#his win-loss record is gonna be so funny

[biomic]

second episode where the cliffhanger is hunty dying on the pavement

[misguidedasgardian]

I want to steal the bride (5)

5. Steal the bride

MASTERLIST

Summary: Aemond’s realizations make him do even boldest moves, now with his own heart on the line 

Pairings: Aemond Targaryen x BestFriend!Reader

Warnings: cursing, use of “stereotypes”, I don’t want to say “eating disorder” but I do will say inaccurate methods of dieting, Aemond is a slut, might miss some warnings, but you know what this is about

Wordcount: 3.5 k

Notes: sorry for abandoning this for so long, I want to finish it! You already might now how it ends but I’m hoping to add some original stuff in the next two chapters (and final ones)

“Whoa, Cersei's pretty good”, muttered Addam, after Aemond told him the story about how she tricked him into hiring a dildo saleswoman to appear into your very family friendly bridal shower 

“The whole goal here was to convince (Y/N) that I'd grown up and she doesn't know

anything about Cregan, that I'm the right man for her, that did not happen!”, he said, exasperated, as both of them were in the locker rooms, getting ready to play some basketball as they always did 

“Yeah, but you're still the maid of honor, right, Aemond?”, he asked, “you're still in the game?”

“I don't know, I think she might have fired me”, he muttered angrily

“Get outta here! How does somebody get fired from being maid of honor?”, laughed Aegon arriving, late as always, a new pair of jordans under his arm 

“Tell me about it”, mumbled Aemond, not being able to confide in Addam his newest realization

That he not only wanted to be with you…

He wanted to marry you

“You know what? I got an idea”, said Addam, trying to cheer his friend 

“Okay”, muttered Aemond, not convinced 

“To prove to (Y/N) that you're the only man for her we have to make you the best maid of honor ever”, he said with certainty

“Right”, he said, not quite convinced 

But then Criston showed up, a frown on his face

“I'm at a loss, completely stunned”, he started dramatically, his friends watched him carefully, “my guy couldn't find any dirt on Cregan”, he finalized, “this has never happened before!”, he was so amazed it surprised Aemond and the rest, “this guy's clean”

“I'm glad it happened to me”, said Aemond, as he and his friends walked towards the court 

“You know he's got three Guinness World Records?”, said Criston

“Cool”, mumbled Aegon, still suffering his “bro crush”

“For what?”, asked Addam, but he obtained no answer

“He's actually got a Medal of Honor”, continued Criston

“Hey, that's pretty funny because we got the maid of honor right here!”, laughed Aegon

“All right, let's stay focused”, demanded Addam

“Look, the point is, we're not gonna get her off this guy”, sentenced Criston, hoping his friend would forget about you, but this was not his luck

“Yeah, so, we need to not make this about Cregan”, said Addam, “We need to make it about you”, Aemond raised an eyebrow

“How?”

“But you gotta show her that you're growing up finally…”, he warned 

“I am”, he said defensively

“... that you're changing”, he continued 

“I am. I am changing”, he said, more convinced but angry too, “I'm growing up!”, but his friends didn’t quite believed him

“Good. Then this should be easy for you”, said Adam with a wide smile

Aemond flinched with the noise all the contents of Addam’s box made when they hit his coffee table. There was dozens of magazines, and DVD’S 

“These are bridal magazines from 18 different countries, each with a feature article on the duties of being a maid of honor”, he said decisively. Aegon grabbed one, more entertained than the rest of the men, and excited too

“Ãœber Bride”, he pronounced poorly, “high Valyrian? really?”, he mocked 

“Yes, they are great at weddings!”, said Adam, “they throw the most amazing, meaningful and pagan weddings of all time, and besides that should be no trouble for Aemond”, he said with a wide smile 

But Aemond nodded, determined, nodding purposefully, the gears on his head working full time, he was determined, not only to win you back, but to marry you. 

“Nice appetizer there, Addam”, he said softly, looking at his friend, “give me the main course”, he demanded

“Here's the main course”, he said back, raising his eyebrow, looking back into the box. 

“What do you got for me? Bring it on”, continued Aemond with his bravado

“My beautiful wife is an A-type personality…. She has to do everything perfectly”

“Sure”, Aemond said, unconvinced 

“Love her”, said Addam signaling with his hand, “Hate that about her”, he said with a hiss, “Anyway, she rented this when she was gonna be the maid of honor for her yoga teacher….”

“Uh this is getting good”, said Aegon, rubbing his hands together

“This is the goods”, corrected Addam, grabbing a DVD from the box and showing it to Aemond

“I’ll get the popcorn!”, said Aegon, jumping from the couch and running to the kitchen. 

10 minutes later they were all seating in Aemond’s livingroom, Aemond with popcorn and a beer, Addam with one of his own, and Aemond with a notepad and pen, ready to write it all down.

“Hi, I'm Jeyne Poole and I'm just so thrilled you purchased this program, and I'm proud of you because it shows that you're not happy being just an ordinary friend and loved one, no, you and I are going to work together to make you the perfect maid of honor… When we're through, you'll know everything there is to know about dresses, crockery, nuptial etiquette, and pleasing your bride!”

It was a hellish couple of hours for the boys.

But Aemond was determined, Aemond was taking notes, Aemond now knew things he wished he didn’t but he knows them now nonetheless, like color combinations, and schemes, or which textures went with what.

And after agonizing days of studying… he was finally reaedy

“Okay. What's the length of the bridesmaid's dress!?”, Asked Adam, throwing the basket-ball at his friend, Aeond catched it flawlessly

“Can't be longer than the bride's”, h said, easy piecy, he thought, and he passed the ball back. Adam passed it down to Aegon

“What if someone won't be able to attend the wedding?”, he tried his brother 

“You gotta send an invitation anyway”, said Aemond, receiving the ball and passing it back to Cole

“Receiving line?”, he tried, Criston passed it back to Aemond

“Receiving line?”, he asked, but when he saw his friend shit-eating grin he chuckled, “If there's a receiving line means I've failed because (Y/N)'s married”, he finished, slamming the ball against the floor.

“Right, it was a trick question”, conceded Criston, and they all found it weird he was paying attention in the first place.

Larys catched the ball that had been bouncing in the middle of the court, he threw it to Aemond who didn’t catch since he wasn’t looking at him, he whined rubbing his arm where the ball hit

“Who was the runner-up MVP, 1974?”, he asked, the four friends looked back at him

“No, hey, these questions all have to do with Aemond being the best maid of honor he can be”, said Adam

“All right. I-I-I thought we were just asking, like, questions”, said Larys

“Go sit down” demanded Aemond

“Alright”, he said nodding enthusiastically, and went and did as they told him to

“Basic duties of the maid of honor?”, demanded Adam

“Manage the bridesmaids, hold the ring, support the bride”, said Aemond quickly

“Basic duties as you as the maid of honor?”, tried Aegon, grabbing his brother by the shoulders and shook him

“Show (Y/N) that I've matured, that I can take care of my responsibilities fully and that I need to destroy the wedding from within”, he said decesively

“What happens if you fail at that task?”, asked Criston

“Cregan gets her”, said Aemond

“So… What are we gonna do?”, asked 

“Steal the bride”, he said in a whisper

“DIDN’T HEAR YA”, Said Adam firmly, “What are we gonna do!?”

“Steal the bride”, he said louder and firmer

“WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO!?”, asked Aegon excitedly 

“Steal the bride!”, shouted Aemond

 “STEAL THE BRIDE!”, everybody shouted 

“You know, you didn't have to clear your whole day to do all this”, you said excitedly, wrapping your arm against his, feeling a bit guilty of wrinkling his crisp suit, but he didn’t seemed to mind as he always did, when he smiled down at you, your best friend

“Are you kidding? Of course I did”, he said lightly, “The perfect maid of honor is with his bride every step of the way”

“His bride uh? wow!”, you said excitedly, “A changed man!”, you admired, you knew dedicated Aemond, mainly when he was dedicated to hunt women or his job, but… it was great to see it invoked because of you

“I am, indeed, a changed man, because of you”, you passed that as sarcasm, but you didn’t mind because despite what you interpret, you were so happy to have him by your side, all motivated to help you

You entered the biggest and fancier apartment store in all of King’s Landing, five floors of clothes, bed clothes, fancy plates, everything for your house, you had so many things to pick, your wedding gifts list and some other things you wanted to buy for your new home and for the wedding day itself.

“I don't even know where to begin!”, you said excitedly, “should we begin by tagging my wishlist? my mom said she was going to gift me the china collection, but there are so many, I don’t know which one to pick”, you said softly.

He looked over the table where they exhibited all the models, and he was almost shocked he knew exactly what to do, what to say to you, he grabbed two beautiful plates with Valyrian designs on the edges of the plates

“When choosing your china patterns you need to think about what type of entertainment you will do, what sort of... foods you wanna cook”, he said, you were taken completely aback by his statement, “Ah, here, look. Now, don't be afraid to mix and match”, now even more so, specially when he started throwing the plates in the air, even more shocked when he caught them, and started juggling them, he even grabbed a third one, “It's important, even with different styles and textures…”, he said, you placed a hand in your mouth to keep yourself from saying something out loud and snitched to a clerc, “What you wanna do is stir up the table…”, he said, looking at you excitedly, he catched all three of the plates, “Make it come alive with color and finesse”, he said, placing one on top of each other by size, “That is the goal”, he said, you noticed that women had gathered around you, listened to his words, “Also, at the end of the day, you will find… connections”, he said, placing a perfectly matchable bowl at the top, and when you looked, you realized, they were all different, but together they looked beautiful.

“Thank you very much!”, he even took a bow when even an employee of the store started applauding him. You did too, as you were so excited, Aemond looked back at you and nodded

“Let's go… If you think I'm good with plates, wait till you see what I do with linens”, he said, weirdly proud of himself. You went up a floor and then another, and then you came across something waaaaay more interested then linens

Underwear

One you needed for your wedding night. 

“Lingerie, perfect!”, you said, excited.

“What about the linens?”, Asked Aemond, as he seemed truly lost

 “You'll be able to help me pick up something for the wedding night”, you explained, he shook his head

“No”, he denied you even with his hands, “Are you crazy?”, you were fearful of it being weird, but then you thought he was the best person for the job

“You're the perfect person for this job!”, you said simply, “Who's taken off more lingerie than you? Let's put your whoring to good use”, and you dragged him into the “forbidden” section

“Good point”, he grunted. Even though he wanted nothing else but to see you in your underwear, he really didn’t want this to be the context in which he was right now…

He was grabbing onto his knees for dear life, as he was waiting for you to finish putting on some lingerie… for your future husband, he looked down to his crotch

“Behave, you hear me?”, he demanded. He then looked back at the moving curtain, the one you were behind, “So, how did it go with the Northerner Grand Council?”, he asked. He had to have his head in the game, and starting to look for weak spots

“Great. Cregan got them to approve everything!”, you said excitedly

“Great!”, DAMN IT, he thought

“So, I gotta tell you, I know this is gonna sound funny but, um, I have to thank you….”, you heard him said, not watching his face got you a bit bold as you tried on the tights

“For what?”, you asked

“Well, for asking me to be your maid of honor”, that made you stop your movements, “Yeah. I-I know this is gonna sound crazy but... you've really opened my eyes to the whole idea of marriage”, that shocked even more than the plate juggling

“Right”, you mocked 

“No, seriously”, he said

“Have you met someone, Aemond?”, you asked then, entertained, although, you felt something you didn’t quite like, if he was serious

“No”, he said softly, and that made you feel better

“Well, then how can you be serious?”, you asked

“I don't know. I just… I don't know”, you finally finished putting your leather get up on, and you got out of the dressing space, moving the curtain theatrically

“What do you think? Think Cregan will like it?”, you asked, you even had a small whip in your hand. But Aemond’s face… you were feeling so confident, getting completely out of your comfort zone with this, and he seemed completely horrified

“No”, he said quickly, looking straight at you, “NO”

“No?”, you asked

“It's just…”, he said quickly, now looking away

“What?”, you sked, looking down at yourself, you knew you didn’t have a perfect body… but he was acting like….

“It's cute”, he said, recomposing himself 

"Cute"? I don't wanna look cute on my wedding night!”, you said, looking down at yourself again, what was wrong with this lacey outfit?, you looked back at Aemond and he was giving you a long coat

“Just put this on”, he said quickly, “Cover yourself up”

“Oh, hey. That's my coat!”, said the other women who was in the other dressing room 

“Here, let me get you in a cab”, he said, placing his hand on the small of your back, leading you out of the store

“I can't believe this is my last day in King’s Landing”, you said softly, looking around at all the buildings, you took a deep breath, trying to memorize the… frankly… shitty smell, but to you it smell like home

“What are you talking about?”, asked Aemond, you looked at him with a smile, although he looked pretty terrified

“I've been meaning to tell you, Aemond”, you started softly, “When I leave tomorrow… I'm not coming back”, you said softly, “I've decided to move to Winterfell, to be with Cregan”

“You're leaving King’s Landing?”, he asked, really surprised 

“I am”, you said, more firmly, he had this tendency of making you take back some of your decisions, but this, was something you were sure of, “It's exciting, you know, and it makes sense”, you said, “we are going to get married, and he can’t move here, he's next in line to take over the family business and...It's a whole new chapter”, you said quickly, he only looked down the street, with an uncrackable look on his handsome face, “You were amazing today, you know that?”, you said lightly, hoping to get him out of his mind. He shook his head, fixing his jacket, a smile returning to his face, although he looked constipated 

“Oh, yeah?”, he asked, his voice returning to him

“Yeah”, you said nodding enthusiastically, “I had no idea you could juggle like that”

“Yeah, well…”, he said, with a proud smile 

“I mean, women, yes, china, no”, you continued, he scratched the back of his neck

“Yeah, I know”, he said with his trademarked smirk, 

“You're always amazing”, you admitted, “but today you were even more so”, he looked at you with a soft smile, a rarity

You were already on the street, and you tried to signal a cab to pull over and take you

“I'll see you in Winterfell soon, okay?”, you said excitedly, as one stopped and you had to say your goodbyes

“Yeah, I'll see you over there”, he muttered, faking a smile, you looked at him with your beautiful eyes, and smiled at him the way you always used to 

“I…”, you started, but you stopped yourself, “I’ll miss you”, you said instead

Aemond’s smile disappeared as you got up in the cab

You didn’t tell him that you loved him like you always did…

As he saw the cab driving away, a hand went to his chest, where an aching pain had him struggling to breathe, he couldn’t breathe

“Hey, are you alright?”, someone asked him, grabbing him by his shoulder

“thank you for picking me up from the hospital”, Aemond muttered as he left his coat on the entrance of his grandfather’s flat.

“Of course son”, muttered Otto, grabbing Aemond on his shoulder reassuringly, “panick attack, uh? that’s new”

“It had never happened to me before”, he whispered, rubbing his temple, “I thought I was having a heart attack”

“Not quite…”, said Otto, serving his grandson a scotch 

“I don’t even know why…”

“I think it’s pretty obvious isn’t it?”, he tried, Aemond looked back at his father figure

“She is marrying someone else”, he admitted, “I've never felt like this before. So hopeless”, he admitted, sitting on one of the designer chairs in the living room, overlooking King’s Landing

“So, tell me again why you agreed to be the maid of honor”, he passed the glass to him, and he took a short si[

“Ah, to be with her”, he said simply, “to make her happy, and to figure out some way to get her off of him”, he admitted shamelessly, he swirl the caramel looking liquor on his gatsby cut glass, “maybe that was all wrong, maybe he's better for her than me”, he admitted, making Otto chuckle, “He's Northerner, he can dunk, he's perfect”

“Nobody's perfect”, he said simply, taking a sip of his own, once he downed the liquid he took the glass in front of his face to look at it better, “Although, I tell you, this whisky comes damn close”.

“It was a gift from Cregan… He made it”, said Aemond downing his own

“Damn he IS good”, said Otto. Aemond sighed loudly, leaving the glass on the side table and rubbing his face with his hands. “I can't go. I can't watch (Y/N) marry this guy, she's moving to Winterfell, I've lost her already”, he lamented, he was throwing his own petty party and he was going to enjoy it. Otto just stopped his movements and looked at him, chuckling again, raising his eyebrows

“Bullshit”, he said, sitting on the other available leather chair

“If you love something, set it free, right?”, muttered Aemond, finally looking at him

“Said by a pussy and used by pussies ever since”, he answered, sipping his drink

“Ah come on, what about Lys? Bogie puts her on the ship”, he said

“Pussy”, Otto said simply, smiling at his grandson

“Bogie's a pussy?”, Aemond said, not believing him

“Big pussy”, he confirmed, “You know, I've only truly been in love once….”, he said, “The most amazing woman in the world, she was my best friend. But I was young, stupid, and I messed it up”, Aemond looked at him wide eye, “my great list of mistakes, that was the greatest”

“Who was it?”, he asked 

“Alyrie”, he said simply, “your grandmother, she was the love of my life, she gave me two beautiful children, your mother and uncle, but I preferred to go higher on the ladder of my company instead of watching over and taking care of my family, when I realized what I had done, it was too late, I had lost her…”, a sad silence was placed before the both of them, “By the way, uh, I'm getting another divorce”

“Oh, pop”, whined Aemond, not shocked at all though

“I will not let what happen to me happen to you too, You will go to that fucking wedding, you are going to stop her from making the worst mistake of her life, and you are going to bring her home, you hear me?”, Aemond nodded, in a decisive manner, his hands tingling with excitement, “Go and get her, you pussy”, Otto said slapping his shoulder

post chapter notes: I have to say it I'M SO SORRY, but I love this movie and I want to finish this, sorry for abandoning it, but I'm here to win it! jeje

TAGLIST!

@snh96 @sagelovesreading @toodlesxcuddles @ammo23 @bananzaa @ttkttt @at-a-rax-ia @n4tforlife @spn-obession

[dino--draws]

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE NEARLY TWO HOUR ADMONITION + EXTRAS POWER POINT

I recorded it and me and my friends do wanna edit it and be silly w/ it so you may actually get to hear the presentation [and if you want the presentation itself just shoot me a dm on discord or smth] at some point but!

"Enter this freak! [image of McDoctorate]" "he looks like weird al.............."

"whats this guys name?" "FUNNY YOU ASK THAT [goes to slide that says 'whats this guys name?']"

"Damn! Sucks for Abbie, man I was invested." "I KNOW I WAS SO SAD SHE DIED." "This is a loss for women." "This was NOT a win for feminism."

"This is the REISNO Cannon!" "...thats a guy." "IGNORE THE GUY IGNORE THE GUY!"

"Failing to fulfil the causal loop causes a paradox. So let's cause a paradox! This is Dougall Deering, a bitchass motherfucker that nobody likes!"

"This is the significance of September 8th!" "...the queen......" "Queen Elizabeth died!! This isn't relevant!"

[Someone I do not know came in and sat down to listen for a bit]

"So you guys know Weirdmaggedon right?"

"And then the therapist dies and it all gets worse."

"So it'll come back, right? Right??? [long pause] There is no cannon." "Ha."

"So you may be wondering 'where the fuck did he go?' and now we finally get into Admonition."

"Because we can't use Narrative travel to jump genres we're writing the Fix-it Fic in the Hurt No Comfort AU. I don't know why I worded it like that in the slide." "That's my fault." "Nonono you're right there."

"They use it to terminate anomalies!!" "Not the ANTIKILL facility.........."

"It was all going dandy and functional until they did something stupid and hubris."

[Me calling the PH-GOS "the silly device"]

"Oh no! Who could've seen this coming!" cries the dumb fucks who should've realized this was an exercise in facility forty years ago."

[A second, new person appears to listen in]

"Say it with me now: YOU CAN'T KILL A LIZARD [several people do say it with me now]"

"Anti-idea???" "Yes, anti-idea."

"We're gonna PEMDAS the starfish!"

"Nice try guys, it didn't work but it wrote them a poem." "Awhhh,,"

"AND THEN THE UNIVERSE FUCKING ENDED!" "Oh it's over already?" "WOAAHHH"

"You may be wondering how the FUCK this is the first article in this series. Well you haven't seen NOTHIN' yet."

"I understand why this is making you insane." "Yeah no I get it."

"Is he [PHMD] a creative

"Director Johnathan King is fucking dead!" "Who??" "Don't worry about it he's not important." "He sounds like he is!" "The only thing you need to know is that he's dead."

"IS THAT JERMA?" "where?" "WHY IS JERMA THERE!" "THATS JERMA???" [me having to explain Jerma]

"Our budget took a hit! So we're gonna devote all resources to build this thing! For the budget!"

"Why are we doing this?" "Because we need to make a man un-die but no other necromancy is working."

"

"WHY IS HE A CAT??" "Don't worry about it." "These two don't have faceclaims to my knowledge so have Dir. Vehmoff looking at manga and catboy Dir. Asheworth (catboyism not relevant here, 120 directorism relevant here)." "He seems sad." "He is sad."

"SO ASHEWORTH ✨ EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATES ✨ HIM INTO VOTING IN X/MACHINA’S FAVOR USING HIS DEAD FRIEND AS LEVERAGE!" "whys theres a 50% opacity dog...." "don't worry about it!"

"If this man says it's safe, I don't know what else to tell you. DRAMATIC IRONY IS A LITERARY DEVICE IN WHICH--"

[Me going off script to briefly and VERY excitedly ramble about pataphysics]

[My one friend comparing generic vs protagonist vs archetypical to a/b/o and me threatening to end her life several times before moving on in the excited ramble and we all think its cool as fuck btw]

"I'm gonna read this [the 6747 imagion particles stuff] because I think it's cool and its my presentation."

"So? When's the other shoe gonna drop?" "Probably right now." "Yes!"

"So sometimes we taze it! Personnel are to be reminded that its totally dead and we totally aren’t lying to your face. The therapist we hired to taze the brain wants to be amnestizied of tazing the brain. We told her no. sorry Ngo." "Hah." "Ngo,,,,,,,,,"

"also his name is sparky...." "well thank god for that."

"It's becoming bad fanfiction." "They're all having sex." "No they're not, there's no sex in this." "We are reading very different bad fanfiction." "Yes we are!"

[My roommate googling 2747 bazongas]

"I wanna punt him [PHMD] like a football." "Good he deserves it."

