#fuck that poster in particular

[drowningbpdbodies]

“How are you?” I should be in a straight jacket but unfortunately for the both of us I’m here

[permanentreverie]

I HAVE NEVER BEEN A HAPPIER GIRL. EVER.

[lamphous]

please read this truly godawful copy I encountered tonight on my break. I'm going to find whoever in this company wrote it and fucking talented mr ripley them for the greater good

[purbiworl]

You'd think with that tag that maybe people would actually be talking about the issue it's supposed to be and not just posting hoards upon hoards of "oooh creepy liminal spaces for aesthetic" posts

[wiishopwednesday]

longing for something you can never return to

[ID: a collection of images relating to nostalgia. the first image is a genius screenshot of the lyrics to car seat headrest's "famous prophets (stars)." the screenshot reads "We gotta go back/We gotta go back/We gotta go back/We gotta go back." the second image is the "we got the torture labyrinth tomorrow" meme template, edited to instead say "We got missing what we can never return to tomorrow/What?/We got the beginning of the rest of our lives tomorrow/Ohhhh/Okay." the third image is a discord screenshot, with the user's username and icon cropped out so that only the text is visible, and reads "Duuudeee you missed out on those 7 days where god created earth you are fucked LOL." the fourth image is a screenshot of a piece of text, which reads in bolder font "You can never leave home." underneath it, in normal text, it reads "You take it with you no matter where you go. Home is between your teeth, under your fingernails, in the hair follicles, in your smile, in the ride of your hips, in the passage of your breasts." the fifth image is a screenshot of a post made by tumblr user ryebreadgf, which reads "YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK! YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK! YOU CAN BITE AND SCRATCH AND BEG BUT YOU CAN NEVER GO BACK!" the sixth image is a screenshot of a piece of text that reads, "YOU KILL YOURSELF AND IMMEDIATELY WAKE UP AS A CHILD ON YOUR PARENTS BED. YOU'VE BEEN ASLEEP FOR HALF AN HOUR. THE SUN IS SHINING." the seventh image is a picture of two uneven dark yellow boxed next to each other on a off-white background. the first box reads, in handwriting, "I'm terrified of change." the second box reads, "I'm terrified of staying this way forever." the eighth image is a screenshot of a post made by tumblr user dakotajohnsongf, which reads "women be looking at pictures of their childhood selves and trying to find a way back to them." the ninth image is a screenshot of a post made by tumblr user bestofgentleearth, containing a screenshot from a forum of some kind. a line of text reads "(16 hours ago) butterfly said:" underneath, an indented section of text reads "today, the world looked beautiful again. i'm starting to remember what kept me alive last summer." the tenth image is another tumblr post by user cursedsuggestion, which reads "the friend you miss comes home for good. you never see another mirror. it's summer forever and that terrible thought you keep having finally disappears." the eleventh image is a screenshot of a reddit post, with the original poster's username and icon cropped out so only the text is visible. it reads "I'm not sure how to word this, but I constantly go through this deep sense of loss. I feel like I terribly miss something I love from the bottom of my heart, but I don't know what it is, exactly. Nothing in life satisfies me, nothing makes me content, but l wouldn't say I'm depressed either. There's just this endless search for something, and at times I feel I can catch a glimpse of it - different sceneries pop into my head at times, like of a particular beach at night, and I'm moved to tears. Or I remember a dream and all the feelings that were stirring while I saw that dream, and feel entirely connected to them." the twelfth image is a screenshot of a tumblr post, but the original poster is cropped out so only the text is visible, which reads "wait i wasn't ready. i never finished that game of tag. i still need to learn how to do a cartwheel. my friends and i never finished making that bridge over the creek. i want to go back. can you carry me to bed one last time? and maybe i'll wake up tomorrow in my childhood room with my pink walls and we'll laugh over this dream at breakfast." the thirteenth image is another tumblr screenshot of a post by user heavensghost, which reads "uhhh yh sure u can go back but no one will be waiting for you there."

the fourteenth image is a screenshot of a reddit comment, with the user's information cropped out so that only the text is visible, which reads "HIRAETH (heer-eye-th) 'A deep homesickness; an intense form of longing or nostalgia for a place long gone, or even an unaccountable homesickness for a place you have never visited. A pull on the heart that conveys a distinct feeling of missing something irretrievably lost.'" the fifteenth image is a collection of 3 rows of black boxes, with 3 boxes in each row. the first box has a white, vague form of a human. the second box pictures the human form stretching its arms and legs out. from the third box onward, the human figure starts to dissipate into white dots until it has completely disappeared and only dots remain. the sixteenth image is a tumblr post by user n1ntendos, which reads "I AM HAUNTED BY A PAST I CANNOT GO BACK TO !!!!!!! anyways." the seventeenth image is a screenshot of text that reads "I cling to everything - CDs that skip, rings that turn my fingers green, the dead ends of my hair, old love notes that turn my stomach over and over. And I'm not proud but there are still boxes under my bed. And I'm not proud but my closet is still running out of space. And nostalgia is a fucking waste of time but my heart is full with it. Tell me I won't hold this forever. Tell me there will be a day where I let gloriously go." the eighteenth image is an image of larger text that reads "It's a summer day, and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world." the nineteenth image is a photograph of a large white dog standing in a dark, flowing river surrounded by a dark forest and green trees. the dog is facing away from the viewer with its mouth open. the dog appears to be glowing, likely due to a lens flare of some kind. the entire picture feels very melancholy and nostalgic. the twentieth image is larger text that reads "Nostalgia is the aching realization that you can't go back again. The longing, no matter how intense, can never be met." the twenty-first image is a screenshot of an instagram dm, with the user's username and icon cropped out so that only the text is visible, and it reads "well the time passes anyway so I have to." the twenty-second image is a screenshot of the spotify lyrics for gerard way's song "action cat." the lyrics read "Hey/Do you miss me?/'Cause I miss you/Do you miss me?/'Cause I miss you/Do you miss me?/'Cause I miss you/Do you miss me?/'Cause I miss you too." the twenty-third image is a screenshot of text that reads "YOUR CHILDHOOD DOG IS ALIVE. YOUR DEAD BEST FRIEND WANTS TO GET COFFEE. YOU HAVE BEEN KIND AND GOOD. THERE IS NOTHING CHASING YOU. YOU CAN SLEEP. WHAT DO YOU DO?" the twenty-fourth image is a continuation of the lyrics from car seat headrest's "famous prophets (stars)" that were pictured in the first image. these lyrics read "We've gotta go back/We've gotta go back/We've gotta go back/(Don't spend too much time on it)." end ID.]

[ravencromwell]

I feel like this Chris Hayes primer on one Itamar Ben-Gvir is a necessary coda to this article's larger point about just what sorts of vile fringe Netanyahu either agrees with, or is willing to climb in metaphorical bed with anyway.

“But this isn’t just about people’s views on Israel. It’s about their views of Biden. He risks being seen here as not his own man. An old Bill Clinton quote has been kicking around in the media in recent weeks: After his first meeting in 1996 with an arrogant Netanyahu, Clinton asked his aides, “Who’s the fucking superpower here?” Netanyahu has only grown more arrogant over the years, which is astonishing. Consider: He’s extremely unpopular in Israel. He’s running a hard-right government that was the target of massive demonstrations since the time it was formed. He’s holding onto his office—and thus prolonging the war—to stay out of jail. His government and military let October 7 unfold for hours with no response. Beyond that, he’s been fine with Hamas running Gaza and letting Qatar finance that for years. And on top of all that, between now and November, he’s going to be playing a game of chicken with Biden. Cut me off, he’ll taunt, and I’ll be more open about my presidential preference (which, obviously, is Donald Trump).”

— Is Biden Really Going to Let Netanyahu Lose Him the Election?

[slut4hee]

I Can Keep A Secret, Can You?

{Paring: Idol Heeseung x Blk Fem! Reader ⋆. 𐙚 ˚

{Genre: smut, nda signing, secret relationship, 18+ so (mdni).

{Synopsis: You joined a fan sign raffle for a chance to speak to the members of Enhypen, but specifically your ult bias Lee Heeseung. You joined for the heck of it, not thinking you would win but to your luck you did. Not only did you get a chance to speak face to face with Heeseung, you got to sign an nda with him…

{Warnings: Softdom heeseung, sub reader, rough sex, unprotected sex, (use protection my lovelies), oral ( f receiving), big dick hee, kissing, titty play, doggystyle, fingering, breeding kink, creampie, cum eating, squirting, dirty talk, pet names.

You screamed to the top of your lungs, as you read the email stating that you won an entry to an in person Enhypen fan signing event, in Seoul South Korea. You couldn’t believe what you were reading right now, you out of all people got selected to meet the Enhypen face to face, in the flesh.

You’ve always been a big fan of Enhypen, being that you’ve been supporting them since I-land, and you literally own every single one of their albums and posters. You loved all the members of Enhypen, but there was one particular member you loved a little bit more.

Lee Heeseung, he was your ult bias and you were so in love with him. You’ve been biasing Heeseung since the beginning, and you have all of his photo cards, as well as his pictures and posters all over your wall. The fact that you will get to meet and speak with Heeseung in person, has all types of butterflies erupting in your stomach and so many emotions going through your head all at once.

You quickly started searching for flights to Korea, and browsing many hotels and airbnbs. Finally after hours of looking for the perfect hotel and the appropriate flight, you booked them both squealing in excitement as you jumped up and down on your bed. You got ready for bed, but you knew sleep wouldn’t come so easily for you, because of how excited and shocked you were, you couldn’t wait for the day to come.

⋆. 𐙚 ˚

Fast forward, it’s now been a week since you found out you’re going to meet Enhypen in person, to meet Heeseung in person. You are now in Seoul, and you’re currently in your hotel room, doing your makeup and getting ready to head to fan sign. That’s right, today is the day your dreams come true and you couldn’t be more happier. You honestly still can’t believe you won the freaking fan sign, and on top of that you get to visit South Korea, one of your dream destinations.

You finally finished your makeup, going with a natural yet soft pink look. You also wore a cute little light pink crop top, with a denim mini skirt showing off your beautiful curves, and you styled your hair in a slicked back bun, your edges laying nicely. You took one last look at yourself in the mirror, admiring your beauty loving how your makeup and hair turned out, you hoped Heeseung would think the same.

⋆. 𐙚 ˚

You’re now standing in line, waiting to enter the building. Your nerves are all over the place and your heart is racing in anticipation as you wait to go inside. It’s really fucking happening, you thought to yourself as reality sets in that you’re about to be face to face with 7 Korean men you’ve only seen on tv, and in concert.

Finally after what felt like eternity, the line moves as the staff starts letting people in, you practiced deep breaths, as you make your way inside the venue, you’re so nervous and anxious you don’t know what to expect. You made it in, and a staff member checks your invitation, before leading you to your seat in the front.

Your heart beats out of your chest, when you realize just how close you are to the stage. Your hands trembled as you held up your phone to snap a picture of the stage. Just as you’re about to take the picture, the crowd of engenes burst into a fit of screams, shouting the members names as they arrived on stage.

You smiled with excitement, waving and screaming for the members as they introduced themselves and bowed to the crowd. Your eyes were on Heeseung the whole time, you couldn’t believe how much more handsome and ethereal he looked in person. Suddenly Heeseung made eye contact with you, his stare lingering a little longer before he turned away smirking to himself.

Did Heeseung just smirk at me, you thought to yourself as you try to process what just happened. Not long after you were being called up for your turn to interact with the members. You started with Jungwon, telling him how much you adored him, and appreciated all his hard work as a leader.

Then it was Sunoo, you expressed how much you enjoyed his vocals and how beautiful he was. Finally after speaking to the rest of the members you then made it to Heeseung. Your palms are sweaty and your knees felt stiff, as you take your seat in front of him. Heeseung gazes at you, studying your facial features.

“Oh my god, Heeseung I love you so much I’m sorry I just don’t know what to I-“ you tripped over your words, feeling nervous from his intense gaze and the fact you are sitting right in front of him, is a bit overwhelming. Heeseung smiled brightly at you, showing off his pearly white teeth, as he reached his hand to hold yours. You were a little taken aback by his sudden move, but you quickly complied, holding his hand with yours.

“Tell me your name princess” he smirked, swaying both of your hands back and forth. You blushed hard at the pet name, not being able to hold eye contact with him. He noticed that, as he titled his head to the side a little as he waited for you to answer his question.

“My name is Y/n, I came all the way from the U.S to meet you Heeseung” you explained with enthusiasm, a wide grin displaying your face. As you both continued to talk, you noticed how Heeseung listened so attentively at what you had to say, and you weren’t so sure, but you would think that Heeseung was into you, by the way he seemed so interested in your day to day life.

Unfortunately it was time to move on to the next fan, you couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that it went by so quickly. You expressed your love and appreciation towards Heeseung one last time before standing up to take your leave. What you didn’t notice was that Heeseung was watching you the whole entire time as you walked back to your seat, not even noticing that the next fan had sat in front of him.

