#here's the shortest version i could manage.

[sanarsi]

Date with a Rockstar

rockstar!Frankie Morales x f!Reader

Part 1 of Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll Series

Summary: Frankie finally manages to invite you for a drink. Unfortunately, things go wrong and he ends up in jail. Warnings: +18, MDNI, protected PIV (implant), pussy eating (no one’s surprised, king will always be king), semi-public sex, car sex (on top! woah), creampie, soft!dom!Frankie, fight, blood, being arrested, mention of attempted rape, use of date rape drug (not by our sweet boy duh) Wordcount: 6,5k An: Without lying to anyone, I have to admit that Frankie is my personal favorite. He's just so gentle and sweet ughhh where's my Frankie :’( Anyway, I hope you like this version of him bc I really enjoyed this one! Music I worked with: Arabella - Arctic Monkeys

Masterlist

You looked at yourself in the mirror one last time. Today you tried harder than usual. You were desperate to finally catch attention of the sexy bassist, who kept sending you glances.

You were desperate enough to put on one of the shortest dresses you had in your closet. You were desperate enough to put on lipstick that had been lying forgotten in your bag for months. You were desperate enough, that your gaze pierced through even your own reflection.

You looked good.

More than just good. You looked sexy.

Sexy enough that when you walked towards the bar, everyone gave you a slightly too long looks. It was a good feeling. Every glance, tickled your ego more and more, making you feel confident.

The clatter of your heels was your only anchor the moment you entered the crowded bar, and the melancholic aura hit all your senses at a dizzying pace. You had already gotten used to the atmosphere that reigned here. The stuffiness, loud music and barely functioning lighting. With time, you could even admit that you liked being here. It was a nice break from your rigid reality.

Here, no one knew you. None of your friends even knew about this place. No wonder, you came here especially from the other end of town.

You came especially for him.

A slightly withdrawn, sweet bassist with big puppy eyes, who played with his band every Thursday.

You immediately headed towards the bar, glancing at the band that was currently entertaining the small crowd. You winced at the squeaky voice of the vocalist and quickly moved to the other end of the room.

The bartender gave you a quick glance, smiling immediately when he saw the familiar face. You smiled back and, avoiding a collision with the slightly tipsy guy, stood at the bar, leaning against the counter.

“I thought I wouldn’t see you here today,” he asked casually, preparing a drink at the same time. You shrugged, watching as he skillfully mixed everything in the shaker.

Al, because that was his name, was the only one who kept you company during your weekly visits. You could say that you became somewhat friends. He was nice, funny and scared away the pests that sometimes hung around you.

“I thought you got to know me a little by now, Al,” you teased with a smirk. You both focused your attention on the drink he handed to some woman, after which he began pouring beer into two mugs.

“Oh yeah,” he snorted in amusement. “You couldn’t miss your Romeo’s concert,” he began, teasing you. You laughed, shaking your head and glanced towards the stage before focusing your attention on him again.

“Quite a lot of traffic,” you said to start a casual conversation. The man immediately perked up, snorting under his breath and mumbling a quiet ‘yeah’ before handing you a glass of cola. He had learned that trying to talk you into a drink never brought the desired result. You thanked him quietly and took a sip.

"They've been coming here like pigs to a barn since morning." You snorted, almost spitting out your drink, starting to choke, to which he just gave you an amused look. "It's Thursday, for fuck's sake. People don't go to work on Fridays or something?" he continued, serving another customer.

He gave a forced smile to the girl who gave him the tip, winking flirtatiously. All she had to do was turn her back to him, and he immediately rolled his eyes in boredom. He looked at you tiredly and finally had a moment to breathe. He reached for the drink hidden under the counter and took a large sip with relief. "These cunts have been after me since morning, too," he muttered, looking around the room.

"Oh stop it, they're just nice."

"Horny," he corrected you, raising his eyebrows when he returned his gaze to you. You nodded, taking another sip.

"True," you said, "but you can't blame them. You don't look like you're on the other side of the force," you explained, pointing at him with your hand. He looked at you with amusement and then snorted.

"Is that what it's called now? The other side of the force?" he asked, pushing himself away from the counter. “God, I really am getting old,” he muttered under his breath, shaking his head with a wide smile, and began serving the next customer.

You turned around, leaning your back against the counter and began to watch the people dancing. It amused you that some people could dance to such crappy music. No offense, the new band that had been playing here for a week just sucked really bad.

"They're bad, aren't they?" A male voice rang out from near you.

You glanced to the side and almost had a heart attack when you saw the man you came here for. Your heart started beating so fast that you almost choked on air.

He was standing, leaning against the counter, maybe a meter away from you, watching the band with the same amusement as you had just a moment ago.

A mug of beer occupied his hand as his fingers slowly ran over the wet glass. You swallowed hard, observing his profile. Slightly disheveled hair under a baseball cap, an aquiline nose and a strong jaw covered with stubble.

Fuck, he was so damn handsome.

Your silence made him look at you and he slowly took a drink of beer. Dark eyes shone like two lanterns in the middle of the ocean. But they couldn't save you from drowning in his gaze. He licked his lips from the hop aftertaste and took a step towards you. You tried to breathe as quietly as possible because you had the impression that you started to pant at the sight of the sweet smile that appeared on his lips.

"Frankie Morales," he introduced himself, extending his hand towards you.

"I know."

Silence fell between you.

You stared at him, not even being aware of what you had just said. Only when he raised an eyebrow in amusement, gave you a sobering slap on the cheek. You closed your eyes, sighing in embarrassment at your behavior.

"I mean-" you started, wanting to somehow get out of the uncomfortable situation you had put yourself in. But his quiet laugh immediately made you fall silent, looking at him as if enchanted. He had a damn charming laugh.

"No, it's okay, I understand," he said, relaxing the whole atmosphere in a second.

Your stomach clenched pleasantly when you finally smiled gently and gave him your hand, introducing yourself. And maybe you were going crazy, but his hand held yours much longer than the situation required. Where he touched you, he left a trail of shivers that stirred your blood to such a state, that you immediately had to drink to cool yourself down.

Frankie leaned against the counter next to you, watching your every move, especially the way your lips formed against the glass, leaving a trace of lipstick behind.

"So..." he began slowly, deep down pleased by your reaction. "I see you here often. You come every Thursday, right?" he asked, wanting to start a conversation.

You nodded, setting the glass down and licking your wet lips. "Yeah."

His smirk only widened. He glanced at the bartender who was sending you not-so-subtle glances.

"I guess not to listen to them." He nodded towards the stage received an amused snort from you in response. He smiled, revealing his teeth as you looked at him with a furrowed brow and a sweet smile.

"No."

"I thought so," he laughed quietly and took a sip of his beer.

This was your chance.

You were finally talking to him.

You could finally show him that you were interested.

"Actually, I'm coming for your band," you said, looking towards the stage to calm the feeling of stress that was starting to grow unwanted in your chest.

"Yeah?" he asked, and for the first time, his gaze traveled down your body. He subtly lingered longer on your exposed thighs and he immediately felt saliva welling up in his mouth.

"Mhm," you hummed, nodding. You looked at him the moment he tore his gaze away from your body and felt a wave of heat as you realized you had his attention.

You knew your slutty dress would do the trick.

"Then you're missing out." You fell silent, staring at him incredulously. You mumbled a quiet, ‘huh’, as he took a sip of beer instead of immediately explaining what he meant. "We're much better at rehearsals."

"Rehearsals?" you frowned, still not understanding what he was talking about.

Did they have any rehearsals that you didn't know about? Did they play on different days? Al would have told you, right?

"Yeah, in the guys' garage, we get carried away more," he explained. But that only caused more confusion. Frankie saw it immediately and straightened up, quickly continuing.

There was no way he had become so hopeless at flirting.

"I mean," he snorted nervously and scratched the back of his neck. "That you should see it. If you're coming here for us, then you should witness a real show." He felt the stress starting to eat him up from the inside.

Why was he even nervous? He was good at it. He never had a problem with flirting.

The only problem was that this time his intention wasn't just to get you into bed.

"Sure," you smiled brightly, and a heavy weight immediately fell from his heart. He sighed with relief and whispered quietly, ‘cool’.

The sight of him like that, gave you a flock of butterflies in your stomach. He was just as stressed as you were, which gave you a strange sense of security. Suddenly it wasn't awkward anymore. You just stood there looking at each other with smiles, feeling the flow of warmth between your bodies.

“Shall I give you my number?” you suggested, raising an eyebrow as he continued to stand there without a word. Your question snapped him out of his suspended animation.

“Oh. Yes, please,” he nodded eagerly, to which you giggled quietly and looked away, searching for Al. Your attention focused on him, immediately drawing him like a magnet.

It wasn’t like he had been watching you from the very beginning, just waiting for some sign that you needed him.

“Do you have a piece of paper and a pen?” you asked, and you didn’t have to say anything more. He started rummaging under the counter and in a few seconds he put everything you asked for in front of you. You smiled gratefully, to which he winked at you and left.

“You’ve become friends in these two months,” Frankie noticed, watching you write down a series of numbers on a small, pink piece of paper.

“Yes, he’s a sweetheart,” you nodded, writing down the last two numbers, but before you lifted the pen from the paper, you felt waves of shivers. Two months.

He knew since you started coming here. He’d been watching you from the very beginning.

Your heart sped up as, without giving anything away, you folded the piece of paper and held it out to him.

“Thanks.” He smiled and took the note, deliberately touching your fingers. Such a small gesture caused a powerful wave of electricity that went straight between your thighs. You held back a moan and sighed quietly instead.

Applause echoed through the bar, so you both looked towards the stage, where the band was just leaving. You both knew what that meant.

“Hey, listen…” Frankie began, feeling a surge of adrenaline. He had to hurry to get to the stage on time. “Would you like to grab a drink after our set?” he asked much more confidently.

“With you?” You smiled wider, feeling like you had won the lottery. Your reaction was everything he could have wanted.

“Yeah I…” he trailed off and glanced towards the stage, where his friends were starting to line up. Pope’s gaze met his, signaling him to hurry up. “You know… I don’t really like sharing,” he finished, glancing at your smiling face. You looked cute. He regretted that he had no time to talk to you longer, but he sincerely hoped that everything would go his way and he could enjoy you later. And your gaze clearly told him that you would gladly let him enjoy you, not just over a drink.

“Okay,” you nodded, biting your lip, which didn’t go unnoticed by him. And it certainly didn’t go unnoticed by his dick.

Fuck, he regretted that he had to go on stage right now.

“Okay,” he repeated, holding your gaze until the sound of a microphone being set up echoed through the room. “I have to go,” he said, as if it wasn’t obvious enough for both of you.

You laughed sweetly at the energy that bubbling inside him. “Okay,” you nodded again.

“Okay,” he replied with a smile, starting to walk backwards towards the stage. You watched with amusement as people moved out of his way so he wouldn’t step on them, until he disappeared into the crowd, only to jump on stage a moment later. You snorted at the sight and took a sip of your cola.

“I thought he’d never dare to approach you,” Al said from behind you. You looked at him with a satisfied smile.

“The dress worked,” was all you said before the sound of guitar and drums echoed through the bar.

The concert had been going on for an hour, gathering more and more people under the stage. The later hour meant more and more customers. Al was busy, fulfilling several orders at once, so you were forced into the company of some guy who wouldn't leave you alone. Bored, you listened as he talked about his vacation in Asia, glancing at Frankie every now and then.

You saw the sweat glistening on his forehead as he watched his fingers play the strings. Every now and then his gaze would meet yours, and the smile he gave you would make you feel warmer and warmer. Only because of that, were you able to endure the company of a self-absorbed idiot, who thought that talking about how rich he was would somehow impress you. You were allergic to poseurs, and he was like a living example from the textbook „HOW TO AVOID LOSERS”.

Frankie had just started playing a solo, so you couldn't tear your eyes away from him, even if you wanted to. The voice of the man next to you stopped reaching your ears the moment the sounds of the bass guitar cut through the space.

You loved watching how devoted Frankie played. You could watch him for hours. Just like he could you.

That's what he did.

And that's why his heart beat faster when he saw something and that probably saved your life.

His smile disappeared and his fingers stopped plucking the strings. You frowned at his strange behavior. He looked in your direction, but his gaze was absent. But you quickly got answers to your unasked questions.

Frankie handed the guitar to Pope, not even looking to see if he aimed for his hand. People squealed in surprise when he jumped off the stage and began pushing through the crowd. Your heart beat faster when you saw him walking towards you. But his gaze was... different. He was furious. You swallowed the lump in your throat, feeling a sudden wave of stress.

He was furious.

But why would he-

Then everything happened too fast for you to react.

Frankie walked past without even looking at you and clenched his fists on the guy's shirt. You jumped on the spot as he pulled him towards himself and threw him to the ground. The poser, whose name you couldn't even remember, was in as much shock as you were, so he didn't even have time to start defending himself as Frankie sat on him, pinning him to the ground with his weight. And then the first punch fell.

His fist connected with the guy's cheek, making him groan in pain. You covered your mouth with your hand, looking at everything in shock, and jumped on the spot as another punch split his lip and his blood appeared on the floor. Your heart was pounding in your chest as you watched Frankie ruthlessly deliver punch after punch. The guy underneath him, groaning in pain, spitting out another portion of blood. People gathered around, watching the spectacle, having a great time.

And you were terrified. You were shaking inside, paralyzed with fear.

Another punch.

His fist was bloody and furiously red from the force with which he punched his opponent's face. And when you gathered the courage to speak up and try to stop it all, his snarl froze you.

"She wasn't interested so you decided to rape her?"

You immediately looked at your glass and noticed in shock that at the bottom, there was something that was slowly dissolving. Cold sweat poured over your body as you realized what you were the victim of.

A rape pill.

"Fuckin’ son of a bitch," Frankie growled, and when you looked at him again, you saw him wiping blood from his lip, which was now cut. The almost unconscious guy had somehow managed to land one punch. But that was all he did.

It was his face that was all blue and bloody. He was the one lying there, barely breathing.

“Frankie,” you whispered in a trembling voice. And despite the chaos around you, he heard you without a problem. He looked at you, breathing heavily, his fist stopped halfway to deliver another punch.

The guy under him coughed, choking on blood, and suddenly three policemen appeared out of nowhere. People in a panic cleared a path for them to get to the very center of the action. And then Frankie was the one lying on the ground, crushed by a cop’s knee. He winced at the unnecessary force they used to overpower him, because he had surrendered without any resistance. Two policemen were collecting what was left of the beaten man from the ground, and the third was handcuffing Frankie. Only that sound tore you out of your stupor.

You watched as the policeman, not very gently, pulled him up and yanked him when he heard his groan of dissatisfaction. With your heart in your throat, you approached them. You were terrified by the whole situation and Frankie noticed it right away. He gave you a smirk and a wink to calm you down.

But that only made the policeman more nervous, so he jerked him again.

"You're happy by the fact that you kicked some guy's ass?" he growled with venom, to which he only smiled wider and licked the cut on his lip. His gaze didn't leave your eyes for a moment; big, shiny eyes that looked at him with confusion.

"I would have killed him if you hadn't stopped me," he replied confidently. You didn't want to believe it, but the seriousness with which he said it exerted the opposite emotions in you.

"We'll see if you're so brave at the police station." And he jerked him again, this time heading towards the exit of the bar.

"Where are you taking him?" you asked loudly, drawing the cop's attention. He glanced at you and his gaze raked down your body with disapproval. Son of a bitch. “I have a right to know, I’m his fiancée,” you added, lifting your chin higher.

Frankie looked at you with amusement and pride. You were so damn sexy when you acted like that.

The cop looked skeptically from you to your fiancé and rolled his eyes. “State police,” he said casually and that was all you saw of him.

Frankie disappeared, and right after him, the whole band. They didn’t seem too bothered as they mumbled the words, ’we need to get him out again’. Again.

Then there were only formalities. You sat on a bar stool answering more questions from one of the policemen. The footage from the cameras and your statements gave the green light to a possible quick bailout of Frankie from custody.

You felt extremely guilty about what had happened, so when you heard the words, ’That’s it. If we have more questions, we’ll contact you’, you almost ran out of the bar.

You probably broke most of the traffic laws when you drove towards the state police station, but it was late, so the streets were almost empty. Luckily, you didn't kill anyone on the way and you made it in one piece.

Apart from your heart beating too fast and your thoughts racing, you were in quite great shape.

You got out of the car and ran towards the police station as fast as your heels would allow you. However, you quickly stopped halfway when you heard loud laughter, which after a moment became faces.

The whole band was just leaving the building, talking loudly with wide smiles on their faces. Everyone was in great spirits, including Frankie. He laughed like a child when he got another punch in the ribs and another warning that next time he'd be behind bars all night.

Pope noticed you first and his smile turned into a smirk as he looked at Frankie and whistled in appreciation.

"For a chick like this, even I would go to jail," he commented, which caught the attention of the rest of the men.

Everyone started looking around until they finally landed on you. Each of them looked down your body and Ben was the only one to nod with cessation, for which he got a punch in the stomach from his brother.

"What?" he groaned but in response he only got a warning look.

You tensed, feeling everyone's eyes on you but then Frankie looked over Ben's shoulder, your attention immediately focused only on him. Shock flew across his face at the sight of you but he quickly smiled and pushed through them. You noticed how everyone exchanged knowing glances with each other, then Tom patted him on the shoulder.

"We’ll leave you here," he said then smiled pleasantly in your direction. You watched as everyone started to walk away, with stupid smiles on their faces.

"Thanks guys!" Frankie shouted but didn't even look in their direction. Only you were able to see Pope wave at him, also not looking at him. You raised an eyebrow with a smile, watching this comical situation but when your gaze fell on the man in front of you again, you became a little more serious.

Stress clenched your stomach as all the events that had happened in such a short time started to come back to you. You swallowed the lump in your throat seeing him take a step towards you.

"I'm sorry for what happened," you blurted out in one breath, making him stop halfway into the next step. He frowned and only then did he notice how stressed you were.

"You have nothing to apologize to me for. It wasn't your fault that some motherfucker slipped some shit into your drink," he said seriously and you felt waves of cold shivers again. It was only when he said it, that it started to dawn on you how you could have ended up if it wasn't for him.

“You ended up in jail because of me,” you added, still feeling guilty.

Frankie snorted under his breath and spread his hands, looking around.

"As you can see, I'm not in it anymore," he noticed, which managed to make you smile a little.

Half the battle.

He slowly walked closer to you with a gentle smile and a tender look. Your heart began to beat faster when he stopped in front of you. Your gaze immediately fell on the cut on his lip and in a rush of something strange, you raised your hand and gently touched the small wound. Electricity passed under your fingertips from the contact with his heated skin.

"Then I apologize for this," you said and his lips formed a smile under your fingers. You immediately looked up at his eyes, which sparkled with amusement.

"I was only defending my fiancée." The tone he spoke with sent butterflies flying through your stomach. You snorted sweetly under your breath and looked down, causing his smile to widen.

With that one sentence, all the tension and stress melted away into thin air.

“Oh, right,” you nodded, more to yourself than to him, and pulled your fingers away from his lips. “Thank you,” you said politely, and then his hand closed around your wrist, trapping yours a few inches from his face. You inhaled louder, feeling his fingers grip your skin.

He gently but firmly pulled you closer, placing your hand on the back of his neck. You gave in to his movements, wanting to see where this was all leading.

"I guess that's not how you should thank your fiancé," he noted with a smirk and slowly put his arm around your waist and connected your bodies in one movement.

Your heart was pounding in your chest as if you had at least run a marathon. Standing in his arms, you couldn't focus on anything. Your gaze was so damn innocent that Frankie automatically hugged you a little tighter, wanting to protect you from everything around. But now the only thing he could protect you from, was himself.

"The policemen who are watching, are definitely not convinced by our love," he teased with a glint in his eye. You shivered, unconsciously digging your fingers into his neck and glanced towards the police station. You ran your gaze over all the windows, but it was dark everywhere.

“But no one’s looking,” you whispered, as if someone could hear you, and looked at him again. And you almost moaned when he leaned in a little closer to you.

“But someone’s could,” he whispered as well.

You immediately understood what was hidden behind his words and even though you tried, you couldn't stop the smile that spread across your lips.

"Right," you nodded and lifted your other hand, placing it on his cheek the moment he leaned down to connect your lips. You purred feeling his stubble tickle your skin and with a giggle you let his tongue connect with yours. He tasted so damn good and was so gentle that you quickly felt the arousal building between your thighs.

His hands slowly ran over your back and waist, which made you moan softly. And your moan made him sigh before he pressed you harder against his chest. His fingers dug pleasantly into your skin until your blood started to boil.

