

She has so much to say, to so many people, so much of the time. She knows many, many words, and she’s not afraid to use her gigantic vocabulary. And when she’s not talking, she’s SMSing. Sometimes she’s talking and SMSing.

Like Dr Frasier Crane, we’re listening. Or, we’re supposed to be. You know how you sometimes tell your man, ‘You’re not listening to me’? He’ll disagree but you know you’re right. He’s not.

Often we’ll be contemplating really important things, such as the future of the global economy, the state of the nation, divisions in the ruling party, the elections, KFC or Nando’s, Lager or Lite, blondes or brunettes or redheads … suffice it to say, it’s a long and important list of manly concerns.

The New Model

She will be as chatty as the current model but she’ll have a highly evolved, telepathic awareness of when we’re mulling over the big issues. She’ll play a key role in addressing our dilemmas (‘Blondes, brunettes or redheads – why not all three? I’ll make some calls’) and quietly use her telepathic powers to time our chats when we’re not occupied with the big questions.

Dating

The Current Model

She’s bored silly with dull pick-up lines and flirting that involves our witty friends expressing their support and encouragement from the next table. She knows her vichyssoise from foie gras and her Pinot Noir from Pino Gris. (Foie gras is bad, apparently, but we try not to eat too many things we can’t pronounce.)

She expects us to know that Spur is not her idea of a fun night out and neither is Dros, regardless of what they claim in their ads. She spends more time than her best friend thinks we’re worth preparing for a night out with us. It’s nothing short of miraculous that humanity didn’t fade away eons ago, leaving talking dogs to run the planet.

The New Model

She’s like Mother Teresa (but alive, hot and sexually active) – she doesn’t discriminate. She’s watched enough bad movies to get those obscure but witty references with which we pepper our conversation; she’s mad about sports but will unhesitatingly defer to our learned, beer-fuelled opinion; her palate is refined but not so much that she doesn’t frequently crave something meaty cooked over open flames.

Fashion

The Current Model

The rent or the Blahniks? To a well-dressed woman, only a feeble-minded man would even consider that anything more than a rhetorical question.

To most men, more than three pairs of shoes is unnecessary (work, weekend and gym; sometimes the latter two are the same); the last suit we bought was for Michael’s wedding and we’ve worn it to work for the past two years, and the Levi’s we bought with our first pay cheque are still in pretty good shape, thanks for asking.

Even if the local Mall is her Manhattan, she firmly believes it’s her right, no, duty, to re-create herself in the image of Carrie Bradshaw, a fictional, middle-aged woman who dresses like a, uh, character from a TV show. (Jack Bauer, Braveheart and those guys from 300 didn’t worry about labels. Neither do we. Grrrr.)

The New Model

She still looks as pretty as a picture but has the good sense to pay the rent first and lust after Manolos later. (Seriously, babe, this is why we have to spend so much time contemplating that global economic crisis.)

Self-Image

The Current Model

Despite her fun, fearless ways, she occasionally manages to surprise us with her insecure and vulnerable side: ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ ‘It’s fant-ass-tic … come to daddy.’ At that point, insecurity is replaced by seething, uncontrollable rage, despite her prior insistence on our complete honesty, regardless of the circumstances.

Similarly, well-meaning and innocent compliments often go awry (‘That shirt makes your boobs look huge. Are you wearing a Wonderbra? Come to daddy’) without us even being aware of the potential for that rather un-sassy, seething, uncontrollable rage.

The New Model

She will utilize her telepathic powers to know that we’re rather fond of her bum/breasts/legs/arms/hair/bits and pieces, even if she’s convinced they’re too big/small/short/thin/fat/hairy/ hairless/dark/light/even/uneven.

Sex

The Current Model

Sassy, sexy and sometimes a little too cocksure, she knows what she likes and how she likes it – and she likes it with real orgasms. Which, hell, is rather a lot of pressure for us.

We’re all for showing a girl a good time. We read those get-fit/quit-smoking/be-the-world’s-greatest-lover articles in those men’s magazines with the pictures of Lee-Anne Liebenberg so we’re pretty good at trying new tricks and not tweaking, tugging, grabbing or groping when we should be stroking, fondling, teasing and tickling.

We’re not gynaecologists, however. We’ve mastered the G-spot but you’re on your own (or with your bi-curious friend from varsity) for the rest of those alphabetized spots we’re convinced the girls are making up to puzzle us.

The New Model

She’s every bit the confident hottie but, to her, our extensive bathroom reading has made us the greatest lover in the world, her bi-curious varsity friend often joins in without any of that post-threesome awkwardness and orgasms always come after just a few satisfying minutes of penetration.

Sandra Prior runs her own bodybuilding website at http://bodybuild.rr.nu.