Heeseung knew he had to have you, you were the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, and he couldn’t deny you intrigued him so much, it was just something about you that he couldn’t quite grasp, but he was determined to have you in his bed by the end of the night. So he quickly called over one of the staff members, whispering something in their ear. The staff member nodded in agreement before walking off.

As you’re grabbing your things getting ready to leave, you feel someone tap you on your shoulder catching your attention. You looked up to see a Tall Korean gentleman with a black mask covering his face. You looked at him confused, wondering if you done something wrong.

“Miss if you don’t mind, would you be willing to follow me to the backstage” he asked you politely, you looked at him a little suspiciously, wondering why on earth would he be asking you to come backstage with him.

“I don’t understand, did I do something wrong?” You asked him, feeling nervous and anxious. The man quickly shook his head no, you immediately felt relief wash over you, hoping you didn’t say or do anything to make any of the members feel uncomfortable.

“No miss you’ve done nothing wrong, it’s just” he leaned in closer to whisper in your ear. “One of the members has requested your presence backstage” he replied, you stared at him in a state of shock, trying to process the words that just came out of his mouth. You wondered which one of the members actually asked for you backstage.

“U-Uh okay” you stuttered, feeling a little skeptical and worried, you were just hoping you weren’t being tricked and you’re actually being led to your death. Only one way to find out right? The man nodded, as you followed him backstage.

Finally he stopped at a door, that had a sign on it that said “Staff Only” You swallowed down your nerves, as you prepared yourself for the worst. The gentleman opened the door and behind it was two other Korean gentleman, who were sitting at a desk, one of them holding a stick of papers.

“Please come in and take a seat please” the man with the stack of papers said, as he gestured you towards the seat. You gulped before taking a seat. The man then laid the stack of papers in front of you, as well as a pen. You looked up at him confused, why was he handing you a contract??

“I know this is a bit out of the blue Miss Y/n, but it seems that one of our Artists has taken a liking to you and has requested for a one night stand with you” the man spoke with seriousness in his tone, you stared at him wide eyed, did he just say what you think he just said. You looked down at the paper in front of you, and at the top of it read the words “𝑵𝑫𝑨” in bold letters.

“Umm may I ask which artist has requested for me” you replied, as you shifted in your seat, feeling a little uncertain about this whole situation. The other man then spoke, you recognized him before, you’ve seen him with the members when you saw them at their world tour.

“My apologies, let me introduce myself. My name is Park Sunwoo and I’m the manager for Enhypen. And to answer your question, Lee Heeseung has requested for you Miss Y/n” he nodded. Your heart nearly leaped out of your chest when he said that, the Lee Heeseung wanted to sign an NDA with you?!

“Before we get started, I do want to let you know that you have every right to decline this offer Miss Y/n. But for me to further explain any more information about this, I would need you to sign your signature on this line right here on the paperwork” he pointed to the line, indicating that you sign your name. You bit your lip nervously, debating whether you should sign it or not.

But when will you ever get the opportunity to have a one night stand with Heeseung, when will you get the chance to do anything like this. You’ve never been the one to do one night stands, or just give up your goodies the first time you meet a guy, but this was so much different. This was Lee Heeseung from Enhypen we’re talking about it, so without any further thought you signed your name on the paper.

“Very well then. Thank you so much for agreeing to the terms Miss Y/n, I will now explain how this whole process works. So you have agreed to signing an NDA, with Artist Lee Heeseung. This means that whatever You and Lee Heeseung decide to do tonight is strictly prohibited from the public eye, do you wish to continue?” He asked, scanning through the pages of the paperwork.

“Yes, I-I do” you responded, fiddling with your fingers. This was just too much to process, you couldn’t lie and say you weren’t a little excited though. He then flipped to the last page of the contract.

“Going forward, we also want to make you aware that failing to comply with the rules of the contract is automatic breach, that goes for both parties. So without further ado, would you please sign your name one last time and we can move forward” Your trembling hands grabbed ahold of the pen, signing your name on the line once again.

“Great, everything has been finalized. We would be contacting you with information regarding your evening plans with Heeseung, once your background check comes back clean. Thank you for your time Miss Y/n” Park Sunwoo stood up to shake your hand. You shook his hand and thanked him before you were led out the back exit.

⋆. 𐙚 ˚

As you got back to your hotel, you had been checking your phone nonstop, feeling anxious and impatient. Finally your phone dinged with a notification, and you grabbed your phone so fast, opening your messages.

Unknown Number: Hello, Miss Y/n. Just informing you that your background check came back clean, and I will now be sending over a personal driver to pick you up from your hotel, to bring you to Heeseung’s private accommodation.

You: Oh okay, thank you so much.

Ten minutes later, you received another text from an unknown number, stating that they’re waiting for you down at the lobby. You quickly grabbed your things, taking one last look at yourself in the mirror, before heading downstairs. You were now in the back of a Black Mercedes Benz Van, with the windows tinted. Not shorty after, you were pulling into a parking lot of very nice modern style Airbnb.

“We have arrived” the man hopped out of the driver’s seat to open your passenger seat door for you. You thanked him and smiled, and he bowed before getting back into the van and driving off.

You nervously walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. Not long after, none other than Heeseung himself answered the door. You gasp inaudible at the sight of Heeseung clad in a white tank top, gray sweats pants, and his hair damp from the shower you assumed he just finished.

“Come in please” he moved to the side to let you by. You nervously walked into the house, taking in the scenery of the place. It was nice and cozy and looked lived in. It’s like Heeseung read your mind when he said “This is my place actually, I stay here when I’m not out on schedules or on vacations” he nodded and smiled, as he walked closer to you.

“It’s really beautiful Hee, I love it” you blushed shyly, feeling a little hot from the close proximity of your bodies almost touching. “Hee?” He questioned as he smirked and wrapped his arms around your waist. You damn near melted, your knees feeling like they’re going to give out on you any minute now.

“I-I mean Heeseung, sorry it’s like a nickname all of us fans call you” you stuttered, feeling the heat rush to your cheeks. Heeseung chuckled, biting his lip, then leaning down to be face level with you because he towers over you. You’d breath hitched, as you feel his lips ghosting over yours.

“Is this okay, do you mind if I kiss you baby girl” he spoke lowly, his voice sounding husky and laced with desire. You whimpered, feeling your arousal starting to leak through your panties.

“God yes, yes you can kiss me plea-“ before you could even finish your sentence, Heeseung’s lips crashed against yours, kissing you with hunger and fervor. You moaned into the kiss, when you felt Heeseung’s hands gripping your ass. You let out a yelp, when Heeseung suddenly picked you up leading you to the bedroom.

“Fuck, you don’t know how bad i want you baby, fucking took everything in me not to pull you into one of the dressing rooms and fuck you stupid” he groaned, laying you on the bed as he got on top of you, attacking your lips once again. You could only moan in response, wrapping your arms around his neck.

“Heeseung, please I need you please do something” you begged shamelessly, still not processing that you’re about to fuck Lee Heeseung, someone you thought you would never have the chance to meet, but here you were about to get your brains fucked out by him.

“Shhh, patience baby I’m gonna give you what you want” he smirked, as he started to undress you. He tugged your top off, and unclasp your bra effortlessly starting to suck on your brown nipple, his other hand fondling the other. You arched your back, rubbing your thighs together trying to gain some type of friction.

“God baby, you’re so fucking sexy gotta taste your sweet little cunt now” he growled, tugging your panties off and spreading your legs wide. You whined, when he dragged his long fingers through your wet folds, sliding his finger inside.

“Fuck, this slutty pussy so tight, fuck can’t wait to stuff you full of my cock mama” he hissed, as he watched the way your tight pussy sucked his finger in. He then leaned down to lick a stripe of your pussy, licking and sucking your clit softly.

“Oh my fucking god, shit Hee baby feels so good” you screamed in pleasure, your legs shaking uncontrollably, as you grabbed ahold of his fluffy hair. His wet tongue felt like heaven on your pussy and you couldn’t get enough.

“Shit baby, wet little pussy taste so good, fuck I could eat your sweet cunt forever” he groaned, the vibration sending a shock of pleasure through you, you gripped his locks a little harder, feeling your climax approaching dangerously.

“Ughh, fuck Hee I’m g-gonna cum” you cried out, your legs trembling as the band in your stomach threatens to snap any minute.

“Cum for me, cream on my face pretty little slut” he flicked his tongue faster against your clit, plunging his fingers deep inside your tight pussy. Not long after you were coming undone on his mouth and fingers, squirting your essence everywhere. Heeseung cursed under his breath at the sight of your spent pussy, leaking out your juices.

“Damn sweetheart, that was so hot I’m so hard I need to feel you wrapped around my cock” he whined, as he quickly rid himself of his clothes, showing off his perfectly lean build, and his long hard cock that leaks precum from the tip. You mouth watered at the sight, as you grabbed his dick stroking him slowly.

“Ah-fuck, shit that feels so good Y/n” he whined, his hips buckling up involuntarily. You bit your lip at the way his heavy cock twitched in your hand so desperately. Before he could come undone, he swatted your hand away, earring a whine from you.

“Get on all fours for me baby” his voice sounding strained, as tugged at his hard cock. You quickly, laid your face down in the pillows, and poking your ass out arching your back. Heeseung smacked your ass before aligning his cock up at your hole. He started to push himself inside you, his cock sliding in easily from how wet and turned on you are. He lets you adjust to his size for a minute before setting a rhythm, rocking his hips back and forth.

“Fuuckkk, you’re so fucking tight, god baby sucking me in so good” he lets out deep grunts as he pounds into you from behind. You gripped the sheets roughly, feeling every inch of Heeseung’s cock penetrating your walls.

“Yes yes yes, fuck me harder please harder” you screamed, throwing your ass back at him as you desperately chased after his thrusts. Heeseung threw his head back, showing off his flushed neck. You clenched your pussy tighter around him, earning a whiny moan from him.

“Ahh f-fuck, stop clenching baby or I’m gonna cum” he hissed in pleasure, gripping your waist tighter as he slammed into you roughly. You rolled your eyes to the back of your head, the head of his cock hitting your g-spot over and over again.

“Please Daddy, fill me up with your babies, I want your load inside me” you looked back at him, tears gathering in your waterlines, from the intense pleasure you’re feeling. Heeseung’s hips stuttered, as his strokes became sloppy, losing his pace.

“Shit shit shit, I’m about to cum Nghh fuck” he moaned deeply, his thrusts became erratic as he chased his high. Not long after his hips stilled, shooting ropes of thick cum inside you. The feeling of his hot cum, triggered another orgasm out of you, squirting and creaming all over his dick. He pulls his softening cock out, watching the way his cum and your arousal leaks from your spent hole.

He collapsed on the bed beside you, pulling you into his arms as he placed a soft kiss on your forehead. You smiled weakly at him before snuggling your face into his neck.

“Wow baby, that was the best sex I ever had in my life” he chuckled weakly, his breathing still uneven from the intense orgasm he had.

“I can’t believe I just fucked Lee Heeseung” you said in disbelief, as you looked up at him before kissing his lips. He kissed you back, as he rubbed your back softly.

“𝗜 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 ���𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗛𝗲𝗲𝘀𝗲𝘂𝗻𝗴”

“𝗜𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼, 𝗜 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗮 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂?”

𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙴𝚗𝚍…

A/n: FUCK FUCK FUCK, if I ever get to sign an nda with Heeseung, just know ima fuck the life out of this man🤭 but honestly I’m thinking about making a part two of this where reader and hee possibly start dating secretly 👀. Let me know if you guys want it, hope you guys like it and reblogs are greatly appreciated. ᯓᡣ𐭩

_____________________________________________

𝙏𝙖𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩:

@wave2hoon

[vaspider]

In defense of retellings & reimaginings

I'm not going to respond to the post that sparked this, because honestly, I don't really feel like getting in an argument, and because it's only vaguely even about the particular story that the other post discussed. The post in question objected to retellings of the Rape of Persephone which changed important elements of the story -- specifically, Persephone's level of agency, whether she was kidnapped, whether she ate seeds out of hunger, and so on. It is permissible, according to this thesis, to 'fill in empty spaces,' but not to change story elements, because 'those were important to the original tellers.' (These are acknowledged paraphrases, and I will launch you into the sun if you nitpick this paragraph.)

I understand why to the person writing that, that perspective is important, and why they -- especially as a self-described devotee of Persephone -- feel like they should proscribe boundaries around the myth. It's a perfectly valid perspective to use when sorting -- for example -- which things you choose to read. If you choose not to read anything which changes the elements which you feel are important, I applaud you.

However, the idea that one should only 'color in missing pieces,' especially when dealing with stories as old, multi-sourced, and fractional as ancient myths, and doing so with the argument that you shouldn't change things because those base elements were important to the people who originally crafted the stories, misses -- in my opinion -- the fundamental reason we tell stories and create myths in the first place.

Forgive me as I get super fucking nerdy about this. I've spent the last several years of my life wrestling with the concept of myths as storytelling devices, universality of myths, and why myths are even important at all as part of writing on something like a dozen books (a bunch of which aren't out yet) for a game centered around mythology. A lot of the stuff I've written has had to wrestle with exactly this concept -- that there is a Sacred Canon which cannot be disrupted, and that any disregard of [specific story elements] is an inexcusable betrayal.