"GET IN LOSER! We're killing gods!"

"What Dr. Blake is about to do has not been approved by the Vatican." [My friends loose their shit]

"That's right babey! It's the motherfucking starfish again!" "WHAT??" "Oh shit!!"

"PHMD’s plan is to create an Unbound Prometheus to help them find the God within the human mind. And not in the Frankenstein sense i mean he wants to unbind Prometheus and promote him as the God of Humanity. And everyone is just ok with this!?!?!?! [I am gesturing frantically and my voice is cracking like hell] Like they restructure the education system and everything to incorporate this and the Foundation starts to pray to Prometheus and all that???? its wild and so casually mentioned too, but here we go we’re doin this!!"

"oh my god he's the modern Prometheus." "HE'S THE MODERN PROMETHEUS!!!!"

"ignore the fact they've given people early onset dementia."

"the exhilaration of severing a finger from a squirming human hand (ie. transcendence). [Pause] WELL AIN'T THAT JUST PEACHY :D"

''that was the SHORT ONE?" "Short and sweet! Not simple and short." "Heeheheh, yeah."

"It's killing all AI!" "yaaaaaaaaaaaaayy!"

"SO NOW DISREGARD THAT LAST SLIDE! BECAUSE I LIED TO YOU!!" "why would you do that,,,?" "what????" "THERE'S NO VIRUS. IT'S ANOTHER GOD DAMN FOUNDATION MADE EIGENMACHINE. THE VIRUS IS A COVER UP." "why are you talking like a republican conspiracy theorist."

"That's really fucked up, thank you!" "ISN'T IT???"

"Please take note to behold the comedic amount of power that LOTUS needs."

"I love 28 nuclear reactors."

"So things go to shit pretty fast! Cause guess what? PHMD touched the damn machine."

"So yeah these guys have no right to be surprised when it starts interring all AI, even the most simplest of spellcheckers." "Not Grammarly!!!" "yup, LOTUS got it."

"isn't LOTUS itself an AI..?" [I turn my head slowly and grin at them in dead silence] "oh great thanks." "we'll get to that :) we'll get to that :)))"

"Have you tried turning it on and off again?"

"Problem solved, right? [next slide] SO EVERYTHING GETS IMMEDIATELY WORSE!!!!"

"Lunar Area-23 is gone." "THEY TOOK THE MOON??" "you know who else takes the moon? Gru." "GOD FUCKING DAMMIT."

[my friends horrified look as I describe Hishakaku's hostile takeover]

"He demoted him and erased his mind, because the Foundation can just do that, by the way." "Oh! :D Ok! :D"

"WOULD YOU BELIEVE ME IF I SAID IT GETS EVEN WORSE? Because I lied to you again!!! OCI does not stand for Obtuse Computation Interface. It stands for Organic Consciousness Interface. THAT'S RIGHT! HISHKAKAU WAS PUTTING BRAINS IN JARS!"

"Not Head of Disinformation that's craaazy," "Yeah they just have that." "I wanna be CEO of lying."

"Wow fuck this guy."

[My one friend making a rainbow dash jar joke like right before the slide that has the rainbow dash jar joke]

"LOTUS is flipping its shit."

"THINGS ARE FINALLY DONE GETTING WORSE! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT!" "Woah!" "No :D!"

[group cackling at Hishakaku's takedown]

"Why'd they do that???" "because they're fucking fascists!!"

"Oh and by the way the remains of LOTUS have been salvaged for Project ADMONITION." "Ggrrrreeat!!"

"Admonition Episode 5, SCP-7243, Existential Abatement." "I like that its gay :}" "It IS gay!"

"What if the timeloop happened in June."

"He also shows Ngo -- the therapist who was tazing the brain earlier you remember her? -- the item he wanted to give Phillip. A magic box, that makes it seem like the object you’ve put in it vanishes. But there’s no magic at all, just a drawer, just a trick." "Oh boy" "Nnnnnno way." "Wow isn’t that a specific detail I sure hope that isn’t a framing device."

"Dougall asks Amelia what the hell he should do. She tells him three words--" "kill yourself." "No more wast-- no."

"Esoteric waste???" "sent it into space." "we can't do that :("

"You killed my husband." "Yeah that's an actual line in the article." "SDKFJSHDKHFD"

"Oh right yeah there's an SCP object in this article."

[my friends thinking DePLExA is really cool]

[Me pausing for two seconds each time 'waste' pops up]

"They are dumping empty containers into an empty pit. Because if they don’t it’ll cause a paradox. [Pause] You ready to cause another parado-- hold your conceptual horses actually because there's more to explain."

"Esoteric gift horses and their non-existent mouths."

"AND THEN IT ALL GOES TO SHIT! [to the tune of 'and then along came zeus']

"Wait September 8th again??" "It's fucking happening again."

"A magnitude 8.5 earthquake hits." "Ttttttthats not good."

[My friends mounting horror as I just read through the EE-7243 event entirely]

"So it was like putting a lid on a burning pan. But the burning pan is an acromatic abatement facility about to esoterically explode and the lid is a bomb that creates a forcefield"

"Oh hey! We found Amelia!" "Oh!!!" "She's not ok, but she's alive!" "That's a lot!!!" "yeah!!!"

[periodic sounds of me excitedly stimming while talking]

"We're living out of spite!" "that's soooooooooo real," "she's so me!" "I love how she hates her brother-in-law more than she loves her husband." "YEAH KDFJGHDFJKG"

"But they don't have one [O5-9]..." "oops." "Whoops!!"

"GUESS WHAT DOUGALL TURNS AROUND AND DOES? AFTER BEING TOLD NOT TO TAKE SHORTCUTS NOR MIRACLE CURES??? GUESS WHAT HE DOES?" "takes a shortcu--" "HE TAKES A MOTHERFUCKING SHORTCUT!"

[group confusion over Amelia and Dougall marrying eachother]

[Group freakout over Dougall being the entity that killed Phillip]

"What is waste? I guess you finally figured it out, Dougall." "OH MY GOD KDJFGHDKFJGD" "THAT'S HILARIOUS." "THIS IS AN ACTUAL LINE IN THE ARTICLE."

"wwwwait a second, a timeline being cut off from the coalition and the RCT? This is familiar..." "that fucking rubik's cube." "the cube!!"

"He fucked around just to get this timeline kicked out?" "He's throwing for content!!" "He should get twitter cancelled."

"Operation LAST STRAW success--" "Hehehehe"

"Because one of the people who writes this taunts me on tumblr and I go insane on the regular."

"She's from the paradox timeline as well," "how'd she get outtie :(((" "We don't know yet!"

this was 101 slides

"why did y'all let this guy cook??" "this freak cannot handle his trauma in a healthy way."

"He might be trying to become the LOGICIAN and kill his author. But also the LOGICIAN is the author so he may be trying to kill the LOGICIAN." "This is just like Betty from adventure time."

"This powerpoint has DLC content!"

and now my friends wanna read the actual Admo articles I am kicking my feet and giggling fr fr fr fr fr fr fr ehehehehehehehe. my brainworms.................... god im so happy rn you have no idea this is all so cool to me and im so happy my friends thought it was neat,,,,,

[uniquejellyfishqueen]

Follow up to my previous post from 11/20.

The Boston Bruins fired their head coach Jim Montgomery on 11/19 after their 3rd straight loss. (3 again.)

Flash forward to 11/24:

The St. Louis Blues have fired coach Drew Bannister and hired Jim Montgomery as his replacement just five days after the 2022 Jack Adams Award winner was let go by the Boston Bruins.

Blues president and general manager Doug Armstrong announced the stunning change Sunday. He is expected to address reporters on a video call in the afternoon, while Montgomery is joining the team in New York on Monday.

Bannister had been on the job in St. Louis for less than a year since succeeding 2019 Stanley Cup-winning coach Craig Berube and getting the interim tag removed after last season. The Blues have lost 13 of their first 22 games this season.

Montgomery spent two seasons as an assistant on Berube’s staff in St. Louis between coaching Dallas and Boston. The Bruins fired him less than a quarter of the way through the season after they lost 12 of their first 20 games.

So the St. Louis dude lost 13 games and got fired, but then St. Louis gave the job to the guy who was fired from Boston 5 days ago for losing 12 games.

12/13 is TS 35 birthday.. is 19 days from 11/24

5 is 1989… and track 5 is “All You Had To Do Was Stay” which is a 7 word title. 5+7=12.

But the funny thing about 1989 is that there were 2 of them the standard edition and then the deluxe edition which had 19 tracks. Track 19 was the voice memo for Blank Space. With a run time of 2:11…. 11/2 backwards. The second to last line is “Oh my God, everyone’s gonna kill you”….. “I’m sorry the old Taylor can’t come to the phone… oh why? Cause she’s dead.” This was a bold foreshadowing for what was to come in her work, and also a major Easter egg since this was before Reputation came out. There is 1110 days from the release of 1989 to the release of Reputation. (Another damn 3)

The voice memo also said “this is like an early 2000’s Nelly track…” like the track “Over and Over” by Nelly featuring Tim McGraw? This song was released on 9/12/2004. One of the two recording studios was Basement Beats “Don't put me in the basement. When I want the penthouse of your heart”-Bejeweled.

Boston to St Louis

17 hr 15 min (1,192.7 mi) via I-70 E and I-90 E

1+1+9+2=13/7…

7/13 was the #115 show N1 in Milan

Surprise songs on Guitar

Folklore (1) The 1

1989 (14)Wonderland

Surprise songs on Piano.

*****this is the ONLY night of the ET that she did a double red mashup on piano..

Red (7) I Almost Do

Red (17) The Moment I knew

2 days ago on 11/22/24 show #145 she played

Ours and The Last Great American Dynasty on guitar…

“Her salt box house on the coast took her mind off St. Louis.”

In 2013 TS bought the Holiday House that inspired TLGAD

Rhode Island to Boston is 1 hr and 18 minutes (70.1 miles) vis 1-95 N. 42 miles via train.

She played on guitar You’re Losing Me for the second time on 6/14/2024 show #101 mashed up with The Great War.. the following night she played “Carolina” for the 1st and only time on the Errors Tour on 6/15/2024 N3/3 Liverpool show #102. This was played on the guitar mashed up with No Body, No Crime.

-> 5 months and 8 days later (13) on 11/23/24 show #146 she played You’re Losing Me mashed with How Did It End? on piano.

TN tweeted a callback to 4/25/2019:

On April 25, 2019, Taylor Swift surprised fans in Nashville, Tennessee with a series of events, including a surprise appearance at a butterfly mural and the announcement of her new song, "ME!"

Butterfly mural: Swift surprised fans by appearing at a butterfly mural in Nashville's Gulch neighborhood. The mural, created by Denver artist Kelsey Montague, included clues about Swift's upcoming music. Swift took selfies with fans for at least 45 minutes

which is the day before Me! Was released, in that song she says “Hey kid spelling is fun” and in “How Did It End” says “D-Y-I-N-G”

Like there is only one me and I’m dying a slow death….from a slow burn?

4/25/2019-11/23/2024= 66 months and 29 days

6+6=12 9+2=11

12/11 is Evermore’s Birthday it is 15 songs and exactly 1 hour long. 60 minutes…

Taylor appeared on “60 Minutes” on 11/20/2011 in an episode titled “The Pledge”

12 years later…

11/20/2023 N3/3 in Rio is when she performed “Me!” On guitar for the only time on the ET and also on piano “So It Goes” which has only been played this one time.

*does this mean that the Great War started in Liverpool?

146-101 = 45

11/24/24 Kansas City @ Carolina

At Banks of America Stadium, which is on 33 acres. Its opening day was 8/3/1996 (Karlie Kloss’s 4th birthday)

- a stadium TS has never performed at. (A really good trivia question would be what NFL stadiums she hasn’t played at.)

Her last performance in NC was on 10/21/2015… a possible mirror of 12/1 which is 7 days before the last Eras Show. On 10/21 she was joined by Miranda Lambert for a duet of “Little Red Wagon” like she uses a red convertible for the cover art for Red?

“You only love me for my

Big sun glasses

*the sun glasses ornament

And my Tony Lomas

And my Dodge Dart classic

You said, "I'll be Johhny and you be June

And I'll ride with you to the moon"

*a space reference all the way back in 2015.

**TS has a History of 15 shows in North Carolina (3 separate cities) throughout her career. Her last stop there was the 1989 World Tour on 10/21/2015

***on 2/7/2024 Disney+ announced that Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version), which is the concert film in its entirety for the first time and includes the song “cardigan” and four additional acoustic songs, will make its streaming debut on March 15, 2024, exclusively on Disney+.

The Red Tour

February 7, 2014 – Berlin, Germany: "I See Fire" with Ed Sheeran

*10 years before the Disney+ announcement

*or 10 years/ 120 months. Like 12/10? 2 days after the ET ends.

3/15/24-12/13/24= 8 months and 28 days

** She has only had 3 concerts on this date: Connecticut, LA, and Detroit. CLAD - “clothes”… DID YOU TAKE ALL MY CLOTHES TO LEAVE ME HERE NAKED AND ALONE?

8/28/2009 Fearless Tour

Ucansville is a village in the town of Montville, Connecticut, United States.[1] It is located in southeastern Montville, at the mouth of the Oxoboxo River where it flows into the Thames River

All aboard! Taylor Swift cosies up to Calvin Harris as they enjoy a boat trip on the River Thames - Thames Limo

8/28/2011 Speak Now World Tour

N4/4 LA “Super Bass” with Nicki Minaj was performed.

**Her favorite Sagittarius

8/28/2018 Reputation Stadium Tour

N1/1 Detroit: surprise song was “Jump Then Fall

[the-firebird69]

Going to dismantle you dr Curran and we're starting now. our son is given sworn statements to the police about you yeah on several occasions. Your character Scott Mccracken it has a full dossier on you then it shows you trying to get him the hospital to screw around with him as a doctor so you are working on his foot in a neuroma to do it and people have all the records and they're going to arrest you and try and paint it on him to try and increase the pressure and we're going to use it to get rid of you in them like we have been to take territory and stuff so we can take care of your little problem you have with your master. It's just that you're incompetent and chicken shit

There's a lot of stuff going on and Garth has been a busy boy screwing around with his relevance he modified that song that says to put my armor on and I'm unstoppable by sia and substituted a modified version of our son singing and it sounds similar and it says put my helmet on and for Christ sake it's actually funny it sounds funny and it's a good time and Garth takes it seriously because he's a **** moron come on we're going to make your people into pulp and feed them to cage you what's your problem stupid you dumb no don't answer that that's the way I'm laughing I know so not really he's a small and things are going ahead and Tommy F think said he's distracting people and he's a huge loser there's a lot of people who are watching him and he's sitting there saying he's trying to kidnap him and our son says why don't you make a big metal hospital facility and call it some sort of you know spa or something and just you guys all go there and stay there and say you're winning plus you're kind of useless I don't need you fighting each other a bunch of **** **** so they started laughing and they said we're not gonna be anybody left here and he's gonna be yelling at us and the truth is the leadership seems to be going before what's left of your army in other words just like what hundreds of trillions of your in other words just like what hundreds of trillions of your army and there's a few million leaders **** **** so you can see how stupid you are hopefully see that you're very stupid. And they start to yell and scream or something then they notice something we're gonna be gone they don't need to send anymore if you believe in love after life it is singing that Cher song if you believe in love afterlife or something and they start to laugh and say I wonder what that means. So they're not really happy about what's happening so he showed up in a Plymouth Duster and they're saying what in the **** is wrong with you says wait a minute he's clarifying it's a twister Now they're looking at them and they're saying what are we gonna do with you and our son says you're going to drive him around to that so people take precautions against the uranium cloud and you irradiate him in the car and he goes and that's what people do around here And people get excited and said that is what we do that's amazing and they started doing it.

-- Today there were 1.4 billion people lost in the rings we're going into the night with 700 million remaining from what they gathered today they're calling another 700 million making it 2.8 billion by 9 or 10:00 PM total that will probably be lost by midnight and by tomorrow morning it'll be another three or 400 million making it an even 3.2 billion it is a hefty day and night and morning. In addition they will have massive losses to their people overseas tomorrow and to people in the West tonight and we mean all of the Morlock. They are being hunted around by groups and they're taking big groups of them down. Absolutely nobody can stand them and they're having trouble being quiet. And they do go out and they see that they're being executed and won't stop yapping. They do some protesting but they don't like that anymore they were doing a lot of it. Today the Eastern Hemisphere the pseudo empire dropped from 38% operational to about 30% so 70% of their operation in the east is defund including the bunkers surface spaces and where their intermingled this includes their bases for refueling but only about 5% of that has been breached and their fleets don't carry that many people believe it or not even though they're pretty big. In the West they have remaining about 42% of their operation including people structures in their areas. Lastly approximately 58% is out.

--trumps bases staches caches nke bunkeres int eheast all are at 50 percent no The basis and the top side ones of his are being devastated every day and the bunkers and the stashes and caches are blocked but only around 30 medium are under siege that's really pitiful but the forces at the other ones are increasing in size two to 3% a day and it's become noticeable. We're about twice as big as when they started but they have specialty stuff there. Their nuclear bases really bunkers about 30% are destroyed and this is on the eastern hemisphere the rest of them are blocked and infiltrated everyday and increasing their infiltration effort they have several other areas their cities that are separate they're all surrounded and about 25% of them in the east are under serious siege another 25% under infiltration efforts that are increasing the remaining 50% are infiltrated and there's a action here and there all night and all day about 20 a day and 20 a night. There is quite a bit more to report will be back in a moment.

Thor Freya

Olympus

Zues

Hera lots of interfernce hree and snide remarks attemts to ding too many animals need assistanc eme too ok all me too

we meet now and do work to get it there

Olympus good it only henps you Hera Zues

[kaiparker-avengerssmut]

Their Doll 5

Throw a punch

B.Barnes x Reader, S.Rogers x Stark!Reader

series synopsis:  y/n Stark, all records of her non existent, and yet Hydra still find her. When she is kidnapped by a certain super-soldier and no one believes her, she finds herself searching for unexpected familiarity in her not-so-distant past.

Series Warnings: smut, violence, torture, swearing

Chapter Summary: y/n finally beats Bucky, he has a surprise for her when she returns from her first mission.

Warnings: smut, violence, mention of death/murder

A/n: The timeline in this has been altered, as there I things I wanted to include but I also wanted this fic to follow the storyline/timeline of Winter Soldier and Civil war.So for purposes of this fanfic, Peter Parker was discovered by Tony at a much younger age - when he was bitten - and has been an intern with him since, almost like a protégée.(For the purposes of this story Peter was bitten much younger too - more like when he was 9 or ten rather than 14/15)

Masterlist | Series Masterlist

3 years. 3 godforsaken, bloody torturous years. That's how long I'd been in this hell hole. How long I'd been repeatedly beaten up by my only form of solace daily. How long I'd been whipped for simply not being good enough to beat a super soldier. How long I'd endured endless torture. And today, today is the day that it will all end.

If there was one thing the last three years taught me, is that I should duck and run rather than throw a punch. At least that's what I thought, and I'd never really been willing to risk a broken jaw to prove my theory. That is, until today.

Come on, y/n, you can do this. The words were repeated in my mind, my own mantra, in order to psych myself up for what I was about to do. There was a fire grip on my arm - arguably much tighter than necessary - as the guards dragged my down the hollow hall to my training session with the Winter Soldier. Pft, more like two hours of humiliation and a sore ass, I though, a little smirk spreading on my lips at my own joke.

"What're you laughing about? Something funny, Stark?" The guard who had the grip on my arm spat through gritted teeth and the smirk was instantly ripped from my lips, instead reverting back to the hard expression I had been trying to maintain while around anyone who worked for HYDRA.

So basically everyone.

We walked in silence the rest of the way, like normal, and the guard roughly shoved my into the room by a hand between my shoulder blades, like normal. But today wasn't like normal - no, today was the day I was the one to throw a punch.

They removed the silencer from my head and let me take a gulp of water before The General was barking the order for us to begin.

I walked into the centre of the room, shoulders back and stare cold. The soldier's gaze matched mine as his cerulean eyes bore into my own, his jaw clenched and hands already curling into fists as I stood before him. We maintained the stare for a moment - almost as if the other was waiting for the other to make the first move, an open opportunity to take the win.

And so I did.

Using the speed I'd worked up to over time, I farted towards the soldier, ducking on a seconds notice as his metal fist flew out. I landed a jab to his stomach, one hard enough to make him cough slightly with the knocked up air but far from hard enough to actually make him stumble. Distracted, he barely noticed me as I slipped under him - through his legs out by his back, which I was quick to jump on. I let my legs wrap around his muscular waist and my left arm wrap around his throat, making the soldier grit his teeth and attempt to pry my arm away from his neck as he began to choke.

When he attempted to fling my forward, I tangled my right fist into his brown locks, yanking painfully and making the soldier cry out as I lowered my lips to his ear. Another thing I'd learnt in the past three years is that the soldier was only affected by my powers under two conditions:

One, he was off-guard or vulnerable - hence the choking - and two, I was as close to him as I could possibly get.

I began to him a soft tune - one I had discovered was most effective in lowering my opponent's defence and lulling them into a false sense of security. I practically smirked irksomely when I sensed his eyes rolling back in defeat and his assault on my arm falter - body falling limp and relaxed under the quell of my voice.

When I was sure I'd lowered his defences enough, I slowly climbed down from his back and admired my handy-work.

The Winter Soldier, stood dopey and barely lucid before me, without so much as the energy to even move his arm, let alone land a heavy punch like he normally would. I took my chance, the man nothing more than a pile of flesh and bones as my leg swept through his, bringing the soldier down the the ground with a loud noise that resembled a mixture of a crash and a thud.

Of course, the impact made my tune immediately ware-off and the soldier was now fully lucid, but I could barely contain myself as I punched my fists into the air triumphantly and a grin curled across my lips.

A lonely applause filled the tall room, bringing me back to earth as I realised the situation. Footsteps angled towards me, slow and calculated as the claps slowed to a stop, The General standing before me with a tight-lipped smile.

