#everywhere I fucking go people assume I'm a girl

[catinasink]

maybe it's my fucking fault I can't pass

[ickie]

♡ evergreen \ ln4.

pairing: lando norris x reader summary: lando is a cheater, and has to deal with the consequences of his actions. \ 500+ words. warnings: mild language, nothing bad. not a happy ending, sad fic??? notes: very reminiscent of how me n my boyfriend broke up but we're not gonna talk about that ! feel free to leave any feedback here, and my requests are open !

"you're an asshole."

the words came out before you could stop them, arms crossed over your chest as you stared the brit down. you had seen the picutres, hell you had seen the videos of lando driving some girl around in his mclaren. it wasn't like he tried to be inconspicous about what he was doing... they had gone out in the middle of the day in the broad daylight. there was no hiding even attempted on their part, at least not this time.

"it's not what it looked like, babe... i promise." he stepped forward, a hand coming to reach for your arm. you jerked away, jaw clenching as you shook your head. "it was exactly what it looked like! do i look stupid? do you think i don't see what the fuck goes on? i'm not oblivious. you have people that watch your every fucking move..." you choked on your words as you tried to fight back the knot that had formed in the back of your throat.

"who is she?" you asked the question that had littered your thoughts for the past two hours that lando had been gone, the same question that had been put in the comments of the pictures, of the videos, of the threads that you had seen on twitter... his pictures with this girl were everywhere and it seemed the only person who didn't know was lando himself.

"she's just a friend!" you couldn't help but laugh at the excuse, your mouth opened in disbelief. "if you can't believe me when i say this, you clearly don't fucking trust me. i'm your boyfriend. we've been together for ages. but if me hanging out with another girl is what takes this over the line then so fucking be it." it was almost as if lando didn't even care about the hurt that he had put you through, seemingly only mad that he had been caught.

"i- we're done." you shook your head, lips pursing as you ran a hand down your face. "you're a piece of shit human, and i hope you know that everyone seems to know that except for you. i deserve better, hell, that girl deserves better." you swallowed harshly, lips pursed together.

"you don't mean that," you had only assumed that the gravity of what lando had done had become crushing down on him in those moments, his demeanor had switched from one of annoyance to one of hurt. you shook your head once again.

"i do mean it lando. i can't keep fucking doing this. you don't deserve me. and i sure as hell don't deserve to keep living with whatever the fuck we are. we are done, lando. you can't win me back this time." tears had been streaming down your face as you walked towards the front door of his place. still not having quite processed what had happened between you and the man you had once considered the love of your life as you left.

all you knew was that in that moment you felt numb. you couldn't be mad, you couldn't be sad, all you knew was that you were going to have to get used to a new norm - a life without lando in it.

[byechristopher]

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I hate you, too [pt.2].

– CHRIS STURNIOLO SMUT & ANGST.

PART ONE.

Author's note: HI, I finally wrote it. I originally made a poll but, the answer was pretty clear so, here it is. It was requested, by the way! I'll reply to the message because I forgot to put it here, thanks for the request, dear. Side note, I was listening to Never Lose Me – Flo Mili (during the smut part, obvi). Do not copy/steal my work. :)

Warnings: filthy smut, super super long, didn't proofread, rough smut, car sex, angst. That's pretty much it. Minors dni. Thank you.

It's been a week since the party I attended, the one where I encountered him.

My mind has been consumed by reflections on that night, so much that I haven't been able to do anything else other than that, except for work. While I assume he might not have dwelled on it, I can't help but wonder if he thinks about me – about the way we touched, the way I looked at him when he prepared to leave. When I didn't want him to leave.

I shake my head, realizing I can't continue this self-inflicted struggle. Accepting the ongoing intimacy with my ex was challenging enough, let alone having feelings that linger inside me, still to this day. I almost gave in that day, when I saw something in his eyes, something that said he still cared about me – mending my dress, that sweet kiss, his declaration of hatred, a reminder of our past. That we once hated each other and that's why we weren't together anymore. Or so we thought.

Deciding that just sitting here, mopping around and feeling sorry for myself isn't going to help at all, I get up determined to go outside and have some fun. No house parties, no hosts, no Chris, no nothing.

My friends are already up for it (and I love them for it), because it only takes ten minutes for them to come over so we can get all dolled up together. It's a few minutes past midnight and we're finally ready (okay, we did have a few pre-drinks then and there), so we immediately call a cab. We reach our destination just a few minutes later and after greeting the girl that was at the entrance of the club, she lets us in and we get lost in the crowd.

You know how it goes; flashing lights everywhere, people kissing and drinking, almost pitch black all around. Looks like clubs aren't that different from house parties after all. A group of friends offers to buy us drinks, and who are we to say no (there's no way we're dancing with any of them, but it's fine) – we're already having the time of our lives, we're drinking, we look amazing, everything seems possible.

Except for the impossible.

Because there's no fucking way Chris happens to be in this same club; I completely lose the ground beneath my feet. I want to turn my back to him, I really do. But at the same time I want him to see me again. I want to see him again.

My friends notice where I'm looking and they know better than to say anything – so they just leave me be. Chris notices me as well and everything stops. Not again. I hope he doesn't come here but deep down I'm praying he does.

"Never had a bitch like me in your life.."

What is it with me, Chris and songs that we both used to like (and have sex while listening to them)? He's looking at me, and I can feel his intense gaze once again. As he drinks something, for a moment, I wish I could see this sight up close, look how his tongue touches the glass. Fucking hell.

Me and my girlfriends sway to the music, letting every beat ignite a playful dance between us. As we keep each other close, the music wraps around us, and for a moment I forget about him. Lost in the rhythm, we surrender to the dance, singing along.

He's here. Well fuck.

He grabs me by the waist and pulls me closer to him – I can't help but roll my eyes, turning around to look into his blue ones, holding my own drink close to me.

"How dare you interrupt my dance?" I yell in his ear so he can hear and he smiles.

"I stayed to watch you for a bit before I approached and interrupted your dance. You were just too irresistible, damn." as usual, he has a big smirk on his face and I just want to slap it off his face.

His arm stays on my waist and I can't find the strength to push it away – his hand roams around my naked back thanks to my dress, not that I'm complaining. He leans in to wrap his lips around my straw, tasting my drink while looking at me.

"Tastes much better with that lipstick you're wearing.." he teases and licks his lips, "..bet you love it even more when it's around my dick." his gaze darkens and my legs shake a little.

"What a shame you'll never see it on you ever again." I give him a sarcastic smile and push him gently with one hand.

"You sure about that?" his lips are touching my ear and again, I hate myself for letting him have such an effect on me.

"Yes. I don't like sharing my lipsticks." I raise a challenging eyebrow, indirectly asking him if he's been fucking anyone else besides me – because if that's the case, I feel like I will completely lose myself.

"Mhmm.. you're already thinking about other girls sucking my dick?" he tilts his head with an innocent-like look on his face, "..jealous about it?" his thumb rubs my bottom lip and his smile returns.

My blood is boiling to say the least, but I know him way better than to show that. So instead, I smile, "I don't have time to think about your dick, baby. Someone else makes sure I don't." take that.

No one. Absolutely no one can make me stop thinking about him in general but I had to say something. Otherwise I might just start crying.

Something shifts in his eyes and I internally high-five myself for achieving to make him jealous once again. He leaves. What? He literally just lets me go and goes back to where his friend group is, turns his back on me and everything. Well, shit.

I'm more than jealous but I want him way more than our egoistic bullshit; I'm shameless, I want him.

I move swiftly through the crowd, desperately trying to find him before i change my mind – and I do find him. He doesn't really expect to see me there but he does and he smiles. I quickly wrap my fingers around his wrist this time, dragging him with me like he did in that house party the previous week. Safely, I lead us out of the club, making sure to not answer any of his questions.

Once he realises that I'm not speaking to him until we reach the car, he stops talking and simply follows me. We finally get into the car and I start the engine.

"Do you realise how crazy that was?" he finally says, he really didn't expect me to just do that.

"I thought you liked crazy." I smirk this time and he huffs, licking his lips and leaning back against the passenger seat, making himself comfortable.

Once I make sure we're somewhere where no one will be able to see us, I immediately stop the car, lock it and I practically jump on him, straddling his thighs. His hands immediately grab my hips, his mouth hungry, searching for my lips and his eyes even hungrier.

"You drive me fucking crazy." he almost growls as he quickly rides up my dress, exposing the rest of my thighs and panties.

I undo his shirt with shaky fingers, leaving it on but making sure I have access to his naked body. I almost attack his skin with hungry kisses and love bites as he keeps himself occupied with my butt, kneading and smacking the skin every now and then.

I wrap my lips around his nipple and now my lipstick is long gone – his moans fill the car, fogging up the windows as I continue sucking on his sensitive nipple. He pushes my panties to the side from behind, his finger traveling from my ass to my pussy, rubbing the entrance and collecting all of the juices. I can't help but moan against his skin. With his free hand, he grabs a fistful of my hair, tugging at it to make my head fall back – with my neck now exposed, he finds the opportunity to attack it with his kisses and bites. In the meantime, I unbuckle his belt, moaning every time his teeth sink into my sensitive skin.

His finger keeps teasing my wet entrance, but his other hand finally lets go of my hair and I immediately lean in to kiss his lips hungrily. As I sit up as much as I can, I push his pants down with a bit of his help, doing the same with his boxers as I start rubbing his cock.

"You must be very loyal to that other guy, hm?" he chuckles and wraps his hand around my throat.

"Your other girlfriends haven't been able to satisfy you, it seems. You're about to cum already..." I click my tongue, completely avoiding what he said to me, "..either that, or you're still obsessed with me.." I whisper, grinding down on his dick as he keeps grabbing me by the throat, "do you think they'd like that?"

He chuckles, moaning as soon as he feels the warmth and the wetness of my pussy, "do you think your little bitch will like it when he sees the marks I left for him?" he whispers, tightening the grip around my throat.

I groan, realising my neck must be all bruised up already. This fucking asshole.

Grabbing his dick again, I lower myself down on it as we both moan in unison – he immediately hugs me, his warm fingers digging into the skin of my back as I start to finally move.

"Fucking hell.." he whispers, his face buried in my neck as his hands cup my ass cheeks, guiding me up and down on his cock.

"Fuck.. Chris.." I moan loudly, one hand around him and the other one pressing against the car window, leaving a mark behind.

"Baby.. like that.." he mutters and I can feel myself clenching around him as soon as he calls me that.

He takes my breasts in his hands, squeezing them gently and kissing them with every chance he gets. I can feel him throbbing and I know it is almost time.

He immediately licks his fingers and presses them on my clit, making me stop my movements and tremble, my eyes roll to the back of my head.

"Don't stop. Keep going." he orders and I do exactly that. My burning thighs don't make it easy, especially in his goddamn car, but I don't care. As soon as I start moving up and down his dick again, his fingers start moving.

"Chris.. Chris, please.." I moan, gasping every time he picks up the pace. My breasts bounce with every movement, both of my hands now are on his shoulders supporting myself as I feel myself getting closer and closer.

"I wanna feel it, cum on me." he moans and his touch on my clit becomes as gentle as it can, and that's when I lose it. Once I come down from my high, he pulls out and cums all over my belly, almost shouting my name as he squeezes his eyes shut and grips my hips so hard that I'm sure it'll leave bruises behind.

It takes a while for me to start breathing normal again – and at the same time, I was afraid of what was going to happen when all of this stopped. But for now, I am trying to live in the moment as much as I can; he holds me in his arms tightly, I can feel his heartbeat and his breath tickling my hair, and I can swear I feel his fingertips caressing my back, drawing invisible circles on the skin.

I almost want to cry as he holds me close, I am so overwhelmed with emotions I didn't know I still had in me, that my hands start shaking.

"There's no one else. Only you." I whisper against his shoulder, my cheek pressed against it.