You slid your fingers into his locks that were tangled on his neck and gently ran your nails over his scalp. This time he moaned softly and deepened the kiss even more. His tongue was in perfect sync with yours, not even trying to dominate you for a moment. It was a completely new feeling and you had to admit, that you fuckin’ loved it.

“So what about that drink?” you asked when he pulled away from you for a moment to catch his breath. You bit your lip with a gentle smile and slowly ran your nails down the back of his neck and Frankie had to admit that he was already having trouble standing when his cock began to painfully dig into his jeans.

He pursed his lips, holding back a groan and nodded eagerly at your offer and he was able to hold out if you wanted to have a drink with him. He was able to wait until you gave him a sign that you wanted to go further.

But then you started walking towards your car, gyrating your hips in front of his face.

A quiet growl escaped his throat as he looked helplessly at the sky, mentally counting to ten to calm down. Only then did he look at you again and damn it, it didn’t work.

He quickly covered the distance between you, calling your name. You managed to unlock the car with the remote before you looked in his direction and his lips immediately attacked yours. You gasped in surprise but gave in without resistance as he forced his tongue into your mouth. His fingers tangled in your hair, holding you against him as he slowly moved forward, pushing you back until you hit the hood of your car. When he pinned you with hips, his hands immediately found their way to your waist, his fingers gripping your flesh tightly. Another moan died in his mouth as you tried to return his kisses with the same fervor.

"I'm sorry," he sighed against your lips, sliding his hands down to your bare thighs and clenching them perfectly under your ass. You shivered, digging your nails into his shoulder. "I don't usually start like this," he said, trying to somehow excuse his behaviour, his lack of restraint, right outside the doors of the police station. You moaned into his mouth as he massaged your thighs intensely, getting closer and closer to their core.

"Me neither," you gasped and then both of you locked eyes.

And you both knew what a fucking bad idea had flown through your heads.

And both of you seemed completely unconcerned about the consequences the moment your lips connected again and his fingers hurriedly began to pull up your dress.

You were acting like stupid teenagers but suddenly it didn't matter. All that mattered now was that he was spreading your thighs with his knee so he could be even closer. And when his hips brushed against yours, you felt how hard he was, how much he wanted to get out of his tight pants because of you. And you'd be lying if you said you didn't leak at the thought of him entering you.

Frankie gasped, grinding against you once more before he pulled away, leaving you breathless. You moaned at the sudden feeling of losing his soft lips on yours, but it quickly passed the moment you saw him kneeling in front of you. You shivered at the sight of his head between your legs and whimpered impatiently. His warm breath fanned your pubic but his lips found their way to your hip. You closed your eyes and gasped at the pleasant waves of warmth that began to spread through your body, from every place he kissed.

He slid from hip to your thigh and his warm tongue combined with his scratching beard were already taking you to the heights of pleasure. Oh, it had definitely been too long since anyone had touched you. Or maybe it was Frankie who had such an effect on you.

You didn't have a moment to think about it because you felt his fingers gently hook your panties, pushing them aside. You inhaled louder and looked down with your lips parted. He leaned down, pressing the tip of his nose between your slit and shamelessly inhaled your scent. He groaned, bringing you to a state you had never been in before so quickly.

"You smell amazing, baby," he purred, tightening his fingers on your thighs and without warning, he plunged his tongue into your leaking hole. You moaned loudly, looking down at him and your hand tangled itself in his hair.

Frankie slowly ran his tongue between your lips, tasting all the excitement that had managed to escape from you. He purred as if he was eating his favorite dessert. You tightened your fingers in his hair, feeling how every movement of his delicate tongue brought you closer and closer to the heights of pleasure.

"Frankie," you gasped loudly and in response you only received a quiet purr and his tongue on your clit. A broken moan escaped you before you started to breathe heavily because he simply started making out with her.

He sank into your pussy and didn't want to break away even for a second. Like a thirsty man, he circled your sweet spot, licked up your juices, and kissed you. Passionately and deeply, until your knees began to shake.

"Fuck, I'm gonna come," you moaned squeaky, pulling his head closer to your temple. You started to gasp for air, chasing your orgasm that was inexorably approaching with every movement of his tongue. Until finally, you felt a wave of fulfillment pass through your body. You held his hair tightly, not letting him move as he continued to guide you through your orgasm. Broken moans echoed around as your clit throbbed under his tongue.

You swallowed hard and loosened your grip on his hair, which immediately allowed him to lick everything that flowed out of you. You moaned as you felt his tongue gently plunge into your throbbing hole. A quiet curse escaped your lips as you calmed your breathing, looking at the starry sky.

"Tell me you're on some kind of pills because I don't know if I have any condoms with me," he gasped, suddenly appearing in front of you.

His lips glistened with your juices and you couldn't resist pulling him to you by his shirt to kiss him hard. You were so fucking grateful for the wonderful orgasm he gave you, you couldn't put it into words. So you just let yourself kiss him passionately, hugging his neck tightly. He didn't resist, in fact, he willingly leaned closer and sank his teeth into you with pleasure.

"Mhm," you hummed in confirmation because you couldn't even tell him that you had an implant and that you desperately wanted to feel him inside you without any shitty latex barriers. That was enough for him to reach into his pants and sloppily start unbuckling his belt. And you were so impatient that in the meantime you unzipped his fly. You moaned feeling his cock twitch towards your hands.

"Baby, I swear to you, I'm clean," he gasped, reaching for his seething cock.

You immediately jumped, sitting on the hood of the car and spreading your legs wide for him. You didn't even look down when you felt his hot tip right next to your entrance. A groan escaped his throat as he passed between your wet lips a few times and slowly entered you. Your loud moan died in his mouth, which effectively silenced you as he went deeper and deeper, only to withdraw a moment later and go even deeper again. Your walls clenched tightly around him, getting used to his invasive presence. Either you hadn't had a cock inside you for so long, or he was well-endowed by mother nature.

“You’re so big,” you whimpered, taking just over half of him.

Frankie groaned loudly, gripping your hips tightly, trying to go deeper but just couldn’t. He cursed under his breath and slowly began to thrust into you, hoping he could stretch you out more over time. But just half of him was enough to make you cock drunk.

You sloppily began to kiss him back and bit his lip hard when he tried to go deeper inside you. He hissed in pain and you felt a metallic taste in your mouth. You looked at him terrified but you couldn’t fight the pleasure his dick was giving you, still moving inside your tight pussy.

“I’m sorry,” you moaned, digging your nails into the back of his neck as he thrust his hips harder again. You slid your other hand down to his cheek and wiped the blood that was starting to run down his chin with your thumb.

“Again,” he gasped, looking at you completely pussy drunk. You clenched around him, making him groan, closing his eyes and letting you press hard into his mouth again.

The pain of the open wound and your tongue gently caressing it, sent shivers down to his balls. He felt fucking nirvana as your pussy allowed him to go deeper with each thrust. He tried to fight the quickly approaching orgasm but he simply couldn't. The way you caressed his body was beyond him.

"Baby please, I can't hold it in any longer," he moaned, starting to tremble. Then your lips began to create a trail of kisses along his jaw to his ear. You needed a long moment to come yourself, but right now you wanted nothing more than to please him.

"Go ahead," you whispered with a smile and gently bit his earlobe. The sounds he began to make with each subsequent thrust could bring you to another orgasm without even having to touch your pussy. You made a mental note to try it with him sometime.

All the moans went straight to his ear, and from his ear, straight to his cock, which was pulsing furiously, signaling the approaching orgasm. And then he made the most animalistic sound you've ever heard in your life. His balls tightened in pleasure, and all of his cum erupted deep inside you. He panted heavily, thrusting into you a few more times before he stopped and rested his head on your shoulder. Your cunt throbbed with the excitement of his orgasm and squeezed the last drops out of him, making him shiver. You began to place soft kisses on his neck and played with his hair between your fingers.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he said contritely, feeling awful that he had selfishly come before you.

“Don’t be,” you whispered, smiling fondly and pulling away. Frankie straightened up, looking at you with sparkling eyes. He looked so damn innocent after his orgasm that you immediately wanted to take care of him.

“I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” he offered and you could hear the hint of pleading in his voice. You smiled wider, shaking your head and placing your hands on his cheeks, stroking his stubble with your thumbs.

“Actually, it was the best first date of my life,” you admitted and leaned down, placing a soft and sweet kiss on his lips. Frankie looked at you with puppy eyes and wrapped his arms around your waist tightly. “And honestly, I’m counting on another one. I haven't had this much fun in a while," you bit your lip hiding your wide smile and that was enough to stop him feeling like a dick. He smiled softly and this time he leaned down connecting your lips in a sweet and slow kiss.

"In that case, I make pretty good drinks," he whispered biting your lip getting a moan from you in return.

"I'd like that."

[naamahdarling]

Today's medical update, please pardon any weirdness as I am using speech to text, and please excuse how long this is. I put an excellent picture of Fancy at the end for you. Here we go.

The shortest version is that my GP is going to try and centralize this. I have made an appointment for Monday. We are going to start over from the very beginning. New specimens, new cultures, everything.

The long version is kind of wild ride. It's going under a cut

My GP is now telling me that on two of the occasions that I went to Urgent Care or the hospital for a UTI, the records say that I did not actually have one.

This makes no sense whatsoever. I was symptomatic and I could smell it. On both of these occasions, I was told in no uncertain terms that I did have one.

I do not believe I was lied to at either facility. That means the only possibilities are that the testing was done improperly, the results were charted improperly, the records were sent over improperly, or I didn't understand what was being said to me.

At this point, with this absolute clown show that has been unfolding around me, this ridiculous circus where each act is fraught with nonsensical antics even more baffling than the ones before, I am literally unable to come to any conclusions. This is absolutely maddening.

And it's frightening, because there is something wrong, genuinely, and it might be something that they are unable to detect with the methods they are currently using. That's scary for a multitude of reasons, one of which is that they are not going to be willing or able to treat something if they do not think it exists. The other is that it opens the door to the possibility of their being further testing, which makes me violent to even contemplate. I want what is wrong with me to be simple, easy to treat, and relatively benign.

This has been frustrating, and drawn out, and I am sick of it. By itself it isn't enough to completely break me down. It's been almost unbearable when combined with the facts that I have serious concerns about the health of three of my cats, that my father seems to be worsening in his condition, that I have several other medical storylines going concurrently with this one, one of which is extremely stressful and frightening, and that all of this fuckery and running around has caused me to have to cut out most of the very, very few enjoyable and meaningful activities that are present in my life.

It has impacted my ability to be present for my partner, and for my pets, for me to sustain communication and relationships with people who are not my boyfriend or my best friend, and to simply fucking relax.

Also I can't fuck. Like, I know that this is the laugh at horny people website, but that is significant. Receiving not just physical touch but intimate touch is one of the very few ways I have of assorting ownership over my own body at this time.

I feel my identity has shifted from an internally defined "struggling person just going about their business" to an externally defined identity as a patient with a body that is sick and who must now structure their life around the demands of a system that does not care about me in the slightest, even though the providers usually do.

From the outside I know that this doesn't seem that terrible. I've spent the vast majority of this with no pain, and the times I have been in pain haven't crested a 3. If it weren't for the fact that I don't know what it is, it would be relatively trivial!

Unfortunately, because this isn't all I have going on, it's been really fucking things up. I space my appointments out so that I have time to recover between each one. I have PTSD, I have medical trauma, I have emotional reactions after stepping into a medical facility for any reason, and when things go wrong even in a very small way they can be intense. I manage this by allowing myself to have the reaction, experience all of the feelings, and come back to myself. It is a healthy way of doing things. It doesn't work, though, if I'm having to deal with one thing after another and no time in between to recover from it. This is essentially what has been happening to me for 2 months. Appointments, phone calls, messages, fixing mistakes, having to explain my history repeatedly as it gets ever more complicated. There's a lot more to it than just one appointment a week, which is already a lot for me.

I know this is something that chronically ill people deal with all the time, often for years, often for life, but the extent of it is new to me and very difficult to bear. My personality is vanishing under the weight of all of this crap. I do not feel like myself.

So yeah, sorry for rambling so much but this is just been...I don't even have the words to describe it. Nonsensical, but in an unfortunately consequential way. I've been going in circles all this time, apparently.

I don't really expect anybody to read all of this. But if you did, thank you. It means a lot to me. This place, and all of you, function as a sort of pressure relief, and a source of constant, pleasurable entertainment. I know many of you empathize with what I'm going through, and that helps me to feel less alone. That all by itself is so important.

Anyway, here's my cat.

She got to be on the puzzle table and was very smug about it.

[i-am-the-oyster]

hey! you know icke braun’s autobiography? i saw a post that you made about the book and that you and somebody were working on translating (the post is from like 2022) and i was wondering if you had a pdf or something of the translated version?

Yes! Icke Braun should get so much more attention from Beatles fans.

@packyourromanticmind has very kindly shared the full text that she and her mother translated (below the cut).

If you'd like to follow along the analysis of Icke and Paul's relationship that I've been working on with @ilovedig go here (we're hoping to continue the series soon).

Anyway, back to the translation:

Kathia heard from a friend that a great group was playing the Kaiserkeller in the Grosser Freiheit area . She kept going on at me that we should go see them play. When we talked about it in the Pigalle, people all pulled skeptical faces.. ‘That’s rock n’ roll that they’re playing, it’s absolutely below our level’.    And anyway, for us it was a dangerous area, but still, I was very intrigued. One could go and listen to them and then decide what we thought of the music, and so I went with Kathia.

It was a sort of wake up experience. This music meant, without exaggeration, a total change in my life. For the first time, I saw The Beatles, I was totally out of my comfort zone;    that was my music. From one moment to the next, Earl Alexander and the whole jazz scene was yesterday’s news. The Beatles brought much more dynamic energy and aggressiveness to the stage. I could feel myself bodily transmorph into the music. It wasn’t just the music that I found amazing, I also found the way that the boys presented themselves on stage - their choreography was amazing. Paul was left-handed and stood with John or George together who were right-handed and the microphone was in the middle. So they stood with their faces to the microphone but the public saw them from the side and it was a wonderful symmetry which fitted their music. At this time the band consisted of five people, Paul McCartney on bass guitar and song, John Lennon; rhythm guitar and song, George; lead guitarist and song, Stu Sutcliffe; bass,    and Pete Best on drums. In the shortest time possible, I became a fervent fan. I went to the Kaiserkeller several times. The atmosphere was rough there, sometimes even dangerous because most of the guests there were rockers. Rock n’ roll was their sole music and they had no patience with people next to them who weren’t Exis. The Beatles at that time had their own style. As I said, I don’t understand music a lot, but to my ears, there was everything in their music that later became their sound. Above all, it was rock n roll. They covered Chuck Berry, and of course the rock fans loved him. The music and the beer would flow freely,    the atmosphere could change quickly, and they would have start a fight. This was not allowed by the Kaiserkeller and its owner, (who was called Horst and was a former boxer).    For the rockers, it was a seal of honour to poke fun at the people who that didn’t fit in with them, especially their enemies, among them of course the Exis to which I belonged. The best thing was to ignore the poking altogether and take yourself to another corner. Luckily I always managed to keep away from the fights, without completely losing face.

After a few weeks, the Beatles went into the Top Ten on the Reeperbahn, where their concerts were mostly visited by people who allowed themselves greater musical freedom. So, visitors like Kathia and I weren’t in the minority anymore. We were at the Top Ten most evenings, where a certain trust situation between The Beatles and us developed. There were situations where I really regretted that I hadn’t learnt better English, otherwise I would have had many more chances to have contact with the boys. One morning after a long night in Top Ten, Kathia and I went to bed between 3 and 4am in the morning. We went to her house and fell into bed exhausted, where we spent the rest of the day in bed. In the evening around 8 or 9pm we made our way to Hamburg again, back to the Top Ten. On the way from Ahrensburg, we came past a large strawberry plantation. Because there were no people around, Katia said, let’s steal a few strawberries. The strawberries were small, red and sweet and after we had eaten enough, we said, let’s take some for The Beatles. Kathia went into a barn and came out with a big basket. We picked so many strawberries that the basket overflowed, and on the way to the car, most fell into the road. We put the basket behind my seat and drove off. At 10pm at the Top Ten, The Beatles were already in full swing, and the dance floor was thick with people. Between two sets, we took the strawberries to the stage. The other guests joked and called us the young strawberries. We could have invited the band for a round of beer or schnapps, like the sailors or rockers did, but the strawberries were something else. The Beatles were overjoyed like children, and Paul said ‘what a wonderful idea, you can do this again!’ (He said this in bad German, which he had learnt in school). The four boys started to eat and couldn’t stop. The interval became longer and longer because the basket was so full and took a long time to empty. The public began to protest, so John decided to start throwing strawberries at people, and then Paul and the others copied him. The public then threw back the squashed strawberries and it became a food fight…Luckily most of the strawberries had been eaten. Paul then came down from the stage and asked Kathia and myself if we had a musical wish. There was a song which we liked called ‘Till There Was You’ and Kathia whispered to me that we should choose this song. It was a love song and didn’t actually fit into the whole rock n’ roll genre that they normally played. Unfortunately Paul didn’t understand that this was Kathia’s music choice and thought for years that this was my favourite song . Every time that I went to the Top Ten or The Star and he saw me, he would play ‘Till There Was You, which was was quite embarrassing for me because it wasn’t my taste of music at all, and also because the rockers bombarded me with rude gestures and remarks.    Years later, when the boys were already famous, and I was allowed backstage, we were sitting in the Ernst Merck hall and George Harrison mentioned ‘Till There Was You. I told him that it was actually Kathia’s    music taste and not mine. So he understood,    but there is still footage from The Star Club where one can hear “And now we will play ‘till there was you’ for Icke”.

After the strawberry episode, we came to know The Beatles better. Sometimes we went with them to a bar. Down below in the port, there was an English speaking pub where you could get English food and be served by English waiters and we went there a few times to eat. It was called British Sailors Society. Pete Best was very rarely there, he usually stayed in the background. And also we didn’t see much of Stu Sutcliffe, he was already dating Astrid Kircherr and concentrating more on his studies in his art school, instead of the music. The best contact I had was with Paul,    not only because he was the only one who spoke German,    but to me he was the most likeable. I went with him a few times to the Raa-Wiese. At one point he wanted to sleep with a girl, a groupie who he met in the Top Ten. He didn’t want to meet in the little room that he shared with John, George and Pete, so there were very few other opportunities for inviting girls back . He asked me if he could take the girl back to mine. Although I didn’t have much space either, but I still said yes. So I invited both of them into my little beatle car; Paul sat next to me on the passenger seat, and he had the girl on his lap. Even though she was small and dainty, it was a very tight squeeze. In a convivial mood we drove along the river at 4am in the morning, reciting tongue twisters. It was my job to say ‘red lorry yellow lorry’ three times. It was very difficult with my bad English…it was even more difficult because I was laughing so much. Suddenly the girl shrieked as in front of us a car appeared. I could only steer the car to the right and we narrowly avoided a crash. However I turned the wheel too sharply and we turned around full circle and came to a stop in the middle of the street. We really had amazing luck that at this time of day, as there was very little traffic. The car that we nearly hit was a taxi , a tank-like black Mercedes. The driver was standing next to his car and shouting like a lunatic, and he was not far from starting a fight. I was in two minds whether to drive off or not, because the taxi driver was a bullish type and he wanted to lay into me. However I decided to walk over to him, and with great effort and honest regret, I persuaded him not to report us so we were able to continue our journey in peace, although the girl now had to sit behind us. That was the worst near fatal collision of my whole life. We had been laughing so much, I didn’t notice that we had somehow ended up on the other side of the road, and we were a hairs breath away from a head on crash. We were uninsured, without airbags or safety belts and it could have been curtains for all three of us and the lorry driver. One could imagine how much poorer the world would have been without Paul..    no Beatles! The band would not have made it without Paul. George might have become an electrician, John an artist and Ringo, well he wasn’t even in the picture.    No, I don’t want to imagine it. I later relayed the story to Thomas Struck,    a Hamburger underground filmmaker who went on to make a small film of our near accident .

It’s strange that there is a rumour in this context which has been going around since 1969, and that is that Paul McCartney apparently died in a car accident in 1966 and has since been impersonated by a double. This rumour became almost a conspiracy theory which the 74 year old Ringo Starr corroborated in an interview in 2015. The theory, he said, was that Billy Shears played the double for Paul. At first, everyone wanted to keep the story going, so that record companies, and concert venues and the public were spared the gruesome details of the reality, and because Shears played his role so perfectly and nobody noticed the exchange of personality, they left it at that. Even on stage, Shears played Paul perfectly . In fact, Ringo asserts, he was better than McCartney! I don’t know what was going on between him and Paul, but such differences to me seemed very hateful. Paul apparently, after this unveiling, very angrily retorted that it was the senile gossip of an old man.