"Well done, Miss Stark." He congratulated, looking around him and outstretching his arms. "It only took you, what? Three years?" He mocked, the taunting laughter of the guards making me feel nauseous. But I kept my composure, returning his mocking, tight-lipped smile that didn't even dare go near my eyes - which were alright with anger. "And now your training is complete. We shall have to teach you how to use a gun, I suppose?" He said lazily. I clenched my jaw.

"I knew how to use a gun perfectly fine, General." I gritted and his eyes brows shot up as he turned to face his comrades.

"Did you hear that, gentlemen? Looks like she doesn't need another three years to learn to fire a gun? My, my, haven't we lucked out with this one?" He mocked cruelly, coming back to face my burning eyes. He smirked, grabbing my chin between his thumb and his finger and angling my head up to meat his eyes. "Take her away, and get her ready for her first mission." He demanded, eyes churning with something that resembled pride, but darker. He kept his eyes on me as he spoke, before roughly jerking my chin away and letting the guards refasten the silencer over my mouth before they were grabbing and arm each and dragging me from the  training room.

The pulled me back down the hollow hall - passing my usual cell.

"W-where are we going?" I asked, swallowing heavily as they halted to a stop in front of an unfamiliar door and we shoving me inside. There was nothing gentle about the HYDRA guards, not that I ever expected there to be.

Once I was in one of them tugged the door shut, the other throwing a bundle of clothes at me, which I fought as the flew at my chest. I opened the ball of fabric out, finding a skin-tight leather tactile suit - red HYDRA symbol embellished on either arm and over my heart - along with underwear and some black tactile boots.

The men stared at me expectantly, eyeing me up and down by never making the move to leave.

"Aren't you supposed to give me privacy to change?" I asked sheepishly. As humiliating it had been to be whipped for three years the sight toppled in front of these men, the idea of willingly getting changed while they were stood staring at me like I was a piece of meat made bile ride in my throat.

"I highly suggest you get to it, unless you'd like us to help out, of course." One of the guards said with a sickening expression, making me grimace and begin to tug my shirt over my head.

"And how about you do it...slowly, if you don't mind, Miss Stark." The other remarked, arms crossed over his chest as he bit his lip and glued his eyes intensely on my body.

I gulped, continuing to pull the shirt over my head. Oh boy, this was gonna be a long day.

…

Blood and soot cakes my nails, the icky feeling of the grime a haunting reminder of what I had just done. I was in the shower room, scrubbing the mud and blood from my body as quickly and efficiently as I could. I was used to cleaning my own blood from my skin, but the feeling of someone else’s just made me want to-

I shivered, hands shaking the the brush tumbling out of my grasp and clattering to the floor. I braced a hand on the wall, letting my head hang forward as I took a deep breath, before looking back up and wincing as the cold water streamed over me.

No hot showers at HYDRA. I hadn’t felt the feeling of warm water rush over me since the last time I had a long bubble bath back home...

I shook the thought off, carding my fingers through my hair and attempting to pick the dirt and gravel out of it. My breath was ragged as I felt a hot steam of air on my neck, the faint tickle of fingers brushing over my hips and up my body until two large hands - one flesh, one metal - caged my head to the tiled wall.

“Soldier...” I moaned breathily, letting my eyes slip shut at the feeling of his hot breath hitting the back of my neck. It was an intoxicating feeling, really, especially after being void of affectionate human contact for so many years. The soldier buried his nose in my hair, inhaling deeply before bringing his lips to my eye.

“I can’t stay away from you.” He murmured, flesh hand coming down to grab a handful of my ass roughly before letting go. I almost whined at the loss of contact before I felt a harsh spank against my right ass cheek. What surprised me the most was the expected cry of pain did not escape me, but rather a moan of pleasure.

I could feel the soldier’s smirk against my skin at my reaction, my eyes still shut as his hand trailed over my hip once again, before slipping down my front and running a finger through my wet folds. I jerked away as his fingertip brushed over my sensitive nub, pressing my lips together to surpress a needy groan at his low chuckle, the sound going straight to my core and causing a pang of arousal to dance through me.

“Ever been touched here before?” He husked in my ear and o shook my head, almost in embarrassment. “No?” He checked and I shook my head again. “I’ll try to be gentle.” He muttered, but before I could protest his cold with gliding through my folds, now coated in my wetness and slowly sheathing itself inside of me.

A raspy moan tore from my throat, the soldier groaning behind me as his hand moved to my hip in a vice-like grip. His cock stretched me beyond my limits, and to say it was painful was an understatement. After a moment of keeping his cock fully seated within me, the soldier pulled his hips back slowly before slamming back roughly. A burn formed in my cunt and I let out another moan, dropping my head forward to to cool shower wall when he thrusted into me again.

After a few more thrusts the pain started to dissipate, instead turning into a delicious and pleasurable burn that sent tingles through me. When one of my hands reached backwards to grip onto the soldier’s thigh, he took it as a signal to speed up snapping his hips into mine until the only thing that could be heard were our skin slapping together, my breathy and broken moans and the soldier’s frankly feral and animalistic growls and groans in my ear.

A sharp gasp crawled up my throat when his hand transferred from my hip down to my core, two fingers flicking at my bungle of nerves. I could feel every vein, every ridge, every part of him as I clamped down around him, throwing my head back to rest of his shoulder as his pace somehow increased again - fingers drawing tight and fast circles on my clit in time with his thrusts.

My knees buckled as I came with a shout, falling back into him as my legs gave up on me. He let out a growl as his thrusts faltered, a few more strokes and he was shooting his load deep into me. I winced as he pulled out, falling forwards into the wall as I tried to catch my breath - breathing laboured.

As I turned to face the soldier, maybe pull him into a kiss, he disappeared. It was like he had gone into thin air. The only trace of him left was his cum dripping down my thighs, tickling my skin.

[eternally-writing]

grammys grief | knj

genre: fluff and angst

rating: G (no swearing or sexual content)

pairing: Namjoon x reader

theme: idol!au, boyfriend!au, one-shot

word count: 1.5k

warnings: none (Namjoon is pretty sad though)

synopsis: After a devastating Grammys loss, Namjoon comes to you for some comfort.

(A/N: Recording Academy if you’re reading this, I don’t like you.)

banner by me!

--♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡--

“I’m sorry” were the first words you said as you opened your apartment door to see a sulky Namjoon.

“I just didn’t want to be alone right now,” mumbled Namjoon as he tossed off his shoes in your entryway.

You get it, or at least if you don’t get it you try your best to. You don’t know what it’s like to be a part of a chart-topping, record-breaking group that just got snubbed by the Recording Academy. You don’t know what it’s like to have the pressure of carrying the image of South Korea on your shoulders, but for Namjoon you’ll try, and you’ll do anything to take his pain away. 

There was a reason Namjoon always came to your apartment when he was sad. He usually tried to pass it off as him wanting to come over because you had a French press and could make his favourite coffee, but the truth was that being at your place felt like home. The caramel-colored walls and small knick-knacks lining your shelves enveloped Namjoon with a strong sense of familiarity. No matter what judgment seemed to face him in the real world, the four walls of your apartment harbored all his secrets and never told a soul, and you did the same. 

Looking over from your kitchen to Namjoon on the couch and seeing him bundled up into a tiny ball made your heart yearn in pain for him. Namjoon always seemed like a big, powerful leader, and you had never seen him look more small than he did at this moment. You wished you could take a photo of him and send it to the Recording Academy to show them how their terrible treatment of BTS affected them. The Grammys milked BTS for every bit of clout that they could with no remorse, and you hated them deeply for it. Of course the biased judgement of the Grammys was no secret, and honestly if the Grammys didn’t mean so much to Joon and the rest of the boys you definitely would just shun the Grammys all together, but this was Joon’s dream and you wanted to support him in any way you could.

Hearing the noises of your French press machine whirring to life in the kitchen, Namjoon glanced at your frame bustling around the kitchen. By the time you are finished and are carrying a mug of coffee over to your living room, Namjoon has already tucked himself into your blankets and curled himself into the corner of your couch. Looking over at you, Namjoon could see the look on your face that was silently asking “are you okay?”. Before the words could leave your mouth, Namjoon already beat you to sharing his answer. 

“It’s all good,” he mumbled as he shrugged his shoulders.

You sighed as you walked towards him. You had dealt with loud angry Namjoon, quiet angry Namjoon, crying Namjoon, happy Namjoon,  and even more. But you’ve never been around this Namjoon: quiet, frustrated, disappointed Namjoon. 

Taking a seat beside Joon on the couch, you laid a hand on his thigh and looked him in the eye. 

“I have watched you say “it’s all good” for the past 6 hours. Every interview, the vlive, and with the boys too. This doesn’t have to be “all good” Joon. You worked incredibly hard, you were successful, and you were robbed of an award that should have been yours. It’s sad, it really is, and I’m sorry this happened to you.”

You cuddled yourself closer into Namjoon’s side, wrapping your arms around him in an effort to help shield him from the negativity which he was facing. Nestling your head into his chest, you continued on. 

“I’m sorry they used you like that. It’s not fair and it shouldn’t be happening. I’m proud of you yknow? You were right about how amazing it is that you’ve come this far. The first Korean act to ever give a solo performance at the Grammys? That will go down in history.”

You heard Namjoon sigh and place a chaste kiss on your forehead. 

“I don’t know it’s just - to come this far and not win? It hurts. I don’t know, maybe I’ve been awake for too many hours and am just upset that I got fully dressed for absolutely nothing. But seeing Jimin so upset that he’s barely said a word all day? Hearing Yoongi crying in the bathroom because he wanted the award so badly? I know I wanted this award so badly, but I know the boys really wanted it too. I just feel like I’ve left them down as their leader.”

You could feel the pain in his voice. The rawness. The emotion. 

Kim Namjoon, the love of your life, was in pain and you felt like there was nothing you could do about it. If you could you would craft a Grammy yourself out of your own bare hands, but unfortunately you didn’t have any magical powers or welding skills that would let you do so. The best you could do is be a comforting voice and lend an ear to listen to his troubles.

As much as you wished you could handle this all by yourself, you definitely needed to call in some reinforcements. 

As you pulled your phone out and Namjoon could see you go to open twitter, he groaned. 

“Please no, Y/N. That dispatch article saying we failed was enough media coverage for me today,” he said as he turned his head away from the screen. 

“No I promise this is gonna be good, babe. Trust me on this ok? Give me 5 minutes and then we can stop if you want.” 

Relinquishing his time to you, Namjoon pulled you closer to him and leaned his head on your shoulder to get a good look at your phone. 

Namtiddie_appreciation: To Namjoon, the most fearless leader:  We are so proud of you. You have and will continue to lead BTS to keep breaking down barriers in the music industry, and it’s the Grammys loss if they can’t see your talent. 

shooky_cooky: I hope BTS knows how proud ARMY are of them tonight. They handled everything today with such grace and respect, and I have never been more proud to look up to them. The world needs more BTS!

Army_for_life613: I know BTS may not have one a Grammy tonight, but they are the reason I am alive today. I don’t think that I will ever be able to repay for the love that they have given me but I will keep supporting them forever! <3 

You looked up at Joon’s face to see the most genuine smile on Namjoon’s face that you had seen all day. 

Taking one hand to wipe the tears away from his face, you smiled at him. 

“There’s more you know,” you said, “I could read these to you all day. Probably for a couple days before I even start running out of tweets. But then we could move to Weverse to read the millions of comments over there too”

The sound of Namjoon’s laughter reaching your ears was the best sound you had ever heard. He stared down at you with a look of awe.

“I don’t know how you do it,” he said. 

“Do what?”

“Make everything ok no matter what. I barely knew how to comfort the boys, let alone myself. But somehow you always say the right things, so thank you.”

“You’re making me sound like a superhero, Joon. And as much as I would love to take credit for this, all I’m doing is reading out tweets. You could probably replace me with a robot if you wanted.”

Namjoon pulled you onto his lap and pulled you into the tightest hug. 

“Sure I could get a robot, but where could I find a robot that’s this cute?” he said as he pinched your cheeks. 

Giggling in Namjoon’s embrace, you continued to scroll on your phone, eventually showing Namjoon another set of tweets. 

“Speaking of ARMY though, they lowkey seem like they’re going to start a riot, not gonna lie. You should put out something to distract them or something,” you said with a chuckle.

With a quick nod, Namjoon pulled out his phone to show you the photo in question, ready to go in his Weverse drafts. 

You chuckled at the photo. That definitely is your sexy boyfriend. 

“That’s perfect babe, let them have at it.”

Soon enough, after posting the gym selfie, Namjoon’s photo had caused Weverse to break yet again (you’re never gonna stop making the joke about him breaking the internet). #BigHitclosethegyms was trending yet again, and you both had the time of your lives reading the funniest comments of the bunch. 

Tomorrow would be the start of BTS’s new journey to win a Grammy, but at least for today it was just about you and Joon reading funny comments and drinking French press coffee. And next year, you were sure that they were gonna win.

--♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡--

If you liked this, please interact/follow! Thank you for reading ♡ 

- Emily

[shiningjoy]

so i’ve finally watched s3 of free! and i wanted to put my thoughts in about it and hopefully also get some ppl to reply (respectfully) with their own input? also sorry if my knowledge of free seems spotty or incomplete since i don’t obviously have all free lore burned into my head so pls inform or correct me on anything i’m missing!

anyways before even watching s3, i noticed it was pretty widespread that s3 was rather disappointing or at least fell short to s1&2. and not only that, but i could see that s3 was likely going to be a bit disappointing just bc of how many less ppl were interested in it or even knew about it (ofc popularity=/=good but i doubted that the loss in numbers was just bc time had passed) sadly, the season actually exceeded my expectations of the worst.

first of all, i think way too many characters were introduced without any need of them being there. ofc not all of them seemed worthless to being there, but i think at least half of them didn’t have a need of being there (or at least didn’t need to appear as much as they did) or they could’ve at least waited to introduce them. don’t get me wrong, i loved characters like isuzu and albert, but with how little they appeared or added to the plot, i don’t think they were necessary at all. they introduced so many characters and kind of tried to forcefully endear them to us but it just seemed really shallow and random. i was really uninterested in the new iwatobi hs sc tbh (i love rei and nagisa, but i just don’t feel anything for the new members tho it was funny how the new manager is interested in fat instead of muscles) i don’t think isuzu was worth introducing, but i do get why they introduced albert at least. he was supposed to serve as their first rival introduced strictly from the professional world, and to emphasize there are many people above them not just in japan but the “world stage” but i definitely think they could’ve waited on that until the free 2021 movie tbh. plus i felt that any conflict he brought to haru was resolved within 1 maybe 2 episodes so yea they definitely didn’t really need him bc he hasn’t had much impact (yet) if anything, they could’ve just had him briefly appear at that training camp haru was at to race him and beat him to remind him that he still has a long way to go to get to the top. but all other appearances of albert were so extra and unnecessarily emphasized how inhumanely talented he was (the arcade scene, the thing with the chopsticks,etc) it just felt like really weak foreshadowing

also, the main conflict in s3 was just way too prolonged and solved unsatisfactorily. first of all, i don’t know why the blame seemed to be shifted by ikuya and hiyori almost solely to haru, like yes he was the one who quit first but it wasn’t an attack specifically to ikuya and the rest of them left too, so they should’ve held more grudges on haru makoto and asahi rather than just haru (or if anything at least have more blame on asahi bc makoto at least talked to ikuya beforehand) like did he just forget asahi also made a promise to not move away? honestly from the content they gave us, i’d argue that asahi and ikuya were actually closer than how ikuya and haru were, since i feel like most of the latter relationship was based on ikuya admiring harus swimming.

second of all, hiyori was another character i found so unnecessary and just weirdly protective over ikuya. he repeatedly gets in the way between them and ikuya when ikuya never said he didn’t want to talk to them (and it’s not like talking to them is gonna give him a health relapse) and so he just seemed to be there to prolong the conflict between them which was irritating. not even natsuya, ikuya’s actual brother, was that obsessive over him so i really don’t get hiyori. even sousuke, who was actually friends with rin before haru and the others were was not that possessive over rin, and there was actually pretty good reasoning why he had a grudge against haru (he didn’t see haru taking swimming as seriously as rin and thought that would cause him to hold back rin who looked up to haru, and was jealous that haru who had the talent to swim the world stage with rin wasn’t taking advantage of it when sousuke wanted to but couldnt bc of his injury) and like what right did he have to say to haru that his swimming hurts others when it didn’t even affect ikuya negatively (instead it inspired him and led to him wanting to swim like haru) like how haru originally thought it did to rin and how it did to asahi in high speed 2?

third of all, like i said before the way they solved the conflict between ikuya and the rest made little sense. like yes harus swimming is magical but i don’t get how swimming IM with him could instantly solve all the problems between them. (ik that it was based on the promise they made to race each other but i’ll get into that part and how shallow it felt later) if anything, i think what would’ve been more impactful was something happening to ikuya that made him realize that he can/should rely on/trust others, (maybe a more serious accident?) and enjoy swimming with a team and not just alone since his personal conflict was that he thought swimming alone was better than swimming with others when actually he was lonely (at least it was in starting days). and that wouldn’t even have to be with haru and the others that he learns that lesson. it could be with his own university team and hiyori, which would give hiyori a much better purpose of being there. (or they could’ve just not had him exist) if they were so inclined to have closure between ikuya and the other boys by having them resolve ikuyas personal conflict, i feel like it should’ve been at least haru AND asahi (maybe even makoto too but idk how thatd work when he’s no longer competing) racing him in the same race (if not them doing a relay but i guess they didn’t want to make it too obvious than they already were that they were just recycling the plot of s1 (lol)) if anything i think they could’ve even waited for them to reconcile while they were on the olympic team, but ig kyoani didn’t want to wait that long to reintroduce ikuya and wanted to use s3 to warm ppl up to the idea of ikuya being on the olympic team which they didn’t do very well considering how bad the development was

also what was with ikuya saying he swims his own way while obviously taking sm inspiration fron the way haru swam? it was so contradictory and even as kids haru told ikuya to swim his own way when ikuya told him that he wanted to be like haru and he understood that obviously but didn’t apply that to his actions at all? and i’m surprised haru was ok with ikuya blatantly copying him when i vaguely rmb that he’s been shown to get annoyed with even makoto when he seemed to be doing that?

another fault in having all these characters was that haru’s actual personality seemed to be taken away for the sake of these characters.

they wanted to establish a deeper relationship between ikuya and haru, but it just seemed so off the way they went about it in free! haru promising ikuya to race him just felt so ooc to me and had little emotional impact tbh bc of the lack of reasoning i felt haru had to agree to such a thing besides him promising ikuya that just bc he asked rather than bc he actually wanted to race ikuya. (while it took rin weeks to get haru to warm up to him and then agree to the relay, and seeing the process of haru getting used to the idea then openly enjoying swimming with the others was really touching) i think they just added that to make harus quitting have more impact on ikuya but i don’t think it was necessary at all when they already made plans with the rest to swim the relay again and win. if they wanted to make it seem like ikuya and haru had more of a one on one relationship with each other they should’ve gone into more about how haru saw the same darkness in ikuya that he did in himself like in high speed 2. make them bond over their similarities since i’m pretty sure ikuyas purpose as a character is to give haru a rival that is like how sousuke is to rin is; which is being rivals while being two of the same person. (in contrast to haru and rin who are very different and are rivals that inspire each other) but the way they try to establish the relationship between ikuya and haru pales sm in comparison to sousuke and rin that it’s a bit laughable, even more so in those occasional moments where they try to act like ikuya can measure up to rin’s impact on haru

another much more obvious event where haru’s character is forced to act ooc for the sake of the establishment of another character is with albert. yes, haru has grown a lot from the beginning of the series and has gotten a lot more open, expressive, and friendly, but that’s mostly just to the friends around him, but that’s not even to all of them (he still seems to find kisumi irritating and in TYM tries to leave at the sight of him lol) so him noticing, randomly approaching a stranger he doesn’t know a single thing about to help them order food and then even going far as to have lunch with him was the most blatantly ooc thing in the season. i think he may be polite enough to help him order his food but i don’t get why he even noticed albert in the first place. they should’ve just left him noticing albert to be at the practice race. like i said that scene was just there to emphasize albert’s skill with the chopstick thing but i think saying he was the world record holder and also being way ahead of haru in the race was already enough

besides haru’s character, another character i felt they did wrong was makoto. besides the plot of s1 being recycled, s3 makoto seemed to just repeat the development he went through in s2. by the end of s2, he already establishes that he wants to coach swimmers. and at the end of s3 he comes to that same realization but acts like it’s something completely new to him introduced by nao that he never thought of before?? the only difference was that he said in s2 he wanted to help kids realize how great swimming is, which was sweet and suited his personality, but in s3 he says he wants to do it for athletes on the world stage. tbh i like either way, and the latter one would help him be able to stand with rin and haru who in s2 he was afraid of being left behind by (hence why he swam the free against haru in s2) but saying that being an olympic trainer can also help him inspire kids and show them swimming is fun makes no sense. choose a path you want for the character already and make it consistent does he want to help athletes in the world stage or does he want to help kids fall in love with swimming? bc i doubt any kids pay attention to the coach or trainers in the olympics rather than the actual athletes so that reasoning like i said didn’t make sense.

and after haru lost what i think was the 200m (?) free at the All Japan Invitational, i found it weird that they had makoto there after to talk with haru and rin about the race? idk to me it just feels like it’s tradition for it to end up just being rin and haru talking when they’re struggling with swimming (in s1 was their fight in front of the tree that looked like the one by their elementary, in s2 it was the australia trip) his presence didn’t even feel necessary either, he just randomly interrupted the moment by saying his future plans after haru had that angst yell lol. it felt like just an appeal to mh shippers which is not a good enough reason at all

the last point i can remember at the moment is that the ending was so underwhelming. i don’t understand why they couldn’t have shown the ending to rin and harus 100m free race when the movie trailer already confirms that they’re going to the olympics. why cut to albert watching them on the tv?? all this build up to not even show the results of it? I think this ending really just confirmed that s3 was so unnecessary and just there to warm ppl up to the olympic movie but not actually give us anything good or plot moving

anyways sorry for this dump. besides all these criticisms, i want to say there were parts of it that i enjoyed, i just didn’t go into it bc this post is already so long, and me bagging on ikuya was not hate; i actually like him and the only time i teared up in s3 was in his race with natsuya lol. i’m afraid that at some parts i may have not expressed my thoughts exactly so please don’t be too harsh if you engage, but i’d love to hear other ppl’s analysis of s3 and the characters as well !!