He takes a moment to respond, but he eventually does, "no other lipsticks for me either. Only yours." he whispers back.

This is what happens all the time ever since we parted ways – I call him, we have sex. He sees me outside, we have sex. We are ruthless, merciless, ready to tear each other apart without thinking of the consequences. So when we're finished, and all the hatred and lust is gone, what's left is two vulnerable, broken hearts and a love for each other that once existed.

I don't know how to react at his words. I feel relieved but I also feel angry, I feel hurt. Everything all at once.

"Come on." he says and makes me lean back against the dashboard. He grabs some baby wipes he keeps in his car and starts cleaning up my belly, my thighs, everywhere. He cleans himself up as well and throws them away in the little bin inside the car. He fixes my panties and my dress as well (as much as he can).

He tries to make me get up, but I stay in place. He looks at me but I don't move an inch, "can I ask you something?" I muster up the courage to ask.

"What is it?" he sighs, he knows something heavy is coming.

"Why are you so cold all the time?" he furrows his eyebrows at my question, and he looks like he is about to say a million reasons why what I just asked was stupid, "..so cold, playing it cool all the time, as if nothing happened." I say and I almost regret it.

"Are you fucking serious? What did you expect? You broke up with me, yet you still wanna have sex with me. Do you want me to be all lovey-dovey with you?" he narrows his eyes and I bite the inside of my cheek.

He's correct – what did I really expect? I vividly recall the day I ended our relationship; he was devastated, it was like something shifted within us since then. I was devastated, too. But the decision to break up felt necessary and inevitable. Our hectic schedules kept us apart for days on end. And being the jealous toxic assholes that we both are, this never ended well; it drove me nuts, I had to end it. However, ending the relationship doesn't mean my love for him ceased; on the contrary, I'll never stop loving him. And as for the sex.. well, it's pretty self-explanatory; he's the only one who knows what I like and what I don't. His touch is the only thing I knew for years. And that was the only way I could be close to him. I might've regretted that decision. Might've.

"No. But I would at least expect you to be respectful towards me, we were together for so long." I look down at my trembling fingers, there's pain in my voice.

"Yeah, well, do you know what else would be respectful? You, owning up to the decision you fucking made for the both of us." he's staring into my eyes, "when you break up with someone, especially when you've been with them for a long ass time, you don't go back to them. No matter what the situation is. That's what's respectful. But can you handle that?"

I don't know what to say. And I hate the fact that he's right – I know I fucked up.

"I don't think I can handle that, no." I say truthfully, my voice feels small and now I feel small too, in front of him.

"Yeah, well, that's your fucking problem now." he leans back against the passenger seat and clears his throat.

"Why do you come back?" I whisper, fearing the answer.

"You said it yourself that day. It's the only way to have you at the moment. And I'm taking it." now there's pain in his voice, "but do you realise how toxic that is? That's draining us way more than our schedule did." he runs his fingers through his hair and looks out of the window.

"So what are we supposed to do?" I ask. I feel so dumb.

"As I said. Own up to your decision. I never wanted to break up with you, which is why I never did. You should be the one who stops any contact between us. Not me. If I could, I would, trust me on this one." there's an emptiness in his eyes that I can not quite comprehend what it means. It doesn't let me see through him like I usually do.

"Chris.. damn it, I can't." I whisper, tears fill up my eyes but he's not having any of it.

"No, fuck off. You're fucking selfish." he's getting angry now, the vein in his neck is popping out, hands turning into fists and his knuckles turning white.

Fuck. It seems like everything I say is wrong. I want to just scream and cry and run away.

"I am not selfish, Chris. I am stupid.." I can't stop the tears that fill up my eyes, "..I never wanted to end things with you, I promise. I thought that.. that was the only way for us to calm the fuck down.. we were jealous, and crazy, and toxic." I let my hands fall on his lap.

"And what we're doing now is not toxic? How do you think I feel coming back to you after you broke up with me, just so we can fuck and tell each other we hate each other?" his jaw is clenched and his eyes are turning lighter. He's about to cry.

"I am sorry, Chris. I cannot imagine that, no.. I just.. I made a mistake.. and I am deeply sorry. I am paying for it as well.. this whole time, I really thought you just didn't care.. otherwise I would've made a move way sooner." I explain as much as I can, I am fully crying now.

He's holding back as much as he can – he collects me in his arms for yet another comforting hug when he notices I practically can't breathe, "first of all, breathe for me, okay? I need you to be calm so we can solve this." he rubs my back soothingly and my heart almost jumps out of my chest, because that's exactly who I fell in love with. That's the Chris I knew.

He does make me calm down way faster than I thought. I wipe away my tears and collect a single tear that left his eye as well.

"I love you. I always will." I whisper, cupping his cheeks.

"You know I love you too." his voice is very low, "I cannot stop loving you."

"Do you want to try again?" I whisper timidly, "I will try my best to make you trust me again." I say and I mean it.

"Pretty girl.." he mumbles, grabbing my chin gently, caressing it, "..you better try your hardest, hm?" he whispers and I nod like a little kid, "I promise to make more time for us, we deserve it. You deserve it."

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[fastcardotmp3]

rockstar!robin, manager!steve, music journalist!eddie AU for funsies

On my first day shadowing her for this article, Robin Buckley tells me that her greatest fear in the world is not the massive crowds that flood arenas at every stop on her ongoing international tour, not the looming anxiety that her blooming success may be fleeting, not even a joke about how she worries this piece will make her look. No. On the day I meet Robin Buckley, she tells me the scariest thing on the planet is rabies. "By the time the symptoms set in, you're already dead," she says, walking with long strides towards her dressing room in the endless backstage of the Indianapolis Fieldhouse. "And I don't know about you, but death by raccoon is not how I want to go out."

I ask her if that's because it's not rock-and-roll enough, if such a mundane last stand doesn't match up with where she sees her life going these days, but the first thing out of her mouth in response is laughter.

She tells me maybe with a toss of her hands, asks me if I'm a music journalist or a shrink, and gets immediately pulled into a conversation about whether she's done rehearsing with her favorite guitar so it can be prepped stage left.

I try to stick around, try and get the inside scoop on how Robin Buckley prepares for a show, but I'm usurped by her fucking guard dog of a manager who fjsakdlfjaslkdfja FUCKING jesus CHRISTfsj

Eddie slams his hands down on his laptop keyboard and strains his neck back to look at the ceiling which is, quite frankly, an idiotic decision for a guy who gets motion sick on vehicles the size of, say, your average tour bus.

Don't get him wrong, he loves a good tour bus, loves the press van, loves the sweaty mess of a thing filled with people competing for clicks and desperate for the best quotes and--

Yeah, okay, maybe he doesn't love it, but if he's ever going to get enough notoriety in this business to write the sort of rock n' roll histories he grew up swallowing hole in the back room of his uncle's trailer, he has to go on a few shitty assignments.

Shitty assignments for alternative rock, one-hit wonders and their fucking hyper-protective managers who carry around lists of topics they're not allowed to bring up around Miss Buckley as if the girl herself isn't a goddamn open book.

How can the guy put a moratorium on her fucking home life if she herself sits down with the lowly press at lunch and twirls out story after story about her hippie parents teaching her how to roll a blunt when she was twelve years old?

How is Eddie supposed to write this damn article let alone his magnum opus if the advent of the internet has made managers and publicists everywhere so goddamn paranoid that Eddie has to use an anecdote about rabies as his hook?

Who is Steve Goddamn Harrington to tell Eddie how to do his job?

It's not that Eddie even wants to tear his little star apart; Eddie actually likes her contrary to the tension headache overtaking him on the ride between Indy and Columbus, but how is he supposed to prove why to readers if he's not allowed to say anything?

On his first day on this tour, Eddie had been forced to sit on this very bus and get a lecture from Steve Harrington, who has apparently been leading Robin's team from the small town get-go, and who is apparently God or whatever, and the thing is the guy's a prick.

He's downright insufferable, assumes the worst in people and expects their best behavior nonetheless, and Eddie can't stand his guts.

Except.

Except on day one of this tour, Steve Harrington gave them a terse lecture befitting a high school principal on the bus and then turned around and talked to the driver about his family for ten minutes before hopping out and going back to work.

And except, when they were in Chicago, he was screaming in some guy's face backstage and Eddie thought he'd discovered the real Steve, only to find out from a crew member later on that the guy in question was getting fired for trying (and failing) to hide a camera in Robin's dressing room.

And except, most of the time Steve Harrington is stern and bitchy and protective but the first time Eddie saw him talking to Robin before a show the two of them were laughing. Bright in ways that can't be faked.

Joyful.

Eddie looks back down at his computer and curses the man who is making this job so much more fucking difficult than it needs to be. Robin Buckley is a good story, without need for any embellishment.

Her start is interesting, where she comes from is interesting, her sound is even interesting despite its overnight popularity and worst of all Eddie likes her.

She's kind and open and smart as a whip-- apparently speaks four languages and is working on a fifth. She's got this sharp edge to her where she doesn't take an ounce of shit this industry throws at her and Eddie doesn't have to stretch to understand why her fans adore her.

God, he wants to write a good piece about this fascinating kid from Hawkins, Indiana, and he wants to write about the manager who she constantly reminds them she owes all her success to because how did that happen.

Eddie wants to be a fly on the wall when those two talk about ice cream, the weather, anything and he wants this article to be the one that gets him that goddamn book deal. Get Jonathan the high profile photog gig he deserves and Nancy the co-writing credit they've been dreaming of since college.

But there's still the guard dog in the way.

There's still Steve Harrington.

On the first day manager and good, Midwestern boy Steve Harrington introduces us to the star of the show, he tells us, "a toe out of line and I'll have your credentials stripped so far down the only paper that'll hire you has a whole page dedicated to Bible verses."

And as a good, Midwestern boy myself? I believe him.

Eddie thinks there's a story here, and he thinks he's the one savvy enough with loopholes to find it.

He's got three more hours 'til Columbus to figure out how.

[alicethepiper]

here's the counterpart to my other post about the desks in the s.t.a.r.s office. there's audio this time, but no music unfortunately. you can hear the mr. raccoon bobble head thingy in the background though. i'm dumb and didn't know that was making the noise. oopsies.

so the desks in og2 are all one desk, but in remake they're two desks pressed together into a row. everyones looks basically the same. we have two additional desks in the back, though, near where rebecca's desk in og2 is. i didn't see any of rebecca's boxes specifically (there were a lot of boxes everywhere) but the green satchel health kit first aid thingy (that i assume is hers) is on the wall. idk which desk is supposed to be hers, but i think it's the one with the cds.