I met Paul long after the supposed accident and I never had the feeling that I was talking to a double. On the contrary, in 1991, at the Hamburg premiere about their previous world tour, I visited him in the Hotel Atlantic. He was standing with his wife Linda and two men at reception and was just about to leave when he saw me. Spontaneously he came over to me and greeted me. Billy Shears couldn’t have reacted like this, because he didn’t know me. Ringo got his comeuppance for his angry diatribes later when a post on Twitter dated    2016 declared him dead. This rumour (and naturally it was nothing more), spread like wildfire over the whole internet. I am curious to see which rumour will be the next one to make the rounds.

Anyway back to reality. When we arrived in Rahlstedt, we had to drive through a little housing estate, and it was night when we arrived; the moon was shining brightly, and the little allotment houses looked like normal houses in miniature form. Paul laughter and said; ‘I’ve never seen anything like this, do dwarves live in them?’ No I said, these are garden houses , they belong to normal people and I live in one of these houses (I was joking). In Paul’s defence , he had had a few drinks, and his tolerance wasn’t very high.

My little room suddenly became quite tight for three people; Paul, his girlfriend, and myself. Paul thought that there was even less space here than the room the group shared above the Top Ten. Because I was feeling hospitable (and because I had a bad conscience about the accident), I gave him my bed, and proceeded to make myself comfortable on the floor. Sleep however, did not come to mind, because the girl tried repeatedly to charm Paul and to pull him into her arms. Instead, he lay with his head supported by the headboard and told us stories about how he and his friends spent their nights in Hamburg. He was talking about himself, John , George and Pete Best. Stu Sutcliffe was better off because he lived with his girlfriend Astrid Kircherr . For the first time I discovered that the four Beatles lived together in a room above the Top Ten with only a little skylight, and that was only a small improvement to the hellhole their previous boss, Bruno Koschmider had put them in when they first arrived in Hamburg. They were still with Stu at that point, so it was five of them in total.    Bruno, who owned the Bambi Kino, vacated a room for them that previously housed the film reels. It was small, unheated, had no window and in comparison to their current abode, it didn’t even have a skylight. To sleep, they had to lie on straw sacks on the floor. The only positive, Paul said, was that this room was directly behind the cinema screen and the boys were able to listen to the dialogue and music of the films that played from 4pm in the afternoon. The room was lit with one tiny bare lightbulb which hung from the ceiling, and there wasn’t even a wash basin in the room. To wash themselves, they had to go to the mens toilets in the cellar. That’s where they got know Tante Rosa, the toilet attendant. Paul was charmed by her, she washed all their sweat soaked clothes, otherwise, they would have had nothing to wear. Without Tante Rosa, they would have long ago been buried in their own dirt. He also told us of the first time they went on stage at the Indra, a strip tease joint, which was also owned by Bruno. Because it was such a bad joint, the Beatles had to share billing with the strip tease dancers. For two months they had to endure this crap, because their previous manager, Alan Williams had told them that they would be appearing in a huge nightclub, (which actually turned out to be the Kaiserkeller). Unfortunately, Derry And The Seniors were appearing there, who were of the opinion that The Beatles had nothing to offer in Hamburg, and they would bring the place into ill repute with their English rock n’ roll. However it wasn’t long before The Beatles were allowed to appear, because the Senior’s contract had expired. However, their living situation didn’t change.

Paul couldn’t stop telling these stories, and I felt very privileged and honoured that he trusted me to share so much. In the meantime, the girl had long since fallen asleep and was snoring loudly, whereas we two talked deep into the night, and our conversation didn’t find an end. Very late in the night, just as it got light outside, Paul suddenly stopped speaking mid-sentence, fell asleep and began snoring louder than the girl. I tried to find myself a bearable place on the floor, but I couldn’t fall sleep for a long time because of the snoring.

I never got to know Bruno Koschmider but after Pauls stories, I’m assuming he must have been a dreadful man. Small, hunched and constantly with a miserable face.. strangely, in World War Two, apparently he performed as a clown, although he never made us laugh. This is the story that Pete Best told us anyway; that ‘he was never a clown and he never made us laugh’. In some strange way however, he had came into the money and was able to buy the Indra, the Kaiserkeller, and the Bambi-Kino cinema . His only merits was he was the first one to bring a British sound to Hamburg; he had started with Tony Sheridan, then came Derry And The Seniors, Rory Storm and The Hurricanes and finally, the Beatles. On the other hand, one could say that he misused these young people shamefully. For instance, The Beatles had to sign an agreement that for 30 marks per person, they had to play four hours a night from Monday - Friday,    and on Saturday they had to play for six hours.    Bruno even took money during their intervals.    When they moved above the Top Ten and were earning 5 marks more a day, they had to play for longer. But even so, they thought it was a move in the right direction, because they got on better with their new boss, Pete Eckhorn. Bruno threw it in their faces that they ‘deserted’ him. Then he became nasty and threw all sorts of accusations at them. First of all, because George Harrison was underage, he reported him for this. Then he reported Paul and Pete, accusing them of trying to burn down his cinema. In reality, they had only left their old boss two used condoms as a farewell present . In the end, it was only John who stayed behind in Hamburg, however he became very lonely without his friends and later returned of his own free will back to the U.K. So the story of The Beatles in Hamburg could have come to an end without much ado . But as luck would have it, they had signed a contract with Eckhorn, which means they could travel back to Germany very soon.

I once had Paul, John and George stay with me at my home in the Raawiese. My landlords weren’t home, only their 12 year old son who hung around us, and their Chinese Nightingale, who were heard singing in the background. We made a small fire in the garden and started to empty a bottle of whisky that we had bought with us. The little boy showed us a mass of twigs which were waiting to be burned, the wood was a little fresh and it was hard to light. After a short while, we had a little campfire, although the smoke got into all our eyes!    Perhaps it was the whiskey talking, or our sporting aspirations , but we decided to start jumping over the fire. After every jump we were allowed to take a slug of whiskey. Even the young boy dared to join in. When John made a misjudged jump and nearly landed in the fire and burnt his trousers, we stopped playing. He complained his only lederhosen was now kaput, although they didn’t seem damaged to me.    In the meantime, the whiskey flask was nearly empty and we were all quite drunk. It was late and the three wanted to get home to rest before their next performance. With my drunken head on, I told them I could drive them, but John wanted to borrow my beatle car instead. The fact that he had no driving license, and probably couldn’t drive anyway, didn’t matter to him. Unfortunately it mattered to me, so instead of driving my taking the car, I took them to the bus stop. It was really hard for us to walk even the few hundred meters with our wobbly legs. If we had driven there definitely would have been another accident!

When I returned to the Raawiese, the little boy came to me in great distress and told me that the nightingale was dead. ‘Which nightingale?’ I mumbled. I let myself be taken to the house where the birdcage hung. Then I saw the problem…The nightingale lay on his back with rolled up feet and he wasn’t moving. Even when I gently nudged him, I couldn’t bring him back to life. Perhaps our campfire had killed him. I actually thought to myself, when the landlords find out about this, I will be out on the street. So I told the boy that our adventures with the fire had to be kept a secret from his parents. He agreed, and we threw some water onto the campfire and moved everything away that was still lying around from the garden party. I was hoping the neighbours were away, and wouldn’t tell on us. Anyway, my fears were ungrounded, because although the landlords were sad about the death of my bird, they never asked any questions. Obviously the little boy stayed true to his word. I met him recently after a visit to the Kleingartensiedlung.    He still lived in the little old house. In the meantime, he had renovated and extended, but otherwise it looked exactly like it did in bygone days. He told me proudly that he tells our story to the people on his estate, and they fall about in surprise when he says that The Beatles once came to his house and jumped over their camp fire.

From April 3rd 1962, The Beatles played in the Star Club. Kathia and I had a sort of place of honour in the upper circle which was always reserved for us. We never paid any entrance fee and we always had a great view. Although since then, I’ve had another girlfriend - we still sat together in the same box. On the box in front of us was Astrid Kirchherr, Klaus Vormann and Jurgen Vollmer. There were the first guard of Beatles friends, and we belonged to the second. The great thing about our box was that we were allowed to use it even when other musicians appeared in the star club . In those days, these were the prominent people in the rock n’ roll scene of the time; Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis.    For all these visits, we didn’t have to pay a penny, except for Ray Charles, who we once saw in the Star Club; that cost me 20 Marks.

Next to the Star Club, there was a place called Zer Holle. This was where I often sat with The Beatles, but also with other bands, such as Gerry And The Pacemakers. There was sometimes a woman joining us called Mary Brown, who was the leader of the Beatles fan club. I was once here with Mary, Paul McCartney, Gerry and a few others. Gerry went on at me that I should become his fan too. He spoke nonstop and he kept repeating the same sentence. “Icke, you should become MY fan”. At the beginning I felt very honoured and flattered, but after a while he got on my nerves . I ordered him a beer and although he was already fairly merry, he toasted me and said, “now I’m becoming an honorary Beatles fan”. I asked Mary to show me my fan passport which she showed me immediately. I was member number 62. Until the late 60s, Mary Brown sent every member of the fan club a vinyl recording of music and best wishes from The Beatles. As an honorary member, I also had to pay very little for the beer. Once, a waiter who was new to the Star Club, asked me for 1.50 Marks and I didn’t have any change, so I gave him a 20 Mark note . He said to me, ‘when I’ve got the change i’ll come back to you’. I tried to attract his attention when he passed by my seat, but he looked at me like he didn’t recognise me. He insisted that I’d only given 1.50 and I became very stubborn and started arguing, and he threatened to throw me out. At that moment Horst Fascher walked past. I didn’t know him very well but he knew me. I told him I’d given the waiter 50 marks    but he hadn’t given me any change. One moment said Horst. The waiter was a head higher than the owner but he knew what was coming. Horst grabbed him by his arm , turned him away from me and said a word I didn’t understand . Then he waited until the the waiter opened his pocket book and gave me 48.50 as change. Normally I’m an honest person, but when I’m being swindled, the war-child in me comes through, who has learnt to insist and get tough, even if it’s at the cost of other people. I didn’t have a bad conscience because of what I had done. First, I did to him what he did to me, and second, on his evening round, he had probably done the same to the rest of his evening guests.

Horst was the eldest of three brothers. They were all small men under 1m 70, but they were feared fighters. He was the first one to have the idea to bring English rock music to Germany. In 1959 he appeared as a lightweight fighter in a match in London. That evening after the fight, he partied through Soho and landed in a club where rock n’ roll bands were playing live.    The German version of this music was also playing at the moment in the Kaiserkeller, but this was a different format. The singer was Tony Sheridan. His appearance was as strong and authentic as Bill Haley or Elvis Presley, who one only knew through Hollywood films. Horst was amazed. Back in Hamburg, he told Bruno Koschmider of his discovery. Bruno flew instantly to London and engaged Tony for his Kaiserkeller . Horst was the second string to his fiddle; he was later responsible for bringing the Beatles from the Kaiserkeller into Peter Eckhorn’s Top Ten, and then to Manfred Weissleder in the Star Club. Both his brothers were waiters in the Star Club but otherwise they didn’t really play a large role. Freddie, on the other hand, who was the youngest brother, became my protector. I was only a little player, and the impression was sometimes that people could push me around. But if I became cross with somebody and Freddie noticed, he would come between us . He was little, and his opponents were mostly bigger so he would grab them by the shirt, pull them down to his level and give them a headbutt, then there was peace.

With his brother Horst, I once had a special adventure. At Christmas of ’62 I had made The Beatles a special Christmas plate (as I had done the year before), where amongst other things I always distributed were bags of Liptons tea. That was a trademark - it was meant to be a quirky reminder of home. I also placed candles on the plates, and I wanted to bring all of this onto the stage, but Horst told me off and said, ‘you can’t do this with lit candles on stage - its much too dangerous…What were you thinking? Give them to me!’    So he dimmed the lighting in the room and took the coloured plates with the lit candles to the stage. The Beatles were already throwing tea bags and biscuits at each other, and Paul took the microphone and said, ‘Icke, you are so considerate’. Because of the teabags, they recognised the plates were my invention, even though Horst had taken them to the stage. The hardened rockers in the audience thought it was a bit feminine and misplaced that I should give such Christmas presents for them. But for me, every appearance The Beatles made was a present that was bigger than I ever could have given them back. Every time I listened to them, an intense feeling of happiness flowed through me . In them, I could forget everything around me. I never experienced such a total immersion in any other rock band who appeared at the Star Club. Perhaps there was something feminine about it , but I didn’t care.

Something feminine was at play the first time I met John. I sat with him and the rest of the band at The Star Club at the end of the night after their gig. The bar was the shape of a large oval on which one side John sat with George and a few other guests, whereas Paul and I were about five meters away on the other side. We chatted about who was our favourite author.    Naturally the guys only knew English or American authors, that was clear. Who mentioned who I’m not so sure. One said Lewis Caroll, another said Dylan Thomas. I had recently seen the play Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas, otherwise I knew nothing of him. ‘And you Icke?’ Asked Paul..    ‘who is your favourite author?’. ‘Henry Miller, I find him really great’, I replied.    At the same moment, John glanced over to me. Up until then, he had been watching - with his usual slightly bored expression, Bettina the bar lady as she washed up glasses and cleared up the bar. Our conversation didn’t seem to interest him enormously. Now he looked at me directly in the eyes. Silently and without taking his eyes off me, he came around the whole length of the bar, kissed me on the mouth and walked back to his place. At first I was very surprised and didn’t know what to do about this. Then I found it slightly amusing and didn’t think any more of it . A few days later, it happened again. I met him on the walkway behind the stage and again he took my hand and kissed me. That made me actually think about the fact.. ‘Oh my God, am I gay?, because I don’t know if I can do this’. But what was really behind this, I don’t know, and never knew. Maybe the kisses were a sort of overture? Because amongst homosexuals, he was known as a Klemm-schwuler (‘camp gay’ /closet case).    I have no idea.    In any case, I saw his girlfriend Cynthia, who visited him in 1961 and who he married a year later. Quite apart from that, he was often seen in the company of girls a lot.

On the 10th April, 1962, the fifth Beatle, Stu Sutcliffe died of a brain tumour. It was the same day that his band colleagues, (apart from George), landed at Hamburg airport a few days later to appear at the Star Club. I had very little contact with Stuart, because he left the band a year before I knew them to concentrate on his studies at the art school. Amongst his friends, his death was a huge shock. Especially hard hit was John, who was at art school in Liverpool with him and was close friends. For days he ran around like a corpse through the city, until he found himself again.

In the first half of Nov 1962, when The Beatles appeared at the Star Club again, the drummer was Ringo Starr and not Pete Best. I couldn’t get used to it at first. Even though I had very little personal contact with Pete, I felt that an important part of the brilliant ensemble had been lost. After a while, I became used to Ringo and strangely, the music became somehow rounder, and in any case, not as loud as before. Perhaps I’m just imagining it, as I’ve said, I’m not the greatest music expert. My impression was that Pete always drummed like a madman, whereas Ringo fitted in with the music. What Paul had said to me was that it was Brian Epstein who replaced Pete. It was already then very obvious the enormous influence this man had on the group. From the beginning of November, he monitored their performances and they appeared in a new, specially made outfits which they had overlooked so far in their Hamburg performances. Now they were in preppy clothes. And accordingly, they behaved themselves on stage. No more mucking around and no insults. It was only when Epstein left Hamburg on Nov 10th, they were able to go back to their old style of performance. Already on the Sunday evening, just a few hours after they had taken their manager to the airport, they were wearing their old leather rags and dancing on the stage as normal. John as usual, offended the whole audience by insulting them.

The Beatles last performances at the Star was Dec 18 -31st, 1962 . On New Years day, they were due to go back to England. I took Paul in my little beatle car to the airport, where he met with the others. Then the announcement came that the flight to London was delayed by four hours. Wonderful I thought, I have more time to hang out with them. It was in these last hours that I could talk to them all on the same level; because what happened in the next few months in England, at the crazy speed it developed, none of us, the Beatles or the fans could have imagined. The next time I saw them, they were absolute world stars and they lived in a different world. That time in the airport bar we were still thinking that in a few months, they would be appearing at the Star Club again . They were in good spirits, and not just because of the previous night where we had celebrated all night, and drunk a lot of alcohol.    It was more because they were heading off on small tour in Scotland, which was due to take place the next day beginning in Keith. But most importantly, they were beginning a tour with Helen Shapiro, where they would appear as one of the six warm up acts. Helen was 16 years old, so a few years younger than The Beatles, but much more famous and much more savvy than the boys. Musically they didn’t think much of her, but her fame was hard to discredit. It was going to be their first professional tour. Us Hamburger fans followed their journey via newspapers and the radio, how they were celebrated by the public, and soon Helen Shapiro was displaced. This tour lasted a month from February to March 1963, and catapulted The Beatles into the heavies of rock music. Together with Tommy Roe and Chris Montez-Tournee, they had broken through. Brigitte Janner, who was my girlfriend at the time, kept me up to date with how famous the band were becoming and the welcome they received whenever they appeared .

It was three and a half years later that I saw them again. A teen magazine called Bravo had organised a lightening tour through Germany with them, and three weeks before had started creating an advertising frenzy . Even the people from Der Bild and Bravo stood outside my house and wanted to interview me. I said they could interview me if they could get me into the Beatles press conference . They didn’t want to do that, perhaps they couldn’t do it. In any case I didn’t give them an interview. The next day in Der Bild newspaper, there was a big article entitled ‘Icke And The Beatles’. There was a photo of me with wide open eyes, which somebody had shot the moment I had opened my door for them. It was not exactly a good image of me and I would have stopped the publication of it had I known. Also in this article, there were loads of made up stories . These stories started circulating at my work which made me uncomfortable, not least because my colleagues were gossiping about me. After all, I was head of the department, and I didn’t want to be compromised.    There were newspaper articles in Der Bild and Bravo about me in Reinhold & Mahla (my workplace) which was uncomfortable for me, because it meant my colleagues had ratted on me.

The tour was booked from the 24th - 26th June; three days in three cities. Through the press photographer, Peter Bruchmann, I found out the Beatles would be arriving at 5 30 am on a special train at the Ahrensburg station, so I got up at 4 in the morning not to miss this moment. As the train approached, I stood very close to the edge of the platform. A mass of journalists, fans and other commuters also stood on the platform. It was terribly noisy and nobody could understand a word anyone was saying. Luckily, I found a favourable place on the platform - facing the wagon in which the Beatles were basically stood right outside my nose. I saw the guys standing at the window and Paul saw me too. He moved his lips as though he wanted to say something to me, and pointed to the front where they were going to disembark. Unfortunately this was about 10 meters deep with people who were all trying to see the band. I tried with all my might to push through but I was still stuck in the middle. It was just impossible to get through. The Beatles had already disembarked. They were corralled straight away by the bodyguards who had freed a walkway through the crowd. However, Paul managed to turn around, he called to me, ‘We’ll see you later!’, and then they ran at speed through the walkway, out to where the cars were standing, surrounded by journalists and fans who were waiting for them. They were taken with a police escort to the Castle Tremsbuttel, where they were staying the night.