Myths are stories we tell ourselves to understand who we are and what's important to us as individuals, as social groups, and as a society. The elements we utilize or change, those things we choose to include and exclude when telling and retelling a story, tell us what's important to us.

I could sit down and argue over the specific details which change over the -- at minimum -- 1700 years where Persephone/Kore/Proserpina was actively worshiped in Greek and Roman mystery cults, but I actually don't think those variations in specific are very important. What I think is important, however, is both the duration of her cults -- at minimum from 1500 BCE to 200CE -- and the concept that myths are stories we tell ourselves to understand who we are and what's important to us.

The idea that there was one, or even a small handful, of things that were most important to even a large swath of the people who 'originally' told the store of the Rape of Persephone or any other 'foundational' myth of what is broadly considered 'Western Culture,' when those myths were told and retold in active cultic worship for 1700 years... that seems kind of absurd to me on its face. Do we have the same broad cultural values as the original tellers of Beowulf, which is only (heh) between 1k-1.3k years old? How different are our marital traditions, our family traditions, and even our language? We can, at best, make broad statements, and of inclusive necessity, those statements must be broad enough as to lose incredible amounts of specificity. In order to make definitive, specific statements, we must leave out large swaths of the people to whom this story, or any like it, was important.

To move away from the specific story brought up by the poster whose words spun this off, because it really isn't about that story in particular, let's use The Matter of Britain/Arthuriana as our framing for the rest of this discussion. If you ask a random nerd on Tumblr, they'd probably cite a handful of story elements as essential -- though of course which ones they find most essential undoubtedly vary from nerd to nerd -- from the concept that Camelot Always Falls to Gawain and the Green Knight, Percival and the grail, Lancelot and Guinevere...

... but Lancelot/Guinevere and Percival are from Chrétien de Troyes in the 12th century, some ~500 years after Taliesin's first verses. Lancelot doesn't appear as a main character at all before de Troyes, and we can only potentially link him to characters from an 11th century story (Culhwch and Olwen) for which we don't have any extant manuscripts before the 15th century. Gawain's various roles in his numerous appearances are... conflicting characterizations at best.

The point here is not just that 'the things you think are essential parts of the story are not necessarily original,' or that 'there are a lot of different versions of this story over the centuries,' but also 'what you think of as essential is going to come back to that first thesis statement above.' What you find important about The Matter of Britain, and which story elements you think can be altered, filed off or filled in, will depend on what that story needs to tell you about yourself and what's important to you.

Does creating a new incarnation of Arthur in which she is a diasporic lesbian in outer space ruin a story originally about Welsh national identity and chivalric love? Does that disrespect the original stories? How about if Arthur is a 13th century Italian Jew? Does it disrespect the original stories if the author draws deliberate parallels between the seduction of Igerne and the story of David and Bathsheba?

Well. That depends on what's important to you.

Insisting that the core elements of a myth -- whichever elements you believe those to be -- must remain static essentially means 'I want this myth to stagnate and die.' Maybe it's because I am Jewish, and we constantly re-evaluate every word in Torah, over and over again, every single year, or maybe it's because I spend way, way too much time thinking about what's valuable in stories specifically because I write words about these concepts for money, but I don't find these arguments compelling at all, especially not when it comes to core, 'mainstream' mythologies. These are tools in the common toolbox, and everybody has access to them.

More important to me than the idea that these core elements of any given story must remain constant is, to paraphrase Dolly Parton, that a story knows what it is and does it on purpose. Should authors present retellings or reimaginings of the Rape of Persephone or The Matter of Britain which significantly alter historically-known story elements as 'uncovered' myths or present them as 'the real and original' story? Absolutely not. If someone handed me a book in which the new Grail was a limited edition Macklemore Taco Bell Baja Blast cup and told me this comes directly from recently-discovered 6th century writings of Taliesin, I would bonk them on the head with my hardcover The Once & Future King. Of course that's not the case, right?

But the concept of canon, historically, in these foundational myths has not been anything like our concept of canon today. Canon should function like a properly-fitted corset, in that it should support, not constrict, the breath in the story's lungs. If it does otherwise, authors should feel free to discard it in part or in whole.

Concepts of familial duty and the obligation of marriage don't necessarily resonate with modern audiences the way that the concept of self-determination, subversion of unreasonable and unjustified authority, and consent do. That is not what we, as a general society, value now. If the latter values are the values important to the author -- the story that the author needs to tell in order to express who they are individually and culturally and what values are important to them* -- then of course they should retell the story with those changed values. That is the point of myths, and always has been.

Common threads remain -- many of us move away from family support regardless of the consent involved in our relationships, and life can be terrifying when you're suddenly out of the immediate reach and support of your family -- because no matter how different some values are, essential human elements remain in every story. It's scary to be away from your mother for the first time. It's scary to live with someone new, in a new place. It's intimidating to find out that other people think you have a Purpose in life that you need to fulfill. It's hard to negotiate between the needs of your birth family and your chosen family.

None of this, to be clear, is to say that any particular person should feel that they need to read, enjoy, or appreciate any particular retelling, or that it's cool, hip and groovy to misrepresent your reworking of a myth as a 'new secret truth which has always been there.' If you're reworking a myth, be truthful about it, and if somebody told you 'hey did you know that it really -- ' and you ran with that and find out later you were wrong, well, correct the record. It's okay to not want to read or to not enjoy a retelling in which Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere negotiate a triad and live happily ever after; it's not really okay to say 'you can't do that because you changed a story element which I feel is non-negotiable.' It's okay to say 'I don't think this works because -- ' because part of writing a story is that people are going to have opinions on it. It's kind of weird to say 'you're only allowed to color inside these lines.'

That's not true, and it never has been. Greek myths are not from a closed culture. Roman myths are not sacrosanct. There are plenty of stories which outsiders should leave the hell alone, but Greek and Roman myths are simply not on that list. There is just no world in which you can make an argument that the stories of the Greek and Roman Empires are somehow not open season to the entire English-speaking world. They are the public-est of domain.

You don't have to like what people do with it, but that doesn't make people wrong for writing it, and they certainly don't have to color within the lines you or anyone else draws. Critique how they tell the story, but they haven't committed some sort of cultural treachery by telling the stories which are important to them rather than the stories important to someone 2500 years dead.

****

*These are not the only reasons to tell a story and I am not in any way saying that an author is only permitted to retell a story to express their own values. There are as many reasons to tell a story as there are stories, and I don't really think any reason to create fiction is more or less valid than any other. I am discussing, specifically, the concept of myths as conveyors of essential cultural truths.

[anantaru]

— ꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱₊˚⊹ cw. riding, fem! reader

aventurine blinks, faltering as he always does whenever you called him yours— and even now, he finds himself vastly spellbound by how you're prancing your hands against the tensed muscles of his chest, kneading at his shoulders while you're on top of him.

boiling heat consumes you the moment he marks your skin with wet traces of his arousal and so did you, claim him equivalent to that, "say it again," he repeats his sentence, this time quieter, leaving it enlaced in a sigh.

you barely have time to react nor reply to him as he bottoms out, your body shaking when you cry out, writhing and collapsing your body against his own when aventurine repeats the action once more.

he thought he should fuck into you twice, catch you off guard for some extra spice, yeah? in fact, to him it's just for good measure, why not ask you something and then interrupt you with two, quick blows into your cunt, right? 

his palm was smoothing over the sore marks his grip left on your ass when he squeezes the flesh, letting the skin bounce beneath the hold of his hands. "ahh, never mind, dear. I guess you simply saying it isn't enough to me anymore," he squeezes your hips into him harder, burying his face in the scent of your fragrance hidden at your throat.

"better yet," aventurine continues as he slowly teases his tongue over your neck, presenting an affectionate sweep of his hand up your spine, "let me make you scream it instead, yeah?"

he wanted to move his fingers slow above your delicate skin— slow enough to make a spectacle out of every touch, to sweetly draw you to the same raw height of emotions where you could fuse into each other forever on end.

your lips part instantly as he pushes his hot tip into your hole, the feeling of intrusion making you actively wrap and shape around him. his cock split you perfectly, and the raw drag was edged with an unintentional roughness that nearly broke your body in half.

you both moan into each other with a sinuous roll of your hips taking his shaft deeper— a rough, broken groan escaping the man's throat as he slides you impossibly close into him, like he's actually frightened you'd leave him.

you enthusiastically greet his movements with your own, bask yourself on his touch when he only slides in deeper and deeper, closer and like you cannot get enough of each other. it's futile.

alas, you should have known that much— because looking back at this situation right now, your boyfriend aventurine wasn't someone you'd particularity address as a poster boy for harvesting patience, or poise, for that matter. 

at least when it came to you.

©2024 anantaru do not repost, copy, translate, modify, claim as your own

[sturnioz]

♯┆fully introducing. . . fwb!chris .ᐟ

you and fwb!chris stopped hooking up after realising you were both taking things way too far, and that the arrangement was lasting longer than necessary — but when you show up at the triplets birthday party empty handed, you both know one birthday present that he'll enjoy the most.

"you're here?" chris' eyebrows raises in surprise at your arrival, but it still doesn't stop him from throwing his arm around your shoulder to coax you into a hug that you immediately return, your hands rubbing his back. "i didn't expect you to, like, be here.."

"i'm not going to miss your birthday," you say with a light laugh, pulling back from the embrace to give him a sheepish smile. "i kinda forgot to buy a present on my way here... i'm sorry."

"no — no, s'cool. don't worry about it," chris dismisses with a wave of his hand before he scratches the back of his neck, adjusting the cap on his head. "the party is about to end soon but, do you — can you stay behind when everyone leaves, or somethin'?"

"sure," you nod slowly. "i'll go wait in your room.."

you've been waiting for fifteen minutes, listening to chris' laughter echoing in the living-room as he bids everyone goodbye and thanks them for coming to his and his brother's birthday celebrations, while you mindlessly walk around his familiar bedroom, capturing the small details of the space that hasn't changed since you were last here.

the walls are still white, decorated with a few random posters of his favourite artists. he still has that neatly stacked record collection that sits in the corner, untouched and left in pristine condition, and he still has his shoe collection tucked away in the other corner, some pairs left slightly askew.

he also still has a few photo frames sitting on his desk next to his computer, and your fingers ghost over the images of him with his friends and family, the locations holding a lot of memories. but you pause when your fingertips touch a particular photo that you were certain chris wouldn't have kept, and your heart swells uncomfortably in your chest.

the photo that catches your eye is one of you and chris at a carnival, both of you wearing silly headbands and grinning widely. chris stands behind you with his arms loosely draped around your shoulders, his cheek pressed against yours. your hand rests on his arm while the other hand squeezes his jaw playfully.

staring at it, your stomach swirls with regret as you take a step back. you feel suddenly guilty for showing up at his birthday, after you were the one that decided to call it quits on your odd situation.

you and chris were friends with benefits — an arrangement that lasted much longer than either of you had originally planned. you were hooking up to satisfy your needs, fucking each other when you were sexually frustrated and in need of a release, or sometimes when you were board.

what was only supposed to be a month-long fling turned into two months, then five, then a year, and eventually nearly a year and a half.

the predicament wasn't good for either of you — feelings had spiralled out of control, and even your shared close friends had pointed out how strangely long it had been going on.

it made you feel terrible when a girl once approached you, saying she liked chris and wanted to ask him out, but couldn't due to the uncertainty around your relationship.

that exact night, you had explained to chris that maybe you had both dragged out the friends with benefits situation longer than you should have, and in doing so, were preventing each other from meeting other people. chris was confused and hesitant, but he eventually agreed, leaving you both to shake on it as you ended your friends with benefits situation.

it's been two months since then, and truthfully, you've both struggled to keep in contact with each other without things feeling awkward and whenever you share eye contact, you're reminded of the intimate moments you've shared.

it felt a dent in your friendship, but you were desperate to still keep chris as the close friend as he once was, which is why you showed up tonight, despite the complicated history.

"sorry for makin' you wait so long," you hear chris apologise behind you, and you're startled at the sudden voice, peering over your shoulder to see chris close his bedroom door behind himself with a grin. "had to help matt and nick get nate into the uber, the kid didn't wanna leave."

"you should've let him stay," you tell him with a kind smile. "then you wouldn't be alone in here for the night on your birthday."

"well, i mean, i was hopin' that you would stay with me tonight," chris admits with an airy laugh, rubbing his jaw — a familiar nervous habit you recognise from your time together. "since we, like, haven't been able to spend time together, y'know?"

"i get it," you nod in understanding, wanting nothing more than to catch up and spend time with him as well "i... i'm still sorry for not getting you a birthday present."

"you can still give me one..." chris murmurs softly as he takes a step forward, his finger scratching his cheek. your eyes widen slightly, immediately knowing what he's hinting at when you feel his hands cradle your face, his thumb pulling at your bottom lip. "you... you can give me you."