Jill's desk is different here too - in og she had a picture of some guy on her desk but now it's a picture of a dog. the beret/hat is still there, so i'm guessing that desk is hers. the desk next to hers has a lot of cds on it, though. it looks like piano music to me, and we know jill plays piano because of the first RE game (from what i remember) but that's about as far as my knowledge on it goes. i think rebecca can also play piano but i could be misremembering the 10 seconds i've played of RE0. idk who that desk belongs to, but it's the only additional desk that actually has any stuff on it, so i think it's rebecca's. all of the bravo team stuff is pretty much packed up (which could be because they're all dead, minus rebecca). so following that logic, the desk with the cds would be rebecca's - all of the other desks are packed up (and all of the other desks, coincidentally, belong to dead people). and i can see rebecca being put next to jill after bravo got wiped out (or even before, since i believe they're the only two girls in s.t.a.r.s and that feels like something the dudes would do. like a whole "lets put those two together so they can bond about being women or something" idk. im rambling. idk who that desk belongs to but i think it's rebecca). i can also see rebecca requesting to be put next to jill. idk too much about chief irons (except for literally all of the bad stuff he does in the game) but i wouldn't be surprised if he was a fucking creep towards jill and rebecca (he also may have only targeted rebecca, since she is a rookie and is also pretty timid, in comparison to jill who is simply not, therefore making her an easier target. i literally have nothing to base this on, i'm just speculating).

wesker's desk just has a lot of books on it. it seems like in remake everyone has their own desk rather than sharing, so i don't think enrico's stuff would've been in there (meaning, i don't think he was the one who had been holding onto a picture of rebecca). ultimately, i agree that the photo of rebecca is just an easter egg and not anything to do with canon as far as capcom is concerned, but if it were to be looked at that way then: in og2, wesker probably shared a desk with enrico, so it could've been either one of them (maybe both?) who had a sus photo of rebecca. and in remake, it's just wesker who has the photo, since enrico probably has his own desk (since everyone else does, and also there are two new desks added in the back - either of which could be his). i would say that remake puts it there just to stay faithful to the original, but the remake version of the photo is significantly worse (somehow??? like, why did you go in THAT direction??) so capcom didn't improve. good job.

conclusion: wesker had the photo of rebecca for sure in remake. he may have shared that photo in og. everyone has their own desk in remake, they shared in og. and in remake, i think rebecca is the desk next to jills. also that photo looks nothing like her so i'm just gonna pretend that wesker used one of those ai thingies and typed in: "rebecca is the new rookie. pls put her in green basketball clothes. also put her in sexy pose, thx" and just printed off the one that either didn't have fucked up hands or didn't show her hands at all.

that's it. thank you for coming to my ted talk. (it isn't even mine) (it was an ask that @highball66 got) (i'm just the private investigator hired to take the photos lol)

[bonny-kookoo]

Hey what about the time when I Like You JK realised that mc is more than just a hollow barbie? What bought him to this realisation? Also I'm sooo loving shy kook XD

When he walks in, he's greeted by.. pink.

A lot of pink.

Your curtains, the counters and and cupboards on the walls of your open kitchenette, the pillows on your little couch, the small heart-shaped carpet in front of it. There's stuffed animals everywhere as well, a folded up mattress and neatly folded blankets in a corner, and he assumes you must pack it up like this after sleeping every day. Your apartment is tiny, after all. There's not much space whatsoever- your living space basically compacted into one big room.

He's not really that surprised. Your apartment, at the first glance, looks exactly like you. Cute, girly, colorful, a little chaotic.

But as he looks closer, things become a bit more.. detailed.

You're off to fetch a towel for his rain-soaked hair, and he's careful not to have his clothes drip all over your floor as he walks around a tiny bit. There's numerous cooking books on a shelf near the kitchen, some in different languages even. Another bookshelf near your TV is absolutely packed with mangas, novels, and many books titled things like 'intelligence of household pets' and others with foreign names.

It's only now that he realizes, he's never actually asked what you did for a living. What your hobbies were. You knew that about him- but he himself knew basically nothing about you.

"There we go!" You chirp, playfully dropping the babypink towel onto his head, making him jump a moment. "I've got a suuper oversized simple shirt here, and a pair of Jimin's sweatpants he forgot ages ago. Just put your clothes in the dryer in the bathroom, I'll turn it on after you're done changing." You tell him, walking towards your couch to grab the TV remote, zapping through the channels.

He's quiet all the way until late, when you're both sitting on that couch, watching the evening news.

"What.. I never asked what your job is." Jungkook wonders, and you look at him at that, a bit surprised it seems.

"I'm an animal behavior consultant." You tell him, and his eyes widen. "I basically.. you know, people give me their cats and dogs and I tell them what the problem is. And how to fix it. If you can fix it." You shrug, reaching out to grab a snack.

"Did you have to study for that?" He wonders, interested now.

"Yep!" You chirp. "Got a masters, wanted to be a vet first but man, I would bawl my eyes out every time I had to put a pet down." You joke. "So I went for a different route, pissed off my parents by studying 'bullshit' as my dad called it, and got a certificate and stuff." You easily tell, not at all with a bragging tone or anything else.

You're pretty.. nonchalant about it.

"That's.. pretty impressive." He says.

"I know!" You laugh. "People think I do onlyfans or something most of the time, but I don't." You giggle to yourself. "Although I did sell feet-pics on discord when I was still studying.." You hum to yourself, making Jungkook himself chuckle. "Hey, a girl gotta pay her bills!" You say, hitting Jungkook next to you on his thigh. "Geez- are you made of only muscle? What the fuck is that?!" You dramatically exclaim, poking his thigh.

"I just.. work out." He mumbles a bit shy, feeling a bit insecure. Do you not like guys like him? Is he intimidating to you? Do you like softer guys more?

And why does he care about that?

"I just work out" You imitate him. "I work out too and my thighs don't feel like that! Though that might also be the three packs of ramyon I shoved into myself last night.." You mumble, poking at your own, way softer flesh.

"You're fine." He reassures softly. "I like your body." He offers- before he turns bright red, realizing what he just blurted out like an idiot.

"Oh damn, Jungkook!" You laugh, playfully shoving your body into his side. "Making moves, my guy!" You say, making him move his head away from you. "I like your body too- well, from what I can tell underneath your baggy clothes." You shrug, and he looks back at you with a mix of wonder and also.. insecurity.

"Yeah well.. I like your.. you know, everything else too." He says.

"Are you confessing to me right now?" You ask, and he shakes his head defensively. "No worries, I was only joking." You tell him, before leaning against him again, watching the TV.

Leaving him mildly disappointed in himself.

Because he kind of wishes he did just confess.

But maybe he just needs a bit more time.

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

No but full stop. if you say anything like "Gen Alpha is being raised wrong/horrible to have in class/morally fucked-up/idiotic/doomed/just really really cringe" I will unironically lose all respect for you immediately.

all this stuff about "they're illiterate", "they have no respect for parents or teachers" "screens have rotted their brains" "they just speak in weird Skibidi Toilet Gyatt Rizz Meme Language" "the screens have made them have no behavior standards or morals" "the ScReEeEeEeEnsssss"

...you sound literally exactly like our parents' generation did with us. and elder millenials'/Gen X/even really late boomer's parents' generations did with them about video games and cable tv and...regular tv

and radio

and records

and. dime novels.

and it literally just goes back like that forever

OVID talked abt this stuff in the EXACT same way

so yeah, if you say that stuff without a shred of self-awareness, then I

1) do not think you can keep your commitment to "not fuck up future generations like we were fucked up", since you're contributing to that fucking-up right now by your words and actions.

2) will assume that you have a similar shortsightedness in other issues that require you to compare your own/modern-day views and events to historical ones, and lose faith in your interpretation of everything from aesthetics and online drama to world-altering current events because of that

3) genuinely I just have nothing but disappointment in people who say these things. anyone on this site who hates "icky gen alpha things" almost definitely did the same thing themselves.

They have "Gyatt", we* had GLOMPING, Yaoi Paddles, shitty mspa twerking gifs everywhere, and "Oh My God, Look At Her Butt"

They have "Rizz" we had "YOLO SWAG" and "I made you a cookie but I eated it" and those selfies where you held your camera up too high and then looked up at it from under your bangs

They have "Skibidi Toilet" we had SO MANY THINGS. Llamas with Hats. Charlie the Unicorn. Annoying Orange. Crazy Frog. Potter Puppet Pals. Minecraft Parodies if you're younger gen z. friCKING TOBUSCUS MUSIC, that man was a PLAGUE.

They have a toxic social media culture focused on heavily edited and unachievable beauty standards, enforced popularity culture, rigid aesthetic-based social groups, harmful rumors about health & beauty, a pressure on young girls to act mature, and underlying racism/classism, all leading kids who dont have adequate guidance to, AT BEST, try beauty "products" that arent meant for kids and are usually scams. We had... literally the exact same thing except our airbrushing was on celebs and models instead of coming from filters.

*I am older Gen Z (24 y.o.) but was so fucking sheltered until ~2014, and even then... I'm going off tumblr-history blogs, yt retrospectives and "my friend said so" to understand what "we" had

TLDR STOP BULLYING GEN ALPHA

...except about "Starpatch" or "Starface" or whatever it is. yes, ik its also popular/more popular with younger gen z. yes I'm literally making a post rn to bully(lh) yall JUST as hard about it. if it were my exact age group doing this I would be bullying yall. i dont care who does it, starpatch is so fricking silly.

[bananadrinkxxx]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐞𝐲𝐞 (2)

[Aemond Targaryen x female Lucerys Velaryon • fem! oc!reader]

[warnings: sex content, fights, harassment, angst, smut, domination, violence, targcest (uncle/niece)]

Only for 18+

[description: Boarding School - Modern Setting. Lucerya avoided her uncle for years but Aemond remembers and he is on his mission to make her life a living hell.]

Masterlist for all available parts (click here)

"I heard she removed Aemond's eye with a spoon and ate it afterwards."

Apparently, Aemond was not the only psychopath at this school. What sane person would start such perverse rumors?

The rumors were awful.

She would love to go to these girls and smack the bullshit out of them.

Jacaerys liked to claim that Lucy had trouble controlling herself but she wasn't the one looking for someone else's eye.

Well, in reality she already did it, but it wasn't planned. Aemond planned her death. Big Difference.

Damn, she had been a child and tried to protect her brother.

She wasn't a bad person.

He attacked. She protected.

Aemond Tarargyen, on the other hand, a full-time psychopath, seemed to have a plan to make her life miserable before he would kill her.

He was just everywhere.

When she came out of the classroom, he walked past her, when she visited her brother, he was suddenly there, and when she had to go to the toilet, he suddenly had to go the same way.

This man had made it his top priority to torment her before he wanted to remove her eye.

"Can't you fuck off?," she said when Aemond surprisingly bumped into her. Again.

"This school doesn't belong to you, little Lucy. I know you are used to get what you want without any consequences but here I am the one who rules," Aemond snarled. "By the way, I'm assigned to you, I think you'll have to endure my presence a little longer. Stay strong."

Ah, the popular joke about her real father again.

Harwin Strong was a businessman in a rival company and her mother was said to have had an affair with him that produced Jace and Lucy.

Since she and Leanor both had silvery blonde hair, it was easy to assume that they weren't Leanor's children.

But her mother had never admitted it, and Leanor never said something.

"Well, very funny, now that you're done with your stupid jokes, you can fuck off and take your shit to-" Lucy winced as Aemond shoved her into a small side corridor and pushed her against the wall.

That seemed to be his habit.

Pushing people against walls.

Or at least her.

"This is my fucking school, niece. Who do you think you are?" He held her arms tightly. She was sure she would see his prints there in the morning. He looked down at her, hard and unyielding. He was a head taller than her, if not even more, and never had Lucy felt so small.

As a child, she has been taller than Aemond, despite their age difference, but that had more than doubled in his favor. The little crybaby Aemond was now a man. To her misfortune.

Puberty did hit him too hard.

"Let me go right now, Aemond," she ordered, tried to free herself but Aemond looked down at her mockingly. Her attempts were pathetic.

"Or what? Are you going to take my other eye then?"

She really longed for that at the moment.

"I've already apologized!"

"You can keep your apology. I desire something else from you," Aemond breathed, pressing her even harder against the wall. If that was even possible. No sheet of paper would fit between them. She had never been so close to anyone before. Her heart was beating wildly against her chest. What the hell was this? "How does it feel, little Lucy? Knowing that I could take your eye anytime, hmm? Do you want to know how it made me feel? Or is everything forgotten and forgiven to you after your sweet apology?"

There was nothing in the world that could save her.

Her mother had made it very clear that she would be spending this school year at King's Landing, and Jacaerys was more concerned about his affairs with some girls than anything else.

What was his advice ? Keep cool ?

The next time he had another argument with Aegon, his blood splattered everywhere, Lucy would recommend a loving 'Keep cool' as well.

She flinched as Aemond's fingers touched her lips.

Would it be a good idea to bite him now? Then he would not only be the one-eyed Aemond but also the fingerless one.

"So will you give me your eye?," he asked. "Or shall I take something else?"

My life? My money? My pure soul?

"Tell me, Lucy," Aemond breathed "Why are you shaking so much? Is it because of me? Has never anyone ever touched you before?"