[crimsonandcloverwrites]

bhah ch8 reread as fast as i can before ch11 arrives help

aww Dani nervous for Jamie’s big race is so cute

i love Dani’s whole photography thing n her wanting to document their lives it’s so sweet

i’m suddenly stuck on the whole blue as a theme thing n now I’m noticing it everywhere/remembering their tent was blue and now their school colours are blue and Dani’s car is blue and I think Jamie’s house is blue. and of course THE SCRUNCHIE

god I love track star Jamie

flip these two are cute together

‘a favour for good luck’ god idk why this gets me so much I think like... Dani giving her this little piece of herself is so wholesome but weirdly loaded i just love it

the carson eddie banter is so funny sdkdhfgj

Dani is such a lil ball of emotions I’m obsessed w her feeling a million things while she watches Jamie

she’s a winner baby!!

also love that this is her setting the record that was mentioned in the prev chapter we love lil details being followed through

Jamie going straight for Dani when she won god that’s so cute

aw Jamie gets a kiss (and a whole gay crisis lol) for her win how sweet

oh no the beginnings of Dani and Eddie

pls this is so soft Carson and Judy so proud of Jamie

I just ate so many carbs I am finally properly fueled for this reading sprint (solidarity w Jamie)

aw Nan quietly proud of her

fkjdfh Dani and Jamie playing footsies at the table

god Nan n Jamie are such a force together truly terrifying to be stuck in the middle of I’m sure. Also fuuuck cld u imagine grown up Jamie and Nan interacting and Jamie in particular being a bit more chilled out and them getting along a lot better but finding their way back to silly little bickering arguments that are really just them knowing they can do that w each other and still be ok at the end of the day bc they love each other ouch it hurts to think about :(

lmao Jamie losing her mind at the sight of Dani in a towel lol I can just imagine her having the same reaction when they’re together too

oooh is the watch from Jamie’s great uncle (? Nan’s brother that she was named for right?) that’s so cool

ugh I want Dani to get her travel adventures so bad

god everytime Dani touches Jamie or says something really sweet or just gives her a look Jamie is suffering so bad

THE MIXTAPE (LITTLE BLUE DUDE SCREAMING AT THE SKY.MEME)

oh god they’re really just gonna curl up in Jamie’s bed and listen to this declaration of love mixtape while Jamie plays with Dani’s hair hold on a minute wait a second

oh no the eddie of it all

aw he brought her flowers (like I am not here for their relationship overall but he does do some sweet things sometimes and he does clearly care abt her)

ugh of course Jamie helped pick them out tho this whole situation is so complicated

god I’m so sad for both of them that their relationship ended up like this. Dani loses that friendship she cherishes so much when it becomes something else she never wanted and Eddie is in love w a girl who will never love him back that way. it really is heartbreaking

oh god the house party time for chaos

Jamie my beloved. sdkjfhsdkjfh and Roger trying to put the moves on her pls this will never stop being funny to me

ugh Dani already feeling so trapped in this life I hate it I hate it

Jamie fiddling w the coin necklace while she watches Dani n Eddie together feels like... she knows she’s losing Dani on some level ouch my heart

is this when Jamie was telling Ed of for letting Dani get drunk wdjkfhdj always the protector aw

she’s still wearing Dani’s scrunchie oh my god. u may have her hand ed but u will never have her hair ties

Dani’s dress MORE BLUE

this is such an interesting event w them like they’re best friends and they’re together so much but they avoid each other for half the party it’s so like... indicative I guess of things changing between them hmmmm

cursed spin the bottle. poor Dani

the zippo lighter. i love seeing things from the box in these chapters. like a gay scavenger hunt

the inadvertent cigarette kiss oh my god. also a little bit like... Jamie just leaning into the pain huh??? I get to put my lips where her lips were but it’s around this thing that has the potential to kill me. god the implications

a little fireside cuddling w ur soulmate ur never gonna kiss how romantic

the sandalwood. I fuckin love that she held onto this scent after Dani told her she smells nice one time. gays really do be like that huh

god this really is the softest moment

christ that almost kiss is so intense how did they just carry on as normal after that I would have died

lol “did i interrupt something?” bro........

dsfkjhdkj Jamie GROWLING at him hahhahahahhaha

oof Dani just wants more of her. I love there was the mention of her carefully constructed walls crumbling and now she’s just like... in this little bubble of almost with her n trying so hard to hold onto that in any way she can

and now she’s back w eddie ouch I hate watching the things she wants slipping out of her grasp

lmao Eddie not putting his arm around Dani when Jamie is there. she really put the fear of god in him I love this angry little lesbian so much

poor Carson being dragged to sports games like “no I’m gay I can’t”

lmao the pair of them trying to be sneaky smoking around the corner (and also having more Moments god the tension of it all)

oooh this Orpheus and Eurydice ref spicy (also fuck this was the beginning of her actually losing Jamie huh god the storytelling... *chef’s kiss*)

oh no Nan :(

god Karen is so awful how could u just break the news to your kid like that

it’s only pain hours from here on out huh

poor Jamie god my heart breaks

something about Dani saying she’s sorry and Jamie just saying she has to go put Mikey to bed fucking breaks me. the fact she’s just lost everything, her home and the stability she was missing from her childhood that she got to have for such a short time, and she can probably barely even process it but all she knows is she has to take care of Mikey. fuck

god her destroying her bike because she’s just so devestated but anger and destruction is easier to feel than being sad.... ouch

“You don’t - you don’t have to feel anything right now. I’ll feel it for you. For the both of us” how dare u make me cry like this

god Jamie giving the scrunchie back feels like such a fucking sad little acknowledgement of her deciding she has to do everything on her own noooo

Dani trying to confront her mom god this is all so much for them to be dealing with I am so sad

tiny mikey saying “want nana” so much pain

Jamie just clinging to Dani when they’re sitting in the pew bc it’s the only way she can ask for help right now ow

“Don’t fight me” my fcking heart this chapter is so sad I need a drink

Jamie is far too young to be self-medicating her way through this god this hurts to read.

this chapter has such a melancholic loss of innocence vibe like going from the teenage parties and boys and track meets and only really having to worry about themselves to this massive amount of responsibility on their shoulders when nan dies (like as much as Jamie tries to push her away Dani takes on a huge burden in trying to help her too) it’s so fucking saaaad

Jamie just breaking and finally crying all this out in Dani’s arms holyyyy shit that will never not break my heart

god Jamie just. determined to raise Mikey on her own cause god knows what the alternative is :(

oof the thread of Jamie determined to fix things. baby sometimes u just cant.

Dani trying so hard to hold things together in the ways that she can :*(

god this ending I am in pain. i know it’s ultimately for the best like Jamie and Mikey absolutely could not carry on like that but.... bro... bro..... ouch

ok gonna go cry in the shower for a bit n then i’ll be back for ch9

[moghedien]

Love Me, Love Me - An Overly Obsessive Analysis of All You Wanna Do

     Here it is. I’m finally writing a far too long and overly analytic essay that no body asked for (well one person did) about All You Wanna Do from Six the Musical. More realistically, I’m going to discussing Katherine Howard throughout the musical and specifically how she manipulates the audience throughout the show to make All You Wanna Do all the more effective. I use the word manipulate and will probably do so again, which has a negative connotation, but I don’t mean it in a negative way. It’s just the most effective word to use. I should also note that I’ve never seen Six…live. I may have happened upon some less than legal video, and all of the knowledge I’ll be pulling from beyond the cast recording and some audios will be from that. I know it was an earlier show and that there have been some changes since then, and I don’t have any way of knowing what those changes are so please bear with me if some details aren’t completely correct or still accurate. I do have every intention to see a production of Six eventually, but I live in the very, very Deep American South, so getting to a city where its playing is gonna take some time. Also, due to the nature of this song, I’m putting a heavy content warning for sexual assault, child grooming, pedophilia, etc. If you’ve listened to the song, you know what its about, so you know I’m going to be discussing all that.

     Now that the preliminary disclaimers are out of the way, let’s begin.

     From the beginning of the show, Katherine Howard is trying to win the audience over more than any other Queen. They’re trying in various ways, yes, but Howard is the one putting the most work in beyond just trying to make herself look better or justify herself to them. From her introduction in Ex-Wives she’s doing this. She interrupts Cleves’s dick joke with “Prick up your ears,” turning Cleves’s joke that probably would have landed somewhat, and making it her joke that definitely lands with the audience. After Ex-Wives, she looks directly at the audience when she delivers the line “The Thomas Cromwell Amongst the Royal Ministers, between 1532 and 1540” which is a line that only works because it goes on too long and is weirdly detailed and specific enough to be funny. She looks and points at people in the front row when she says “between 1532 and 1540” as an acknowledgement that she’s breaking from her stage persona for a moment to give them this line, and that sells it to the crowd. They know that she’s purposely being overly detailed and they’re with her. It’s not expected, especially not from her, and so its funny. The entire goal of K Howard throughout this show is the make sure that the audience stays with her and to use what people expect from her to her own advantage and, at some points, against them.

     Really, that’s the goal of all the Queens to win over the audience, but the rest approach it differently. Aragon tries to convince the audience that she’s right and therefore deserves to win the competition. Boleyn tries to make her whole situation out to be ridiculous (including the fact that she got beheaded). Both of them heavily fall into basically going “can you believe what Henry did?” And I mean, neither of them is wrong. Seymour tries to pull on heartstrings and play into love and loss. Cleves…is interesting. Cleves is basically just there to prove that she’s above Henry and his nonsense. Parr I’m not really going to touch on, because her song is more a reaction to everyone else and the scene that happens after Howard gets “real” with her song. The other queens will occasionally interject to try to further win people over to their side, but they do so using the same point they were making in their song. They aren’t subtle about it, though they try to be. To the audience, though, its always clear what they’re doing, and for the most part that’s the joke. The one who actually is subtle about it, though, is Howard.

     Being the fifth wife, Howard goes second to last. She knows this, and knows she can’t dump her trauma on the audience before her song, so what does she do make her case throughout the show, before she gets her shot in the spotlight? She makes sure the audience is on her side already by the time it gets to her. She steals Cleves’s punchline. She makes winky jokes with the audience and acknowledges that she’s doing so. She’s overall charming and she never once tries to convince them to be on her side in the competition, or at least never makes it seem like that’s what she’s doing. She just wants them to laugh at her jokes and like her, but that has nothing to do with the competition, surely? Well, considering she uses these exact same methods in her song, you can assume that this is an intentional manipulation. Again, I don’t mean manipulation maliciously, but she’s definitely making the audience want to like her before she even begins her story. But that’s for more reason than just winning the competition. 

     When it does get to her turn, the other queens try to again interject with their own points (the same points they’ve already made) and belittle her. It’s actually somewhat interesting because you can see Howard trying to speak up before Parr tells them it’s her turn, but she seems kind of meek in the background as the other queens bicker amongst themselves. Even after Parr has to kind of push her forward because its her turn, she looks intimidated. She seems to be trying to make herself small, and she’s holding onto the microphone like it’s a security blanket. She actually looks nervous, and she’s right in the middle of the stage, so all of the audience sees her being frightened and will probably feel for her in that moment. She looks like someone who needs help. 

     Then she begins roasting the other queens like chestnuts upon an open fire. It begins with their “Good luck trying to compete with us” to which she responds “You’re right, I mean your lives all sounded terrible, and your songs…” and then she shrinks back into her meek, awkward pose a moment before adding “…do a lot to convey that.” She’s using the sympathy she gained with the audience to pull off that joke, because they see that she’s being bashful but then she just pulls off this burn in the middle of that bashfullness. So they feel sympathy for K Howard, who’s already been charming throughout the show, who’s being shy now, but still manages to be funny. So the audience is with her already. Then she goes to the queens one by one and points out holes in their claims to having the Worst Time, but she does it in a humorous way. She does it in a way that makes the audience feels like it’s for them. She even looks at the audience when she gets to Parr, making a “can you believe her?” expression at them instead of actually addressing Parr. Howard is with the audience and the audience is with Howard. Its never been more true than in this moment.

     When she gets to Cleves, she doesn’t insult Cleves in any way and instead decides to use the moment brag about herself. Not in a way that has anything to do with Henry or the competition. “Being rejected for your looks legit sounds terrible. I wouldn’t know anything about that.” And its not Cleves she’s addressing at this point, because again, she’s speaking to the audience when she says “Look at me, I’m really fit,” and in the version I saw, there are lots of cheers at this. People were whistling at her. People not only agree with everything she’s saying now, but they love her.

     And then we get to her song. She drops her song like its her mic drop saying she has no idea how she’s going to compete with other queens. “Oh wait, like this” and the lights drop and the music starts and it’s a big seamless conclusion to the roast. Only its not the conclusion, you’re only just beginning, and haven’t even begun to realize what Howard is doing to manipulate you to make her point.  

     So Howard uses the audience in a way that others don’t do in their songs. In Aragon and Seymour’s songs, they act as though Henry is their audience. Boleyn and Cleves acknowledge the actual audience more, but its still as part of the song. Certain moments will be sung to specific audience members, but its only moments and again, its sung. It’s part of the song. Howard, on the other hand, doesn’t sing all of her story. A lot it’s a conversation with the audience; she’s telling them a story, and she’ll stop her song occasionally to continue the conversation. Bear with me, because I’ll be going line by line now.

     She opens by speaking to the audience:

“I think we can all agree

I'm the ten amongst these threes”

     And that’s both bold and presumptive, but by this point, she’s won over the audience. They do agree with her. They like her. They think she’s funny. They think she’s hot. And these lines aren’t only meant to boost her, but it gets the audience to belittle the other queens by agreeing with her. It’s also one last reminder that she’s on their side and they’re on hers. One last reminder that they can trust where she’s going to take them, and she trusts them.

And ever since I was a child

I'd make the boys go wild

 Take my first music teacher

Henry Manox

I was young, it's true

But even then I knew

The only thing you wanna do is...

     She starts out speaking these lines, then begins singing them as she goes on. Note the last three lines in particular. She’s going to mention her age again in a moment, but before she even gets to the exacts of that, she’s telling you that “even then she knew.” So she’s making it clear right off the bat that she at least wants us to think she knows what people want from her. Also note she’s not saying “the only thing men want” or “the only think Henry Manox wanted.” She’s using you. I’m going to go more on that later, but her switch between third and second person pronouns is interesting. Also she doesn’t ever finish the sentence of what it is “you” wants to do. You’re forced to fill in the blanks by the kiss and breath she gives instead of the completion of the sentence. Again, more on that in a moment.

Broad, dark, sexy Mannox

Taught me all about dynamics

He was twenty three

And I was thirteen going on thirty

    This is the first real indication that something’s off. This is also the first place that a lot of people will stop and think “wait what did she just say?” I remember the first time I listened to the song, I definitely noted the ages and I definitely was disgusted. In the live versions I’ve heard, Howard’s voice will fall a little when she says “I was 13” but she’ll immediately pick up again and add “going on 30” like it’s a joke that she’s telling everyone. Sometimes people laugh at it. Sometimes they don’t. When they do, it’s either that they don’t take in what she’s saying or it’s an awkward, uncomfortable reaction. A “oh ok that was a joke then?” It makes people uncomfortable, especially since she begins the verse by describing Manox as “Broad, dark, sexy.” She’s making him sound appealing, suggests that she finds him appealing right before dropping the fact that she was 13 and he was 23. That’s information she can’t drop and have it be ok without either breezing past it and hoping you don’t notice, or making light of it and trying to say it was ok. Howard does both of these, which makes it so that she doesn’t really accomplish either effectively. It sounds wrong. You, the audience, notice it, but you still go past it and keep watching/listening to the rest of her song.

We'd spend hours strumming the lute

Striking the chords and blowing the flute

He plucked my strings all the way to G

Went from major to minor, C to D

    This happens immediately after the age reveal, in the same verse. Howard just blows past the age thing and starts to make it clear the relationship was sexual. She tries to convince the audience that she was on board. She puts herself in an active role saying “We’d spend hours” but then two lines later puts only him in the active role. A subtle thing, but it’s as if she can't keep up the claim that they were both active, willing participants in this. Her tone is still suggesting that everything is fine, that she’s on board and being taken care of in some way. Look, she’s so much more excited and outgoing than she was earlier when she was standing meekly in the middle of the stage, so she’s probably ok. 

Tell me what you need

What you want, you don't need to plead

    She changes who’s she’s addressing here. She’s no longer talking to the audience, or at least makes it seem like she isn’t at first glance. She’s talking to Manox, and frames it as if she’s trying to reassure him. “You don’t need to plead” suggests that he is pleading, which is a weird way to frame a 23 year old man trying to pressure a 13 year old girl to have sex with him. But this is coming from the point of view is of the 13 year old girl, who’s already been trying to put herself in an active role in this. But note that she’s never actually saying “this is something I want,” and instead saying “this is something he needs.” She’s not framing herself as “needing” anything, but instead trying to make herself understanding to his supposed needs. She makes it seem like she’s doing something for him, again putting herself in an active role. Making it seem like this was something she decided to do. 

'Cause I feel the chemistry

Like I get you and you get me

    And now she’s explaining why she’s “deciding” to do this. She feels a chemistry with Manox. He gets her. You get her, because she’s still using second person when referring to Manox. Manox still isn’t he anymore. Manox is you. And isn’t it interesting that she’s putting you (the audience) in Manox’s role when she’s been addressing you and building up a rapport with you (the audience) for the entire show? She gets the audience and the audience gets her, right?

And maybe this is it

He just cares so much it feels legit

    She switches back to third person now, removing any suggestion that she might be referring to anyone but Manox. Because now she’s trying to justify this. To herself. To you the audience. It’s ok if she “lets” him do this because he might be The One, right? He seems to care for her, so wouldn’t this be caring for him? Didn’t she already say that she understands that he needs this? If she’s letting him, then it’s not bad...right?

We have a connection

I think this guy is different

    Ah, the first “connection.” This is the part in the song where Howard gets touched for the first time. It’s not too much. Parr and Seymour stand in either side of her, facing away from the audience, and they put their hands in her shoulders. You might not even realize that they’re doing it at first. Howard doesn’t seem bothered by it, and doesn’t acknowledge it. She looks at the audience while two people put hands on her and she sings that “this guy is different.” And the audience watches still, witnessing all that’s happening. The two people touching her are looking away from you, clearly not wanting to be seen, but still clearly doing it.

'Cause all you wanna do

All you wanna do baby

Is touch me, love me, can't get enough, see

All you wanna do

All you wanna do baby

Is please me squeeze me birds and the bees me

   The first chorus, and I should note the music at this point is very pop-y. It’s upbeat. It’s happy and gives you no reason to think anything’s off at this point.

     So for the chorus, Howard switches back to second person. All YOU wanna do is touch her. All YOU wanna do is love her. It’s obvious that the “you” here is Manox, but the frequent switches from “you” to “he” is disorienting, especially since she goes on to address the audience directly immediately after the chorus. So it’s not so much that she’s addressing You the Audience instead of Manox, and what she’s actually doing is making Manox a part of You the Audience. She’s focusing on him for now, but don’t these claims also apply to the audience? They cheered and whistled she said she was really fit. They laughed and agreed when she said she was a ten. They’ve been on her side every time she made a claim like that. So while You the Audience may not be Manox, Manox is among you, and you have some things in common with him. That combined with the plucky, pop music doesn’t seem bad right now. The audience doesn’t even notice the 23 year old man in their midst that is forcing sex on a 13 year old, especially since the 13 doesn’t seem to be suffering or anything. Look at her, she’s fine and she’s encouraging it, isn’t she? She seems happy. You’ve seen what it looks like when she’s afraid. And let’s be clear “birds and the bees me” leaves no illusion as to exactly what’s going on. She’s telling you what’s going on, so there’s no way to deny that or suggest otherwise. You know what’s happening. 

Run your fingers through my hair

Tell me I'm the fairest of the fair

Playtime's over

The only thing you wanna do is...

    Last part of the chorus, and I wanted to separate it to point out the language. The language isn’t inherently aggressive or violent here. “Run your fingers through my hair” that’s almost nothing. We know what’s going on because the lines above tell us it IS sexual, but this is rather tame for the most part. The accompanying music is rather tame too, and still perky. The “fairest of the fair” allusion adds fairy tale language and the next line “playtimes over” here work together to reinforce the impression that she’s 13 here. She’s a kid who thinks that this man might be Prince Charming. She tells herself it’s romantic, it’s a fairy tale. But then playtime is over. The line repeats through each chorus but here it has two meanings: Manox is done with her, and childhood is done. She may not even realize the latter yet. She may not even realize that this man hurt her, but this man who “felt legit” and might have been “it” is clearly done with her. The only thing he/you wanted was to....

  She never actually directly says sex, but she makes every possible reference she can to make it clear that sex occurred. But she can never finish the line “the only thing you wanna do is...” She can never bring herself to claim it. Instead she just blows a kiss and makes you figure out the rest. The only thing you/Manox wanted was sex, and when he got it he was done. You know that. She knows it but can’t completely acknowledge it and make it real. It’s obvious though, and the audience is still watching this happen.

    So for the next lines, I’m going to use the spoken dialogue from the show rather than the cast recording because I think it provides better context.

[Spoken]

So then there was another guy, Francis. And at the time I was living at my step-grandma’s house and he was working for her. Working so, so hard. So he asked me to be his little piece of ass...sistant.

  So Howard speaks these lines rather than sing them. As I mentioned already, she’s the only queen who really stops her song multiple times to turn to the audience and talk to them. But she isn’t only acknowledging them, she’s giving them a story. She’s providing context. She’s being friendly with them. Yes, she’s the one performing on stage, but she knows that the audience is there and she knows what they want, and she’s so willing to please. To give people the entertainment and the story they want. It’s like she wants to make sure that the audience really understands. 