"chris..." you warn him, and your fingers curl around his wrist, but you don't pull his hands away.

"c'mon.. you don't miss it?" chris questions you and you get surprised, watching as his teeth kneads down on his bottom lip as he stands closer to you. "i miss it. a lot — more than i'd like to admit, to be honest."

"i do," you admit quietly. "but that doesn't mean we should."

"we enjoyed ourselves, we — we liked it," he states, grazing his lips over yours. "that's all that matters, right? i mean, we were fuckin' happy, so — so who cares what others think? i'd never want them like i want you.. don't you want me too?"

"you talk too much," you sigh, fisting the collar of his shirt and pulling him in for a kiss which he reciprocates almost instantly, refusing to give either of you a chance to breath as he's licking inside your mouth and kissing your lips raw.

his quick and nimble fingers are tugging down the zipper of your jeans, and you gasp when you feel his hand slip beneath the waistband of your panties, pressing his fingers to your folds and rubbing your clit in circular motions that elicits a whine from you, baffled by the fact he still knows your body so well.

he's laying you down on his unmade bed, hovering above you, resting one hand by the side of your head to keep him upright while the other plays with your pussy — the kiss hot and heavy as his fingers push through your opening, curling them and grazing the spot that has your thighs snapping shut around his hand.

chris is drinking up your moans, panting in your mouth as he grinds down on your thigh while bringing you closer and closer to your orgasm, and he's grinning against your lips as you're embarrassingly quick to cum over his fingers, the wet squelching sounds echoing throughout the quietness of his bedroom.

"yeah, that's it..." he sighs over your mouth. "good, ma.. jus' like that."

neither of you give yourself time to calm down as he's already sitting back on his knees to pull his pants and boxers down to his thighs, not wanting to waste any time in taking his clothes off fully.

you do the same, lifting your hips to pull down your own jeans and underwear, cursing under your breath when the material gets stuck around your shoes and chris laughs, helping you yank off your shoes to leave your lower half bare for him.

chris resumes his position above you — guiding himself to your slick pussy and stroking the head of his cock between your puffy folds, gathering your arousal for an easy slip in, and you wrap your thighs around his hips as he does so, the feeling of being full with his cock leaves you a moaning messy already, gripping at his shoulders as he thrusts, grunting with each deep stroke.

"chriiiis..." you mewl his name loudly and he grins, slotting his lips to yours as he pounds relentlessly, skin slapping against skin.

he's not letting up, his pace brutal when he feels your nails dig into his shoulder blades and he tastes the salty tears that slip down your cheeks from the pleasure and sensitivity of not being fucked in so long.

"so fuckin' pretty, ma," he compliments you when he parts from your lips, admiring you beneath him. his eyes dart above your head for a moment, glancing at the headboard that rattles but holds the birthday gift someone had gifted him earlier this morning, a chuckle rumbling in his chest as he shakes his head. "yeah... you're definitely my favourite birthday present."

© STURNIOZ

[lordprettyflackotara]

noise || hoody

SMUT. MINORS DNI. 18+. remember when i talked about this hoody fic 509 years ago? yeah here it is. also yeS i am aware masky & hoody belong to marble hornets this is the only time im going to address this💀 we are in 2024 in this fandom WE KNOW. anyways enjoy !! <3

If there was anything you could’ve changed about your life, you had a particular decision in mind.

Being a desperate college student for cash, babysitting and dog walking wasn’t paying the off the debt you were accumulating.

You had scoured Craigslist, confident that there would be an odd job you’d be able to accomplish for quick cash.

Looking back you wish you had known quick cash wouldn’t come easy.

A posting offering $5k a week fell into your lap about a week later. The details seemed easy enough. The ability to clean an older mansion, whilst keeping the identities of the multiple infamous residents that resided there a secret seemed like a piece of cake.

What the posting didn’t list, was that the infamous residents were unhinged killers. Some of which you couldn’t even categorize as human.

It also didn’t list that your position would be residing in the mansion, permanently.

Being a maid in the Slenderman mansion was, in lack of better words: fucking terrifying.

The residents operated at odd hours. No matter what time you cleaned, you always received the displeasure of running into someone.

The longer you stayed, the longer paranoia began to settle in. Ben Drowned, the poster of the Craigslist ad, was a perv. You learned to stray away from electronic devices he could peep his head through. Jeff the killer, one of the most unhinged, had a short temper. He was one of the first ones to opt out of having his room cleaned by you, a decision you silently praised after walking by and seeing how filthy it was.

The next to opt out with a demonic creature named Eyeless Jack, one who specifically requested you stay out of his medical lab. Given all of the blood and goop you had mopped up at this point, a fear of being eaten led you to offering to clean it regardless. EJ knew you wouldn’t be able to handle it, given his ‘hobbies’ were the most gore filled of the mansions residents. It didn’t surprise him when you left the lab green, puking immediately in a bucket he had placed beside the door for you.

The other members whose names you were obligated to memorize, Jane, Clockwork, Jason the something maker, all were rarely home. You learned to steer clear of Jason’s workshop, the dolls he made often speaking to you as if they had souls. The only three other residents who lived in the mansion full time (minus its owner), were what you learned to be proxies. These proxies, two of them at least, seemed to be human just like you.

Ticci Toby’s mortality was still up in the air for you. He once had tripped and fallen after you had mopped the floors, landing on the marble face first. He got up like nothing happened, giggling to himself about ‘how wet you made the floor’. After observing him throw axes in the training room, you decided to steer clear of him.

Masky seemed to be the trio’s leader, his face consistently hidden behind a doll resembling mask. He avoided you like the plague, skipping the formalities and acting as if you didn’t exist. You never asked questions, not knowing how long anyone had truly been here. But Masky in particular seemed a bit older than everyone, when you accidentally stumbled upon him coming home late one night from a mission. His nose was trailing blood, his mask broken in half. You ensured to avoid eye contact, but extended a wet washcloth to him so he could attend to his nose.

After that your dynamic remained the same for the most part. Except when both of you occupied a room together, neither of you made an effort to beeline to the door.

Hoody was the last proxy, the one that made you more at ease than the others. Hoody had spoken a grand total of maybe ten words to you, introducing himself and Masky before dashing out of the back door. The only time you really saw him was when you cleaned his room, the man doing a poor job of pretending to read magazines while you cleaned. Other than that, you only caught glimpses of the proxies when they came home in the late hours of the night from missions.

Most of the time they were soaked in blood. In a couple of odd occasions you had to assist them in carrying one another up to Eyeless Jack’s medical lab. You couldn’t figure out why the proxies were here, two humans not seeming to fit in with the rest of misfits that resided here. You had no idea soon enough you’d be up close and personal.

Late night was when you preferred to clean, most of the killers away from the mansion and out hunting. The existence of the residents here only existed because of their dedication to keep their identities a secret. Night time was the perfect cover, for them and for you. You were leaning over the kitchen sink, scrubbing at a particular stubborn pot when you heard the back door open. You tried very hard not to stare, not wanting to gain unwanted attention.

You glanced up briefly, catching a glance of Toby’s and Masky’s familiar figures as they trudged upstairs. “He cost us that fucking mission, Slender’s gonna be so pissed off,” Masky growled, rounding the corner of the kitchen. Toby trailed behind him, an axe dripping blood slung over his shoulder. “Y-yeah, what w-w-was he thinking?!” Toby exclaimed, his stuttering something you had grown accustomed to. You noted Hoody’s absence, your eyebrows raising as you returned your gaze to the pot.

The sound of doors slamming echoed through out the other wise quiet mansion, the silence fulfilling you with some sort of ease. It didn’t take long for the final proxy to stumble into frame, his hand cupping his face. You weren’t forbidden from interacting with the mansions residents, your urge to help sweeping over you. Hoody was awkwardly stumbling, immediately leaning onto you for support as you helped him stay standing.

“I got it,” He huffed. His usual ski mask was half raised, the bottom half of his face revealed to you for the first time. His chin and upper lip had surprisingly clean cut facial hair, kept to a minimum. You guided him around the counter, helping him sit onto the kitchen counter by the sink. Hastily he shoved his yellow hood off of his head, yanking the ski mask off with it. You were surprised a normal human being stared back at you, a large gash sliced across his cheek.

“Jesus Christ,” You muttered. You grabbed a clean wash cloth, running it under cold water. “Didnt ask for your commentary doll,” Hoody said dryly. You swallowed, wringing out the excess water. You could’ve done what you did with Masky, handing him the washcloth and wishing him a silent farewell. But instead you didn’t. “Sorry,” You mumbled. You craved human contact, any kind of human contact. Brushing off your skirt you stepped in between his legs, leaning forward.

You were careful to avoid eye contact, focusing on dabbing the wound. Hoody silently winched under the feeling, inhaling through his teeth. As gently as you could you dabbed away the blood. “Do you want me to get EJ?” You asked. Hoody’s face was stone cold, from what you could see out of the corner of your eye anyways. “Dont bother, i’m sure he’s sick of patching us up all the time,” He grumbled. The wound didn’t look deep, just very long. Thankfully most of the blood was gone, the rest of his face covered in specs of dry blood (that you presumed to not be his) and dirt.

Turning on the sink you washed out the washcloth, the crimson paint drifting off down the drain with the water. You then returned to Hoody, wiping off his face. You weren’t sure what compelled you to be so compassionate, Hoody’s eyes fluttering shut. He took a deep breath, his shoulders seemingly relaxing. You were gentle of course, not wanting to piss the killer in front of you off. But even Hoody knew your action wasn’t callous.

Once you were done you awkwardly stepped aside, putting the rag in the sink. “You want a cig?” Hoody asked. He dug in his jeans, pulling out a beat up cigarette box. “Is this your way of showing gratitude?” You asked. The man in front of you smiled, extending you the box. “This right here is the only kind of buzz you’re getting around here doll,” He explained, allowing himself to half smile. You had never smoked a cigarette before, nor had you really planned on it. Not like it mattered now.

You put one to your lips like people did in movies, watching Hoody do the same. He pulled out a lighter, flicking it and igniting the end of his cigarette. You leaned forward, watching Hoody attempt to flick the lighter again. The flame refused to ignite, the sight of small sparks making him sigh. “Masky always takes the good lighters,” He muttered. He inhaled his cigarette, blowing the smoke to the right. You found the gesture of attempting to not violate you with smoke a little sweet.

“Well I appreciate the offer. I’ve never smoked a cigarette anyways,” You admit. Hoody shook his head. “That just won’t do then. Put it to your lips and stay still,” He ordered. You did as instructed, watching him lean closer to you. His fingers went under your chin, keeping your head held high. You felt your face beginning to burn, the end of his cigarette lighting yours as you inhaled. You both avoided each others gazes, until the second he began to back away.

For a brief moment you shared eye contact, searching each other’s eyes. For what? You didn’t know. You properly inhaled, coughing immediately. “You guys like this stuff?” You asked in between coughs, continuing to choke. Hoody nonchalantly took another drag of his, watching you struggle. “It’ll grow on you, trust me. I didn’t like it at first either,” He confessed. Once you regained strength in your lungs you properly stood up. Hoody remained seated on the kitchen counter, with you standing beside him.

“How long have you been here?” You asked curiously. You were stepping over a hundred boundaries, ones you could die for if you stepped over the line too far. “A while,” Hoody answered honestly. You took another drag of your cigarette, the taste of tobacco growing on you. “How long are you going to be here?” Hoody countered. You exhaled, glancing back at the proxy. He had exhaled through his nose, boldly making eye contact with you.

“A while.”

You found the courage to turn around, facing him fully. “You aren’t lonely?” You asked. Hoody gave you a smile, tossing the bud of his cigarette into the nearby trashcan. “I am, are you?” He asked curiously. You followed his lead, tossing the bud of the cigarette into the trashcan. If it set the kitchen on fire, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen. “Yeah I am,” You admit. Hoody slid off of the counter, his tall height towering over you.

“Do you uh, wanna change that?” He asked. For a killer who had a victims blood splattered across his face moments ago, he seemed so awkward. You wondered how long it had been since he had been with a woman. How long would it be before you could be with a man again? “Please,” You sighed. Hoody kissed you just as rough as you expected, both of you melting into the other. Both of you were undeniably needy, touch depraved and lonely. You were sure this was forbidden for both of you but as his tongue slid into your mouth, you just couldn’t find it within yourself to care.

“Call me Brian but only when it’s us, okay? Thats not who I am anymore but that’s who I want to be with you, okay?” Hoody asked. You nodded, the normal name bringing your comfort. Brian’s hand snaked down your waist, squeezing and kneading at the flesh of your ass. You whimpered into his mouth, the sound only making him harder. There was no telling how much longer you’d be around, the residents of the mansion unhinged enough to snap at any moment.

You couldn’t fully undress here and going upstairs was out of the question. “This has to be quick, we can’t get caught,” You whispered. Brian nodded, slipping his hand up your skirt. He rubbed against your wet cunt, your panties preventing any further stimulation. Brian had zero control over his life but he did right here, right now. You had no control over yours either, the decision to fuck each other to release steam the only free will decision either of you could make. You palmed him through his jeans, his cock practically busting through the fabric.