By the old gods. His words sounded so filthy. Did he do that on purpose?

"Even if someone had touched me, it's none of your fucking business," she hissed and Aemond laughed in response.

She tried to free herself but he pushed her harder against the wall. Pressed against the wall without escape. It made her feel his muscles under his shirt.

He took her breath away, twisted her world and she couldn't help but think about how his skin would feel against hers.

"Even if? So I'd be the first to-"

"Aemond?"

They both looked to the right. Lucy embarrassed and shocked that they had been caught and Aemond murderous that he had been interrupted.

A girl with long black hair and tanned skin stood not far from them and stared at them.

Her gaze was disdainful as she ran it over Lucy. "Who is this?"

Aemond let his gaze slide back to Lucy and the corners of his mouth turned up. She did not like his look. He looked down on her like a wild animal ready to devour its prey.

"My new playmate," Aemond replied in amusement, gently stroking Lucy's cheek with his long fingers before pulling away, leaving her pressed against the wall like an idiot.

He left her without a second glance and threw his arm around the strange girl, who gave Lucy a hostile look before letting Aemond pull her along.

Lucy clutched her chest, which was rising and falling uncontrollably.

It was worse than she had expected. Maybe she shouldn't wait until Aemond killed her. Maybe it would be better if she faked her own death.

This school year was going to be horrific.

Aemond was not only a psychopath but also an arrogant bastard.

And everyone in that goddamn school seemed to respect him.

Or fear. Often these two feelings were close to each other.

"His mother was here yesterday," Baela informed him. "Aemond beat up some classmate for pulling his eye patch off."

"Sounds fair," judged Rhaena.

"Before that, they say Aemond pushed him against the lockers."

"And now it sounds a lot less fair."

"And has he been suspended?" Lucy asked hopefully.

Baela gave her a pitying look.

"Unfortunately not, our uncle spoke to Mr. Velaryon. He got only a warning," Rhaena shared. Lucy had to organize her thoughts for a moment. By uncle she meant her uncle Viserys, who ironically was Lucy's grandfather.

It was all very confusing.

"And that's what happens when you have a powerful man as your father," Baela interjected as she put another spoonful of soup in her mouth. It was already her third plate and Lucy wondered when she'd finally stuffed the black hole in her stomach.

"Aemond is an asshole and one of the reasons is that Viserys always gets him out of those situations."

Lucy could only agree.

They all looked up as Alys River's laughter echoed through the hall.

She sat on Aemond's lap and seemed to be having fun while Aemond looked almost bored.

He sat back in his chair, legs spread wide and one arm over the seat back.

"Look at him, how he sits there like he is the god damn king of this school."

They all looked at him. "Well, he kind of is, the king of this school. His minions love him and do everything he says."

Suddenly, Aemond's gaze shifted to them and Baela and Rhaena jumped in shock.

They looked back at their plates as fast as they could, but Lucy felt ... consumed.

Aemond's gaze pierced her and robbed her of the ability to think. Why did he have so much power over her?

A knowing smile appeared on his lips and he winked at her.

Annoyed, Lucy rolled her eyes and turned around.

It was best if she tried to avoid him.

It was like some bad cheesy teen drama when she walked out of the secretariat and walked straight into Hugh Hammer.

Hugh Hammer was big and would have knocked her over if he hadn't caught her at the last second.

She was momentarily dizzy from the impact.

"Are you alright?" he asked looking at her worried.

He was pretty. He had brown eyes with long eyelashes and light blonde hair.

His face was very square and his build was similar to Aemond's, only slightly shorter and broader.

As Lucy ran her gaze over his body, she saw the muscles showing beneath his clothing.

"You mean after you almost killed me?" she asked wryly and he laughed.

"You ran into me. As quickly as you stormed out of the secretariat, it's a wonder you didn't kill me," he joked and she laughed.

She had called her mother begging her to take her out of school, but the only thing that had come from her was that her life hadn't been easy either.

Thanks for nothing, mum.

She decided to write a long farewell letter explaining that it was her fault that she had to suffer so much before Aemond finally had mercy and put an end to her suffering.

"I'm Hugh," he introduced himself and Lucy took his outstretched hand.

"Lucerya but my friends call me Lucy," and Aemond Targaryen who was doing whatever he wanted. Little Lucy. Sweet.

"Lucerya? Are you Jacaerys' little sister?"

"Oh god, please don't tell me you're friends with him?"

Hugh laughed.

"No, I was in the same year as Aegon before he had to repeat. Jacaerys is just very popular, and word has it his sister is going to our boarding school."

Apparently, Jacaerys wasn't lying about his supposed popularity after all. People here were crazy. Maybe she should drop that he cries when he sleeps.

"Are you at the party tonight?"

"What party?"

"Your brother's party?" Hugh asked in surprise and looked confused.

Well, he wasn't the only one.

Jacaerys, that little asshole, that little worm, that little dwarf, didn't invite her.

Hugh would think she was a boring loser if she confessed to him now.

"Ah, the party. Sorry, always so busy I forgot." She laughed like a crazy bitch. All she had to do was open one of her books and dream that she was somewhere else. Far away. "Of course I'll come."

"Cool," Hugh replied, smiling. He was so cute.

"See you tonight then, Lucy."

Now all she had to do was find out where this party was taking place.

And killing her brother for not inviting her.

Did sound like a good plan.

Taglist:

@watercolorskyy @marvelescvpe @ammo23

[salvadorbonaparte]

2023 in Films

I watched way too many films this year. Here are my opinions on some of them

January

Las Cosas Del Querer (1989) - Amazing if you love sad hot people and flamenco

Canadian Bacon (1995) - Incredibly silly and Alan Alda plays the US president

Nope (2022) - A highlight of the year

February

Hellraiser (1987) - This film is actually about miscommunication in this essay I will-

Predestination (2014) - Time Travel and Gender Moments

Malignant (2021) - Camp horror masterwork

Late Phases (2014) - Mediocre werewolf film with some really interesting comments on ageism, ableism, suburbia and religion

March

Sterne (1959) - Plays into some problematic stereotypes from today's perspective but revolutionary for its time, first German film to address the Holocaust

Major League (1989) - A film I only watched to confirm that it uses a weird phrase I also found in my thesis project

Carry On Screaming (1966) - Camp. Gay. Horror. Parody.

Glen or Glenda (1953) - A product of its time and no longer up to date in its understanding of gender but surprisingly revolutionary in its compassion and earnestness despite the bad reviews

April

Taxi Driver (1976) - Isn't it frustrating when annoying people tell you a film is good and then it's actually good?

June

Mr Deeds Goes To Town (1936) - Mr Deeds has autism swag

El Espíritu de la Colmena (1973) - I really wanted to like this because civil war era Spain and Frankenstein are super up my alley but unfortunately it was so much slower than expected

Das Boot (1981) - Very long and claustrophobic but holds up to the hype

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) - RIP King

July

Nimona (2023) - His big wet eyes bewitched me

First Blood (1982) - You're telling me the film is about Americans fighting an enemy they view as simultaneously weak and dangerous, escalating the situation, and then sending more and more men into a rainforest to die through guerilla warfare after being warned again and again they can't win this? sounds familiar

Barbie (2023) - Insert a bunch of pink emojis

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) - Made me crave bagels

Jojo Rabbit (2019) - God I love war satires

Sweet Liberty (1986) - Alan Alda having fun and also using his own film as a therapy session

The Majestic (2001) - A rewatch but it's so tragically underrated, Jim Carrey is very good in dramatic roles and McCarthy-era media is like catnip for me

Joker (2019) - This is just Taxi Driver with extra steps

August

Tin & Tina (2023) - Probably one of the worst films I have seen in a while

Battle of the Sexes (2017) - I love women

Four Lions (2010) - The ending really got me, I love when satire gets serious

The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid (1979) - Can we talk about how the theme song is just going "I'm the sheriff" "yes you're the sheriff"

Happiness (1998) - Nauseating but in a "good film but what the fuck" way

They Call Him Bulldozer (1978) - Italian Lagaan

The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) - Sad and Gay

Twister (1996) - So much better than expected

Magnolia (1999) - Cloudy with a chance of frogs, a really long but really good film and I'm not entirely sure I got it

Doubt (2008) - Somehow I watched 5 films with Philip Seymour Hoffman that month because I was haunted by his ghost or something

September

The Terminal (2004) - I assumed this to be more of a classic romcom but the whole concept (based on a true story) is so terrifying and tragic that it made me feel all emotions at once

Apocalypse Now (1979) - I knew a lot of trivia about the film but for some reason I didn't know anything about the cast so every single actor was a surprise and made me go "!!!", Also I kinda wanna write an essay about it

October

Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984) - Some of the gay jokes absolutely killed me

Last Night in Soho (2021) - I'm Not Like the Other Girls to Time Travel Murder Nightmare Pipeline, actually I really enjoyed this one but it's also super silly

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) - How do you say poor little meow meow in gaeilge

The Menu (2022) - I go to the murder restaurant I order the beesechurger, I was super surprised there's no cannibalism but tbh that would have been low hanging fruit

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) - Explains a lot about religion in the US, I love that she was pro lgbt, also I googled her ex husband and he has a prepper/survivalist thing going on now and scams more people

The Darjeeling Limited (2007) - we can't eat pray love ourselves out of this one boys

Holes (2003) - Hated the book as a teenager for school reasons but gave the film a try and really enjoyed it

Renfield (2023) - I expected werewolves but I enjoyed it nevertheless, My Chemical Romance is on the soundtrack, it's very silly, the effects are great

Interview with the Vampire (1994) - Oh people weren't lying about it being homoerotic

The Big Lebowski (1998) - I've had days that feel like that

November

Pappa ante Portas (1991) - Funnier now that I'm an adult, basically half the jokes my mum makes are from this film

The Meg 2: The Trench (2023) - I watched this while sick and really wanted to see a giant shark fight a giant octopus and boy did it deliver

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022) - Very nice animation style

JFK (1991) - I actually fell asleep halfway through because it's so long but can we talk about how this film is just A-listers but has some of the worst wigs and makeup I've seen

Bottoms (2023) - A spiritual sequel to Heathers

December

When Harry Met Sally (1989) - They deserve each other (derogatory) but that one restaurant scene was pretty funny

The Royal Nanny (2022) - one of the many Hallmark films my mum made me watch and this is perhaps the worst one, incredibly sexist even for a Hallmark film and they clearly mean Mi5 but say Mi7 which was a WW2 propaganda service? Also they really want me to believe there is a British prince called Colin and that he doesn't look like his family tree is a circle?