    So to get to what Howard actually says here, she just breezes past Manox and moves onto the next guy. She doesn’t let herself dwell on Manox any longer and quickly rushes forward and onto Francis. The context for Francis, like Manox, is unsettling. She’s living with her step-grandmother and her grandmother’s adult secretary turns his attention on her and gets her to “help” him. However, like with Manox, she makes a joke about it. She acknowledges that he wants her around so that he can objectify and sexualize her. She uses that fact as a punchline, and people do laugh at the line. Even when she’s clearly saying “he employed me because he wanted to have sex with me” the audience laughs, because her joke was funny, she seems to be fine, and she has a happy tone as she’s saying all of this. Manox didn’t turn out that bad, did he? She still seems happy, doesn’t she? The audience is still watching, aren’t they?

Serious, stern and slow

Get's what he wants and he won't take no

Passion in all that he touches

The sexy secretary to the Dowager Duchess

     A few things here. Howard’s tone is still meant to make it seem like she was into this, like these are attractive attributes of Francis, but literally the only positive words here are “passion” and “sexy.” She’s literally telling you that he doesn’t take no for an answer. She’s also pointing out again the Dowager Duchess, her step grandmother. The woman who was supposed to be in charge of keeping an eye on her, but didn’t. The woman who definitely could have given Francis the boot or made sure, at the very least, that he didn’t make Howard his “piece of ass…sistant.” It’s not something that happened once and no one could have known about it. Howard mentions the woman twice, pointing out her prominence here. A woman who probably saw what was going on and did nothing, or who decided not to actually see what was going on and still did nothing. Who else is seeing what’s going on right now and doing nothing?

Helped him in his office, had a duty to fulfil

He even let me use his favourite quill

spilled ink all over the parchment

my wrist was so tired

Still I came back the next day

as he required

     So Howard is again making it perfectly clear what’s going on without actually having to say it. If you didn’t get it at “his favorite quill” and “spilled ink all over the parchment,” you probably get it when she says “my wrist was so tired” which she speaks instead of sings and delivers it as if it’s a joke line. But then the next lines are “Still I came back the next day/as he required.” Her use of the word “still” really makes it clear how much agency she had in the situation, though at this point she’s still mostly trying to claim an active role in everything. What she’s saying here is “he made me do this and I did, but look, I still came back the next day.” You don’t say “still I came back” when you’re in a pleasant situation. The illusion she’s trying to create is starting to slip some. She’s starting to have trouble painting all of this out as something she enjoyed and chose.

You say I'm what you need

All you want you don't need to plead

'Cause I feel the chemistry

Like I get you and you get me

     This bit of the pre-chorus is nearly identical to what she says about Manox, and again she slips into second person. Instead of her asking you/Francis what you need like she did with Manox, though, you/Francis are telling her. She’s not acting, but being acted upon. Still, she has to reassure that you/Francis don’t need to plead because obviously you have chemistry. And you/Francis get her. So, the “you” now consist of Manox, Francis, and the audience. Those two men are among the people watching this whole thing go down.

And I know this is it

He just cares so much this one's legit

We have a real connection

I'm sure this time is different

     So the language here is notably different than it was with Manox. First I want to point out that this is the first indication from Howard herself that something with Manox was wrong. She’s “sure this time is different” meaning that she’s trying to convince herself that this time won’t be like last time. But she seemed so happy and into what happened last time? I mean, anyone with enough common sense to know that a 23 year old man should not be with a 13 year old would know that something was wrong, but Howard gave no indication herself that anything was wrong. Up until right now, retrospectively. And again, at the word connection, two of the queens touch her shoulders, grabbing her while they face away from the audience, wanting to remain anonymous while doing it.

     What she is doing is trying to convince herself that this time, its ok. Whereas before she thinks they have a connection, now she knows. She doesn’t think this guy is different, she’s sure this time is different. Francis doesn’t just feel legit, he is legit. She’s telling both the audience and herself, “last time was bad but this time is real and fine!” And yet, we continue.  

'Cause all you wanna do

All you wanna do baby

Is touch me love me can't get enough see

All you wanna do

All you wanna do baby

Is please me, squeeze me, birds and the bees me

You can't wait a second more

To get my corset on the floor

Playtime's over

The only thing you wanna do is...

     The only lines in the chorus that aren’t identical to the first are “You can’t wait a second more/to get my corset on the floor” replacing the lines about telling her she’s the fairest of the fair. So the line that alludes to fairy tales gets replaced with a line about her getting naked. Meaning that the previous line that suggests her youth and wasn’t inherently sexual is replaced with a line that directly sexualizes her. She’s not that much older here than she was when the Manox incident occurred, but ever since the incident with Manox occurred, playtime has been over. The repetition of that reminds you of that, and again, suggests that Francis is done with her once he gets what he wants.

[Spoken]

So yeah, that didn’t work out. Turns out some guys just employ women to get them into their private chambers. Different time back then. So I decided to take a break from boys. Focus on my career, and my dad got me this amazing work placement in court and you’ll never guess who I met.

     This time Howard does acknowledge that “that didn’t work out.” She acknowledges directly that her impressions about Francis were wrong. She was sure about him. She phrased everything in absolutes, not hypotheticals, and it still “didn’t work out.” But Howard is still working the audience here. She’s glib, makes it sound like a joke. Then drops the line “Turns out some guys just employ women to get them into their private chambers. Different time back then.” That may be the most important line here. It’s a joke, but one that we get because we know its ironic and not accurate. We know now more than ever that men still hire women to “get them into their private chambers.” We know that in this instance, times aren’t different. This still happens, and its something that has been ignored and not talked about until very recently. Howard knows that we know this. She knows that “different times back then” will land, and she uses that line and that knowledge to connect what has happened and will continue to happen to her to those abuses we know about now. We know those things happen, and they happened to Howard back then too, and we’re still just watching it happen to her.

     So this is where the song also really starts to shift. She says that she’s taking a break from boys and focusing on her career. She gets a good job. She stops sexualizing the situation and trying to justify what’s going to happen before hand. She’s starting to realize what she actually wants, and that’s to have a good job at court. She’s making career choices, not marital choices. She is now making the decision herself that she doesn’t want men or a relationship, but a job.

Tall, large, Henry the Eighth

Supreme head of the Church of England

Globally revered

Although you wouldn't know it from the look of that beard

     How she introduces Henry is already different. She attempted to sexualize the prior two men and make them sound appealing. In most audios I heard, Howard pauses between “large” and “Henry the Eight,” as if she’s trying to come up with some more appealing way to describe him but she can’t. The best descriptions she has is “he’s big and the head of a religion. Some people like him and his beard is funny.” Very sexy description. It’s like she can’t even make herself sexualize him. With the others she could at least tell herself that they were attractive so she must be interested in them. Not with Henry.

Made me a lady in waiting

Hurled me and my family up in the world

Gave me duties in court and he swears it's true

That without me he doesn't know what he'd do

     Still, Howard is doing nothing to attempt to sexualize Henry. She’s not even suggesting that their relationship was sexual or romantic, whereas before she was explicit about the sexual natures of her relationships. She’s talking about a job. He gave her a job. He elevated her family by giving her a high placement in court, and clearly its because she deserves it, as he says he doesn’t know what he’d do without her. She’s doing nothing to build to the marriage that we know is coming. She’s doing nothing to romanticize this. She’s here to have a career. She wants to do her job, and she’s proud that she seems to be doing such good work and making Henry (her boss in this situation) pleased with her work.

You say I'm what you need

All you want we both agree

This is the place for me

I'm finally where I'm meant to be

     These lines are, to me, maybe the saddest in the entire song. Worse than the chorus about Thomas Culpepper even. Howard has done nothing up until this point to suggest that she and Henry’s relationship is sexual or would become sexual. She’s been talking about her job in court. These lines, unlike with the previous two men, don’t read as if she’s trying to agree to their sexual advances. They read as if she’s meeting with her boss. They read as if she’s interviewing for a job or a promotion. She’s what he needs in court. They both agree that court is the place for her. And she’s finally realized that this, the work she does in court, is what she wants. Not a relationship with a man. She doesn’t even seem to comprehend that Henry could go after her. As she said earlier, she’s focusing on her career. Then Henry comes to her with this and she thinks they’re on the same page. But they’re definitely not talking about the same things.

     And once again, she’s making Henry a part of you. He’s in the audience with the other two. You, the audience, came here knowing what would happen. Howard is only here because Henry did go after her and married her. You know this. You know where he’s going with this. And you’re watching her not realize what’s happening until she accidentally agrees to this and gets into the situation. You’re still watching. You’re still with Manox and Francis and now, you’re with Henry.

Then he starts saying all this stuff

He cares so much he calls me love

     Now Howard is realizing that Henry wasn’t talking about her career. He was saying that he needs to be with her. And for the first time, we get no indication about exactly what’s going on except “he starts saying all this stuff.” But he does seem to care, doesn’t he? He calls her love, doesn’t he? That’s not nothing, right? That has to mean something. She legitimately struggles with this, because two of the queens try to touch her shoulders again, and she swats them away. She can’t even make it seem like she’s interested. The “he cares so much” is a half hearted attempt to comfort herself.

He says we have this connection

I guess it's not so different

     At this connection, two of the other queens grab her shoulders like they did before, but another comes from behind and puts an arm around her waist. She doesn’t see it happen and she can’t do anything to break away because she’s literally being held. But this time she isn’t the one saying they have a connection. He is saying they have a connection. She doesn’t seem to agree, and she has to tell herself that this relationship isn’t so different from the previous ones, and also that this outcome isn’t so different from what she wanted. Isn’t being queen like a promotion? But she literally has to use the two times she previously taken advantage of by older men to comfort her in this situation. It’s not so different from those times. This time it’s just your boss who is also your king, the head of your religion, physically imposing and by all accounts repulsive and sickly, about 33 years older than you, has a daughter that’s older than you, and also beheaded one of his previous wives who happens to be your first cousin. It’s not THAT different.

'Cause all you wanna do

All you wanna do baby

Is touch me, love me, can't get enough see

All you wanna do

All you wanna do baby

Is seize me, squeeze me, birds and the bees me

There's no time for when or how 'cause you

Just got to have me now

Playtime's over

The only thing you wanna do is...

     Before I even get into the language here, I’m want to talk about the choreography of this verse. Howard all but stops dancing. She’s pretty much just standing there, occasionally shifting or making a hand gesture, but she’s not dancing. She looks like someone who is trying to look like they’re dancing but failing terribly at it. She just looks so defeated. Before she could go along with it, or at least seem like she’s going along with it, but now she’s just standing there. And all around her the queens are still dancing, and their movements seem more violent juxtaposed against how little she’s doing here. They’re moving around her, touching her or almost-touching her, and she’s just letting it happen. Does nothing to protest it or join in with it.

     The language in the chorus is getting more and more violent. “You” no longer want to please her. Now its “All you want do baby/is seize me.” Unlike with the last two men, Howard didn’t know what Henry was after from the beginning. She was on a different page with him until she had gotten into the situation, so even though the other two men had also been predatory, even though they had taken advantage of her and lied and manipulated her, the situation with Henry is much more violent because it’s not expected. She doesn’t have time to mentally prepare herself or try to convince herself that she has a choice in it. “There’s not time for when or how cause you just got to have me now” shows how suddenly this all was to her. And with Henry, she has the added complication of him being Henry. He’s not only forcing this, but she’s now the queen. Please remember that Katherine Howard was most likely either 16 or 17 when she became queen. Right here we’re talking about someone who wouldn’t even be out of high school yet and a 49 year old man who’s already had four wives.

[Spoken]

So we got married

Wooh...

     Before, Howard can monologue a little bit between each chorus and verse, usually saying something that is supposed to make the audience laugh. After the chorus about Henry, though, this is all you get. She sounds so defeated/distraught and even chocked up when she says “So we got married,” and in some versions will sound like she’s trying to come up with more to say, but ends up just going “Woooh..” in a really unhappy way in attempts to make the audience laugh. A lot of people do laugh, because they’re supposed to. It’s a joke. It’s a joke being delivered by a teenager who just recounted one of the most horrifying experiences a young girl/woman in a job can experience, and afterward just married her boss who put her through it because she didn’t really have a choice. Wooooh. And you’re still watching this all go down, even now that you can see that she’s clearly uncomfortable because she can no longer pretend otherwise.

With Henry it isn't easy

His temper's short and his mates are sleazy

Except for this one courtier

He's a really nice guy, just so sincere

     So Howard does absolutely nothing to introduce Thomas before this moment. She doesn’t even say his name yet, and she never says his last name. Manox, Francis, and Henry all got introduced or hinted at before their respective parts of the song. With Thomas, she opens up with countering him against Henry and his sleazy mates. She’s making it clear she can’t even pretend to have a good relationship or good opinions of Henry. She’s queen and the only thing good she has is that one of Henry’s friends is nice to her and not a complete sleaze. Remember that prior to this, when she was describing court, she was so happy. She said that she belonged there, that she was happy and she liked it. She’s still in the same place and technically she’s higher in rank, and its miserable. Miserable to the point that even with what’s about to happen, her voice lifts slightly when she says Thomas is “just so sincere,” as if it’s a relief to her. As if it’s a pleasant memory, and not the thing that will soon end with her being taken advantage of once again and then beheaded for her “crimes.”

The royal life isn't what I planned

But Thomas is there to lend a helping hand

So sweet, makes sure that I'm okay

And we hang out loads when the king's away

     So Howard went from being excited for her job in court, to being thrust in an extremely powerful and heavily scrutinized role with little to no help. Except Thomas, who to her, seems to be genuine. Why wouldn’t he want to help her? She’s his queen, and the wife of one of his friends. And now she’s married, so there’s nothing that could come of their relationship anyway. Howard now might be the safest she’s ever been from men (other than Henry) because not only is she married, she’s married to the king. That should de-sexualize her entirely, right? So Thomas’s help must be genuine and his friendship must be genuine. Howard has no reason to worry about his motives.  

This guy finally

Is what I want, the friend I need

Just mates, no chemistry

I get him and he gets me

     Howard doesn’t switch to second person here, like she usually does. She doesn’t make Thomas a part of that “you” that consists of Manox, Francis, Henry, and the audience. Because she has no reason to. Because he’s just a friend. And she realizes that’s what she’s needed this entire time: a friend. Someone that will make sure she’s ok. Only now, after all that’s been through in her short life, does she realize that’s all she’s ever wanted or needed. Someone who can just help her and spend time with her without sexualizing her or having any kind of ulterior motive. She can pretend to have chemistry with the other men, but Thomas is and will always be her friend. Someone who gets that she just needs a friend.

And there's nothing more to it

He just cares so much he's devoted

     She feels so compelled to insist that there’s nothing beyond platonic friendship here. In some versions she sounds almost frantic to point out that there’s nothing more to it. He cares about her. He’s devoted to his queen. So that means that there’s no possible way he could want more. Men who care about her don’t want or expect more from her. She’s pacing the stage, pointing at people in the audience. At “And there’s nothing more to it,” Parr and Seymour put hands on her shoulder and she quickly shrugs them off without acknowledging it. She can’t acknowledge it, because she finally has a friend. He can’t want anything else from her. He can’t.

He says we have a connection

     At this point the music stops. The other queens surround her and grab her arms, her legs, her shoulders, her chest. She’s just frozen in the web of hands touching her from every direction. She just freezes for several seconds, doing nothing to fight the hands on her. Because she’s at the most secure and powerful she’s ever been and could ever be, and it’s not enough. 

I thought this time was different

Why did I think he'd be different?

But it's never, ever different

     The hands stay on her through most of this, and she mostly just stands there. Her voice goes from shock/disappointment in “I thought this time was different” to self-deprecating at “Why did I think he’d be different?” to fury at “But it’s never, ever different” to the point where she pretty much screams the last word. It’s not that she’s only just realizing now what’s been happening to her. She’s known. She’s known this entire time. She begins the song by telling the audience that “I was young, its true, but even then I knew.” It’s that now, she can’t lie to herself about any of it anymore. Because even if she knew that Thomas wanted sex from her, she also knew that he couldn’t do anything, because she’s the queen. If he tried anything, he’d be dead. He can’t touch her, so she can say that he’s just her friend and shrug off the moments where he suggests otherwise like she shrugs off Parr and Seymour’s hands initially.

     But now, apparently even that doesn’t protect her. Even being married to one of the most powerful men in the world, a man who has already beheaded men for supposedly sleeping with his wife, isn’t enough to protect her from every single man that wants to put his hands on her and assault her and abuse her. They’re going to do it no matter what, because its never different. Not even for the queen.

'Cause all you wanna do

All you wanna do baby

Is touch me, when will enough be enough?

See

All you wanna do

All you wanna do baby

Squeeze me, don't care if you don't please me

Bite my lip and pull my hair

As you tell me I'm the fairest of the fair

 Playtime's over

Playtime's over

Playtime's over

 The only thing

The only thing

The only thing you wanna do is...

      I’m just going to cover all of this at once. Howard is still stuck in the same spot. Her voice is some combination of screaming, crying, and singing, and she’s constantly being grabbed by the queens and either trying to push them off of her or waiting for them to let go. She goes back to the pronoun “you,” finally putting Thomas among all those other men and the audience, and she’s screaming. She’s furious, she’s finally accepted that she can’t accept this, that “you” don’t want to love her, just touch her constantly. You just want to squeeze her and pull her hair and hurt her to please yourself, and you don’t care how she feels about it. You’ll say kind things to her while you’re hurting her, as if that’s supposed to make it better. It just makes you feel better. 

     Then she’s on the ground, and all the queens are facing her, surrounding her and gradually stepping closer and closer as they sing “Playtime’s over” at her. Because its over, and its not just that she’ll be tossed aside again. Everything is over now, because of what men have done to her. Her life is over, as she literally is going to be beheaded because of everything that happened to her. Katherine Howard was either 18 or 19 years old when she was beheaded because men have been sexually assaulting her for years, and it was only acknowledged when they decided to condemn her to death for it.

     After every version of this song that I’ve seen and listened to, there is a moment of shocked silence from the audience before they’ll start applauding. They’re startled by this turn in the song. They don’t expect Howard to start screaming at them or to start crying or to have this strong of an emotional reaction. Yet, they’ve been watching the whole time. They’ve been seeing everything that’s happened to her and listening to everything she’s said. And they have been listening and seeing because they’ve been laughing at her jokes and responding to her comments. The audience, or you, laughed at her jokes when she was making light of her sexual assaults. She has been making sure for the entire show that you were paying attention to her. You knew what was happening. And you just kept watching, shocked when at the end it got that dramatic.

     If you were wondering why Howard makes the audience a part of the collective “you” that includes Manox, Francis, Henry, and Thomas, this is why. Because they may not have been doing the acts these men did, but they just sat there and watched as it happened, pretending--like Howard--that this it could have been consensual acts and that those jokes were funny. If those who knew from the beginning that it wasn’t ok just watched and did nothing to get in the way or help, they may not be these men, but they allowed the men to abuse her.

     Howard does everything she can to endear herself to the audience and make herself noticed throughout the entire show, in preparation for her song. And by the time it gets to her song, they love her. They’re listening to her and interacting with her and noticing her, seeing everything she’s doing. And they still don’t stop what happens to her. So even if they don’t actually want to assault and hurt her, they might as well because it’s happening, they know it’s happening, and they did nothing.

     Now am I saying that the audience is actually, literally complicit in this. No, obviously not; this is a musical. But the audience is a stand in more or less for everyone else that had to have seen what was going on and did nothing to prevent it from getting to the point where Howard’s head was on the chopping block. But the audience is meant to feel complicit because there were people complicit in letting these men abuse her, just like there are people complicit in letting abusers and rapists get away with it to this day. Her step grandmother did nothing to watch her when around Francis. Her family did nothing to watch her when around Manox and they placed her in the position where Henry would take notice of her. People laughed at Howard’s “different times back then” joke because they know that this still happens today, and she knows that they know. So, what are people doing when they see it going on? Just pretending not to notice? Still? Howard, like so many others, is a victim of not just the men who assaulted her, but the societal structures that think its better to let one girl be hurt and killed than it is to upset the power structure or punish the powerful, important men who abuse that girl.

    Katherine Howard was a young girl. In Six, she just wants people to love her, and loving her is not sexual. In Megasix, she changes the lyrics so that its:

All you wanna do

All you wanna do, baby's

Sing along to your favourite queen's song

All you wanna do

All you wanna do, baby

Love me, love me

She wants to be your favorite queen, and she wants you to love her. The part where she’s trying to endear herself to the audience has never been a lie. She wants to win the audience over. Because if there’s one thing Katherine Howard has never had, it’s an adoring crowd that will listen and support her and sing along with her and just love her without wanting anything else. She’s done sexualizing herself in an attempt to make her point or to win people over, now she’s just telling you to love her, because she realized that all she ever needed was friends. So, love her, take care of her, be her friend, and ensure there aren’t other Katherine Howards in the world, because there have been too many already.

[cynthiaandsamus]

Custom Toonami Block Week 76 Rundown

Code Geass: So we’ve come to this, been kind of avoiding this episode, part of the reason I did the Rebuild marathon last week was to put off this episode for as long as I could. Shirley’s death is fucking bullshit, the whole thing feels like a farce, she dies from trying to help him against someone that wasn’t even trying to kill him just because she triggered Rolo’s Yandere Simulator instincts. It’s a foregone conclusion that Shirley would die at some point, Lelouch is a tragic figure and having him be happy doesn’t really fit his character arc as the martyr that will save the world, like the Zero Requiem would be really fucked up if Shirley was still alive and had to watch Lelouch become Gundam Hitler and then get stabbed. But still the matter of fact nature of her death is so weird, like I feel like a lot of people originally knew this was coming and kind of braced themselves for it but it’s so weird and contrived and sad, Euphy’s death made me cry and this didn’t quite get there but I did get a bit weepy, like fuck this show man, it knows what it’s doing and pulls on the emotional manipulation hard.

Inuyasha: Another filler episode this time around, this one’s pretty funny though with Jaken doing all kinds of Team Rocket-esque hijinks to steal the Tessaiga, it’s some good character building for Jaken and Rin before Rin gets kidnapped leading to the actual canon part of this story and plus there’s a lot of cute fluff with Inuyasha’s group just kinda killing time, like they’re still traveling but they seem to be taking it easy and playing games and shit this time around. Also Kagome definitely saw Inuyasha’s junk in the hot spring so that’s a good reverse on that, we get basically no fanservice for the girls but Inuyasha gets splayed out and spends the climax shirtless so that’s some defying expectations right there.