He guided you to the counter, grabbing the sides of your panties and yanking them down to your ankles. He shoved them into his pocket for what you thought to be safe temporary keeping. But Brian had other ideas.

“Fuck, please, wanna feel you Brian,” You whispered, trying hard to not groan loudly. Brian quickly undid his belt bringing his lips back to yours. It had been so long since he had kissed anyone, your soft lips driving him mad. It wasn’t long before his cock was at your entrance, awkwardly shuffling with his jeans at his ankles. He fell a bit backwards, causing you to laugh. “Fucking hell, sorry-” He began apologizing. You giggled, hopping off of the counter.

You brought him fully to the ground, pushing his back against the oven. “This might work better,” You replied, lowering yourself down onto his cock. Brian’s cock felt like heaven, your mouth falling open. Both of you let out a sigh of relief. You had no way to masturbate, no way to possibly release the stressful tension building inside of you. As you pressed your forehead against Brian’s, you realized that this was what you got. This was your outlet.

Brian’s gloved hands met your waist, helping you roll your hips. You let out a loud groan, one of his hands flying to your mouth. “Shh, you can’t make any noise,” Brian warned, your inability to stay composed only making him more hot and bothered. He took control, guiding your hips to ride him at a pace that worked for both of you. You were as wet as a virgin, your body yearning for more as Brian abused your g spot. Your sinful moans were muffled by his gloved hand, his other attempting to guide you.

He brought himself close to your ear. “If you wanna get off, you’re gonna have to ride me by yourself mkay? Do that and i’ll play with that pretty clit of yours doll,” He huffed, trying to control his own noises. You nodded yes profusely, trying to concentrate on grinding your hips against his. With his spare hand he found your clit, drawing sloppy circles around it. For a brief moment he was worried about his ‘skills’ not having slept with a woman in years. Whether he was good or bad at it, you didn’t appear to give a shit. You were still a panting mess, your hair sticking to your forehead from sweat.

Your walls clenched tighter around Brian as you felt yourself closer to euphoria, your eyes fluttering shut. With your forehead pressed to his you pawed at his hoodie, grabbing handfuls as your orgasm washed over you. Your sinful noises were muted by Brian’s hand, the muffled sounds music to his ears that he had made you feel that good. Your walls fluttering around him triggered his own orgasm, his cum flooding inside of you. He dropped his hand from your mouth, both of you taking a moment to breathe.

In a moment of true loneliness you leaned against Brian’s shoulder, ignoring the faint smell of dried blood and sweat. Unsurely Brian stroked your hair, trying to remember if that was comforting or not. He licked his dry lips, a bold question on the tip of his tongue.

“You wanna share a cigarette again tomorrow?”

[3liza]

what tumblr is *actually* really particularly good at as a group rather than as individual famous posters (such as dril on twitter), and this is something we share with 4chan, is originating and then popularizing particular jokes and meme phrases. we are good at coining things. "coining a phrase" means to say something with a particular flourish or carefully-chosen compositional attention in an effort to make the phrase "stick" in some way. for example, "stop trying to make 'fetch' happen" (which became a meme in of itself) is a response to a person attempting to coin a phrase--in this case, referring to things as "fetch" (adjective)--in a way that is not working. i think that tumblr, as a group, is very good at making fetch happen.

"blorbo" is a perfect example of a word that was made up on tumblr and has now become widespread over multiple social networks and is in (limited) use in irl verbal conversation. whatever our personal individual feelings on it (and a lot of us are fed up with it/find the term annoying because it got REALLY saturated here) it's so good that it will likely (i think! this is my prediction) become a permanent resident in american slang as long as it is useful, and this is because there was an empty space where that term was needed: a term for a person from a work of fiction that the speaker (the person who says "blorbo from my shows" in the hypothetical scenario invoked by the post) is particularly interested in, but whom the listener (the hypothetical "you") has no familiarity with.

fandom as an activity is extremely old at this point (no not dante's inferno fuck off) so it's likely we have had terms like this before that either weren't successfully coined, deprecated out of common usage, or which i personally am not familiar with. but when the blorbo post was made, there was an empty space where that term WAS needed in many conversations that were being had. oh yeah, blorbo from your shows. all my friends have blorbos from their shows. i do not have a pre-existing term for this, i would have just referred to that concept as "characters from shows i havent watched, which my friends talk about all the time". it is convenient to have the term "blorbo" for this, and it was particularly canny as a choice of phonemes because it references how fucking stupid all the Star Wars Expanded Universe names are (and always have been, speaking as an old school SWEU fan [NOT ANYMORE]). ponda baba? sebulba? max rebo. the intergalactic jizz wailers. sy snootles. fuck off

coining a phrase successfully actually uses marketing principles, or vice versa really, to launch a word that "sticks". we can use "fetch" as the counter-example: there was no demand for "fetch" in that market (the setting of the film).

this is a sort of cousin to the now-deprecated phrase "it's all greek to me", which meant "i don't understand this, it is as unfamiliar to me as someone speaking greek, a language i dont understand [and which is considered by my culture to be difficult to understand and/or archaic]". but instead of invoking an actual language to exemplify

EDIT 6:19AM PST: i apparently just hit "Post" before finishing the post. i think i had more thoughts about "its all greek to me" but i dont know what they were and its not important

[wilwheaton]

When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children who were abused and exploited daily during production. No adults protected us.

This was originally published on my blog in August, 2022.

I had a wonderful time at Steel City Comicon this weekend. It was my first time at this particular con, so I didn’t know there was such a huge contingent of horror fans, creators, and vendors who attend.

I love horror, and I was pretty psyched to be in the same place as John Carpenter and Tom Savini, across the street from the Dawn of the Dead mall. Pittsburgh feels like one of the places horror was invented, at least to me.

A number of these horror fans came to see me, and asked me to sign posters and other things from a movie my parents forced me to do when I was 13, called The Curse. I had to tell each of these people that I would not sign anything associated with that movie, because I was abused and exploited during production. The time I spent on that film remains the most traumatizing time of my life, and though I am a 50 year-old man, just typing this now makes my hands shake with remembered fear of a 13 year-old boy who nobody protected, and the absolute fury the 50 year-old man feels toward the people who hurt him.

I told this story in Still Just A Geek, and I’ve talked about it in some podcasts I did on the promo tour, but I’ve never put it out in public like this, in its entirety.

I suspect someone at the publisher would prefer I tease this and hope it drives book sales from people who want to read all of it, but I honestly don’t want to have another weekend like this one where everything is awesome, except the few times people who have no idea (and why should they) put that fucking poster in front of me, and all the fear, abandonment, and trauma come flooding back as I tell them that I won’t sign it, and why.

To their credit, each person was as horrified as they should have been, told me they had no idea (if they didn’t read my book why would they), and quickly put the poster away. They were all understanding. I am grateful for that.

But I really don’t need to tell this story over and over again, so here it is, with a child abuse and exploitation content warning, so I can just tell people to Google it.

After Stand by Me, everything changed. The attention from entertainment journalists, casting directors, and especially teen magazines came pouring in. The movie was a generational hit, beloved by critics and audiences alike, and every single one of us could pick anything to do next.

River’s parents and his agent got him Mosquito Coast, with Harrison Ford, as his next movie. I also auditioned for the role, but I knew even then that River was going to book the job. He was perfect, and I’d have to wait a little bit for my opportunity to come along.

I went on a lot of theatrical auditions after Stand by Me. I had tons of meetings with directors and the heads of casting at every major studio. It was all a very big deal, and I felt like we were all looking for something really special and amazing as my follow-up to Stand by Me.

At some point, a couple of producers contacted my agent with an offer to play one of the leads in an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” The script was titled The Farm. (It would, of course, be changed when the film was released).

I read it. I did not like it. It was a shitty horror movie, and I saw that right away. It was the sort of thing you rented on Friday when the new release you wanted was already out of the store.

My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

I told my parents I didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it. I clearly recall thinking it was a piece of shit that would hurt my career.

It wasn’t the first thing that had come our way that I wanted to pass on, and every other time, it hadn’t been a very big deal.

Sidebar: I was cast in Twilight Zone: The Movie, in 1983. The film tells four stories, and I was cast as the kid who can wish people into cartoonland. It was a GREAT role, in a movie I still love. (Note that Twilight Zone had four directors. One of them got three people killed. The segment I was cast in was not that one. I mention this because too many people zero in on this to deflect from what this whole thing is actually about.)

But I was CONVINCED by my parochial school teacher that if I worked on The Twilight Zone, which she had determined was satanic, I would go to hell. (This woman and her bullshit played a big role in my conversion to atheism at a young age, but when she told me that, I was all-in on the supernatural story they taught us in religion class.) I was so scared, more scared than I’d ever been to that point in my life, I cried and wailed and begged my parents to not make me do the movie. And I never told them why, because I was afraid my dad would laugh at me for being weak and afraid. My agent tried to talk me into it, and I wouldn’t budge. It’s the only thing I deeply and truly regret passing on, and I really hate I made that choice for such a stupid reason.

Okay. Back to The Curse.

This time, when I told them how much I hated it, they wouldn’t listen to me. My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

That is, until they made me take a meeting with the producers of the movie, in their giant conference room on the top floor of a tall building in Hollywood. All I remember about this place was that it was huge; the table was way too big for the five of us who spread around it, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on three of the walls, but the room was still dark. There was a weird optical illusion in the center of the table, this thing they sold in the Sharper Image catalog, made from two reflective dishes with a hole in the top of one. You placed an object in the bottom of the bottom dish, and it made it look like that object was floating above the whole thing. They had a plastic spider in it. What a strange detail for me to remember, but it’s as clear in my memory as if I were sitting in that room right now.

One man, who I presumed was the executive producer, was European or Middle Eastern (I didn’t know the difference then, he was just Not Like People I Knew), and I was instantly afraid of him. He was intimidating, and seemed like a person who got what he wanted.

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

I don’t remember what they said to me in their pitch or anything other than how uncomfortable and anxious I was to even be in that room. I tried so hard to be grown up and mature, but I — and my parents — was way out of my depth. I’d done one big movie and that was it. We didn’t have my agent with us, who had lots of experience and would have known what questions to ask.

No, in place of my experienced agent, my mother had decided she was going to be my manager, and she tackled the responsibility with an enthusiasm that was only matched by her absolute incompetence and inability to go toe-to-toe with producers the way my agent did. She was outwitted, out-thought, and outmaneuvered at every turn.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

At some point, this man, who is represented in my memory by big Jim Jones sunglasses under dark hair above an open collar, said, “We are offering you a hundred thousand dollars and round-trip travel for your whole family. We will cast your sister, Amy, to play your sister in the movie.”

It all made sense, now. I was only thirteen, but I knew my parents were pushing me so hard because this company was offering me — them, really — more money than I’d ever imagined I’d earn in my life, much less a single job.

I knew that the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, was to say no. There would be other opportunities, and it was stupid to cash myself out of feature films for what I thought was, in the grand scheme of things, not very much money.

It’s incredible to me that I knew all of this. It’s incredible to me that I could see all these things, plainly and clearly, and my parents couldn’t (or, more likely, chose not to).

So after this man made his offer, all the adults in the room ganged up on me, selling me HARD on this movie.

My mother said, “Don’t you want your sister to have the same opportunities you’ve had? Wouldn’t it be fun and exciting to go to Rome? Think of all the history!”

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

I don’t think about this very often, because it’s super upsetting to me. Right now, I’m so angry at my parents for subjecting me and my sister to this entire experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In that moment, I felt bullied and trapped. All these adults were talking to me at the same time, and I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to go home and get out of this room. I just wanted to go be a kid, so I did what I’d learned to do to survive: I gave in and did what my parents wanted.

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

But here’s the thing: when you watch The Curse, you are watching two children, me and my sister, who were abused on a daily basis. The production did not follow a single labor law. They worked us for twelve hours a day, on multiple film units (while I work on First unit, second unit sets up and waits for me. When I should get a break to rest, they send me to Second unit, then to Third unit, then back to First unit. I was 13.) without any breaks, five days a week. I was exhausted the entire time. I was inappropriately touched by two different adults during production. I knew it was wrong, but I was so scared and ashamed, and I felt so unsupported, I didn’t tell anyone. I knew my dad wouldn’t believe me, and my mother would blame me. Anything to keep the production happy, that’s what she did. That was more important to her than the health and safety of her children. The director was coked out of his mind most of the time, incompetent, and so busy fucking or trying to fuck one of the women in the cast, he was worse than useless. He was a fading actor who was cosplaying as a director, as in over his head as my mother. My sister and I were never safe. Instead of harmless atmospheric SFX smoke, they set hay on fire in barrels and blew actual smoke onto the set. They took buckets of talc, broken wood, bits of wallpaper and plaster, and threw it into my face during a scene inside the collapsing house. My sister is in a scene where she goes to get eggs from some chickens, and they attack her. So they hired Lucio Fulci, the Italian horror master, to direct her sequence. His idea, which everyone was totally on board with, was to throw chickens at my sister. Live chickens, live roosters, live birds. Just throw them at a nine-year-old girl. Oh, and then tie them to her arms and legs so they’ll peck her. All of this happened under my mother’s observation, and with her full participation.

Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

If just ONE of the things I can remember happened to someone I loved, I would have grabbed my kids, gone to the airport, and flown home. Fuck those abusive assholes in the production. Let the lawyers sort it all out. Nobody hurts my children and gets away with it.

My mom says she “had some talks” with the producers. She claims that, once, she wouldn’t let us leave the hotel. (God, what a fucking dump that place was. It was just slightly better than a hostel.) I have no memory of that, but honestly the entire experience was so traumatic, I’ve blocked most of it out.

The movie was the commercial and critical failure I knew it would be. My parents spent the money. I don’t know what they spent it on. I got to keep fifteen cents of every dollar, so . . . yay?

My sister and I hardly ever talk about this. I suspect it was as upsetting and traumatic for her as it was for me. I told her I was writing about it, and asked her if she remembered anything. She told me she’d been lied to her whole life about this movie. Our mother let her believe she had been cast on the strength of her audition. “I was excited to work with you,” she said. She reminded me about some stuff I’d blocked out, including a scene where my character’s older brother (played by an actor named Malcolm Danare, who was kind and gentle, and made both of us feel safer when he was around) shoves my character into a pile of cow shit. When it came time to shoot the scene, the mud they’d put together to be the cow shit looked an awful lot like cow shit. When Malcolm pushed me into it, we all found out it was real cow shit. I was FURIOUS. The director had lied to me and had allowed me to have my entire body shoved into an actual pile of actual cow shit. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember he treated me the exact same way my father did whenever I got upset: he laughed at me, told me I was being too sensitive, reminded me that he was the director and he wanted to get a “real” performance out of me, and concluded, “If it bothers you so much, we’ll get you a hepatitis shot,” before he walked away.

My sister also recalled that, after she survived the scene with the chickens, it was the producers’ idea to give her one as a pet.

Okay, let’s unpack that for a quick second: you’ve been traumatized by these birds, so we’re going to give you one as a pet. That you’ll somehow keep in your hotel, and then will somehow get back to America. It will shock you to learn that neither of those things happened.

She remembered, as I do, the huge fight I had with my parents in our kitchen, where I told them I hated the script and I hated the movie. I didn’t want to do it, and I hated that they were making me do it.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

“This is the only film you are being offered,” my mother lied to me. She made me feel like, if I didn’t do this movie, I would never do another movie again in my life. I had to do this movie. As my father bellowed, I had no choice.

Both of my parents denied this argument ever happened. Can I tell you how reassuring it is to know that my sister, who was also there, remembers it the same way I do?

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them.

But one thing she told me, the thing I did not know, the thing that makes me so angry I want to break things, actually managed to make the entire experience even worse than I remembered it.

There’s a scene after her chicken incident where I check up on her in her bedroom. She’s got cuts and bruises, and I guess we talk about it. I don’t remember and I can’t watch the movie because I’m terrified it will give me a PTSD flashback (I’ve had one of those and I recommend avoiding it). Here’s the thing about that scene: she has some cuts on her face, and those cuts are real. They are not makeup.

I’m going to repeat that. My nine-year-old little sister had actual cuts on her face that were placed there by an adult, on purpose.

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them. My sister told me our mother wasn’t in the makeup room when this happened — honestly, it seemed like our mother was strangely and conveniently absent when most of the really terrible things happened to us on the set — and when my sister told her what they’d done, she “lost her shit” at the production. She was pissed, I guess, which is appropriate and surprising. I wonder what would have to have happened for her to put us on a plane and get us home to safety? I mean, her son being abused daily didn’t do it, and her daughter being CUT IN THE FACE ON PURPOSE didn’t do it.

I just . . . I can’t. I can’t understand or comprehend allowing your own children to be physically and emotionally abused. They were literally selling my sister and me to these people, like we were some kind of commodity.

This was a tough conversation. My sister’s experience with our parents is very different from mine. My sister and I love each other. We’re close. I know it’s hard for her to hear that her brother, who she loves, was so abused by her parents, who she also loves. I was really grateful she made the time to talk to me about it, and grateful the experience wasn’t as horrible for her as it was for me.

As we were finishing our call, Amy also remembered one man, a young Italian named Luka, who was our driver for the movie. I haven’t thought about him in thirty years, but I can see his face now. He was kind, he was friendly, he taught us how to kick a soccer ball, and in the middle of an abusive, torturous experience, he stood out as a kind and gentle man. I mention him because she remembered him, which made me remember him, and goddammit I want at least one small part of this thing to not be awful.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares.

Ultimately, as I predicted and feared, this piece of shit movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me. The industry looked at me and River, wondering if one or both of us would become a breakout star. They quickly saw that River was doing real acting work, and I was in this piece of shit. For River, Stand by Me was a beginning. For me, it would turn out to be pretty much everything, at least as far as film goes.

There are thousands of reasons film careers do and don’t take off. Maybe mine wouldn’t have taken off anyway. Clearly, it’s not where my life ended up, and I’m super okay with that now. But when all of this happened, it hurt and haunted me.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares. Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

This annotation is the last thing I wrote before I turned this manuscript in, because opening these wounds is hard and painful. I put it off as long as I could, and I feel like I’m still holding back, because just this small glimpse of the experience has taken me a week to write. I can’t imagine trying to go back and unpack the whole thing. (Note that is not in the book: I’ve made an EMDR appointment to work on this because the nightmares have come back after the weekend).

Fuck The Curse, and fuck every single person who exploited and hurt two beautiful children to make it. You all participated in child abuse, and you all knew better. Shame on all of you. I hope this follows you to the end of your life. I hope that living with what you did to innocent children has been as hard for you as it has been for me, because you deserve no less.

[mind-empty-just-fictional-people]

Poems

main masterlist | supernatural masterlist

summary: dean searches your room when you’re missing, and the love letters he finds break his heart

pairing: dean winchester x female reader

rating: R for language

word count: 1.9k (1.5k excluding poems) 

warnings: reader goes/is missing, language, 

author’s note: please don’t make fun of my “poetry”, i know it’s not good that’s why i don't write poems lol

“Hey Dean, I’m working a case near Wichita so I’ll probably be back home by the end of the week. See you soon, bye.”

“That’s the last I heard from her,” Dean told his brother after playing him the message you left. “It’s been over a week, I’m gettin’ worried here!”

“Do you know what kinda case she was working?” Sam asked, Dean shook his head. “Okay, well I’m sure she’s fine, Dean. Let’s call the hospitals around where she is and ask if she’s there.”

“You do that, I’m gonna head to Wichita,” Dean replied.

“I think we should call the hospitals first, Dean. She said she was near Wichita, she could be anywhere from here to there!”

Dean sighed but agreed with Sam’s plan.

**

The boys had no luck with any of the hospitals so they decided to head over to Wichita and look for you. They searched for a few days before heading back to the bunker, hoping you might be there waiting for them. You weren’t, of course, and that only made their worry grow.

You’d been missing for nearly two weeks!  

Dean thought there might be some kind of clue in your room and decided that searching it was next on his to-do list. Though he knew he was grasping at straws, he did it anyway.

Opening the door to your room, he smiled at the poster near your bed. It was the one he’d gotten you for Christmas last year. It was a kind of gag gift—it was his favorite band. (His real gift had been much more thoughtful.)

He began his search at your desk, digging through the mess of papers splayed out on the wood surface. His brows furrowed when he found one paper in particular. It looked like… a love poem?

The way your hair looks in the morning

The way your laugh adds life to moments boring

The way your breath hits my neck when you’re standing just behind me

Reaching over to grab something off the table

A lore book, of all things to be

And the way your eyes light up when you look into mine

I swear I almost see a hint of love

Behind those piercing starlights

Your lips on mine is what I need

Did you hear me? 

I said kiss me, you fool!

We’ve not got much time

In this line of life 

And I need you at my side.

Dean didn’t know if the poem would be considered “good” in the public eye, but he knew it made his heart clench. You were in love? But… with whom?

To him, the words were beautiful, and the thought that you wrote them about someone else broke his fucking heart. He knew there were no clues to your whereabouts in the next poem, but of course, he read it anyway.

I think of you when I drive and spot a classic car

I think of you when I eat a cheeseburger 

And I’ll turn it upside down when I’m missing you

I think of you when I hear a Zepplin song

And I turn the music up when I’m not with you

I think of you when I see anyone wear flannel

Or a leather jacket that’s clearly a size or two too big

And I love to think of you

It just makes sense to me

I love to picture you beside me

At night when I can’t sleep

Or when I get scared of what I’m facing

I think of what you would do

Day or night

Night, day, or noon 

I always think of you

Whoever this mystery person was, they were fucking lucky. Dean had never felt so jealous in his entire life. He always thought you two had a “will they won’t they” side to your relationship but at that moment he realized it was completely one-sided. The fun, flirty side to all your late-night conversations had just been friendly. Two friends playfully talking as if they both wanted to be more.

Of course Dean wanted to be more. Of course he knew he wanted to be with you. But now? Now he knew he’d either missed his chance or he simply never had one.

You were in love with someone that wasn’t him. And the love you’d been writing about wasn’t the kind someone gets over. It’s the kind that sticks—for life. The kind that people write songs about, the kind that people fight wars over, and the kind that makes people go crazy in the best way. 

He knew he’d found that love when he first fell for you, but it turned out you had found that love in someone else.

“Anything?” Sam asked, walking into your room.

“Uhm,” Dean cleared his throat, hoping his eyes didn’t look as cloudy as they felt. “No, nothing important. Just some love letters or something.” 

Sam furrowed his brows and picked up one of the poems off the desk, one that Dean had not read yet. As the taller Winchester read what you wrote his eyes grew wide, practically popping out of his head as his mouth fell open.

“Oh my fucking god!” Sam exclaimed. “Y/n’s in love with you?” He looked at his older brother in shock.

“Me? No, these poems are about whoever she’s been seeing recently, they aren’t about me. We’re just friends.”

“You haven’t read this one yet, have you?” Sam asked with a small smile before handing it over.

You asked me today; “what’s your favorite color?”

And I just shrugged; “I don’t know, blue?”

Cause how could I have said the truth?

The color I love most in the world

The color that brings me nothing but joy

In this sad, awful little life

Is the green and hazel of your eyes

The emerald diamonds that shine

When you look into the sun

The soft hazel that looks over at me

When we’re reading in the library

How can I tell you all of this 

When the question is so simple and plain

How do I go into such specific detail

About the color I’m in love with

Without freaking you out

Or scaring you away

Or making you laugh at me

Because I know your favorite color 

And I know it’s not the color of my eyes

“You…You think this is really about me?” Dean asked his little brother, hoping Sam was right.

“Dean in all my life I have never seen anyone but you eat a burger bun-side-down,” Sam chuckled a little having read one of the poems Dean had read earlier.

“Oh my god.” Dean furrowed his brows, looking back down at the paper in his hands. “We’ve gotta find her, Sammy, I gotta tell her!”

“Tell her that you went through her stuff while she was gone? Don’t think that’s the best idea.”

“No! Tell her I’m in love with her! Tell her that the color of her eyes is my favorite fucking color too! And every time her favorite band comes on the radio I turn it up, and every time I see a woman wearing her type of clothes I think about her. Tell her that all I do every waking moment of every day is wish I was with her, wish I was holding her in my arms so I could never let go.”

“I think you just told her.” Sam smiled, nodding to where you now stood at your door. Dean turned around quickly. Tears of joy stung your eyes as you looked at him and smiled.

“You love me?” you asked.

“More than anything,” Dean admitted as he hurried to you. He wrapped you in a tight hug, kissing your temple quickly before he tucked your head under his chin. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call, it’s a long story,” you mumbled. “When vampires ban together with twisted humans, they’re a lot harder to kill.”

“We were really worried about you,” Dean admitted. “Like…fucking terrified.”

“Is that why you decided to dig through my personal shit?” you asked. You were one hundred percent kidding, but Dean was still nervous.

“Yeah…sorry,” Sam cringe-clenched his teeth, “it was my fault.”

You and Dean pulled back from the hug, but you took his hand in yours as you narrowed your gaze at the younger hunter.

“I know your tell, Sammy,” you said. “But it’s sweet that you’re trying to cover for Dean.” 

“Yep, all Dean’s fault,” Sam admitted before heading for the door, giving his brother a pat on the shoulder on his way out. “Good luck.”

“Look, I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, I swear,” Dean told you quickly. “I was looking for something that might tell me where the hell you were.”

“How many did you read?” you asked.

“Three,” Dean sighed, still thinking you were pissed at him.

“So…you know, then? That I’m hopelessly in love with you? And you think I’d be mad at you for looking through my stuff?”

“I mean, I know you value your privacy.”

“Dean,” you started, putting a hand on his cheek and turning his face to look down at you, “would you please just fuckin’ kiss me already?”