I forgot the title but there was also the one where two people get stuck in a time loop while trying to make a sponsored youtube video about baking and I didn't really pay attention much but man that was bad

[cator99]

Had a really awesome time with my district manager today. She spent a significant amount of time clowning on her ex as we worked... he was just some ex-con loser who she had initially said was "from Chicago", only to reveal that they'd gotten into an (online– ldr) argument which led to him calling her a "Mongrel" and then blocking her in every capacity to which I said Now Hold On... When you said "from Chicago"... you mean the suburbs don't you. "No, he's from Chicago," she said, "Northbrook." Oh girl. No........... We went on like this for over an hour just absolutely digging in on this guy, who ended up moving to Florida of all fucking places to escape his ex who had been trying to kill him for years and seemed like she had ample reason and finally after this lengthy story of this messy long-term long distance relationship she offhandedly mentioned that the dude had actually ended up dying under mysterious circumstances years after they'd cut contact... probably wasnt even the exes doing. Dude sounded like he made enemies everywhere he stepped. Unbearable guy. Florida suddenly made sense– from what I understand its where people go to die. But yeah him dropping dead and her being questioned about it was absolutely an afterthought to the conversation. Anyway yes this is the district manager that has been touching all up on me as FUCK and treating me like her special little pet (she cannot stand anyone else... no one knows how to deal with rural-raised women better than I... sigh) but to be completely honest the most shocking part of the entire story was finding out that she's not a total lesbian (I keep telling myself to STOP assuming that assertive single childless hardworking business-oriented women in their 40s who don't wear makeup or feminine attire are dykes but every time without fail just when I start losing hope is when they start placing their hands on my lower back at every opportunity calling me baby and finding excuses to give me back massages or place her head on my shoulder... many such cases... absolutely not the vibe of my workplace or her for that matter everyone else thinks she is a massive cunt bitch. And she totally is. To them. Because they're not Perfect Tyler. This phenomena is interesting because generally straight women are usually uncomfortable around dykes and know that if she presses her tits to my back I'll be thinking about it fr so yeah generally they dont. um. Do that. But as soon as I started boy passing the white trash ladies began to flock eyeing me up like sweet meats)..... yea she's just one of the Other types I tend to draw which falls into the "40 year old lonely bicurous woman" category who likes that I am reminescent of the boys she crushed on in her youth except I'm actually a 27 year old female so I act a bit less retarded

[lafemmemacabre]

I need normies to understand that a lot of subcultures don't derive their names in straightforward ways. Some do, like metalheads and rivetheads -- and even then most of you are... Extremely ignorant on it anyway. The amount of times I've had to explain to people that "emo" comes from "Emocore" which is a shortened version of "Emotional Hardcore Punk" is astounding -- but a lot of the time it's not like that.

Sure goths are labelled goths AND a lot of our subcultural sensitivities are derived from gothic literature and we think gothic architecture fucking rules but also? Neither the literature genre nor the architecture are where we got the name from.

We got the name through an internal joke between artists that are now considered goth, about how Andi Sex Gang from Sex Gang Children was a ridiculous gothy troll too obsessed with the macabre who lived in a building literally called the Visigoth Towers, so if he was a goth, then his fans were goths too.

Even then, the label "goth" was a pejorative when it first spread and most of our iconic bands hated being called that because they associated "goth" with the tackier, less serious contemporary bands that they considered basically low brow campy horror fanservice for losers obsessed with old and bad horror movies (Specimen, Alien Sex Fiend, and so on) while they were Serious Musicians just going through a Tormented Artist phase. There's a reason why Dinah Cancer from 45 Grave (a campy, "low brow", horror fanservice band) embraced the goth label immediately (and still does), while many of her contemporaries from more "serious" bands didn't and to this day won't.

Now, going back to the lolita subculture:

Do Americans realize that American literature classics aren't classics everywhere? Each cultural region and even country has its own literature classics. I wasn't made to read Mark Twain or Hemingway in school because I'm Chilean. I was forced to read Don Quixote, some people were also forced to read El Mio Cid, I had to suffer through fucking Subterra. I had to read María Luisa Bombal, García Márquez, Marcela Paz, and many, many others. AND I'M SOMEONE FROM A CULTURE THAT SHARES AN ALPHABET WITH THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD. Chilean culture is also undeniably more directly impacted by American culture than Japan is.

Lolita, the book, wasn't that old by the time the lolita subculture started, I'm going to assume it wasn't that widely known in Japan since it was relatively new in the US itself, and Japan has its own literature to occupy itself with. Not that there's no translations or that Japanese people don't read Western literature, of course they do, I can also easily find translated copies of The Great Gatsby if I go to any mainstream bookshop in Santiago, but what I'm saying is that books that are ubiquitous in the US cultural landscape aren't necessarily so everywhere else, much less in diametrically opposed geo-cultural areas that are highly culturally isolated, AND there's cultural influences in other countries that ARE ubiquitous in those countries that foreigners have no clue about. If any piece of Western literature has been greatly influential in the lolita fashion subculture it wasn't Nabokov's Lolita, but Alice in Wonderland, in part because lolita fashion's whole point was escaping sexualization.

I think we're all aware that Japanese pop culture, especially in anime, has a lot of issues with the sexualization of children (not like that's a problem unique to Japan but, whatever), BUT I think it's also pretty fucking racist or at least orientalist to perceive any embracing of childish cuteness as inherently sexual and pedophilic or otherwise perverse as soon as it comes from Japan (especially when the fashion itself literally has you covered from head to toe AND WAS DESIGNED PRECISELY TO ESCAPE BEING SEXUALIZED BY MEN, BY YOUNG GIRLS, NOT BY PEDOPHILIC MEN OR GROWN WOMEN WHO WANTED TO APPEAL TO THEM).

Stop talking about shit you don't know anything about with authority, for the love of fuck.

[sapphsorrows]

I'm not a psychologist, so take this with a massive grain of salt, but... I do not think it's a coincidence that trans people absolutely demand to be included everywhere no matter how socially unacceptable it is and have meltdowns when they aren't included in something + a huge percentage of trans people are autistic + rejection sensitive dysphoria is a trait/symptom of autism. I just do not think those three things are coincidences.

I believe the founder of kiwi farms once called the trans movement a "rat king" because there are SO many different parts of it that all come together in very bizarre ways, and I'm not sure if it's a coincidence or on purpose.

Like you said, you have the autistic people trying to fit in with this new group they've been indoctrinated and lovebombed into (can we stop pretending lovebombing isn't a MASSIVE part of the trans community I mean the whole reason people even come out nowadays is so they can be showered in praise and attention), then you have the autogynophiles and crossdressers, then you have the HSTS dudes, then the fandom fujoshi girls who could also be lumped in with the autistic people (many self ID as autistic), then you've got moms who trans their kids either for attention or some other reason (munchausen by proxy), then you have actual predators who take advantage of the whole system (could also be agp but I consider jeffrey marsh part of this too, idk what he is i just assumed he's hsts but he could be agp). Then you've got the porn addiction aspect.

Then you've got big pharma handing out hormones to all of them! Then there's the issue of, like, is this all on purpose? Is this some kind of bizarre MKULTRA experiment or soft warfare by another country being used to destroy us from the inside? Is this just the tide receding before the tsunami of authoritarianism comes and claims us all?

Even just saying all of this sounds SO. FUCKING. INSANE. Being involved in this trans stuff, and being openly against it in general is so fucking hard because it's like a black hole of insanity that just consumes everything.

Honestly when I first peaked I seriously thought I was going through some kind of psychosis because surely all these people can't be wrong, surely there are men out there who really are women "on the inside", and vice versa.

But no.

It's all a lie.

[davekat-sucks]

>Pride month includes trans pride, and who’s deemed canonically trans by the Huss? THAT’S RIGHT! HOPE YOU LIKE SEEING JUNE EGBERT ON YOUR DASH A WHOOOOOOOOLE LOT AAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL MONTH!

(hopefully this formats the text right i dont use tumblr a lot and i usually only lurk)

Listen anon, this shit aint gonna work. June Egbert is not canon and she wont be, it doesnt matter if she appears on HSBC because let me tell you, its already on its name: BEYOND CANON.

You are not owning transphobes or helping trans people by screaming that June is canon everywhere you go, all you do is annoy people who arent trans and help make those trans stereotype become even worse and that just makes everything more awful than it already is. What you are doing is not helping ANYONE and it just makes you look like an asshole.

In fact Homestuck trans rep sucks as a whole. Vriska sucks in general and people like Kate will use her being "canonically" trans as an excuse when like I said all that does it make things WORSE. June is forced and people like you usually try to force people that its canon when its not and the Roxy one from HSBC is the same thing but nobody gives a shit about one so people usually dont talk about it.

And no just because Hussie said it doesnt mean its true (ie. Andrew Hussie Formstring) and sure the circumstances are different but the webcomic is done, its like if George Lucas claimed Luke Skywalker was actually a trans girl in secret all this time or some shit, it would be nonsensical to suddenly say that when theres never evidence for it + the main material having ended years ago. It has already ended and HSBC is just a non-canonical continuation.

And I don't know how much it "being planned from the beggining" means but I'm pretty sure its about being planned since the epilogues or something and not since the Homestuck Beta from april 10th, look at me in my invisible eyes and tell me that the Hussie from that era was thinking about transgender rights and not about his next webcomic and i dont fucking know that creepy puppet he had as a kid or horses.

AND before you assume Im transphobic, Im not and support trans people because i know how gender dysphoria feels [even though i do feel like some people online are faking it for attention or are there not for support but because they have some fetish which is pretty fucking bad (and Im unsure if fit the label or if I want to fit it considering I dont tell anyone about it at all and everyone online nowdays seems to suck overall and I also dont want to go around telling online strangers on a public profile about it)], so please understand this. June Egbert is not canon and is not a good rep, if you like it then keep it on the parts of the community that like it and stop trying to force "dubiously canon" on everyone. You are causing more harm than good, in fact I think that you are doing might not be doing any good at all.

And because I feel like I didnt let enough steam off Im gonna say this

Fuck June. Fuck her stupid fucking name. Fuck her rep. Fuck Post-Canon. And she and other shit reps deserve to be forced to take a permanent vacation straight to Hell.

Oh and davekat-sucks please keep existing and dont let these people put you down, you are one of the few people in this community nowdays that seems to not be overly aggressive and you allow people to show their opinions without having to fear getting harassed on or getting dragged on a full blown warzone just for not thinking like most people on the community do. Your blog means a lot for fans like us and remember, just because a lot of people seem to disagree with you it doesnt mean you are wrong! ^U^

Thank you for the kind words, Anon. And thank you for this amazing post here too. ✧ദ്ദി( ˶^ᗜ^˶ )

[justplainwhump]

Coffee To Go

Adrian and Blanca go to the park.

A little filler scene, because the next one is going so slow.

[pet safety masterpost]

Content (warning): BBU, some behind the scenes peeks on pet lib organisation

There were several coffee stands littered over the waterfront park, most serving cheaper coffee than the little bike with the green roof that Adrian was strolling towards. Most served better coffee, in fact. Joana didn't put a lot of effort into growing her customer base.

Joana's effort went into privacy.

"You cannot be serious," she hissed, as she handed him his usual - a large caffe latte with hazelnut syrup. Her dark eyes flurried between him and Bea by his side. "You can't stroll around here with a fucking runaway, there's controls everywhere. You have a fucking death wish?"

"She's not a runaway," Adrian replied evenly, and handed his coffee over to Bea.

"What because she dresses like a girl clone of yours one should assume she's not a pet? I've done this for longer than you have, my friend, and she's-"

"Owned," Bea said softly. "I am an owned pet. I belong to Adrian Delgado."

"What the-" The second paper cup slipped from under the espresso machine and Joana hissed as the coffee spilled over her pants. "Fuck!"

She grabbed a tissue and dabbed at the coffee on her legs, still cursing.

"Why, Adrian? How?"

"It was the only way," he said flatly. "Can I help you with anything there?"

"Not risking everything we do would be a start." She looked up at him grimly. "Of all the things that could go wrong, you buying a Romantic was not on my list. Do you..." She clicked her tongue. "Use her for her intended purpose? Fuck, I really hope you don't."

Adrian flinched. "That's none of your business," he said.

Next to him, Bea stood perfectly still, holding her untouched coffee between two fingers, only her eyes moving between them as they spoke.

Joana stared at her. "Did he? I'll get you out of this, right now, if he laid a finger on you."

"Master Adrian doesn't hurt me," Bea replied with a soft tilt of her head. "He saved me from someone who did."

"Well, I guess that's something." Joana emptied the espresso grounds and started anew. "I still don't like it."

"I figured." Adrian grimaced. "I'm not here for your advice though. Can I speak to our boss somewhere private?"

"She's at the gallery this afternoon. But I..." Joana gestured at Bea. "I won't be the one to tell her about... this."

"But we can go see her?"

"We? You want to bring the pet?"

Adrian smirked. "Bea is a person, Jo, I thought we agreed on this."

"Fuck you, Adrian." She slammed the full cup onto the counter. "Here. Six dollars."

Adrian gave her a bill. "Keep the change."

She leaned in, brought her mouth close to his ear, as she hissed. "You're a fucking idiot. You can't trust her."