Yu Yu Hakusho: The Black Black Club arc concludes with Yusuke and Kuwabara vs the Toguros. Honestly this fight does a really great job of subverting expectations since you think it’s going to be two on two but then Younger Toguro basically uses his brother as an Equip Spell Card and it’s essentially one on two. Kuwabara gets his flash of Yukina’s backstory and his Super Saiyan powerup which is pretty standard for how these arcs end but Toguro doesn’t seem that phased by it which is because he isn’t and this is all a ruse and Toguro fakes his loss so Sakyo can win his bet and get rid of Tarukane. The Black Black Club shenanigans have been in the background of this whole arc and spicing up the fights that are otherwise Yusuke and Kuwabara just plowing through mooks so it’s really neat that it ends this way so it can subvert how things are supposed to go and still give us a cool fight, it reminds me of how arcs tend to end in Hunter x Hunter where the climax is often undercut because of outside forces. I think I like this version better though because HxH tends to go for an anticlimax, this is a standard climax but it doesn’t mean what we think it means at first and that’s really kinda cool. Also Kuwabara tells Yukina to not give up on humans and Hiei saves her without telling her he’s his brother cause he thinks she’s better off this way.

Fate Zero: We take a detour from anything of importance to see how Baby Rin is doing, it’s pretty much completely unrelated to anything going on but it is pretty cute and gives some nice character stuff for her that puts her arc from UBW in a new light so that’s nice. Also Kariya shows his face again and reminds us that he’s really the only one who has any good reason for trying to get the Grail amongst all the child murderers, arrogant kids, arrogant adults and general war criminals in this fight. Everyone’s basically “I am a dick, gimme the grail” or “My family’s a dick, gimme the grail to shut them up” and while Kariya is in the latter camp, he’s also doing it to save Sakura and not just “Welp that’s life.” Given that Sakura’s still with the Matous in UBW and no one besides Kiritsugu and Kotomine and Waver are confirmed alive, we probably know how that went.

Konosuba: So the big showdown with the Mobile Fortress is here, I do kinda like how Konosuba peppers mentions of the big bad throughout the arc so it builds the hype when it finally shows up. Everyone gets serious and actually does shit to take down the Wild Wild West Spider Tank, unfortunately it’s not piloted by a racist old man in a wheelchair but a dead guy that didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. For building it on the cheap he sure made it sturdy at least, but Kazuma basically acts as a Mana Dumpster and gives the important people the energy they need to get rid of the core and blow up the carcass. This is Konosuba and our Protagonist is essentially a glorified battery. Also Kazuma’s insane luck betrayed him and threw the core into the Capital so now he’s a war criminal, oops I guess.

Sailor Moon Crystal: So everyone goes to the moon surprisingly easy and fights out from Usagi’s Fortress of Solitude Recording Mom all about how the moon was cool and shit but then everything changed when the humans attacked and the princess was such a little bitch that she gave up right after her man died and the queen had to do all the magic sealing and shit but that also destroyed the kingdom for some reason. Also the Four Kings are formerly Earth Knights also reincarnated like the Sailor Guardians and used to be less dicks and were even the guardians’ boyfriends which feels REALLY forced and even more gross and weird than Usagi’s reincarnation relationship just being told “Hey you love this guy now, you don’t get a say, past life shenanigans decided” and everyone decides that they can’t fight the people they love that they only just remembered so Usagi has to boomerang some bitches in the face and then there’s a four way Solar System Kamehameha to get the Four Kings to fuck off again. Now Beryl’s working on borrowed time since she had to re-brainwash her pawns so she’s gonna brainwash Tuxedo Mask to do it even though he doesn’t have powers and should be less effective than the kings but it’s really dramatic if Usagi has to fight her boyfriend so let’s go with that.

Durarara!!: Reporter Shuuji Niekawa is digging around Ikebukuro to find out about the crazy amount of tough customers the city has. The first half of the episode is the “fuck around” half where he talks to much of the main cast, and then as everyone knows, when you fuck around, that leads to the “find out” half where he is promptly stabbed and becomes a Saika kin and stalks Anri and Shizuo and wants to stab everyone before getting crushed behind a car door by Shizuo while thinking he can finally get his life back on track. RIP Reporter-chan, you fucked around and found out.

[x-exo]

*slides into your asks with a rose in my mouth* why hello, tis me!

Apologies for the long wait but your favorite long asks anon is here and OOF so much has happened. Let us break it down one by one lol

Monsta x our beans, welp we can officially say we are army wives for them because shownu is now at the military and just welp this feels weird lol. I lowkey forgot he was meant to enlist so when the news came out I went through so many emotions. Its why the latest comeback feels a bit bittersweet to me. It is their BEST for sure and for this year, I agree so to not see him perform right before he left is a bit sad. I don't blame him of course (if anyone does i am fish slapping you) but just a shame. I'm happy we do get content with him still? Seems pre-planned so that is nice!

Onto legends exo, fantastic comeback. I cannot stop listening to the album, its just bops full of bops to me. They broke so many records and I'm over here sipping my tea because fudge yes. It isn't a full member comeback, 2 of the members featured in the comeback are off playing call of duty and they still did THAT. While having lay properly in the comeback!? (Or at least some form, better than tempo era!) Kyungsoo my beloved, the man that can swoon you off your feet, his proper solo album. Omg I am just in love? The album feels like a Playlist that you hear while taking a walk or on a raodtrip? I love it, I just love everything about this with how much thought was given. It makes me feel warm and I'm so proud of him (I think he even got a first win) but sadly xiumin got the it shall not be named virus D: I feel so bad and I can only hope he gets better! It makes me worried because I keep seeing more and more idols getting sick and I can't help but wonder why don't the kpop entertainment just put a pause with stuff? Of course that is VERY unrealistic, I am aware that is naive for me to think but its just so idk how to word it properly (my English brain is not working I am sorry) I cannot help the feeling of while I get people are being safe and yes we need to still live like normal beings, is it worth risking idols health just for some entertainment? Idk how to explain my thoughts properly but maybe I hope I made sense!!

Onto svt! That is perfectly fine to not vibe with a comeback! I will admit, I didn't fully vibe with this comeback and it shocked me because every comeback was a hit to me. Even fear, left and right or homerun where I know many fans were split on, I liked but RTL was a grower. For me, listening to it without watching the mv, helped it alot and it is a song I like. Is it their best? No I don't think so but it is alright to say "hey I didn't bop to this, not my cup of tea" (imo I blame the mv? The mv REALLY didn't do the song justice at all, I am sorry if I sound like a fake fan but this mv Just is bad in all aspects. Sure we have some pretty shots but like it just doesn't fit at all?) So if anything listening to the song or wishing the live performances does it better. Seeing the choreography amps the song up more, cannot go wrong with their dancing. As for the rest of the songs, I admit game boy is my top favorite? Idk if it is because I am a gaming nerd and found all the production of the song so creative but yeah. We can wait for the next comeback! Svt always have something up their sleeves, plus we do have their music projects to look forward too (I wonder when we will get one? Seeing as RTL promotions stopped) some positive news with the boys is they resigned like a year before their contract ends and I'm a bit emotional :') I'm excited to see the boys future projects. We did have caratland recently! Did you watch it if I may ask? We did get in the soop confirmation so I'm excited to watch that, the boys deserve that nice break (even if it was filmed for a show fjsbsns)

Ok I think that is it for kpop updates? XD I do hope life has been treating you kindly! Life has been a bit all over the place sadly so I hope it wasn't like that for you as well! Until next time my bean!

hii!!!! omg sorry for the late reply i've been pretty busy these days 🙈

indeed so much has happened! and much more since you sent this ask omg!!

our shownu is at war *looks into the distance* *wipes away tear* *sighs* by now I got used to enlistment news (see what happens when you stan 2nd and 3rd gen groups) but STILL [[IT HURT]] when they uploaded the monchannel videos of his goodbye day like ????? what kind of twisted mind diuhdfuihdifuhs but the boys were all so cute and soft but they seemed so sad they didn't want to let go of their super leader :(( I hope he's learning lots and making new friends (and also we've got our international super spy yoo kihyun giving us small updates on him every now and then so everything's fine!). Yeah I totally get you it felt empty without him this comeback and at first it didn't really clicked with me but when the enlistment news came out i understood he had to take care of his health and thoroughly check on his eye sight in order to be 100% ready for the military so it made sense he had to be absent :( everything was so close (the comeback and enlistment) that I'm sure there was no other way for doing it I'm pretty sure he couldn't maybe postpone the enlistment day any further

onto exo! my ksoo my soft boi my romantic boi 🥺 his album is so him SO HIM i can't explain it bur it's just HIM you know it's the type of album you'd play on loop on a summer afternoon when you've taken your papers and paints outside in the garden to paint a bit with the warm soft breeze moving the trees lightly 🤧 and he signs in English and SPANISH (he did it for me) my multilingual king he's a native. Also I've been watching Honeymoon Tavern with Jongin these days and OMG i could d word for him really (if you haven's watched it go do it when you have time) he's SO SOFT and SO CUTE and he works as a waiter and a wedding planner and helps with the room preparations and is also a tour guide and he's just so cute so happy al the time the way he interacts with everyone is so 🥺🤧😭 onto more serious stuff now: yeah i was so worried about minseok catching covid omg but i'm glad he went through it with our any major complication and the rest of the boys are safe too! I guess the industry doesn't stop bc that would mean a huge loss of thousands and thousands of dollars/won/etc so as long as the gov doesn't prohibit going out or gathering like at the beginning of the pandemic, they'll keep on going with the idols' schedules otherwise the industry would just shut down having no way of earning money to sustain all the companies and idols.

as for seventeen! yeah i like the songs too! the mv sure ruined rtl and listening to it without watching it has really helped it grow on me more but still it feels kind of meh to me idk i really like anyone i think it's my favourite from the album. AND NOW WE'VE GOT A COMEBACK IN OCTOBER!!!! yayyyyy i can't wait they seem to be preparing very diligently (i hope they release a sexy bop) it's a shame junhao aren't gonna be present for this comeback but i'm soooooo happy they have the opportunity to visit their families again omg they have spent 2 whole years without seeing them in the flesh they must be so happy to get back to them again!!! it's so funny seeing them be bored at the quarantine hotel and doing lives every day duhdfiudhfiuh i hope it passes quickly and they can see their loved ones finally! and I did watch Caratland!! omg the unit switch song was the best thing ever hhu doing lilili yabbay and not being able to stop laughing idfuhdifuhs perf team doing chocolate and owning it????? hello??? performance team more like main vocal team wow! and the vocal team being a complete mess during check in lmaooo i loved it! In The Soop has finally started!!! I love these kind of "normal life" concepts I love seeing the boys being themselves cooking and relaxing I've watched the first and second eps as of today and also few clips from the third and omg mingyu and jeonghan drowning in the pond dfuhidfhidfs lmao they're so dumb i love them 🤣 i'm glad they could go away for a few days and spend time together away from their hectic schedules!

I hope you're well now and if not hang in there it'll all pass soon enough! 🥰💕 bye bye!!

p.s.: I got your request for the svt this or that gifset and i promise i’ll do it one day i just don’t feel like giffing these days dhbduusi i’m out of energy 

[faecaptainofdreams]

Story time! The start of this story has a bit of a theme song, because i just always think of this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyGSe7… Sad and awful as it looks, this actually has a majorly happy ending! Major thank you to my friend Sumi-Sprite for collaging this for me! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When Walter is 22, he goes on a very dangerous mission with Lance. While they wait for backup (which Lance is willing to accept most of the time now on account of personal growth), the duo storms a chemical lab, where the "final battle" takes place. I don't have a lot of details worked out, but long story short, they succeed in their mission (with several casualties as a result of what comes next), but fire and blow-outs in the lab lead to a very terrifying situation. The men find themselves in a space with only one oxygen mask for emergencies. Lance forces Walter to wear it,  but even after being taught compromise, the latter is very stubborn. As Lance begins to lose consciousness from being stuck inhaling smoke and various chemicals, Walter takes advantage of this. He shoots him in the neck with his own tranquilizer (a familiar scene, no?), and as Lance is passing out, Walter gives him the mask instead. Lance passes out from the tranquilizer, and Walter slowly begins to suffocate until he too, is rendered unconscious. Lance wakes up in the medical bay at the H.T.U.V. Delirious but suddenly remembering the mission, he starts to panic and call out for Walter. Not a few moments later, the younger of them reveals he's in a bed right beside Lance's, groggy with an oxygen mask strapped to his face, an IV in his arm and an EKG hooked up to him, but he's smiling and reaching out for Lance. Lance takes the boy's hand firmly and says "You scared me." Walter answers with "You scared me first...!" He sleepily explains that backup came and rescued them and brought them back to the agency, where they've apparently only been for a short while. In better shape than Walter on account of the latter's sacrifice, Lance gets up and lays beside him, jokingly threatening a "quadruple fire" if he ever does something like that again. Walter very softly smiles and says "I'm not sorry." When Marcy eventually shows up to visit them after hearing the news, she finds them laying there in the bed together and jokingly asks if she's interrupting something. "Nope, just two grown men cuddling after they almost died, nothin' to see here," answers Lance in a similar tone. Marcy informs them that most of their targets were saved and are in custody (some of them being in the hospital), but a few of them died from the fire and chemical blast. Walter is sad to hear it, but accepting of it, and glad that not every life was lost. About an hour or two later, he's stable enough to be off of the oxygen and other attachments. With all the smoke and chemical inhalation, the medical staff advises giving Walter a bronchoscopy to check for potential damage to his lungs. Such a procedure often only requires conscious sedation with a numbing of the nose and throat, but when they get him to the operating room, Walter panics at the thought of being awake while having a scope down his throat; after having nearly suffocated to death just hours ago, the thought of being awake and the fear of suffocating again is too much to bear (even though he would be fine). So instead, they decide to give him a general anesthesia and put him under for the procedure. It's just safer for everyone this way. When it's over and he's beginning to wake from the anesthesia, Walter is wheeled back to his room on the bed, and is happy to see Marcy and Lance waiting for him. But anesthesia is a funny thing, and as he's wheeled in, he's singing the Disclaimer Song in a very loopy fashion. Once settled, he chooses not to finish the song. This conversation ensues: ------- "Lance: You're not gonna finish the song? Walter: *mildly sassy* Ffffhhh, youknooww... I sing...ALLLL the tiiime, anndiiiffinishh all of them, anndd it'ssfuunn, buut... Whyy issitt aalwaayys me...? Why'd's WalterrBeckkett onlyy siing??? YOUU finishth'sonng... Lance: *"well shit" face* Wow, all right then, I'll finish the song. ♫Don't try this at home, if you do, you might--♫ Ey, aren't you gonna sing? Walter: ...Mmm givinng youaheadd starrtt..." ------- He joins in eventually. There is a lot of talking about various things, and lots of Marcy and Lance laughing to themselves at the rambling and singing. Oh yes, more singing. Lots of singing. Lance records some of the rambling, including an entire conversation that begins with Walter casually asking if they'll have to "take his lungs out." After being told no, that he's perfectly fine, he says it would be hard to breathe without lungs, and then regales his company with the thought of the lungs being replaced with balloons. Specifically, the left one would be blue, and the right one would be red. Why? He doesn't know, it's not his call, apparently. At the thought of them popping if he took too deep a breath, a laughing fit on Walter's part ensues. A little while later, this conversation happens: --- "Walter: Whenn I'mmbetterr, 'm gonna drriiveyou'round in the e-tron... Lance: You wanna drive me around? Walter: Yeaaah... Ohh, waait... Imight craash... Lance: Naaahhh, i think it'd be worth the risk. You can drive the car. Walter: Buutt youuloove that carr... Lance: Yeah, well... I love you more. Walter: Hmm..... Whaat...? Lance: *softly* I said I love you, Walter." --- Lance has told him this before, but in his drugged up state, the blatant expression of love swiftly turns the tide of the mood from funny to pitiful. Walter bursts into tears and tells Lance he loves him, too. And Marcy. And Killian, and Joy, and Lovey and Jeff and Crazy Eyes, and Terrance even though he ignores him, and August (OC) and Ramsey (OC [sorta]) and Shannon (OC) and that he thinks it's mean that people nickname Joy "Joyless," all while bawling his poor eyes out. Endeared, Marcy and Lance try to calm him down. But Walter reveals that he hasn't forgotten his conversation with Lance when they first woke up in that room together. He says he's sorry for scaring Lance, that he just didn't want him to die because he "doesn't want to be alone again," but that he understands Lance has the same fear and he just couldn't win. Somewhere in the rambling mess of emotions, he mentions fear of Lance "dying like his mother." Basically, every subconscious or pushed-down negative thought and feeling he's had since the mission comes blubbering out in a heap of drunken tears and sadness. Seeing how very real his distress is, his company is quick to try and ease his mind and offer him comfort. Walter asks if Lance really is going to fire him again, to which Lance says no. He then asks if Lance is mad at him, which earns another "no." Lance says no one is mad at him, that he just needs to close his eyes and try to take a nap. After a few minutes of quietly crying to himself with his eyes closed, Walter comes to a terrifying conclusion... What if he never stops crying?! Of course, Lance almost bursts out laughing, but a death glare from Marcy forces him to keep it to himself, lest he risk further upsetting Walter. It may sound ridiculous, but for someone who's been anesthetized, every feeling is very real. Marcy comforts him, tells him no, he's not going to cry forever. It's not long before the tears slow down. They don't stop, but they slow down. [fun fact: crying is reported in 40% of patients who wake from anesthesia, be it for a presented reason or for no reason at all. Very little is known about why this occurs, though it's suspected that the stress and fear from whatever they had to be put out for manifests itself in that drugged-up state. This is referred to as "the boo-hoos."] But it's late, and Marcy must go home. She and Lance talk off to the side, and the lady gives her man a kiss to remember her by for the evening.~ After Marcy's departure, Lance decides that after everything they've been through and with how upset Walter's been, he will sleep in the bed with him. He reclines him, crawls in, and holds him tight until morning. Walter wakes up around 1 in the morning, mildly confused, but Lance tells him to go back to sleep. Happy that Lance stayed with him and choosing not to question this unexpected all-night cuddling party, he submits without a word. By morning, everything is fine, and the anesthesia has worn off. Before the lad can even put his clothes on, Lance just HAS to show him the video he took of him while he was all loopy. Walter is embarrassed and cringes through it, but also laughs at some parts. It's a happy ending. "Okay but for real, don't ever do that again."        "No promises." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- This movie is something else. Lance, Walter and Killian have all experienced trauma and loss, but in different ways. Walter and Killian are the extremes; one copes with loss through love, wanting desperately to let people in and let others know they aren't alone. Killian has no way to cope, and expresses his pain through hatred and a desperate longing to make the one who hurt him feel what he's felt, and then end it all in his own death. Lance is right in the middle. He has acquaintances, he talks to people, he cares, but he holds everyone at arm's length. He pretends everything is fine, he acts cold and aloof, "too cool" for playing on a team or working with others. But really, it's a fear of letting others in, because life could take it all away again. He still bears a lot of empathy, but also exercises carelessness on criminals. He and Killian are not so different, but with Walter's help, both men learn to open up (we can see Killian's expression for redemption in his final scene in the movie, we know he was a little touched that Walter saved him. Also consider, Killian didn't know Walter survived that fall at the time). So now that they're partners and each have someone in their lives to love -- multiple people now, in fact, it means feeling desperation to keep them close. It means taking a bigger risk, it means work. After everything they've been through, no, Lance is not ashamed to hug and hold and love on his little nerdy white gay son. He's not afraid of intimacy anymore, no matter the form. He'll take what he can get, because tomorrow is never a promise. Would you die for the ones you love...?

[thetriggeredhappy]

angst&hurt/comfort, where scout is anxious and doubts his skills, so he tries to calm himself by holding/hugging/whatever his plushie (or something else, idk), whilst someone is trying to get to him, to make him confess what is bothering him? idk if you wanna make it a ship ir maybe dad spy, ily -🦂

oh dude you already KNOW dad!spy hours are 24/7 up in here. welcome to “projecting RSD onto Scout TF2 episode 85″

-

Stupid summer, stupid break, stupid losing streak. Stupid everything.

Usually Scout was excited about breaks. A week or so of getting to be off work, heading home to visit family or going on a road trip or whatever was happening. It was nice, he loved it. But this time they had explicit orders from their boss not to go anywhere or do anything. To stay on base or to go specifically exclusively to the store in the nearest town for food or whatever. He hated it. The base was too small to hang out in for more than a few days at a time. He hated it.

And not to mention that they’d finished off work on a bad note. A day of losses turning into a week of losses, half the team scrambling to try and pull together enough to get one last good push in before the break and the other half deciding to just accept the loss and do better once they got back.

And every day after battle Soldier would single out someone who wasn’t on top of their game and lecture them. And all week, instead of going for the people who were largely slacking off and not breaking their necks to try and get them some actual wins, he went after Scout, who was so frantic that he kept making stupid mistakes.

And he just... usually he argued about it, and got in a fight with Soldier, but he just... didn’t have the energy for it. The day was over. They’d lost. And Scout knew it wasn’t entirely his fault, but it kind of felt like it. Maybe if he’d tried just a little bit harder, pushed himself just a little further, he could’ve gotten the rest of the team motivated. Maybe they all would’ve picked things back up and tried too. But he couldn’t do it.

It was frustrating. He knew his job, beyond what he did on the field, was trying to keep morale up. He kept music playing, he was always up for hanging out or playing a few hands of poker or headed into town with someone to get shitty fast food. And he tried really hard to be funny and to keep things lighthearted, tried so fucking hard to keep spirits up. And he knew if he said anything about it, pointed out how literally like all of his time was spent trying to make sure everyone was feeling okay, it would...

He didn’t know. Maybe they’d just tell him off for being whiny or whatever. Maybe it would stop working so well, if they knew he was always doing it so extremely on purpose, so intentionally. He didn’t know.

But at that moment, he was feeling so much like utter garbage that he knew he had to just avoid the team so he didn’t drag the mood down further. Usually they didn’t really miss him anyways, other than idly asking if he’d gotten into any trouble while he was off doing “whatever he did”. All he knew was that him feeling like shit around everyone else would just make them feel bad too. And it was break anyways—maybe they’d just end up feeling better on their own. Especially since he wasn’t around to interrupt them.