The whole thing happened so quickly that on the way home, I thought it had been a dream. On the way back in the car, I asked myself, what did Paul mean when he called out to me? How should I approach him, how was it going to work that we would see each other when the instructions had been so vague. The two concerts were scheduled for 3pm - 4.45pm and then 7pm - 8 45 pm. In between both concerts there were press conferences being held, to which unfortunately I wasn’t invited. I managed to get a ticket for the second concert, but I still hung around for three hours with the other fans in the hall. Suddenly on the loudspeaker I heard my name. ‘Icke Braun is asked to come to the desk’. I thought to myself, what do I need to come to the desk for? but I went anyway. A man was standing there who I had met before - he was from the newspaper, Der Bild. He told me that Paul McCartney wanted to speak to me, then turned around and went into the conference room and I followed him. Already outside I could hear John Lennon’s voice and as the door opened, I saw him joking with the journalists. As everyone was only speaking English, I didn’t understand much of it. The Beatles were sitting on a podium together with a man I didn’t know. Later I discovered that that was Neil Aspinall who was the personal assistant to the Beatles. George saw me and waved me to his side. I went a bit nearer to the stage but kept my distance. Why should I stand around on the stage looking stupid when I had nothing to say? So I stayed where I was and waited until the end of the conference until I said hello to the guys. A few journalists then left the room but most stayed. When the Beatles came down from the stage, George asked me ‘how are you and what are you doing with yourself’? I said, ‘yes I’m good, I’m now married!’, John heard that and called, “Where’s your wife, let’s see your wife!” and Neil said to me; the Beatles wishes must be obeyed! So I called Evelyn and told her the Beatles wanted to meet her. She was able to come straight away because we had talked about something like this happening. We withdrew into a little room, and suddenly I saw that there was Kathia and Bettina from the the Star Club. I must have overlooked them amongst all the chaos. When Evelyn appeared, she was the first to be introduced to the Beatles. Everything revolved around her and as they were all speaking in English, I stood by looking stupid, so I took the chance to go to the toilet. in order to do that, I had to go through the hustle of journalists who were waiting to grab one of the Beatles. When I came back from the toilet, they were begging me to take them back into the conference room. One said, if you take me with you, I will give you 1000 Marks.    When I got back to the Beatles, I asked if I could bring a few people in to meet them, but John and the others were emphatic; no way, we want this to be just us. Bettina took a few photos out of her bag, which showed the Beatles in the Top Ten and    the Star Club. The boys were delighted and told her that they would like to have the photos. I told them that the photographer who took them was standing outside the door. ‘Fetch him in, fetch him!’ said John excitedly. The photographer was called Peter Bruchmann, and was absolutely delighted to be the only journalist to be allowed into the conference room. It was he who had given me the tip that the band would be alighting off the train at Ahrensburg . I knew him from the time when the Beatles played at the Top Ten. At that point he hadn’t heard anything about them, and I had to persuade him to come and see them and take a few photos. These became the most famous photos he had ever taken.

A few years ago, we spoke and he told me that his career never got better than these early days. Sadly in 2014 he died. The last photo that he ever took of The Beatles in Germany, he took at the Ernst-Merck-Halle concert venue. The other people in the picture were Bettina, Kathia, Evelyn and i. Unfortunately he couldn’t supply photos from their Hamburg time to the boys at this moment, but he promised them he would send them on if they gave him a forwarding address, however, in the general melee this conversation sadly got forgotten.

All together we stayed for two hours and told each other what we had been up to in our lives. Amongst other things, I asked if they and The Rolling Stones were enemies like the German press insisted. They said that was total nonsense; they were very friendly with them. Then we went into the dining room where we ate fillet steak with lots of onions. Ringo pushed the onions fussily to the side of his plate, and said ‘the whole world knows that I don’t eat onions apart from Hamburg evidently’. During the second concert, we sat int the first row in reserved places, so I could have said myself 20 Mark fee! The Beatles only played half an hour because they wanted to introduce some Hamburg band which included The Rattles. A few of these bands ended up being a bit disappointed because they were just pushed to the side and their music was hardly listened to. Unfortunately, I as an audience member, could understand because everyone had came to see the Beatles, not the Hamburg side acts. Paul told me before the band went onstage that we would see him afterwards, however they disappeared from the stage straight away; while the public was still clapping and calling for more, they were already in their cars. That was the only way to take them from their fans in safety. This was the only contact that my wife Evelyn had with the Beatles.

I myself had two more opportunities to meet Paul McCartney. The first time was in Scotland in 1988. I had long been married to Uta and she was pregnant with our first child. The car we had brought along was a Renault, a fairly long car, where we were transporting a canoe which wouldn’t fold, so it didn’t look very elegant. We had came to a town called Campbelltown, to meet our friend Mary who we had worked with at Amnesty international in Jagerberg . Mary remembered visiting us and seeing a picture of Paul, and told us that her mother had worked for him, at his estate which was not far from here. I said to Uta; ‘come on, let’s go and drive to see him’. But she did not want to go, so therefore I drove there alone. On the way, I had a rethink about what I was actually doing. The estate was guaranteed to be a tourist attraction for journalists and fans, so Paul would likely always have bodyguards on duty. If I were to arrive in my completely filthy Renault with a monster of a canoe on the roof, I wouldn’t stand a chance to get past the bodyguards. They would think that a lousy jerk was coming, who has no reason to be here. That I was once a friend of the famous Paul McCartney, they simply wouldn’t believe. The estate was quite a way away, but I stopped the car and really thought this through - should I carry on with this adventure, or would it be best to simply turn around and just go home. The humiliation that I could be turned around and sent away… I would never get over . For a while I fought with this, backward and forward, then I turned the car around and drove back at a snails pace.

So the last opportunity where I met Paul was in 1991 at the world premiere of Get Back, directed by Richard Lester. After the press conference, I met him and his wife Linda in a room at the back of the cinema. In the room with me was Astrid Kircherr, Ulf Kruger and Achim Reichel and his wife, who had won a place at this this meeting in a competition. During our chat, I mentioned my adventure in Scotland. Even though it was embarrassing to talk about this in front of people, I told Paul that I had planned to visit him, and that I was fearful of the consequences, didn’t trust my courage enough and therefore turned around. He said, “Oh for Gods sake Icke, that’s such a shame. It    would have been wonderful if you had actually visited me”. It sounded like he really meant it. I’m still angry at myself over this, sometimes I’m too much of a doofus for this world.

[writingquestionsanswered]

how to get into reading more? I find it very it hard to get into reading and whenever I try to read books I could never get past chapter one.

Tips for Getting Into Reading More

Reading is a habit, just like exercising or brushing your teeth. The more consistently you do it, the easier it is to do. Reading is also a skill, meaning that doing it consistently makes you better at it. Whether that's reading a print book and training your eyes and brain to read better and faster, or reading an audiobook and training your ears and brain to listen and comprehend better. Try reading a book or audiobook every day for at least ten minutes, and after a while you'll find it's a habit and you're craving more.

Here are some other things you can do during that initial few weeks to help yourself along...

1 - Read Fan-Fiction - Go to AO3 or FF.net and look for fan-fiction of your favorite shows, movies, books, games, etc. AO3 also has podfic available to listen to. Fan-fiction is a fun and easy way to get back into a reading habit since it's easy access (your brain is already familiar with the world and you already love it) and it's free.

2 - Read Short Stories - Short stories are a great way to build a reading habit. You can find free short stories online via a Google search. Wattpad has a short story section and many libraries also offer them in their online catalogs. Or, you can by short story collections by author or anthology. You can also find audiobooks of short stories and recordings.

3 - Read Graphic Novels or Comic Books - Graphic novels and comic books can be another great way to get back into reading. The visual component can help draw you into the story, but the text makes sure you're honing your reading skills. Many graphic novels have audiobook adaptations.

4 - Read Bite-Sized Serial Fiction - Sites like Kindle Vella and Radish offer "bite-sized" serialized fiction which allows you to get absorbed in a story a little at a time. Bite-sized and serialized fiction works great if you're trying to build a reading habit by reading for 10 to 20 minutes a day. You can also find serialized audiobooks.

5 - Read Books That Were Adapted Into Movies or Shows - If you watch TV and movies, there are probably several that were adapted from books. YA books that were adapted into movies and shows (Twilight, Love Simon, The Vampire Diaries, The Hunger Games, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, The Sun is Also a Star, The Hate U Give, Dumplin', and The Princess Diaries--just to name a few) are especially good for getting back into reading because the content and story presentation is accessible and the lengths are usually manageable. But really, any TV show or movie you loved that was based on a book would be a great place to start. Most books that were popular enough to be adapted into a show or movie will also have an audiobook.

5 - Try Audiobooks - If you don't read audiobooks already, they can be a great way to get back into reading. Even if you're not training your eyes to read print, you're still training your brain to engage with a story which is just as important. If you're able to read print books, you might even try reading book one of a series on audiobook, then switch to reading the print version of book two.

6 - Reread Old Favorites - If there are any books you've read before and loved, try reading them again. Sometimes, revisiting old favorites can help us get back into reading because we already know we love the story, and familiar stories can be more accessible to our eyes and brains. Many older books and even classics have audiobook versions.

7 - Read Children's Fiction - Picture books, chapter books, Middle Grade, and YA books can be a great way to get back into the habit of reading. You might even try rebuilding your reading habit/skills from the ground up, starting with picture books, moving onto chapter books, then heading into Middle Grade and finally YA. Children's fiction tends to range from shortest to longest, with picture books being the shortest and YA fiction being the longest, but YA fiction still tends to be shorter than most adult fiction. Children's fiction is also written to be accessible to younger age ranges, which doesn't mean it's not complex or can't be enjoyed by adults, but many readers to find most Middle Grade and YA books to be easier to read than say A Game of Thrones or Outlander. Everyone is different, though, and every book is different. So it really just depends on the book and the reader.

8 - Try Reading Out Loud - If you're able to read print books/stories, some people find it's easier to read out loud. You can even read to your pet, pretend you're reading to a class, or pretend you're the author doing a reading at a book signing. It sounds silly, but sometimes this performative aspect can make it a little more accessible and easier to do.

9 - Audiobook Alternative to #8 - Something similar you can do with an audiobook is listen to a few minutes, pause it, and then talk out loud about what just happened as though you were discussing it with a class or book club. This can help you get (and stay) engaged with the story.

10 - Keep It Fun and Stress Free - The most important thing of all is to keep it fun and stress free. Try not to give yourself a hard time if you drop the ball. Do your best and give yourself grace if you struggle. Putting pressure on yourself or creating unreasonable goals only makes it stressful which makes your brain want to avoid it. Set up or find a cozy reading space if you can. Put on some light music and grab yourself a cup of coffee, tea, or your favorite beverage. Sit outside if the weather is nice. Walking or doing chores is great if you're reading an audiobook. You can also try reading when you're waiting for things. Try instituting a reward system, like eating a special treat whenever you finish a book/story, chapter, or you've read for your ten daily minutes.

Happy reading!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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[gillianthecat]

I have Not been doing what I should have been doing this week, which is Not Great. BUT. I have been feeling the urge to watch BL again, so I been flittering around streaming services and binging some and dropping others. Here's the list of the 18, in the order I watched them, with brief thoughts on each. My rating (out of 10) are in [blue]. Feel free to ask me to say more about any of them!

Pit Babe (2 eps) [7]

Fun, enjoyed the tropiness of it, intrigued by Jeff/Alan, whatever secrets Charlie and Jeff are keeping, and that drifting competition which was hella sexy. I like my omegaverse fics "non traditional" so i appreciated that the first BL out there was alpha/alpha. I wasn't engaged enough to keep going, but would like eventually to pick it up again. One of the few shows I'm not filtering the tag for, so I'm enjoying other people's reactions and gifs.

My Personal Weatherman (finished) [8]

I wanted to love it more than I did, many aspects were wonderful, but the leads never felt like real characters to me, just seme/uke tropes fulfilling their roles. Actors very pretty though. I have a bunch of notes I may finish and post eventually.

Laws of Attraction (finished) [9]

10% of it was terrible, 10% was completely nonsensical (instagram live-ing your date while on the lam? really??), 10% was mediocre, 50% was good, and 20% was sublime. Film was phenomenal as the complicated lawyer with his thousands of smiles, and I now have a crush on him. I started watching a het lakorn for him afterwards (Lucky Star, free on Viki, very soap opera, he and his costar are great). I loved grandma and the batshit ex. I've already forgotten parts of the plot. Wish it could have been higher heat, the restrictions kinda fucked with Charn and Tinn's chemistry in the second half, after they got together, but Film made it work with his coy blushing maiden routine. And their chemistry pre-dating was fire. Second leads were cute and I do love me a pining bodyguard, but sadly the actors were kinda eh.

I Became the Main Role of a BL (1 ep) [9]

I am very excited about this, doing so many things well, balancing slapstick and humanity, all the little details are great. I like how the "real world" is still tropey and absurd but also noticibku more grounded than the "drama" world. I'm invested in the managers' stories. I have hopes for its sexiness, given how Aoyagi was touching Akufuji's arm in their rehearsal. Love love love Akufuji stanning.

Double Mints (finished) [5]

um. I didn't hate it. I didn't like it exactly, but there were some poignant moments. My first actually dark BL (I know Pornographer is classified as dark, but it didn't feel that way to me). Possibly there's some profundity in it, but it didn't grab me enough that I want to spend the time thinking about it. Also many plot things that didn't make sense to me. Perhaps just translation issues? Unlike the next on my list, this wasn't porn, it was a violent yakuza story. Not actually very explicit given that it's supposed to be high heat, with the significant exception of a rape scene.

The Shortest Distance is Round (Noir) (finished) [5]

I mean this is literally softcore porn with a weird dark plot around it. I think most of the actors are actual porn actors; I know the lead is. I could have thoughts on the story, but I feel like I'd need to know more about Japanese cinema to say anything meaningful. Just saying, the sexual harassment at the beginning is the tamest bit. Also a hilarious misdirect with the dead fish sleep kiss (at least for me who was going in blind). Some of the sex was hilarious (goat boy!) some of it was creepy and rapey, and some was genuinely hot.

Mr. Unlucky Has No Choice But to Kiss (3.5 eps) [7.5]

Fun and fluffy, like the premise, the seme character has charm, but soon lost interest in that level of slapstick and tropiness. May eventually finish.

Love Stage Japan 2018 (half an ep or so) [6]

Liked it more than the Thai version, which I saw a few episodes of. The set up makes more sense. Soon lost interest in that slapstick style. Wouldn't avoid it, but no current urge to return.

Utsukushii Kare 2 (My Beautiful Man 2) (finished) [9]

I love them so much! As the middle section, it didn't work as well on its own as season one (a hothouse masterpiece) or the movie (their blossoming), but it was an important bridge in their journey.

Utsukushii Kare Eternal (My Beautiful Man Eternal) (finished) [10]

So amazing. I wasn't sure that they could make a good ending of this story but they knocked it out of the park. Managed the tricky balancing act of having Hira and Koyoi grow up and learn to have a healthy relationship while still remaining their kinky weird selves. Echoed season one in so many beautiful and meaningful ways. I may eventually write more about it.

Long Time No See (movie) (finished) [7]

I didn't recognize the title so o started it without knowing anything about genre or plot. I wanted to like this much more than I did. Theoretically I am into all the elements. But somehow it didn't work for me. It felt hollow, or rather like the outline of a movie rather than the movie itself. Nothing really felt real to me. Perhaps just my mood, perhaps because I didn't recognize the name and so went in to it completely lost and confused. And the sex scenes all felt a little off, a little fake to me. Like the actors were kinda uncomfortable with it. It was very low budget for its concept, and I think needed to either be full kdrama length (maybe 8 full episodes) of get somehow even artier about it to be an atmospheric film. Which it should have been, and all indicators pointed to it, but somehow wasn't. I think I needed to know the characters better to care about. Which may or may not have required learning more about them; there are characters I've felt deeply that I knew very little about, but somehow not with these two. Also I couldn't get the sister's deal. It felt like she was hinting she knew the assassin secrets? But also not. Anyways, the leads were very pretty. And the shot of them stumbling out of the final fight was moving. I may write more later.

Dom (a Strongberry short) (dnf) [4]

Only 13 minutes long and I couldn't finish it, even with 1.5x speed in parts. Experimental little short about anthropomorphized condom boxes, and there's some sort of human plot about a virgin and his cheating boyfriend that I lost track of. It's not bad, just not what I was in the mood for.

Bake Me Please (like 10 minutes of ep 1) [5.5]

When I was talking about not being into cooking themed shows this is the kind of show I mean. It already had a bunch of tropes that are not for me, particularly random normal people treated like celebrities, and people on tumblr seem frustrated with it so it didn't feel worth pursuing.

Ossan's Love (2018 Japan) (2 of 7 eps) [8]

Seems very well constructed to be exactly what they wanted it to be. My enjoyment of that sort of slapstick and yelling style show depend on my mood, and I lost interest, but want to return eventually because it's a foundational show.

Love Mate (less than 1 ep) [7]

Some appealing elements, but got annoyed at the employee's negging and pushiness. I guess I'm too particular about realism, but in what company would it be acceptable to turn a meeting about their product into a psychoanalytical critique of why your boss can't love. Also I es confused by the bosses dating strategy. He just regularly meets up with men 1 time for awkward meals that he seems to hate and then doesn't even have sex with them? Or were we supposed to infer the sex was just censored out? Not the biggest deals but both together indicated that this show was going to play loose with logic in a way that would irritate me. And the seme was being a pushy ass.

Naked Dining (Zenra Meshi) (finished) [8.5]

Loved it overall, though had flaws. Loveblogged it so many thoughts in the tags.

My Ride (4 out of 10 eps) [7]

See today's liveblogging for my thoughts. I like many aspects, but lost interest after four eps. Didn't catch me up enough to want to binge it. I think I'm in an actor centric mode, and unfortunately none of the actors are that good in it.

Every Moment That I Think of You (finished) [8.5]

Randomly found on Gaga, 2 very short episodes from China 2021. Very appealing leads, censored, high school romance/intense friendship, partially through the pandemic. Fit a year's worth of story into 28 minutes. Surprisingly solid, though made me want to see the full length uncensored version of their love story, same actors. Ending confused me. Subtitles of voiceover implied that was their last night together but didn't say what happened, but nothing and was shown. Perhaps just a bad translation? Very low budget (sound mixing was amateur) but did a lot with what they had. Chaotic adolescent boy camera work and editing style, always moving, which fit story very well. Recommend if ok with censored stories.

[persephone-s-moon]

Taking you up on your dare/offer benji! Tell me all about your oc Than (I'm a sucker for necromancer things hehe.)

HELL YEAH!!!!!!!! Idk how much detail you want but here's the mildly chaotic sparknotes of their lore

Questions about anything or anyone mentioned in this post are welcome as well :)) this is a lot

Than (uses all pronouns) is a part of a homebrew campaign my friends and I started a month ago and they are everything to me

(Outfit redesign so far :3 face and hair redesign in progress, and I'm probably going to make their clothes less vibrant)

In life, Than (full name Thanatos Pyre) was an acolyte of Etrix, the goddess of death. (Etrix is HEAVILY based off of Kelemvor (because of my influence >:3c) if you're familiar with DND lore.) He provided funeral services and healing to those in need and lived in a temple with their family.

Acolyte robes featuring Anubis (eldest brother), Mors (Than's very large twin), and Hecate (little sister)

Both of Than's parents are priests and their older brother Anubis was trying to become one as well. (Their best friend/crush was about to be a priest too.) Etrixian priests are the only ones permitted to provide merciful death and they are also tasked with killing the undead :)

Indoor priests robes featuring Mother Maveth and outdoor priests robes featuring Fathet Hawthorn. Than is about Hawthorn's height (slightly shorter than Anubis)

For context Etrix has some beef with her brother Rhytar, the god of necromancy, because she HATES undeath, so of course their worshipers also have beef... :)

Than was murdered by a Rhytarian half-elf necromancer named Vallana Siannodel (during an attack on the Etrixian temple but that's a long story) and kept as essentially a pet for five years. As a reborn/undead, they've lost most of their memories and the memories they do have are vague. They know they were a worshiper of Someone but they don't know who, they know there was an attack on their temple and they feel responsible for it but they don't know why, and they know they had friends and family but faces/names elude them entirely.

Reborn under the control of necromancers very rarely regain autonomy, HOWEVER, Than was able to escape and they've essentially been on their own for a year prior to the story of the campaign. He's confined to the city of Nightborough (homebrew as well) because it's all they know, but they avoid the inner city to evade Vallana and mostly stick to the slums. They're compelled to recite prayer/provide funeral services for the dead without really knowing why. (The funeral prayer is ingrained into them, and they only recall pieces of other prayers.) In exchange for essentially free funeral services and healing, some people offer shelter. She became friends with the deep gnome Shortspark family, specifically the eldest son Bellpepper Jr., after attempting to heal and providing funeral services for the youngest Poppy Jr. Because of Bellpepper Jr., Than is able to escape Nightborough entirely and go on our adventure :)

Than functions as a bard but only because of Vallana's influence. If Rhytarian attack didn't happen, they would have been a cleric.

The party has hilariously only Very Recenty discovered Than's undead nature because they passed enough perception checks to realize she Doesn't Breathe Or Eat. It's a surprise they didn't notice earlier because she's SO clueless about most things but we've managed to have a firbolg who's even MORE clueless than Than.

Anyway that is the shortest version I could come up with without sacrificing comprehensiblity <33 Thank you for asking!!!!!!