He seemed almost surprised by your question but he quickly smiled as he bent down and kissed you. His one hand stayed clasped in yours while his other went to your waist and then trailed to your lower back. The hand you had on his cheek went to the upper back of his neck so you could tangle your fingers in his hair. The smiles on both of your faces only grew before you both pulled away.

“Wow, I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Dean mumbled before he let out a short, breathy laugh.

“Me too,” you replied. 

**

You’d been back home for a few days now and you had explained the whole missing situation to the brothers. You told them how the simple vampire hunt turned sour quickly when you realized the small-town’s sheriff was in on it and helped the vamps with making humans just disappear. They’d made you as a hunter instantly and held you hostage for a few days before you killed your way out. 

Dean never left your side so when he saw a new poem on your desk his brows furrowed. Curiosity got the better of him as he sat down to read it.

My god aren't I lucky

Now that you're holding me at night

And that first time we kissed in the doorway

I could’ve sworn I was kissing pure sunshine 

When your lips hit mine it was better

Then I could’ve ever imagined

And the love poems I've written became

Manifested words of affirmation

The butterflies in my stomach fluttered

And the blood rushed to my head

Think I could stay like this forever

Won't overthink it, I’ll just go and kiss you instead

“Well, well, well.” You came up behind him, and put your hands on his shoulders before you trailed them down and clasped them together over his chest, leaning your chin on his shoulder and kissing his cheek. “Look who’s digging through my shit again.” You smiled against his skin. He turned his head and placed a deep kiss on your lips.

“I’m not even sorry this time, because I think this might be the best thing I’ve ever read.”

“I love you,” you said and kissed him again.

“I love you so fuckin’ much,” he mumbled back.

[centrally-unplanned]

IRL (In Real Life) - Buffydom Propaganda And The Internet-That-Was

It is 1997. You just got back from the latest Hot Topic run to restock on whatever the most raven-black bomb of Manic Panic they have on the shelves is, so you can do double-duty bleaching your hair in the shower while watching a CRT TV precariously mounted on the lip of your sink. On that TV is the Season 1 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you are obsessed. Unfortunately for you, no one else in Bowling Green, Ohio, shares your passion for a CW WB show about vampire hunting teens who purposefully fumble their line deliveries. You are alone, and you have shit you gotta say about it to someone, anyone, who will understand.

Fortunately for you, the marketing team at ye old WB anticipated that their audience would be a bunch of fucking nerds, and boy do they have a solution to your problem! Welcome to the Bronze:

A while back I stumbled upon the inexplicable existence of "IRL (In Real Life)", a 2007 documentary about the community that formed around the aforementioned Buffy fan discussion forum/chatboard. Officially running from around the launch of the show until it switched over to UPN after its fifth season (with the forum dying a dramatic death in the process), The Bronze was a highly active center for the Buffy fandom, which generated several spillovers into real life. In particular, it was famous for the creatives and even actors on the show occasionally posting on the forum, which culminated in members of the community organizing a yearly party in Los Angeles where posters would fly out and be joined by said cast and crew. This documentary charts its culture & history via interviewing an array of its members.

As always, I am not here to give the blow-by-blow; instead, what is the narrative this documentary is trying to sell?

My previous documentary write-up was about nerd culture in the 2010’s; newly ascendant, growing confident in its own values and looking to justify that to itself, wealthy and with a developed enough ecosystem for crowdfunding to create professional, polished documentaries of its own heroes. None of that is true for IRL. Filmed on whatever camcorder/potato hybrid proto-Ebay would cough up from its zero-bid listings in a series of hotel rooms and people’s living rooms in 2003-2004 after the forum had died, this is the era of nerd culture at its most conflicted and insecure; mocked by the mainstream and unsure if it should be proud of that fact or deeply ashamed of it. And this documentary wears this conflict right on its sleeve; one of its opening lines is a confident assurance to the audience of “don’t worry, we aren’t like those nerds”:

Throwing Trekkies under the bus in the process, cold! Particularly given how it proceeds to barely even blink before pivoting to explaining their hobby of running “WITTs”, multi-day-long collaborative roleplays:

You are exactly those Trekkies my dudes; you weren’t just at the devil’s sacrament you were hosting it! "WITT" stands for Whedon Improvisational Theatre Troupe, you can't recover from that guys.

(I love how “dozens” is large by the way - it was for the internet in 2001, right?)

Anyway, beyond documenting the forum and its members, the conclusion this documentary wants you to hold is that the Bronze was a special place of real community, and it is a community of “normal” people, who made real relationships. And in particular, that internet relationships can be just as real as those found in meatspace, that these relationships transcended the digital and entered the physical; and that this is what fandom can be about.

I want to start with the ways that narrative was correct within the context of the time. I can actually explain that Klingon comment! I have one extant interview with the director of the film, Stephanie Tuszynski, and she put her motivation as follows: 

FFN: What made you decide to study Buffy fandom, particularly the Bronze, for your documentary? ST: The idea to do a documentary film about the Bronze actually came to me very early on, because "Trekkies" came out in the late 1990s so I was already a Bronzer at that point. And when I saw it I started throwing things at my television. I was incensed. That wasn't a documentary about the fandom experience, it was "hey let's find the most extreme examples possible and have a freak show!" It infuriated me […] It reinforced every awful stereotype about media fans while purporting to be objective.

It wasn’t a random example - the 1997 documentary Trekkies set the “standard” view of fandom as extremist oddballs, and Tuszynski specifically wanted to counter that. It was the early 2000’s after all, nerd stereotypes were strong, you had to fight them explicitly! In a society where there is strong background hostility to one’s identity, you will attempt to normalize it using known reference points; and certainly the people on these forums were more “normal” than the stereotypes admitted to because that entire binary framework is a dead end.

More importantly to the narrative is the online aspect, “making friends on the internet”. Another find I have is a blog post from a professor who used the film in a class; and in the film’s narrative of “people with no one ‘irl’ to share their hobby with finding friends online” triggered a debate around if the online relationships are “taking away” from in-person relationships that are presumed to be more valuable. A debate that still rages to this day over social media! But the contours were different back then, the internet was presumed to be niche, ancillary, and relationships made online in a completely separate box from “in person” friendships. The documentary goes to great lengths to explain that they were a real community because that idea is so contested. Ironically, they do this by emphasizing that they met up in person, hung out, attended each other's weddings, etc; as if only by meeting up in person could the relationships be validated as real? But you can’t truly fault them for meeting their implicit critics halfway in making their case.

So what can I fault them for?

*****

I was perpetually amused when watching the doc that they included two married couples in the filming, and for both one of the spouses would talk and the other would sit there, in silence, the entire time. Maybe they were members of the community and just not talkers; maybe their lines got cut in post. But what I kept thinking was that they were there selling normality to me; married couples are just inherently less oddball, less threatening, and in the era where “nerd = virgin” just less nerdy. Like with the Klingon line, there is an intentionality to the “just like you” vibe.

Which, as mentioned with the extensive forum roleplay, inevitably breaks down once the reality of forum activity is dug into. And I buried the lede here - you may have seen the title of the “longest” roleplay was “RTBS Soul Restoration Project”, but what does that mean? RTBS was a forum member’s name, and well:

Oh yeah, we are saving our friend from “a fate worse than death: worshiping Britney Spears” - welcome to 2001 baby! This is peak “nerd wars” stuff, the normies hate our shit so we hate the normie shit right back. Which is exactly how nerd culture was in the 2000's. I am not at all throwing shade at their tongue-in-cheek roleplay, resplendent in the ludicrously purple prose and asterisk-laden action descriptions as required by the early internet; but it sits in clear tension with some of the other messaging in this film. Leave Britney alone guys!

The documentary highlights a number of common practices from the forum - people doing daily greetings, the way that it being one unending massive chain of posts with no threading or topics meant people would mass-tag individual people to respond to and form “circles” that way - but there are things it leaves out. I did what any normal person would do after watching this documentary and read through over a year of archived posts on The Bronze to understand the community - but man did I not have to, as on literally the first page of my archived link I see:

And through God’s good grace that second link is archived:

Yes there are pictures at the link, and yes later on it does compare Buffy’s cleavage to the Mona Lisa. (The Giles link is not quite functional, but I was able to find it; sadly it is not nearly as thirsty)

I also found these “onboarding” sites for new members. Remember, this forum was the official forum, which meant there were no community mods or ability to “pin rules”, it was pure anarchy - so advice filled the gaps. And one of the bigger ones, in its *sighs and rubs forehead* blue font on black background, warns against “hottie posting” aka talking about how hot say Angel is, not because it isn’t allowed, but because it is like “pointing out the sky is blue” - it is so common that it will just get washed out.

It might seem like a similarly sky-is-blue comment to note that this forum was heavily about shipping, hotness discussion, fanfiction, and the like. Of course it was, right? These website “senior members” were trying to minimize it, police it, but it broke through constantly and also simmered under the surface through discussions and RP’s from my own review of the forum. The documentary, however, spends incredibly little time on it. Brief mentions of Angel fics, and no mention (iirc) of discussion of how hot the women were at all. Because once again those details really don’t fit into the narrative it is trying to sell.

At one point in the documentary someone notes how diverse all the friends they met in this community were? Which I broke out laughing over. In one way it is not wrong, I get it! Midwest college kids meeting people from all over the country, ages 40 to 14, talking about something no one in their podunk town understands. But on the other hand, you could not come up with a more standardized slice of humanity if you tried to rig it. Everyone here is an American+ with computer access in 1998, it is a grab bag of sys admins, nerd creatives, and comp sci majors.  I did a random sampling googling the people interviewed to see what they are up to now, and literally a third of them are librarians. Even their fashion is like God played a prank on this director; not even a 2000’s anime con panel lineup is this stereotypical in the combinations of alt-goth lit girls and nerdcore computer bros.

The evolutionary process of joining this forum -> liking it enough to go to the live meetups -> liking that enough to participate in a documentary about it was a pressure cooker spitting out only a certain kind of person. Which is truly fascinating to see on display! This is the internet-that-was; and it bleeds through the grainy film despite the director’s efforts at times to the contrary.

Though even then it was only a very specific slice of the internet-that-was, because this is a very special breed of Online; namely, the professionals.

*****

Something that is decidedly not typical of The Bronze as an online community is that, as mentioned before, Joss Whedon and other creatives posted on the web forum, answering questions and also just playing around, and how that led to in-person parties where both forum members and cast/crew attended - the Posting Board Parties, or PBP’s. At these they hosted fundraisers, talked about the show, and in the documentary one girl reverently describes with incredible Repressed Lesbian Energy her experience of seeing Eliza Dushku dancing next to her. The PBP had a panel of party organizers, admission systems to keep out the “undesirables”, budgets, the works.

All this the documentary shares openly; it is a peak moment where the digital becomes real in a transcendent way, opening doors analog reality never could. It is also a cold-sweat-waking nightmare story from the lens of a modern Hollywood social media manager; one person in the documentary tells the tale of how one time lead actress Allyson Hannigan posted her phone number on the forum asking people to leave her cute voicemails. The person in question immediately called, and got Hannigan herself instead of the voicemail, so they chatted for a bit (The guy telling this tale is obviously lovestruck; his wife is sitting in typical silence next to him). Today this would be a code-red, nuke your phone situation; but the circle was so cloistered, and the rules so unwritten, that no one cared in these early years.

What they share less openly is all the drama that went into this event. They wax nostalgic about how the parties brought them together, but what isn’t mentioned is the church schism it caused, as the moment cast from the show started attending the party it got mobbed by outsiders. By its ~3rd year there were approximately 400 guests but only ~50 or so were from the forum. They had a huge fight about it, the head of PFP planning committee - “Morbius the Vampire”, who was later jailed for financial fraud btw - told the dissenting faction why don’t they just throw their own party if they hate his so much, and so they did. There was more fighting about it, and eventually they held a peace summit at an LA joint called Mel’s Diner to merge the two factions together. (My source for this is a book, which I will link later)

Hilarious, for sure, but while so much of what we have discussed is “proto online nerd communities”, this part is most decidedly not. The typical web forum absolutely cannot replicate the experience of roleplay-posting your way into shaking hands with Joss Whedon and having a shitfight over party budgets in LA. But most posters never got to attend these parties, of course, this didn’t mean much to them. While for those who did, you cannot help but imagine that this played a gigantic role in making them all become a “real” community. And care enough about that circle to, well after the forum was gone, schlep to a hotel room to be interviewed for a documentary about it. Participating in a documentary is always, in some way, an exercise in selection bias; but here the pruning is turned up to 11 - this is a very elite slice of a very unique fandom experience.

*****

I have one deeper level to go on this thread, somewhat buried in time today, that further shaped the participants here: “Whedon Studies”. The 2000’s was not the birth of media studies as an academic discipline; but it was the birth of fandom-driven media studies, and Buffy was nearly unassailably the leading light of that movement. Academics hosted entire conferences (and inexplicably still do!) on Buffy, Firefly, etc; almost all from the lens of gender & media, as Buffy’s brand was deeply entrenched in that deconstructive milieu. This movement would die a fiery death during the 2010’s shift in media & gender politics, and when the controversies around the toxic working conditions on the set of Buffy/Angel led to Joss Whedon’s near-total expulsion from creative pursuits. The whole edifice is, in a deep way, “cringe” for many of its former participants today.