He had plenty of food in his room, mostly chips and candy bars and stuff like that, stuff he didn’t want the guys stealing. And he’d totally share if they asked, for sure, but for that moment he was mostly just digging through the hoard for himself and doing not much of anything else.

He felt like kind of an idiot, sitting alone and eating his feelings like some kind of angsty teen in a movie or the chick in the romcom who just got broken up with. But there was nobody there to ridicule him except himself. And he did, but... the point stood.

A few days passed like that. He had food, he had the little bathroom connected to his room, he had comics to entertain himself. He slept a lot, mostly. Felt like garbage. Read some comics. Ate chocolate about it. Slept some more. He left a few times to do a few assorted things—called home like he did every week, went into the common room late one night to grab some of his records back so he could listen to them.

At one point, he got a knock on his door. He didn’t answer, couldn’t seem to find the energy to. A second knock when the first was unanswered after about twenty seconds. He still didn’t move.

The next day, another knock. This one was accompanied by words. “Scout? I know you’re in there,” Spy called, sounding annoyed.

To be honest, Scout was pretty sure he didn’t have the energy to deal with whatever Spy was about to lecture him about. So he just rolled over.

“You’ve missed every team meal for almost four days. You’re being rude,” Spy declared.

Scout reached off the side of the bed and picked up a plushie that had fallen down. It was a big, chunky pig, and he’d won it when he and Pyro had gone out to a fair and he’d knocked the ball toss game out of the park. Pyro had taken three of the plushies he’d won, and insisted he keep the fourth for himself.

He felt like even more of a dumb baby, sitting there cradling a stuffed animal like he was scared to head off to his first day of kindergarten, but he was already too tired and filled with vague unrest for it to get to him much.

At some point he heard a heavy sigh and the clack of fancy shoes moving away down the hallway, and Scout relaxed.

Twenty minutes later, a knock.

“Scout, let me in,” Spy said firmly.

“Fuck off, Spy,” Scout snapped.

“Scout, if you don’t open the door, I’m going to,” Spy declared.

“Bullshit.”

A heavy sigh, and then a few moments later the door swung open.

“What the fuck?” Scout asked, lifting his head to glare towards the door as Spy stepped inside.

“I know how to pick locks, Scout. You know this.” Spy squinted to try to get used to the light, the blinds having been drawn. “I’m turning a light on.”

Scout just grumbled, dropping his head back into the plush pig. In his periphery, the light was indeed turned on. There was a beat of silence.

“I brought a plate from dinner. I was concerned you would get scurvy, since you now apparently have the diet of an eight year old child who was given a hundred dollars and left unsupervised at the grocery store,” Spy said dryly.

“I don’t want your fuckin’ handouts, Spy,” Scout muttered, muffled.

“It’s not a handout, it’s the fact that I refuse to have anyone on the team besides me whose teeth are falling out. Take the food.”

“Fuck off.”

Spy sighed again, and after a moment he moved to put the plate on the bedside table. Scout prickled at the proximity, but didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking up.

“I noticed that while you haven’t been at dinner, you still took the time to leave a thumb tack on my chair. Usually when you do that it’s because you’re angry with me. What exactly have I done?”

“I’m not mad at you, I’m just mad,” Scout grumbled.

“You know, it’s very childish to refuse to look at someone when they are trying to talk to you.”

“Guess I’ll just keep being the dumb idiot kid of the team then, huh?” Scout snapped.

Silence for a moment. “Scout. You’ve locked yourself away in your room and refused to come out again for several days. I know that something is wrong. The team does too—they’re starting to worry.”

“That might just be the most obvious lie you’ve ever fuckin’ told me, Spy,” Scout practically spat, and was glad to have his voice muffled, because suddenly it went a little tight.

“Is it that hard to believe that perhaps your teammates care about you?” Spy asked, a little sharply.

“It’s me, in case you haven’t noticed,” Scout said next, getting his voice back under control. “People don’t hang around me on purpose. They put up with me. And then they stop putting up with me at some point.”

“That’s not true,” Spy said, tone leaving no room for argument, but Scout elbowed some argument in anyways.

“All seven of my brothers, every fuckin’ date I’ve ever been on, the standing ban sayin’ I can’t go in Engie’s workshop or in Heavy’s workspace down by the boiler or the infirmary unless I’m actually seriously injured—“ Scout listed off, ticking off on his fingers, keeping his face hidden. “My own fucking dad decided he couldn’t fucking stand me and I was two years old, Spy, what the hell does that tell you? I’m an annoying little piece of shit and that’s all I’m ever gonna be and then one of these days I’m gonna die for real out in this hellhole desert and ain’t a single damn person out here will have ever even bothered to learn the name that’s supposed to go on my gravestone.”

Dead silence in the room. Scout’s arm fell back down by his side. His voice was shaky when he spoke again.

“Nobody’s ever even asked,” he managed. “Demo’s real name is Tavish, Heavy’s real name is Mikhal but his sisters call him Misha. And plenty of you guys get asked about it all the time but you don’t wanna say. And nobody’s ever even fuckin’ asked me.”

Silence for a few more seconds.

“I’m a whole person,” Scout said next. “I’m really into sci-fi. I’ve read every mainline issue comic book ever published after ‘35. I know how to cook and draw and I know the all the stats of every person on every major league baseball team. I was in theater in high school between track and baseball season in the winters and I and got a lead role on some Shakespearicles thing before it got cancelled because of budget cuts. I bet you didn’t even know that.”

“I didn’t,” Spy admitted.

“And why would you? Who the fuck cares? It’s just dumb scrawny idiot Scout, who the fuck cares what his deal is? He can barely do his job and read any word that’s over four syllables, who cares what he does? He ain’t nothin’ today, he must never have been somethin’ in the first place.”

“Scout—“

“Tell me I’m wrong, Spy,” he snapped, voice cracking down the middle.

“You’re wrong. Scout, what’s going on?” Spy asked, and his voice sounded closer, like he’d taken a knee. “What happened?”

He understood, logically, that telling Spy damn near anything was a bad idea. He sold information for a living. But logic hadn’t ever been much help to him, and anyways, he was pretty sure he was about to break down either way, and he could either cry like a dumb little baby and Spy could go to the rest of the team and tell them about stupid Scout and his crying for no reason, or he could at least sort of maybe a little bit sound justified and a little bit less completely unhinged.

“We lost all week because I fuckin’ suck at my job, and we don’t get to go off base for some goddamn reason, and I miss my family, and I—“ God damn it, he hoped to at least get to a second sentence before he broke, but here came the waterworks. “—and I know the team doesn’t give a shit, and if they even noticed they probably think I’m being some idiot baby, and I’m just so fuckin’ tired of all of this, alright? I’m just so goddamn exhausted, all the time, and no matter what I do I can’t make my own stupid, shitty, broken-ass brain shut up, and I...”

There was a hand on his shoulder, now. For some reason that’s what unstuck the sob in his throat.

“And I just miss my mom,” he managed, and sobbed again. “And I know that just makes me a stupid fucking baby—“

“Scout, it doesn’t,” Spy said firmly.

“Bullshit.”

A sigh, less exasperated than the others. “Scout, I miss my own parents. Often. Heavy writes to his mother, the Bushman calls home once a week and stays on the phone for an hour at a time. Do you think they would do that if they didn’t miss them?”

Scout couldn’t seem to find his voice, and just sniffled a little.

“If anything, it’s good that you miss your mother. You are appreciating her now, while she’s still part of your life, rather than later on when she’s gone. That’s a good thing.”

“Here I am cryin’ over dumb shit—“

“The fact that you’re even capable of tears shows that you haven’t completely sealed yourself off from your emotions like several of our testosterone-puppet teammates. I’m fairly certain that Medic surgically removed his own tear ducts. I think Soldier is so dehydrated that he’s incapable of it. And rather than sweat he needs to cover himself in liquid-like food products or else he’ll die of heat stroke.”

Despite everything, that made Scout laugh, just a little. More of a hiccup than anything else.

“Admittedly, you have greater social needs than several of our team, and they need to take breaks. Not just from you, but from everyone. It’s part of being human, everyone requires some amount of time alone or else they start losing their minds. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about you—value the things you do for this team, even. Every time someone would like company when going in to town for any reason, they always ask me where you are. And you’ve given good film recommendations to everyone except for the Sniper.”

“Guy hates movies,” Scout defended weakly.

“You keep recommending horror films. As it turns out, he is a fan of romantic comedies.”

“Fuckin’ what? Seriously?”

“I was shocked too. His complete lack of taste in all areas of his life continues to amaze me.”

Scout scoffed at that. A beat of silence.

“What I am saying is that the team doesn’t simply put up with you. You’re impossible to simply put up with, you take up too big a part of everyone’s life here. Instead, they must like and respect you.” A pause. “And your father must have truly been an idiot. Anyone with two eyes would be proud of the challenges you’ve faced and overcome with all of the disadvantages you’ve been dealt over your lifetime.”

Scout sniffled, wiped his eyes with his forearm, finally managed to look up at Spy. “Anyone with two eyes? You sayin’ you’re proud of me, then?” he asked, even if it was a little shaky.

“I feel no strong emotions,” Spy deadpanned.

“Alright, nevermind about earlier. That’s the most obvious lie you’ve ever told me.”

Spy rolled his eyes, standing, brushing off the knee of his suit.

Scout looked at the plate, made a face. “Aw man, what the fuck, is that asparagus? Is Medic back on trying to make us eat healthy again?”

“The Engineer cooked it, stop complaining and just eat it,” Spy said, quickly falling back into his role of naggy just on the near side of patronizing.

“C’mon, it couldn’t have been like, mashed potatoes or broccoli or somethin’?”

“You always douse those things in salt and butter. That combined with the energy drinks means you’re going to get a heart condition before I do.”

“Just get the fuck outta my room, Spy,” Scout huffed, putting the stuffed animal aside and moving to pick up the plate and utensils.

“Very well. And go talk to Demoman at some point, he’s been whining about nobody wanting to go get fast food with him for two days,” Spy said as he walked to the door. “And you can’t borrow my car to go.”

“Fuck you, Spy,” Scout said flippantly, waving him off.

“Fuck you too,” Spy said just as casually, and made sure to close the door behind him.

[clumsyclifford]

For the loss thing, 19 with malum?

i think it’s funny that i got this prompt once for malum and once for lashton but since i am a dedicated writer i wrote both so here you go madam distracting kisses from malum + notice by thomas rhett which is a song i’ve been meaning to write a malum fic around for a good while now

-

“Calum.”

Calum looks up from his phone and blinks. “Sorry. Sorry. What?”

Michael sighs, defeatedly, and it makes Calum’s heart clench, because it’s his fault Michael is sighing like that, like he should have known better than to expect Calum to be paying attention to him. It’s awful, because it’s not like Calum isn’t trying. There’s just so many people always trying to reach him, so many things he’s expected to attend to, and Michael has started giving him these glares when he checks his phone during dinner, so he has to resort to doing it at other times instead — like when they’re getting ready for a party.

“I asked if my hair looks okay,” Michael says coolly. 

Calum gives Michael a distracted once-over. There’s a really important email on his screen right now but he tries to give Michael his best review.

Michael looks smashing, as always, and his hair is fine, but Calum sets his phone aside anyway. “Let me fix it for you.”

Michael raises an eyebrow. He’s standing in front of a mirror; he can probably see that his hair is fine, but he lets Calum reach up and muss it up a little bit, without complaint. Calum takes a deep breath in as he pats Michael against his chest, once, with finality.

“You look amazing,” he says softly.

Michael shakes his head. It looks like he wants to say something, but whatever it is must get swallowed down by the next comment, which is, “You’re not going to be on your phone during the party, right?”

Calum nods resolutely. “I promised I wouldn’t be.”

“Okay,” Michael says, though he looks skeptical. “I just want you to be there.”

“I will be, Michael. I promised.” Calum kisses his cheek swiftly. Michael doesn’t look reassured, but just shakes his head again and takes Calum’s hand as they go. 

On the drive there, they play Michael’s party music playlist, which is just a lot of old-school upbeat pop punk to get them in the partying mood. Calum expects to hear zero pop punk at the party — no party that requires a suit is going to be playing New Found Glory — but he likes hearing Michael sing along anyway, and even when they park and the music is off, Michael keeps singing the rest of the line, quiet under his breath like it’s just for him. Calum notices; he picks up on the little things about Michael, even if Michael doesn’t believe he does. Like the way he forgets the lyrics to the end of Whiskey Rose and just babbles random syllables instead, tucking a smile away. The way he sways to himself to the phantom beat of the song, like Calum’s not standing a foot away watching him.

The party is in full swing on arrival; as soon as they’re in, Michael is swept up by Ashton, who hands him a glass of red wine and tugs him away without ceremony. Calum shrugs off his coat and tosses it onto the bed through the open doorway to the right, with all the others. He’s lost Michael, but that’s fine. Calum can be a social creature. Just because these are Michael’s work friends doesn’t mean Calum can’t find common ground with them.

“Hey!” Calum looks up, and it’s Luke. Thank God.

“Luke,” Calum says, relieved. “I was worried I wouldn’t know anybody else here.”

“You won’t know most people,” Luke says, grinning. There’s a flush on his cheeks, like he’s been here for awhile. “Don’t worry. I’ll introduce you.”

Luke and Ashton are Michael’s closest friends from work, which means Calum has met them enough times to consider them friends too. They’re lovely people, and also very sociable, which is to Calum’s benefit tonight. Luke takes off into the clamor of people and Calum trails behind, wondering when it’s appropriate to steal away to the kitchen for a glass of wine himself.

“So Michael ditched you, huh?” Luke asks as they stroll.

“Ashton snatched him up the second we walked in,” Calum says. “Eagle eyes, that one.”

Luke hums his agreement. “Ah, I’m sure they’ll be back around soon enough. Given Michael can’t stand to be separated from you for longer than five minutes.”

Calum blushes, even though it’s kind of true. That, too, makes Calum feel like shit, that Michael is working so hard to be there with Calum and Calum has been distracted for months. “He’ll have a hard time getting away. He’s looking delicious tonight, I can tell you that.”

“Gross,” Luke says, wrinkling his nose, but he’s smiling. “I don’t want to know that.”

“Seriously,” Calum says, unable to resist bragging a little bit. He doesn’t need to, because Luke has Ashton, but he likes to. “It’s a new suit, and it fits him so well, Luke. You’ll get it when you see him. He’s a knockout.”

Luke laughs. “You would say that.”

“Because it’s true!”

There’s an uproar of laughter from the middle of the room. Calum turns; sure enough, there’s Michael, the center of attention as usual. It doesn’t take long for his natural charisma to kick in, and the mostly-empty glass of wine in his right hand probably helps. Calum can see the dusting of pink across his cheeks. Michael always blushes when he drinks red wine, and it’s a dead giveaway to Calum. 

(Which isn’t to say he shouldn’t drink red wine. As it happens, Michael looks very kissable with a flush on his cheeks.)

“Okay,” Luke concedes, “he does look pretty good.”

Calum chuckles. “Come on, let’s go join the circle.”

“I’m gonna grab a drink,” Luke says. “Want one?”

“Yeah, actually. Thanks.”

Luke disappears to the kitchen and Calum edges his way towards the circle forming around Michael as he recounts a funny story from earlier in the week. Calum knows the story — actually, he was there when it happened, and then heard Michael retell it to basically everyone in his contacts list — but in Michael’s voice it’s just as good this time as it was the first. There’s something so captivating about Michael. He steals the attention of everyone in any room.

The story gets wilder every time Michael tells it. This time, though Calum can see Michael smiling a little bit as he fibs, it ends with, “and the fire alarm still wouldn’t shut up, so Calum smashed it in with a hammer.”

Well. There is no way Calum will be thrown under the bus. As everyone laughs, he sidles up to Michael and plants a kiss on his cheek. “I won’t stand for this slander,” Calum says. “I would never take a hammer to a fire alarm, since I’m not a complete moron.”

“Hey!” Michael protests half-heartedly.

“Michael smashed the fire alarm,” Calum tells the group, and they laugh at that, too.

“Okay, well it wouldn’t shut up!”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t have,” Calum says, with a winning smile at Michael. Michael rolls his eyes fondly, moving to brush his hair away from his eyes. Calum resists the urge to do it himself, just for a chance to see Michael’s green eyes glitter the way they do whenever Calum does anything sweet. These days, the look is tinged with hesitance, so Calum doesn’t do it as often. “I see you’ve made the wine your bitch tonight.”

“Do you want me to get you a drink?” Michael asks.

Calum shakes his head. “Luke said he would.”

Ashton peeks his head around Michael. “You know where Luke is?”

“Right here!” Luke says brightly, showing up on cue with two glasses of wine. One he hands off to Calum, and from the other he takes a sip.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Ashton tells him.

“Well, you found me.”

“Well, good.” Ashton grins at him. “There’s someone I want to introduce you to, come with me. See you two later!” 

Calum and Michael wave as Ashton pulls a dimly protesting Luke away to some other part of the room. The crowd has dispersed now that Michael’s no longer speaking, and Michael looks at Calum and smiles.

“I’m happy you’re here,” he says.

Calum returns the look. “I’m happy I came.” The weight of the unread emails, all the correspondence he needs to get to, all the people asking things of him, sits heavy on his chest, but he forces the thought out of his mind. Michael wants him to be present, and Calum is going to be present. He’s done a bad enough job as it is.

“Michael, hey,” says someone, and Calum turns to see two people approaching, both dressed nicely. Michael waves amiably.

“Oh, Calum, this is my boss Alex Gaskarth and his husband Jack,” he says. “Alex, Jack — my boyfriend Calum.”

“Finally, the boyfriend Calum!” Alex says, holding out his hand to shake. Calum accepts. “I don’t think there’s a single recorded moment of company time where Michael isn’t talking about you, so it’s nice to put a face to the name.”

“You know, that’s so funny,” Calum says. “I was going to say the same to you.”

Alex laughs. Calum decides to like Michael’s boss, although he’d already kind of decided that the day Michael came home gushing with the story of his promotion and the way Alex had watched him burst into tears in surprise and then patted him on the back until he’d calmed down, without telling anyone.

“Cal, would you mind —” Michael holds out his empty glass of wine, a hopeful smile across his face. Calum sighs. 

“If I must,” he says.

“That’s it,” Jack says. “Put the boyfriend to work. If he’s not working for us I have to assume he’s a slacker.”

“Jack, you don’t work for me,” Calum hears from Alex as he makes his way to the kitchen. He snickers.

The kitchen is calm and quiet, except for a few murmured conversations in corners. Calum uncorks the wine and fills Michael’s glass. After a moment’s thought, he drains his own glass, then immediately refills it. In the safety of the kitchen, Calum is sorely tempted to check his messages. There’s probably something urgent in there, something that can’t wait for this party to end — someone waiting on an immediate response, or requesting advice that won’t be pertinent anymore tomorrow. Calum’s supposed to be responsible. He’s expected to deliver. And Michael won’t know, because Michael is chatting up his boss.

But even as his fingers itch to check his screen he sighs, takes a swig of his wine, and steels his resolve.

Michael said no checking his phone. Whoever needs Calum can wait. If it’s that urgent, they shouldn’t be asking Calum anyway, not on a night he specifically explained he’d be needing time away for. 

This is the least Calum can do. He owes it to Michael. And, quite frankly, he owes it to himself. It’s possible that work stuff is starting to take over his life, and equally possible that Calum should start trimming down the amount of time he’s actually expected to be on-call.

Slowly he makes his way between people in conversations until he finds Michael again, mid-conversation with Alex about stuff that sounds very businesslike.

Calum kisses his shoulder as a greeting, holding out the wine glass, and Michael ignores the kiss, though he takes the wine. Jack smiles cheekily at that. Calum wraps his arms around Michael’s neck from behind and kisses him again between his shoulder and neck, then on the back of his neck, then just underneath his ear.

“Calum,” Michael says distractedly, turning to face Calum. “I’m in the middle of —”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Calum says sweetly. “By all means.”

Alex grins like this is funny to him. “Yeah, by all means, Michael.”

Michael huffs. “I was saying — I figured there had to be a faster way to move the files, right?” Calum presses a kiss to his temple, then moves his head to the other side of Michael’s face and continues down that way. Jack’s grin grows. So does Alex’s. “The file transfer protocol we usually use was crashing, so I was doing everything by hand, which — Calum!”

Calum stalls in the middle of kissing Michael on the corner of his mouth — a feat in and of itself, because Calum really isn’t tall enough to reach that far, but not for lack of trying. The wine in his glass sloshes dangerously. Possibly Calum should drink it.

“Yes?” Calum asks innocently.

Michael shakes his head. “You’re impossible. I’m so sorry about him,” he tells Alex and Jack. Jack gives Calum a secret thumbs-up. 

“No, it’s really fine,” Alex says. “If only my own husband loved me that much.”

Jack makes an offended noise. “I could assault you with kisses!”

“Not here,” Alex says, holding up a hand; Jack grabs the hand and immediately starts kissing each fingertip, and Michael snorts in laughter. 

“Well, forget what I was saying,” Michael tells them. “It doesn’t matter. Long story short, there’s a new FTP on my computer. I think I’m going to go discipline Calum now.”

Calum pats Michael’s face, giving his boss and his boss’s husband a cheeky grin that Alex returns wryly. “Have fun,” Alex says. “Michael, we can talk later. Have fun tonight. It’s a party.”

“Yes sir,” Michael says, dry. Then he turns and tugs Calum away, Calum waving a farewell as they go.

“What has gotten into you?” he asks the moment the door shuts behind them. Calum glances around them at the overly neat bedroom — probably a guest room — and furrows his brow. 

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m trying to talk to my boss and you’re, like,” Michael makes a helpless gesture.

Calum frowns. “They thought it was cute. And I was trying to remind you that I love you the most out of anyone ever.”

Michael, in his move of the evening, shakes his head. “By distracting me in the middle of a conversation?”

“Okay,” Calum admits. “In hindsight, not my best move, but it did get you alone.”