[meimi-haneoka]

Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card Chapter 72: Comments + JP-ENG translation differences

Hellooo everyone! The plot-train that will bring us to the finale of Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card Arc is unstoppable, so here we are once again, at the beginning of another month, for another chapter of the climax of this saga!! April 1st as usual is a very busy and important day in the CLAMP world, as it is not only the so-called "CLAMP Day", but also the birthday of our Sakura Kinomoto (and many other CLAMP characters!)!! Moreover, precisely as I'm writing this post, SakuraFes is being held in Tokyo!! Fans strived hard to get a ticket (I could see the struggle on my TL on Twitter) and while some managed to get one somehow, others were left out....since there's been lots of anticipation for this event, we'll see if it was worth the struggle and if we'll get info about the thing we're all waiting the most for: a second season of the Clear Card anime!! (UPDATE: IT WAS INDEED ANNOUNCED like we all hoped for!! Congratulations to all of us!! 😂)

In the meantime, let's focus on the analysis of chapter 72 because boooooy, it might be one of the shortest chapters ever (I remember chapters this short were released in 2018) but the info that was disclosed in it!!! We're definitely, definitely at the climax and it shows. CLAMP sensei are solving all the mysteries and giving us all the answers one by one. But since this is important info that will help us understanding the story better, let's review this chapter (and its translation) carefully!

And as usual, before diving under the cut and into the chapter, the gif of the month (paying homage to Lilie, lol) !!

The Cover Page

Oooh, what a pretty Sakura we have here!! She looks as if being half-asleep, and judging by the content of the chapter, it kinda makes sense. Sakura stays in a dream for the most of it. The simple dress is very elegant with all those gemstones applied on it. It also looks as if Sakura is creating them? Also, we have once again the black background that's become so common lately in the color pages of Clear Card. With that expression, Sakura looks a little bit more mature, and I really like it. The text in the JP version reminds us again of the last words Lilie said in the previous chapter: "I crossed time and dreams to come to see you".

"I know her very well, and yet I don't know anything about her"

The chapter starts right from where we left off at the end of chapter 71, with our Sakura and Lilie meeting for the first time....or is it?? 😉 Sakura sounds a bit confused at what Lilie said, but as usual (bless her!!!) she's very perceptive and notices that Lilie resembles Akiho a lot, more than actually Sakura herself. Lilie seems delighted and answers "I'm happy to hear that!!" (and not "Thank you!" like she said in the ENG translation). I was all smily when I've read this for the first time, but what came right after threw me in a puddle of sadness, and now you'll understand why. Sakura asks her if she knows Akiho, and Lilie's answer is "I could say I know her very well, and at the same time, that I don't know anything about her. And that makes me terribly sad". That's it. I was all giddy and happy to finally hear Lilie starting to talk, and she had to throw this brick made of sadness at me like that, right in the beginning. 😭😭Because it's clear here she's referring to the fact that despite being her own daughter, she won't survive long enough to see her grow up. Not even long enough to ascertain who she will look more similar to, her mom or her dad. Because Lilie died when Akiho wasn't even 1 year old. She was just a baby. The realization tinted that "I'm so happy to hear that!" we've seen before of the same sad color. ☹️ BUT!! We're not here to get shot down by angst so early in the chapter, so we proceed with Lilie apologizing for making things so confusing for Sakura, and she informs her they're in a dream. Then she finally proceeds to give some explanations on what's she's been trying to do this whole time, at the same time solving one of the BIGGEST mysteries in the Clear Card Arc. The question everyone had ever since chapter 1 was: "who's under the cloak of the Mysterious Cloaked Figure?" And here, my dear readers, we finally get our answer, in the year of the lord 2023, 7 years after the beginning of the manga: MCF WAS LILIE ALL ALONG!!! But let's see her version of the facts. Basically, Lilie in the beginning strived hard to travel through time alone to speak directly with Sakura at the age of 13 years old (HOW F*CKING POWERFUL IS THIS CHILD??), but it wasn't successful because her voice didn't reach our girl. We see a flashback right from chapter 7 with someone dressed with the robe standing right outside Sakura's house. Do you remember that? Yeah, MCF didn't appear only in dreams, but also physically in Sakura's reality. These scenes appeared in the anime as well and in the end we found out that under the cloak there was a sleepwalking Akiho, acting completely unconsciously. As it's typical with CLAMP anime, this turned out to be different in the manga! (But there's still a chance they'll explain that scene of the anime in a different way!) I had the impression, for a long time, that MCF was a different person depending on the dream Sakura had, or depending on whether MCF appeared in a dream or not. Well! Turns out even that intuition was wrong, because MCF was ALWAYS the same person, it's just that...some big mess happened, but let's see how Lilie explained it herself. Since her voice couldn't reach Sakura, and since our girl kept seeing the future ahead in her premonitory dreams, Lilie tried to get in touch with her through the dreams she was having.

But, for a twist of fate (I know you're all laughing right now) Lilie ended up mingling with Sakura's foretelling dreams. Yessir. When we saw MCF apparently "attacking" Sakura, or riding on top of Dragon-chan, she actually didn't have anything to do with it. She just ended up being mixed in the middle of all of that. Sakura sometimes dreamt about a "force" pulling her key away, and Lilie ended up in front of it, thus suggesting that MCF was the one trying to grab it. Turns out, it was Lilie probably trying to talk or communicate with Sakura in some way. But hold on, the revelations aren't over yet, oh no. Lilie explains how that mingling with Sakura's dreams went quite wrong.

Because yes, when one of her premonitory dreams was trying to warn her about Kaito taking the appearance of Syaoran during the play, with the Cat costume...well....Lilie ended up mixing in again, and that's how we got our MCF Syaoran. Hahahahaha! Are you baffled?? 😂Well I have to say I had so many theories as to why Sakura saw Syaoran under the cloak of MCF, some even concerning the psychological side...well, damn. Sakura simply never truly doubted her boyfriend and silly of me for thinking she could 😂 Also, we know now that we can rest assured Syaoran won't turn into an evil pawn or something...it was just a huge misunderstanding. Poor Lilie, I can't really hold it against her even though she ended up making a huge mess, because she really strived hard however she could, and...fate didn't work in her favor, apparently...until the right moment, that is (remember, hitsuzen always knows when it's the right time!) Moreover, Lilie tells Sakura that she already dreamed of this very same meeting they're having now, and guess when that was? Yes, at the end of chapter 6, precisely in the scene I mentioned in my post for chapter 71!!

After the shocking revelation (that made me yell at CLAMP once again for how astutely they FOOLED all of us for 7 years - I'm pretty sure no one thought about this possibility), I started to realize something. Sakura, in her premonitory dreams, pretty much dreamt about things mainly connected to Kaito. The "You won't be able to come back anymore" voice? It was the Association + Squids threatening Kaito with what would've happened if he dared touching the artifact inside Akiho. Dragon-chan? As its shape it's basically the same of the Seal of D that engulfed Kaito right before he disappeared into the artifact book, we can safely say it's strictly connected to him as well. MCF Syaoran? He was actually Kaito himself, disguised as the Syaoran-Cat of the play. I have to admit it, I had started getting signs that one of the MCFs Sakura was talking to during her dreams might have been Kaito, at some point. I knew the height worked against my theory, but when Sakura said "You look....so lonely" in chapter 48, right when Akiho had supposedly the same dream and confessed her love to Kaito through "the moon is beautiful" phrase right after that, I knew the "lonely" one could be none other than Kaito. Maybe Sakura was supposed to see Kaito in her dream, that one time, but Lilie mixed up again. Heh. 😅 And here we get our first serious translation mistake that can easily create confusion. Lilie goes on saying that the Cards Sakura had newly created (thus the Clear Cards) have now disappeared, and her magical powers diminished by an amount corresponding to the power of those Cards. Moreover, the Cards that once were separated from her (the Sakura Cards) are now back with her and their connection to her became stronger than before (well, we have seen it, Sakura now summons Mirror even without a particular reason, just to talk). Here, the ENG translation completely skipped the distinction between the two decks of Cards (in the JP version Lilie clearly talks about "the cards you had newly created" and "the cards that were once separated from you"), making Lilie sound as if she's still talking about the Clear Cards even in the second panel.......when we can clearly see the back of the Sakura Cards there. And right in the next panel, we have yet another translation mistake. They completely made up what the Book did here. ENG: What's more, the book's forbidden magic...can only turn back time so far. It has no power over times before the caster or the target were born. He's younger than me... JP: Moreover, the "forbidden magic" (that originated) after using the Book does not reach further than the (moment in) time when the person who activated it and the target of said magic were born. And "that boy" is younger than me.

Lilie never mentions anything about the Book "turning back time". The "forbidden magic"'s work is to rewrite the memories that were recorded in the Book, it does not turn back time. I wish they made that clearer, it's been messed with even in the previous chapters!

But it's not over, as even the next sentence suggests something that in my opinion is incorrect. Lilie goes on explaining that for this reason, she decided to visit Sakura "now" that she's the same age as hers (she literally says the word 今, which for her is her present), crossing time and dreams to reach her. However, the ENG translation here says "So I've come to you from the time when I was the same age as you", suggesting that adult Lilie went back in time to reach Sakura's age and then went to visit Sakura in a dream. There's nothing that suggests that, in the JP sentence. As she will say herself later, Lilie is capable of seeing the future so much ahead, so it seems convoluted that she'd wait to become an adult, just to go back in time to when she was almost 13 (supposedly Sakura's age) and then cross time again to go see Sakura in the future. It makes more sense for her to attempt this when she was *already* 13 years old. I checked the other translations, and the Portuguese and French seem to agree with me (they translate correctly that 今 with "now that we have the same age").

Anyway. For Lilie it was important to attempt this now, while the Book's power can't reach her and mess with her goal, and while Kaito and Akiho aren't born yet. And she adds "(I've come to see) You, the cute Alice (daughter) of the girl named after a flower who became my friend", and we see a nice flashback of a little Nadeshiko, at the same age when she met Lilie. Sakura in this way understands that Lilie knows her mother. Sakura asks if Lilie came from the past and whether she came to tell her something. Lilie confirms she wants to talk about something that for her will happen in the future, but for Sakura it has already happened. Sakura is unstoppable with her questions (good!) and asks Lilie if she can see the future, to which she replies that yes, she can see the future in her dreams exactly like Sakura. "I can see what will happen just moments from now...what will happen long in the future...and even...what will happen after I've passed on". And here came the other punch in the stomach for me. Because Lilie's expression here is really, really painful. I think I'll do a separate post with all my thoughts on Lilie triggered by this chapter, so maybe check it out later if you're curious.

That's who I am

Sakura asks "Isn't it painful to know plenty of the future ahead?" and Lilie's sorrowful smile is already enough of an answer. But she goes on,

"the things I can do...and even those I can't...make me the person that I am"

I found that extremely beautiful. It is painful, yes, but that's part of herself too. And Lilie seems to be very accepting of her nature and her "gift", as well as her limits. Maybe that's why she's able to remain so positive and strong even in a very difficult situation like hers.

The moment is solemn. Lilie says (lit., JP): "Kinomoto Sakura. Your memories and records have been rewritten". Here the ENG replaced "records" with "life", probably because it doesn't make much sense to include "records" just like that. The Spanish version translated it as something like "(your memories) and the records that keep track of them", and I think that works very well. Sakura is shocked upon hearing that. Lilie here talks in future tense because this is something that for her will happen in the future: "That boy...will lie and tell the guardian of the book, who will one day be named Momo, that his goal is to exchange you with the other Alice". And why will he do that? Apparently, because in this way he won't make Momo think or have any suspicion that he will be the actual target of the exchange magic for the artifact that was inside Akiho. (JP) "Because Momo knows painfully well what will happen if that boy becomes the target, in the state he'll be in at the moment of the exchange". I'm a bit butthurt they removed that "painfully" and went for "all too well", because in the original JP text Lilie uses 痛い程 and its literal translation is "to the point of hurting". And I think that's perfect to describe Momo's feelings. Momo cares about Kaito, a whole lot. And she would've never agreed to a goal like this, endangering his life in that way and ending up carelessly triggering the Seal of D. And this is precisely the reason why Kaito lied to her. Because he knows that. He knows she's a "kind and a bit stubborn" creature. And her kindness towards him would've lead her to stop him, something he couldn't really afford.

Lilie can't help but muttering "blockhead". Yeah, in Japanese it's the same わからずや "insult" that Momo used at the end of chapter 70, precisely as he was disappearing engulfed by the artifact book. (And the ENG should've kept the translation of that term consistent between the two chapters, which was "dolt" in chapter 70 and turned into "hardheaded" in chapter 72). This made me wonder whether Lilie was the first one using that term for him, and so Momo took it after her, or if she simply saw that moment in a dream of the future, and quoted Momo's words. One thing is for sure, the JP fandom used that terms quite a lot after reading chapter 70. 😂 Lilie continues saying (still in future tense) that Momo will want Sakura to stop the forbidden magic, so she will give her a hint, but that will end up being incorrect, precisely because Kaito will lie about his real plan. So, what does this translates to, for us readers? When we were thinking that Kaito wanted to exchange the girls, we weren't completely wrong. Or, rather, we weren't lead to that theory without good foundations. It's just that Kaito lied to Momo and made things seem that way on purpose, so his real goal would've come out only at the last moment, the moment of activation of the forbidden magic. When Momo couldn't do anything about it anymore. He really mislead all of us. Because he wanted things to go this way so badly. Because he wanted to be the one to take into himself the thing he inavertedly caused Akiho to be engraved with, and which was about to kill her soul. I sense a profound, desperate sense of guilt from this. It's no wonder Momo was so mad and ended up crying, at the end of Chapter 70. She did what she could to protect "her children", but she ended up losing one anyway. Because, just like in the most common relationship between a teenager and their parental figure, he deceived her and still had it his way, stubborn and oblivious to how much suffering he would've caused to the people who loved him the most. No wonder CLAMP called him more than once "immature" in their Twitter Spaces. This is the reason why I see Momo as a strong parental figure for both Akiho, but mainly for Kaito too.

What is happiness to you?

So Momo's hint ended up being incorrect (remember the "world where no one remembered Sakura"?). But Lilie says "But even so, it's still the same. What's happiness to you?" Because, as Lilie says, the answer is the same even for the other Alice by Sakura's side. And in this very important moment, there's another difference in translation.

ENG: "Even if it makes someone else happy...imagine living in a world where the people you held most dear are gone. Could you call that happiness?"

JP: "Even if someone told you that's happiness/even if someone told you they're happy like this, can you really call it happiness if they live in a world where they lost what they didn't want to lose?"

It's painfully clear what Lilie is meaning here. Even if Akiho looks (and maybe even affirms to be) happy and cherished in this new arranged world with her memories rewritten, can she really say to be happy if the ONE thing she didn't want to lose the most....is gone? Sakura thinks hard about that. Even if Lilie doesn't mention names specifically. And just as she's thinking hard about the answer, the dream starts to crack. Sakura is about to wake up and Lilie knows it. (JP) "I come from a time where the forbidden magic can't reach. But you're right within its range. Once you wake up from this dream, I guess you will forget about meeting me. But, you have the magic that you've been preparing yourself. You just need to realize about it. I believe...in the two Alice"

And just like that, Sakura wakes up in Syaoran's arms, on the floor of the school grounds. Syaoran is visibly stressed and nervous, so much that when Sakura wakes up with a "Oh..." he goes "Don't "oh" me! You suddenly fainted!!" 😂 although this is a tense moment, I laughed at this scene because the stressful moment made some of the old, "rude" Syaoran come back 😂yes, there isn't any translation mistake this time around. The nervousness made Syaoran a bit snappy with Sakura 😆 Sakura, still in his arms (kyaaa), says that she had a dream, and she had the impression Akiho appeared in it. Syaoran helps her standing up, trying to defuse the situation joking that "that's what they call a sister complex, Sakura", and that Tomoyo told him about this term 😂😂(I've already seen some of my Japanese mutuals on Twitter saying Tomoyo teaches Syaoran stuff she shouldn't teach him 😆) Sakura doesn't really answer the joke, as she's still quite dizzy and confused by the dream. Syaoran goes back to be serious, seeing her like that, and asks if she's ok. Sakura says she is, but she holds her head almost as if she had a headache, so Syaoran asks her if she had a premonitory dream. Sakura isn't sure, you can really see she's trying hard to remember the content of the dream, but she just can't. Although, there's one thing she remembers. That this was a dream telling her something very important, both for her, and for everyone else.

And this, dear readers, is where chapter 72 leaves us, ready to advance the plot once again in the next chapter. As I said in the beginning, this chapter was short but finally explained some important things that were torturing us ever since the beginning. But not only: the just released volume 14 featured a change of script in chapter 70, when Momo is talking to Kaito after the forbidden magic was activated. Instead of asking him "what about you?", she tells him "You even lied to me, the guardian of the book, about the subject of the rewriting" which is directly connected to what Lilie said in this chapter. It was a "last minute change" (that normally happens between the Nakayoshi version and the tankobon version) probably to justify better why we were lead to believe that Kaito wanted to exchange the two girls (and thus not giving the impression CLAMP were playing us for fools completely). Moreover, it sounded strange that Momo would've let Kaito go on with his plan if she knew he would've ended up triggering the Seal of D. It looked pretty OOC for her, so maybe Ohkawa wanted to fix that. I was a bit confused by this change in the beginning, but now I completely understand why she did it.

Furthermore, there's the mention of the "magic Sakura has been preparing" that really intrigued me. Is this about the usual "zettai daijoubu da yo", or is it something more complex? Could Sakura have been preparing a spell that would activate in a certain circumstance before the play happened, in case she needed it later? Of course her memories now have been rewritten, but Lilie's words suggest that she will soon remember about preparing this magic. And I'm super excited to find out what it is. It would give Sakura a really good development, and show she can be planning things too!

At the end of the chapter, Sakura forgets about meeting Lilie. And while that might seem as once again an unnecessary stepback, I don't really think it is. If this was played in this way to give Akiho the agency she needs later, then it makes a lot of sense. Especially when many of us are hoping to see her remembering about Kaito on her own. Because it would be particularly significant. If Sakura remembered this meeting, and the fact that their memories had been rewritten, and about "Momo" and "that boy" who lied about exchanging them, logically the first thing she would do is to inform Akiho about it. But is this how things are supposed to go? Is this how Akiho is supposed to find out a truth that concerns her very closely? If Akiho is meant to remember Kaito on her own, because the void he left in her life will soon feel larger and larger, suggesting her that she's not truly happy and that something/someone is missing, then it makes sense for the narrative to hold things back for a short while. Sakura can always remember about this meeting on her own later on, thanks to her magic. While Akiho will work hard to grasp the true happiness she wants, with the help of the people who care about her. And I suspect that might happen as soon as next chapter. And then it'll be time to understand what to do to bring Kaito back, or to reach him where he is.

While here we keep praying hard for a happy ending in the manga, in the meantime I bask in the happiness of the freshly announced sequel of the Clear Card anime!!

Next release dates for what concerns chapter 73:

April 30th, on CLAMP’s Youtube channel (digital, JP and other languages) May 2nd, on Nakayoshi (paper and digital, JP)

Kodansha announced for May 10th the launch of a new simulpub platform directly managed by them (K-Manga), where it's very likely it'll be possible to read Clear Card in English digitally and simultaneously with the Japanese release. Although, that service will work only in the US (for the moment).

Alright, see you at the end of this month!! 😉

[mariana-oconnor]

The Bruce Partington Plans pt 3

Well last time Watson was told to bring a gun and a chisel, so things were heating up in the espionage arena. I hope he doesn't kill a dog this time.

It was a nice equipment for a respectable citizen to carry through the dim, fog-draped streets. I stowed them all discreetly away in my overcoat...

Watson, I don't know why you're deluding yourself that you're a respectable citizen. You're really not. And that's not an insult.

Also, the fact that the man can fit 'a jemmy, a dark lantern, a chisel and a revolver' discreetly in his overcoat is impressive and I 100% assure you that had it been a woman's overcoat he would not have managed it. A dark lantern is a clunky piece of kit and even the small versions seem pretty big. A jemmy is skinny, a chisel and a revolved will fit in a decent-sized pocket, but a dark lantern?

That's a pretty awesome overcoat, Watson

"Then join me in a coffee and curacao."

Is that like a thing? Maybe it's because I dislike the flavours of both coffee and alcohol, or maybe it's because I think the only curacao I've ever seen is blue curacao, but that seems like a strange combination to me.

OK, research shows that you can in fact get coffee-flavoured curacao, so this isn't as weird as it seemed. I doubt they're using the blue curacao here, which makes me feel better. There's something about mixing something that bright blue into coffee that upsets my stomach just thinking about it.

“Have you the tools?” “They are here, in my overcoat.”