But what is relevant for our story is that director Stephanie Tuszynski was a full member of that movement; while composing this film she was, for example, giving talks like these at conferences devoted to the Buffyverse:

God that is a lot of talks. This film itself was her thesis project for her I believe philosophy masters, and in our scant interviews lists other fandom-academic film projects she wanted to tackle (which as best I can tell fizzled out later). And the interview subjects were often participants in the same space as well! Academic-types doing media studies with a Buffy bent, or things like culture writers for new media outlets. One of them, writer Allyson Beatrice, even published a book about the Buffy fandom that was in regular bookstores:

To quote the blurb:

A hilarious collection of true stories from Allyson's days as one of the Internet's leading cult TV fan gurus, her mind-boggling escapades include meetings with network executives in dark steakhouses to try to save doomed TV shows and one hastily arranged wedding for two committed Buffy fans. 

I highlight this not to say that academics cannot make documentaries, they certainly can. What I am saying is that if you point your camera at career Buffyverse writer Allyson Beatrice, and label her as a typical forum member giving you the hometown everygirl perspective on the community, you are, however unintentionally, lying to your audience. In its quest to give you the just-like-me Buffy fandom experience, what this documentary elides is that it is often giving you the lens of people who are fans of Buffy as a career. Those people are going to be bringing very different experiences to the table - of course they are concerned with sanitization, with nerd culture debates, the works. That is their bread-and-butter trade.

This dynamic bled into the forum’s day-to-day; there was a very clear hierarchy of “veterans” and “top” posters, who organize the live parties, have deep roots in the community, and even the ear of the show team...and everyone else. Particularly because as mentioned there were no rules on the forum, but since that can’t actually function in practice they self-generated community rules and thus their own leadership class. Cliques and groups were common and named, and veteran posters even had formally designated groupies:

I had also by this time become a groupie. I so enjoyed one particular Bronzer’s posts that she allowed me to become the seventh of her groupies. It was through groupie-dom that I got my first taste of firsthand WITT: several Bronzers, on the occasion of the birthday of she-to-whom-we-group, each took turns grabbing the microphone and praising the day that she was born. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we did this. But it was fun, and very funny, too, as we each took turns waxing melodramatic off the top of our heads. And from work, no less.

The source for this by the way is a 400 page ethnography of The Bronze posted by academic who did *cough* “field research” there; I am sure their membership in the “Bronzers Adoring Darla” fangroup was purely for comprehensive data collection purposes.

And to emphasize, I am not saying this is problematic or anything - the groupie things were all in good fun, best I can tell. I simply aim to showcase how the Bronze wasn’t just a baby version of online fandom forum dynamics; but also a baby version of e-celebrity mechanics. Something the documentary does not even attempt to touch on because that would be something normal people would not understand.

*****

All of the above may have come off like one big roast, and it is a little bit, but as I have mentioned before every documentary is propaganda. It is just impossible to have a tight film building a narrative out of the pieces of letting people speak to the camera without that narrative being but a slice of the truth those people want you to know. The Bronze web forum was a very special place to these highly invested fans, and this documentary is not lying to you about that.

But it is also a big part of early internet fandom! The Bronze was famous at the time, and it is right there at the beginning of so many shifts; the first generation of non-technical internet users, a new era of ‘fantasy’ media with the trappings of prestige and social critique, a boom in critique-as-community, and more. I very much want the full picture of that community; who made it up, what did they want from it and what did they get from it, and so on. No film could offer the full picture; this film’s homebrew rawness gives a valuable piece of it, and I enjoyed it for that. I just aimed here to draw out not only what the broader, more accurate dynamics of The Bronze were, but also the cultural question of why the film focuses on what it does, hides what it refuses to show, and what that says about 2000’s internet & nerd culture. Hopefully I succeeded in that.

And also to have fun looking at some incredibly dated Buffy fandom bullshit. May it have been fun for you too! {hugs you and waves goodbye}

[pixie-ass]

Tim LaFlour x F!Coquette(ish) reader

Readers a girl in his english class, inspired by the scene of him reading Langston Hughes. They're opposites bc I think the opposite aesthetic trope is so damn cute.

I have a lot of ideas for this trope that I'll try to add!

Warnings - none except for fluff with my fav punk!

°•♡•°

Tim was not the best at poetry. Needless to say, english literature wasn't one of his strongest suits. That's why when the professor had assigned a very long, very taunting poetry book along with an analysis, he was fucked. Not only that but he didn't really know anybody in that class to ask for help and he was sure his roommate, Daryl, was as clueless as him.

As class was dismissed and all the students were beginning to leave, Tim packed his stuff up, sighing as he began to think. The class size wasn't big, so as people walked out, he looked around for anyone who seemed helpful, only to catch eyes with a particular girl.

He'd noticed her since the beginning of the semester. She always sat second row on the right and would never talk unless called on. He noticed all her supplies were a light shade of pink, which he thought suited her. She'd always dress with light colors too, very put together. Tim sat in the row behind her a few seats to her left so he'd always find himself zoning out on her, only because she stood out.

“Do you know how to do this?” He'd take his chance and ask her, she seemed so sophisticated taking notes everyday, he was sure she'd know what she was doing. Her eyes widened and she seemed to go from shock, to confusion, to acceptance all in the span of a second. “Yeah, we're just going through the book assigned and analyzing the poems. Pretty easy.” She smiled as she swung her backpack (light pink of course) over her shoulders.

“I got that, but I don't get it, like how we're supposed to analyze. I suck at this class.” She giggled in response, causing Tim's brows to knit in confusion, he couldn't find what was amusing. “It's pretty simple, if you want, I can help you.” She offered him a sweet smile that caused him to smile. He nodded, “Yeah, that'd be awesome! We can work in my dorm.”

She nodded, “I'm y/n by the way.” She offered her hand out for him to shake. He slipped his hand into hers, feeling her soft skin and admiring how well taken care of her nails were. “Tim! Nice to meet ya." He stared into her eyes almost dumbfounded as he shook her hand, a dumb smile plastered on both their faces.

------

A knock on the door startled Daryl as he sat in the living room, tense from the drug effects. Tim opened the door to his dorm, quickly walking over to the front door and opening it, “Hey! Welcome, welcome, you can make yourself right at home. My rooms over here.” Daryl raised a brow as he watched the very opposite girl walk in. Her light clothed and accessories a blinding contrast to everything Tim owned. It was almost comedic.

“We’re gonna be studying, dawg, so don't interrupt so we can get smart.”

“Yeah man, don't worry. You have fun.” He responded, a teasing hint in his tone.

As the girl walked into his room, she couldn't help but look around, admiring all the punk posters and dark themes. She stood out like a sore thumb. Her white sweater, blue jeans, and pink accessories were almost blinding in there. Tim noticed straight away, letting out a small chuckle as he shut the door. “You listen to any of them?” He asked, pointing to his various punk band posters. As expected, she shook her head, “No, haha. They look sick, though.” This caused Tim to smile as she set her bag down on the floor next to his bed. He motioned for her to sit, and she did.

Immediately, she began pulling out the poetry book and some paper. I guess she was here for business. Tim sat down across from her, getting his own stuff out. As she got a paper, she began explaining, Tim nodding in response as he listened. It seemed a hundred times easier to listen to her than the professor. After explanations he began to understand, they'd take turns reading poems out loud, analyzing, highlighting, and annotating what they agreed was important, (though it was mostly Y/n who would point out most and Tim would just agree since she seemed so pleased).

Tim noticed that when she would concentrate she would chew on the end of her pencil, her glossy pink lips attracting him like a moth to light. She had pretty lips and he couldn't help but stare at them, his own mouth seeming to slightly open as he stared until he had to catch himself multiple times.

After about 2 hours of this, they'd finished more than half the assignment, and they were both more than exhausted. It was nearly midnight. Yawning, y/n shut the poetry book, packing her papers into her folder. They hadn't chit chatted a lot, Tim didn't want to interrupt her focus so as they cleaned up Tim spoke up.

“So do you enjoy poetry? You seemed really into all the poems.” Y/n shrugged as she packed away the last of her things, “I guess I do. I like the beauty and emotion put into poems. They're really beautiful if you read them right.” Her response was said in a sleepy tone but was so sincere, Tim found himself feeling a sort of admiration along with a tingling in his stomach.

He smiled at her as she broke out into a yawn again. “You seem tired, we should get to sleep, eh.” He suggested standing up and fixing his bed to rest. She also stood up, stretching her body. “How fars, your dorm? I can walk you. It's pretty late, so I wouldn't want you to get spooked.” She giggled as he said it. Mostly, his tone was what made her laugh.

“It's all across campus, on the other side of the main hall.” His brows raised in concern. “That far? That's like a 10 minute walk.” He knew it wasn't far but she seemed so tired he wasn't sure if she'd even make it, she looked one blink away from knocking over like a leaf in the wind.

“You'd be better off staying here.” She raised a brow at his comment, a frown appearing on her soft face, “I'm not dumb enough to stay in a college guys dorm for the night. If you're thinking what you are, know I'm not the one.” Her sleepy voice was now stern as she headed for the door, her walk telling him that his comment had made her upset.

“Hey, hey. I didn't mean it like that. I promise! I'm on a no sex, drugs, or anything sinful pact so I swear I didn't mean anything that you're thinking.” He raised his arms up in defense, watching as she stopped and turned around, eyeing him.

“I was just saying, since you look so tired. I think it'd be better for you to just sleep here than walk all the way over there.” She stared at him in silence for a few long seconds.

She was only thinking it through so much since she really found Tim to be cute. Ever since she'd laid eyes on him as he walked in through the door mid-lecture, she'd felt her cheeks go pink. Something about the way he looked, or carried himself, or talked, it all fascinated her, and soon enough, she found herself crushing on him like a high school girl.

Sighing, she responded, “Okay, fine. But only because I really am so exhausted.” Tim's face seemed to go from upset to a beaming smile quickly. “Awesome! You can borrow one of my T-shirts if you want. And you can take the bed. I'll take the floor.” He exited the room after tossing a t-shirt onto the bed, leaving her a very flustered and hot mess. Her heart was racing as she lifted up the shirt he'd left for her. It was of a punk band. It smelled just like Tim. She blushed as she put it on. She blushed as she got into Tim's very soft and warm bed, blushed at how sweet it was for him to offer to sleep on the floor.

As she tucked in, Tim knocked, walking in after she answered and smiled down at the view of her covered in his blanket, completely bundled from neck down.

"Thank you for helping me by the way. Learned more from you then the professor, goodnight.”

He shut the lights off, and y/n heard as he shuffled on the floor. Looking down, she saw him lying with a comically small blanket and a decor pillow. Her heart raced in her ears as she decided if she should speak or not.

“You can sleep on the bed, Tim. It's your bed anyway, so I'd feel terrible if you slept on the floor.” She was also pitied by the sight of his tall figure under that poor excuse of a blanket. She heard him shuffle and next thing he was standing.

“You sure? Really, I'm alright sleeping on the good ole floor.” He chuckled.

“Im sure.” She scooted over to the other side, patting the bed. He didn't hesitate even a second as he tucked in beside her, far enough to not make her uncomfortable. As her eyes adjusted, she could begin to make out his silhouette in the dark. That's when she realized how close he really was, and she found a new found heat on her face. She went to cover her head with the blanket as if he could see her reddened cheeks.

“Tim.? You still awake?” She spoke softly under the covers. The soft ruffle of the pillow case sounded, “Yeah. What's up?” He whispered back.

Her hands seemed to tingle along with the butterflies in her stomach. She uncovered herself and moved her body so she could stare at him and him at her, he was already facing her direction though.

“Thank you for letting me stay, I didn't tell you, but it means a lot that you care.” She offered a sleepy smile as she stared into his face. He smiled back, and though she couldn't see it, she could see the outline of his cheeks when he did so.

“It's no biggie. Just the right thing to do. You tell me if you had a pretty girl in your dorm who was tired and lived far away that you wouldn't feel bad if she was alone.” His statement caused her to let out a small giggle into the sheets, which in turn caused her heart to flutter.

She scooted closer to him, not much, not enough to be noticeable in the dark but enough to where she could feel how warm he was, a huge grin spread across her face. "Goodnight, Tim…" Her eyes were far too heavy to keep open now, she shut them, and without a thought cuddled into Tims side causing him to freeze.

He slowly looked down at her, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest, her closed eyes and her features. Gently he wrapped his arm around her, feeling her shift closer to him, his heart ramming against his chest. She was so small in his arms, so warm, he felt himself leaning into her head, resting his head against the top of hers, caressing her back as she slept. He wasn't sure why he was doing this or why he felt so much in his gut.

All he knew was that he was happy, holding her and admiring her. That he was feeling far too much all at once.

He'd have to talk to her about this tomorrow. His emotions would be the death of him.