“This is my boss’s house,” Michael says. “We are not fooling around in my boss’s house. At a work party.”

“Mhm,” Calum says, stepping closer. “You know, now that I think about it, your hair actually looks too neat. Probably best to mess it up a little.”

“Calum,” Michael says exasperatedly, with an obviously fond undertone. “Come on. What are you doing?”

Calum smoothes the front of Michael’s shirt and sighs. “I just…I know I’ve been bad at, like, being your boyfriend recently.”

“You haven’t,” Michael says immediately.

“I have,” Calum insists. “I know I have. And I’m sorry. I’m trying to be better about it, but I don’t want you to think I love you any less or anything like that. I have a lot on my plate, but that’s no excuse.”

“Calum.”

“You knock me out,” Calum says softly. “All the time. Every single day. I’m the luckiest guy at this party. I’m the luckiest guy in the whole fucking world.”

“Not as lucky as I am,” Michael answers, one hand cupping Calum’s face. “Look, I’m not going to say you haven’t been distant, because you have, but I get it. You’re dealing with a lot of work stuff. I’ve been there. The important thing is that you’re trying.”

“I’m trying,” Calum affirms. “But I could be trying harder. Mikey, come on. You act like you miss me when I’m in the same room as you.”

Michael winces. “It’s been a hard year for you. I know you can’t always be with me. You can’t always be paying attention to me. I’m not the only thing in your life.”

“I’m listening to you,” Calum swears, because he is, when it matters. Out of every voice in the world, Michael’s is the only one Calum would willingly hear day in and day out. “I’m paying attention to the important stuff. Every day I get to notice all the things I fell in love with you for, and I fall in love with you again.”

Michael exhales. “I could be more patient with you. It takes two, you know.”

“Well, nobody said we’re perfect.” Calum smiles and pulls Michael in for a kiss, what he realizes is their first of the evening, not counting the attack leveled against Michael, minutes prior. The tang of red wine is on Michael’s lips, and when they break apart he’s blushing, this time from the kiss and not from the drink. Calum can tell the difference, somehow.

“I think you’re perfect,” Michael whispers.

Calum breathes a laugh. “Well, I know you’re perfect.”

“Mathematically,” Michael says, “I think that should mean we’re perfect together.”

“Don’t bring math into this.”

Michael laughs, crowds another kiss onto Calum’s mouth, and is smiling as he pulls away. “Okay. Back to the party. Together.”

“Together,” Calum agrees, and the word sits comfortably on his tongue. An idea is starting to form in his mind, just bits and pieces, but it involves a gleaming ring and the words I do and Calum suddenly, violently wonders if he has to keep it under wraps, because Michael could ask him right now and Calum would say I do and mean it in his bones.

[anxiety-trademark]

The week in review:

Raw 12/14 NXT 12/16 NXT UK 12/17 Smackdown 12/18 TLC 12/20 + Main Event 12/17

Raw:

“This Sunday at tlc, it’s gonna be you and me against Nia and Shayna,” Lana says to Asuka, as a quiet ‘woo’ can be heard in the distance.

Lana facing her fears and fighting Nia Jax makes her the bravest person Asuka knows. Rolling. Fucking Asuka. ASUKA. wwe, stop.

Why isn’t Asuka accompanying Lana to the ring?

I like Lana’s gear.

Joe just compared Lana to a mosquito, goodbye.

Oh snap look how fast Lana did that headscissors takedown. We’re witnessing her progression, ladies and gents.

You know, I knew Lana would win this match, I knew exactly how she would win this match, but jfc what a treat watching it myself. 

Nia’s face lmfao.

Shayna wrecking Asuka so she can’t save Lana from her inevitable fate. Still curious on whether or not this beatdown injured her, if she was injured going into the match, or if it was all really just a storyline.

Yikes this is sad.

Man that leg drop onto Lana’s ankle actually looked kinda wicked, ngl.

*distant woo intensifies*

Wow we got real tears from Lana. Points.

Becky and Charlotte have been gone, Alexa hasn’t been on tv, the Raw women’s championship has become a meaningless prop... what a dead period for this roster.

Hi why is this match happening?

I will never not be impressed by Dana’s entrance.

Is Mandy actually hurt? Why did they take her off tv for so long? Is Shayna the resident kayfabe shelver? “Hey this girl is actually injured, have her written off by Shayna” ?? Cuz I know they’re not splitting Dana and Mandy up, and Dana has been on tv every week since Mandy left. Must be genuine.

These 2 are running roughshod over the entire division at this point.

OH SHIT MANDY’S BACK WITH A KENDO STICK

Lmfao the babyfaces are fucking done with Nia and Shayna. Honestly that’s great, I love it when babyfaces band together to stand up to dominant duos. This has been going on long enough. They took out Mandy, took out Lana, were about to take out Dana. Totally fair.

Highlight: Lana getting a clean win over Nia & being taken out so my queen can return

---

NXT:

It’s a funny thing with Toni and Rhea. Toni says she’s the reason Rhea came to nxt, but she’s also the reason I became such a huge fan of Rhea’s. Heard they were having some big TakeOver match and everyone was always praising Toni. So I checked into Blackpool solely to see what the Toni Storm fuss was about, and I left that ppv solely impressed by Rhea Ripley. Then I took particular notice of Rhea in the Royal Rumble a few weeks later, and I’ve been watching NXT UK for her ever since (til she moved). To see her growth has been tremendous, and she’s so young. Such a bright future.

The music to this is great.

Toni says she isn’t scared of Rhea, as if Rhea’s mere theme music didn’t scare the absolute shit out of Toni the week prior lol.

Toni’s not even a terrible promo, but the timing of her blinks could not be worse. Yes, it matters.

I can’t stop laughing at how fucking intensely Shotzi started this interview.

She does pissed off interviews well. I can feel her annoyance.

Really don’t want to see a Candice/Shotzi feud tbh but okay, I’ll try.

aaand there’s the howl. Awful.

Lmfao Rhea called Toni a piece of trash. This is gonna be interesting to see with the alignments reversed.

I don’t remember who won this match, but I’m betting it was Toni. Which is fair tbh. Rhea is probably on the “put some peeps over before moving up to the main roster” path that everyone in the women’s division walks on. They always eat at least one monumental, or a couple meaningful, loss(es).

Oh man that is fucked up. To not only be forced to continue punching/kicking a human (fun fact: the person on the offense takes quite the damage doing so) but to have the defenseless victim bleed out and beg for you to stop. That’s rough.

This was shot really well. That music holy shit, I’m creeped out. It’s like a horror movie.

I see the point. Numbs him to pain and breaks his will, while numbing her to mercy. Ruthless stuff.

Oh are we finally done with Indi’s neck brace? Cool.

I can’t believe wwe invested in this upgraded tank. I still don’t think it’d work on the MR, but points to the boss for shelling out the cash.

Wtf was that stumble and “fall” by Indi lmao.

If Candice was a real bully, she’d distract Shotzi by fucking with her tank at ringside.

Indi does need a mentor, she’s a hell of a lot greener than my mutuals have made it sound. oof.

Shotzi looks like she has no idea how to work with Indi, and Indi looks gassed, confused, and slow as hell.

All Indi knows it going from spot to spot while Shotzi waits around for her to get there.

Lol Indi failed at getting a dirty win. I don’t really care if this is a part of her The Way storyline, what a mess.

The only redeeming part of this piss poor segment was Theory shaking the troll’s head at Shotzi.

I’ll give wwe an extra $9.99 if they let this match have a clean ending.

“[Rhea] was at one point the biggest superstar in the world,” that isn’t even close to being true because Becky Lynch exists, but I’ll let it slide and pretend you said “in nxt”.

Their paths will be so similar to Becky and Charlotte in the future.

Wow what a sequence. That would’ve received an applause on the MR. Traded headlocks for restholds, threw around their strength, then went into a battle of pinfall reversals. Instead of following that with some stalemate, they didn’t take a breath and proceeded to dance with each other and showcase some chemistry before rolling back into a battle of pinfall reversals. The sequence started with a kick by Toni to Rhea’s midsection, and it ends with a kick by Rhea to Toni’s midsection. Peep that match production, good stuff.

My, my, those slaps to Toni’s back. Whew.

Yeah actually it’s really fucking cool that these 2 get to main event nxt together, come to think of it.

They sell well for each other.

Rhea has the best dropkicks, lesbireal.

Holy shit Toni’s headbutts make my own head hurt. God I wish she wouldn’t. Most people put their hands between the heads so no contact can be made, but Toni’s just like “lol fuck it”

This is a great match. This duo works a lot better with these specific alignments. Watching face Toni try to chop down Rhea is not as good as heel Toni being impossibly hard for Rhea to put away.

Women’s matches and never having a clean ending. Name a more iconic duo. Winter of overbooked women’s matches continues.

Like I had guessed Toni was gonna win anyway, but fucking come on.

*Bonus* online exclusive: Toni says playing by the rules got her diddly and squat, but like... she was a champion lol. “It ain’t even Toni time right now, it’s party time.” Alright.

Highlight: Rhea vs Toni minus the ending

---

NXT UK:

I don’t know why we’re getting Isla Dawn vs KLR but anytime I get to see KLR fight, I’m here for it.

Hell even Isla’s song never kicks it out of first gear. Song has so much potential but it never goes to the next level.

Ahhhh my Scottish queen is here.

No, don’t compare Sasha’s basement meteora to the double knees Isla did. That was pitiful.

Anyway, KLR vs any of the 4hw would be fantastic, take my money. Sasha, Bayley, Charlotte, or the woman KLR wanted to face at TO Dublin, Dublin native Becky Lynch.

That back body drop is horrendous as a finisher. It’s like when Becky won her debut match the exploder suplex. Awful lmao. Imagine if KLR lost to a back body drop ffs.

You don’t get to be this frustrated for not being able to beat the champion when you’ve only been fighting for like 3 mins.

Isla’s pisspoor speed going in the corner, and her pisspoor roll off of KLR’s tornado ddt. Shame.

Such a clean transition from a failed pinfall attempt into a submission by KLR, whew.

This whole match was just a flex by KLR lmao.

There was a time where we had Becky Lynch, Bayley, Rhea Ripley and KLR as our champions. Wow, take me back plz.

The background music of this stupid recording is so unnecessarily dramatic, wow.

All for the delivery of a chair. Of a fucking chair. Piper... shut up and handle your shit.

For someone so much larger than the little man, Piper is insanely unintimidating.

Highlight: I got to see KLR wrestle

---

Smackdown:

Bayley does run her mouth a lot. She’s kind of the EST at saying dumb shit that gets her into trouble lmao.

Bianca is so friggin good at interviews and in backstage segments. She hasn’t received much of a chance to do promos in the ring, let alone obviously to a live crowd, but I hope she shines there, too.

Has Liv reverted back to being a dumb blonde, or is it drugs? Stop letting her speak.

Love Riott Squad’s everchanging gear. Wonder who makes it for them.

Billie Kay claims that she’s a ‘seasoned’ ring announcer, and somehow that would not surprise me.

Tamina “get the fuck out of my face until I get a nap and a vat of coffee” Snuka, everyone.

Lmfaooo Tamina fucking chucked Liv across the damn ring. What a good job by Liv.

Ruby is exceptional at running the ropes. She gets a good spring off of it.

Tamina’s hair is always so beautiful, she gets points there.

Dropkick into a faceplant. Billie Kay gets pinned rofl. She’s so bad at wrestling and yet here I am ridiculously entertained.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Carmella’s current persona, but man I wish she’d come out in a cut off tank top, camo pants, high tops and a printed hat.

I mean people are at home cuz covid, but go off.

Aye putting over Sasha. Good heel Mella.

Sasha has held the title for like a whopping 2 months and we’re already marking calendars. Sad.

In kf, Sasha is kind of mentally weak, so I’ll give Mella that. I’m not sure what it’s gonna take to shake that perception, either.

“Who is Sasha Banks if she’s not the Boss? Who is Sasha Banks if she’s not the best? It’s sad because that’s a question that not even Sasha Banks knows the answer too.” So I get that wwe are trying to help Sasha develop and fight off her past demons, but man these women are ripping her a new one. Sasha’s only 29 so she can grow and develop however she wants, but jeeze. Salt, meet the dagger Bayley stuck in Sasha’s back.

I like Mella cuz she knows how to hype her opponent’s accolades and strengths while cutting an immaculate heel promo where she hits them RIGHT where it hurts. She’s a pro. Heels should take notes.

This music is like the Jazz Vibes playlist I always listen to.

She just called Sasha cheap and frantic lmaoooo

Oh damn Sasha be out here looking like MONEY. That girl has style, even if it doesn’t always hit with me, she got style.

oof the crack of that slap to Reggie.

OOF the crack of the bottle shattering over Sasha’s poor back. rip.

Match at TLC should’ve been a champagne match. That entails whatever your mind comes up with; pouring alcohol on your opponent, dumping their head in a bucket of ice, breaking bottles over spines. It don’t matter.

“You don’t see me going around here bragging about how damn good I am,” lmao WHAT. Bayley is equal parts delusional and obnoxiously annoying.

One size heel does not fit all, but I think her version suits her beautifully.

If I were her I’d pick your brain too, but I’d also want a match, cuz people leave matches with you looking as good as humanly possible. Equal parts selfless as well.

She didn’t lie, this was absolutely her putting Bianca on the map on the main roster.

wwe: wants to strap a rocket to Bianca and make her a star. Also fucking wwe: “lol no we’re not gonna show you her full entrance, cry more scrub.” 

Bayley still looks weird without a title.

Bayley mocks Bianca’s entrance and then gets swept onto the apron lmao. Idiot.

Bianca is a lot of flash and showboating, which is great from an entertainment standpoint, but she needs to do a little... less.

Fantastic snap of the hand against the led board. Bayley wrecking Bianca’s arm gonna hinder the flips.

“I’m the ER. I’m BET-TER. haha.” lmao Bayley is such a fucking dork. Got sent into the ring steps for her bravado. Love that there’s always immediate repercussions for Bayley’s arrogance.

Bayley turned midway going down onto Bianca’s knee for that backbreaker, there. Hope she doesn’t have a massive bruise. Looked like it’d leave a massive bruise.

3 things I’ll apparently never get to see again: Bianca’s hair whip, Bianca’s full entrance, and Bianca’s 450 splash. I’m tired.

These stupid fucking squats while Bianca is dangling off the top rope rofl I swear Bayley is something else. Girl knows how to entertain. “Bayley got a bit cute and Bianca made her pay,” story of Bayley’s life.

Beautiful spinebuster by Bianca. At least SOMEONE in the women’s division will use it.

Bit of a miscommunication there it seems. Bayley goes for a B2B, Bianca tries to block it, Bayley drops down to dodge and go for a cradle. She rolls Bianca all the way back, stands up and hesitates before running at Bianca with an elbow - even though Bianca is not in position to receive it - which Bianca counters by rolling Bayley up, but it was super obvious Bianca was just scouting the next spot. Bianca goes to pick her up for a powerbomb but Bayley has to kick out twice to prevent herself from being pinned while Bianca tries to lift her. That entire sequence was super messy.

Then Bianca nearly drops her lifting her all the way up lol. Yikes. Gotta be pretty fluent to pull that off. Not to plug my fav (but I’m totally gonna plug my fav); it’s a move Charlotte does in almost every match against Asuka or Becky, and you gotta be not only built to pull it off, but you need to have impeccable timing to make the transition look smooth. Extra points if you lift them off the mat RIGHT before a 3 (which Charlotte usually does)

Anyway, good match with a messy last 2 sequences. Bayley did what Bayley does best.

Highlight: Bayley vs Bianca

---

TLC:

They really took Eva Marie and Sasha Banks’ characters and meshed them together while keeping Carmella’s obsession for animal print lol.

Really don’t like that gear. That’s a miss, Mikaze.

Beautiful arm drag. Sasha taking the idea of wrestling like a Lucha more seriously? Cuz she should, ain’t nobody else in the MR doing it.

Commentators say the trash talk is continuing, I say Sasha is quietly leading this match with a grimace. Peeped that “hit me”.

Carmella goes to suicide dive through the ropes just for Reggie to catch her, cept she got caught up and started turning in midair. Would’ve hit her neck and shoulder HARD had he not been there. Great catch indeed.

Sasha “rip my back” Banks.

Not to be douchey, but if you have to adjust your gear in the middle of a match and it’s not just to fill time or be used as character work, then you need to redesign your gear.

Sasha’s a great babyface once that bell rings man. I wish she could carry that energy everywhere.

Holy fuck that facebuster. SPIKED her head, oh my god. I have never seen anyone make a facebuster look so impactful. Points if intentional.

Oh the timing of Sasha blocking that superkick from legit connecting. God she’s good.

You know how I know this is a good match? I’m watching some of these near pinfalls and submissions knowing damn well Sasha’s gonna win, yet my anxiety is still spiking thinking Carmella might walk out with the title. I KNOW she doesn’t though lmao. Good sequences, believable offense, great near pinfalls. They work well together (I’m not surprised, Mella and Sasha both work well with almost anyone)

What a fantastic transition into the bank statement. Points.

That match should’ve ended by dq the second Reggie pulled Mella out. 

Sasha could’ve sold that double superkick pinfall attempt a little bit more.

Carmella having a breakdown. What does that mean? That means she’s about to lose this match lmao. There it is, not even 10 seconds later hahaha.

Sasha sells pain so damn well. Good for her. Good defense of her title. Points to Sasha, she’s phenomenal every time she has an actual match. Post-match and she’s already annoyed me though lol. Ugh. Maybe she’ll get it soon enough.

Nice “replay” wwe. Billion dollar company btw.

Billie, drawing a horizontal line is not how you write ‘clairvoyant’. 

“proficient in Japanese” aw Asuka was so excited for a split second lmao.

Oh no, she made a mask to match Asuka’s with a paper plate. Oh no no no. Travesty. 

Ugh I’m so excited. I’ve already seen this and yet I’m excited. Here we are, the whole damn reason I started catching up on everything I basically refused to watch since June 22.

SHE LOOKS LIKE MONEY, WHEW. The queen IS back. She’s so fucking beautiful man.

Love how annoyed Nia looks. This is your comeuppance tbh. Could’ve just faced a measly Lana, but no, you had to play too much.

Really Charlotte shouldn’t be in the tag division, and really she shouldn’t give half of a fuck about Asuka, but we’ll get to that more in the future since this is already nearly 2 months old.

Nia’s doing a great job selling Charlotte’s return, and she’s not even active in the match rn. She does good work.

Bad camera angle on Asuka hitting the ring post.

Asuka getting wrecked lol.

I really despise that the Raw women’s championship was tied up in all of these storylines that have nothing to do with the Raw women’s championship. The Lana crap, the Charlotte crap, the tag teaming in general crap.

In hindsight, I now find it curious that Ric Flair was in the back for this match. Very curious. I swear, if the past 2 real time months weren’t a part of some master plan the Flairs came up with together, I will be SHOCKED.

Charlotte’s fucking crazy for doing those moonsaults to the outside though, for real. I know she was a gymnast and an exceptional cheerleader, but MAN you could not pay me to do fucking blind back flips that high up. Crazy.

She should’ve given us a spear in this match. I wanna go rewatch her work just to see some spears.

Good match. They needed to not focus on destroying Asuka for as long as they did, pacing was off for a little bit there.

Love how Charlotte sticks her tongue out when she bridges up into the figure 8. She’s such an asshole lmao.

If I could’ve changed one thing about that finish, I would’ve had Charlotte bounce off the ropes before hitting Natural Selection. Other than that, it was great.

Charlotte looks good with a title, idk *shrug*

The way Charlotte looked over at Asuka though. I really don’t trust her in hindsight lol.

Like how this Firefly Funhouse is setting the spotlight on Alexa before Bray takes his leave of absence, only wish she hadn’t missed 2-3 wks of tv.

What a fun way of running a video package.

Inferno matches are insane and I’m not sure why anyone would participate in such.

Think it’s smart they’re both leaving their jackets on tbh.

Alright that was cool. The way Fiend called up the flames was fucking cool. It looks amazing aesthetically. They could’ve never done the set quite like this if there had been fans.

WE HAVE STRAPS?! IS FIRE NOT ENOUGH?!? Man. Randy is a fucking trooper.

Guys. Guys excuse me, that strap is on fire, can... can we not, please??

Man is swinging a god damn pick axe at Randy Orton, I--

I hope that wasn’t actually flammable liquid cuz otherwise Randy is now soaked in it, and that’s insanely dangerous. Oh that’s great editing. So it was flammable, but Randy was out of the chair before the fire rushed at him. Also covered the chair in blood. That was cool.

Orton just pull the damn string out of the jacket real quick lol.

Caught Orton’s attempt at an rko with a mandable claw. Points.

Can someone... put him out? Editing trick? Were the flames real? Am I real??

Shouldn’t the bell ring? Match is over, right??

The dummy was kind of obvious ngl. Not to sound like an asshole, but they should’ve made it a bit thicker and more solid lol. Doesn’t really take me out of it though, cuz even though I’m sure it was a stunt double that got lit on fire by the ramp, someone was on fucking fire, and that’s intimidating in itself.

Also the dummy is melting. I’d say they should’ve used pig meat, but I’m sure vegans and animal rights activists would’ve had a field day writing to Snickers about that.

Was a good match, for what it was. I was entertained.

---

*BONUS*

Main Event:

“Nasty Nikki” lol okay.

“The only reason people even know you exist is because you were Alexa Bliss’ best friend,” ouch. Truth is pain.

Ahahahah Lacey has hand sanitizer again. 

Love that submission Lacey jumped into through the ropes, plus an eye rake. Fantastic.

That’s curious. Lacey and Peyton are arguing over the hand sanitizer as Lacey wants to squirt it on Nikki, while Peyton is claiming it’ll get her DQd. Now I’m on Peyton’s side in the sense that it should absolutely be illegal, but Lacey’s done it in a match against Nikki before, sooo ???

I like how Nikki fell trying to get back into the ring before the 10 count. Adds credibility.

Haha Nikki gets the pinfall over Lacey because Peyton was being a nuisance on the outside. Lacey big mad. That’s great.

---

*Smackdown easily shined the brightest in what was a great week of wrestling. Utilized 8 women in 3 different storylines, couldn’t possibly complain about that.