“Could it not have been dropped from a bridge?” “I should say it was impossible. If you examine the roofs you will find that they are slightly rounded, and there is no railing round them."

I think I'd personally go with improbable rather than impossible, but sure.

"Now, suppose that a train halted under such a window, would there be any difficulty in laying a body upon the roof?”

...yes? You have to lift a dead weight out through a window. I doubt the train is that close to the window, and you're in the room, presumably, so I'd say that sounds difficult. Also you just said that you can see the windows from inside the carriage, so it could easily have been seen by passengers, but you wouldn't even necessarily know.

Is your window large enough to put the body out sideways, in which case two people could probably heave-ho it over onto the roof, but it would make a hell of a thump as it hit the roof. And how many windows in London are wide enough - and open wide enough - for a full size man to be thrown out of them sideways? But if you're pushing him out long ways, you're going to have to sort of bend him up at first so he doesn't flop down in the gap between the train and the window, but bridges the gap, then slide him over.

It sounds like a lot of work, is what I'm saying. Seems almost as possible as dropping a body onto a train from a bridge and the body staying on the train. Actually, that seems more likely to me, with the train roofs being curved, because if you drop it from above, you can aim for the centre of the roof, where the body can sort of balance itself over the curve, while if you're pushing the body on from the side, it's more likely to be weighted towards the side you're pushing it on from, so more likely to fall off.

Train carriages aren't exactly thin. If you're throwing it on sideways then getting it to a balancing point at the top of the curve is going to be more difficult. You'll have to lean all the way out. but long ways, you're going to be pushing a dead weight from one of the shortest sides - head or feet - with no real way to control the other end.

Really we need to conduct an extensive experiment to settle this.

“We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Sherlock. Sherlock. Sherlock. You can't just say something's impossible and then take that as written. That's not how possibility works. I bet you it's possible for a body to fall from a bridge, onto the top of a curved carriage and rest stably enough there that it won't fall off for a little while. Clearly it wasn't very stable because it did fall off eventually.

"...the idea of an amateur domiciliary visit would certainly never occur to him."

Such a polite way to say B&E.

“My dear fellow, you shall keep watch in the street. I'll do the criminal part."

I think that keeping watch would still make Watson an accessory to a crime, and therefore also a criminal in the eyes of the law. Not to quibble or anything.

And you were just saying how respectable you were earlier, Watson.

“I knew you would not shrink at the last,” said he, and for a moment I saw something in his eyes which was nearer to tenderness than I had ever seen.

...presented without comment...

"Let us walk,” said he. “Don't drop the instruments, I beg."

As if he could. How could you malign Watson's overcoat in such a way?

The very next train roared from the tunnel as before, but slowed in the open, and then, with a creaking of brakes, pulled up immediately beneath us. It was not four feet from the window-ledge to the roof of the carriages.

...OK. It seems like the 4 foot must be down, not across. Even so, the train can't be right next to the building, there must be a bit of a gap. I'd say at least a foot.

So... from the window. This guy (possibly alone, possibly with a partner (perhaps a colonel)) took a dead body, and managed to get it not just to the edge of the carriage roof, but let's say the carriage is 8 foot wide, which seems to be roughly the narrowest possibility at the time from a brief online search. That means they got it ~5 foot to the centre of the carriage (including the gap between the train and the building), then over the top so it wouldn't immediately slide off.

Say Mr Cadogan West was about 170cm (the average height of a man 1896-1900 according to this site). That's just under 5'6". And to get him to a reasonable balancing point - let's say with 2 feet over the centre of the roof, that's 6 foot onto the roof, they're having to lean out the window... down 4 feet to get him there. If they're going sideways, they have to throw that body about 7 foot because they'd be throwing from inside the window. The drop would make it an easier throw, but it would also make a louder noise as body hits roof.

I'm sure it's possible. It just seems like a really bad plan. Also, human bodies are all floppy when they've just died, aren't they? That's got to be so difficult to move.

This is clearly what we are meant to accept has happened. But the logistics of doing it seems like it would have been farcical. Poor Mr Cadogan West's corpse just flopping around as they try to manoeuvre it this way and that.

“So far we are justified,” said he.

If you say so, Holmes. yes, the bloodstains prove it happened, but genuinely don't know how they managed it. Think of his arms flopping down, catching on the windowsill and the edge of the train, dead fingers knocking against the carriage window.

ALSO this is all happening in the smog.

Whatever. I have wasted too much time contemplating the logistics of this. It is not supposed to be examined so closely.

I thought Watson was supposed to be playing lookout...

It was a small tin cash-box which stood upon the writing-desk. Holmes pried it open with his chisel.

Did Holmes also bring a chisel? or is this Watson's chisel? Or did Watson bring Holmes' chisel? Or is it the communal chisel for all 221b Baker Street chiselling needs?

“Hoped to hear sooner. Terms agreed to. Write fully to address given on card. — Pierrot."

Ooh, commedia dell'arte reference. We love to see it. PIerrot's the sad clown guy, iirc. Not sure how that refers to any of our suspects.

Why is the spy keeping these in a tin box? That seems unnecessary. Clearly it is good for the plot. But he should just read the message, get whatever information is in it, then discard of the paper as anyone else would.

The area door of Oberstein's house had been left open the night before, and it was necessary for me, as Mycroft Holmes absolutely and indignantly declined to climb the railings, to pass in and open the hall door.

The guy barely walks anywhere and you're expecting him to climb over railings? This can't have come as a surprise to you, Watson.

With the shock, his broad-brimmed hat flew from his head, his cravat slipped sown from his lips, and there were the long light beard and the soft, handsome delicate features of Colonel Valentine Walter.

Does anyone know what ACD's problem with colonels was? I have not been keeping a running tally, but this has got to be about the 5th time that a colonel in these stories turned out to be a horrible person. I mean, in The Silver Blaze he was just a dick, and in The Crooked Man he was the victim, but it turned out he was terrible and kind of had it coming. Elias Openshaw in The Five Orange Pips was a colonel, in The Engineer's Thumb the guy's pretending to be a colonel, then there's Colonel Sebastian Moran. That's five I can remember.

Holmes gave a whistle of surprise. “You can write me down an ass this time, Watson,” said he. “This was not the bird that I was looking for.”

Really? Because he had access to the keys and also his brother mysteriously vanished. Plus he tried to get you out of the house pdq after you started questioning him.

“Everything is known, Colonel Walter,” said Holmes. “How an English gentleman could behave in such a manner is beyond my comprehension."

Not to disagree with everything you say in this story, but we've seen plenty of English gentlemen behave in ways just as bad. I guess you're putting treason as the worst possible crime or something, but even so. You yourself had a whole-ass speech about how the countryside of England is littered with crimes. It's also littered with the landed gentry. You can't really be surprised by this.

"There he intervened, and then it was, Colonel Walter, that to treason you added the more terrible crime of murder.”

Oh no, you do think murder is worse than treason. Good for you. But also in that case, you've definitely seen English gentlemen do worse.

"It was so thick that nothing could be seen, and we had no difficulty in lowering West's body on to the train."

Also the letters in the paper were from Oberstein? Not from Valentine, so... why on earth did he keep his own messages?

Oberstein, eager to complete the coup of his lifetime, came to the lure and was safely engulfed for fifteen years in a British prison. In his trunk were found the invaluable Bruce-Partington plans, which he had put up for auction in all the naval centres of Europe.

All's well that ends well - apart from poor Arthur Cadogan West who was only trying to do the right then and ended up murdered and framed for treason. I hope the government gave his family and fiancee some sort of reparations for the slanders against his name.

Colonel Walter died in prison towards the end of the second year of his sentence.

That's pretty quick, and ambiguous... he was quite young, wasn't he? Just 'died', nothing more than that? Hmmm.

This whole last bit reminds me of those 'where are they now' segments.

Roll credits.

[bibliophileiz]

A Charming Carol

For Meli @perhapsblues for the 2023 Charmed Secret Santa. Happy Holidays and I hope you like your story! (Sorry it's a little late, I ended up with a ton of family stuff, plus this story got a little out of hand length-wise.)

Note: I am not Wiccan or Pagan and have never celebrated Solstice, so I did a little Google research while writing this story to get an idea of Solstice celebrations. They seem to vary a lot, but I made sure to include candles for light and acknowledge the importance of the shortest day of the year. Any outright errors are entirely my own.

Christmas Past

Prue didn’t know how it happened. One minute she was standing in the kitchen, checking the Book of Shadows to make sure she’d added all the potion ingredients right, and the next she felt a blast of heat at her back and was hurtled forward, just managing to catch herself on her hands as she fell to the kitchen floor.

“Ow.”

She scrambled to her feet, ready to yell to the rest of the house that she was fine. But there was no inquiring shout from either of her sisters. In fact, the house was oddly still, with the only sound she heard now being the distant notes of … was that the Trans Siberian Orchestra?

Perplexed, Prue glanced behind her at the kitchen’s island counter to see if the potion had exploded.

The potion was gone. So was the pot it had boiled in and the smattering of leftover ingredients.

And so was the Book of Shadows.

“Oh no,” Prue said. “Oh no, no, nonono. PIPER!”

She stood frozen, staring at the empty counter. How had the Book of Shadows disappeared so quickly and how had she not realized it, and was it the potion or was it a demon or was it….?

“Hey, Mom’s not here right no—who are you?”

Prue whirled around to see two tall young men, one blond, one brown-haired, and instead of bothering to ask them what the hell they were doing in her kitchen, she just raised her hand to throw them out.

Only the blond one immediately brought up a shield of blue light, which seemed to deflect Prue’s powers. Both men—boys really, she could see now how young their faces looked—stared at her with wide eyes. “Aunt Prue?” the brown-haired one said.

“Aunt … Prue—what now?” Prue blinked several times.

“Oh, I think she got blasted here from the past,” the blond one said to the other. “Did Mom ever mention anything to you about this?”

“Rules of time travel, Wyatt, how do you always forget?” the brown-haired one said. “If it goes right, they don’t remember anything when they go back to their own time.”

The blond rolled his eyes. “’I’m Chris and I know all about time travel because an alternate version of me went back in time and saved my big brother,’” he said in a mocking voice.

“Well, I did. You’re welcome.” The brown-haired one turned back toward Prue. “Aunt Prue? How you doing?”

“Not good,” said Prue. “Because I’m not your aunt. I’m not anybody’s aunt. You’re just two demons who shimmered into my house and stole my book and now are trying to trick me by claiming to be family, which, by the way, get a better story next time because I’m not convinced.”

She punctuated this with another sweep of her hand, which she hoped would toss them across the room. Instead, it just made their shield flutter a little.

Even that seemed to alarm them. “She’s powerful,” said the blond in awe.

“Yeah, we knew that already,” said the other. “Listen, Aunt Prue, we really are your nephews, you’re just in the future. In the year 2023. And the Book’s upstairs in the attic, like always.”

“Why should I believe you?” Prue demanded.

“Believe this.” The brown-haired boy tossed something rectangular shaped, which sailed harmlessly through the shield and which Prue caught automatically. She glanced at it. It had a picture of the two boys on it under the digital time—6:00 p.m. exactly—and in the top left-hand corner was the date. Dec. 21, 2023.

She held up the rectangular thing. “What is this?”

The brown-haired one nodded impressively. “That’s what a cell phone looks like in the year 2023.”

“Well, it doesn’t flip open.”

“They tend to not, anymore.”

Prue looked wildly around her. Now that she was paying attention to something other than the Book being gone, she noticed subtle changes to the kitchen. The egg yolk yellow paint on the walls had been replaced with a soft, muted gray. Piper’s snarky hand towels hanging on the oven had been replaced with different towels that were still snarky but didn’t have curse words. The photos on the fridge were sleeker and featured a veritable herd of mostly dark-haired children she’d never seen before.

“I’m … in … the future?”

“Yep,” said the blond. “Now we’ve got to figure out how you got here and how to get you back.”

Prue tried to sound sternly maternal. Or aunt-like. Whatever. “Where is your mother?” She frowned. “And who is your mother?”

“Piper is our mom, Leo is our dad,” said the blond. “I’m Wyatt, and this is my little brother Chris.” Chris held up one hand in a casual wave. “He’s a pro at the whole time-travel thing.”

“And Mom and Dad are visiting Aunt Phoebe right now,” Chris said. “She’s living in a loft downtown.”

Prue let out a bark of laughter. “Phoebe lives in a loft? Who’s paying for it?”

“She is,” Wyatt said brightly. “She’s a celebrity now.”

Prue opened her mouth to say something sarcastic, but then stopped herself. Phoebe had been working hard lately to get her life on track. If everything Chris and Wyatt said was true, then she was succeeding … had succeeded … would succeed?

The point was, she didn’t need her big sister second guessing her.

And Piper and Leo had made it. Prue felt the beginnings of something warm fill her stomach. “So … so you two are … the next generation? Which means … we survive.”

Wyatt opened his mouth, but Chris stepped on his foot. “Yes, Aunt Prue,” Chris said. “The Charmed Ones survived.”

Wyatt lowered the shield and gave her a quick, cautious smile. Prue didn’t miss the way his eyes darted to Chris’s. There was something the boys weren’t saying.

But Prue knew better to interrogate. For one thing, they were limited in what they could say, due to the whole butterfly effect. For another, she probably wouldn’t be able to remember any of this anyway once she got back to her time. And for the last thing, she had more immediate problems.

“Great, so.” She wracked her brains, trying to think what to do next. “This has been fun meeting you and everything, glad to know your parents make it work—and your Whitelighter shield is very impressive, Ch—Wyatt, sorry, it’s Wyatt, right? But we’re in the middle of a major demon hunt—Belthazor, the Triad, the Source—so in order to make sure you two get born and don’t have demons breaking down the door every day, we need to get me back to the year 2000.”

“Agreed,” Wyatt said brightly. “Chris can help you with that.”

***

It turned out working with her nephew was a lot like working with her sisters, except Chris actually listened to her.

“Don’t worry,” he said grinning when she made a comment about it. “It’s only Wyatt I don’t listen to.”

He also had the same power as Prue did, which he demonstrated by closing the attic door with the same casual hand wave she did.

“Cool,” Prue said, grinning. “Can you astral project too?”

“No, but I can orb.” Chris frowned. “Astral projection. What if it was your astral projection powers that interfered with the potion to send you to our time?”

As they’d headed to the attic, Prue had explained to Chris the spell she’d been working on in 2000. A time management spell—with everything going on, the manor had needed a little organization, dammit.

But Prue didn’t think astral projection would have anything to do with that spell. “I move through the astral plane, not time,” she said.  

Chris held up one finger. “But time is different in the astral plane. Especially on nights of concentrated magic. Like, say, December 21?”

Prue frowned. “Okay, I didn’t think of that.” She peered down at the Book. It was much thicker in 2023 than it had been in 2000. She pointed to a passage. “And I probably used too much cayenne pepper, which could have reacted with my powers—”

“—And mistletoe—”

“And all of that together on a powerful night like the winter Solstice caused a time travel blip,” Prue finished. “Ok, note to self: no more cooking with cayenne on Wiccan holidays.”

“Better leave the cooking to Mom anyway,” Chris said, closing the book. “Simple accident should require a simple solution. Luckily, I’m an expert at the spell you need to travel through time.” He took a piece of chalk and began sketching a large, long shape on the wall while Prue watched.

While he worked, Prue opened the book and began paging through it, pausing to look at spells and creatures she didn’t recognize.

“It’s nice to know all this keeps going,” she said. After I’m gone, she added in her mind. It hadn’t escaped her notice that almost none of the new spells were in her handwriting. She was torn between wanting to ask Chris how much longer she had and being terrified of the answer.

She looked up to see Chris had drawn a giant triquetra on the wall. “If you call your mother and Phoebe, we can do the Power of Three spell,” she said.

“We don’t need to,” Chris said. “This is my own spell, sort of.” He frowned as he stepped back. “Unless you want Mom and Aunt Phoebe.” He looked at her uncertainly.

Prue chose her words carefully. “How would they react to seeing me?”

Chris gave her a small, understanding smile. “I think they’d be really happy to see you.”

***

Christmas Past

The last time Phoebe approached the manor with this much trepidation, she’d been twenty-two years old and coming home from New York with no money to pay for her cab.

Now she was anxious about seeing the same person—but in a completely different way.

Leo was in the front seat driving, with Paige in the passenger seat. Phoebe sat in the back with Piper, who grabbed her hand as they turned into the driveway.

Paige had offered to orb them, but Phoebe wanted some time to ground herself. More than twenty years as San Francisco’s preeminent advice columnist, and never once had anyone written her asking what to do when their dead big sister shows up from 2000 and asks to see her.

Leo parked the car, and they all got out silently. Phoebe was still holding Piper’s hand.

They got to the door. “Should we knock?” asked Phoebe.

Piper scowled, looking for a moment like her old self. “It’s my house, I’m not knocking.” She opened the door.

They were greeted by Wyatt, sitting on the bottom step playing on his phone. He looked up and flashed them a grin as Piper and Phoebe came in, followed by Leo and Paige. “Where is she?” Phoebe asked, suddenly desperate to see her.

“In the sitting room with Chris,” Wyatt said. “He made her stay put because she was pacing so much.”

Phoebe started running.

She skidded to a halt in the living room, causing Piper to nearly crash into her. Prue jumped off the couch and for a moment, they all stared at each other.

It was like looking at a video of a Christmas past. Prue looked thirty years old, her dark hair long and lustrous, wearing a tight t-shirt with cookies and milk on it that said I PUT OUT FOR SANTA. She was beautiful. She was home.

Then the Halliwell sisters all squealed like a bunch of teenagers and crashed into each other in a hug.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Phoebe said, smushed between her two big sisters.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” Prue said. They all squeezed tighter, giggling and sliding on Piper’s slick floor. After several long moments, they let go and Prue blurted out, “You guys look so old!”

“Hey, watch who you’re calling old, lady!” Piper said, but there were tears running down her face. Prue kissed the top of her head, and Piper fit her head in the space between Prue’s neck and shoulder, looking like a little girl again.

“I heard you finally got your restaurant,” Prue said.

“Yeah, after demon vanquish number 60 million.”

Phoebe leaned her head on Prue’s other shoulder, and Prue brushed some of her hair out of her face. “And you’re giving people advice for a living?”

Phoebe stiffened. “Surprised?”

“Not at all. I … actually feel like I should have seen it coming.” Prue seemed thoughtful.

Phoebe sniffed. “Well, I’m the one with the power of premonition.”

“And … empathy and levitation?”

“Eh.”

Prue finally looked away from her sisters to the rest of the people gathered in the living room. Chris and Wyatt were standing back like they didn’t want to intrude on an emotional moment, but Leo and Paige were in her line of sight. Prue grinned. “Hey, Leo. Looking good.”

Leo let out a laugh through his front teeth. “Thanks Prue. It’s good to see you.”

Prue disentangled herself from Phoebe and Piper and pulled Leo into a long hug. When she released him, she turned to Paige. “And you must be Paige.”

It had been a long time since Paige looked uncertain, but as she cast a quick glance at Piper and Phoebe, she reminded Phoebe so much of the first time they’d met that for a moment Phoebe wondered if they weren’t the one who had time traveled. She gave Paige as encouraging a smile as she could, and her baby sister squared her shoulders and turned back to Prue. “And you’re the famous Prue. It’s … really great to meet you.”

She held out her hand, but Prue shook her head. “Sisters hug,” she said firmly, and Paige laughed as the two embraced.

“So Chris and Wyatt explained everything to you?” Piper said shrewdly as they two women released each other.

“Yes.” Prue pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. She looked exactly the same as the last time Phoebe saw her—thirty years old, beautiful, and much more confident than the rest of them. “I kind of figured it out when I noticed none of the new spells in the Book of Shadows were left by me.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. “I was upset, at first, but mostly I just want to see you guys.”

“What time are you from, exactly?” Paige asked.

“December 21, 2000,” Prue said. “Exactly twenty-three years ago.”

“Wow,” Phoebe said. “We’re so old.”

“Belthazor just killed the Triad, and then you killed Belthazor,” Prue said, gesturing to Phoebe who tried not to wince. Somehow, she had never thought about how the last Christmas she’d spent with Prue, she’d been lying to her. “And now we’re trying to deal with the Source. And Piper and Leo are on probation, but it looks like that works itself out.”

“Yeah, after a couple of hiccups,” Piper said.

Leo held out his hand, and his wife took it with a small smile. “It was worth it, though,” Leo said, bending to kiss her.

“And you’ve got amazing kids! I mean, I can’t believe that Chris wrote a working time travel spell that doesn’t even require the Power of Three,” Prue said.