Adrian shrugged. "I have to."

"She just used your full name in front of me."

"Come on, Jo. You know my full name."

She clenched her jaw and inhaled deeply, replying only with a boring stare. And she was right. She was fucking right, apart from Joana there was only a very select handful of people in the movement who knew about him. He'd phased out, built up an intricate web of lies about why he wouldn't be part of the movement any longer. He'd pushed away most of the friends he'd made, in order to protect his cover, communicated mostly via Joana or very secretive personal meetings.

Bea put all that at risk. He'd not be able to hide his sympathies from her; he'd failed at that in the last 24 hours already. At the same time, she'd be the first one to be questioned should his employer ever suspect he betrayed them. Bea shouldn't know anything about his private life, much less about the movement. Still, he refused to leave her alone. She needed help.

They both did.

And there was only one person he could think of to provide that.

Adrian lifted the cup in a mock farewell. "I'll tell her you said hi."

Joana shook her head, exhausted. "Don't."

---

-

Pet safety taglist: @gottawhump @flowersarefreetherapy @whumplr-reader @highwaywhump @tauntedoctopuses @pigeonwhumps @whumppsychology @labgrowndemon @whumpinggrounds @somewhumpyguy @whumpzone @tragedyinblue

[princeresnikov]

it's in my nature {Tangerine} // 11

ten. the scorpion: same eyes in different people.

Summary: Clementine begrudgingly goes back to doing her actual job of guarding The Prince, though unfortunately The Prince wants to go stare death in the face and see her brother. How she knew he was on the train is beyond Clementine, who is unfortunately used to The Prince being smug and correct almost all of the time, and would rather be with the girl than let her roam this train full of killers on her own. A chapter about family or not being welcome in one.

{ Masterlist }

A/N: 5736 words. this time it's only been two months ! WOW! but also hello again friends, i'm here today to celebrate my favourite fucked up dynamic which is Clem & The Prince. i could write them forever i honestly could, I love them so much. this chapter has less editing than the last ones so it might be a bit everywhere but im very tired and haven't been back to the source material in quite a while (the book). i hope you enjoy, and as always I would love if you left a comment about what you've been enjoying so far! ALSO QUITE A BIT OF CLEM LORE???

Warnings: Don’t be surprised when the OC is a terrible person and is implied to have done terrible things along with the rest of them.

Chapter Warnings: discussions of murder, violence, unhealthy family dynamics, some allusions to torture but only faintly, drinking, grieving kind of??

Taglist: @venusthepirate @malar-region @tangerinesgf @esmaada @sarcastic-sourwolf @chuyouchu @justshutupmars @somikesoc @chachadelight @andydre4m @evangelineflowers @darkchai @bellatrix124 @kunikidaswhore @thewinterschildren178 @deadtildeath @folkloreandfall @aniglio18 @geeiz @mimidior @justice-333 @ltlthetrifecta @salsasadd @xkawax @hellsgatelove22 @brownficgirl @tangerineswife @cigarettesandfigureskates @ceciliahargrove @welcometothescreaming20s @moonlight-matcha @thyeb @emilia527 @tangerinefics @charlemagnethesecond @little-miss-bi @megplant @kalli0pes @aaronperryjohnson @nachtcirce @literatureisair @nina-isabelle @queenofspades403 @ayaahaddadd @sweetbutpsychobutsweet @persephones-garden

----

Despite how inherently she lacked one, being around The White Death's family had never made her yearn for a family of her own. Of course she's well aware that they're not exactly the model of a perfect, healthy family dynamic, but it really was all she had to go on -

[I know he's here.] Case and point, The Prince had been sending increasingly cryptic texts that Clementine could only assume was about her brother. The Prince had a way of knowing things, and more infuriatingly, jumping to conclusions based on Clementine's non-answers that were correct a frustrating amount of time. 

"What have you done now -?" Clementine had answered The Prince's phone call with her patience wearing thin.

"I've found the case, our friend is just now working on getting it open for us," The Prince says, reminding Clementine of the hollow-eyed Yuchi who had tailed after The Prince into the bar cart looking like he was already half way to giving up, "and I do worry when you speak to me like that," The Prince continues with faux concern, "imagine if someone heard you talking to your poor, sweet client like that; it'd certainly blow your cover." As if she even cares about how Clementine speaks over the phone to her for the benefit of Clementine, as if she didn't simply take any opportunity she could to exert even some small amount of control over her bodyguard. 

"I'm coming to check on you -"

"So proud of you for remembering to do your job," immediately The Prince fired back, voice all but dripping with sarcasm, and Clementine knows she's rolling her eyes on the other end of the line. 

"Ma'am I was following your instructions of distracting the man in the blue suit." 

"I didn't think you'd go on for this long."

"So you're calling me to come back because you do actually want me around?"

"Don't flatter yourself; Mister Kimura has hundreds of combinations to go through on that suitcase and I'm rather bored," at least her tone matched her words, coming with a faint, exasperated sigh.

"I struggle to believe you're yearning for my companionship in this moment," Clementine deadpans, and much to her surprise, The Prince laughs, the sound bright and genuine on the other end of the line. 

"Of course not!" The Prince practically crows, though the levity dies out, "however I would like to have a serious conversation with you about withholding important information, and you not doing that again." 

About a million different things run through Clementine's head at once, all most certainly incriminating, and all things she'd take to her grave. However she knows better than to panic in this moment, remembering the girl's earlier text messages.

"There are things you don't need to know, ma'am," Clementine tells her gently, all the while thinking - how was I meant to tell you that yes your brother is here, but he's dead!?

"Agree to disagree, fruit fly," and The Prince hangs up. Fuck. How would she even know about her brother being aboard the train? The girl has always known far too much, even for her resources. 

As a child she'd had this insatiable curiosity that had made Clementine wary when they'd first met. The Prince had always seemed like she'd been starved for information, never giving a real reason as to why she'd poke and prod and investigate so thoroughly for someone her age. Information gathering for it's own sake, her father had always showered her with affection for her persistent nature. 

"What's wrong with you?" Was the first thing The Prince had ever said to Clementine. 

In The White Death's office, the next room over, The Son was arguing with his father about the budget they'd been allocated for Clementine's wardrobe and how he believed it wasn't enough to dress her like a believable socialite. Of course Clementine couldn't care less about how she's dressed as long as she's able to do her job; some of the dresses The Son had picked out hadn't exactly been conductive to some the more physical aspects of her job, but they hadn't stopped her either.

The girl is small, dark hair and eyes that reminded Clementine almost too much of The Son; this must be the sister he had occasionally complained about. Never around others, but Clementine clearly didn't matter when it was dawn and she was wiping the puke from the corners of his mouth, or putting ointment on the grazes he got after he ate shit on the sidewalk outside of a club. This is the sister he claims his father cares more about than him.

Clementine frowned at the little girl and her intrusive question.

"You're a child." Clementine still hasn't lost the Russian accent she'd adopted after leaving the country to find The White Death. She avoids using it at The Son's behest, but makes an effort to occasionally revert to it, if only to give off the impression that it was her natural accent. She's not sure why, but he looks strangely at her when she does.

"You sound like my father," the girl says, her own accent a stark contrast.

"Roshan Resnikov?" 

"I'm Prince Resnikov."

"I know."

"Because you're my brother's girlfriend." It's not a question. Clementine corrects her anyways.

"Bodyguard." 

"That's not what he says."

"We," Clementine hesitates, unsure of how to even interact with a child, let alone explain the nuances of the situation to her, "play pretend," she finally settles on, "to keep him safe."

"You keep him safe?" Even at six the girl had a handle on conveying her disdain. Clementine is growing less fond of this girl by the moment. She sounds, just for a moment, like the White Death himself when Clementine had initially requested to work for him. Then, after a moment and without any warning, her gaze shifts to Clementine's bare forearms where she'd rolled up her sleeves, "you let people hurt you." 

Before Clementine can respond, however, an explosive shout comes from the next room -

"If you mispronounce Balenciaga one more time I'm going to kill myself!"

Both Clementine and The Prince look to the office door where they'd just heard The Son shout dramatically. Neither of them hear his father's reply, though the door remains close.

"Father and I don't take him seriously," the young girl says with such ease and casualness, but with a hint of something that sounds like a warning, something territorial. Father and I. 

"If your father didn't take him seriously he wouldn't have hired me."

The girl's expression scrunches up into something disbelieving. After another moment, she fixes Clementine with a scrutinising look, an unnerving look coming from any child let alone this one. 

"You'd be pretty if you didn't have those ugly scars," as if it's note most normal thing in the world, "and you don't talk right," she says, "you're meant to be nice to me." Clementine was unsure of what prompted this response; she thought she had been nice to the girl. In the years that followed, Clementine would learn that being nice to The Prince was just the same as being nice to her brother; humour them, but most importantly, agree with them. 

It was, unfortunately a truth that had carried on even to the present day.

In the bar cart, The Prince is suspiciously alone, of course apart from The Wolf's corpse still propped up in the corner. Her charge is wearing that Cheshire smile that has only ever meant bad things, watching Clementine with a kind of smugness that she knew set her bodyguard on edge. 

Clementine will not speak first, however, making a beeline for the bar. With lazy steps the young woman follows, going so far as to lean on the bar itself, chin resting on her hand with that same, watchful smile. 

"How is he?" 

Clementine glances at her out of the corner of her eye as she opens the bottle of expensive rum, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. The Prince sighs, as if disappointed with the non-answer, momentarily giving up the bit as she tipped her head to the side, the slightest frown gracing her youthful features.

"I do wish you'd watch your tone when answering my calls," The Prince doesn't actually tsk as she reprimands Clementine, but it's clearly there in her words.

"And I wish you wouldn't identify me to strangers in an effort to cause me problems, but we don't always get what we wish for," Clementine told her blithely, back to the girl as she pulled a cup from the shelf behind her.

"Yes, but he wasn't a stranger was he?" The Prince responds slyly.

"You didn't know that, did you?" Clementine frowns for a moment, looking up with genuine concern as she poured her drink. Of course it's a trap, and something almost malevolent lights up in the Prince's eyes.

"So he's not a stranger?" The Prince gives a mean little smile, adding, "I thought I may have recognised him myself," she shoots for nonchalance, "like I read something about him somewhere, or perhaps saw a picture." Clementine goes still, halfway through her first large sip of the liquor, the liquid burning her tongue. Looking over her shoulder, she meets The Prince's knowing gaze, the girl raising a single, perfect eyebrow as if in challenge. Clementine swallows the rum and slowly turns back to the girl, determined to put on a show of being unimpressed, even when alarms were going off in the back of her mind.

"He's worked for my father before," she says, gaze unwavering, like she's desperate for Clementine to react, "did you know?"

"I don't think this is -" Clementine puts her cup down, expression drawn where she meets The Prince's piercing gaze.

"Around twelve years ago, I think it was." She's giving Clementine this calculating look, as if trying to tell if Clementine knows more than she lets on. Clementine looks up blinks slowly, but it's enough for The Prince, the young woman whose known her for years, enough to divine meaning and truth from it. As if satisfied with Clementine's non-answer, The Prince raised herself from the bar, crossing her arms, cruel little smile gracing her lips, "oh how benevolent you are then, Scorpion, if your report from New York is to be believed."

"Where is Kimura?" Clementine asks instead of acknowledging The Prince's statement and it's implications. Clearly frustrated at Clementine's unwillingness to play along, the girl's grin drops, gaze flicking almost irately to the bathroom at the back of the carriage. 

"Busy," Clementine watches as the girl appears to physically shake off her irritation, like it passes through her like a shiver, leaving her as bright as she'd boarded the train. These little moments, these cracks Clementine is allowed to see in her mask, she finds fascinating; where there should be humanity is simply a tide of malevolence and intrigue. From observations and anecdotes she knows that The Prince is talented at gaining fear through respect; her classmates, her teachers, any authority she appeared to come across. Clementine wonders if that's one of the reasons she despises Clementine so strongly, since she could never get Clementine to do her bidding in the way that made her feel the most powerful.