“Yeah, and that spell is ready whenever you are,” Chris volunteered from the corner where he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Wyatt.

“Oh, you don’t have to go now, do you?” Phoebe blurted out.

“Yeah, it’s Christmas!” Piper said. “You can stay for Christmas!”

“Or at least Solstice,” Paige said. “I mean, the power’s going to be really easy to tap into until midnight, so we have a few hours, and even after that we can still get you back, whenever you want. I mean, if you want,” she added. “I know we all look different and you just met me and you probably want to get back to your own time, but … I’d love to get to know my big sister.”

“I do need to get back,” Prue said. “But I think it can wait a few hours.”

“Then let’s do Solstice and Christmas!” Phoebe said. “I have the candles and all the shopping’s done. I can have the girls bring over the presents.”

“Yeah, Henry can bring over ours,” Paige said.

“But I haven’t done the baking yet!” Piper said.

“We’ll just order pizza,” said Wyatt.

“Pizza? On the Solstice? In my house?” Piper said. “Who raised you?”

What followed was a flurry of activity. Piper went to the kitchen to bake cookies and canapes (though Wyatt still ordered four pizzas for everyone). Phoebe and Paige got on the phone with their respective husbands to tell them what was going on and that Christmas would be a couple of days early this year so they could spend it with Aunt Prue. Within an hour, the house was filled with the sound of children’s shrill laughter and the smell of Piper’s baking.

Witches and Wiccans celebrate Solstice a variety of ways, but since the Charmed Ones celebrated it and Christmas—and since demons still tended to crash any bashes they threw—they kept their celebrations simple. As the sun set, they gathered in the living room to light a candle and pass it around, each saying what they were thankful for and expressing their hopes for the coming season of light.

Piper tried to get Prue to start, but Prue patted her knee. “I think it should be you, since you’re the head of this family now.”

Piper’s eyes filled with tears, but she gave Prue a quick smile and began to speak, talking about the importance of the shortest day of the year. As they moved from the darkness of winter toward the light of spring, she said, it was important to hold onto hope and remember what all they had.

“This year, I’m thankful for our family, like every year,” Piper said. “For my wonderful, loving husband. For my talented boys. For my spirited nieces and nephew. For my supportive brothers-in-law. And for my sisters, who have always been there for me.” She glanced at Prue. “Especially when I didn’t expect them.” She continued. “And my hopes for the new year are that we will all stay together and remember how—” her voice caught. “—how lucky we are to have each other,” she finished tearfully, and then quickly passed the candle to Phoebe.

Phoebe took it and spent a silent moment centering herself, like always. “This year, I’m thankful for the peace and joy we’ve had together as a family. For my beautiful girls. And I’m thankful for this time I get to spend with Prue.” She beamed at Prue, who had tears running down her cheeks. In fact, almost everyone in the family was crying now, so Phoebe decided to lighten the moment. “And I hope next year I make lots of money.”

Everyone chuckled, and Phoebe quickly added, “And I hope that we all grow stronger and more confident in our power and our love for one another.”

She passed the candle to Leo, who passed it next to Chris (“I’m thankful I finally get to meet Aunt Prue so we can bond over our kick-ass power.”) and then to Paige (“I’m thankful to meet Prue and find her as warm and down-to-earth as I always hoped, while still being the hot, bad-ass goddess I was always a little intimidated by.”) and on and on until finally Prue was the last one holding the candle

“I’m thankful for this opportunity to see my family,” she said. “To see what we become.” Her voice caught, just like Piper’s had. “And I know now that I don’t have much longer left, but … I am so happy to see the legacy we have. And I’m sad, but I’m not afraid.”

She handed the candle back to Piper, who said, “So mote it be,” and blew out the candle.

Food and a much less quiet, more chaotic Christmas celebration followed. No one had bought presents for Prue, of course, but she still somehow ended up with elf ears, a sparkly Santa hat, several pieces of both store-bought and homemade jewelry, Parker’s old phone, and a lap full of chocolate coins. Phoebe and Paige’s kids sat around her in a circle listening to her tell stories while Piper filled and refilled everyone’s plates and Wyatt made a circle of white lights float over the Christmas tree.

As midnight approached, the younger children nodded off on the living room floor, while the men started discussing football. The sisters retreated to the kitchen to help Piper clean up.

Prue put an arm around each Piper and Phoebe. “I just want to say I am so proud of you guys.” She glanced at Paige. “And you too, although it sounds like you were always going places.” Paige grinned.

Phoebe put an arm around Prue. “We couldn’t have done it without you,” she said in a slightly higher voice, the kind she used to use when Prue was alive.

“Yeah, not without our big sister,” agreed Piper.

“Also, not to give too much away about the future—”

“I already know I die—”

“But you have some kickass astral projection stuff coming up. Also a demon wrestling match.”

“Ugh,” Prue said. “That makes me feel sore just thinking about it.”

“And Piper’s going to table dance!” Phoebe added.

“Don’t tell her that, it’s bad enough living through it once,” Piper said.

At midnight, the sisters, including Paige, went upstairs to the attic with Chris. To Phoebe’s surprise, Prue gave her nephew a tight hug. “Proud of you, kid,” she said.

Chris grinned broadly.

Another round of hugs went between the sisters. Everyone was crying again.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Piper said, squeezing her eyes shut and burying her face in Prue’s shoulder.

Prue sniffed and wiped a tear from her cheek, but said, “You’ll see me again. Just, like, summon my ghost or something.” Piper let out a watery laugh as she released her.

She hugged Paige next. To Phoebe’s surprise, Paige was crying too. “It’s been so great meeting you,” she squeaked through her tears.

“You too,” Prue said, squeezing her tightly. “I’m glad to know the Charmed legacy is in such good hands, though.”

Last, she hugged Phoebe. Phoebe sank against her, inhaling the smell of her perfume that brought back memories of being in college and confused and in love with Cole and in awe of Prue. Prue kissed her hair. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispered in Phoebe’s ear. Phoebe could only blubber unattractively.

Finally Prue stepped back and smiled at all of them. “I love you guys.” She looked at Chris. “I’m ready.”

Chris handed her the Book.

“Hear these words, hear the rhyme, heed the hope within my mind,” Prue read slowly. “Send me back to where I’ll find what I wish in space and time.”

The triquetra on the wall suddenly glowed blue, and all the air in the room seemed to hum. Prue gave them one last smile, turned to the portal, squared her shoulders, and walked through the shape on the wall.

There was a sound like a gust of wind. And then Prue was gone.

***

Christmas present

Prue ended up back in the kitchen, looking at a now empty bowl of potion, trying to figure out both what had happened to it, and if she’d just had some sort of dream, and if those two things were related.

She raised her wrist to push her hair back and saw a childlike bracelet she’d never seen before around her wrist. Between pink and purple beads were some with blocky letters that said PEYTON.

“Peyton?” she said.

At that moment, Phoebe walked into the room. Her hair was blond and she was twenty-four. “My finals are supposed to be posted tonight, and I have no idea how I did,” she groaned, helping herself to one of the early Christmas cookies Piper had left cooling on the table after an afternoon of baking. “Are you prepared to continue supporting me if I flunk out and have to do college all over again in another two years?” Prue continued to stare at her bracelet. “Who’s Peyton?”

A small suspicion was growing in Prue’s mind. “Did you cast a time travel spell?”

“No, why?”

Prue held up her wrist and shook it. “Because I just time travelled. How else do you explain this?”

“Usually you don’t remember time travel,” Phoebe said. “Why do you think you went back again?”

“Something about too much cayenne in this potion… maybe? I don’t know, I just have a feeling, that’s all.”

Phoebe sat on the table and dangled her legs. “Do we need to go to the Book?”

“No, I … I think we should fine, as long as it doesn’t happen again.”

“Well, do you happen to have a feeling about my exams?” Phoebe said hopefully.

She meant it as a joke, but Prue looked at her, beginning to smile. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she was absurdly proud of her little sister.

Phoebe reached up to her face self-consciously. “What? Do I have something on my nose?” A small smile crept across Prue’s face. “No. But I think your exams are going to be just fine.”

[greyyson-but-no]

is this real? | tommyinnit

genre | fluff, angst

warnings | heavy suicide tw (reader throws themself off different heights to feel pain that they can't feel), fighting (tommy vs technoblade)

pairing | c!tommyinnit x reader, platonic!wilbur x reader

word count | 1.4K

a/n | same dsmp version as 'come with us' but set much later on with some unknown contexts. reader has died lol. a cheesy reunion at the end.

the skatepark hadn't changed. it never did. in all eight years i had been here, not once did anything change. i would have been thankful for a new broken window at this rate but no: simply, nothing ever changed.

that morning i had woken up, grabbed the block of chalk that was settled next to the block of wax and drawn another line on the shortest wall. stepping back, i had looked at it all, seeing that it was nearly ready to move onto another room. there was one for every single day i had been there. it was just something to do each day that wasn't skating, and helped me keep track of how long i had been here, even if i'd forgotten the exact number. and it stopped me from going insane. probably.

thoughout the day, i had thrown myself off the edge of the tallest half-pipe at least ten times. i had learnt yet another trick, perfected it, and then climbed up the walls to the ceiling, hung from the fixtures and then dropped from them to celebrate. alas, still not pain. i didn't scar anymore, i didn't get bruises or cuts anymore. it was as if i was completely untouchable now.

but it was nearing the end of the day when it happened. when one by ne, the wood that blocked up the windows slid down and crashed against the floor. the first one had made me jump to the floor prematurely, but even when i didn't know, i didn't take any damage.

at first, i was too scared to leave. they had never given me a chance to leave before, what if it was a trap? or a test? it could simply be some sick, cruel joke made to ruin my life even more than it had already been ruined.

but then the metal double doors swung open, and a blinding light was let in.

still, i didn't want to leave. still, i didn't trust it but it didn't matter. they didn't care. it was as if i was being dragged through the doors, into the blinding light. i was on the other side of the warehouse, though, and due to my hesitance and resistance against the force, it took too long for their patience so the ceiling simply started falling in. first it was the strip lighting, then the lighting fixtures but somehow i had managed to dodge all of that. until each plank in the ceiling was slowly falling down.

one of them, of course, hit me on the head and knocked me out. but it hurt. it actually hurt and for the first time in eight years i felt pain.

when i woke up, the first thing i saw was daylight. a blinding, seething hot sun against my skin but it was still feeling things. it was still incredible. slowly, i sat up, the grin on my face growning wider and wider against my lips as the feeling of the grass beneath me processed. my eyes opened and i was in a forest, but at the edge of it, and laying against a hill.

and there was a voice. many of them, actually, all chanting something incoherant but definitely the same thing over and over again. and it was almost certainly coming from the inside of the moutain.

swiftly, faster and with more motivation than i had had in years, i pulled myself up off the ground and dug through the grass. using my bare hands to pull at the dirt and grime, getting it in my fingernails but not caring because there were people. only, it opened up into a small starter base. there wasn't much there, simply a crafting table, furnace and a selection of chests with basic survival tools in there but the chanting had gotten louder. there must be a cave somewhere then.

in the corner there was a hole. there was a ladder attatched to it so deep that i couldn't see the bottom but the people were down there. there were chants echoing up from down it, so i descended the latter, listening for the voices that got louder and louder the further i got down.

a large cavern but revealled, with so many signs of life i could almost cry. i knew i was definitely in the right place so i scaled down the levels and stairs to the very bottom, spotting the large group of people that i couldn't identify. it didn't matter if it wasn't my friends because they were people. after years and years of complete solitude there were finally people that i could talk to and socialise with.

but it was better than i could have imagined. it was my friends. they were the people i had grown to know and love like i had never before.

wilbur, standing taller than most of them, turned around at the sound of feet on the stares and although the look on his face was worry at first, when he saw it was me his face lit up.

"y/n!" he cried, and everyone spun around, fast enough to give them whiplash but there was only one person i wanted to see. i pushed past everyone, wilbur catching my arm and look down at me. "y/n, you might not want to see this."

my eyebrows furrowed immediately, the grin on my face dropping at his words. "see what?"

"don't."

"wilbur." i warned. "i don't care." and i pushed passed him, nearly falling into the pit but being pulled back by wilbur again. then, i could see everything.

it was tommy and technoblade, fighting again, like i made him promise he wouldn't, but it wasn't even going well. tommy was cowered into a corner with techno punching him again and again. my heart was being pulled, insinctively i jumped into the pit, wrapping my arms around techno and pulling him off tommy, facing him and pointing, not even bothering to say hi to tommy.

"why the fuck would you do that! you broke pit rules!"techno shouts, standing up and pulling himself toegther.

"y/n?" i could barely hear him.

"you were going to kill him, techno!" i shouted. "i don't care about fucking pit rules! he's on his last life and i won't let him go through what i did!"

"y/n!"

"i just got back." i told him, calming my voice and explaining. "i don't want to come back to find the love of my life dead in a ditch because of some stupid fight rules, techno. why were you even fighting in the first place?"

tommy must have stood up, but it made me jump when he placed a hand on my shoulder. "y/n, fucking turn around! "

and finally i did. spun around on the balls of my feet to look at the one person I'd missed more than the sun. more than the feeling of pain or happiness, I'd missed him more than I thought humanly possible and here he was standing in front of me, a black eye slowly forming but safe, and alive like I made him promise he would stay.

"tommy."

his hand moved to my cheek, a look of disbelief in those gorgeous eyes, his other palm clutching mine like his life depended on it. "is it you? did it work? is this real?"

"i think it is. i don't know how, or why, or even if this is real or if we're both hallucinating but I don't care. oh, tommy."

and if I were to say I missed one thing more than anything else while I was dead, rotting away in a warehouse alone, it would be the feeling of his arms wrapped around my waist, his nose buried in my neck and the warmth, the pure radiating warmth that came from him that made me feel so alive. more alive than when I had woken up from death.

"fuck, i love you." he mumbled into my neck, the feeling of hot tears against the skin.

it made me pull myself off him, looking up at the boy that was so much more than a survivor, and certainly much more than mine simply mine. i reached up and wiped the tears from his cheeks, everyone else having been zoned out, as if they weren't even there because all that matter was that i was back, i was back and everything was okay for now. i had the love of my life back, and everything was okay. everything would be okay.

i squeezed his hand. "i'm never leaving again, tommy. i promise with my life that I will never leave again. if death tries to take me i will drag it to hell and storm right back to you, okay? you never have to worry again."

[hyperfixationmess123]

Ok so this is a short Lucifer, Supernatural and Good Omens crossover I wrote. 

Should I make this into a whole fic and post on ao3? 

------

They did it. Armageddon didn’t happen. Adam stopped it. 

A loud crack sounded from behind them. 

“No. This can’t be right. I swear I threw her into an empty universe.” a tall, dark haired brit said.

“Lucifer! Slow down!” a woman called after him.

The brit in the expensive suit didn’t listen to her.

“Lucifer!” she yelled. 

“I’m just going to ask them something, relax.” he called as he turned around and walked backwards, still heading to the group.

The woman suddenly disappeared and reappeared a few feet in front of him as he turned back around. 

“I’m just saying we should be careful. I mean, you’re you, a lot of universes are very wary and untrusting of you.” 

“As they should be. I’m the devil after all.” 

“Yeah, but you’re still a lot nicer than most versions of you.”

“Lucifer?” came a confused voice. 

“Indeed. I need to speak to your god. It’s urgent.” he said with that signature smile.

“I can feel mom's presence here. She created this world.”

“Eden. That’s impossible. She could create, but she wasn’t strong enough to create all this.”

“I’m the First Creation you little shit. I was the first thing she and dad created. I’ve known her for billions of years longer than you have, I know her presence and this is it. All this is hers.”

“Hey. You’re an angel. Go upstairs and tell your god it's urgent and that we need to meet with her.”

“I’m not just an angel. I’m Gabriel, and I’m not taking orders from you.”

The two looked at him with a slightly disgusted look.

“You’re Gabriel?” Lucifer judged.

“Suddenly I’m glad our Gabriel is how he is. Damn, you look like you have a whole tree up your ass. Relax dude.” Eden spoke.

“Lucifer? Eden?” a voice boomed. It was her. A ray of light shone brightly and a woman stepped out.

“Mom.” Eden smiled at the familiar face. “Still hanging on to Charlotte's face I see.”

“What can I say? She was a stunning lady.” she smiled. “Now what are you two doing here? I never thought I’d see you two again.”

“Dad’s destroying the multiverse.”

“What.”

“He’s wiping the slate clean. Everything he’s created that still exists is being destroyed.”

“He didn’t create this world. I did.”

“He created the empty universe we threw you into. You just created everything inside it.”

“He has no right to destroy my masterpiece!”

“Oh I think I do.” a new voice came.

“You.” 

“Honey, I’m home.”

“What on earth has gotten into you?”

“I grew bored. I’m going to start a new project, I just need to wipe the slate clean first.”

“Just because you’re angry that two random people managed to get free of your narrative doesn’t mean that you have to erase every single universe.”

“I made a mistake giving humans free will.”

“Hey Chuck!” another voice came. The new arrivals were a blond, young man and two taller older men.

“You really are a pain in the ass aren’t you?”

“It’s what we are best at apparently. Why don’t you take a hit at us before you un-create us. It’s us you hate.” the shortest to the two older men tempted.

“You know. That’s a good idea.” Chuck said and then started throwing punches at them. 

Eden gasped. “That’s brilliant.”

“What?” Charlotte asked.

“Look at Jack.” Said boy's eyes were glowing gold as he absorbed the godly energy Chuck released as he beat the brothers to a pulp. 

“Who is that boy?” 

“My son apparently. My monster was released from its cage and impregnated some poor woman. Since the monster has a part of my grace, the boy is technically mine.”

“How old is he?”

“Three.”

“A three year old nephilim is going to be your new god? Are you crazy?”

“I’ll guide him, and take over if he wishes to be with his family, after we fix what’s left of heaven. There’s been a civil war for the last five years. There are only seven angels left in the whole of heaven.”

“What? Where was he?”

“Gone. He has been missing for millions of years. He only decided to show up again because we released The Darkness.”

“Amara is free? Why hasn’t she destroyed everything?”

“She tried, but then they made up for a while, and then she moved on, decided to take a vacation and enjoy what humanity has to offer. He became jealous and angry.”

They watched as Chuck turned to face the young nephilim. He looked him straight in the eyes as he snapped his fingers. His dark expression turned into terror as nothing happened as he tried again and again. The glowing eyes of the boy suddenly looked terrifying. The boy grabbed Chuck’s head and absorbed the rest of his powers.

“Nephilims are powerful, but not this powerful. How is he able to do this?”

“He died, but we managed to rip him out of The Empty, not without consequence though.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack.” Lucifer smiled softly.

“You seem changed Luci. You’re not hateful and angry anymore.”

“I know. I met someone. She changed me, and helped me find my purpose again.”

“Oh really?”

“A detective. His detective as he keeps saying.”

“I realized that I’m going to help souls move on. I’m not going to torture souls anymore. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

“Wow! You really have changed. I’m so happy for you.”

The two bloody, beaten up brothers limped over to them.

“Hey. Let me.” Eden spoke and touched their foreheads, healing them.

“Thanks.” Sam smiled. “Hey Charlotte.”

“Hello boys.”

“What are we doing with him?” Dean asked, nodding towards the whimpering Chuck on the ground.

“I’ll have him here. Out of your way and out of your universe. It’s clear you have a lot of rebuilding to do. The last thing you need to be concerned about is him.”

“Almighty?” a shy voice questioned. Charlotte turned around.

“Aziraphale.” she smiled.

“Are-” he swallowed thickly. “Are you angry?”

“Angry?”

“That we stopped Armageddon?”

“No, not at all. I’m proud. Armageddon was a test. A test to see if you would blindly follow orders or question it. Armageddon was never going to happen. The world is perfect as it is, or, well, almost perfect. But I’m not about to destroy the planet to end a feud that probably isn’t going to end anyway. Now that the great test has passed, I’ll be around more. You’re my children after all, I shouldn’t leave you alone.” 

[incorrect-web-novels]

The Demon Prince Goes to the Academy Character Guide

Spoilers beware - I tried to black out the major ones (hover over or make a copy & change the highlight to see it), but some characters/sections are spoilers just by existing 😔

The final section ("Epilogues") is NOT redacted at all bc the entire thing is a spoiler, so don't go there if you want to remain unspoiled 👍

I'll probably edit this and/or make a fun Google slides version, but here's the shortest version of a DPA Character Guide I could manage lol

[roseblushwrites]

ao3 wrapped [writer edition]

I know it's supposed to be an ask meme but I am not going to sit here and wait to be asked when I feel like just answering all of them right now! It has been like two decades since I last got to do a MySpace bulletin survey and frankly I miss infodumping about myself!!!

How many words have you written this year? 125,547. Which, quite honestly, does not seem like it could possibly be true.

How many works did you publish this year? 17

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)? Probably Lovers in a Fable and Engraved Upon My Heart, they're my two longest one-shots and I managed to get some actual plot in with the smut for once.

What work of yours has the most hits? Lover, Be Good to Me

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected? Known in the Ache. It was the first fic I'd posted in 13 years and I was not expecting a single person to notice or care.

Favorite title you used? The Force of Forbidden Love by Jusjuli Doutgods makes me laugh every time I see it still.

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most? Hozier.

Pairing you wrote the most for this year? Cal/Merrin

Favorite pairing you wrote for this year? This is mean. I'm going to say Cal/Merrin though because they have more content to be inspired by than Jyn/Cassian, and they didn't require me to do the work of making up an OC, like Gale/Tav. So they were just easier to write about.

What work was the quickest to write? I honestly don't remember! I feel like for the most part my one-shots take an average of the same amount of time to write.

What work took you the longest to write? Known in the Ache. I wrote all of it before I started posting, over about five months. The first draft was only from Jyn's POV and was about half as long as the final version - I rewrote almost every part of it for the second draft and added in all the Cassian POV sections at that point.

How many WIPs do you have in your docs for next year? Seven, lol. Though most likely at least one of those will get written and posted before this year is over.

What’s your longest work of the year? Known in the Ache, 41,632 words

What’s your shortest work of the year? Watch Me Unfold, 1,963 words

What WIP are you taking into next year with you? For sure Hope to the Edge, my Merrical cowboy AU... but I also accidentally wrote an outline for a smutty one-shot in the urban fantasy Merrical AU setting I thought would never exist anywhere other than my own brain, so also that one.

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag? Aside from the obvious ones like "established relationship" and "shameless smut" and tags for various sexual acts that are basically on all of them, the answer to this is probably "consensual voyeurism"

Your favorite character to write this year? I have to say Cal. I have not loved a character the way I love him in yearrrrrssssss. He is just so earnest and I love his journey. And I just think he and Merrin deserve to fuck nasty 🤷‍♀️

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year? Gale Dekarios. Good lord. I love this sweet man but his vocabulary and speech patterns can be so hard to get right. I think (hope?) I've mostly gotten the hang of it now, but every fic I still have to basically write the version a normal person would say in the initial draft and then "Gale-ify" it on the edit.

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year? Um... recent developments have me thinking a lot about a Karlach/Wyll/Dammon OT3. I've never written anything like that so it would be a challenge, but I am thinking about it 👀 kind of a lot 👀👀👀

Which work of yours have you reread the most? I actually have no idea. I usually reread everything I post several times in the first day it's up (and spot all the tiny edits I missed or new things I want to change 🙄) but after that I kind of... never look at it again lol.

How many kudos in total did you get this year? 2,433 😭♥️

Which work has the most comments? Known in the Ache, because it's the oldest and longest

Did you do any collaborative works this year? No 😞 maybe next year!

Did you write any gifts this year? Yes I wrote Lovers in a Fable for Sarah aka dangerwillrobinson aka @icapturedthecastle because it was her birthday and I wanted to do something nice for her 🥰 my love language is dedicating smut to my friends

Did you receive any gifts this year? Sarah dedicated free to a good home to me on my birthday because she's the best. clone club 4 lyfe

What’s your most common category? F/M

What do you listen to while writing? Most of the time it's Goodnight Moon ASMR videos because they're always so cozy and comforting but aren't the kind of ASMR that make me sleepy, but also aren't really distracting (which music tends to get for me).

Favorite work you wrote this year? My favorite is usually whichever one I just finished, so Engraved Upon My Heart at the moment.

Favorite line/passage you wrote this year? I'm going to be annoying and do lines from each character in my pairings. Favorite Cal line: “I know that first one was for you,” Cal panted into her mouth. “But this one’s gonna be for me, okay?” (Bedroom Hymns) Favorite Merrin line: “You bumbled too much for it to be lurking.” (The Force of Forbidden Love by Jusjuli Doutgods) Favorite Cassian line: “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll keep you warm.”(Known in the Ache ch. 10) Favorite Jyn line: “Can I at least get a knife or something?” (Known in the Ache ch. 9) Favorite Gale line: “Oh, but maybe we’ve already arrived at that point.” (Lover, Be Good to Me) Favorite Tav line: "You might be made of magic, but magic is not made of you." (Engraved Upon My Heart)

Biggest surprise while writing this year? Honestly, that I could still do it 🙏

[fjadwrites]

crunch reading just to be back on track

Good afternoon!

Yes, I know. This is a lot later than my usual blogging time. You could say things had gotten busier around here since I woke up this morning. It's 3:46 PM here as I'm writing here. But I did read for today. I think that's a good thing. I tried to read as much as I can while doing things around here.

As for my reading update from yesterday,  I got to finish reading several books! What do you know? Then again, three of them were just the shortest books from my old currently reading list that were added since the early 2024, to be honest. You could say I'm in a hurry to be on track with my Goodreads Reading Challenge for this year. And what better for me to do that?

Read short books. But three out of the four books I've finished reading yesterday were self-help books. And one of them has something to do with writing. And obviously, since I did crunch reading (as I'd like to call it) yesterday, it was obvious that I surpassed my page count quota yesterday. With this, now I'm thinking of raising the maximum number of pages for me to read to either 80 or 90. Definitely not 100 as it was still too much for my brain.

Let me rate the books I've read yesterday. I mean, I know I did it in Goodreads already. But I also want to do it here.

"The 12 Week Year" by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington - ⭐⭐⭐, but only because it only made my brain like a mush and maybe I just felt pressured in a way as I was reading the whole thing. I mean, the idea was great that you can actually do a lot of things in about 3 months. But maybe I wasn't in the right mindset just yet to implement the process to myself at the moment. For now, I would consider doing the process in the future, especially since I do view myself a failure at my age of 33.

"5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter" by Chris Fox - ⭐⭐⭐, but the idea was definitely something I can do when I'm writing. I actually first heard about this book because of Kate Cavanaugh's video when she tried to write 5,000 words an hour like Chris Fox. But it actually took me a while to finish reading the whole thing. I don't know what made me stop reading this, to be honest. And I know it's other than my reading slump. Should I blame my writing slump/writer's block on that, as well? But yes, I know I can only write around 3,000 words maximum in one day. Why? I tend to write my stories by hand first. It has been a habit since high school and I don't think I've ever outgrown that. But I could still do the practices here in this book in my writing just so I can use that as a reason to discipline my writer self. So the books still helped me in some way.

"Romancing The Beats: Story Structure for Romance Novels" by Gwen Hayes - This one was a definite ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ for me, only because it does provided me more insight than I ever thought I needed when it comes to writing romance stories. I mean, you could say that romance is sort of my forte in writing stories. It was the genre that I started writing back in high school. Yes, I'm thanking Kate Cavanaugh once again for me discovering this book for writers. And I think she outlined her first romance novel with this as a guide. I still haven't started outlining any romance stories with the beats in this book. But I will get to that ㅡ once I managed to get my writing groove back.

The second volume of "By The Grace Of The Gods" is also done, and I've rated it ⭐⭐⭐⭐ in Goodreads. Hmm... Maybe because I wasn't some of the characters to appear here early that I've only seen on the second season of the anime version. Another thing that could've affected the original 5 stars rating was the initial assumption I had that anime version encompassed the first two volumes of the light novel. I was wrong. This volume seemed to be encompassing only 3 episodes since it has something to do with the continuation of the monster subjugation and starting the laundry store. The real problem for me? Information overload on the store building part.

That's a lot for me to even write here, you know. But I thought I should add my comments (even if it's short) on each of the book I would finish reading. Yes, even my own ratings on the books done reading.

It's currently raining hard as I write here, but let's get on with the next part. As for th book I continued reading, I actually read 18 pages of the fifth volume of "The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen" at past midnight, as I've mentioned in my blog entry yesterday. I didn't add more pages done reading on that book after that since I concentrated reading more on the other books. So no comments and ratings just yet.

I really should try raising the maximum number for a bit, but I would definitely not let it reach 100 for my brain's sake. But with all that I've read today, I think I already reached this page count quota today. I'll let you know about the books I read tomorrow. 

Just to give you a heads up ㅡ they were mainly novellas. Blame my frustration for constantly seeing the number of books behind schedule in my Goodreads Reading Challenge. So this was my solution to finally beat that.

Yes, I know this entry is already way too late than my usual posting time. But it's only past 5 in the afternoon here in 🇵🇭, so it's still within the day.

Let's see if I can post here during my usual early posting time. See you tomorrow! Happy reading. 😊✌️💕📚📖

[freakinator]

prev i actually forgor to do that lol so here it is

(read more cause its long and written kinda badly lol)

so starting off with stuff i forgor to do:

checking the color values before going to sleep, there are So many parts of this that dont look the way theyre supposed to esp the darker parts

to scale up parrot and wiffies, zam and spoke are actually the shortest guys here

spoke's skelehands, its actually p important that i remember this one cause its the main design choice he shares with mapicc

i didnt have my wemmbu ref (cause it was on a notebook) but his belt tie is actually on his right side not his left which is important cause i wanted him and zam to have a little subtle mirrory-ish thing going on

the tie around zams scabbard actually. tying together

zams golden shoe buckles

next with the stuff i thought about but didnt add for one reason or another:

jamato was originally gonna have a glove + arm warmer sleeve things combo with the gloves being the same color as his shoes, i may change it back to that depending on how his story goes specifically in regards to how he interacts with spoke (if they become more codependent i'll change it back as it would make his and spoke's hands blend together when they hold hands)

was debating between making jamato's black parts actual pure black but decided on keeping it that off black color, may change later if i manage to figure out what i want his species to be

debated between putting parrot in cargo pants or pants with zipper pockets and decided to go with the latter cause it seems more practical with how much he flies around

was originally gonna make parrot's hair neater than his other versions but i wanted him to match with wifies so it stayed loose and messy

wemmbu is supposed to have a jacket but i couldnt think of what to give him, originally thought of giving him a lab coat but realized he doesnt really do a lot of experimentation esp compared to the other two mcs and i just kinda hit a wall after that, just realized at the time of writing this i could give him an aviator jacket

wemmbu and zam were also supposed to have capes but their designs already have too many details so i excluded them

zam's circlet was originally gonna have larger spikes but i decided tomake it smaller cause 1. its more practical and i wanted unstable zam to be almost absurdly practical compared to other zams and 2. he doesnt have the same sun symbolism that he has in lifesteal and making the spikes larger really made it look like very sunny which i didnt want

zam's eyes were originally gonna be fully red which is his equivalent to that thing in anime where super serious kinda dead inside characters would have no light in their eyes but i decided to change it cause i dont think hes That dead inside (at least not yet anyway, may change later depending on how the story goes), picture below of when i was figuring out his design for reference of what im talking about

now for the stuff thats actually there:

i never really drew jamato before (not counting the back of his head, pic below for reference of what he normally looks like in my design) and the only other parrot drawing i have is of his tsftlt version but this is the only version where they have chest ribbons and thats because they both seem to have a a lot more knowledge on mc mechanics (exploits and vanilla respectively) compared to the other players and also to connect them with their respective partners (parrot has a ribbon hair tie which means both he and wifies have two ribbons)

the rainbow parts on spoke's shirt and shorts are all in slits which would be hidden if he stood completely still as opposed to his usual design of having all of them present at once, this is mainly cause i wanted to emphasize his movement since running away from things is a big part of his character

spoke has black leggings, rainbow ankle warmers, and loafers(? idk what theyre called) cause i wanted him to match with jamato and also to give him more of a school boy vibe compared to his usual design of vaguely scene basketballer

parrot normally wears a button up, jogging pants, and rain boots but i wanted him to match with wifies

wifies normally has brown eyes but i wanted him to match with parrot in having an eyecatching accessory color be his eye color

wemmbu doesnt normally have two-tone hair and i added that as a replacement for his crown jewel and to match with zam's multicolored hair

wemmbu normally has x-shaped laces but i decided to change it to horizontals so he can match with zam

wemmbu has a lot less jewellery than he normally wears cause he doesnt have that same "extravagance" so to speak that his other versions have which mainly stems from the fact that his normal ingame brokeness can no longer be superseded by his irl richness so much so that he gets excited by things like finding open air diamonds in a cave

related to the above, he specifically has only stud earrings as opposed to his usual myriad of earrings because of it and also because of his nostalgia for older minecraft since stud earrings are the kind of earrings that ppl usually get when they first get their ears pierced and this version of wemmbu has only ever had these specific earrings and will cry if he ever loses them

unstable zam is probably the most uptight zam ive designed ngl: he rarely if ever lets his hair down and will almost always choose tighter styles even if hes just going to sleep, practicality over style (tho he will style the practical things if he can), always depicted with a weapon of some kind, eyes always slightly squinted and brows always slightly furrowed in concentration, and wears clothing that makes him look closed in (he wears lighter clothing in the pze cause its in a warmer biome but it still fully covers him up), basically i just wanna make him look like hes got a stick up his ass and always ready to kill even if hes not really that uptight and homicidal in the actual series, make him look as intimidating as possible basically

not sure how obvious it is but unstable zam has broader shoulders than other zams and everyone else in this lineup cause hes the most tryhard guy here and probably trains like everyday or something

zam wears leather gloves because its more practical to wear it with all the rough handling he does and also to match with wemmbu

the posing are all based on their relationship with each other:

jamato is spokes mentor so he leads spoke by the hand while spoke follows, jamato is more chill about the whole ordeal while spoke is more excited and even copying jamatos posing in a more exaggerated way even if it endsup making him look a bit more awkward silhouette-wise reflecting their differing levels of dedication to each other, jamato is also more open than spoke is even if spoke didnt really mean to become so closed off later on, spoke is also the only one of the main three who didnt lead his partner when they were together hence why he comes after jamato

parrot and wifies have a lot of opposite personality traits/thinking patterns but ultimately do things together in sync and supporting each other, and the importance of the trust spyglass ofc

wemmbu and zam are basically pissing each other off the entire time theyre together thanks to their opposing personalities making them constantly butt heads with each other even when theyve got the same goals and keeping as much emotional distance as they could and yet they still cant help but get in each others space for one reason or another, theyre the only ones not smiling not because theyre necessarily Unhappy being around each other but because when theyre purposefully pissing each other off is when theyre actually getting along and when theyre smiling at the same time is when they hate each other

the bg colors are initially chosen between analogous and tradic colors but then adjusted a bit:

for jamatospoke the initial chosen color was 7bb976 (triadic of jamato [676f9d and d58484] since spoke was too many colors and also their relationship is heavily focused on jamato thanks to spoke being a codependent little freak) and while i liked the fact it was a pale color i didnt like the fact it was green since its not a primary color so i changed it to pale yellow to show how happy yet kind of innocent and naive it was, a little too innocent and naive for the series making it easy to wash it out

for parrotwifies the initial color chosen was 5165a6 (analogous of parrot [7cdace] and wifies [5c2f73]) but the color was a little too pale and also i wanted to make it darker to reflect the fact that parrot and wfies' story arcs revolved heavily around being kept in the dark but still having each other as support even when they stumble

for wemmbuzam the initial color was eb427d (analogous of wemmbu [8d29da] and zam [fad160]) and while it was good i thought it wasnt saturated enough for how intense their partnership got at times so i maxed the saturation to reflect that

the unstable boys and the guys they have a totally normal attachment to

[casspurrjoybell-26]

May to December - Chapter 27 - Part 1

*Warning Adult Content*

Guest Announcement

Otis was sitting in the center of the living room with Chaska.

They were coloring in dragons and cartoon castles.

"Chaska, do you know where Otis' puffer jacket is?" Kyle's mother asked, walking into the living room with a basket filled with clothes.

She was going to do laundry and after that Chaska would make her a cup of tea before taking over with chores.  

"It's at my apartment," Chaska said, looking up from the coloring book.

"Kyle and I will be doing one last look around and pick up tomorrow, sorry."    

The old woman smiled.

"It's no problem. I can't wait for you all to live together so things aren't miles apart," she said with a sweet laugh before walking away.

Chaska smiled at that before looking down at the picture Otis was trying to get his attention to see.  

It was a Friday afternoon and the Christmas holidays were starting early for the kids in school, so Chaska had free time to spend with Otis and his grandmother.

Kyle has a client to work for today, so he wouldn't be back until sometime in the evening.      

In-between work, taking care of Otis and doing basic house chores the two men had managed to move most of the furniture in Chaska's place over to the townhouse.

They had put his clothes in boxes and bags and they were going to pick those up tomorrow.

The cats were still at his apartment but Kyle and Chaska planned on bringing them over to Kyle's mother's place for the time being by tomorrow.  

The plan for the holidays was to spend Christmas and New Year's Day together in Kyle's mother's cottage before leaving for their own house sometime in January.

Everything was happening fast but Chaska has been able to keep up so far.

He was excited about the change in his life and he was happier than he'd ever been in his whole twenty-two years.      

"Can you draw the house?" Otis asked, making Chaska come out of his thoughts.

The young man blinked before staring down at the blank corner of the coloring book the toddler was pointing to.

"The new house," Otis went on, giving Chaska a pencil.  

"Okay," the dark-haired man said, trying his best to draw a simplified version of the red brick townhouse he has Kyle has gotten together.

They talked about moving in together and the house a lot in bed, so it was natural that Otis picked up on it.

Even his grandmother mentioned it quite frequently.    

"The cats will live with us?" the child asked, as their small mouth made a shocked 'oh' as they clapped their hands.

Chaska nodded, drawing the third cat as a stack of circles with a wriggly line as the tail.  

"Daddy," the boy laughed, staring down at the stick drawing that Chaska gave Kyle's new fuzzy scruff.

The taller stick figure standing beside it took a while for Otis to figure out but he soon did.

"Chaska," he said, pointing at the long lines for hair.      

Chaska nodded, picking up the boy before placing him in his lap.

The boy said Chaska like 'chess-car' but he never bothered to correct him.

The British cartoon accent was here to stay it seemed.    

"Is that me?" the boy asked, as his eyes stared down at the shortest stick figure.      

"It's you," Chaska said, putting on a cute voice before picking the book up so that the two of them could see the drawing better.      

Chaska ruffles Otis's blond hair as the boy smacked his lips and stared at the drawing.      

"What about mommy?"    

Chaska's face became pale at the boy's words.

"Your mummy is working," the dark-haired man said.

"See," he added, taking a pencil to draw a woman at the other end of the paper.      

Chaska was worried about Otis' reaction but the boy seemed satisfied.    

"And grandma?" he asked, making Chaska Chile before getting to work drawing a hunched back stick figure.

It seemed the boy was just curious, not sad.

He was happy about that.    

He had an urge to tell Otis that it was okay to call him daddy too but he pushed it to the back of his mind.  

'Soon,' he thought, reminding himself that transitions like that took time for children.

Also, it was just a title.

For all intents and purposes, he was already acting like Otis' father... he was one of Otis' parents.    

Kyle came back just in time for dinner.

He went up to the attic to change out of his work clothes before coming downstairs wearing a pair of loose shorts and a tank top.

The evening dinner was nice.

It was homely and the food tasted nice.

The men talked to the elderly woman about moving and she went on about how she was going to be lonely again by herself.      

"We'll come to visit a lot," Kyle said.

"I promise," he added, earning a smile from the elderly woman who poked at her food with her fork.

It was evident that she was worried Kyle would disappear again, even though he would just be a few miles away.      

"I would love that. You can always come and borrow anything you need," she said.

The woman looked over at Chaska.

"You're dropping off your keys with your landlord tomorrow, right?"  she asked and Chaska nodded.

"Yes."

He poked a pea.

"I even spoke to the person who'll be living there soon the other day."

The table became quiet for a bit until Kyle let out a little 'oh' and everyone turned to look at him.

He shook his head, waving a hand over his head.

"I forgot to say something," he said before looking from Chaska to his mother.

"Anastasia said she's coming over on Christmas day if that's alright."  

"That's good," Kyle's mother said, grinning from ear to ear.

"I've never seen the person that made this boy face to face before," she said, reaching out to pinch Otis' cheek.    

"Mommy?" the boy asked with wide eyes and Kyle nodded.    

"Just for a few hours," he told Otis, before turning his attention back to the adults.

"She said she's passing through this route for a business trip and asked for the address so that she could stop by."  

Kyle's mom hummed, nodding her head and Chaska forced himself to smile.