"Still, you've reminded me -" tone chipper, The Prince brings Clementine out of her thoughts and back into their reality, "- let's go see him."

"Him?" Clementine already knows who, but she really doesn't like where The Prince is going with this. As if able to read her thoughts, she shakes her head as if Clementine were a child making a mistake.

"My darling brother," she sounds sincere despite being anything but, "I know he's here," the smile remained, but something had gone cold in the girl's eyes, "and I know you know too."

"How do you know?"

"I don't answer your questions, fruit fly." 

"How do you know your brother is on this train?" 

There's that look again, that intrigued and cruel kind of amusement in The Prince's expression. 

"It's taken you long enough to take me seriously," and beneath the cryptic wording, The Prince sounds almost triumphant. Turning on her heel she begins to flounce out, calling out that she's going with or without Clementine, and despite the day she was having, Clementine felt beholden to her station. Silent but swift, Clementine is following her back through first class. 

In the small segment between carriages, Clementine grabs The Prince by the arm, insistently pulling her to head down the righthand aisle instead. When she hisses for her not to draw attention, she considers it a small victory when The Prince rolls her eyes but agrees. Several carriages later, once more finding themselves in the space between carriages, upon seeing Lemon approaching them, Clementine shoves The Prince into the bathroom, despite the girl's many initial protests -

"Let me do my job!" Clementine hissed, and thankfully the girl relented just as the doors slid open and Lemon joined the confined area.

"Oh, sorry, I -" upon realising it was Clementine, he frowned in question.

"I am a human, I do still need to pee from time to time," she said with an irate awkwardness, "but I've been waiting here for almost ten minutes -" taking a chance on The Prince's love of schemes and nosy nature, she knocks on the bathroom door, and they both hear 'still occupied!' from inside.

"Oh," Lemon says rather lamely, taking it at face value and quickly moving on. 

"You owe me one," The Prince is practically preening as she leaves the stall, smug grin stretching from ear to ear. The momentary ruse had been convincing, Clementine concedes, but at what cost. Her client's ego hadn't needed even the smallest of boosts. 

Outside of third carriage, they again give pause. This time, it's The Prince who stops. 

"You never deserved any of it, you know that don't you?" For the first time in a long time, her tone is completely devoid of inflection. The Prince looks through the window to the passengers, while Clementine wonders if she can already see her brother, but doubts it, "neither did he, but at least he was family." 

And without elaboration, she steps forwards and into the carriage. Much slower, Clementine trails behind. She's not quite sure why she doesn't warn The Prince of her brother's state, perhaps to shock the girl, to see if her brother's death could genuinely rattle her, or perhaps a small part of her believes it would have been unnecessary, that she somehow already knew. 

She watches from several feet away as The Prince approaches her brother, expression unreadable. There's a moment, a single brief look that The Prince shoots to her bodyguard, the closest to hesitation that Clementine had ever seen from her, before she leaned in to get a proper look. Lifting his glass, Clementine can see he's still bleeding despite her earlier efforts to clean him, not that it mattered. Despite all the resentment she held towards him, she still flinches when The Prince spits on his corpse in disdain.

The silence between them as they head back is somehow the tensest Clementine has experienced in a long while. The Prince does not seem rattled, though she does seem somehow affected, though in what way that is Clementine can't begin to fathom. This time when she sees Lemon approaching, there's enough time for her to fit into the little cubical with The Prince herself. It's the second time she's been trapped in one of these bathrooms with another individual with probably malicious intent, yet somehow being here with The Prince was infinitely worse than her argument with Tangerine.

"You couldn't save him either," The Prince tells her coldly after several long moments of silence.

"Boomslang venom kills within thirty seconds," still, Clementine's tone does have notes of apology, not that the girl across from her much cared for them.

"How do you know that yet seemingly nothing useful?"

"I," Clementine gave pause, considering whether she should really be telling The Prince this, but figured that there was a chance it wouldn't matter after today finally ended, "hired a contractor once who used -"

"You couldn't save him if you tried," already bored of Clementine's explanation, The Prince cuts her off with a sneer and roll of her eyes. Then, cruelty bleeding through her tone, her lip curled as she looked over Clementine's attire, "you look like a joke." Biting back her retort that this is how The Prince insisted she had dressed, Clementine lets the girl have this moment over her; clearly she wanted to appear unscathed after confronting her dead brother. But he was still her family.

"I'll find some pants on the way back," Clementine concedes with a murmur, looking away from the girl, trying to give her the barest amount of privacy despite the space they were cramped in. Some of the tension in the The Prince's shoulders that had developed back in carriage three eased. It takes a few more moments before the telltale knock and Lemon's voice tentatively greeting the occupants of the bathroom. Lowering her voice and speaking Japanese, she tells him that it's occupied. After he apologises, she waits another quiet minute before letting them both out.

As promised, when they get to the next set of luggage racks just before they find themselves back at first class, Clementine puts her morals aside to find a pair of pants. Unfortunately, while her wording could have been kinder, The Prince had a point.

"I am curious," The Prince leans against the wall with her arms crossed as Clementine carefully picks the lock on a piece of luggage, "did you ever catch yourself actually caring about him?" And Clementine goes very still.

"In the beginning," she says softly, "I did care about whether he lived or died for more than just my own sake." Silence spills out between them as The Prince ruminates on Clementine's delicate answer. Clementine's not sure where her next words come from, unable to look at The Prince in these surprisingly honest moments. When she speaks, it's quiet enough that The Prince has to step forward, and she's switched to Russian, "when he was my priority, he was my everything," she admits, "and when he wasn't, I had once considered there to be no-one closer to me. I could have loved him, but he never saw me as a person," flicking a sharp look to The Prince, her voice turns sharp on the last few words, and knows without having to spell it out that The Prince understands; I know that you don't either.

"Can I ask you something, fruit fly?" It's not a real question, and the shift in both tone and language is almost jarring, like she was trying to dismiss Clementine's admission entirely, which was, of course, completely standard for The Prince in times like these. Still, Clementine nods, keeps her expression neutral as she's elbow deep in someone else's luggage, finally finding an appropriately sized pair of beige slacks.

"Knowing what you know now, what my father makes you do, how he'd make you my brother's babysitter and all that would entail," The Prince regards Clementine with this kind of scientific curiosity that she usually reserved for when she made Clementine 'test' her 'self defence' weapons, and Clementine steps towards the door to the previous carriage, "would you go back and keep your nose out of my family's business?" It's that same curious but disconnected tone, but the wording catches Clementine by surprise. Looking back at her charge she can see the malice in the girl's eyes despite her deceptively sweet expression.

"No."

For just a second The Prince's expression appears to twist involuntarily furious, betraying her.

"Of course not," almost as if to herself, sounding genuinely frustrated. Then, after a moment, as Clementine disappears through first class to the bar cart she hoped would have remained undisturbed, "why not?" Still sounding irate, The Prince picks up her pace to catch up to Clementine, snapping at her loud enough that one of the few remaining patrons in first class glared at her pointedly.

Once in the bar cart, Clementine turns on the young woman.

"Why does it matter?"

As if realising that she'd had something of an emotional outbursts, The Prince schools her expression and posture into something that reads as otherwise unaffected.

"It doesn't," she shrugs, looking away, her gaze landing on The Wolf still propped up in the corner. Clementine knows her well enough to know The Prince was still both curious and furious.

"It matters to you, Malen'kiy Prints," Clementine pushes, unable to help the faint, triumphant smirk, "don't ever forget that I could have been family; you should be glad I never married your brother -"

"I wish you had!" The Prince snaps, "I wish he'd bought you like he wanted and kept you far, far away from me for the rest of your tragic little life. You could have just pissed off to be his little lapdog you wouldn't keep ruining everything in our lives, you- you- you selfish, little Scorpion! You ruin everything you touch!"

After a long, shocked silence, Clementine takes a deep breath and starts stepping out of her shoes. The Prince let's out a shrill, frustrated noise, stalking over to one of the free lounges, throwing herself onto it, slouched down, scowling, altogether unladylike, a sharp change from the carefully calm composure she carried herself with most other times.

As she's putting on the pants beneath her skirt, Clementine's voice is the only sound other than the quiet hum of the train.

"Is this about your mother?" Clementine switches to Russian once, and The Prince turns her furious scowl upon her bodyguard.

"Of course it's about my mother, Scorpion," she spits back, initially matching Clementine's Russian before she switches back to a contempt-filled English, "she thought you hung the stars in the sky all because my idiot brother was obsessed with you," she rolls her eyes, finally looking away, "I can't believe she let him give you Baba's ring just for you to turn him down," she scoffed, lip curling as she watched Clementine now take off her skirt with the pants secured, "and you still got her killed."

"I did everything I could I -"

"It wasn't enough," The Prince glowers, finally sitting forward and levelling a look of anger and betrayal at Clementine, "and it's all your fault."

The accusation genuinely surprises Clementine, who begins to internally panic - how had The Prince come to this conclusion? She'd been so careful. Keeping a cool head, she decides to play dumb, hoping the The Prince knew less than her accusation implied.

"It was an accident."

"You were her bodyguard, my father trusted you. She wouldn't have even been in that car if my brother hadn't got himself arrested knowing our mother would bail him out; he knew you would be with her."

"He didn't get arrested to see me -"

"Of course he did! Because he knows our mother was on his side, but you couldn't be convinced! You couldn't just let him love you, couldn't let him have you like everyone in our family wanted!"

Clementine let's her rant, watching the girl get worked up in a way that only seemed to happen around her, in just the same way that The Son could only keep his lackadaisical demeanour for so long when Clementine refused to humour him. Part of her wishes she was less adept at getting under the skin of The White Death's children; they often bottled things up, and it seemed like Clementine was the only one they felt the need to lash out at from time to time.

"If you want to blame me," Clementine says carefully, "I'm not going to stop you."

"Oh I do," The Prince says matter-of-factly, punctuating it with a humourless bark of laughter, "I think my father should have killed you and the only reason you're still alive is because he knew mother was soft on you."

"She was always good to me," Clementine agreed, "I tried everything I could to save her," she then lied, "I'm sorry I survived," she pointed out rather firmly, and The Prince pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes as she regained her composure from easier. Standing, she smooths out the pleats of her skirt, taking a deep breath before she turns, expression carefully neutral.

"Come here, fruit fly," and she crooks a finger at Clementine without looking at her. Clementine fights the urge to roll her eyes at the petty power move, but takes the four steps to be beside The Prince.

Turning, The Prince steps into her space, a show of intimidation, but Clementine doesn't back down, doesn't step away.

"I don't care," she says in a dangerously quiet voice, gaze shallow as she meets Clementine's, "how many near death experiences you've supposedly survived, I don't care how resilient you are, how they say you're downright unkillable, Cockroach," she takes hold of the knot of Clementine's tie firmly, voice never wavering, threatening demeanour never dropping, "you see the second my father finally stops having a use for you, I will squash you like the bug you are. I will use everything in my power to make sure I am the one to make your actions have conveniences; I promise," she emphasises eyes going dark, "that I will be the one to make it stick."

As lucky as The Prince is, Clementine wonders if it would be enough.

The Prince tightens the tie tight enough to be uncomfortable around Clementine's neck, like a reminder of her supposed power over her bodyguard.

"Would you like me to set up a reminder in your calendar, ma'am?" Clementine's expression goes a vacant kind of pleasant, as her tone turned sweet and immediately eager to be a people pleaser.

The Prince gives her a look of utter disgust.

"You're trying too hard," The Prince scoffs, stepping away, shaking out her hands as if dirty simply from being in contact with Clementine.

"Sorry, ma'am."

"Go away before you ruin this too," her lip curls.

"Your plan, ma'am?"

"Obviously."

"May I ask -"

"You absolutely may not. Go away -"

Clementine's at the door when she hears her phone go off in her purse. The Prince makes an insistent shooing gesture, but Clementine tells her that it could be her father and she relents with an eye roll.

Except it's not an unknown number, the type The White Death usually calls with. It's the number she'd so desperately hoped would still be active only an hour before.

The name Daddy❤️ lights up the screen, and Clementine is stunned enough that it takes The Prince reminding her to answer it before she does.

"Do you have a gun?" Tangerine on the other end of the line sounds exhausted and put upon all at once.

"I- no, I-" she stumbles over her words for a moment as The Prince is asking if it's her father, "I don't have a gun on me," Clementine tells him while waving a dismissive hand at The Prince, "I gave yours back."

"And I gave it to Lemon," Tangerine sighs, "it's fine if you don't have one," though it doesn't exactly sound like it from his tone, "but how quickly can you get to the front of the train?"

"Do you need a gun?" The Prince says with surprising interest.

"Why do you need a gun?" Clementine frowns, "or me?"

"Our boss has decided to send another welcoming party to make sure we're all on schedule -"

"Fuck."

"Yeah."

"And you need me to -"

"Vouch for us again, yes. Consistency," after a beat he adds, "and he may or may not have threatened to kill everyone on the train if you weren't with us."

"So he knows," Clementine mutters darkly.

"Of course he does," but Tangerine simply matches her defeated tone in the moment.

"I have a gun," The Prince says nonchalantly over Clementine's shoulder, and Clementine momentarily covers the receiver to scowl at her.

"Why do you have a gun?!" She whisper-shouts.

"Excuse you I was almost murdered with it earlier today," The Prince sounds offended to have had to remind Clementine of Kimura's gun that she'd been fussing with earlier, "but you can borrow if it means you'll leave quicker."

After a moment of serious deliberation, she uncovers the receiver.

"I can get a gun."

"Brilliant," Tangerine actually breaths a sigh of relief, "hopefully we won't need it, but -"

"Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, I guess... I still don't like guns-" Clementine hears an unfamiliar voice in the background of Tangerine's call.

"Who is that?"

"I'll explain when you get here," and he hangs up. After taking a moment to steel herself, Clementine turns to see The Prince smiling brightly at her, completely at odds with her frustrated demeanour only moments ago.

"I can get you a gun," wearing a wide, almost innocent smile.

"I have so many questions."

"And I will answer none of them, because that's not how our relationship works, fruit fly," she says, having regained that menacing, chipper attitude with which she usually walked through the world. It takes Clementine a moment for her to process the full situation before she submits to it, closing her eyes and nodding once. While she hears The Prince chuckle softly and move to the back of the carriage and it's bathroom, Clementine keeps her eyes closed. However, with the buzzing of the phone in her hands, her eyes snap back open.

Unknown.

The last damn thing she needs. 

And perhaps it's the alcohol or the onslaught of situations that would have overwhelmed a lesser person, but just for a moment her frustration escapes her.

"What?" She sighed, irate. What followed, however, was silence.

"Tone, Scorpion." The White Death's voice chills her to her core.

"I'm so sorry, sir," right as she realises her mistake she's internally berating herself, heading to the seat The Prince had recently vacated, trying her best to sound accommodating, "how can I help -"

"Your intuition has exceeded my expectations," something about his tone set her hair on end, "you are taking responsibility for both of my children." It's not a question. He knows something's wrong, of course he does; Clementine knows with absolute sincerity that he does not intend her to survive the night.

She pinches the bridge of her nose.

"Of course, sir, I'm just glad you thought to hire the operatives you did to get your son here."

"If my Little Prince hadn't been in your care already I would have had you retrieve him, however," the telling words sour for a moment on his tongue, "priorities."

"I understand," she muttered disdainfully, "but his," her nose wrinkled for a moment, "couriers, I guess you could call them, they're off the hook are they? You knew I'd be on this train, you knew I'd find him searching for my bonus, you knew I'd take responsibility for him from there."

("You couldn't save him either.")

"Of course my little Scorpion, after all, I'm confident you know better than to let harm befall my foolish Frog of a son."

"Of course, sir."

"Good to hear," he says slowly, really letting the moment sink in, "then I suppose if you're willing to give up your bonus, let The Twins return my briefcase to me as they initially intended, my son's care will fall squarely on you, as will the reward for his safe return; double what was promised to you in that bonus."

Despite how he's sweetening the deal, Clementine knows there's no real light for her at the end of this tunnel. But maybe, just maybe, if she could convince The Prince to hand over the briefcase, she could get it to Tangerine and Lemon. 

"Was it a test?"

"It was my way of guaranteeing you would find my son."

"So all Lemon and Tangerine need to do is give you back your case? And if anything happens to your son, it's on me?"

"Has something happened to my son?"

"No," Clementine lies easily, "but if I punch him in his foolish mouth I don't want them being punished too."

"Yours is the only head on the chopping block for my son."

Clementine is quiet for a very long moment, eyes closed as she breathed deeply. After a few beats of silence, The White Death's voice is quiet when he speaks.

"Is that all, Scorpion?" Something about it is almost - almost - concerned. Almost - almost - like he cared.

"Can I ask you something, sir?" She hears The White Death huff the faintest laugh. She takes it as permission, "did you intend for me to kill Tangerine?"

"Yes," he says after a long moment, voice completely devoid of humour, "now, then," she knows in this moment that he means back in New York, "I know what he did to you, and I know you know, Little Scorpion; what he did to you, to..." he sighs, trailing off, clearly having forgotten the name he was searching for. Hearing it all, Clementine feels like her blood is fire in her veins, eyes squeezed tightly shut as she holds the phone to her ear and tries to hold herself together. The fire beats with a demand for retribution that she could never fully forget.

"Ilyanka."

"Ilya," there's a strange tone to The White Death's voice, a darkness that appears only in his muttering of the name, "I tried to give you catharsis. You bargain with me for him, remove him from accountability for my son. I do not understand you." In this moment, though she's not sure why, she hears a familiar voice from a long time passed, the same tone, blue eyes and cruelty in the blood, it's the same confusion and disbelief at Clementine herself that The Prince had always held, even all those years ago; what is wrong with you?

"You knew," it's not a question this time, though she just hopes he can't hear the betrayal in her voice.

"Of course I knew," is said with surprising care, "and I am always sorry it happened to you, Little Scorpion."

"Of course you knew," Clementine choked out, the fire in her veins now white-hot to hear him say these things when she knew he was lying about his own involvement, and just how long he'd known. Except he reads her reaction as merely sorrow, his voice surprisingly gentle as he calls her Little Scorpion in a voice far kinder than she'd ever heard him speak to his own son.

"Can I ask you another question?" This time her shaky voice is met with silence, yet still she goes ahead, "why are you telling me this?"

"Do you not think you've earned my trust after all these years?" His tone demands an answer.

Clementine has so much blood on her hands.

"I- thank you, sir."

[withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus]

Dude I can't deal, I will star blocking. This phrase coming from foreigners living in Japan pisses the hell out of me: "It’s ok if you can’t do that (they mention it's ok if you can't come to Japan rn because it is sth hard to do) but don’t try and think you know what’s going on from overseas."

While we can't know everything, claiming we don't know shit as if it's sth completely out of reach unless you are there sounds so fucking entitled to me. Call me bitter, but most of them have that attitude and there's proof they too don't know as much as they think.

I spoke with a girl who shared some live and meet and greet moments of hers with a favorite jrocker of mine with me and it baffled me how much she complained about some parts of his attitude when all she'd been telling me up to that point were normal to me. There was only one thing she told me I didn't expect from him, the others were pretty expected if you read his interviews and pay attention to how he reacts to things. Like honey. Where you are doesn't matter when it comes to basic human reactions. Also I didn't speak about my experience at Kamijo's live here but basically, even though we don't follow Japanese rules at lives here in Europe, even though I didn't have to do choreos or other things "expected from vkei fans", AND it was the 2nd live I've been ever in my 30 years of life cause nb comes where I live and I never have money to go even to the capital to see American artists, AAAALLL of the atmosphere, the live, dealing with other fans etc. felt like sth I do every day. It's a live dammit, it's not rocket science. And Kamijo, a person I'd never once seen in my life up until that point and had only seen live through my screen felt like he was someone doing something I actually have experienced for a long time rather than sth "new" or "unknown" to me. I was at a foreign country I'd never been before. I was scared shitless to go and believed I would fail every single minute as a fan in that arena. Yet I felt this was normal to me. I knew what to sing, what to scream, how to move, and all that? By learning through a screen. Just because you Ms "if you are not here you don't know shit about vkei" never searched beyond what was available to you on vkei while you weren't living in Japan, doesn't mean that everyone stops there. I see many both Japanese and foreign fans being there being just as shitty to jrockers often as some foreign fans living abroad, as if you literally take everything for face value as well, as if you don't know shit, even though you're there. (Not everyone is shitty, what I'm saying is bad apples exist everywhere)

Want me to take it somewhere away from vkei? While studying with 2 Japanese teachers, there were many times I shared stuff with them I enjoy they didn't have a clue Japan has. They'd been locals and yet, there were things they didn't know. Because it wasn't sth they were interested in. Hell, do you know how many times people tell me shit about Greece I don't know? I'm astounded by the knowledge of foreigners, not living in my country, have about my own country's culture in the past. Japan, just like every other country in the world, is no longer a closed off society you can never know shit about. If you look up things, if you ask the right people, locals, and more importantly if you take time to observe and understand them, you will be surprised with how much you learn.

No I don't know everything. And I sure made mistakes while studying, assuming things about a culture different from mine. But I also experienced 2 types of Japanese women who showed me that knowledge lies in the eye of the beholder and how different can people be depending on their maturity and experiences. My first teacher was ambitious, money oriented and didn't know much about subcultures. I found her shallow and selfish, she also looked down on people with mental disorders cause she came from a family heavily affected by it. She didn't value relationships easily and was quick to judge even if she didn't say a word. That person told me about Yoshiki, Gackt and Hyde from a business point of view. I never realized who Yoshiki was in Japan beyond the music industry. Gackt and Hyde too. I was only seeing photos and reading articles so it was refreshing to see them as businessmen from a business standpoint. This woman and I often didn't see eye to eye cause I valued emotions more than ambition and money, yet she was surprised about how much slang I knew for sb who doesn't live there. She was also surprised I knew stuff about mythology, history, Takarazuka Revue, Japanese traditional theater, butoh (which she'd never heard before) etc. Even about the dark parts of Kabukicho's nightlife where she herself had worked. She did add more to my knowledge on that too. My second teacher was much older, much wiser, friendlier and non judgemental. I loved being taught by her cause she was more human and deeper emotionally than the other one. She didn't live much in Japan, she left around her early 20s and kept going back every now and then, but she knew most things a native would and still was so happy when I told her I knew about Takarazuka (she's a fan :P), she wanted to hear about visual kei, she was surprised I knew about Japanese witches, festivals and many more. One of them gave me the nihongo jouzu attitude Japanese people give foreigners, and the other a true appreciation for my love for her country's culture. The latter also told me where to look for more. She encouraged my thirst to learn more instead of disapproving everything she didn't understand about how I approach things. With that old lady we talked shit about Arashi, we talked about SMAP's disband and the industry of idols and talent agencies in Japan. We held a real conversation with plenty of mutual exchange of information xD.

Do tell me or anyone else who doesn't live in ANY country that when you trully love sth you can't know shit about it unless you experience personally. I dare you. And those of you who keep learning things about things you love every day, keep learning, keep asking and let anyone who aquires knowledge ONLY from personal experience doubt you, just cause their learning abilities are limited like that. It shouldn't be a competition, but when you come for my knowledge without even knowing me, I will bite back, cause I can play the "I'm smarter than you" childish attitude too. Help others learn without putting down what they already know dammit, it's not that hard and you are not being "honest" by saying that shit all the time.